A crime has indeed been committed, and ignorance is no defence, but the RIAA was extremely heavy-handed. They prosecuted many people who were naive, and starting from a time when there were very, very few legal ways to download music. They failed to recognise that the-times-had-a-changed, and sought to preserve "traditional" music (real, hard-copy) by marginalising "modern" music (virtual, down-loadable).
A crime has been committed - and there should have been prosecutions. But the RIAA acted excessively.
Strongly agree, except for the first line: the RIAA in particular may not haved a culture, but they've certainly spurred me to action - I've not bought a CD in years (well, with maybe one or two exceptions...)
The RIAA and its members have attempted to curtail my fair-use of CDs, by introducing copy-protection; they suggest people are criminals for wanting to archive legally purchased CDs; and they sue children and pensioners. I don't deny they do have a legitimate interest - but their actions have lost them any sympathy from me.
...and, since I live outwith the USA, the RIAA have harmed musicians and music industries in Scotland and elsewhere in Europe: both by provoking myself and others to buy less music, and by encouraging other national recording-industry associations to adopt similarly heavy-handed actions.
Still, it's not all doom-and-gloom. This recent article cheered me up. I used to buy a lot of Warp records back when I still bought vinyl!
You say "They were busted for being uploaders". Maybe so, but do you think they considered themselves uploaders? They're (mainly) non-geeks, with no idea what P2P means, or stands for. As far as they were concerned they were just downloading.
The RIAA broke a butterfly on a wheel, and even corporate America are acknowledging it.
This doesn't work! I tried this on my Windows XP system and Clippy said "You appear to be betraying Microsoft. Would you like me to send an email to Redmond?";-)
I don't know about *England* - my sister lives in Bristol and says no-one she knows uses "Z" - but here in Scotland a few friends (straw poll!) said they'd seen it. Elsewhere in Britain YMMV...
Z? Yuck. I believe, however, that it is a*reasonably* common spelling in Britain. At least one application I use regularly (Dreamweaver, maybe?) offers a choice of dictionaries - British-S and British-Z. Can't say I use Z myself, or know anyone who does (apart from folk who'd spell colour with a "k"...) I suspect it's a creeping Americanisation, like Sulphur => Sulfur.
Hmmm, interesting. I suspect you're right, that corporations have different legal positions in the USA vs. the UK, but I don't know. To be honest, I tend to think of a corporation as being the sum of its employees (or at least its board members!) Thanks for the info.
Curiosly, they hand-search bags in Britain, too. And at most other airports I've flown through recently. Just they do it *while*you*wait*.
If US airport security want to search my suitcases, that's fine. That's understandable. Reasonable, even.
But they can do it in my prescence so that I can lock my bags afterwards - so that I'm reasonably reassured drugs or bombs can't be placed in *my* bags without my knowledge - it's happened to Britain (and the US) before: over Lockerbie.
Incidentally, once my bags have been searched, and locked, I reckon security has done its job as far as its obligation to me is concerned: if they're suspicious after that, force my bag open - blow it up, even. At least they made every effort to do things right.
Currently, as a New Zelander living in the UK, I can be arrested and held without trial, as can my US neighbour - go figure.
AFAIK, the UK government will be wanting my fingerprints plus biometrics by 2006.
Like the parent poster, I don't feel one bit safer knowing about these systems. I have family in the UK, but I'm currently considering returning to NZ (left when I was a child) - a recent trip home was an eye-opener.
Incidentally, I passed through LAX on my flight back from NZ - the staff there required I *unlock* my suitcases before checking them in, ie. my suitcases were unlocked from check-in at LAX until I (eventually) collected them back in the UK. Is this normal for US airports? It meant I had no idea if anything was "added" to my cases after I left them to the tender mercies of LAX baggage control. This was early-2003 - since then I've avoided flying through the USA, and recent events have done nothing to change my mind.
Interesting that you mention Scarface - in 12 months of playing Vice City, I always assumed that "Haitian" really meant "Cuban" (I started with the assumption that "Vice City" really meant "Miami").
