"Even if AllOfMp3 is legal, by buying our albums offshore, we take away the jobs of hard-working Americans in the recording industry, little people who toil for as little as 70 or 100 thousand dollars a year."
Your post was funny and all, but I was of the understanding that most people whose livelihood is in the entertainment industry make about the same amount of money that those of us in other industries -- that is, if you're a graphic designer for a 12-person indie label, vs. a graphic designer for a 12-person web shop, you'll probably make about the same. Sure, the top-paid executives in the record industry make an insane amount of money, but the same goes for the top-paid executives of the lawn mower industry, the computer peripheral industry, and just about every industry.
The only "executive" I've ever known in the recording industry ran an indie label with about ten employees. Piracy hit him harder than it did the larger companies. When sales were down (for whatever reason), it meant that he laid off his friends. He worked about 60 hours a week and paid himself the princely sum of about $20K a year.
Now, to be clear, I can understand that the image that you've projected certainly can be used to feel better about piracy, but I'm not seeing the evidence to support it. If you have data that shows that the average person in the recording industry makes $70K - $100K a year (which, FWIW, is shit pay if you live on one of the coasts and you're trying to raise a family), can you give a citation?
Are you joking? I've reported child pornography on several occasions (we are required to here in the US, as well) and I wasn't arrested for making the report. Just take a few seconds to think about why the law exists: to punish those who distribute it, not entrap those who report it.
If you're not sure what I mean, ask anybody who runs or works for an ISP.
Nonsense. I run a photo hosting site and I've reported kiddie porn on several occasions. The response was "thank you very much," not "you're under arrest for looking at it yourself." Why do you think they would act so silly? The point of the law is to catch people who traffic in kiddie porn, not entrap abuse desk workers. This isn't something I should even have to point out.
Google is not an ISP. I don't know what the folks at Google do when they discover that they've linked to kiddie porn. That would be a great question for them.
In short, this law has been around for years in the US and we do just fine with it. ISPs get reports, they forward them along, and they go about their business.
" Canadians have enjoyed free downloads [com.com] because of a tax that we pay on blank media."
A common misperception. To clarify:
Downloading MP3s in Canada has been deemed to be legal.
Canadians pay tarrifs on blank media.
"because of" is incorrect. These are not directly related. Canada may have socialized medicine and other similar programs, but your music industry is not socialized.
No, really. What civil liberties are being violated here? Please spell it out for me. In the US, possessing child pornography is generally illegal, but I'm not familiar with Australian law.
I don't get your point. How hard can it be to investigate reports of kiddie porn? You already have an abuse desk, right? It's simple: if your abuse desk gets a report of kiddie porn on your host, just take a few seconds to look at the site in question, and if it's kiddie porn, take action.
Really, this is basic stuff that you should be doing anyway. I don't see how an ISP operator could see any moral value in providing a haven for kiddie porn collectors, let alone justify mailbombing law enforcement as a means to that end.
"Seiously How are they even going to try to enforce this? Unless They have an army of trained web-content filtering monkeys, it's going to be next to impossible."
I'll break it down for you:
Somebody notifies you of one of your subscribers posting kiddie porn on a web page you host.
You spend one minute out of your busy day viewing the web page and you suspect that it may indeed be kiddie porn.
So you tell the authorities.
Then you go back to reading Slashdot.
If anybody can't be bothered to investigate a report of suspected kiddie porn on their own server, then they should not be running an ISP.
"What that equates to is if child porn is reported to the ISP/webhost, they have to then report it to the Australian police quickly or face penalties."
Correct. Just as has been the case for several years in the USA.
When this happened to me -- somebody let me know that a member of my site was using their storage to host child porn, I very quickly called the FBI, who in turn sent me to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
For me, there was no gray area. I didn't think for one minute of my rights being violated. I didn't think for one minute about losing my Slashdot cred (which, by definition, I must not have in the first place) by doing so. In short, the phrase "your rights online" did not even occur to me; if any phrase came to mind, it was "you shore got a purdy mouth" or some similar one that I envisioned the scumbag hearing sometime soon.
In short, I think that if an ISP operator is upset by a law that requires them to report child pornography to the authorities once they're made aware of it, then perhaps they shouldn't be running an ISP.
