after reading a few stories, I found out that at least a handful of people being sued were ONLY DOWNLOADING music, not sharing it...
I've been following these stories for years now, and haven't encountered a story about someone specifically being sued for downloading (at least, not one that appeared to be written by a journalist who know what he or she was talking about). Suing downloaders would require that the RIAA or their agents set up honey pots full of popular music in order to ensnare people who download, a tactic that I'm sure would not sit too well with the courts (I'm imagining the word "entrapment" being bandied about), and one that the RIAA has never admitted to employing in all the hundreds of articles on the topic that I've read over the last couple of years.
At the same time, the RIAA is not the least bit coy about how it finds those who are sharing music; I've even heard interviews with their agents on NPR, and all they talk about is looking for people who are sharing.
If you have a link to a story that specifically spells out the circumstances under which a person was sued because the RIAA watched them download music, I'd would be quite interested in seeing it. I would even retract my ranting, drooling anti-media diatribe. At least part of it.
I am getting really sick of sloppy, idiotic journalists who absolutely insist on referring to those whom the RIAA has sued as "music downloaders," and the USA Today article is a prime example of this complete stupidity.
AFAIK, in absolutely not one single solitary incident has the RIAA sued anyone for downloading music files. They have only ever sued people for sharing music files in excess of a certain number, and even then only if the person is sharing a lot of popular, contemporary music.
Admittedly, those who are sharing files are more than likely downloading them as well, but that is not why they've been sued.
These journalists appear to be utterly incapable of doing even the most basic homework on this issue. One journalist mistakenly writes "The RIAA is suing people for downloading music" and every other journalist, rather than double-checking to see what exactly the lawsuits are about, just parrots what the first journalist wrote. It makes me ill. Thanks to the ever-shoddier American news media, people out there think that downloading "The Log Driver's Waltz" from Gnutella is going to result in uniformed officers kicking their door in moments later, which, at the moment, is simply not true.
As we all know, the RIAA is a massive misinformation machine, and now Pepsi and Apple are jumping in and lending a hand in distributing the RIAA's "We're suing everyone" propaganda. The truth is quite different, but I doubt that more than a handful of Superbowl watchers is going to jump online to ferret out the real story.
The promotion itself sounds like an effective one, and I'm sure it'll bring people to the ITMS in droves, but we really can do without the lies.
Re:Being English, I have to ask...
on
Superbowling
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Oceana is our ally and always has been.
Go back to watching your TV, citizens.
Re:Being English, I have to ask...
on
Superbowling
·
· Score: 5, Funny
American Football is big, big business in the USA. It represents what Americans love best, which is war. It has nearly all the elements of a war, fought during a time frame of about four hours, with sixty minutes of actual game time. It has offense, defense, gaining ground, losing ground, battle after battle, strategies, tactics, hierarchical command structures, casualties, statistics, a winner, and a loser.
The Superbowl represents the pinnacle of all this, the wheat having been separated from the chaff throughout the regular season and post-season.
It's a chance for American Football aficianados to gather over pizza, chicken wings, potato chips, shrimp cocktail, and copious beer, and cheer on one team or the other.
For the fans in the home city of a Superbowl contender, there is a level of excitement that would probably embarrass a British person to death. Scottish people, on the other hand, would quite understand.
When I Googled my father I found out that he really DID have a 15-foot-high friend named Carl and that he DID work at a circus and he DID save a small town from extinction and he DID have a multimillionaire friend on Wall Street and he DID rescue a pair of Siamese twin lounge singers while performing a secret mission as a paratrooper and my mother really DID get a notice that he was dead but he really wasn't...
This sounds like a good plot starter for a political thriller.
A college student goes out to look at wireless cameras and witnesses a murder, which is later ruled a suicide by the coroner's office in a massive political coverup. He has the murder recorded on the hard drive of his notebook computer, and shortly after he hands a CD he burned with an MPEG of the murder over to his uncle, a police detective, his uncle is then found dead, another "suicide." Then the kid realizes they'll be coming after him next, and a merry chase ensues.
I'd never heard of Booble before seeing it in the/. post.
I think that the publicity brought by the C&D letter will probably increase Booble's bottom line to the point where they'll be able to fight it in court. A court fight would bring substantial media attention, and Booble's traffic would increase a hundred-fold.
I prefer simplicity in language, too, especially when it comes to people using words like "utilize" instead of "use," and "facilitated" instead of "helped." The best use of modern language is certainly not represented by the kinds of text created by government bureaucrats. Zounds, most of it is florid to the point of insufferability.