I kinda assumed that Northstar/Take Two/whoever developed the game intentionally avoided mentioning "Cubans" because of the power of the Cuban community in Florida - where Vice City is set.
Not sure what this proves, other than satire isn't safe from assaults by the tabloid press, or that I read too much into video games;-)
Slight quibble: Concorde was *not* grounded for safety reasons. Concorde was grounded for financial reasons - after 30 years of service, major investment would have been necessary to keep Concorde aloft. With only one major accident, Concorde has (had?) a better safety record than most major commercial aircraft.
IANAL, so would anyone care to explain the logic of continuing to sue Diebold over the C&D letters, when Diebold have stopped persuing the C&Ds? (Not flaming the EFF, just curious why they aren't going after other Diebold challenges to freedom)
OK, I've been trolled, right? I've just noticed the pattern - every time I provide a link to refute one of your generalizations, you introduce a new tangent. Fair play, and kudos to you. You caught me!
I don't recall *advocating* collective farms; I posted the link to refute your bogus claim that it was only whining liberals in the North who protested:
> Look carefully at the issues "big protest" > takes on, and you'll see a pattern - only > capitalist democracies are ever their targets.
So - care to try again? Do you *still* believe that "only capitalist democracies are ever their targets"? But seeing as you now generalize that collective farms don't work:
> Yes, collectivizing the farms worked so well > when the Russians tried it, the Chinese tried > it, the Cambodians tried it...
Enclosure in Britain seemed to work; and Israel had quite a positive experience with kibbutz (collective farms). But another generalisation is probably easier than checking the facts, eh?
Certainly Tony Benn. This is what Tony Benn has to say about his "close personal friend": > I went to hear his answers.. he is a brutal > dictator, and he knows I have said that.. > I don't whether to believe him, but I don't > believe Blair's dossier.. and I know Powell > was dishonest.. and about the fraudulent story > about the Kuwaiti babies thrown off incubators.. > I believe Blix, he says more time, more > inspections.. Saddam is a brute, but he was > America's brute.. America funded Osama bin > Laden, taught him terrorism, to defeat the > Russians. [http://www.flashpoints.net/index-2003- 02-11.html]
"Friends don't call friends 'brutal dictators'"
As for George Galloway: > I met Saddam Hussein twice, the same number of > times that Donald Rumsfeld met him. > > The difference is that Rumsfeld met him to sell > his regime guns and gas and to give them the > maps necessary to target [Iran] while I met > him to try and avert suffering sanctions and > war. [http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0310 /S0033 1.htm]
I suppose, morally, "friends don't sell freinds poison gas", so, "Go, Donald." No really....and seriously, how cheap is that: labelling *all* Guardian readers as "apologists" (I'm guessing that was your intent? It's difficult to tell without anything tangible in your post) because of two men? (No cheaper than categorising everyone in the anti-war movement as having no memory of past events -- at least I'm big enough to concede that the pro-war movement might remember Churchill gassing the kurds, or post-war US, UK, France, etc, exploding atomic bombs over their own soldiers, or Gulf-War Syndrome -- you *do* remember all that, don't you?)
Please feel free to respond with *real* arguments - you'll help your case a lot better, and maybe learn from the experience.
> It's funny, the US locks up a few terrorists and > the Guardian-readers whine to the high heavens, > but when their Socialist brother Castro locks up > dozens of journalists for daring to criticize > his regime, there's not a word. Ah, because the US is supposedly a "free society", not a Marxist republic, and we expect democratic countries to follow the rule of law?
> As bad as the Apartheid regime in South Africa > was, it never nerve gassed one particular ethnic > group and Western lefties still held protests, > boycotted products, called for sanctions. Yet > when the Ba'ath (it means "Socialist Arab > Rebirth") party gassed the Kurds, not a whisper > of dissent from said Westerners. Well I remember Guardian readers "whining" about it - and at the time Iraq was Britain's (and the USA's) ally -- it was *only* "whining Guardian readers" who complained. Hey! Guess who sold Iraq the gas! That's right, Britain, the USA and other "free world" countries.
