If Creative's actions surprise and dismay you, you'd be shocked to see the plethora of concepts patented by Apple that would make the average Slashdotter utter a hearty "well, duh." Representing a hard drive as an icon that looks like a hard drive? A patent for a heat sink? A patent for a single window interface? Oh, please. Actually, there's a reason why these sorts of obvious-to-Slashdotters concepts are patented, but this has got to be troubling for the "Creative shouldn't be allowed to patent this! Bork bork bork!" crowd.
I know Apple fanatacism is often quite a humorous thing, but "Apple should be able to get patents for obvious things, and other companies should not" is something I'd put beyond even the most obsessive fanboy.
"The lyrics are probably a separately copyrighted work, so copying the lyrics is actually copying the whole work."
Correct. That's why CD liner notes have two or three sets of copyrights (the third is often for the melodies). More importantly, while the copyright is typically owned by the big, greedy record company, the lyric and composition copyrights are owned by the musicians. This is important to understand for anybody who follows the "artists good, record companies bad" mantra.
"Okay, I can kind of see the basis behind SOME of the recording industry's points (go ahead and mod me flamebait now) seeing as music is copyrighted property and whatnot."
That's fine. Today, we are talking about the music publishing industry. I know it's a "same difference" to a lot of Slashdotters, just as non-Slashdotter types might think that IT guys, MIS guys, coders and project managers all do the same thing.
"But aren't lyrics not copyrighted or are the hundreds of sites out there that give song lyrics away for free underground criminal enterprises?"
Lyrics are copyrighted, typically by the lyricist. The lyric sites get around this with those cryptic "only for individual private study" disclaimers -- I'd copy and paste the exact text but I don't feel like going to a lyric site right now and festooning my display with twelve pop-ups.
Anyway, the lyricist may transfer the publishing rights to a company that specializes in such things (similar to entrusting a real estate agent to sell your house or a CPA to do your taxes -- pay a little more and let an expert do it), or they might form a one-person publishing company. Lennon and McCartney created a two-person company, Northern Songs, Ltd.
As an aside, since many of these publishing companies are just the lyricist and/or the composer, and lyricists and composers are creative folks, you get some funny and clever company names. Look on your CDs -- you'll often see things like "Contents copyright (c) MegaBigRecord Company and Green Ardvaark Ltd." "Green Ardvaark" is probably the guy who wrote the words or the notes.
Warner/Chappell Music happens to be an exception -- it's a very large music publishing company that handles the publishing rights for lots and lots of musicians. They are a subsidiary of the Warner empire (as are their record, film, and book divisions) but they are not a record company, and they are not in the recording industry. They are in the music publishing industry.
"In any case I think the recording industry is definately overstepping its bounds here and should probably focus on winning the first losing battle it got it self into (the fight vs. p2p file sharing) before trying to start another one."
Different industries. This is the music publishing industry, that gets its revenues through radio airplay, jukeboxes, licensing to films and movies, etc. -- pretty much everything but record sales and other pursuits of the recording industry. Perhaps it would be accurate to say that Warner should not be doing this, but this very well might be a left hand/right hand thing.
Not per se. If I want a particular track, the iTMS will only let me have it if I pay them. I can't invite 10,000 of my friends to come to the iTMS and get their free copy of that track, nor will the iTMS let me download all the tracks I want for free. Subscription music services like Napster let you do this, but since continued listening requires a continued payment, I consider this to me more of a time-shifted digital radio. Either way, the producer controls the supply, and if you want to get it legally, it must be via their terms.
I think a lot of Slashdotters are of the understanding that just because all their friends are comfortable with getting their music via P2P, then everybody must think and act this way, and people who confine themselves to the legal music economy are a bunch of old doodyheads. Perhaps that is the case, but nonetheless, theft (cue the "copyright infringement isn't theft!" robots here) is not part of the classical definition of a free market economy. Similarly, if I had the moral compunction to do so, I could make a few phone calls and buy a stolen car on the black market for far less than what my dealer is charging, but I (and most consumers) choose not to do so. Thus, Mercedes is able to charge what the market will bear.
"So the big question is.... who is financing these guys?"
The startup capital is from the founders themselves -- several of them are well off, either from other blogosphere projects or from other media (Roger L. Simon writes novels). Going forward it's an ad-supported model.
