Who owns a show/program/whatever broadcast by a station that includes live commentary and maybe a guest as well as prerecorded RIAA content? Is the RIAA trying to claim ownership of everything that makes use of it's content? And what are these "next-generation digital radio receiver/recorders" ? The only ones I've heard of are receivers for sattelite radio and I don't think the FCC has much control over that, isn't that why Howard Stern moved his show there? Trying to make legal things illegal because they don't match your obsolite business model, yes that's the RIAA for you.
I never understood that part and I'm guessing I'm missed something. If someone has your credit card number(not the card, just the number) they can't just walk into a store and give it to the clerk without the card. There are some places where you can manually enter a card number if there's a read error, but then the clerk might notice if you're reading a number from somewhere other than what's printed on the card, paper or written on the card with a sharpie. If they buy something from an Internet based store they have to gave a traceable delivery address. Unless they give a friend's address then they can claim to not have ordered anything.
"I know a lot of people (including myself, until now) simply assumed the card had some magick code on it that opened the door, and once they checked out, the code stopped working"
I also thought it made sense to have it that way. The card contains combination to the lock on your door. And the door lock recognizes a few codes, the one on your key and the one for the housekeeping/security/management staff.
The article author states that he found the data in and unencrypted form. Reading unencrypted data on something given to you, say your keycard after you check out would not be a violation.
"To his dismay, a surprising number have contained his name and credit card information - and in unencrypted form."
However the data on Disney cards could be considered encrypted and may be a violation of some law, maybe even the DMCA, if you were to crack it and steal the data.
It's possible the cards were made so the data can be easily scrambled. I guess they're betting on a lost card being accidentally exposed to a weak magnetic field and made useless before someone can get it to a card reader.
The iPod as we know it today won't exist in 20yrs, but the few GB multimedia device that's going to replace it will. The wav format has existed since I don't remember when and wiki doesn't have a date and it's still supported, not used much but still supported. What's another few hundred KB for the mp3 codex in a media player with the TB drives of 20yrs from now? not much. Records and cassettes died off because they can't be used with a PC, without a $150 cassette drive. The CD and PC were made for eachother.
"Good luck listening to those songs you bought on CD, cassette, 8 track or, possibly, record, in twenty years"
The CD's been around since 1979 and MP3 since 1993. The CD will be usable until the 5.25" drive bay stops being 5.25" Backwards compatibility isn't going to go away. When 200GB quad layer DVDRW drives are available with the cheapest Dell PC they will still be able read&write CDs. I don't know about 20yrs, but I see the CD being around for at least 10or15yrs. I don't plan on getting rid of this PC anytime soon, I'll probably upgrade to a dual layer/format DVD recorder and maybe up the RAM to 1GB. When I build an AMD64 based replacement I'll keep it around. I'm sure enough of you have a C64 or Apple II still sitting around in working condition, no reason why you can't keep the PC you have today for another 20yrs.
"two words: RCA out. Fancy encryption can always be trumped by an a/v signal out into a recording device. It's not the fastest, but it works everytime."
exactly, I wonder what part of "inside job" is beyond their comprehension. Sometime during the summer my mother walked in with a bag of DVDs and said watch what you want. I looked at them and asked where she got them. It seems one of her friend's kids got a summer job at the local theater and setup a camera in the projection booth. If the MPAA is going to try installing stuff to detect cameras, I hope they're not going to have them pointed at only the paying audience. Yes, he only used a camera but he could just have easily connected a laptop to the projector's video-out.
It wouldn't hurt them to lower the cost of production. They don't need to spend over 100mil for a movie. Special effects are there to add the the movie, not make the movie. My favorite MPAA excuse was with the Hulk a fe wyrs ago. They claimed it did poorly in theaters because everyone had seem a leaked version with unfinished effects and the teeneagers text messaged their friends saying the movie sucked while in the theater watching the movie. Maybe it did so poorly because it really was that bad, I saw some of it on HBO and agree on how bad it is. And remakes and 2hr episodes called movies of old tv shows don't work either. Firefly was a decent show, but the commercials for Serenity are making it look like nothing more than a 2hr episode.
