> People don't think about the resale value when buying CDs.
I don't buy CDs personally, but the same model fits for other copyrighted works from video games are included. I personally am slightly more likely to buy a game because I know I can always resell it if I hate it later. If that were to happen, I'd end up buying a used video game instead of a new one, more than likely.
At the same time, if there was a new game coming out, and I was sufficiently bored with enough of my old games, I'd convert them to cash through sale and buy a new game. Without that conversion, there is no way I could financially support buying a new game at that time.
> An existing second-hand market has no effect on sales of new CDs, other than to eliminate a purchase whenever someone buys a used CD.
I'll admit that my own personal experience is circumstantial, but your dismissal of my point is just as presumptive. Just because one is able to buy a used CD does not necessarily mean they could just as easily afford a new CD. There would be logic is assuming that most people would buy two used CDs (or possibly more, considering how overpriced new CDs are) over one new CD, but this assumes that a used CD store carries the titles wanted.
For fad popular CDs there isn't a large enough fad window for people to buy used copies of the CD. Once the fad is over, there's very little incentive to buy the CD, new or used. For other CDs, buying the new CD when it's new gives the buyer a feeling of helping the artist. Also, buying a new CD generally includes a CD's artwork which one doesn't get with a used CD. Overall, there's various incentives to buy new CDs new instead of used. Such things don't apply to everyone, but it seems hard to me to deny that none of the above creates a push for buying new CDs when there are used CDs.
> I do too. I buy all CD's (sic) USED. cince (sic) buying used CD's (sic) gives ZERO profit to the RIAA and pisses them off to no end.
The fact that you and others buy used CDs creates a secondary market upon which primary CD buyers can rely upon to exist. Therefore, they're more likely to buy CDs in the first place and later on as they use the money from selling their CDs to used CD shops. The net result is increase sales. Hypothetically, used CD sales are a net loss as the total times the CD is sold decreases the net profit per sale. Hypothetically, also, CD makers make more as the used CD sales allow for CD makers to have a higher initial markup as the cutting-edge buyers pay a premium price and even buy a lot more CDs than they'll keep, selling most to used CD shops.
The sad part about this is the latter occurs with the real cost of production (excluding markup, which amounts to the price) is cheaper than used CD prices, and pirating CDs is even cheaper. The whole point of the used market, I always thought, was about selling objects that are in worse condition for a cheaper price than retail. But with intellectual property, you're selling a right to the work which is independent of the media it is pressed into, so why are used copyrighted works cheaper (realizing that most people wouldn't want to buy a used CD that doesn't play properly)?
> Software (and to a lesser extent, hardware) prices are based on percieved value. When Microsoft charges $400 for Office, do you really believe that R&D cost them $350 for every copy? The upfront cost was in the tens of millions, but the cost to print the CD, box and manual is right around $5. Does that mean that we should be paying $10 for office? After all, a 50% profit margin is pretty good, right?
> Adobe doesn't charge $650 for PS-CS because their costs are high. They charge that much because that's what the market will bear. That's what it seems to be worth.
And you and I are are aware of how much it cost to produce. We also have some vague presumption on how many copies will be sold. So, (development_costs) / copies_sold + manuals+ CD + paper_box is the perceived value for a lot of geeks (or good econ students). Most people kindly allow for price = 10xcost (ie, 900% markup) on copyrighted works (maybe in homage to 90% inspiration, 10% perspiration). So, every dollar saved in development is a decrease in price. The problem, of course, is not everyone who buys software, movies, etc thinks in this context. So, they're the people responsible for the price being jacked up so much (as the gain by setting the price at 100x instead of 10x the cost outweighs the lost consumers). So, all I can say is, no thanks to those people.
Do people only use computer's at work? At work, the person who makes the choice for the end user is normally the boss, so I don't think those people's opinions really matter in the discussion.
For everyone else, the whole choice thing is something you just make and live with it. It's not about having every little thing being written as free software. It's about using free software when it's available because you want to support free software because you're willing to accept the means of using software that is superior in the end.
