One would assume that it's easier to find high quality recordings on Napster, and that you could download them faster than you can off a P2P network.
Plus, there's always a small chance that RIAA or some government will decide to go after big downloaders (a very small chance, granted, since it's harder to make a case against a downloader than someone sharing lots of copyrighted works with lots of people), while there's pretty much no chance of them finding out who exactly is removing the DRM from Napster files to keep them for themselves. They could look at people who sign up for a month, download a ton of music, and then cancel their subscription, but it seems to me that it would be hard to establish probable cause; at least some people legally using the service would want to get the maximum value for their $20 by listening to as much music as they can for a month, then decide it's not worth it to keep paying.
Claims that RIAA treats their "customers" as criminals when they sue people for trading music they didn't actually buy are kind of foolish. The people they're suing aren't customers. But to even find out which customers were breaking the law with Napster, though, they really would have to treat their actual customers as criminals, and who the hell would want to pay $20/month for music if they knew they'd get slapped with a subpoena and accused of being a pirate if they ever stopped paying?
Umm, ever heard of a little thing called "friction"?
What "phenomenom" do you think makes microwaves work, exactly? They heat up the air with "radiation", cook your food with convection, then cool the air down really quick when you open the door so you can't figure it out?
Just wait until cigarette taxes get high enough that so many people quit that their tax revenues go down. They'll start taxing chewing gum and hard candy to cut down on those damn orally fixated smokers who managed to quit.
Contributers license their articles under the GFDL, which allows anyone in the world to take their work and make a profit from it as long as they redistribute under the GFDL. I wouldn't be so sure you;d win, unless you think the GFDL and GPL are invalid.
That clause does not prohibit a distributer from only distributing to a limited set of people. What it does is prohibits the distribution of DRM'ed copies of the content so those receiving it from you cannot themselves make copies and distribute them.
That said, while they're under no obligation to give you a mirror of the entire database, once you have it, they obviously can't stop you from distributing it yourself.
Since it's public, it _MUST_TRY to make money for the shareholders, lest it gets sued by said shareholders for not doing everything possible.
That's a load of crap.
If it's true, try buy a single share of just about any company in the country, then leading a class action lawsuit against them for donating money to charity instead of giving you the money in a dividend.
And that would be why Apple has filed a lawsuit, instead of kidnapping the guy and throwing him in a private prison. See, they're trying to get a judge to issue a court order, after which he could be imprisoned for contempt if he doesn't comply.
Do you imagine that courts just randomly issue orders to random people to reveal random bits of information, and if they happen to ask the right person for the right information, then Apple wins?
Non sequitur. The fact that the Justice Dept. has no interest in finding out which one of their senior administration buddies committed a federal crime has no bearing on Apple's case. Blame the expiration of the Independent Counsel statute, but don't try to claim that the rule of law no longer exists anywhere in the country because of one case of corruption.
First of all, the government can't classify anything as a trade secret, and it can already imprison or execute you for espionage involving classified material, so your worries about the Bush administration are just paranoid delusions. The UTSA has absolutely nothing to do with government secrets.
As for corporations silencing people, that's a slightly more valid concern, but there are also laws that protect whistleblowers, and I don't believe a corporation can consider the fact that it's engaging in illegal or unethical behavior to be a "trade secret" either.
Also, if you read the document you'll see most of the rights start with the phrase "Congress shall make no law...".
I suggest YOU read the document, and explain how one = most. Only the first amendment uses that language. Read it yourself before suggesting others do so.
I realize here on/. the PATRIOT act is unpopular, and people claim it's unconstitutional, but I've never heard a legal argument that made any sense. And neither have the courts.
Google "patriot act unconstitutional" and you'll get news stories about a federal court declaring part of it unconstitutional. I assume they heard a legal argument they thought made sense when they made the ruling.
You're either a troll or an idiot. Most likely both.
The University of Ohio exists in a parallel universe. The story came across into our universe while they were using our bits to carry out their quantum calculations.
The eMac has a built in display, and comes with an keyboard and mouse. Granted someone buying a mini might be unlikely to purchase Apple's expensive accessories, but display + keyboard + mouse will most likely run you more than £80.
I bought a car. Clearly, I would have been better off taking the amount of money the car's value has depreciated since I bought it, putting $10 of that money in my pocket, and flushing the rest down the toilet. I'd be ahead by $10!
I don't think "time shifting" means what you think it means. The idea in Sony v. Universal was that it's legal to tape a program to watch it once at a later time. It's probably not legal to keep a collection of episodes of a program (or a collection of songs) to watch them as many times as you want.
The Supreme Court actually did not even really consider this issue in the case, contrary to popular belief. Their ruling was supported by the lower court's finding that such time shifting was probably legal, and that approximately 75% of Betamax owners were using them only for time shifting, that that, therefore, the machines had been show to have significant non-infringing use and Sony could legally manufacture them, as doing so did not constitute interference with copyright holders' rights.
The decision has nothing at all to do with whether or not you can record programs to save them forever. Both sides in the case stipulated that such use of a VTR would constitute an infringement of copyright.
Re:Parent is flamebait and trollish. Mod down.
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. Legally, if you purchase a movie, you may not show it publically. That includes inviting friends over to watch.
No, it doesn't.
Can everyone PLEASE stop making up what the law says? Maybe try READING the law instead?
A bar showing a copyrighted movie (I don't know what the licenses for PPV events look like, so I won't comment on that) to its customers without a proper license is just as illegal as a bar playing music without a license from ASCAP. Showing a movie or playing music in your private home is perfectly legal, even "technically" as you put it, as long as you're not charging admission.
