Azure Khan has the ISP side of this right. The ISP doesn't *want* to sell unlimited access. They want to sell "reasonably unlimited" access. If you push the connection hard, you are costing the ISP money; there's a point to which this is useful for goodwill and public relations, but if you're costing the ISP $1K/month you had better be producing a *lot* of goodwill. What the ISP is really after is those people to whom "unlimited" means "I won't get charged if I use it a bit too much this month."
Yes, it's false advertising. Unfortunately all the ISPs are in the same boat, so anybody who advertises honestly that the accounts aren't really unlimited won't get any business and will go broke. It's a selection process that leads only to those willing to advertise falsely being left in the market.
That's why the ISP will usually have a clause in their contract saying that they can cut you off pretty much without reason. It gives them a legal "out" to get rid of those customers who bought an "unlimited" account expecting it to actually *be* unlimited, while preserving the letter of the contract, since while you were still using the service you were not limited in its use.
I used to work for an ISP, but I no longer do. I always tried to get the marketing people to keep their ads honest, but it's not something I had a lot of influence on. We had an "unlimited" ADSL plan which capped bandwidth once you had used 500MB. The small print (not mentioned in the ad) said that the plan was capped to "modem speed" after that point. What was omitted was the speed of the "modem"... 28.8kbps. Even most of the staff thought it had a 57600bps limit.
On the other hand, as does any ISP, we had our share of scummy customers. We didn't impose simultaneous dialup restrictions until we found one user whose monthly usage was three times the number of hours in a month, and it turned out the the account was being used simultaneously from five different locations.
Trying to act as devil's advocate here (except I'm too sympathetic to the "bad guys" - that would be the people breaking the law.)
Personally I think it's all good as long as everybody winds up better off, or at least no worse off. And I'm fairly sure I said that this is usually the case. But you can bet that telling a judge "but I bought this, instead!" won't get you off a fine. There are times when the law is an ass. Whether what you're doing is morally right is a judgement call. You think it is. I reserve judgement (it's none of my business - unless your actions hurt me in some way, which they certainly don't).
Are you pirates? Yes. Look it up. "Pirate: One who makes use of or reproduces the work of another without authorization" (courtesy of www.dictionary.com.) Does it matter? Not to me. It does to the RIAA. It probably doesn't to you (although you seem mighty touchy about it).
The RIAA (and ARIA) don't want me to (illegally) sample their wares. So I don't. But they would probably be better off if I did.
Certainly from *this* side of the Pacific, the legal situation in Guatemala Bay is telling us things about the US's *real* position on human rights.
It seems that the rights enshrined in the US constitution only apply to U.S. citizens. And not even to them when it can be avoided. It puts a huge question mark over the U.S.'s claims to the moral high ground in international affairs.
At least the current administration has brought its hypocrisy into the open.
Of course, the current administration's position does not necessarily reflect the position of the majority of U.S. citizens. We'll find out whether that is the case at the next election.
I don't download music tracks... and buy very little music, because I'm reluctant to buy music which I don't know is good, and without exposure I don't know what's good. There's certainly some truth to the contention that sharing music = exposure = sales.
That said, the argument that "I download tracks that are not commercially available, and so that doesn't affect commercial album sales" isn't terribly defensible. There's something called the substitution effect: if you didn't download the otherwise unavailable material, you would probably be more inclined to actually spend money on those tracks that are commercially available. It's likely that exposure leading to sales eclipses this effect in the music industry, but proving that point isn't quite as easy as stating it.
Then there are those who refuse to buy commercial music because it gives money to the RIAA. Way to make the "enemy's" point for them, fellas.
The ISPs can't really do this. Sure it's technically possible, but any ISP of nontrivial size will cut its own throat if it forces all customers to relay through a common server.
Consider:
Outgoing email from the ISP will all have a common source IP address. (Or will come from a pool of common addresses.)
The ISP has no way of knowing that somebody is a spammer when they initially sign up. There will be a lag of a couple of days before they find out (if anybody tells them.)
There is no reliable way to automatically detect outgoing spam. By "reliable" I mean *no* false positives and no false negatives.
Some anti-spam block lists will add you if you fail a single check and all removals are processed manually.
The net effect of this is that if *one* of your customers spams (or their system is abused as an open relay, or is compromised in a manner such as the article describes), then *all* of your customers will be blocked from sending email to those using these block lists. With no fixed timetable as to when the removal will occur, even if the problem is fixed immediately.
There were about twenty block lists last time I looked. If I find out about a spammer the instant they are added to a block list and if I can remove somebody from one block list per minute, that's still an average of ten minutes that my entire customer base is being blocked. In practice the delays are much larger than that.
So the ISP has to set up a *very* good mail relay, which costs money. Then a single spammer can cause all of their email to selected sites to be blocked.
In the ISP business this is known as "unreliable service" and with Internet access being a commodity market it's a good way to go broke.
If you can think of a reliable way around these issues there's a lot of ISPs who would like to talk to you. Once you can set up an SMTP relay and be certain that the sins of one customer won't cause all of them to be blocked, forcing use of the relay is easy (it's just a transparent redirect). Unfortunately this is a case where one anti-spam measure (the relay block lists) renders another unusable.