Higher sales at lower prices or lower sales at higher prices, seems they chose the latter.
I'm sure some economics or math person can write a simple equation showing that they can more than double the ticket sales if they drop the price 30%. I've talked to a couple merchants at computer shows, they drop their prices a lot and triple their sales. Not bad, higher profit and more inventory turnover.
That's nice for when you're walking around not using your card, but what about during those few seconds when you take your card out to pay for something? Unless you're refering to a device that would restrict reading of the card to one direction.
I may be thinking of something else, do you have a link with pictures?
"And the security guards will jump you when you walk _into_ the store if you don't have a credit card on you, since obviously you are there to steal stuff."
or they'll stop you as your about to leave and hand you the recept you forgot to take. I'm sure cash will still be accepted, but don't know how long until it's also RFID tagged.
"On the flipside, the card never has to leave your physical possession."
It rarely has to anymore. Most stores have installed credit/debit card readers for their customers, thanks to that scare a while back that cashiers were stealing credit card numbers. The only time my card leaves my posession is with the older style BoA/Fleet ATMs that still want to hold on to your card until the transaction is complete. I hope they will still require a PIN/passcode along with the card or maybe a thumb held on a scanner while the PIN is entered with the other hand.
Or they could try making the cards smaller. Who says a credit/debit card has to be 3.5"x2"? Yes, it fits perfectly in a wallet, but so does a 3.5" floppy in a shirt breast pocket. I remember seeing commercials of credit cards designed to fit on a keychain, it even had a protective case. A credit card can easily be reduced to 1" high, if you examine one you'll see that the top half contains the magnetic strip and the signature box and the bottom has the number, exp date and name. And they're on opposite sides of the card.
Remeber, RFID that claims to be read at only up to 6" can really be read at up to 70' The tinfoil wallet is too passive an approach and can only protect the card while it's in the wallet, not in use. It's time to modify a PDA RFID scanner to be an RFID jammer.
RFID passports, RealID cards and credit cards. What's next RFID birth certificates and social security cards? That will add a new level to wardriving and even war/RFID walking in malls.
"The US Senate voted 100 to 0 against it for damed good reasons even that even the most vocal left Senators couldn't vote against"
When it comes to international treates the President has as much power as the Queen of England. They all have to be approved by the Senate. Remember Wilson and the League of Nations and his 14pts at the end of WWI? The treaty wasn't approved by the Senate and we weren't offically at peace with Germany until 1921.
"the US Senate voted 100 to 0 for the RealID act too...because it was hidden in the military spending bill"
the in-line veto needs to make a come back, there are far too many pork barrel pet projects being sold off for votes. Even then I don't know if it would have been removed.
Interesting, the posting is under 'Your Rights Online', yet the comments seem mosr suited for 'Politics'.
A theater with free(free to enter still have to pay the ticket price) conditional membership. The rules of "The civilized movie goer" are clearly posted with the clauses that after two -1 Troll or -1 Loud you're out. Private businesses have the right to eject people and refuse entry. As long as it's made very clear that the person is being banned because of bad behavior they should be able to avoid frivolous lawsuits. A signed membership application with the rules and grounds for dismissal should be enough.
"In part to cut down on piracy, the movie industry is thinking about releasing DVDs the same time movies are released in the theater."
Theaters still have a larger screen than I've ever seen in a home, the screens may be larger than some homes. It's less desirable because of the ever increasing ticket prices but the number of decent movies is also dropping so I still spend about the same. It's sometimes still a decent place for a date. If you want to not have to deal with those damn kids who were brought there to kill time, pick something rated R, that shoudl get rid of them. I'd keep the theaters, just move up the DVD release date. Most remain in theaters for about a month then the DVD is released 5months later. Why can't movies be released on DVD the day after the last theater showing? That is the big main theaters that had it opening day, not the smaller ones that get it weeks later. If you think about it as profit, the movie is not generating any cash for 5months. That's long enough for some people to stop wanting to wait for the DVD release and download it. But they're probably people who are going to get the DVD on the first day anyway.
"We pay taxes which fund police, fire and ambulance services, even if we aren't responsible for the law being broken, the house burning down, and the crazy cat-ladies stroke."