>...snip... [more drivel about living in a democracy so we should never complain/whine/whatever]
> Yes, I think the grandparent poster has it > backwards.
That would make sense to *us*, but sadly I think the GP has it right - most IT purchasers are non-geeks, think family, non-geek friends and PHBs.
> I buy new hardware because of software I > already own. Or, in other cases, I buy new > hardware because of software I would like to > own.
Agreed - but most of the non-geeks I know don't. They download the "app of the week", and wonder why it doesn't live up to the hype, and blame their hardware (it's always the hardware - PCs are designed to run software, so it *can't* be the software, nosirree! Gator wouldn't mess up my system! Why would Office make my PC crash? Why would anyone make software that broke my computer? etc etc)
Slashdot Mirror
A crime has indeed been committed, and ignorance is no defence, but the RIAA was extremely heavy-handed. They prosecuted many people who were naive, and starting from a time when there were very, very few legal ways to download music. They failed to recognise that the-times-had-a-changed, and sought to preserve "traditional" music (real, hard-copy) by marginalising "modern" music (virtual, down-loadable).
A crime has been committed - and there should have been prosecutions. But the RIAA acted excessively.
Strongly agree, except for the first line: the RIAA in particular may not haved a culture, but they've certainly spurred me to action - I've not bought a CD in years (well, with maybe one or two exceptions...)
The RIAA and its members have attempted to curtail my fair-use of CDs, by introducing copy-protection; they suggest people are criminals for wanting to archive legally purchased CDs; and they sue children and pensioners. I don't deny they do have a legitimate interest - but their actions have lost them any sympathy from me.
...and, since I live outwith the USA, the RIAA have harmed musicians and music industries in Scotland and elsewhere in Europe: both by provoking myself and others to buy less music, and by encouraging other national recording-industry associations to adopt similarly heavy-handed actions.
Still, it's not all doom-and-gloom. This recent article cheered me up. I used to buy a lot of Warp records back when I still bought vinyl!
You say "They were busted for being uploaders". Maybe so, but do you think they considered themselves uploaders? They're (mainly) non-geeks, with no idea what P2P means, or stands for. As far as they were concerned they were just downloading.
The RIAA broke a butterfly on a wheel, and even corporate America are acknowledging it.
This doesn't work! I tried this on my Windows XP system and Clippy said "You appear to be betraying Microsoft. Would you like me to send an email to Redmond?" ;-)
I don't know about *England* - my sister lives in Bristol and says no-one she knows uses "Z" - but here in Scotland a few friends (straw poll!) said they'd seen it. Elsewhere in Britain YMMV...
Z? Yuck. I believe, however, that it is a*reasonably* common spelling in Britain. At least one application I use regularly (Dreamweaver, maybe?) offers a choice of dictionaries - British-S and British-Z. Can't say I use Z myself, or know anyone who does (apart from folk who'd spell colour with a "k"...) I suspect it's a creeping Americanisation, like Sulphur => Sulfur.
Hmmm, interesting. I suspect you're right, that corporations have different legal positions in the USA vs. the UK, but I don't know. To be honest, I tend to think of a corporation as being the sum of its employees (or at least its board members!) Thanks for the info.
Definitely debateable. They (Blake Stowell?) claimed that Linux's headers were OK, then they (Darth McBride) claiemd they weren't.
It seems that the Spammer laws apply to SCO:
1. SCO Lie.
2. When SCO appear to be telling the truth, see Rule #1.
Time for personal Linux users to alter the server response header to something like:
Apache/1.3.0 (NOT LINUX - HONEST!!! And I can't afford $699 - I put all my money in a trust fund for my legal defense team!!!)