"Yeah, that's the ticket! Blackmail a company into making what I'm doing legit! Since I know they won't do the legal way I'll force them into it using blackmail!"
If I'd been the FBI agent assigned to that one, when it came time to go to his house to arrest him, I'd have done so in a new Volvo T5, just to make him think until the last second that he was getting what he wanted. Then I'd jump out of the volvo and scream "psych!" or whatever the hip phrase was back then.
"If your buisness plan can be implemented by a pimplefaced teenager in his parents basement, you should be prepared for the competition of several hundred thousand pimplefaced teenagers doing just that."
Very astute. Being prepared, in this case, is doing a better job than those pimplefaced teenagers.
"The value in such a simple buisness is just too small to support a public company as anything other than a short-term investor aberration."
Not in this case. Those pimplefaced teenagers have been launching their own little blog hosting sites for years now. There's a metric squillion of them. Yet Six Apart (the blogging company mentioned in The Fine Article) has seven million users and growing fast. The pimplefaced teenagers are losing this one.
"I can't see much revenue for the blogging hosts, they still only really have banners/popups."
That's an interesting observation. I just bought a Lotus Elise with blog host revenue. TFA points out that Six Apart has seven million users -- larger than Slashdot's userbase by an order of magnitude. If their take rate to paid accounts is like mine, they're grossing about $1.5 million a month, and their company has fewer than five employees.
Reading the comments to this article shows that many other Slashdotters similarly don't see the revenue potential for blog hosting. You're not alone, but nonetheless, a little research will probably open your eyes.
"You know, it's crazy, but you'd think that after the dot.com bubble burst the venture capitalists would be a little more careful with their money when it came to tech, yet here they are, wanting to get in on an industry where the main product is something that is already available for free."
Yet the paid blogging industry is growing. Perhaps this seems counterintuitive, but it's true. I think many Slashdotters are basing assumptions on the fact of free blogging platforms (MSN Spaces being the latest of which) being readily available. I'm guessing the thought process is that with all the free solutions out there, the paid market can't possibly still be growing. But it is.
It appears that at least in this particular case, the VCs have analyzed the situation better than Slashdotters have.
"People aren't actually very willing to pay for somewhere to write their blog"
That's an extremely general statement; can you clarify? What people? Your friends? You're correct, in the tautalogical sense, that people who don't want to pay don't want to pay, but the important thing is that there are people who do.
The fact that your post was modded "insightful" shows that there are many who agree with you, but this may be similar to the "lots of people pirate music, thus people aren't willing to pay for it, thus the value of music is zero" fallacy. As the volume of piracy grows, so has Apple's business in paid downloads. And despite more and more free blogging services popping up, more people are paying. I'm able to measure this not in the abstract, let's-post-hunches-on-Slashdot sense, but by the amount of money that's put into my bank account each day.
To your credit, the "there's no business in blogging" sentiment is a popular one, but I'm just not seeing the evidence to support that.
Whenever the subject of intellectual property comes up, quite a few Slashdotters are quick to point out that copyright violation != "theft," as the rightsholder still has the rights to the work and can try selling a copy to somebody else. I believe the situation is the same here -- if I've been the victim of identity theft, it simply means that somebody else is using my identity, but I haven't lost mine. Yet I haven't yet seen anybody take anybody else to task for using the word "theft" in this context.
I think the difference is that copyright violation is one of those things that falls under situational ethics (ie. it's okay if you think the rightsholder already has enough money, or if you think you probably wouldn't have bought it anyway, or any of a dozen other popular rationalizations). In other words... it's something that many Slashdotters do. But identity theft has no similar justification; it's just plain wrong. No Slashdotter would partake in it, and thus we don't need to collectively point out that it's not "theft" to make ourselves feel better about doing it.
" Doesn't Slashdot have editors that are supposed to analyze and edit user postings."
This is often deliberate. Slashdot editors often choose words that are sensational and inflamatory. Accuracy takes a back seat in these cases.
"Lately, Slashdot quality has been going down the tubes."