Those are usually state provided services that don't generate profits. Only big cities have a paid FD, most towns have volunteer fire departments. The RIAA and their international clones are for-profit corporations who are just trying to increase their cash flow. Maybe I missed it, how much is that tax? I guess they are just jealous of all the tax breaks and government subsidies the oil industry gets.
OH CANADIA! The Canadians have something similar, they've all been convicted of the INDUCE act and are paying their fine when they buy any piece of hardware that could possibly be use to do what it was designed to do, COPY data. It just so happens that music can be stored in these data files. If paying is an admission of guilt then the entire country is guilty of music piracy, ARRRG! Yes, I know it's call a "levy" and copyright laws are a little different up there, but the concept is the same.
"Note: This setting does not prevent Autoplay for music CDs"
HAHA, that's the funniest thing I've seen all day. I never liked XP enough to switch from Win2000 so I was unable to look for the notes unique to XP. If I'm remembering correctly XP gives you a popup asking what you want to do with some types of disks and "do nothing" should still be an option unless it's been changed to "do what the RIAA wants". If it installs software then it's a data/music combo disk and should not be seen by Windows as a music CD.
"I thought I was not allowed to have a Region 1 drive in region 2? Won't I get taken to court or something?"
If it isn't illegal yet I'm sure there are some companies that would like it to be illegal, not because it's dangerous or harmful to anyone, only because it would be in the best interests of their obsolite business model.
Anyone know if that "copy protection" exists on all Sony disks? I just got a used one, but since I've had autoplay disabled for years I didn't notice it trying to install/run anything and had no problems copying it to my iPod. If comments on this posting hadn't mentioned it was Sony disks I wouldn't have even considered that I may have unknowingly bypassed something "protected" by the DMCA.
If I were an old fashioned pirate I'd find out where the CDs were being produced, you know it has to be outsourced, and capture the ship transporting the disks and sell them as coasters at 5 for 3 pieces of 8, whatever that's worth these days.
I've always considered the CD autoplay nothing more than a nuisance and have been disabling it since 1996. Anyone who thinks disabling a unneeded pre-existing windows process is circumventing the DMCA and a criminal act needs to have their head examined. They have their CD autoinstall a piece of restrictive spyware without the users knowledge and then complain when people do something to stop it. I was almost confused by that, then I remembered it's the RIAA we're talking about and the phrase "but that would make sense" doesn't apply.
I've been too lazy to hold shift so I just disabled autoplay: Win95/98/ME get to properties of the drive uncheck auto insert notification Win2000/XP run gpedit.msc Administrative Templates - System - Disable Auto play-enabled
"Was it her IP address at the time of the upload or did the RIAA just ask for whoever had the IP address at the time of their request and neglect to specify a time?" probably at the time of the request or when someone added it to the infringing IP list, but who knows, and they probably won't say if asked
Can the software that tied the user to the IP be considered 100% accurate? NO, it's too easy for a "real" "pirate" to fake
"Has an audit been done to insure this?" conducting an audit would be a violation of trade secrets, so that's another NO
I'm not saying there arn't guilty people out there, just that the methods used are unreliable at best. Especially when dealing with time stamps with dialup and DSL ISPs where the time really matters. Lots of cable ISP users leave their cable modem on all the time so they have very close to a static IP. My watch says 8:54, my PC has 8:48, what time your watch/clock say?
I made an almost similar point when the first challege was reported. What's to stop them from reporting a most of or an entire IP block to an ISP to get the subscriber information? If you challenge how they got the IPs in court they can claim they received it from a "reliable" paid contractor and cannot explain becuse it would violate industry secrets or some BS like that.
"and the IP address they presented as "evidence" wasn't yet allocated to a computer, nor was it available to DHCP hosts"
Interesting, since the IP they reported wasn't available to you(or anyone else), I wonder how it was traced back to you, unless they or someone working for them spoofed all the data.
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Who owns a show/program/whatever broadcast by a station that includes live commentary and maybe a guest as well as prerecorded RIAA content? Is the RIAA trying to claim ownership of everything that makes use of it's content?
