FUD much my friend? Even in the industries that have these in place already, that isn't what happens. Nor do your comments actually line up with what GP said.
Let's ignore for a moment what I said here. Because what you've said is interesting on it's own.
Lets say that this did cover our new budding artist's work. And lets say they didn't opt-out of the plan, for some reason.
What really would be the harm in having Google as your publisher rather than your 'big name' publisher? Google will be paying you 60% of the profits, what do you think your publisher is going pay? The primary difference would be Google wouldn't be pimping your book out to the New York Times. On the other hand, I really haven't seen much advertising for 'no name' authors in the book industry. Normally your book just gets shoved on the shelf and you hope someones eye gets caught long enough for them to give you a chance.
Yes, Google is currently only online, but isn't Amazon still the world's biggest mover of books? Does having a brick and mortar store presence really mean much these days? And if it did, and if Google did get into the 'new book' sales business, wouldn't make sense for them to do something like these print on demand services?
10/28/08 - Authors Guild v. Google Settlement Resources Page
On October 28, 2008 the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and Google announced the landmark settlement of Authors Guild v. Google. On this page, we've gathered documents and links that will be of interest to authors and others regarding this settlement.
Critical Dates:
January 5, 2009: Notice is mailed to rightsholders around the world and published in newspapers and magazines. A preliminary list of books covered by the settlement becomes available to rightsholders.
September 4, 2009: The last day to opt out of the settlement as a whole.
October 7, 2009: A court hearing will take place to determine the fairness of the settlement.
January 5, 2010: Deadline for filing claim for cash payment for Google's pre-settlement scanning and digitization of books.
Bolding added by me.
So I may have overspoke when I said the class action was "for every author ever", it looks as if it's for "any author that had a book in the libraries in question".
Are you even capable of reading the English language? If you have made such a decision, then take the steps necessary to ensure that decision is respected.
You know, I felt it was horribly unreasonable to have to bend over and pick up that quarter the cashier dropped this morning when I was ordering a bagel. I suppose you feel it would have been more appropriate for me to just stand there and bitch loudly all day till she came around the counter and did it herself?
The argument for opt-in/opt-out in this particular case basically boils down to whose side of the coin you want to favor when it comes to preserving access to works. If you believe in the Disney model where it's perfectly alright to remove your works from the public, till they become public domain, either because you don't want people to see them any more or to ensure the next time you publish the work (and thus renew the copyright because you remastered it and thus created a 'new' work) you'll have a high demand, then you want an opt-in system.
If you believe in the public good argument which points out the only reason you were given copyrights in the first place was so you could make money from your works in a set amount of time before they became public domain, then the entire concept of "orphaned works" is blasphemous from the start. Remember, the idea of copyright isn't "You control the idea" it's "You control the means to reproduction so everyone has to pay you to get a hold of the idea". In this case, you are for opt-out because while it's still against your beliefs that a book can be purposefully kept out of publication, it's at least the option that allows you to republish those works where the author didn't care enough either way to indicate their desire.
I think though, reading the above, you know my bias on the issue. To me, anything that is copyrighted can be considered a 'derivative work' based on the entire culture you were brought up in. You would not have been able to make it without that, and thus you shouldn't have sole right to control it forever. However, these days, that is what is going on, since many things that have been copyrighted will never physically last long enough to fall into public domain. How many movies and shows from the 1900's to the 1950's have been lost because the film they were printed on crumbled into dust a long time ago. How many books have been lost because they are no longer published and the pulp they were printed on has disintegrated by now.
By the time these works become public domain, how many of them will even be understandable given the inevitable drift in language?
You aren't looking very hard at all are you? How many times have people explained class actions in this and the other slashdot articles concerning this settlement?
Says I've spent a lot of time reading bullshit from folk like you who would rather whinge about life and how evil everything is rather than fix whatever they consider the 'flaw' in the argument.
The 'decisions' made by the legal rights holders aren't being overruled. If you are someone with rights to a work being covered by this settlement, you have numerous options today to ensure your decision is the one being respected. If instead you want to sit there and bitch about how it's not fair that you have to do this, then STFU. Honestly, the ONLY people who have a reasonable right to bitch are the folk who have some how missed the fact that all this is going on right now and thus haven't had the chance to opt out of the class action. However, even then, if the settlement goes through the ONLY thing those folk have to do is once they do find out their works are being republished (probably when they receive a check from Google) and they don't want them to be, is tell the registry. Period. End of story.