My recollection is that Slashdot has always had this quality. One way in which Slashdot has changed lately is the epidemic of those "free iPod" pyramid schemes. I can't imagine that people find it worth the effort to sign up friends (or even strangers) into a pyramid scheme when scam-free iPods are readily available at the local retailer. $299 isn't a lot, really -- even if you make only $15 an hour, that's just 20 hours of work, and you don't have to annoy anybody in the process.
"Do you want a free iPod? You can have one here [freeipods.com]."
" Man this took them forever. Call me a simple developer, however how hard can it be to add some more flash memory, better sound output through a headset, and modify the hardware to read MP3s. I've been pissed at the phone industry for nearly 2 years for not doing this."
It's not the first phone with those features, by far. My somewhat old Sony Ericsson K700i has ~ 40MB of memory and plays MP3s with good quality. I don't use it as an MP3 player in the traditional sense, but I use MP3 files as ringtones, much to the chagrin of the people around me. The FM radio has been surprisingly useful as well.
It's not easy to find in the US, but it's available online. I got an unlocked model on my last trip to Asia. A trip to Asia is a great way to remind one's self of how utterly backward the US mobile phone market is.
"Those are two instances which are clearly not in the best interests of Orbitz. However, what about more mundane uses? Perhaps I want to help a friend find the best price for their trip? Technically, I won't be able to directly link them to the results I've found. Instead, I'd have to walk them through exactly what search/browse/filter criteria to use and hope that their result set is no different than mine."
No, you wouldn't -- just e-mail your friend the link and don't worry about it.
It seems clear to me that Orbitz put this into place so that they have the grounds to go after others that are putting permanent deep links on their web sites. They're going after the aforementioned competitors, et al., and not you.
"Perhaps Orbitz should be allowed to do this. After all, it is their site. At the same time, however, consumers should voice their annoyance at being so inconvenienced. Just a quick email to their customer service department telling them "I'd love to use your site to find the best travel information I can, however, I find the TOS too restrictive for my needs and will be using Travelocity instead. I felt it important to inform you of this loss of business in the hopes that you will one day revise your TOS to allow deep linking for personal use.""
I'm not sure what the point of this would be, other than to get attention. If you want to send a link to a friend, do it. Their TOS hasn't been written for the purposes of what you're doing. No need to be a martyr.
In case I'm not being clear, here's a similar example. I run a web site which has a TOS that states that we have the right to bounce accounts for excessive profanity and various other naughty things. Now, this does not mean that we're running a profanity filter and proactively bouncing anybody who utters the random "fuck." The TOS is in place so that we have a clearly defined right to bounce people who are being obnoxious. If somebody were to send me an e-mail similar to yours -- "I would like to use your site but since you won't let me use profanity I'll go somewhere else instead" -- I would rightfully point out that they were being a moron.
"For decades they conspired on prices and you claim they "paid the price"?!"
The price-fixing settlement was not as a result of "conspiring" for "decades." Here's what happened:
A couple of "big box" retailers (Wal-Mart, Best Buy and the like) started selling CDs at a loss, or for extremely low margins, as an inducement to get people into the stores and buy other high-margin stuff.
This started hurting a few music-only chains (Tower Records, TWE and one other that slips my mind), who didn't have an acre of high-margin children's clothing or computer equipment in the back of the store that allowed them to sell CDs at a price that competed with Wal-Mart and Best Buy.
Tower Records, et al complained to the record companies (notably Universal) that Wal-Mart and Best Buy were putting them out of business.
In response, Universal started a "MAP," or "minimum advertised price" program. Universal gave Tower, et al. funding for advertising (in newspapers and the like) with the stipulation that the advertised prices didn't fall below a particular point. In case this concept seems familiar to you... lots of other industries do it, including the computer peripheral industry.
Best Buy and Wal-Mart noticed this and complained to the government.
The government smacked Universal around a bit.
Wal-Mart and Best Buy had the last laugh.
Tower Records filed for bankrupcty.
The winners here are Best Buy and Wal-Mart. The losers are the traditional record stores and indie stores that continue to get squeezed out of the business by Wal-Mart and their loss leader prices on CDs. The record companies probably don't mind; other than sending out some settlement checks and sending some crappy CDs to some libraries (as you've mentioned), this didn't hurt their bottom line. They were selling CDs to Tower Records for the same price that they sell to Wal-Mart.