Unfortunately you (and lots of other readers who didn't follow the link) were trolled by yet another misleading Slashdot headline. Cary Sherman very clearly called it a "mistake" earlier in the satement that was quoted in the summary. In other words, it wasn't the case that the moderator missed that part -- he successfully fooled you. Here's the complete quote:
The problem with the SonyBMG situation is that the technology they used contained a security vulnerability of which they were unaware. They have apologized for their mistake, ceased manufacture of CDs with that technology,and pulled CDs with that technology from store shelves. Seems very responsible to me. How many times that software applications created the same problem? Lots. I wonder whether they've taken as aggressive steps as SonyBMG has when those vulnerabilities were discovered, or did they just post a patch on the Internet?
C'mon, mods -- the record companies are evil enough on their own; no need to pull these sorts of tricks.
"I thought file-sharing technology was used for a variety of things. Yeah, it's mostly file-swapping of copyrighted material, but hardly the only use."
Yup, you're correct. That's why the quote you provided stated that it was popular for copyright violation... not used exclusively for copyright violation. In other words, lots of people used it for copyright violation, but the article didn't claim that all of Grokster's customers did. Re-read that quote and I think you'll see what I mean.
I guess you haven't been following the Grokster case too closely. Your conclusions are way off the beam.
This page will get you caught up. Here's the court opinion. If you read that and you're still not sure of the difference between Grokster and Ford, post here and perhaps somebody can explain it to you more carefully than I can.
That's the summary, not the court opinion. The opinion is some 50 pages but I think it'll address your concerns. I know reading dry court opinions are a drag, but there's no better way to understand what happened here.
BTW, kudos to you for acknowledging that you're slippery sloping.
It's great that you're curious. A bit of Googling would've turned up the Supreme Court opinion on the case. It's about 50 pages, but it's worth a read if you're curious about why Grokster was ruled illegal, and say, Firefox would not be.
Here's the opinion. As I mentioned, good reading if you truly want to have a better understanding of what happened here.
"It seems you just can't fight corporate giants with billion dollar legal power..."
Sorry... many folks think justice prevailed here. Grokster was actively encouraging their customers to use the service for piracy, and from this they made millions and millions of dollars. Compare how Grokster operated compared to, say, BitTorrent or the iTunes Music Store, and I think you'll see what I mean.
"Other than pure unadulterated obscene greed, there is no reason that a CD costs more than a DVD."
DVD sales are an incremental revenue stream -- ideally, the film's production costs are covered through theatrical release. The production costs for a CD's worth of music must be covered by the sale of the CD. If the film industry didn't have the primary revenue stream of theatrical release, then you're correct, DVDs would have to cost a lot more. But, this isn't how it works.
However, that's beside the point. CDs and DVDs are, like virtually everything else for sale in the world, sold at what the market will bear. And if the net margin on CDs (typically less than 20%, and if this confuses you, find somebody to explain the difference between gross and net margin) bothers you, trust me: if you were to learn what the average net margin is on computer peripherals, software, packaged food or clothing, it would make you want to curl up into a fetal position and never leave the house.
If your dislike of the free market economy is heartfelt and genuine, one way to fight back is to start with your own finances. Try this:
Figure out the bare minimum that you and your family need to get by for the year. Don't allow for vacations, purchasing fancy vehicles, designer clothing, meals in fancy restaurants, or anything else which might reflect greed, vanity or wastefulness.
Add 5% as a safety cushion.
Tell your boss tomorrow that you'd like your salary to be reduced accordingly.
This actually makes sense. Free as in beer... and who knows beer better than the Germans?
This fills me with a great sense of ichhasseschwierigestückescheiße... no real direct English translation, but Germans use it to describe those moments when one is angstful about open-source software. Remarkably compact language, that German is.
"It is a known problem that OOo takes a while to start. Staroffice (at the point when Sun bought it) was made by a German company. Most of the internal functions are named in german, and use abbreviations that are not obvious."
While I understand that you were not trying to be an open source apologist, this statement is the epitomy of the frustration that many mainstream users have with open source:
Office worker: "why does Open Office take so long to load?"
IT guy: "That's because the routines were written by a German guy in his free time. I'm sorry, little-miss-everybody-should-speak-English, but this poor guy was working for free. What do you expect?"
Office worker: "what does the German language have to do with this?"
IT guy: "Your PC was built in Austin, Texas. German is its second language. See this routine here, öffnenSiediegroßeAkte()? Your American PC doesn't know what that means, and has to consult a dictionary each time it sees it. There's a group of teenagers translating it into English. They work on one word each for greater safety. One of them saw two words of the program and spent several weeks in the hospital."