And frankly, if you care enough to do that, then you should already know what's up.
Here's a simple fact of life grasshopper, class actions aren't about being fair to everyone in the world. They are about trying to settle issues that affect a whole group of people without having to deal with each and every one of them while still being fair to the majority of them.
If you care enough about your 'rights' on this, then either put forth the effort to opt out now and be excluded from the class altogether, or put forth the effort to ensure your wishes are respected once the settlement. If you don't give enough of a shit to do that, then stop bitching and live with it. Sometimes we do have to put forth that extra bit of effort, maybe it's not fair, but it is life.
Actually it fairly blatantly contradicts your explicit statement that this was some sort of dodgy deal. Regardless of whether the deal goes through or not, the people making the deal have the legal authority and power to make it.
Which, unless you are reading at a fourth grade level, should be obvious to you. Given that, lets just go with the assumption that your idea of 'clearly state' could more easily be defined as "fill with as much FUD and other biased bullshit as possible".
If you deliberately allowed your work to go out of publication then you can opt out, either now, as part of the class action, or later when the system is setup by contacting the non-profit registry that will be setup as part of the settlement and indicating you don't want your works republished till it becomes public domain, at which point it's not up to you.
No, however an issue is folk like you spouting off without knowing what they are talking about, muddying the waters.
The actual real issue is thus:
Right now, Google has been hit with a class action lawsuit on behalf of pretty much every author ever, because it's a class action, if you are a member of the class you are bound by the settlement terms unless you opt out of the class before the deadline in May.
The current settlement agreement provides Google with a number of things, in return for a number of things from Google. However, the biggest issue worrying people is that Google will receive a license to republish out of print books on demand. The so called "orphan works" which are not yet in public domain but are also no longer being printed and therefore can only be found if you are lucky enough to find one in a library or used book store.
They are (potentially) getting this license because as a class lawsuit, the lawyers running the plaintiff's side of the arguments are empowered to speak for all the members of the class and thus can legally agree to this even if the authors involved aren't actually aware of the settlement. Of course, if you are a member of the class and you think the lawyers are doing a crappy job, since all members of the class have an equal voice in the issue, you could always raise Cain to have your own lawyers replace the ones already doing the work.
What worries everyone is that since this license is granted via settlement through a class action lawsuit, many people feel that it would be impossible for anyone else to get the same license. And unfortunately, the judge in this case has already declined to allow other companies to 'join the defendant' so they can get in on the settlement.
All the rest of the noise and turmoil is bullshit and a tempest in a teapot, since part of the settlement will be you can opt-out of Google's publish on demand system if your works would count as 'orphaned works' and if your books are still published, then Google doesn't get the rights to sell you anything, without your explicit permission.
How this turns out is anyone's guess. It's possible that the settlement could go through, giving Google a fairly large mass of work which is out of publication but not yet in public domain, which in theory only they and the individual authors of those works would have permission to reprint. It's possible the settlement could be re-arranged to allow third parties to 'buy into' the setup, preventing anti-trust issues. Or it's possible that the settlement just gets tossed and we go back to square one.
This sort of highlights the flaws in our current copyright system. Not that this settlement is possible, but that there are actually works out there that would be covered by 'orphaned works' clause of it. The point of copyright was never to be "we give you exclusive rights to making copies of this book for a limited time period, then you remove it from our culture forever by burying it".
The court directs that notice be given to all parties having a similar claim for the duration of a particular time period. They are to be notified (generally by the defendents' attorneys) so that they may be informed and have input into the case. This is where all parties, including the person or persons who bring the claim, are treated equally. This means that all class members are supposed to have equal input, rights to any monies, remedies ordered by the court, and so forth.
There are often several notices mailed to class members over the course of the case. The first notice is to accomplish the above - plus the added purpose of giving a person the option to "opt-out" (not be a party in the case) and not be represented by the party who established this case and is issuing the notice.
If a party "opts out," they have no further standing in the case. They can forget the matter or bring an action on their own behalf. Neither option gives them right to any damages won in the original case.
If a party does NOT "opt-out," they are generally deemed to be a party to the case, are bound by the settlement, and prohibited in taking any further action on the matter.
If you don't get notice and have no idea of what is going on... too bad! The court normally is required to direct that the "best notice practical under the circumstances " be given (normally mail, sometimes publication). Again, if you don't receive or find the notice and the "opt-out" date passes... again, too bad!