No, no, no! "IO" is fine. You're thinking of "win". "winSlaves" would be totally unacceptable. ;-)
Curiosly, they hand-search bags in Britain, too. And at most other airports I've flown through recently. Just they do it *while*you*wait*.
If US airport security want to search my suitcases, that's fine. That's understandable. Reasonable, even.
But they can do it in my prescence so that I can lock my bags afterwards - so that I'm reasonably reassured drugs or bombs can't be placed in *my* bags without my knowledge - it's happened to Britain (and the US) before: over Lockerbie.
Incidentally, once my bags have been searched, and locked, I reckon security has done its job as far as its obligation to me is concerned: if they're suspicious after that, force my bag open - blow it up, even. At least they made every effort to do things right.
Currently, as a New Zelander living in the UK, I can be arrested and held without trial, as can my US neighbour - go figure.
AFAIK, the UK government will be wanting my fingerprints plus biometrics by 2006.
Like the parent poster, I don't feel one bit safer knowing about these systems. I have family in the UK, but I'm currently considering returning to NZ (left when I was a child) - a recent trip home was an eye-opener.
Incidentally, I passed through LAX on my flight back from NZ - the staff there required I *unlock* my suitcases before checking them in, ie. my suitcases were unlocked from check-in at LAX until I (eventually) collected them back in the UK. Is this normal for US airports? It meant I had no idea if anything was "added" to my cases after I left them to the tender mercies of LAX baggage control. This was early-2003 - since then I've avoided flying through the USA, and recent events have done nothing to change my mind.
What took my breath away was a quote:
O'Keefe: I'm told in a golf analogy, that landing on Mars is a hole-in-one, from Paris to Tokyo.
Good work all round!
Interesting that you mention Scarface - in 12 months of playing Vice City, I always assumed that "Haitian" really meant "Cuban" (I started with the assumption that "Vice City" really meant "Miami").
;-)
I kinda assumed that Northstar/Take Two/whoever developed the game intentionally avoided mentioning "Cubans" because of the power of the Cuban community in Florida - where Vice City is set.
Not sure what this proves, other than satire isn't safe from assaults by the tabloid press, or that I read too much into video games
Slight quibble: Concorde was *not* grounded for safety reasons. Concorde was grounded for financial reasons - after 30 years of service, major investment would have been necessary to keep Concorde aloft. With only one major accident, Concorde has (had?) a better safety record than most major commercial aircraft.
IANAL, so would anyone care to explain the logic of continuing to sue Diebold over the C&D letters, when Diebold have stopped persuing the C&Ds? (Not flaming the EFF, just curious why they aren't going after other Diebold challenges to freedom)
OK, I've been trolled, right? I've just noticed the pattern - every time I provide a link to refute one of your generalizations, you introduce a new tangent. Fair play, and kudos to you. You caught me!
I don't recall *advocating* collective farms; I posted the link to refute your bogus claim that it was only whining liberals in the North who protested:
> Look carefully at the issues "big protest"
> takes on, and you'll see a pattern - only
> capitalist democracies are ever their targets.
So - care to try again? Do you *still* believe that "only capitalist democracies are ever their targets"? But seeing as you now generalize that collective farms don't work:
> Yes, collectivizing the farms worked so well
> when the Russians tried it, the Chinese tried
> it, the Cambodians tried it...
Enclosure in Britain seemed to work; and Israel had quite a positive experience with kibbutz (collective farms). But another generalisation is probably easier than checking the facts, eh?
> Look carefully at the issues "big protest"
> takes on, and you'll see a pattern - only
> capitalist democracies are ever their targets.
[http://www.brazzil.com/p120feb03.htm]
Look even more carefully, and you'll maybe stop generalizing, stop getting your facts wrong, and possibly even learn something.
Besides...ever considered that protesting, say, 3rd-world debt, in the 3rd-world might just be preaching to the converted?
DEAR MS SECURITY TEAM
;)
1'VE BEEN HIT BI A VIRUUS! NOW MY WINDWS HAS A *PENGUIN* INSTED OV A START BARR!1!