In a less abstract sense, GNU has done an amazing job at fixing a lot of the problems (though not all) of the user-land unix environment. I personally would prefer using gcc over a proprietary unix's cc compiler just because gcc is superior (being free is also nice). And yes, I've used proprietary unix's because there are times you don't have a choice.
But when I make the choice, I almost always choose the free solution. And now, when there *is* fully free systems available, it's a lot easier than 20 years ago when there was nothing available. I still make concessions, so I'll admit I don't reach Stallman's ideal. I don't believe I need freedom in console games or the firmware on my keyboard, but I made the choice that I'd rather use a few proprietary things until something non-proprietary comes along (the one exception is nvidia's drivers, though thanks to patent laws there's no way a GPLed driver can become superior to nvidia's drivers -- a great example of why software patents are evil).
I have been using Linux for two years on my computer, and I like it a lot. I made the choice more because I got sick of Windows and its lack of a good, free C compiler (cygwin doesn't count to me mostly because it's more or less installing *nix on top of Windows because Windows is so sucky at fulfilling the environment needed). But if I were to try to get other people to use Linux or GNU, maybe it would be better to get them to support the idea of freedom than to push the ulitarian approach.
Is choosing slavery over death make slavery freedom? This is not to say that such matters are of such a great magnitude, but it is possible to freely choose something not free. Read 1984.
Apparently you didn't fully RTFA. Stallman doesn't believe the goal of getting people to use free software is popularity but because they want the freedom that comes with it. As copyright enforcement through copy protection or other means becomes progressively harsher for the end user, it'll become more clear that the reason that can motivate people to use free software isn't that everyone else uses it but because they don't want to live in an entrapped world of software. To that end, Stallman admits that people will end up using free software that's inferior to non-free software, but given enough users some might begin to help with the project. Maybe it'll be only words of support or a little money to add a feature they want, but the free software can be made superior to the non-free one and people can choose to use the free software as encouragement until it gets to that point. If anything, Stallman is encouraging the communitizing of the people in free software, not the simple leeching of something that's free. In the long term, the former will help everyone. And if end users realize that, they can accept inferior software until it becomes superior.
What makes you think that during that 0.1% of the time there will be a cop around to stop them before they get into an accident? The problem is, most of these laws don't tend to stop people for the same reason rules at school don't work to stop bullying, there's rarely someone around at the time to stop the bullying and incur significant punishment on said bully. So, the teacher might catch the bully about to punch you, but the bully doesn't get expelled with a restraining order. At worse, they get detention. Then they'll just punch you after school.
The only way such a law would work is if you started jailing everyone who remotely broke such laws such that they'd not be on the road the time of the 0.1% so they won't be in said accident. Like others have suggested, the best thing isn't to stop people from doing such things but instead to increase punishment if they were doing such things which resulted in the accident. Attempted anything laws just cannot sanely have the same bite.
>In the case of abusing a right, there is normally always a victim...
I'd take that a step further and say that in the case of abusing a right, there is always a victim. Rights, after all, are inherent properties that an individual possesses. Things like freedom of speech, a right to a fair trial, and a right to not be punished with cruelly or unusally clearly fall under these things. In fact, the Bill of Rights in the US is specifically worded to describe what rights the government *doesn't* have. The government, in reality, is only meant to cover laws that protect the rights of people. So, given all this, you have to be abusing a victim's rights for rights to be abused.
No where in the Constitution is there mention of a right to not be offended. Much of what people say (freedom of speech) offends others. Nor is there mention of a right to nudity. But, nudity is a form of expression just as wearing any specific design of clothes is. As such, it stands to reason that nudity would override any state law written to prevent public nudity.
The fact is, the bar in question is a quasi-public place (just like shopping malls), where the owner has the right to bar people from entry (not something allowed in a public place to be applied to produce a private place), but at the same time the bar is open to the public (it requires the owner actually telling you to leave before the police would consider your presence trespassing). Given the owner has the power to exclude, I don't see how the law even applies in this instance, anyways. If there are other pictures which do occur on public land, then the issue of freedom of speech/expression can be brought up.