At this point, you're "in" and bound by the courts decision. The case proceeds, sometimes for years. If you never received notice, you'll more than likely never know about any monies or other remedies to which you may be entitled.
I believe this was the project where they were attempting to brute force the key that encrypted the song database on the newer iPhone/Touch firmwares. They did this by requesting everyone upload their own copy of the database off their device.
The purpose in doing this was to enable third party programs to actually sync with the device, since currently the only way to do so is through iTunes (even the third party programs that do so now rely on being able to hook into it's dlls).
Apple hit them with a C&D letter indicating that the project was a viloation of the DMCA, specificly an attempt to bypass DRM.
The question will be, do the courts agree with Apple?
And what I'm getting at is that unless you are hosting such a site and have refused to obey a cease and desist letter from Apple, inviting them to sue you, you can STFU about his level of courage and your opinion of how he should have shot himself in the foot just to spite Apple.
He is fighting back, in a far more intelligent manner than what you proposed. If he, and you, are right that Apple doesn't have a leg to stand on, then the only harm done is that the project was delayed.
If, however, you both are wrong about Apple's legal strategy and this isn't the making of another SCO level FUD battle, in other words if the judge actually buys Apples arguement, then his method at least protects him and his users from further harm in the matter. Your method simply leaves him bankrupt.
Argue the merits of the case, argue the merits of Apple's business strategy. But unless you've already put your own balls on the fire here, keep your trollish opines on Sam's to yourself.
That's certainly the rational approach. You took that route, right? I mean there is a Publikwerks site out there, with all this shit already on it, waiting for Apple's legal team to find it and sue you. Right?
No? Hmmm. Too bad you are too chickenshit to stick your own neck out on the line, I might have actually considered your point a small bit valid if you had. But right now you are just a named AC throwing his own feces at the folk actually working to correct the problem.
I would go even a step further than that and posit that a good portion of his problem was stemming not from the system as much it came from the active resistance of the people attending him in using the system.
I don't directly work in healthcare, but I do work in a corporate environment for a large healthcare company that recently (in the past decade) made the switch from paper to a 'global' electronic system. At the start, stories like this were common, as people fought the system rather than use it.
Yes, not all systems are equal and it's entirely possible to design and implement an completely unusable one. But there is no avenue for improvement when the default behavior to burrs in the system is to revert to a far more inefficient (and porous) paper method, which, due to the introduction of the electronic system, is not even being monitored as well as it was when it was the only method.
In the end, the improvements that were introduced and enabled by converting to an electronic system far out weighed any of the temporary and transient issues such as this.
I think it's less that people don't care as much as it's one of the rare times where we are actually divesting functions from a device instead of integrating more.
It's hard to do 7.1 or even 5.1 audio from a set of stereo speakers. So why put much effort in it? Simply acknowledge this is something better left to an actual audio setup, and seperate the two functions into two seperate devices, both designed to do what they actually do, well.
The goal for the researchers is to be able to mass produce standard poster-size speakers (A2, or 60centimeters by 44cm) costing just US$20 each. Movie makers could then put out posters with soundtrack music or movie highlights emanating from them as people walk by.
Kill me now, please. Just kill me now.
You thought those talking birthday cards were annoying? Just try walking in the mall as all 100,000 posters located in random locations start talking all at once, producing the noise which finally wakens those who must not be named and end reality as we believed it to be.
In all seriousness though, part of this is over compensation on the part of Joe Six Pack. Smart people are threatening because they are smart; therefore, make them seem less so by over emphasizing parts of them that aren't as attractive as others.
It's not as if the 'nerdy' qualities of most of us are actually qualities unique to anyone. We may as a group normally indulges in different flavors of these things, but they aren't that different from anyone else.
Our obsessions are just as rational (or irrational) as the next person, our quirks just as endearing (or annoying) as those of anyone else. It's simply that we have someone pointing at them and going "Oh! Look at him, isn't he goofy because of that."
Think Trekkies are scary? Try people who run fantasy sport leagues.
Think LARPers are dorks? Take a look at the more extreme sports fans out there and their attire (or lack of it).
Think computer geeks are weird for wasting weekends playing with Linux or building their own computers? Who would spend a perfectly good weekend fiddling with a car that already works for performance you'll never realistically use?
Anime freaks got you shaking your head? Next time American Idol has tryouts in your area take a look at who shows up.
In other words, Sun has contractual obligations to continue with Glassfish, and Oracle has inherited those obligations. They can't just drop support.