You should be happy about this if:
You don't mind buying your music in Wal-Mart (sadly, for many people reading this, Wal-Mart is the only place they know to get music, and they'll never know what it was like to have that cool indie record store in town before Wal-Mart put it out of business.) Can't beat those great Wal-Mart prices, particularly if you like Shania Twain!
You don't like MAP pricing programs. In that case, one industry down (the record industry) and lots more to go. This battle is fought one step at a time.
You subscribe to the "what's good for Wal-Mart is good for America" philosophy.
You should be unhappy if:
You miss the old days when indie record stores and stores like Tower were more prevalent, and you wouldn't mind paying a few extra bucks for more selection and the opportunity to avoid going to Wal-Mart for your music.
It bothers you that the computer peripheral industry still uses MAPs. Doesn't bother me, as that's the industry I'm in. MAPs are great.
The bottom line is that anybody who thinks that the price-fixing settlement was a strike against big business and a win for the little guy is mistaken. They're probably still chuckling about it at Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville.
IANAL, but I understand copyright law as it relates to architecture better than the GP. Thanks for the additional insight into the vagaries of copyright law and architecture. In my post I was simplifying for the sake of brevity, not writing a thesis.
Who holds the copyright does matter; otherwise I agree with your sentiment. As I mentioned in another post, the way they're enforcing the copyright is silly. In my untrained opinion I think it would be better enforced ex post facto; that is, taking it to the courts if a book or a postcard or a t-shirt prominently featuring the sculpture happens to show up on the market.
"Should programmers get a royalty for a photograph containing part of their source code printed out in the background that's neither runable nor readable?"
To my understanding, no -- and that's because different types of work have different protections. A sculpture is referred to in copyright law as a visual art and has its own set of restrictions. FWIW, software is considered a literary work. By their nature, literary works have different protections than visual arts. Creators of literary works should not be upset that creators of visual works have their own set of protections, and vice versa.
" It's not about some being "more equal" than others-- it's about applying common fucking sense."
It's a little of both. I think enforcement of the rightsholder's rights would be better handled ex post facto -- if a book or a postcard shows up with a photo of the sculpture, then the sculptor can sue. Chasing photographers out of the park, as one person put it, isn't the best way. However, the underlying theme of "the sculptor gets the right to say who can photograph their work, but I don't have that right associated with the way I choose to make money" is indeed driven by the recurring perception on Slashdot that coders, web designers and other Slashdot-friendly professions are getting the shaft.
" Yes, but they certainly can't prohibit me from taking pictures of my cd."
Technically speaking, they could if they wanted to, depending on how you used those photos. The CD art is copyrighted as well. For example, you can't publish a book of photographs of famous CD artwork without getting permission from the artists first.
Slashdot Mirror
"Even if AllOfMp3 is legal, by buying our albums offshore, we take away the jobs of hard-working Americans in the recording industry, little people who toil for as little as 70 or 100 thousand dollars a year."
Your post was funny and all, but I was of the understanding that most people whose livelihood is in the entertainment industry make about the same amount of money that those of us in other industries -- that is, if you're a graphic designer for a 12-person indie label, vs. a graphic designer for a 12-person web shop, you'll probably make about the same. Sure, the top-paid executives in the record industry make an insane amount of money, but the same goes for the top-paid executives of the lawn mower industry, the computer peripheral industry, and just about every industry.
The only "executive" I've ever known in the recording industry ran an indie label with about ten employees. Piracy hit him harder than it did the larger companies. When sales were down (for whatever reason), it meant that he laid off his friends. He worked about 60 hours a week and paid himself the princely sum of about $20K a year.
Now, to be clear, I can understand that the image that you've projected certainly can be used to feel better about piracy, but I'm not seeing the evidence to support it. If you have data that shows that the average person in the recording industry makes $70K - $100K a year (which, FWIW, is shit pay if you live on one of the coasts and you're trying to raise a family), can you give a citation?
Are you joking? I've reported child pornography on several occasions (we are required to here in the US, as well) and I wasn't arrested for making the report. Just take a few seconds to think about why the law exists: to punish those who distribute it, not entrap those who report it.
