They do everything from linux to graphic software to word processing.. And none of its really working.
I must protest. I am an fervid WordPerfect user and, until the most recent version of each, it worked far better than Microsoft Word.
I also know many who still use Corel linux (which Corel (in a move you would say was wise because it focused their resources) dropped).
I think that their software has usually been good. It doesn't work from a business standpoint, because there is already quality software that is much more popular, and people take popularity over quality any day. It is like VHS vs. BetaMax.
HTTP proxies DO exist & squid is a good one. I don't think I was clear, though. For one thing, bit-torrent has the promise to ease the load on a machine that is being used as a cache. Peers can get content from each other.
For another, squid isn't a client application. If every machine was running a simple bittorrent-derived program that would poll an on-site server for updated torrents for (for example) antivirus definitions, they could then get new updates from other machines on that subnet.
This could have an even greater application in keeping cloned machines cloned. There are certainly protocols and programs to do this, but few have the added benefit of being P2P.
This is a very good point, but it would be invaluable for a single subnet. In a single company/school/lab/whatever, sharing small bandwidth costs across many servers & having everything be up-to-date would be great.
I think that bittorrent can be of significant commercial interest. It might be used for software updates for instance. Have you pursued this path or have companies approached you?
I certainly hope you'd keep a free version available, but a more feature-rich version would surely land you a great deal of money with the right pitch.
Slightly less obvious, but as interesting is what do you think of what people have done with what you have created. I'm sure you might be sick of people asking you how to obtain a torrent for the latest movie, but are you troubled that it is being used for copyright infringement? Pleased? Apathetic?
Do you wish that it was used more for distributing legal ISOs and other files? If so, do you believe you should promote it more for this purpose or promote development of tools to push it in this direction (perhaps automatic creation of torrents on a successful build, etc.).
I do agree with you that intelligent and curious people tend to research a breadth of subjects like this. I'm a bit curious about how long geeks keep their hobbies. I know that I find myself switching from one to the next every few years. I know other geeks who are the same way, and we differ a great deal from hobbyists who have been at whatever it is they do for many decades.
I have been into blacksmithing and then riflery and then publishing and then electronics and then pyrotechnics and then making liquors/bartending and now am into cooking. Anyone have suggestions on what to do next?
Re:1999: breeder reactor
on
ScavHunt211
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Yeah, so I'm an idiot:
''People think of the University of Chicago and they think the students are weird,'' says Tom Howe, a junior from Atlanta. Having taken off his chicken suit, he is wearing a cardboard crown from a Burger King Kid's Meal. ''We want to show that intellectual doesn't necessarily mean stuffy.''
It is this philosophy -- that Chicago students can have fun if they really put their minds to it -- that gave birth to the University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt, a yearly celebration of looniness at a campus far better known for its Nobel laureates.
Putting aside term papers for a long weekend, hundreds of undergraduates in teams representing dormitories and student organizations range around the campus -- and, this year, the North American continent -- in search of items that will never be found in a course catalogue. The grand prize is $500, but the goal, says Mr. Howe, is loftier: ''to make the participants maximize their intellectual creativity.''
These were among the 339 items on the list for this year's scavenger hunt, released at the stroke of midnight on May 6:
No. 123: A computer suffering a year 2000 problem.
No. 262: Five Mensa membership cards.
No. 167: A 15-foot-tall monument to Grimace, the McDonald's Happy Meal character.
No. 40: A tenured professor willing to recite profane lyrics from a gangsta rap song.
Each team works from an identical list; items are assigned points, based on difficulty, and the team with the most points by Sunday afternoon is the winner. The wording of certain clues often suggests a trip to a far-flung destination -- having a team member photographed with an Ontario police officer, for instance.
Teams are often elaborately organized, with ''page masters'' assigned to each page of the list and at least one person operating a computer long after midnight in search of Web sites that will lead the team to cubic zirconia (20 points) or Chicago Bulls season tickets (15 points) or an autographed photograph of the Food Network star Jacqui Malouf (30 points).
''One of the items on the list was the 'street value of Mount Everest,' '' said Sam Hunt, a freshman competing for his dorm, Shoreland Hall. ''So we posted it on Ebay, and made it look pretty, with a nice picture of the mountain and everything. The bidding got up to $180 before we got kicked off the site.''