AND NOW WEN I GET MIKROSFT UPDATES LIK THISS THEY DO NO RUN ON MY COMPOOTER!!!1!
HOW DU I MAKE MY COMPOOTER RUN THEESE UPDATES?!1!
Certainly Tony Benn. This is what Tony Benn has to say about his "close personal friend":- 02-11.html]
0 /S0033 1.htm]
...and seriously, how cheap is that: labelling *all* Guardian readers as "apologists" (I'm guessing that was your intent? It's difficult to tell without anything tangible in your post) because of two men? (No cheaper than categorising everyone in the anti-war movement as having no memory of past events -- at least I'm big enough to concede that the pro-war movement might remember Churchill gassing the kurds, or post-war US, UK, France, etc, exploding atomic bombs over their own soldiers, or Gulf-War Syndrome -- you *do* remember all that, don't you?)
> I went to hear his answers.. he is a brutal
> dictator, and he knows I have said that..
> I don't whether to believe him, but I don't
> believe Blair's dossier.. and I know Powell
> was dishonest.. and about the fraudulent story
> about the Kuwaiti babies thrown off incubators..
> I believe Blix, he says more time, more
> inspections.. Saddam is a brute, but he was
> America's brute.. America funded Osama bin
> Laden, taught him terrorism, to defeat the
> Russians.
[http://www.flashpoints.net/index-2003
"Friends don't call friends 'brutal dictators'"
As for George Galloway:
> I met Saddam Hussein twice, the same number of
> times that Donald Rumsfeld met him.
>
> The difference is that Rumsfeld met him to sell
> his regime guns and gas and to give them the
> maps necessary to target [Iran] while I met
> him to try and avert suffering sanctions and
> war.
[http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO031
I suppose, morally, "friends don't sell freinds poison gas", so, "Go, Donald." No really.
Please feel free to respond with *real* arguments - you'll help your case a lot better, and maybe learn from the experience.
I'm starting to think I want *MPs* in my audio server, and *MP3s* at Westminster and Holyrood ;)
> Not that I care; I'm not even British.
[sarcasm]
Well that's alright - the DMCA itself only ever affected US citizens [cough]Dmitri[/cough] [cough]DVD Jon[/cough], right?
Boy am I grateful I only live in Europe - if I were British as well now I'd be screwed.
[/sarcasm]
> It's funny, the US locks up a few terrorists and
...snip... [more drivel about living in a democracy so we should never complain/whine/whatever]
> the Guardian-readers whine to the high heavens,
> but when their Socialist brother Castro locks up
> dozens of journalists for daring to criticize
> his regime, there's not a word.
Ah, because the US is supposedly a "free society", not a Marxist republic, and we expect democratic countries to follow the rule of law?
> As bad as the Apartheid regime in South Africa
> was, it never nerve gassed one particular ethnic > group and Western lefties still held protests,
> boycotted products, called for sanctions. Yet
> when the Ba'ath (it means "Socialist Arab
> Rebirth") party gassed the Kurds, not a whisper > of dissent from said Westerners.
Well I remember Guardian readers "whining" about it - and at the time Iraq was Britain's (and the USA's) ally -- it was *only* "whining Guardian readers" who complained. Hey! Guess who sold Iraq the gas! That's right, Britain, the USA and other "free world" countries.
>
> Yes, I think the grandparent poster has it
> backwards.
That would make sense to *us*, but sadly I think the GP has it right - most IT purchasers are non-geeks, think family, non-geek friends and PHBs.
> I buy new hardware because of software I
> already own. Or, in other cases, I buy new
> hardware because of software I would like to
> own.
Agreed - but most of the non-geeks I know don't. They download the "app of the week", and wonder why it doesn't live up to the hype, and blame their hardware (it's always the hardware - PCs are designed to run software, so it *can't* be the software, nosirree! Gator wouldn't mess up my system! Why would Office make my PC crash? Why would anyone make software that broke my computer? etc etc)