If you're not sure what I mean, ask anybody who runs or works for an ISP.
Nonsense. I run a photo hosting site and I've reported kiddie porn on several occasions. The response was "thank you very much," not "you're under arrest for looking at it yourself." Why do you think they would act so silly? The point of the law is to catch people who traffic in kiddie porn, not entrap abuse desk workers. This isn't something I should even have to point out.
Google is not an ISP. I don't know what the folks at Google do when they discover that they've linked to kiddie porn. That would be a great question for them.
In short, this law has been around for years in the US and we do just fine with it. ISPs get reports, they forward them along, and they go about their business.
" Canadians have enjoyed free downloads [com.com] because of a tax that we pay on blank media."
A common misperception. To clarify:
"because of" is incorrect. These are not directly related. Canada may have socialized medicine and other similar programs, but your music industry is not socialized.
No, really. What civil liberties are being violated here? Please spell it out for me. In the US, possessing child pornography is generally illegal, but I'm not familiar with Australian law.
I don't get your point. How hard can it be to investigate reports of kiddie porn? You already have an abuse desk, right? It's simple: if your abuse desk gets a report of kiddie porn on your host, just take a few seconds to look at the site in question, and if it's kiddie porn, take action.
Really, this is basic stuff that you should be doing anyway. I don't see how an ISP operator could see any moral value in providing a haven for kiddie porn collectors, let alone justify mailbombing law enforcement as a means to that end.
"Civil liberties mean nothing when you can get a good hysteria going."
What civil liberties are being violated here?
Why do you say that? We've had a similar law in the USA for years, and it hasn't spelled the death of the ISP industry.
"Seiously How are they even going to try to enforce this? Unless They have an army of trained web-content filtering monkeys, it's going to be next to impossible."
I'll break it down for you:
If anybody can't be bothered to investigate a report of suspected kiddie porn on their own server, then they should not be running an ISP.
"What that equates to is if child porn is reported to the ISP/webhost, they have to then report it to the Australian police quickly or face penalties."
Correct. Just as has been the case for several years in the USA.
When this happened to me -- somebody let me know that a member of my site was using their storage to host child porn, I very quickly called the FBI, who in turn sent me to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
For me, there was no gray area. I didn't think for one minute of my rights being violated. I didn't think for one minute about losing my Slashdot cred (which, by definition, I must not have in the first place) by doing so. In short, the phrase "your rights online" did not even occur to me; if any phrase came to mind, it was "you shore got a purdy mouth" or some similar one that I envisioned the scumbag hearing sometime soon.
In short, I think that if an ISP operator is upset by a law that requires them to report child pornography to the authorities once they're made aware of it, then perhaps they shouldn't be running an ISP.
"Yeah, that's the ticket! Blackmail a company into making what I'm doing legit! Since I know they won't do the legal way I'll force them into it using blackmail!"
It happens more than you might think. A few years back, a grad student in Colorado found a hole in Audible's web site and told Audible that he wouldn't release the vulnurability if they agreed to give him A Volvo T5, some cash, two Diamond Rios and a lifetime subscription to Audible.
If I'd been the FBI agent assigned to that one, when it came time to go to his house to arrest him, I'd have done so in a new Volvo T5, just to make him think until the last second that he was getting what he wanted. Then I'd jump out of the volvo and scream "psych!" or whatever the hip phrase was back then.
"If your buisness plan can be implemented by a pimplefaced teenager in his parents basement, you should be prepared for the competition of several hundred thousand pimplefaced teenagers doing just that."
Very astute. Being prepared, in this case, is doing a better job than those pimplefaced teenagers.
"The value in such a simple buisness is just too small to support a public company as anything other than a short-term investor aberration."
Not in this case. Those pimplefaced teenagers have been launching their own little blog hosting sites for years now. There's a metric squillion of them. Yet Six Apart (the blogging company mentioned in The Fine Article) has seven million users and growing fast. The pimplefaced teenagers are losing this one.
"I can't see much revenue for the blogging hosts, they still only really have banners/popups."