Office worker: "So, what do I do about it?"
IT guy: "Have a little more tolerance for the global community in which we live, and worship the holy light of open source that's shining out of Richard Stallman's ass. Oh, and consider dying your hair blond, adopting a schnauzer, and carrying a riding crop. Open Office seems to like that."
Office worker: "Dork."
If this continues, I think it will inevetably lead to new ad campaigns like:
Microsoft Office: We won't coerce you into adopting a schnauzer!
"You clearly don't know what an ad hominem attack is."
The GP does indeed appear to understand the subject. I think the confusion lies in the fact that there are various types of ad hominem attacks. In this case, this is what's known as a circumstantial ad hominem.
The wikipedia article explains this well. If you believe the wikipedia article to be incorrect, you may want to take the time to edit it.
"But when Ou, who has a long and easily verifiable history of writing articles that disparage open-source software, says the same thing, his words should be taken with a generous pinch of salt."
Ironically, you have made an ad hominem attack yourself. From the wikipedia article:
Ad hominem circumstantial involves pointing out that someone is in circumstances such that he is disposed to take a particular position. Essentially, circumstantial ad hominem constitutes an attack on the bias of a person. The reason that this is fallacious is that it simply does not make one's opponent's arguments, from a logical point of view, any less credible to point out that one's opponent is disposed to argue that way.
But I'm not surprised that you're incorrect, since Anonymous Cowards usually are.;-)
Re:not easy enough to install, not easy enough to
on
Fighting FUD with Humor
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"And BTW, Gagne might want to update the subtitle of his book, "Kiss the blue screen of death goodbye." I have to use Windows a lot at work. I haven't seen a BSOD in years."
Me neither. That's the author's way of trying to spread a little FUD himself. Maybe it's an attempt at irony.
"Last time I checked, there is no clause in the Constitution saying anything about how old you have to be to qualify for the First Amendment."
...
"By the way, if you are in the DC area, you owe it to yourself to stop by the National Archives and see the Constitution. It had a surprisingly profound impact on this jaded science geek."
Good for you -- I think everybody should look at it and read it. But that "Congress shall make no law..." part is essential. Understand that, and you'll understand how a Catholic school, a 7-11, a web site operator, or pretty much any non-government entity can stifle your speech with impunity.
"The reason we never hear about wide-scale piracy, though, is that they don't want us to hear about it."
I see articles about Microsoft busting counterfeiters, etc. fairly often. The hunt for the guys running the bootleg CD and DVD factories has been ongoing for years, but it doesn't happen to be the flavor of the month. I rarely see these articles picked up on Slashdot, and my guess is that old-skool CD duplication isn't really a "news for nerds" item. So in this case, the "they" in your quote is the Slashdot editors!
FWIW, the media conglomerates have been putting huge pressure on the US government to, in turn, put pressure on the Chinese government to crack down on the CD/DVD bootleg factories. I did happen to read about this on Slashdot (and yeah, a significant number of the comments were sympathetic to the poor bootleg factory owners who were just helping information to be free) but it gets wider coverage in the mainstream press.
"This is really funny. Disney is basically saying that the academy is the biggest problem in the whole movie copying/pirating thing."
Stick around and read more Slashdot coverage of movie piracy, and with each article you'll see at least one nitwit post something to the effect of "If the movie industry wants to stop piracy, they should stop the leaks, rather than busting the poor teenagers who use BitTorrent bork bork bork!". In other words, you'll find plenty of Slashdotters who really do think that, yes, it's Academy screener leaks that are the biggest problem.
While the notion of taking measures to track screeners has obviously boggled more than a few Slashdotters, you can rest assured that the industry -- including the folks in the academy who get the screeners -- have known about this paranoia for years. The "do not copy under penalty of castration with a dull spork" type warnings have been plastered on screeners for quite a while now, and recipients have to literally sign agreements before they get their screeners, or it's sporking time. In fact, it's watermarking that caught Carmine Caridi. If this level of security makes you uncomfortable, or if you'd be offended to be asked to sign a confidentiality agreement, then you're probably not suited for the movie industry, or any industry that requires NDAs, for that matter.
"I think I'll go out on a limb and say that Disney isn't going to earn any more awards for future movies."
Yes, a huge limb -- your conjecture is unfounded and incorrect. But that's understandable, since you're obviously not up to speed on this little part of the industry. So, naturally, your post is +5, Insightful. Ain't Slashdot great?