The Shoreland team is run out of sixth-floor dormitory room of its captain, Ryan Miller. By the end of the weekend, Thai food containers litter the floor and at least three trash cans are overflowing with empty soda cans. The members have slept little if at all, and the room is a nest of cables that wire no fewer than six personal computers.
When the phone rings, it is answered with a curt ''Command central'' and calls are kept short so that the line can be free for a check-in from the road-trip group, probably somewhere in Canada.
''From what we can gather, the road-trip team is doing really well,'' Mr. Miller says. ''Except last time they checked in, they sounded drunk.''
Other items on this year's list included building a nuclear reactor from scratch (one team was actually successful -- this is the University of Chicago, after all), an edible iMac computer and a ticket to a local theater for a certain movie opening May 19. (To these students, the date needs no further explanation.)
No one is really sure how or when the scavenger hunt began, but they do know it is a welcome break from economics exams and Shakespeare papers -- a way to demonstrate, in Mr. Howe's words, that ''we actually can have fun on this campus.''
And how do you say fun on a college campus better than a keg toss? As part of the Scavolympics, a string of a dozen events before the final judging that teams compete for points in, all 13 teams came together to recreate a battle of the Civil War, to demonstrate a fight between Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth, and, yes, to toss a keg.
Competing for his dorm, Hitchcock-S
Re:1999: breeder reactor
on
ScavHunt211
·
· Score: 1
Anyone have the full text or another story about this for free?
Assume the article is:
On Campus; It's that season at Chicago, and Ph.D.'s have taken a back seat to a degree of silliness.
You're right about ethical vs. legal. I think that the law already redresses any ethical violations. The artists are getting royalties when their songs play on the radio & they're getting money when you purchase digital recording devices or media. I don't really think they see a big enough share of these royalties, but the fact that our recording media costs a little bit more and the fact we have to listen to more ads is indication that we ARE compensating artists.
Exactly right. Thanks for responding. The Audio Home Recording Act made it OK for consumers to tape broadcasts & that right hasn't been taken away. I haven't even heard RIAA argue that consumers can't tape radio broadcasts.
OK firstly, the non-objection of broadcasters (or the other owners) was a matter of evidence (fact), not a point of law.
True. Sorry for the imprecision.
In the case of Radio broadcasts of music, the artists, record companies and the RIAA might, as a matter of fact, have some objection. The point the court was making in Sony v Universal, was that some of the timeshifting was actually authorized by the copyright holders. So in the case of radio broadcasts "this" does not hold true.
Perhaps. I'd imagine there have been bands and labels and DJs who have said they want people to tape their material. Not all bands, labels, and DJs need to do this, just as not every network came forward and said "tape everything you want!"
People don't usually tape songs from the Radio, not for the purposes of time-shifting, but merely to have a library of songs. Such a library of songs then takes up exactly the same ground that purchasing recorded music inhabits. "Some meaningful likelihood of future harm" would seem to be much easier to demonstrate in such circumstances. More than that, you can be pretty sure the RIAA have done their homework on gathering 'evidence' for such harm. They certainly are doing so in regard to file sharing. Well, I'm not sure that having a library of songs is such a horrible thing. Libraries of self-recorded TV shows aren't that horrible. Perhaps a better argument would be that they are "space shifting" the music. They can dump it onto a CD to listen on their disman that has no radio, for example. This kind of thing was supported in the Rio case.
After looking into this a bit more, it is now obvious to me that I shouldn't have argued from Sony v Universal to begin with. I should have cited the Audio Home Recording Act, which says that consumers can make digital audio recordings of broadcasts. The catch is that digital audio recording devices need to be registered by the manufacturer and royalties need to go to recording artists. RIAA gets money for every sale of a DAT tape, for instance.
The right to space-shift has been recognized as extending beyond those devices that need to pay royalties under the act by the Rio case (Rios aren't digital recorders because the song must be copied from the computer to the device).
The DPSRA and DMCA and NET did put further limits on this--it is definitely not OK to distribute copies of copywritten material electronically, even if you don't make a profit--but I believe that it is still completely legal to tape audio broadcasts.