That's an interesting observation. I just bought a Lotus Elise with blog host revenue. TFA points out that Six Apart has seven million users -- larger than Slashdot's userbase by an order of magnitude. If their take rate to paid accounts is like mine, they're grossing about $1.5 million a month, and their company has fewer than five employees.
Reading the comments to this article shows that many other Slashdotters similarly don't see the revenue potential for blog hosting. You're not alone, but nonetheless, a little research will probably open your eyes.
"You know, it's crazy, but you'd think that after the dot.com bubble burst the venture capitalists would be a little more careful with their money when it came to tech, yet here they are, wanting to get in on an industry where the main product is something that is already available for free."
Yet the paid blogging industry is growing. Perhaps this seems counterintuitive, but it's true. I think many Slashdotters are basing assumptions on the fact of free blogging platforms (MSN Spaces being the latest of which) being readily available. I'm guessing the thought process is that with all the free solutions out there, the paid market can't possibly still be growing. But it is.
It appears that at least in this particular case, the VCs have analyzed the situation better than Slashdotters have.
"People aren't actually very willing to pay for somewhere to write their blog"
That's an extremely general statement; can you clarify? What people? Your friends? You're correct, in the tautalogical sense, that people who don't want to pay don't want to pay, but the important thing is that there are people who do.
The fact that your post was modded "insightful" shows that there are many who agree with you, but this may be similar to the "lots of people pirate music, thus people aren't willing to pay for it, thus the value of music is zero" fallacy. As the volume of piracy grows, so has Apple's business in paid downloads. And despite more and more free blogging services popping up, more people are paying. I'm able to measure this not in the abstract, let's-post-hunches-on-Slashdot sense, but by the amount of money that's put into my bank account each day.
To your credit, the "there's no business in blogging" sentiment is a popular one, but I'm just not seeing the evidence to support that.
Whenever the subject of intellectual property comes up, quite a few Slashdotters are quick to point out that copyright violation != "theft," as the rightsholder still has the rights to the work and can try selling a copy to somebody else. I believe the situation is the same here -- if I've been the victim of identity theft, it simply means that somebody else is using my identity, but I haven't lost mine. Yet I haven't yet seen anybody take anybody else to task for using the word "theft" in this context.
I think the difference is that copyright violation is one of those things that falls under situational ethics (ie. it's okay if you think the rightsholder already has enough money, or if you think you probably wouldn't have bought it anyway, or any of a dozen other popular rationalizations). In other words... it's something that many Slashdotters do. But identity theft has no similar justification; it's just plain wrong. No Slashdotter would partake in it, and thus we don't need to collectively point out that it's not "theft" to make ourselves feel better about doing it.
" Doesn't Slashdot have editors that are supposed to analyze and edit user postings."
This is often deliberate. Slashdot editors often choose words that are sensational and inflamatory. Accuracy takes a back seat in these cases.
"Lately, Slashdot quality has been going down the tubes."
My recollection is that Slashdot has always had this quality. One way in which Slashdot has changed lately is the epidemic of those "free iPod" pyramid schemes. I can't imagine that people find it worth the effort to sign up friends (or even strangers) into a pyramid scheme when scam-free iPods are readily available at the local retailer. $299 isn't a lot, really -- even if you make only $15 an hour, that's just 20 hours of work, and you don't have to annoy anybody in the process.
"Do you want a free iPod? You can have one here [freeipods.com]."
Case in point.
" Man this took them forever. Call me a simple developer, however how hard can it be to add some more flash memory, better sound output through a headset, and modify the hardware to read MP3s. I've been pissed at the phone industry for nearly 2 years for not doing this."
It's not the first phone with those features, by far. My somewhat old Sony Ericsson K700i has ~ 40MB of memory and plays MP3s with good quality. I don't use it as an MP3 player in the traditional sense, but I use MP3 files as ringtones, much to the chagrin of the people around me. The FM radio has been surprisingly useful as well.
It's not easy to find in the US, but it's available online. I got an unlocked model on my last trip to Asia. A trip to Asia is a great way to remind one's self of how utterly backward the US mobile phone market is.
"More to the point, look at the manufactured crap the record companies are spitting out - Maroon 5, retreaded Green Day and a dead Ray Charles."