And what are these "next-generation digital radio receiver/recorders" ? The only ones I've heard of are receivers for sattelite radio and I don't think the FCC has much control over that, isn't that why Howard Stern moved his show there?
Trying to make legal things illegal because they don't match your obsolite business model, yes that's the RIAA for you.
"minimum fine: 24 hours of forced listening to Britney Spears singing"
don't you mean forced watching of a music video of her lip-synching?
"and go shopping at your expense"
I never understood that part and I'm guessing I'm missed something. If someone has your credit card number(not the card, just the number) they can't just walk into a store and give it to the clerk without the card. There are some places where you can manually enter a card number if there's a read error, but then the clerk might notice if you're reading a number from somewhere other than what's printed on the card, paper or written on the card with a sharpie. If they buy something from an Internet based store they have to gave a traceable delivery address. Unless they give a friend's address then they can claim to not have ordered anything.
"I know a lot of people (including myself, until now) simply assumed the card had some magick code on it that opened the door, and once they checked out, the code stopped working"
I also thought it made sense to have it that way. The card contains combination to the lock on your door. And the door lock recognizes a few codes, the one on your key and the one for the housekeeping/security/management staff.
The article author states that he found the data in and unencrypted form. Reading unencrypted data on something given to you, say your keycard after you check out would not be a violation.
"To his dismay, a surprising number have contained his name and credit card information - and in unencrypted form."
However the data on Disney cards could be considered encrypted and may be a violation of some law, maybe even the DMCA, if you were to crack it and steal the data.
It's possible the cards were made so the data can be easily scrambled. I guess they're betting on a lost card being accidentally exposed to a weak magnetic field and made useless before someone can get it to a card reader.
The iPod as we know it today won't exist in 20yrs, but the few GB multimedia device that's going to replace it will. The wav format has existed since I don't remember when and wiki doesn't have a date and it's still supported, not used much but still supported. What's another few hundred KB for the mp3 codex in a media player with the TB drives of 20yrs from now? not much. Records and cassettes died off because they can't be used with a PC, without a $150 cassette drive. The CD and PC were made for eachother.
"Good luck listening to those songs you bought on CD, cassette, 8 track or, possibly, record, in twenty years"
The CD's been around since 1979 and MP3 since 1993.
The CD will be usable until the 5.25" drive bay stops being 5.25" Backwards compatibility isn't going to go away. When 200GB quad layer DVDRW drives are available with the cheapest Dell PC they will still be able read&write CDs. I don't know about 20yrs, but I see the CD being around for at least 10or15yrs. I don't plan on getting rid of this PC anytime soon, I'll probably upgrade to a dual layer/format DVD recorder and maybe up the RAM to 1GB. When I build an AMD64 based replacement I'll keep it around. I'm sure enough of you have a C64 or Apple II still sitting around in working condition, no reason why you can't keep the PC you have today for another 20yrs.
"two words: RCA out. Fancy encryption can always be trumped by an a/v signal out into a recording device. It's not the fastest, but it works everytime."
exactly, I wonder what part of "inside job" is beyond their comprehension. Sometime during the summer my mother walked in with a bag of DVDs and said watch what you want. I looked at them and asked where she got them. It seems one of her friend's kids got a summer job at the local theater and setup a camera in the projection booth. If the MPAA is going to try installing stuff to detect cameras, I hope they're not going to have them pointed at only the paying audience. Yes, he only used a camera but he could just have easily connected a laptop to the projector's video-out.
It wouldn't hurt them to lower the cost of production. They don't need to spend over 100mil for a movie. Special effects are there to add the the movie, not make the movie. My favorite MPAA excuse was with the Hulk a fe wyrs ago. They claimed it did poorly in theaters because everyone had seem a leaked version with unfinished effects and the teeneagers text messaged their friends saying the movie sucked while in the theater watching the movie. Maybe it did so poorly because it really was that bad, I saw some of it on HBO and agree on how bad it is. And remakes and 2hr episodes called movies of old tv shows don't work either. Firefly was a decent show, but the commercials for Serenity are making it look like nothing more than a 2hr episode.