I was talking more about personal correspondence, the kind undertaken by Chaucer in the example given.
And has anyone else ever noticed how medical people being interviewed on TV and especially on the radio talk? You'd think they were trying to compose a thesis on the spot. For example, I remember a doctor on TV talking about a risky medical procedure, saying "At this time the procedure engenders a high probability of resulting in a fatal outcome." Really, that's what he said. WAY too many years spent writing papers, I think. I mean, do doctors talk that way all the time? Do doctors greet each other at the hospital and say, "My personal vehicular conveyence unit was unable to commence operation and I was compelled to utilize public transportation to make my arrival"? No, I bet they'd say, "My car wouldn't start and I had to take the bus here." But point a camera and a microphone at them and it's time for medical school double-speak.
I don't feel guilty about using OSX so much as I feel guilty about not having the money to buy a Mac for every Windows user I know that has two hundred spyware programs and back-door trojans running on his or her PC.
Those I know who are Windows experts and can keep their PCs running smoothly are doing fine most of the time, and good luck to 'em. But from the phone calls I'm getting from family and friends I'd say the computing neophytes really are getting killed out there.
To keep from being modded as off-topic I'm going to say that Linux is awesome and the very sound of the word transports me to a garden of delight.
That was -- ahem -- an interesting read. I liked the part where I had absolutely no idea what he was saying.
Nevertheless, I'm always impressed by how flowery the language was in the old days, considering how time-consuming it was to actually pen something.
In our day and age, we have the ability to dash things off at fifty to a hundred words a minute (depending on typing ability), and we make nearly everything we compose direct to the point of sterility.
I'm not trying to make any enemies, but I've got to speak my mind on this.
I further admit that this is an off-topic reply, although it does have to do with spam somewhat, and I guess maybe it deserves to be modded down heavily, but I really object to the signature in the parent message. The signature misrepresents a question asked during a congressional hearing by heavily editing it and then displaying it as a statement.
Here is how the signature reads (copied and pasted in case it gets changed): "there should be an unlimited right to fill up your mailbox with e-mail." -- Democrat Robert C. "Bobby" Scott
I looked up the transcript at house.gov, and here is what was actually said by Bobby Scott: "But there should be unlimited right to fill up your mailbox with-- your e-mail mailbox-- with unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail?"
He was asking that question of Joseph Rubin, a witness at the hearing, during an exchange where Scott was trying to get Mr. Rubin to clarify his position about what "spam" really is, and how it might relate to various Supreme Court decisions and the First Amendment and all that. It was a long and complex exchange between several representatives and various expert witnesses, full of questions, answers, clarifications, and minute details, the way congressional hearings always are.
To alter the text and punctuation of that single line of the hearing, the transcript of which is 53 pages long, making it appear that Bobby Scott supports the right of spammers to fill up people's mailboxes, is dishonest. If it wasn't for the awkward and outrageous wording of the statement, I wouldn't have felt compelled to look it up, and might have taken it at face value myself, thinking that the spammers have a Democratic friend in Washington. Maybe they do, but I don't think it's Bobby Scott.
I wish Diana Spencer were alive to see this development. I bet she would have gotten other celebrities to underwrite the use of this technology to save countless lives worldwide. But luckily there are other wealthy individuals who might undertake an experiment with this plant, and make that company rich in the process (which is, in the words of Stuart Smalley, "okay").
Elton John will write a song about it, too.
Nice to see a company making a bio weapon that helps people instead of making them die horribly and slowly.
I don't know... remember in X2 how that rogue government guy (Stryker, right?) mind-controlled Kurt into attacking the White House and making it look like renegade mutants were behind it, when all the while it was meant to discredit mutants in general and futher the government's aims?
I get the creepy feeling that something like that is happening here. I mean, after all, a website being down a couple hours is a small price to pay for having the opportunity to characterize one's opponents as monstrous criminal hackers. Why would an irate Linux supporter include a keystroke logger? Are there really that many Linux supporters who moonlight as identity thieves and spies? I bet SCO would welcome the chance to convince the general public of that notion, and that makes me suspicious.
When all is said and done with this case I think Darl McBride will be making a fast exit... to South America.
Other people have said it and I agree with it... those attempted extortion, excuse me, licensing letters they sent out are should be pursued as federal mail fraud, and the SEC should take a long hard look at Mr. McBride and his lawyers, and how they're playing their own company's stock.
I remember when the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed, and I really never imagined that another space shuttle would be destroyed in my lifetime.
I've heard complaints about feeding starving people instead of exploring space, and that does sound compelling in light of the fact that there is so much human suffering, but I believe (as do many) that space exploration represents a greater destiny for mankind.