For what it's worth, Maroon 5 got their start posting their stuff to MP3.com. However, I agree that they're pretty mediocre.
"Those are two instances which are clearly not in the best interests of Orbitz. However, what about more mundane uses? Perhaps I want to help a friend find the best price for their trip? Technically, I won't be able to directly link them to the results I've found. Instead, I'd have to walk them through exactly what search/browse/filter criteria to use and hope that their result set is no different than mine."
No, you wouldn't -- just e-mail your friend the link and don't worry about it.
It seems clear to me that Orbitz put this into place so that they have the grounds to go after others that are putting permanent deep links on their web sites. They're going after the aforementioned competitors, et al., and not you.
"Perhaps Orbitz should be allowed to do this. After all, it is their site. At the same time, however, consumers should voice their annoyance at being so inconvenienced. Just a quick email to their customer service department telling them "I'd love to use your site to find the best travel information I can, however, I find the TOS too restrictive for my needs and will be using Travelocity instead. I felt it important to inform you of this loss of business in the hopes that you will one day revise your TOS to allow deep linking for personal use.""
I'm not sure what the point of this would be, other than to get attention. If you want to send a link to a friend, do it. Their TOS hasn't been written for the purposes of what you're doing. No need to be a martyr.
In case I'm not being clear, here's a similar example. I run a web site which has a TOS that states that we have the right to bounce accounts for excessive profanity and various other naughty things. Now, this does not mean that we're running a profanity filter and proactively bouncing anybody who utters the random "fuck." The TOS is in place so that we have a clearly defined right to bounce people who are being obnoxious. If somebody were to send me an e-mail similar to yours -- "I would like to use your site but since you won't let me use profanity I'll go somewhere else instead" -- I would rightfully point out that they were being a moron.
"For decades they conspired on prices and you claim they "paid the price"?!"
The price-fixing settlement was not as a result of "conspiring" for "decades." Here's what happened:
The winners here are Best Buy and Wal-Mart. The losers are the traditional record stores and indie stores that continue to get squeezed out of the business by Wal-Mart and their loss leader prices on CDs. The record companies probably don't mind; other than sending out some settlement checks and sending some crappy CDs to some libraries (as you've mentioned), this didn't hurt their bottom line. They were selling CDs to Tower Records for the same price that they sell to Wal-Mart.
You should be happy about this if:
You should be unhappy if:
The bottom line is that anybody who thinks that the price-fixing settlement was a strike against big business and a win for the little guy is mistaken. They're probably still chuckling about it at Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville.
IANAL, but I understand copyright law as it relates to architecture better than the GP. Thanks for the additional insight into the vagaries of copyright law and architecture. In my post I was simplifying for the sake of brevity, not writing a thesis.
Who holds the copyright does matter; otherwise I agree with your sentiment. As I mentioned in another post, the way they're enforcing the copyright is silly. In my untrained opinion I think it would be better enforced ex post facto; that is, taking it to the courts if a book or a postcard or a t-shirt prominently featuring the sculpture happens to show up on the market.
"Should programmers get a royalty for a photograph containing part of their source code printed out in the background that's neither runable nor readable?"
To my understanding, no -- and that's because different types of work have different protections. A sculpture is referred to in copyright law as a visual art and has its own set of restrictions. FWIW, software is considered a literary work. By their nature, literary works have different protections than visual arts. Creators of literary works should not be upset that creators of visual works have their own set of protections, and vice versa.
" It's not about some being "more equal" than others-- it's about applying common fucking sense."
It's a little of both. I think enforcement of the rightsholder's rights would be better handled ex post facto -- if a book or a postcard shows up with a photo of the sculpture, then the sculptor can sue. Chasing photographers out of the park, as one person put it, isn't the best way. However, the underlying theme of "the sculptor gets the right to say who can photograph their work, but I don't have that right associated with the way I choose to make money" is indeed driven by the recurring perception on Slashdot that coders, web designers and other Slashdot-friendly professions are getting the shaft.
" Yes, but they certainly can't prohibit me from taking pictures of my cd."
Technically speaking, they could if they wanted to, depending on how you used those photos. The CD art is copyrighted as well. For example, you can't publish a book of photographs of famous CD artwork without getting permission from the artists first.