> Also remember that a finished CD is the work of dozens or hundreds of people -- all of whom expect to be paid.
Most bands now days are 4-5 people, tops. Add in a manager, workers to press the CDs out, accountants, etc (most of those being spread out across multiple bands), and you get maybe 10 people being paid. Oh wait, that's more like 5 since it's the band that ends up having to pay the managers, buy the CDs, pay for the CDs to be pressed, etc.
> Before you shout "those greedy bastards!", consider that many of them are like you and me... good people, who may have families to support and mortgages to pay. They do this by working, in some capacity, in the music industry.
Good. That's great for those people who actually *should* be working for the company. If their margins are so bad, that they lose a lot of money, they should be downsizing. Of course, it works out instead that most bands (not necessarily excluding indie bands) are "loaned" money by a label, and then the band in terms of the loan pays the label for a variety of things. As has been quoted many times, most CDs have to sell at least platinum level before the artist who made the song gets any actual profits (barring, of course, all the money they spent in the process of making the CD that wasn't necessary (though the labels pushing to help the artist spend their loan money on glitter to attract fans is common)).
> CDs are sold into the distribution channel for about $8 - $10. This leaves the record label with about a 50% or 60% gross margin -- typical for a lot of industries.
A lot of industries take a good that at production time costs less than $1 in raw materials, and dump out a product that costs 8-10 times as much with only a 50%-60% gross margin? Oh wait, a gross margin is gross profit/net sale. That's not a precentage. Were you trying to say only 50% of CDs are sold? Or that the $8 is 150% to 160% the price of the raw goods? Well, whatever, as neither of those explain the 8-10 fold increase in cost.
> But the net margin is much lower, after accrual for price protection, channel marketing, returns and the like. This is why many, if not most, CDs don't end up turning a profit, and if a CD loses money, the record company eats the loss.
"Price protection"? Is that code for predatory price protection (aka, price fixing)? That phrase doesn't show up in my dictionary. Now, channel marketing I'd assume is meant to mean simply marketing. Advertising comes out the money loaned to the artist, so there's no direct loss for advertising in net profits. Indirectly, of course, not selling enough CDs (or having enough returned) will mean the artist doesn't make enough royalties to pay back the loan which could mean a loss.
>>"Sell me a song I like for $0.50 and I'm a happy camper!"
>Me, too, and I think prices will ultimately end up around there. But in the meantime, paying $1 does not fill me with sufficient outrage to allow me to justify piracy.
You know of a place that sells regular mp3s for $1? I don't have a Mac, nor Windows, and Windows Media Player doesn't work in WINE, so that leaves me out of most if not all of the online music stores. You point out that I have to buy a CD player to listen to a CD, so why complain about Windows/Mac? CD players can be bought from a whole host of different companies. There's actual competition as far as that goes. If I start using iTunes, though, I'm stuck using an iPod to have portage digitally encoded music. And if I get.wma files online, I'm stuck to the few digital players that support wma. There's tons of sellers of mp3 players (and there are a few ogg players). The only lucky part in all this is both.wma and.aac can be burned back to a CD-R.
>>"Let me use that song in any way I see fit (as long as I'm not trading it around like a joint at a frat party) and I'm certain the RIAA/MPAA can make a buck and keep their customers from
> Those poor home users who are not technically savvy are pretty screwed. They won't be able to figure out *nix and don't want to pay the bucks for Apple.
Uh, you do realize that as far as the non-tech savvy go, Windows, a good GUI *nix distro, and Apple are only about equal ground, right? I'm sure you can claim that each is better in certain areas, but they're all the same in the nature of configuration you have to do in a gui (which is horribly difficult to communicate over the phone)--unless you're doing the actions yourself you're likely to forget the exact words. Command-line can be easier because you can tell them exactly what to type, but then you have to be using their OS for the same reason as a gui, the exact words used between versions change.