Allowing customers to send email directly may result in *their* address being banned, but at least it doesn't affect *other* customers.
Incidentally, most ISPs do *not* want spammers on their network. They chew up disproportionate amounts of bandwidth, they get your servers banned (which can affect your other customers) and they cause a stream of complaints that must be handled manually. All of this means that unless the spammer is offering you a *lot* of money they're just not worth it.
Unfortunately the sales people who accept the contracts with such people in the first place tend to be clueless about such things.:-( But spammers are rare enough that such "offers" are rare.
Personally I would rather have the open source movement "win" on its own merits than because somebody (unfairly) judges MS on the basis of alpha software. If we compare release software vs. alpha, the release version will probably win. Alpha *testing* is intended to eliminate such bugs, after all.
Microsoft should "lose" because their software (and intellectual property model) is inferior, not because people are comparing non-release MS software with release-version Open Source software.
Not in Australia as far as I am aware - and it's the AUSTRALIAN performing rights association who made the suggestion.
Australian copyright law is slighly more restrictive with regard to "fair use" than US law as I understand it. In particular, copying your own media for your own use - for example creating MP3s of CDs that you own - is not generally allowed. Fair use allows limited copying for review, research, or a couple of other reasons. The only general licence to copy material that is copyright to other people is to make a single backup of a computer program.
However, Australian judges also appear to be somewhat more free to exercise their good judgement and common sense than is the case in the US, as a result of which some of our more outstandingly stupid laws are pretty much ignored. That's not to say our judges don't make occasional bone-headed decisions, of course.:-)
Re:Address to spelling mistakes...
on
20 Years of Virii
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· Score: 1
I hate spelling mistakes. I just hate spelling flames more.:-) Such flames invariably include a not-inconsiderable number of errors themselves, resulting in a long discussion concerning nothing of substance.
Emily Postnews is your friend.:-)
Basically, the purpose of language is to communicate. If you spot a spelling error that may result in a misinterpretation, please do correct it. Otherwise take a five second timeout to feel superior, then ignore it.
It's not about being PC. It's about spending your time on stuff that matters. I just wish that/. had a facility for sending private replies, which is where this sort of thing really belongs. (That is, spelling flames should be sent in private email - IMO anyway).
Re:Address to spelling mistakes...
on
20 Years of Virii
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Spelling and grammar flames rarely contribute anything useful to a discussion. Your meaning was clear.
It may be true that the lead articles in/. should be held to a higher standard than replies, but that's no excuse to bury useful discussion in a flood of pedantry.
Whatever happened to the playfulness with words that is supposed to be one of the earmarks of the hacker culture?
Briefly, they suggest that the floodgates are open, that the rush to restrict music distribution is a lost cause, and that the way to go at this point is to collect a levy on blank CDs.
While I'm not sure I agree on the last point, it's nice to hear from somebody in the music industry with a fairly firm grip on reality.
SCO are liable if they use BSD code *and* fail to retain the copyright header indicating that it's BSD code or incorporates BSD code.
The BSD licence is extremely generous, but does require that copyright attributions be retained. If they skip that step, it's open season. Not having seen the SCO sources, I don't know whether that's the case here.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it's false advertising. Unfortunately all the ISPs are in the same boat, so anybody who advertises honestly that the accounts aren't really unlimited won't get any business and will go broke. It's a selection process that leads only to those willing to advertise falsely being left in the market.
That's why the ISP will usually have a clause in their contract saying that they can cut you off pretty much without reason. It gives them a legal "out" to get rid of those customers who bought an "unlimited" account expecting it to actually *be* unlimited, while preserving the letter of the contract, since while you were still using the service you were not limited in its use.
I used to work for an ISP, but I no longer do. I always tried to get the marketing people to keep their ads honest, but it's not something I had a lot of influence on. We had an "unlimited" ADSL plan which capped bandwidth once you had used 500MB. The small print (not mentioned in the ad) said that the plan was capped to "modem speed" after that point. What was omitted was the speed of the "modem"... 28.8kbps. Even most of the staff thought it had a 57600bps limit.
On the other hand, as does any ISP, we had our share of scummy customers. We didn't impose simultaneous dialup restrictions until we found one user whose monthly usage was three times the number of hours in a month, and it turned out the the account was being used simultaneously from five different locations.
In any case, I'm out of it now.
Personally I think it's all good as long as everybody winds up better off, or at least no worse off. And I'm fairly sure I said that this is usually the case. But you can bet that telling a judge "but I bought this, instead!" won't get you off a fine. There are times when the law is an ass. Whether what you're doing is morally right is a judgement call. You think it is. I reserve judgement (it's none of my business - unless your actions hurt me in some way, which they certainly don't).
Are you pirates? Yes. Look it up. "Pirate: One who makes use of or reproduces the work of another without authorization" (courtesy of www.dictionary.com.) Does it matter? Not to me. It does to the RIAA. It probably doesn't to you (although you seem mighty touchy about it).