You've got it mostly right and can read the decision thanks to the EFF.
IMHO, nothing in that case gives people a blanket right to copy broadcasts (TV or radio) simply "for personal use."
This is true & future cases fleshed out some things that people CAN'T do. But you can tape unecrypted broadcasts and collect them. Interestingly, both the Sony and Universal indicated that people were accumulating tape libraries. This is why you can use a PVR. The networks do still argue that you can't skip commercials or share your recordings on the net (see, for example, the replaytv case), but they don't complain that you've taped something and keep it.
Clearly this does not apply to a situation where a song is being copied in lieu of being purchased.
It isn't clear to me. The Court actually said that broadcasters would have no objection to expanding their audience. I think this holds true to radio broadcasts.
One standard they cite is that the recordings aren't made for personal gain. It is very clear that selling the tape you made would be infringement. It -might- be infringing to trade broadcast tapes with others (as you're benefitting by expanding your collection. I don't see the extra benefit you get on top of time and space shifting.
Setting the law aside & looking at it pragmatically, I don't know how you would say that the person is taping a song so that he doesn't have to purchase it. In some ways, the author of the article is right, but possibly in the wrong medium. Copyright holders intentionally allow their songs to be broadcast to increase their audience--the songs on the radio are ads. Expanding that audience probably wouldn't raise any hackles.
From the OED: "[1668 J. HANCOCK Brooks' String of Pearls (Notice at end), Some dishonest Booksellers, called Land-Pirats, who make it their practise to steal Impressions of other mens Copies.] 1701 DE FOE True-born Eng. Explan. Pref. (1703) 6 Its being Printed again and again by Pyrates. 1709 STEELE & ADDISON Tatler No. 101 1 These Miscreants are a Set of Wretches we Authors call Pirates, who print any Book,..a soon as it appears.., in a smaller Volume, and sell it (as all other Thieves do stolen Goods) at a cheaper Rate. "
"1706 DE FOE Jure Div. Pref. 42 Gentlemen-Booksellers, that threatned to Pyrate it, as they call it, viz. Reprint it, and Sell it for half a Crown. 1754 Connoisseur No. 38 6 To prevent his design being pirated, he intends petitioning the Parliament"
"1697 tr. C'tess D'Aunoy's Trav. (1706) 77 One day, as Meluza came from Pyrating, he brought [etc.]. 1727 A. HAMILTON New Acc. E. Ind. I. xii. 140 The English went to burn that Village and their pirating Vessels. 1731 GAY Let. to Swift 1 Dec., I have had an injunction for me against pirating-booksellers. 1737 BYROM Jrnl. & Lit. Rem. (1856) II. I. 133 To put out a pirated edition."
Recording off of the radio requires comparitively greater effort than does pirating mp3's. While pirating, you can do a quick search and find what you are looking for on demand, whereas you need to "hunt and trap" what you are trying to find on the radio. I've argued in the past that the ease of "consumer copying" should increase the burden to prove piracy (i.e. with intent to profit). But I don't know how hard it is to tape a song, especially when you can call in and make a request.
By recording off of the radio, you are getting a lower-fidelity signal (noise and compressed sound), definitely an inferior product to that which you would be purchasing. So, let's say you tape digital radio, off of syrius or xm or the music channels on digital tv, etc.
I don't know about the legality of recording off of the radio or not, but it is obviously much less harmful given my points above. I would argue that the Sony-Betamax case should apply to radio just as it does to TV, which means that you can tape radio for personal use. Selling those tapes would obviously be illegal, but I do think there is a real gray area when you start to give them away, either physically or on the net.
I would definitely say it was a stupid, round-a-bout way to get your music, but I think that it can be done legally. If ripping and sharing is copyright infringement (it is...), then where do you draw the line between the two?
I did see that ad & you're right--that's a great sign of support that I forgot.
Incidentally, it is good that these DVDs are coming out--otherwise my significant other would almost certainly force me to download or trade for the show. She gave it more of a chance than I did & was hooked, but did miss an episode. I just watched the first couple aired eps, which many say weren't the best 'hook' for the series. I may become a fan yet!