The fact is, there's only two really good solutions to this. The first is, as Roblimo's article suggest, to just let the user do it themselves--the suggestion about restoring to manufacturer's base install even baring security updates isn't good, but that's more to do with users actually installing stuff and there being no way for a program to automatically "fix" the right things; if there was, you'd never need the button in the first place. The second solution is to have the user think for a change. In that, describe where things are located. Instead of saying "Options", say "Options" or "Preferences" or something like that. Humans, even the non-tech savvy, have pretty good pattern matching skills and should be able to find things better if you admit that the name is around something. Over time, those you help will begin to realize that the above are synonymous for the most part, that you speak vaguely about some things and more distinctly about others which should limit them wandering off when you say something distinct (they'll come back and tell you they can't find it instead of guessing that you meant "" instead), and they might even begin to learn how to do things themselves. After all, if you're slightly more verbose about how things are related (like saying how folder options are a windows explorer thing for which the "My Computer" icon uses) that coupled with the pattern matching they had to do should indirectly force them to learn something which might mean they're able to fix the problem themselves. Of course, the fact that a lot of Windows things (can't speak for Macs, since I've virtually never configured one) are so intermixed might make it next to impossible to allow for some nature of cognitive grouping to occur which would allow for the non-tech savvy to know that if they want to alter X they should look for an "Options" item in X and program Y, a "parent", won't have it. In a sad sort of way, mixing gtk+ and qt elements actually help draw the line between programs better for configuration purposes (kcontrol is still evil).
The wording of the patent(s) involved talks about the creation of long file names to pair short file names. As such, a read-only driver would be clearly outside of the scope of the patent. Ironically, the wording is so vague that an 8.3 old fat could be interpreted as covered under the patent (the patent makes mention only that lfn pairs are only a possible, not a necessary, so simply denying lfn creation would still fall in scope of the patent (the resulting file structure would be the same in both cases)).
I'm surprised no one mentioned this anime series. Platonic Chain obviously never covers the issue of privacy as the series is meant to be light-hearted, but the sort of information you could gain from cell phone tracking and security cameras would be pretty amazing information. The biggest thing, though, is I don't think it'd help law enforcement nearly as much as people think.
It's the same issue with trying to track down a worm: information overload. A central core of people monitoring the world would never work simply because jumping on all misdemeaners which are happening all the time would so quickly clog up the legal system. The end result would be a rather large increase in the court system size. After people begin to realize they would be caught for their actions, the court system would become underwhelmed with actual cases.
At about that point, the court system workers (like any other "company") would try to artifically inflate the number of cases to justify their size and prevent downsizing. The end result would be either lighter punishments to get more offenders out on the street again to capture or stricter laws (thankfully the latter would require legistlation conspiracy which would limit the potentional).
And what about the people who are part of the court system? They'd probably be exempt from monitoring because of how it might effect their decision.. Overall, petty crime would go down and more nefarious crimes would just be done more privately. The only reliable way to stop crime from petty to nefarious is p2p monitoring. Nothing else can scale well or be blocked through associative allignment--ie, narcotics agents dress up like narcotics pushers to fit in for a reason. Arm-chair management wouldn't work unless everywhere in the world had a camera, split the world into three groups, and had each group watch the others. That at the local level still reverts back to p2p.
If I could moderate your comment above 5, I'd like to see it as at least a 7 just because it does describe a very real and important aspect of society.
The problem is, what you're talking about isn't the same thing as the issue at hand. The issue isn't society as a whole which is subdivided into groups that do tasks but the actual subdivision that's made up a variety of different actors.
Now, the original poster didn't specifically state what the company he worked for does, so it's not clear (though it's probably unlikely) if he's part of the pool of talented people which make up a subdivision. In most democratic societies, these subdivisions are called companies of an industry. Members of a subdivision often are centralized into a few specific companies, but over time most every company ends up needing at least one member of a subdivision to have a knowledge person of a trade to advise and guide them when interacting with the industry from which they come.
Now, subdivisions include things like craftsman, artists, and resource cultivators for the most part which produce "tangible" goods that are the foundation of trade which is the foundation of how our capitalistic society functions. The problem is that lawyers and management, ie the "ruling class", don't have any real part directly in the production of any good.