Higher sales at lower prices or lower sales at higher prices, seems they chose the latter.
I'm sure some economics or math person can write a simple equation showing that they can more than double the ticket sales if they drop the price 30%. I've talked to a couple merchants at computer shows, they drop their prices a lot and triple their sales. Not bad, higher profit and more inventory turnover.
That's nice for when you're walking around not using your card, but what about during those few seconds when you take your card out to pay for something?
Unless you're refering to a device that would restrict reading of the card to one direction.
I may be thinking of something else, do you have a link with pictures?
"And the security guards will jump you when you walk _into_ the store if you don't have a credit card on you, since obviously you are there to steal stuff."
or they'll stop you as your about to leave and hand you the recept you forgot to take. I'm sure cash will still be accepted, but don't know how long until it's also RFID tagged.
"On the flipside, the card never has to leave your physical possession."
It rarely has to anymore. Most stores have installed credit/debit card readers for their customers, thanks to that scare a while back that cashiers were stealing credit card numbers. The only time my card leaves my posession is with the older style BoA/Fleet ATMs that still want to hold on to your card until the transaction is complete. I hope they will still require a PIN/passcode along with the card or maybe a thumb held on a scanner while the PIN is entered with the other hand.
Or they could try making the cards smaller. Who says a credit/debit card has to be 3.5"x2"? Yes, it fits perfectly in a wallet, but so does a 3.5" floppy in a shirt breast pocket. I remember seeing commercials of credit cards designed to fit on a keychain, it even had a protective case. A credit card can easily be reduced to 1" high, if you examine one you'll see that the top half contains the magnetic strip and the signature box and the bottom has the number, exp date and name. And they're on opposite sides of the card.
Remeber, RFID that claims to be read at only up to 6" can really be read at up to 70'
The tinfoil wallet is too passive an approach and can only protect the card while it's in the wallet, not in use. It's time to modify a PDA RFID scanner to be an RFID jammer.
RFID passports, RealID cards and credit cards. What's next RFID birth certificates and social security cards? That will add a new level to wardriving and even war/RFID walking in malls.
"The US Senate voted 100 to 0 against it for damed good reasons even that even the most vocal left Senators couldn't vote against"
When it comes to international treates the President has as much power as the Queen of England. They all have to be approved by the Senate. Remember Wilson and the League of Nations and his 14pts at the end of WWI? The treaty wasn't approved by the Senate and we weren't offically at peace with Germany until 1921.
"the US Senate voted 100 to 0 for the RealID act too...because it was hidden in the military spending bill"
the in-line veto needs to make a come back, there are far too many pork barrel pet projects being sold off for votes. Even then I don't know if it would have been removed.
Interesting, the posting is under 'Your Rights Online', yet the comments seem mosr suited for 'Politics'.
A theater with free(free to enter still have to pay the ticket price) conditional membership. The rules of "The civilized movie goer" are clearly posted with the clauses that after two -1 Troll or -1 Loud you're out. Private businesses have the right to eject people and refuse entry. As long as it's made very clear that the person is being banned because of bad behavior they should be able to avoid frivolous lawsuits. A signed membership application with the rules and grounds for dismissal should be enough.
"In part to cut down on piracy, the movie industry is thinking about releasing DVDs the same time movies are released in the theater."
Theaters still have a larger screen than I've ever seen in a home, the screens may be larger than some homes. It's less desirable because of the ever increasing ticket prices but the number of decent movies is also dropping so I still spend about the same. It's sometimes still a decent place for a date. If you want to not have to deal with those damn kids who were brought there to kill time, pick something rated R, that shoudl get rid of them.
I'd keep the theaters, just move up the DVD release date. Most remain in theaters for about a month then the DVD is released 5months later. Why can't movies be released on DVD the day after the last theater showing? That is the big main theaters that had it opening day, not the smaller ones that get it weeks later. If you think about it as profit, the movie is not generating any cash for 5months. That's long enough for some people to stop wanting to wait for the DVD release and download it. But they're probably people who are going to get the DVD on the first day anyway.