It does depend on who is doing the duplication. Many times there is no fee. Good fans will usually allow you to send in your tapes and you'll just have to pay postage. I obtained the Good Eats marathon this way.
The Sony Betamax decision made COLLECTING tapes legal & I don't think that noncommercial tape trading of broadcast TV has been challenged (which isn't to say that it is legal). The same can't be said for all digital rips. Studios have been fairly aggressive about making sure that digital rips of their intellectual property aren't freely and easily available. FOX hasn't been as aggressive as say paramount, but they have flexed their muscle.
The DMCA has provisions to make it easy for the networks to ask that infringing material be removed IF POSTED ON THE INTERNET. Also, some digital rips come from encrypted wildfeeds or copy protected dvds. Obviously, this would involve a direct DMCA violation. Most tapes come from broadcast feeds & sometimes even carry the original commercials & most who trade stop trading when DVDs become available on the market.
And as to vcrs, tivos and downloading the show, you're totally off. Fox is a business.
I didn't mean to imply that Fox should have made a decision based on this kind of fan support. I meant that the fact that there wasn't more of this support went to show that, for whatever reason, Firefly's lackluster ratings were in agreement with the lack of fans. This isn't to say that there are no fans and that those fans aren't vocal (and, yes, they have shown this through making rips available & even selling/trading tapes, but there is still little interest in these compared to other shows). I think that shows that have had a bigger fanbase have been cancelled and the fact that many fans admit that it was hard to get into the show should make it no surprise that Fox, as a business, made the right decision.
As to the fans having a conscience, I doubt it. Seems more unethical to make high quality digital rips that encourage piracy and compete with the DVDs than to offer moderately priced tapes (to cover the cost of the tapes and postage with only a modest fee on top of this) to broaden the fanbase or provide people who are already fans a chance to see a show they missed. TV studios know how important demographics are, and if Firefly's fanbase was better (even if they were smaller), than other shows, the network would take it into consideration.
It's apparently cost effective to release them for series that weren't on the air long and which will therefore be difficult to find even in syndication (which has traditionally at least demanded that shows be on the air for three years or so to sell).
This is quite true. The best example that comes to mind is the Clerks animated show from ABC. It survived for less than half a dozen aired shows, played out of order. The DVDs sold surprisingly well.
As for Firefly, I don't know what more Fox could have done for the show. Playing the episodes in order or a little more promotion would help. But giving Joss another chance when it had been proven that his shows aren't necessarily a 'match' for the network was good enough.
Ever since the third season of the original series of Star Trek, it has become fashionable to blame the network for killing a Sci Fi series. While it is sometimes true, I don't see most networks giving shows 1/4 of what they were promised, throwing the shows in timeslots that they can't hope to survive in, and 'forcing' the executive producer/creator of the show to leave by refusing to negotiate.
I watched the first couple episodes and then abandoned it. I just couldn't get into it, but maybe I should have had more patience.
I don't think the show died because of the timeslot. Perhaps it would've done better if it played immediately before or after Buffy or Angel (yes, I realize those are on other networks), to get more Joss fans tuning in. I doubt it, though. Maybe they should have made the first episodes good?!
Other shows have survived that timeslot (X-Files comes to mind), and the interest for a show usually doesn't have much to do with the timeslot anymore thanks to vcrs, tivos, and the ability to download the show off the internet. Even shows which have been long cancelled or aren't produced in the US find life through tape-traders, ebay sales of VHS tapes, etc. I didn't see much support for the show in these ways either.
There are a ton of sites to answer not only this question, but the same question for MANY other shows as well. I won't remind you that a google search for firefly space western may turn up some infromative pages, but will point you to TV Tome.
The palm emulator on the zaurus is pretty good, but dumping a clie rom onto it & using that to emulate a calculator is a round-about way of getting this to work. Now that there has been a Free port for Palm and PocketPC devices, maybe some developer will be interested to port it to the Zaurus.
Slashdot Mirror
They do everything from linux to graphic software to word processing.. And none of its really working.
I must protest. I am an fervid WordPerfect user and, until the most recent version of each, it worked far better than Microsoft Word.