Wanna bet?
Dear Valued Customer,
As you may already know, Sun has recently been acquired by Oracle. As part of this process, Oracle also inherited the service contracts you held with Sun. However, due to the current economic climate, some of Sun's less profitable product lines need to be discontinued or consolidated into existing product lines Oracle already has.
As such, Oracle is declaring that the following products: X, Y, and Z are being end of lifted as of December 31st 2009 and will no longer be supported Jan 1st 2010 and onward.
If you held a service contract for any of these products, you have the following options:
Accept a pro-rated refund on the remaining length of your service contract along with a nominal cancellation fee.
Contact your Oracle sales rep for a one time offer: a heavily discounted conversion from your current product and contract to Oracle's X, Y, and Z Squared server and a corresponding service contract covering the remainder of the length of your old one.
We do apologize for this inconvenience, but are confident that once you use our XYZ server, you will not look back.
Actually "they" could give a crap. Because "they" actually consider your eyeballs the real product, and the advertisers the actual customers. If your eyeballs are 'duds' it's not the network's problem. As long as they can say "x number of eyeballs watched your ads", they are satisfied.
Slashdot Mirror
Repeat with me children "CLAASSS ACCTIOONN!" Oh very good. I knew you could.
FUD much my friend? Even in the industries that have these in place already, that isn't what happens. Nor do your comments actually line up with what GP said.
Is it that you don't understand, or is it that you don't want to understand, what a class action lawsuit is.
Even a basic understanding of the concept answers every one of your statements above. Don't make me pull a Gary Oldman on you.
Let's ignore for a moment what I said here. Because what you've said is interesting on it's own.
Lets say that this did cover our new budding artist's work. And lets say they didn't opt-out of the plan, for some reason.
What really would be the harm in having Google as your publisher rather than your 'big name' publisher? Google will be paying you 60% of the profits, what do you think your publisher is going pay? The primary difference would be Google wouldn't be pimping your book out to the New York Times. On the other hand, I really haven't seen much advertising for 'no name' authors in the book industry. Normally your book just gets shoved on the shelf and you hope someones eye gets caught long enough for them to give you a chance.
Yes, Google is currently only online, but isn't Amazon still the world's biggest mover of books? Does having a brick and mortar store presence really mean much these days? And if it did, and if Google did get into the 'new book' sales business, wouldn't make sense for them to do something like these print on demand services?
http://www.authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/settlement-resources.html
from the Authors Guild page:
Bolding added by me.
So I may have overspoke when I said the class action was "for every author ever", it looks as if it's for "any author that had a book in the libraries in question".
Are you even capable of reading the English language? If you have made such a decision, then take the steps necessary to ensure that decision is respected.
You know, I felt it was horribly unreasonable to have to bend over and pick up that quarter the cashier dropped this morning when I was ordering a bagel. I suppose you feel it would have been more appropriate for me to just stand there and bitch loudly all day till she came around the counter and did it herself?
The argument for opt-in/opt-out in this particular case basically boils down to whose side of the coin you want to favor when it comes to preserving access to works. If you believe in the Disney model where it's perfectly alright to remove your works from the public, till they become public domain, either because you don't want people to see them any more or to ensure the next time you publish the work (and thus renew the copyright because you remastered it and thus created a 'new' work) you'll have a high demand, then you want an opt-in system.
If you believe in the public good argument which points out the only reason you were given copyrights in the first place was so you could make money from your works in a set amount of time before they became public domain, then the entire concept of "orphaned works" is blasphemous from the start. Remember, the idea of copyright isn't "You control the idea" it's "You control the means to reproduction so everyone has to pay you to get a hold of the idea". In this case, you are for opt-out because while it's still against your beliefs that a book can be purposefully kept out of publication, it's at least the option that allows you to republish those works where the author didn't care enough either way to indicate their desire.
I think though, reading the above, you know my bias on the issue. To me, anything that is copyrighted can be considered a 'derivative work' based on the entire culture you were brought up in. You would not have been able to make it without that, and thus you shouldn't have sole right to control it forever. However, these days, that is what is going on, since many things that have been copyrighted will never physically last long enough to fall into public domain. How many movies and shows from the 1900's to the 1950's have been lost because the film they were printed on crumbled into dust a long time ago. How many books have been lost because they are no longer published and the pulp they were printed on has disintegrated by now.
By the time these works become public domain, how many of them will even be understandable given the inevitable drift in language?