The cool thing about a free market economy is that if the pricing really is ridiculous, then you won't have to implore people not to use it -- they'll stay away on their own.
"This is very important everyone. the content providers are VERY SCARED. First they were scared the medium wouldn't be popular enough to thwart file sharing, now they are scared it is SO POPULAR it will thwart their very role in distribution!"
Just to be clear: Apple is a reseller. Their competitors are not the record companies (which sell their product to the resellers) but other resellers like Amazon.com, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, indie record stores and anybody else who sells CDs or downloads. While the record companies do some direct business (record clubs, etc.), they largely rely on the retail channel. They pretty much always have.
The reason why the record companies are scared of Apple is that they might become too big. Not because they will usurp the record companies "role," but because if one reseller gets too big, they call the shots. In the high tech industry, everybody has a love/hate relationship with Best Buy. For a lot of industries, the 500 lb. gorilla is Wal-Mart. When one reseller in a channel gets big enough, they can set the pricing that they pay, and manufacturers' margins get squeezed. This is why the record companies are doing the power play now with the "let's raise prices above $0.99" nonsense, because they foresee the day when Steve Jobs starts setting the wholesale prices.
Partially correct. In most cases rights must also be secured from whomever owns the publishing rights -- that is, the copyright on the words and the lyrics. Words and music are owned by the songwriter and composer, unless they transfer the rights to somebody else. Record companies typically only own the copyright on that recording of the words and music. Sometimes the local country's artists' rights management societies get involved as well.
This is important to understand for folks who kneel at the shrine of "record companies bad, artists good." It's not just the greedy, stupid record companies that are getting in the way of progress -- sometimes it's the greedy, stupid songwriters and composers!
I'm sure you were aware of that, but the way your post was written, it gave the impression that the record companies are the only obstacle.
"Record Companies are going to be irrelevant in the years to come. Bands are going to start selling their own music over the internet."
To be fair, your sentiment is a common one, but I've also been seeing it for over five years. While there continues to be a certain percentage of unsigned bands who've chosen not to sign record deals (as there always has been), record contracts seem to be in demand as always. So, my question for you is this: when do you expect this to happen? In five years, ten years, fifteen? No right or wrong answers of course... I'd just like to hear your estimate.
"Why get pennies on the dollar when you can get the whole dollar? Sell your songs for 99 cents online. Pay your $20 hosting fee. Sell millions."
The classic question for bands choosing the DIY vs. record deal route (assuming they have the required talent and luck to make this choice) is "do I want most of a really tiny pie, or a little bit of a potentially very fucking huge pie?". Another way of looking at it is whether you want to sink $10K of your own money into recording, engineering, producing, promoting and selling your CD (and hoping that you sell enough to make back your investment so that you can actually make some cash), or getting a record company to spend $100K of their money (and hoping that they sell enough to make back their investment so you can actually make some cash).
"Ok, the story is interesting and all, but did they really think that they'd change the way that a monopoly does business?"
You may want to double check your undstanding of the word "monopoly." The record industry, like many industries, has a few major players and thousands of little ones. Despite GM, Daimler/Chrysler, Ford and BMW being some of the biggest companies in the world, nobody describes the auto industry as being a monopoly. Lotus was able to successfully build and sell me a car, and bands and consumers alike are free to do business with any of the thousand and thousands of indie labels.
"It would be like getting them to admit that they're on a sinking ship, and that just ain't going to happen."
The record company is a ship, alright... a big one. And it takes time and work to turn ships around. The record industry survived the transition from 78s to LPs, and the launch of the cassette tape, and the CD. The paid download industry is finally beginning to click (thanks to Steve Jobs, who is smarter than most record industry executives), but recall that it took at least 10 years before audio CDs really took off. While you might think that the record industry is the Titanic, the reality is that it's like the QEII: it's slow moving and inefficient, but it eventually gets where it needs to.
"But this is also why I'm such a big believer in free market economics. About time somebody thinks they own the customer, somebody else will out-hussle them and provide better service at a lower price."
If by this you're referring to the brisk trade in pirated material (facilitated by Kazaa, Bittorent et al), this is not how a free market economy is classically defined. See the wikipedia article if necessary. Don't get caught up by the article's use of the word "theft" -- they mean it in the sense of "illegal means," and not in the "copyright infringent is not theft!" slashdork sense.
"Fact is, they aren't; even Apple sells its iTunes tracks as a loss-leader for its iPod sales."