I also know many who still use Corel linux (which Corel (in a move you would say was wise because it focused their resources) dropped).
I think that their software has usually been good. It doesn't work from a business standpoint, because there is already quality software that is much more popular, and people take popularity over quality any day. It is like VHS vs. BetaMax.
HTTP proxies DO exist & squid is a good one. I don't think I was clear, though. For one thing, bit-torrent has the promise to ease the load on a machine that is being used as a cache. Peers can get content from each other.
For another, squid isn't a client application. If every machine was running a simple bittorrent-derived program that would poll an on-site server for updated torrents for (for example) antivirus definitions, they could then get new updates from other machines on that subnet.
This could have an even greater application in keeping cloned machines cloned. There are certainly protocols and programs to do this, but few have the added benefit of being P2P.
This is a very good point, but it would be invaluable for a single subnet. In a single company/school/lab/whatever, sharing small bandwidth costs across many servers & having everything be up-to-date would be great.
I think that bittorrent can be of significant commercial interest. It might be used for software updates for instance. Have you pursued this path or have companies approached you?
I certainly hope you'd keep a free version available, but a more feature-rich version would surely land you a great deal of money with the right pitch.
I remember certain adult movies being released to test out bittorrent. Why are you only allowing tests of rather tame isos now?
If you were to start from scratch, what would you change about bittorrent? Decentralized trackers? Imposed bandwidth caps? Better karma system?
Slightly less obvious, but as interesting is what do you think of what people have done with what you have created. I'm sure you might be sick of people asking you how to obtain a torrent for the latest movie, but are you troubled that it is being used for copyright infringement? Pleased? Apathetic?
Do you wish that it was used more for distributing legal ISOs and other files? If so, do you believe you should promote it more for this purpose or promote development of tools to push it in this direction (perhaps automatic creation of torrents on a successful build, etc.).
I do agree with you that intelligent and curious people tend to research a breadth of subjects like this. I'm a bit curious about how long geeks keep their hobbies. I know that I find myself switching from one to the next every few years. I know other geeks who are the same way, and we differ a great deal from hobbyists who have been at whatever it is they do for many decades.
I have been into blacksmithing and then riflery and then publishing and then electronics and then pyrotechnics and then making liquors/bartending and now am into cooking. Anyone have suggestions on what to do next?
Yeah, so I'm an idiot:
''People think of the University of Chicago and they think the students are weird,'' says Tom Howe, a junior from Atlanta. Having taken off his chicken suit, he is wearing a cardboard crown from a Burger King Kid's Meal. ''We want to show that intellectual doesn't necessarily mean stuffy.''
It is this philosophy -- that Chicago students can have fun if they really put their minds to it -- that gave birth to the University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt, a yearly celebration of looniness at a campus far better known for its Nobel laureates.
Putting aside term papers for a long weekend, hundreds of undergraduates in teams representing dormitories and student organizations range around the campus -- and, this year, the North American continent -- in search of items that will never be found in a course catalogue. The grand prize is $500, but the goal, says Mr. Howe, is loftier: ''to make the participants maximize their intellectual creativity.''
These were among the 339 items on the list for this year's scavenger hunt, released at the stroke of midnight on May 6:
No. 123: A computer suffering a year 2000 problem.
No. 262: Five Mensa membership cards.
No. 167: A 15-foot-tall monument to Grimace, the McDonald's Happy Meal character.
No. 40: A tenured professor willing to recite profane lyrics from a gangsta rap song.
Each team works from an identical list; items are assigned points, based on difficulty, and the team with the most points by Sunday afternoon is the winner. The wording of certain clues often suggests a trip to a far-flung destination -- having a team member photographed with an Ontario police officer, for instance.
Teams are often elaborately organized, with ''page masters'' assigned to each page of the list and at least one person operating a computer long after midnight in search of Web sites that will lead the team to cubic zirconia (20 points) or Chicago Bulls season tickets (15 points) or an autographed photograph of the Food Network star Jacqui Malouf (30 points).
''One of the items on the list was the 'street value of Mount Everest,' '' said Sam Hunt, a freshman competing for his dorm, Shoreland Hall. ''So we posted it on Ebay, and made it look pretty, with a nice picture of the mountain and everything. The bidding got up to $180 before we got kicked off the site.''