You aren't looking very hard at all are you? How many times have people explained class actions in this and the other slashdot articles concerning this settlement?
Says I've spent a lot of time reading bullshit from folk like you who would rather whinge about life and how evil everything is rather than fix whatever they consider the 'flaw' in the argument.
The 'decisions' made by the legal rights holders aren't being overruled. If you are someone with rights to a work being covered by this settlement, you have numerous options today to ensure your decision is the one being respected. If instead you want to sit there and bitch about how it's not fair that you have to do this, then STFU. Honestly, the ONLY people who have a reasonable right to bitch are the folk who have some how missed the fact that all this is going on right now and thus haven't had the chance to opt out of the class action. However, even then, if the settlement goes through the ONLY thing those folk have to do is once they do find out their works are being republished (probably when they receive a check from Google) and they don't want them to be, is tell the registry. Period. End of story.
And frankly, if you care enough to do that, then you should already know what's up.
Here's a simple fact of life grasshopper, class actions aren't about being fair to everyone in the world. They are about trying to settle issues that affect a whole group of people without having to deal with each and every one of them while still being fair to the majority of them.
If you care enough about your 'rights' on this, then either put forth the effort to opt out now and be excluded from the class altogether, or put forth the effort to ensure your wishes are respected once the settlement. If you don't give enough of a shit to do that, then stop bitching and live with it. Sometimes we do have to put forth that extra bit of effort, maybe it's not fair, but it is life.
The authors are receiving compensation. Especially those being reprinted, since Google will be providing 60% of the profit to them.
Actually it fairly blatantly contradicts your explicit statement that this was some sort of dodgy deal. Regardless of whether the deal goes through or not, the people making the deal have the legal authority and power to make it.
Which, unless you are reading at a fourth grade level, should be obvious to you. Given that, lets just go with the assumption that your idea of 'clearly state' could more easily be defined as "fill with as much FUD and other biased bullshit as possible".
And more bullshit from you:
If you deliberately allowed your work to go out of publication then you can opt out, either now, as part of the class action, or later when the system is setup by contacting the non-profit registry that will be setup as part of the settlement and indicating you don't want your works republished till it becomes public domain, at which point it's not up to you.
No, however an issue is folk like you spouting off without knowing what they are talking about, muddying the waters.
The actual real issue is thus:
Right now, Google has been hit with a class action lawsuit on behalf of pretty much every author ever, because it's a class action, if you are a member of the class you are bound by the settlement terms unless you opt out of the class before the deadline in May.
The current settlement agreement provides Google with a number of things, in return for a number of things from Google. However, the biggest issue worrying people is that Google will receive a license to republish out of print books on demand. The so called "orphan works" which are not yet in public domain but are also no longer being printed and therefore can only be found if you are lucky enough to find one in a library or used book store.
They are (potentially) getting this license because as a class lawsuit, the lawyers running the plaintiff's side of the arguments are empowered to speak for all the members of the class and thus can legally agree to this even if the authors involved aren't actually aware of the settlement. Of course, if you are a member of the class and you think the lawyers are doing a crappy job, since all members of the class have an equal voice in the issue, you could always raise Cain to have your own lawyers replace the ones already doing the work.
What worries everyone is that since this license is granted via settlement through a class action lawsuit, many people feel that it would be impossible for anyone else to get the same license. And unfortunately, the judge in this case has already declined to allow other companies to 'join the defendant' so they can get in on the settlement.
All the rest of the noise and turmoil is bullshit and a tempest in a teapot, since part of the settlement will be you can opt-out of Google's publish on demand system if your works would count as 'orphaned works' and if your books are still published, then Google doesn't get the rights to sell you anything, without your explicit permission.
How this turns out is anyone's guess. It's possible that the settlement could go through, giving Google a fairly large mass of work which is out of publication but not yet in public domain, which in theory only they and the individual authors of those works would have permission to reprint. It's possible the settlement could be re-arranged to allow third parties to 'buy into' the setup, preventing anti-trust issues. Or it's possible that the settlement just gets tossed and we go back to square one.
This sort of highlights the flaws in our current copyright system. Not that this settlement is possible, but that there are actually works out there that would be covered by 'orphaned works' clause of it. The point of copyright was never to be "we give you exclusive rights to making copies of this book for a limited time period, then you remove it from our culture forever by burying it".
You didn't read a wit of the quoted section of my comment, did you?