The RIAA (and ARIA) don't want me to (illegally) sample their wares. So I don't. But they would probably be better off if I did.
It seems that the rights enshrined in the US constitution only apply to U.S. citizens. And not even to them when it can be avoided. It puts a huge question mark over the U.S.'s claims to the moral high ground in international affairs.
At least the current administration has brought its hypocrisy into the open.
Of course, the current administration's position does not necessarily reflect the position of the majority of U.S. citizens. We'll find out whether that is the case at the next election.
I'm definitely with TGK on this one.
That said, the argument that "I download tracks that are not commercially available, and so that doesn't affect commercial album sales" isn't terribly defensible. There's something called the substitution effect: if you didn't download the otherwise unavailable material, you would probably be more inclined to actually spend money on those tracks that are commercially available. It's likely that exposure leading to sales eclipses this effect in the music industry, but proving that point isn't quite as easy as stating it.
Then there are those who refuse to buy commercial music because it gives money to the RIAA. Way to make the "enemy's" point for them, fellas.
Consider:
- Outgoing email from the ISP will all have a common source IP address. (Or will come from a pool of common addresses.)
- The ISP has no way of knowing that somebody is a spammer when they initially sign up. There will be a lag of a couple of days before they find out (if anybody tells them.)
- There is no reliable way to automatically detect outgoing spam. By "reliable" I mean *no* false positives and no false negatives.
- Some anti-spam block lists will add you if you fail a single check and all removals are processed manually.
The net effect of this is that if *one* of your customers spams (or their system is abused as an open relay, or is compromised in a manner such as the article describes), then *all* of your customers will be blocked from sending email to those using these block lists. With no fixed timetable as to when the removal will occur, even if the problem is fixed immediately.There were about twenty block lists last time I looked. If I find out about a spammer the instant they are added to a block list and if I can remove somebody from one block list per minute, that's still an average of ten minutes that my entire customer base is being blocked. In practice the delays are much larger than that.
So the ISP has to set up a *very* good mail relay, which costs money. Then a single spammer can cause all of their email to selected sites to be blocked.
In the ISP business this is known as "unreliable service" and with Internet access being a commodity market it's a good way to go broke.
If you can think of a reliable way around these issues there's a lot of ISPs who would like to talk to you. Once you can set up an SMTP relay and be certain that the sins of one customer won't cause all of them to be blocked, forcing use of the relay is easy (it's just a transparent redirect). Unfortunately this is a case where one anti-spam measure (the relay block lists) renders another unusable.
Allowing customers to send email directly may result in *their* address being banned, but at least it doesn't affect *other* customers.
Incidentally, most ISPs do *not* want spammers on their network. They chew up disproportionate amounts of bandwidth, they get your servers banned (which can affect your other customers) and they cause a stream of complaints that must be handled manually. All of this means that unless the spammer is offering you a *lot* of money they're just not worth it.
Unfortunately the sales people who accept the contracts with such people in the first place tend to be clueless about such things. :-( But spammers are rare enough that such "offers" are rare.
Personally I would rather have the open source movement "win" on its own merits than because somebody (unfairly) judges MS on the basis of alpha software. If we compare release software vs. alpha, the release version will probably win. Alpha *testing* is intended to eliminate such bugs, after all.
Microsoft should "lose" because their software (and intellectual property model) is inferior, not because people are comparing non-release MS software with release-version Open Source software.
Australian copyright law is slighly more restrictive with regard to "fair use" than US law as I understand it. In particular, copying your own media for your own use - for example creating MP3s of CDs that you own - is not generally allowed. Fair use allows limited copying for review, research, or a couple of other reasons. The only general licence to copy material that is copyright to other people is to make a single backup of a computer program.
However, Australian judges also appear to be somewhat more free to exercise their good judgement and common sense than is the case in the US, as a result of which some of our more outstandingly stupid laws are pretty much ignored. That's not to say our judges don't make occasional bone-headed decisions, of course. :-)
Emily Postnews is your friend. :-)
Basically, the purpose of language is to communicate. If you spot a spelling error that may result in a misinterpretation, please do correct it. Otherwise take a five second timeout to feel superior, then ignore it.
It's not about being PC. It's about spending your time on stuff that matters. I just wish that /. had a facility for sending private replies, which is where this sort of thing really belongs. (That is, spelling flames should be sent in private email - IMO anyway).
It may be true that the lead articles in /. should be held to a higher standard than replies, but that's no excuse to bury useful discussion in a flood of pedantry.
Whatever happened to the playfulness with words that is supposed to be one of the earmarks of the hacker culture?
Briefly, they suggest that the floodgates are open, that the rush to restrict music distribution is a lost cause, and that the way to go at this point is to collect a levy on blank CDs.
While I'm not sure I agree on the last point, it's nice to hear from somebody in the music industry with a fairly firm grip on reality.
Wouldn't work. Too much prior art.
SCO are liable if they use BSD code *and* fail to retain the copyright header indicating that it's BSD code or incorporates BSD code.
The BSD licence is extremely generous, but does require that copyright attributions be retained. If they skip that step, it's open season. Not having seen the SCO sources, I don't know whether that's the case here.