The Shoreland team is run out of sixth-floor dormitory room of its captain, Ryan Miller. By the end of the weekend, Thai food containers litter the floor and at least three trash cans are overflowing with empty soda cans. The members have slept little if at all, and the room is a nest of cables that wire no fewer than six personal computers.
When the phone rings, it is answered with a curt ''Command central'' and calls are kept short so that the line can be free for a check-in from the road-trip group, probably somewhere in Canada.
''From what we can gather, the road-trip team is doing really well,'' Mr. Miller says. ''Except last time they checked in, they sounded drunk.''
Other items on this year's list included building a nuclear reactor from scratch (one team was actually successful -- this is the University of Chicago, after all), an edible iMac computer and a ticket to a local theater for a certain movie opening May 19. (To these students, the date needs no further explanation.)
No one is really sure how or when the scavenger hunt began, but they do know it is a welcome break from economics exams and Shakespeare papers -- a way to demonstrate, in Mr. Howe's words, that ''we actually can have fun on this campus.''
And how do you say fun on a college campus better than a keg toss? As part of the Scavolympics, a string of a dozen events before the final judging that teams compete for points in, all 13 teams came together to recreate a battle of the Civil War, to demonstrate a fight between Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth, and, yes, to toss a keg.
Competing for his dorm, Hitchcock-S
Anyone have the full text or another story about this for free?
Assume the article is:
On Campus; It's that season at Chicago, and Ph.D.'s have taken a back seat to a degree of silliness.
By Andrew Bluth (NYT) 997 words
You're right about ethical vs. legal. I think that the law already redresses any ethical violations. The artists are getting royalties when their songs play on the radio & they're getting money when you purchase digital recording devices or media. I don't really think they see a big enough share of these royalties, but the fact that our recording media costs a little bit more and the fact we have to listen to more ads is indication that we ARE compensating artists.
Exactly right. Thanks for responding. The Audio Home Recording Act made it OK for consumers to tape broadcasts & that right hasn't been taken away. I haven't even heard RIAA argue that consumers can't tape radio broadcasts.
OK firstly, the non-objection of broadcasters (or the other owners) was a matter of evidence (fact), not a point of law.
True. Sorry for the imprecision.
In the case of Radio broadcasts of music, the artists, record companies and the RIAA might, as a matter of fact, have some objection. The point the court was making in Sony v Universal, was that some of the timeshifting was actually authorized by the copyright holders. So in the case of radio broadcasts "this" does not hold true.
Perhaps. I'd imagine there have been bands and labels and DJs who have said they want people to tape their material. Not all bands, labels, and DJs need to do this, just as not every network came forward and said "tape everything you want!"
People don't usually tape songs from the Radio, not for the purposes of time-shifting, but merely to have a library of songs. Such a library of songs then takes up exactly the same ground that purchasing recorded music inhabits. "Some meaningful likelihood of future harm" would seem to be much easier to demonstrate in such circumstances. More than that, you can be pretty sure the RIAA have done their homework on gathering 'evidence' for such harm. They certainly are doing so in regard to file sharing.
Well, I'm not sure that having a library of songs is such a horrible thing. Libraries of self-recorded TV shows aren't that horrible. Perhaps a better argument would be that they are "space shifting" the music. They can dump it onto a CD to listen on their disman that has no radio, for example. This kind of thing was supported in the Rio case.
After looking into this a bit more, it is now obvious to me that I shouldn't have argued from Sony v Universal to begin with. I should have cited the Audio Home Recording Act, which says that consumers can make digital audio recordings of broadcasts. The catch is that digital audio recording devices need to be registered by the manufacturer and royalties need to go to recording artists. RIAA gets money for every sale of a DAT tape, for instance.
The right to space-shift has been recognized as extending beyond those devices that need to pay royalties under the act by the Rio case (Rios aren't digital recorders because the song must be copied from the computer to the device).
The DPSRA and DMCA and NET did put further limits on this--it is definitely not OK to distribute copies of copywritten material electronically, even if you don't make a profit--but I believe that it is still completely legal to tape audio broadcasts.