Maybe that destiny could be put off a few decades while we solve all the world's problems, but I don't want that long.
It's like that t-shirt my one trekkie buddy used to wear, "The meek shall inherit the Earth... the rest of us shall go to the stars."
Since when is iPod the "real thing"? To me, the real thing can play WMA, and OGG would be nice as well. Those "phony and cheap" players can at least play WMA - one of the most prolific formats out there right now.
Methinks you are a dingbat. Not everyone is in love with Apple and their overpriced, underuseful and uberghey products.
When I said "the real thing" I was referring generally to the larger-capacity drives of whatever brand, of which the iPod Mini is the comparably-sized entry, which was, AFAICT, the point of the article.
I guess I didn't make that clear enough. I've got an iPod, but I'm considering buying a non-Apple MP3 player as a gift for the g/f just so she has something that's more compatible with her PC. The iPod is the right unit for me, not necessarily everyone else.
If you need an OGG and WMA format player, go and get yourself one. I don't recall saying "All non-iPod MP3 players must be banned."
I was walking around Best Buy on Sunday and noticed the $200.00 MP3 players, and other their tiny size, I can't imagine someone not wanting to spend the other fifty bucks and get the real thing.
I'm convinced, too, that multiple colors will be more attractive to a broad consumer base than I previously thought. Look how well the colored iMacs have done.
And Apple offers nice discounts to people who attend or work at colleges and universities. If you're such a person, don't forget to check with your college bookstore or electronics store to see what the price is there before you buy an iPod or a Mini. At the school I work for, the 15GB iPod is discounted something like 10%.
I have a patent on making comments about having a patent on patents, so all those of you who say "I'm going to patent getting patents" now owe me royalties...
Oh, no, I just got a cease & desist letter from someone who says he holds a patent on making comments about people making comments about patenting getting patents. I hope he'll accept my cross-licensing deal.
Slashdot Mirror
And here's a link to a newspaper article about Mr. Richter's other felonious activities:
at the Rocky Mountain News
If he didn't have so much money from spamming he'd probably be on his way to the big house right now.
By any chance, does that article mention anything that he's fatally allergic to, say, something that could be purchased in bulk from a supermarket?
Just wondering.
I've been following these stories for years now, and haven't encountered a story about someone specifically being sued for downloading (at least, not one that appeared to be written by a journalist who know what he or she was talking about). Suing downloaders would require that the RIAA or their agents set up honey pots full of popular music in order to ensnare people who download, a tactic that I'm sure would not sit too well with the courts (I'm imagining the word "entrapment" being bandied about), and one that the RIAA has never admitted to employing in all the hundreds of articles on the topic that I've read over the last couple of years.
At the same time, the RIAA is not the least bit coy about how it finds those who are sharing music; I've even heard interviews with their agents on NPR, and all they talk about is looking for people who are sharing.
If you have a link to a story that specifically spells out the circumstances under which a person was sued because the RIAA watched them download music, I'd would be quite interested in seeing it. I would even retract my ranting, drooling anti-media diatribe. At least part of it.
I am getting really sick of sloppy, idiotic journalists who absolutely insist on referring to those whom the RIAA has sued as "music downloaders," and the USA Today article is a prime example of this complete stupidity.
AFAIK, in absolutely not one single solitary incident has the RIAA sued anyone for downloading music files. They have only ever sued people for sharing music files in excess of a certain number, and even then only if the person is sharing a lot of popular, contemporary music.
Admittedly, those who are sharing files are more than likely downloading them as well, but that is not why they've been sued.
These journalists appear to be utterly incapable of doing even the most basic homework on this issue. One journalist mistakenly writes "The RIAA is suing people for downloading music" and every other journalist, rather than double-checking to see what exactly the lawsuits are about, just parrots what the first journalist wrote. It makes me ill. Thanks to the ever-shoddier American news media, people out there think that downloading "The Log Driver's Waltz" from Gnutella is going to result in uniformed officers kicking their door in moments later, which, at the moment, is simply not true.
As we all know, the RIAA is a massive misinformation machine, and now Pepsi and Apple are jumping in and lending a hand in distributing the RIAA's "We're suing everyone" propaganda. The truth is quite different, but I doubt that more than a handful of Superbowl watchers is going to jump online to ferret out the real story.
The promotion itself sounds like an effective one, and I'm sure it'll bring people to the ITMS in droves, but we really can do without the lies.
Oceana is our ally and always has been.
Go back to watching your TV, citizens.