Instead, lawyers provide the glue to interact with the outer society from a legal standpoint and management is there to interact with other businesses and to generally lead a company in some direction for an industry. A large problem comes in, though, that management often seems so distant from the actual subdivision they represent that they will often make rather incompetent mistakes.
Upper management of most conglomerate companies in fact are more or less forced into this situation. While each smaller division of the company may be competent in the subdivision they represent, the lead management has only the distant and possibly unequal represented lower managers to rely upon for advice on guiding the company. In such a position, any reasonable competent manager person could take their place without any noticable effect, especially given that such a position in management is often based enormously on deligation of responsibilities.
The very lowest class of skilled workers at the bottom, however, as a whole are not easily replacable. It is true, obviously, that at such a position individuals are easily replaced. This fact is the core foundation for the production of unions to allow the skill labor to not be easily replaced under management which is totally divorced from producing actual products that reasonable ensure the continued existence of jobs.
Given that the individual sounded like a network guide more than anything else, I'm lead to believe he was part of the branched computer networking industry that exists in most companies. In that position, he is easily replacable. At the same time, wounded a member of the respected networking industry could have as serious repercussions as illy firing a lawyer without just backing. The next serious step is for the computer networking subdivision to network to form allies of trust from which to probably black list irresponsible companies.
Sorry, it was Compaq, not Phoenix.
IBM did open up their BIOS, though. They did it so they could claim anyone who made an IBM clone had commited copyright infringement of their BIOS.
> to... impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner
If the dll is written very badly then anything that relies on the dll as part of a technological measure is impaired. The copyrighted work being impaired is not the dll but the copyrighted work protected by the dll. The maker of DeCSS can't claim copyright as protection for DeCSS because DeCSS doesn't impair itself. DeCSS does impair CSS, though, which is the issue.
As a simple example, imagine a competitor's product was being pirated and the chief fault was a dll made by MS. Even if the fault was unintentional, under the DMCA MS was at fault.
>> detailing the nature of the security-related fixes
>DMCA violation.
I know the comment was made in jest, but you actually raised an actual technical issue. If you were to write a program that relies on some MS dll for a copyright protection scheme and the dll ends up having a serious security flaw, could you sue MS for producing software the circumvents a copyright protection scheme? Afterall, fundamentally it's the dll that's making the copyright protection scheme insecure, providing for the circumvention. An analogy might be that if a law made it illegal to make a device to circumvent a lock to get into a house. and the one major door manufacturer makes doors so fundamentally flawed that all locks attached to it are inately circumventable; doesn't that make the door a form of circumvention device?
If it doesn't follow the red book audio CD specifications, I personally wouldn't abbreviatedly call it a CD. Against such, it is possible for a "CD" to have DRM protections.
The original poster, though, went onto details about digitized music being a form of DRM. If you use DRM in the vaguest possible extent to mean any technological means require hardware to use a copyrighted work, then yes it's a DRM. DRM, though, is meant to specify a form of control usually in the form of encryption that limits a user's ability to use or modify to use a work.
In that regard, CSS could be seen as an independent form of DRM. Something that calls home would be a dependent form. It is possible to encode a CD into just about any format you please, including cassette tapes or printed out wave forms. iTunes' format is limited to only support CD burning. Of course, once it's a CD you can do whatever you please with it, but the issue remains that the original form is limited. Also, my understanding is to play a song requires calling home which would make it a dependent DRM.
You might then ask yourself, does this mean that if there doesn't exist an to that is a form of drm? The answer to this is actually pretty simple. If something about , like a patent or other legal obfusciation, prevents a person from writing the converter to where does not prevent a persom from writing the converter through a patent or other legal obfusciation, then is likely a DRM. Therefore, even though an mp3 to mod converter doesn't exist, mp3s aren't a DRM in themselves. Of course, there may be artifical limitations on a file format (like internal pointers that are only 8-bit therefore not allowing any reasonable conversion) but since the above is not a legal limitation, it's not a DRM.