You've got it mostly right and can read the decision thanks to the EFF.
IMHO, nothing in that case gives people a blanket right to copy broadcasts (TV or radio) simply "for personal use."
This is true & future cases fleshed out some things that people CAN'T do. But you can tape unecrypted broadcasts and collect them. Interestingly, both the Sony and Universal indicated that people were accumulating tape libraries. This is why you can use a PVR. The networks do still argue that you can't skip commercials or share your recordings on the net (see, for example, the replaytv case), but they don't complain that you've taped something and keep it.
Clearly this does not apply to a situation where a song is being copied in lieu of being purchased.
It isn't clear to me. The Court actually said that broadcasters would have no objection to expanding their audience. I think this holds true to radio broadcasts.
One standard they cite is that the recordings aren't made for personal gain. It is very clear that selling the tape you made would be infringement. It -might- be infringing to trade broadcast tapes with others (as you're benefitting by expanding your collection. I don't see the extra benefit you get on top of time and space shifting.
Setting the law aside & looking at it pragmatically, I don't know how you would say that the person is taping a song so that he doesn't have to purchase it. In some ways, the author of the article is right, but possibly in the wrong medium. Copyright holders intentionally allow their songs to be broadcast to increase their audience--the songs on the radio are ads. Expanding that audience probably wouldn't raise any hackles.
Dates back even further....
From the OED:
"[1668 J. HANCOCK Brooks' String of Pearls (Notice at end), Some dishonest Booksellers, called Land-Pirats, who make it their practise to steal Impressions of other mens Copies.] 1701 DE FOE True-born Eng. Explan. Pref. (1703) 6 Its being Printed again and again by Pyrates. 1709 STEELE & ADDISON Tatler No. 101 1 These Miscreants are a Set of Wretches we Authors call Pirates, who print any Book,..a soon as it appears.., in a smaller Volume, and sell it (as all other Thieves do stolen Goods) at a cheaper Rate. "
"1706 DE FOE Jure Div. Pref. 42 Gentlemen-Booksellers, that threatned to Pyrate it, as they call it, viz. Reprint it, and Sell it for half a Crown. 1754 Connoisseur No. 38 6 To prevent his design being pirated, he intends petitioning the Parliament"
"1697 tr. C'tess D'Aunoy's Trav. (1706) 77 One day, as Meluza came from Pyrating, he brought [etc.]. 1727 A. HAMILTON New Acc. E. Ind. I. xii. 140 The English went to burn that Village and their pirating Vessels. 1731 GAY Let. to Swift 1 Dec., I have had an injunction for me against pirating-booksellers. 1737 BYROM Jrnl. & Lit. Rem. (1856) II. I. 133 To put out a pirated edition."
Recording off of the radio requires comparitively greater effort than does pirating mp3's. While pirating, you can do a quick search and find what you are looking for on demand, whereas you need to "hunt and trap" what you are trying to find on the radio.
I've argued in the past that the ease of "consumer copying" should increase the burden to prove piracy (i.e. with intent to profit). But I don't know how hard it is to tape a song, especially when you can call in and make a request.
By recording off of the radio, you are getting a lower-fidelity signal (noise and compressed sound), definitely an inferior product to that which you would be purchasing.
So, let's say you tape digital radio, off of syrius or xm or the music channels on digital tv, etc.
I don't know about the legality of recording off of the radio or not, but it is obviously much less harmful given my points above.
I would argue that the Sony-Betamax case should apply to radio just as it does to TV, which means that you can tape radio for personal use. Selling those tapes would obviously be illegal, but I do think there is a real gray area when you start to give them away, either physically or on the net.
I would definitely say it was a stupid, round-a-bout way to get your music, but I think that it can be done legally. If ripping and sharing is copyright infringement (it is...), then where do you draw the line between the two?
Recording off the radio is making a copy of coprighted material. In almost all jurisdicitions this constitutes a breach of copyright.
So does the Sony-Betamax case not apply to radio? This decision is what allows you to record television shows.
I do agree with you, but wonder if you think it is unethical to tape a song off the radio.
I did see that ad & you're right--that's a great sign of support that I forgot.