That hasn't been true for a couple of years. When iTMS was in startup mode it was losing money (as do many, many startups due to sunk costs of launching a business), but Steve Jobs has mentioned on recent earnings calls that the iTMS is now a profit center.
iTMS probably doesn't operate at as high of a margin as their hardware business, but that's par for the course for the music industry.
Slashdot Mirror
If Creative's actions surprise and dismay you, you'd be shocked to see the plethora of concepts patented by Apple that would make the average Slashdotter utter a hearty "well, duh." Representing a hard drive as an icon that looks like a hard drive? A patent for a heat sink? A patent for a single window interface? Oh, please. Actually, there's a reason why these sorts of obvious-to-Slashdotters concepts are patented, but this has got to be troubling for the "Creative shouldn't be allowed to patent this! Bork bork bork!" crowd.
I know Apple fanatacism is often quite a humorous thing, but "Apple should be able to get patents for obvious things, and other companies should not" is something I'd put beyond even the most obsessive fanboy.
"The lyrics are probably a separately copyrighted work, so copying the lyrics is actually copying the whole work."
Correct. That's why CD liner notes have two or three sets of copyrights (the third is often for the melodies). More importantly, while the copyright is typically owned by the big, greedy record company, the lyric and composition copyrights are owned by the musicians. This is important to understand for anybody who follows the "artists good, record companies bad" mantra.
"Okay, I can kind of see the basis behind SOME of the recording industry's points (go ahead and mod me flamebait now) seeing as music is copyrighted property and whatnot."
That's fine. Today, we are talking about the music publishing industry. I know it's a "same difference" to a lot of Slashdotters, just as non-Slashdotter types might think that IT guys, MIS guys, coders and project managers all do the same thing.
"But aren't lyrics not copyrighted or are the hundreds of sites out there that give song lyrics away for free underground criminal enterprises?"
Lyrics are copyrighted, typically by the lyricist. The lyric sites get around this with those cryptic "only for individual private study" disclaimers -- I'd copy and paste the exact text but I don't feel like going to a lyric site right now and festooning my display with twelve pop-ups.
Anyway, the lyricist may transfer the publishing rights to a company that specializes in such things (similar to entrusting a real estate agent to sell your house or a CPA to do your taxes -- pay a little more and let an expert do it), or they might form a one-person publishing company. Lennon and McCartney created a two-person company, Northern Songs, Ltd.
As an aside, since many of these publishing companies are just the lyricist and/or the composer, and lyricists and composers are creative folks, you get some funny and clever company names. Look on your CDs -- you'll often see things like "Contents copyright (c) MegaBigRecord Company and Green Ardvaark Ltd." "Green Ardvaark" is probably the guy who wrote the words or the notes.
Warner/Chappell Music happens to be an exception -- it's a very large music publishing company that handles the publishing rights for lots and lots of musicians. They are a subsidiary of the Warner empire (as are their record, film, and book divisions) but they are not a record company, and they are not in the recording industry. They are in the music publishing industry.
"In any case I think the recording industry is definately overstepping its bounds here and should probably focus on winning the first losing battle it got it self into (the fight vs. p2p file sharing) before trying to start another one."
Different industries. This is the music publishing industry, that gets its revenues through radio airplay, jukeboxes, licensing to films and movies, etc. -- pretty much everything but record sales and other pursuits of the recording industry. Perhaps it would be accurate to say that Warner should not be doing this, but this very well might be a left hand/right hand thing.
"hey economist guy: the supply is unlimited!)"
Not per se. If I want a particular track, the iTMS will only let me have it if I pay them. I can't invite 10,000 of my friends to come to the iTMS and get their free copy of that track, nor will the iTMS let me download all the tracks I want for free. Subscription music services like Napster let you do this, but since continued listening requires a continued payment, I consider this to me more of a time-shifted digital radio. Either way, the producer controls the supply, and if you want to get it legally, it must be via their terms.
I think a lot of Slashdotters are of the understanding that just because all their friends are comfortable with getting their music via P2P, then everybody must think and act this way, and people who confine themselves to the legal music economy are a bunch of old doodyheads. Perhaps that is the case, but nonetheless, theft (cue the "copyright infringement isn't theft!" robots here) is not part of the classical definition of a free market economy. Similarly, if I had the moral compunction to do so, I could make a few phone calls and buy a stolen car on the black market for far less than what my dealer is charging, but I (and most consumers) choose not to do so. Thus, Mercedes is able to charge what the market will bear.
"So the big question is.... who is financing these guys?"