Basically, DRM is a method of using law outside of copyright to protect a copyrighted work because there is a lack of faith in copyright functioning. Whether or not there is justifiable reason for lack of faith, I think that DRM should be fundamentally outlawed as it goes against the right to use a copyrighted work as covered under First Sale Doctrine (something that was affirmed by the Supreme Court, haveing been brought up because of real contracts during the reign of books as the leading edge of copyright law mangling).
The only way in which I can see DRM as being legal is if it's clear one is renting a song instead of buying it, in which case it's clearly up to the renter and rentee to discuss terms. If people are unwilling to rent a copyrighted work because they don't like the concept, I don't see how copyright owners can somehow have the right to claim they are selling under copyright with renter like conditions. That's paramount to fraud.
Well, 30hrs of TV translates into an easy 450 min (15min/hr*30hr). Admittedly, you can't exactly switch away to another channel (well, not without another computer..:)), but there's still bathroom breaks, watching tv and possibly clicking stuff as you do, or going to the fridge.
In more direct monetary terms, 90 minutes works out to be about $7.73 for a minimum wage (still $5.15?) worker as opportunity cost. So, that works out to the user being better off for 6 years. Of course, if you have the money to buy a computer then the whole value point is moot.
You've got to remember that at the time manned flight in anything beyond hot air balloons was in the same realm as fusion is today. Ie, lots of research, lots of failed attempts to produce a viable product, and more than a few people screwed over in the process. At the time, so many failed attempts had occurred it was just assumed that it was impossible. The last thing Scientific America wanted to do was print the story up and look like another idiot.
Meanwhile, the Wright brothers were intentionally as secretive as possible because even if they were to patent a lot of their ideas, it's still pretty conceivable that a venture capitalist funding their ideas would have been too overbearing for their tastes. So, they worked in secret. The only thing about your statement that rings true is it'd possible not be as obscure thanks to scientific tabloids which don't have a reputation to worry about. There are at least a few of those online, right?:)
Slashdot Mirror
> People don't think about the resale value when buying CDs. I don't buy CDs personally, but the same model fits for other copyrighted works from video games are included. I personally am slightly more likely to buy a game because I know I can always resell it if I hate it later. If that were to happen, I'd end up buying a used video game instead of a new one, more than likely. At the same time, if there was a new game coming out, and I was sufficiently bored with enough of my old games, I'd convert them to cash through sale and buy a new game. Without that conversion, there is no way I could financially support buying a new game at that time. > An existing second-hand market has no effect on sales of new CDs, other than to eliminate a purchase whenever someone buys a used CD. I'll admit that my own personal experience is circumstantial, but your dismissal of my point is just as presumptive. Just because one is able to buy a used CD does not necessarily mean they could just as easily afford a new CD. There would be logic is assuming that most people would buy two used CDs (or possibly more, considering how overpriced new CDs are) over one new CD, but this assumes that a used CD store carries the titles wanted. For fad popular CDs there isn't a large enough fad window for people to buy used copies of the CD. Once the fad is over, there's very little incentive to buy the CD, new or used. For other CDs, buying the new CD when it's new gives the buyer a feeling of helping the artist. Also, buying a new CD generally includes a CD's artwork which one doesn't get with a used CD. Overall, there's various incentives to buy new CDs new instead of used. Such things don't apply to everyone, but it seems hard to me to deny that none of the above creates a push for buying new CDs when there are used CDs.
> I do too. I buy all CD's (sic) USED. cince (sic) buying used CD's (sic) gives ZERO profit to the RIAA and pisses them off to no end.
The fact that you and others buy used CDs creates a secondary market upon which primary CD buyers can rely upon to exist. Therefore, they're more likely to buy CDs in the first place and later on as they use the money from selling their CDs to used CD shops. The net result is increase sales. Hypothetically, used CD sales are a net loss as the total times the CD is sold decreases the net profit per sale. Hypothetically, also, CD makers make more as the used CD sales allow for CD makers to have a higher initial markup as the cutting-edge buyers pay a premium price and even buy a lot more CDs than they'll keep, selling most to used CD shops.