American Football is big, big business in the USA. It represents what Americans love best, which is war. It has nearly all the elements of a war, fought during a time frame of about four hours, with sixty minutes of actual game time. It has offense, defense, gaining ground, losing ground, battle after battle, strategies, tactics, hierarchical command structures, casualties, statistics, a winner, and a loser.
The Superbowl represents the pinnacle of all this, the wheat having been separated from the chaff throughout the regular season and post-season.
It's a chance for American Football aficianados to gather over pizza, chicken wings, potato chips, shrimp cocktail, and copious beer, and cheer on one team or the other.
For the fans in the home city of a Superbowl contender, there is a level of excitement that would probably embarrass a British person to death. Scottish people, on the other hand, would quite understand.
I have to pull my pants down to vote?
No way!
Oh, wait... you said "retinal"... sorry... never mind.
In the spirit of Vyvyan from The Young Ones, if one more person mentions the McDonald's coffee lawsuit, I'm going to put his head through a window.
When I Googled my father I found out that he really DID have a 15-foot-high friend named Carl and that he DID work at a circus and he DID save a small town from extinction and he DID have a multimillionaire friend on Wall Street and he DID rescue a pair of Siamese twin lounge singers while performing a secret mission as a paratrooper and my mother really DID get a notice that he was dead but he really wasn't...
Oh, wait... was that a movie?
But my movie will have a talking pie.
Never saw that one, but I just read the description on IMDB and it does sound pretty similar, right down the whole surveillance thing.
But Enemy of the State was a flop. My movie would succeed because it wouldn't have Will Smith in it.
This sounds like a good plot starter for a political thriller.
A college student goes out to look at wireless cameras and witnesses a murder, which is later ruled a suicide by the coroner's office in a massive political coverup. He has the murder recorded on the hard drive of his notebook computer, and shortly after he hands a CD he burned with an MPEG of the murder over to his uncle, a police detective, his uncle is then found dead, another "suicide." Then the kid realizes they'll be coming after him next, and a merry chase ensues.
Has this already been done?
I'd never heard of Booble before seeing it in the /. post.
I think that the publicity brought by the C&D letter will probably increase Booble's bottom line to the point where they'll be able to fight it in court. A court fight would bring substantial media attention, and Booble's traffic would increase a hundred-fold.
You just know they're going to incorporate this idea into an episode of Will & Grace next season.
I prefer simplicity in language, too, especially when it comes to people using words like "utilize" instead of "use," and "facilitated" instead of "helped." The best use of modern language is certainly not represented by the kinds of text created by government bureaucrats. Zounds, most of it is florid to the point of insufferability.
I was talking more about personal correspondence, the kind undertaken by Chaucer in the example given.
And has anyone else ever noticed how medical people being interviewed on TV and especially on the radio talk? You'd think they were trying to compose a thesis on the spot. For example, I remember a doctor on TV talking about a risky medical procedure, saying "At this time the procedure engenders a high probability of resulting in a fatal outcome." Really, that's what he said. WAY too many years spent writing papers, I think. I mean, do doctors talk that way all the time? Do doctors greet each other at the hospital and say, "My personal vehicular conveyence unit was unable to commence operation and I was compelled to utilize public transportation to make my arrival"? No, I bet they'd say, "My car wouldn't start and I had to take the bus here." But point a camera and a microphone at them and it's time for medical school double-speak.
I don't feel guilty about using OSX so much as I feel guilty about not having the money to buy a Mac for every Windows user I know that has two hundred spyware programs and back-door trojans running on his or her PC.
Those I know who are Windows experts and can keep their PCs running smoothly are doing fine most of the time, and good luck to 'em. But from the phone calls I'm getting from family and friends I'd say the computing neophytes really are getting killed out there.
To keep from being modded as off-topic I'm going to say that Linux is awesome and the very sound of the word transports me to a garden of delight.
That was -- ahem -- an interesting read. I liked the part where I had absolutely no idea what he was saying.
Nevertheless, I'm always impressed by how flowery the language was in the old days, considering how time-consuming it was to actually pen something.
In our day and age, we have the ability to dash things off at fifty to a hundred words a minute (depending on typing ability), and we make nearly everything we compose direct to the point of sterility.
I'm not trying to make any enemies, but I've got to speak my mind on this.
I further admit that this is an off-topic reply, although it does have to do with spam somewhat, and I guess maybe it deserves to be modded down heavily, but I really object to the signature in the parent message. The signature misrepresents a question asked during a congressional hearing by heavily editing it and then displaying it as a statement.