The startup capital is from the founders themselves -- several of them are well off, either from other blogosphere projects or from other media (Roger L. Simon writes novels). Going forward it's an ad-supported model.
"Given that:"
Unfortunately you (and lots of other readers who didn't follow the link) were trolled by yet another misleading Slashdot headline. Cary Sherman very clearly called it a "mistake" earlier in the satement that was quoted in the summary. In other words, it wasn't the case that the moderator missed that part -- he successfully fooled you. Here's the complete quote:
C'mon, mods -- the record companies are evil enough on their own; no need to pull these sorts of tricks.
"I thought file-sharing technology was used for a variety of things. Yeah, it's mostly file-swapping of copyrighted material, but hardly the only use."
Yup, you're correct. That's why the quote you provided stated that it was popular for copyright violation... not used exclusively for copyright violation. In other words, lots of people used it for copyright violation, but the article didn't claim that all of Grokster's customers did. Re-read that quote and I think you'll see what I mean.
I guess you haven't been following the Grokster case too closely. Your conclusions are way off the beam.
This page will get you caught up. Here's the court opinion. If you read that and you're still not sure of the difference between Grokster and Ford, post here and perhaps somebody can explain it to you more carefully than I can.
"I don't think I like such vague wording."
That's the summary, not the court opinion. The opinion is some 50 pages but I think it'll address your concerns. I know reading dry court opinions are a drag, but there's no better way to understand what happened here.
BTW, kudos to you for acknowledging that you're slippery sloping.
It's great that you're curious. A bit of Googling would've turned up the Supreme Court opinion on the case. It's about 50 pages, but it's worth a read if you're curious about why Grokster was ruled illegal, and say, Firefox would not be.
Here's the opinion. As I mentioned, good reading if you truly want to have a better understanding of what happened here.
"It seems you just can't fight corporate giants with billion dollar legal power..."
Sorry... many folks think justice prevailed here. Grokster was actively encouraging their customers to use the service for piracy, and from this they made millions and millions of dollars. Compare how Grokster operated compared to, say, BitTorrent or the iTunes Music Store, and I think you'll see what I mean.
"Other than pure unadulterated obscene greed, there is no reason that a CD costs more than a DVD."
DVD sales are an incremental revenue stream -- ideally, the film's production costs are covered through theatrical release. The production costs for a CD's worth of music must be covered by the sale of the CD. If the film industry didn't have the primary revenue stream of theatrical release, then you're correct, DVDs would have to cost a lot more. But, this isn't how it works.
However, that's beside the point. CDs and DVDs are, like virtually everything else for sale in the world, sold at what the market will bear. And if the net margin on CDs (typically less than 20%, and if this confuses you, find somebody to explain the difference between gross and net margin) bothers you, trust me: if you were to learn what the average net margin is on computer peripherals, software, packaged food or clothing, it would make you want to curl up into a fetal position and never leave the house.
If your dislike of the free market economy is heartfelt and genuine, one way to fight back is to start with your own finances. Try this:
"So, use OOo because it is free and Free."
This actually makes sense. Free as in beer... and who knows beer better than the Germans?
This fills me with a great sense of ichhasseschwierigestückescheiße... no real direct English translation, but Germans use it to describe those moments when one is angstful about open-source software. Remarkably compact language, that German is.
"It is a known problem that OOo takes a while to start. Staroffice (at the point when Sun bought it) was made by a German company. Most of the internal functions are named in german, and use abbreviations that are not obvious."
While I understand that you were not trying to be an open source apologist, this statement is the epitomy of the frustration that many mainstream users have with open source:
Office worker: "why does Open Office take so long to load?"
IT guy: "That's because the routines were written by a German guy in his free time. I'm sorry, little-miss-everybody-should-speak-English, but this poor guy was working for free. What do you expect?"
Office worker: "what does the German language have to do with this?"
IT guy: "Your PC was built in Austin, Texas. German is its second language. See this routine here, öffnenSiediegroßeAkte()? Your American PC doesn't know what that means, and has to consult a dictionary each time it sees it. There's a group of teenagers translating it into English. They work on one word each for greater safety. One of them saw two words of the program and spent several weeks in the hospital."
Office worker: "So, what do I do about it?"
IT guy: "Have a little more tolerance for the global community in which we live, and worship the holy light of open source that's shining out of Richard Stallman's ass. Oh, and consider dying your hair blond, adopting a schnauzer, and carrying a riding crop. Open Office seems to like that."