Re:Parent is flamebait and trollish. Mod down.
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To quote a somewhat relevant Supreme Court ruling (the one that ended MPAA's attempt to make Betamax illegal), web browsers have "significant noninfringing uses".
I work for a medical library that subscribes to several thousand electronic journals. The license agreements for the journals spell out very clearly who we can and cannot give access to, and it works just fine.
If you wanted to do something like that and open it to the public, there's no way you'd be able to come up with the funding you'd need to secure licenses, and most of the publishers probably wouldn't even consider offering licenses at any price.
Well would you have less of a problem with it if I released a closed source Linux distro, but made it very clear that I didn't write most of the code and gave credit to the people who did?
Slashdot Mirror
Right. We Americans all know the proper term is "burlgerificationized."
I think they're more likely to keep using a real dictionary, though.
Claims that RIAA treats their "customers" as criminals when they sue people for trading music they didn't actually buy are kind of foolish. The people they're suing aren't customers. But to even find out which customers were breaking the law with Napster, though, they really would have to treat their actual customers as criminals, and who the hell would want to pay $20/month for music if they knew they'd get slapped with a subpoena and accused of being a pirate if they ever stopped paying?
What "phenomenom" do you think makes microwaves work, exactly? They heat up the air with "radiation", cook your food with convection, then cool the air down really quick when you open the door so you can't figure it out?
Just wait until cigarette taxes get high enough that so many people quit that their tax revenues go down. They'll start taxing chewing gum and hard candy to cut down on those damn orally fixated smokers who managed to quit.
In other news, [insert random company here] will no longer be accepting email by uucp connection, and is dropping support for BITNET addressing.
Contributers license their articles under the GFDL, which allows anyone in the world to take their work and make a profit from it as long as they redistribute under the GFDL. I wouldn't be so sure you;d win, unless you think the GFDL and GPL are invalid.
That said, while they're under no obligation to give you a mirror of the entire database, once you have it, they obviously can't stop you from distributing it yourself.
That's a load of crap.
If it's true, try buy a single share of just about any company in the country, then leading a class action lawsuit against them for donating money to charity instead of giving you the money in a dividend.
Do you imagine that courts just randomly issue orders to random people to reveal random bits of information, and if they happen to ask the right person for the right information, then Apple wins?
Non sequitur. The fact that the Justice Dept. has no interest in finding out which one of their senior administration buddies committed a federal crime has no bearing on Apple's case. Blame the expiration of the Independent Counsel statute, but don't try to claim that the rule of law no longer exists anywhere in the country because of one case of corruption.
As for corporations silencing people, that's a slightly more valid concern, but there are also laws that protect whistleblowers, and I don't believe a corporation can consider the fact that it's engaging in illegal or unethical behavior to be a "trade secret" either.
If you're gotten rid of 80% of the virus, you might not want to market it as "derived from HIV". Really.
I doubt the average user has contributed a single line of code, so no, it's not "something you wrote yourself" for most people.
I suggest YOU read the document, and explain how one = most. Only the first amendment uses that language. Read it yourself before suggesting others do so.
I realize here on /. the PATRIOT act is unpopular, and people claim it's unconstitutional, but I've never heard a legal argument that made any sense. And neither have the courts.
Google "patriot act unconstitutional" and you'll get news stories about a federal court declaring part of it unconstitutional. I assume they heard a legal argument they thought made sense when they made the ruling.
You're either a troll or an idiot. Most likely both.
The University of Ohio exists in a parallel universe. The story came across into our universe while they were using our bits to carry out their quantum calculations.
The eMac has a built in display, and comes with an keyboard and mouse. Granted someone buying a mini might be unlikely to purchase Apple's expensive accessories, but display + keyboard + mouse will most likely run you more than £80.
Although if we're making up quotes now, Patrick Henry said "Anyone who runs Linux is a freedom-hating lover of George III."
Damn astroturfing spammers...
I bought a car. Clearly, I would have been better off taking the amount of money the car's value has depreciated since I bought it, putting $10 of that money in my pocket, and flushing the rest down the toilet. I'd be ahead by $10!
The Supreme Court actually did not even really consider this issue in the case, contrary to popular belief. Their ruling was supported by the lower court's finding that such time shifting was probably legal, and that approximately 75% of Betamax owners were using them only for time shifting, that that, therefore, the machines had been show to have significant non-infringing use and Sony could legally manufacture them, as doing so did not constitute interference with copyright holders' rights.
The decision has nothing at all to do with whether or not you can record programs to save them forever. Both sides in the case stipulated that such use of a VTR would constitute an infringement of copyright.
No, it doesn't.
Can everyone PLEASE stop making up what the law says? Maybe try READING the law instead?
A bar showing a copyrighted movie (I don't know what the licenses for PPV events look like, so I won't comment on that) to its customers without a proper license is just as illegal as a bar playing music without a license from ASCAP. Showing a movie or playing music in your private home is perfectly legal, even "technically" as you put it, as long as you're not charging admission.
To quote a somewhat relevant Supreme Court ruling (the one that ended MPAA's attempt to make Betamax illegal), web browsers have "significant noninfringing uses".
If you wanted to do something like that and open it to the public, there's no way you'd be able to come up with the funding you'd need to secure licenses, and most of the publishers probably wouldn't even consider offering licenses at any price.
Well would you have less of a problem with it if I released a closed source Linux distro, but made it very clear that I didn't write most of the code and gave credit to the people who did?