Incidentally, it is good that these DVDs are coming out--otherwise my significant other would almost certainly force me to download or trade for the show. She gave it more of a chance than I did & was hooked, but did miss an episode. I just watched the first couple aired eps, which many say weren't the best 'hook' for the series. I may become a fan yet!
It does depend on who is doing the duplication. Many times there is no fee. Good fans will usually allow you to send in your tapes and you'll just have to pay postage. I obtained the Good Eats marathon this way.
The Sony Betamax decision made COLLECTING tapes legal & I don't think that noncommercial tape trading of broadcast TV has been challenged (which isn't to say that it is legal). The same can't be said for all digital rips. Studios have been fairly aggressive about making sure that digital rips of their intellectual property aren't freely and easily available. FOX hasn't been as aggressive as say paramount, but they have flexed their muscle.
The DMCA has provisions to make it easy for the networks to ask that infringing material be removed IF POSTED ON THE INTERNET. Also, some digital rips come from encrypted wildfeeds or copy protected dvds. Obviously, this would involve a direct DMCA violation. Most tapes come from broadcast feeds & sometimes even carry the original commercials & most who trade stop trading when DVDs become available on the market.
And as to vcrs, tivos and downloading the show, you're totally off. Fox is a business.
I didn't mean to imply that Fox should have made a decision based on this kind of fan support. I meant that the fact that there wasn't more of this support went to show that, for whatever reason, Firefly's lackluster ratings were in agreement with the lack of fans. This isn't to say that there are no fans and that those fans aren't vocal (and, yes, they have shown this through making rips available & even selling/trading tapes, but there is still little interest in these compared to other shows). I think that shows that have had a bigger fanbase have been cancelled and the fact that many fans admit that it was hard to get into the show should make it no surprise that Fox, as a business, made the right decision.
As to the fans having a conscience, I doubt it. Seems more unethical to make high quality digital rips that encourage piracy and compete with the DVDs than to offer moderately priced tapes (to cover the cost of the tapes and postage with only a modest fee on top of this) to broaden the fanbase or provide people who are already fans a chance to see a show they missed. TV studios know how important demographics are, and if Firefly's fanbase was better (even if they were smaller), than other shows, the network would take it into consideration.
It's apparently cost effective to release them for series that weren't on the air long and which will therefore be difficult to find even in syndication (which has traditionally at least demanded that shows be on the air for three years or so to sell).
This is quite true. The best example that comes to mind is the Clerks animated show from ABC. It survived for less than half a dozen aired shows, played out of order. The DVDs sold surprisingly well.
As for Firefly, I don't know what more Fox could have done for the show. Playing the episodes in order or a little more promotion would help. But giving Joss another chance when it had been proven that his shows aren't necessarily a 'match' for the network was good enough.
Ever since the third season of the original series of Star Trek, it has become fashionable to blame the network for killing a Sci Fi series. While it is sometimes true, I don't see most networks giving shows 1/4 of what they were promised, throwing the shows in timeslots that they can't hope to survive in, and 'forcing' the executive producer/creator of the show to leave by refusing to negotiate.
I watched the first couple episodes and then abandoned it. I just couldn't get into it, but maybe I should have had more patience.
I don't think the show died because of the timeslot. Perhaps it would've done better if it played immediately before or after Buffy or Angel (yes, I realize those are on other networks), to get more Joss fans tuning in. I doubt it, though. Maybe they should have made the first episodes good?!
Other shows have survived that timeslot (X-Files comes to mind), and the interest for a show usually doesn't have much to do with the timeslot anymore thanks to vcrs, tivos, and the ability to download the show off the internet. Even shows which have been long cancelled or aren't produced in the US find life through tape-traders, ebay sales of VHS tapes, etc. I didn't see much support for the show in these ways either.
There are a ton of sites to answer not only this question, but the same question for MANY other shows as well. I won't remind you that a google search for firefly space western may turn up some infromative pages, but will point you to TV Tome.
The palm emulator on the zaurus is pretty good, but dumping a clie rom onto it & using that to emulate a calculator is a round-about way of getting this to work. Now that there has been a Free port for Palm and PocketPC devices, maybe some developer will be interested to port it to the Zaurus.