Here is how the signature reads (copied and pasted in case it gets changed):
"there should be an unlimited right to fill up your mailbox with e-mail." -- Democrat Robert C. "Bobby" Scott
I looked up the transcript at house.gov, and here is what was actually said by Bobby Scott:
"But there should be unlimited right to fill up your mailbox with-- your e-mail mailbox-- with unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail?"
He was asking that question of Joseph Rubin, a witness at the hearing, during an exchange where Scott was trying to get Mr. Rubin to clarify his position about what "spam" really is, and how it might relate to various Supreme Court decisions and the First Amendment and all that. It was a long and complex exchange between several representatives and various expert witnesses, full of questions, answers, clarifications, and minute details, the way congressional hearings always are.
To alter the text and punctuation of that single line of the hearing, the transcript of which is 53 pages long, making it appear that Bobby Scott supports the right of spammers to fill up people's mailboxes, is dishonest. If it wasn't for the awkward and outrageous wording of the statement, I wouldn't have felt compelled to look it up, and might have taken it at face value myself, thinking that the spammers have a Democratic friend in Washington. Maybe they do, but I don't think it's Bobby Scott.
I wish Diana Spencer were alive to see this development. I bet she would have gotten other celebrities to underwrite the use of this technology to save countless lives worldwide. But luckily there are other wealthy individuals who might undertake an experiment with this plant, and make that company rich in the process (which is, in the words of Stuart Smalley, "okay").
Elton John will write a song about it, too.
Nice to see a company making a bio weapon that helps people instead of making them die horribly and slowly.
I don't know... remember in X2 how that rogue government guy (Stryker, right?) mind-controlled Kurt into attacking the White House and making it look like renegade mutants were behind it, when all the while it was meant to discredit mutants in general and futher the government's aims?
I get the creepy feeling that something like that is happening here. I mean, after all, a website being down a couple hours is a small price to pay for having the opportunity to characterize one's opponents as monstrous criminal hackers. Why would an irate Linux supporter include a keystroke logger? Are there really that many Linux supporters who moonlight as identity thieves and spies? I bet SCO would welcome the chance to convince the general public of that notion, and that makes me suspicious.
When all is said and done with this case I think Darl McBride will be making a fast exit... to South America.
Other people have said it and I agree with it... those attempted extortion, excuse me, licensing letters they sent out are should be pursued as federal mail fraud, and the SEC should take a long hard look at Mr. McBride and his lawyers, and how they're playing their own company's stock.
I remember when the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed, and I really never imagined that another space shuttle would be destroyed in my lifetime.
I've heard complaints about feeding starving people instead of exploring space, and that does sound compelling in light of the fact that there is so much human suffering, but I believe (as do many) that space exploration represents a greater destiny for mankind.
Maybe that destiny could be put off a few decades while we solve all the world's problems, but I don't want that long.
It's like that t-shirt my one trekkie buddy used to wear, "The meek shall inherit the Earth... the rest of us shall go to the stars."
Since when is iPod the "real thing"? To me, the real thing can play WMA, and OGG would be nice as well. Those "phony and cheap" players can at least play WMA - one of the most prolific formats out there right now.
Methinks you are a dingbat. Not everyone is in love with Apple and their overpriced, underuseful and uberghey products.
When I said "the real thing" I was referring generally to the larger-capacity drives of whatever brand, of which the iPod Mini is the comparably-sized entry, which was, AFAICT, the point of the article.
I guess I didn't make that clear enough. I've got an iPod, but I'm considering buying a non-Apple MP3 player as a gift for the g/f just so she has something that's more compatible with her PC. The iPod is the right unit for me, not necessarily everyone else.
If you need an OGG and WMA format player, go and get yourself one. I don't recall saying "All non-iPod MP3 players must be banned."
I was walking around Best Buy on Sunday and noticed the $200.00 MP3 players, and other their tiny size, I can't imagine someone not wanting to spend the other fifty bucks and get the real thing.
I'm convinced, too, that multiple colors will be more attractive to a broad consumer base than I previously thought. Look how well the colored iMacs have done.
And Apple offers nice discounts to people who attend or work at colleges and universities. If you're such a person, don't forget to check with your college bookstore or electronics store to see what the price is there before you buy an iPod or a Mini. At the school I work for, the 15GB iPod is discounted something like 10%.
I have a patent on making comments about having a patent on patents, so all those of you who say "I'm going to patent getting patents" now owe me royalties...
Oh, no, I just got a cease & desist letter from someone who says he holds a patent on making comments about people making comments about patenting getting patents. I hope he'll accept my cross-licensing deal.