No. You can't sue the lawyer. The options available are: Opt out of the class and handle your own lawsuit, stay in and let them handle it.
How Class Action Lawsuits Work
Specificly:
I believe this was the project where they were attempting to brute force the key that encrypted the song database on the newer iPhone/Touch firmwares. They did this by requesting everyone upload their own copy of the database off their device.
The purpose in doing this was to enable third party programs to actually sync with the device, since currently the only way to do so is through iTunes (even the third party programs that do so now rely on being able to hook into it's dlls).
Apple hit them with a C&D letter indicating that the project was a viloation of the DMCA, specificly an attempt to bypass DRM.
The question will be, do the courts agree with Apple?
And what I'm getting at is that unless you are hosting such a site and have refused to obey a cease and desist letter from Apple, inviting them to sue you, you can STFU about his level of courage and your opinion of how he should have shot himself in the foot just to spite Apple.
He is fighting back, in a far more intelligent manner than what you proposed. If he, and you, are right that Apple doesn't have a leg to stand on, then the only harm done is that the project was delayed.
If, however, you both are wrong about Apple's legal strategy and this isn't the making of another SCO level FUD battle, in other words if the judge actually buys Apples arguement, then his method at least protects him and his users from further harm in the matter. Your method simply leaves him bankrupt.
Argue the merits of the case, argue the merits of Apple's business strategy. But unless you've already put your own balls on the fire here, keep your trollish opines on Sam's to yourself.
Yes, yes.
That's certainly the rational approach. You took that route, right? I mean there is a Publikwerks site out there, with all this shit already on it, waiting for Apple's legal team to find it and sue you. Right?
No? Hmmm. Too bad you are too chickenshit to stick your own neck out on the line, I might have actually considered your point a small bit valid if you had. But right now you are just a named AC throwing his own feces at the folk actually working to correct the problem.
I would go even a step further than that and posit that a good portion of his problem was stemming not from the system as much it came from the active resistance of the people attending him in using the system.
I don't directly work in healthcare, but I do work in a corporate environment for a large healthcare company that recently (in the past decade) made the switch from paper to a 'global' electronic system. At the start, stories like this were common, as people fought the system rather than use it.
Yes, not all systems are equal and it's entirely possible to design and implement an completely unusable one. But there is no avenue for improvement when the default behavior to burrs in the system is to revert to a far more inefficient (and porous) paper method, which, due to the introduction of the electronic system, is not even being monitored as well as it was when it was the only method.
In the end, the improvements that were introduced and enabled by converting to an electronic system far out weighed any of the temporary and transient issues such as this.
I think it's less that people don't care as much as it's one of the rare times where we are actually divesting functions from a device instead of integrating more.
It's hard to do 7.1 or even 5.1 audio from a set of stereo speakers. So why put much effort in it? Simply acknowledge this is something better left to an actual audio setup, and seperate the two functions into two seperate devices, both designed to do what they actually do, well.
Kill me now, please. Just kill me now.
You thought those talking birthday cards were annoying? Just try walking in the mall as all 100,000 posters located in random locations start talking all at once, producing the noise which finally wakens those who must not be named and end reality as we believed it to be.
You'd really get along with John Galt, I think.
In all seriousness though, part of this is over compensation on the part of Joe Six Pack. Smart people are threatening because they are smart; therefore, make them seem less so by over emphasizing parts of them that aren't as attractive as others.
It's not as if the 'nerdy' qualities of most of us are actually qualities unique to anyone. We may as a group normally indulges in different flavors of these things, but they aren't that different from anyone else.
Our obsessions are just as rational (or irrational) as the next person, our quirks just as endearing (or annoying) as those of anyone else. It's simply that we have someone pointing at them and going "Oh! Look at him, isn't he goofy because of that."
Think Trekkies are scary? Try people who run fantasy sport leagues.
Think LARPers are dorks? Take a look at the more extreme sports fans out there and their attire (or lack of it).
Think computer geeks are weird for wasting weekends playing with Linux or building their own computers? Who would spend a perfectly good weekend fiddling with a car that already works for performance you'll never realistically use?
Anime freaks got you shaking your head? Next time American Idol has tryouts in your area take a look at who shows up.
Wanna bet?
Actually "they" could give a crap. Because "they" actually consider your eyeballs the real product, and the advertisers the actual customers. If your eyeballs are 'duds' it's not the network's problem. As long as they can say "x number of eyeballs watched your ads", they are satisfied.