Office worker: "Dork."
If this continues, I think it will inevetably lead to new ad campaigns like:
Microsoft Office: We won't coerce you into adopting a schnauzer!
"You clearly don't know what an ad hominem attack is."
The GP does indeed appear to understand the subject. I think the confusion lies in the fact that there are various types of ad hominem attacks. In this case, this is what's known as a circumstantial ad hominem.
The wikipedia article explains this well. If you believe the wikipedia article to be incorrect, you may want to take the time to edit it.
"But when Ou, who has a long and easily verifiable history of writing articles that disparage open-source software, says the same thing, his words should be taken with a generous pinch of salt."
Ironically, you have made an ad hominem attack yourself. From the wikipedia article:
But I'm not surprised that you're incorrect, since Anonymous Cowards usually are. ;-)
"And BTW, Gagne might want to update the subtitle of his book, "Kiss the blue screen of death goodbye." I have to use Windows a lot at work. I haven't seen a BSOD in years."
Me neither. That's the author's way of trying to spread a little FUD himself. Maybe it's an attempt at irony.
"Last time I checked, there is no clause in the Constitution saying anything about how old you have to be to qualify for the First Amendment."
...
"By the way, if you are in the DC area, you owe it to yourself to stop by the National Archives and see the Constitution. It had a surprisingly profound impact on this jaded science geek."
Good for you -- I think everybody should look at it and read it. But that "Congress shall make no law..." part is essential. Understand that, and you'll understand how a Catholic school, a 7-11, a web site operator, or pretty much any non-government entity can stifle your speech with impunity.
"The reason we never hear about wide-scale piracy, though, is that they don't want us to hear about it."
I see articles about Microsoft busting counterfeiters, etc. fairly often. The hunt for the guys running the bootleg CD and DVD factories has been ongoing for years, but it doesn't happen to be the flavor of the month. I rarely see these articles picked up on Slashdot, and my guess is that old-skool CD duplication isn't really a "news for nerds" item. So in this case, the "they" in your quote is the Slashdot editors!
FWIW, the media conglomerates have been putting huge pressure on the US government to, in turn, put pressure on the Chinese government to crack down on the CD/DVD bootleg factories. I did happen to read about this on Slashdot (and yeah, a significant number of the comments were sympathetic to the poor bootleg factory owners who were just helping information to be free) but it gets wider coverage in the mainstream press.
"This is really funny. Disney is basically saying that the academy is the biggest problem in the whole movie copying/pirating thing."
Stick around and read more Slashdot coverage of movie piracy, and with each article you'll see at least one nitwit post something to the effect of "If the movie industry wants to stop piracy, they should stop the leaks, rather than busting the poor teenagers who use BitTorrent bork bork bork!". In other words, you'll find plenty of Slashdotters who really do think that, yes, it's Academy screener leaks that are the biggest problem.
While the notion of taking measures to track screeners has obviously boggled more than a few Slashdotters, you can rest assured that the industry -- including the folks in the academy who get the screeners -- have known about this paranoia for years. The "do not copy under penalty of castration with a dull spork" type warnings have been plastered on screeners for quite a while now, and recipients have to literally sign agreements before they get their screeners, or it's sporking time. In fact, it's watermarking that caught Carmine Caridi. If this level of security makes you uncomfortable, or if you'd be offended to be asked to sign a confidentiality agreement, then you're probably not suited for the movie industry, or any industry that requires NDAs, for that matter.
"I think I'll go out on a limb and say that Disney isn't going to earn any more awards for future movies."
Yes, a huge limb -- your conjecture is unfounded and incorrect. But that's understandable, since you're obviously not up to speed on this little part of the industry. So, naturally, your post is +5, Insightful. Ain't Slashdot great?
" The pricing is just ridiculous."
"Send them a message: do not use this service."
The cool thing about a free market economy is that if the pricing really is ridiculous, then you won't have to implore people not to use it -- they'll stay away on their own.
If, in a few months, we see headlines like:
AUSTRALIAN ITUNES COMPLETE FAILURE Citizens prefer barbecuing giant shrimp, survey says...then you're correct that the pricing is ridiculous.
"This is very important everyone. the content providers are VERY SCARED. First they were scared the medium wouldn't be popular enough to thwart file sharing, now they are scared it is SO POPULAR it will thwart their very role in distribution!"