"We pay taxes which fund police, fire and ambulance services, even if we aren't responsible for the law being broken, the house burning down, and the crazy cat-ladies stroke."
Those are usually state provided services that don't generate profits. Only big cities have a paid FD, most towns have volunteer fire departments. The RIAA and their international clones are for-profit corporations who are just trying to increase their cash flow. Maybe I missed it, how much is that tax? I guess they are just jealous of all the tax breaks and government subsidies the oil industry gets.
OH CANADIA!
The Canadians have something similar, they've all been convicted of the INDUCE act and are paying their fine when they buy any piece of hardware that could possibly be use to do what it was designed to do, COPY data. It just so happens that music can be stored in these data files. If paying is an admission of guilt then the entire country is guilty of music piracy, ARRRG! Yes, I know it's call a "levy" and copyright laws are a little different up there, but the concept is the same.
"Note: This setting does not prevent Autoplay for music CDs"
HAHA, that's the funniest thing I've seen all day.
I never liked XP enough to switch from Win2000 so I was unable to look for the notes unique to XP. If I'm remembering correctly XP gives you a popup asking what you want to do with some types of disks and "do nothing" should still be an option unless it's been changed to "do what the RIAA wants". If it installs software then it's a data/music combo disk and should not be seen by Windows as a music CD.
"I thought I was not allowed to have a Region 1 drive in region 2? Won't I get taken to court or something?"
If it isn't illegal yet I'm sure there are some companies that would like it to be illegal, not because it's dangerous or harmful to anyone, only because it would be in the best interests of their obsolite business model.
Anyone know if that "copy protection" exists on all Sony disks? I just got a used one, but since I've had autoplay disabled for years I didn't notice it trying to install/run anything and had no problems copying it to my iPod. If comments on this posting hadn't mentioned it was Sony disks I wouldn't have even considered that I may have unknowingly bypassed something "protected" by the DMCA.
If I were an old fashioned pirate I'd find out where the CDs were being produced, you know it has to be outsourced, and capture the ship transporting the disks and sell them as coasters at 5 for 3 pieces of 8, whatever that's worth these days.
ARRRG!!!
I've always considered the CD autoplay nothing more than a nuisance and have been disabling it since 1996. Anyone who thinks disabling a unneeded pre-existing windows process is circumventing the DMCA and a criminal act needs to have their head examined. They have their CD autoinstall a piece of restrictive spyware without the users knowledge and then complain when people do something to stop it. I was almost confused by that, then I remembered it's the RIAA we're talking about and the phrase "but that would make sense" doesn't apply.
I've been too lazy to hold shift so I just disabled autoplay:
Win95/98/ME get to properties of the drive uncheck auto insert notification
Win2000/XP run gpedit.msc Administrative Templates - System - Disable Auto play-enabled
"Was it her IP address at the time of the upload or did the RIAA just ask for whoever had the IP address at the time of their request and neglect to specify a time?"
probably at the time of the request or when someone added it to the infringing IP list, but who knows, and they probably won't say if asked
Can the software that tied the user to the IP be considered 100% accurate?
NO, it's too easy for a "real" "pirate" to fake
"Has an audit been done to insure this?"
conducting an audit would be a violation of trade secrets, so that's another NO
I'm not saying there arn't guilty people out there, just that the methods used are unreliable at best. Especially when dealing with time stamps with dialup and DSL ISPs where the time really matters. Lots of cable ISP users leave their cable modem on all the time so they have very close to a static IP. My watch says 8:54, my PC has 8:48, what time your watch/clock say?
With a class action suit we'll be lucky to get a coupon for 25cents off our next of purchase of $19.99 or more of the crap they produce.
I made an almost similar point when the first challege was reported. What's to stop them from reporting a most of or an entire IP block to an ISP to get the subscriber information? If you challenge how they got the IPs in court they can claim they received it from a "reliable" paid contractor and cannot explain becuse it would violate industry secrets or some BS like that.
"and the IP address they presented as "evidence" wasn't yet allocated to a computer, nor was it available to DHCP hosts"
Interesting, since the IP they reported wasn't available to you(or anyone else), I wonder how it was traced back to you, unless they or someone working for them spoofed all the data.