Just to be clear: Apple is a reseller. Their competitors are not the record companies (which sell their product to the resellers) but other resellers like Amazon.com, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, indie record stores and anybody else who sells CDs or downloads. While the record companies do some direct business (record clubs, etc.), they largely rely on the retail channel. They pretty much always have.
The reason why the record companies are scared of Apple is that they might become too big. Not because they will usurp the record companies "role," but because if one reseller gets too big, they call the shots. In the high tech industry, everybody has a love/hate relationship with Best Buy. For a lot of industries, the 500 lb. gorilla is Wal-Mart. When one reseller in a channel gets big enough, they can set the pricing that they pay, and manufacturers' margins get squeezed. This is why the record companies are doing the power play now with the "let's raise prices above $0.99" nonsense, because they foresee the day when Steve Jobs starts setting the wholesale prices.
"The record companies."
Partially correct. In most cases rights must also be secured from whomever owns the publishing rights -- that is, the copyright on the words and the lyrics. Words and music are owned by the songwriter and composer, unless they transfer the rights to somebody else. Record companies typically only own the copyright on that recording of the words and music. Sometimes the local country's artists' rights management societies get involved as well.
This is important to understand for folks who kneel at the shrine of "record companies bad, artists good." It's not just the greedy, stupid record companies that are getting in the way of progress -- sometimes it's the greedy, stupid songwriters and composers!
I'm sure you were aware of that, but the way your post was written, it gave the impression that the record companies are the only obstacle.
"Why are storm names female?"
Back in the day when hurricanes really were given exclusively female names, the common answer was because there's so such thing as a HIMicane.
"Record Companies are going to be irrelevant in the years to come. Bands are going to start selling their own music over the internet."
To be fair, your sentiment is a common one, but I've also been seeing it for over five years. While there continues to be a certain percentage of unsigned bands who've chosen not to sign record deals (as there always has been), record contracts seem to be in demand as always. So, my question for you is this: when do you expect this to happen? In five years, ten years, fifteen? No right or wrong answers of course... I'd just like to hear your estimate.
"Why get pennies on the dollar when you can get the whole dollar? Sell your songs for 99 cents online. Pay your $20 hosting fee. Sell millions."
The classic question for bands choosing the DIY vs. record deal route (assuming they have the required talent and luck to make this choice) is "do I want most of a really tiny pie, or a little bit of a potentially very fucking huge pie?". Another way of looking at it is whether you want to sink $10K of your own money into recording, engineering, producing, promoting and selling your CD (and hoping that you sell enough to make back your investment so that you can actually make some cash), or getting a record company to spend $100K of their money (and hoping that they sell enough to make back their investment so you can actually make some cash).
"Ok, the story is interesting and all, but did they really think that they'd change the way that a monopoly does business?"
You may want to double check your undstanding of the word "monopoly." The record industry, like many industries, has a few major players and thousands of little ones. Despite GM, Daimler/Chrysler, Ford and BMW being some of the biggest companies in the world, nobody describes the auto industry as being a monopoly. Lotus was able to successfully build and sell me a car, and bands and consumers alike are free to do business with any of the thousand and thousands of indie labels.
"It would be like getting them to admit that they're on a sinking ship, and that just ain't going to happen."
The record company is a ship, alright... a big one. And it takes time and work to turn ships around. The record industry survived the transition from 78s to LPs, and the launch of the cassette tape, and the CD. The paid download industry is finally beginning to click (thanks to Steve Jobs, who is smarter than most record industry executives), but recall that it took at least 10 years before audio CDs really took off. While you might think that the record industry is the Titanic, the reality is that it's like the QEII: it's slow moving and inefficient, but it eventually gets where it needs to.
"But this is also why I'm such a big believer in free market economics. About time somebody thinks they own the customer, somebody else will out-hussle them and provide better service at a lower price."
If by this you're referring to the brisk trade in pirated material (facilitated by Kazaa, Bittorent et al), this is not how a free market economy is classically defined. See the wikipedia article if necessary. Don't get caught up by the article's use of the word "theft" -- they mean it in the sense of "illegal means," and not in the "copyright infringent is not theft!" slashdork sense.
"Fact is, they aren't; even Apple sells its iTunes tracks as a loss-leader for its iPod sales."
That hasn't been true for a couple of years. When iTMS was in startup mode it was losing money (as do many, many startups due to sunk costs of launching a business), but Steve Jobs has mentioned on recent earnings calls that the iTMS is now a profit center.
iTMS probably doesn't operate at as high of a margin as their hardware business, but that's par for the course for the music industry.