The sad part about this is the latter occurs with the real cost of production (excluding markup, which amounts to the price) is cheaper than used CD prices, and pirating CDs is even cheaper. The whole point of the used market, I always thought, was about selling objects that are in worse condition for a cheaper price than retail. But with intellectual property, you're selling a right to the work which is independent of the media it is pressed into, so why are used copyrighted works cheaper (realizing that most people wouldn't want to buy a used CD that doesn't play properly)?
> Software (and to a lesser extent, hardware) prices are based on percieved value. When Microsoft charges $400 for Office, do you really believe that R&D cost them $350 for every copy? The upfront cost was in the tens of millions, but the cost to print the CD, box and manual is right around $5. Does that mean that we should be paying $10 for office? After all, a 50% profit margin is pretty good, right?
> Adobe doesn't charge $650 for PS-CS because their costs are high. They charge that much because that's what the market will bear. That's what it seems to be worth.
And you and I are are aware of how much it cost to produce. We also have some vague presumption on how many copies will be sold. So, (development_costs) / copies_sold + manuals+ CD + paper_box is the perceived value for a lot of geeks (or good econ students). Most people kindly allow for price = 10xcost (ie, 900% markup) on copyrighted works (maybe in homage to 90% inspiration, 10% perspiration). So, every dollar saved in development is a decrease in price. The problem, of course, is not everyone who buys software, movies, etc thinks in this context. So, they're the people responsible for the price being jacked up so much (as the gain by setting the price at 100x instead of 10x the cost outweighs the lost consumers). So, all I can say is, no thanks to those people.
I'd disagree, and so would this definition of free software philosophy. Open source is more or less the same thing.
Do people only use computer's at work? At work, the person who makes the choice for the end user is normally the boss, so I don't think those people's opinions really matter in the discussion.
For everyone else, the whole choice thing is something you just make and live with it. It's not about having every little thing being written as free software. It's about using free software when it's available because you want to support free software because you're willing to accept the means of using software that is superior in the end.
In a less abstract sense, GNU has done an amazing job at fixing a lot of the problems (though not all) of the user-land unix environment. I personally would prefer using gcc over a proprietary unix's cc compiler just because gcc is superior (being free is also nice). And yes, I've used proprietary unix's because there are times you don't have a choice.
But when I make the choice, I almost always choose the free solution. And now, when there *is* fully free systems available, it's a lot easier than 20 years ago when there was nothing available. I still make concessions, so I'll admit I don't reach Stallman's ideal. I don't believe I need freedom in console games or the firmware on my keyboard, but I made the choice that I'd rather use a few proprietary things until something non-proprietary comes along (the one exception is nvidia's drivers, though thanks to patent laws there's no way a GPLed driver can become superior to nvidia's drivers -- a great example of why software patents are evil).
I have been using Linux for two years on my computer, and I like it a lot. I made the choice more because I got sick of Windows and its lack of a good, free C compiler (cygwin doesn't count to me mostly because it's more or less installing *nix on top of Windows because Windows is so sucky at fulfilling the environment needed). But if I were to try to get other people to use Linux or GNU, maybe it would be better to get them to support the idea of freedom than to push the ulitarian approach.
Is choosing slavery over death make slavery freedom? This is not to say that such matters are of such a great magnitude, but it is possible to freely choose something not free. Read 1984.
Apparently you didn't fully RTFA. Stallman doesn't believe the goal of getting people to use free software is popularity but because they want the freedom that comes with it. As copyright enforcement through copy protection or other means becomes progressively harsher for the end user, it'll become more clear that the reason that can motivate people to use free software isn't that everyone else uses it but because they don't want to live in an entrapped world of software. To that end, Stallman admits that people will end up using free software that's inferior to non-free software, but given enough users some might begin to help with the project. Maybe it'll be only words of support or a little money to add a feature they want, but the free software can be made superior to the non-free one and people can choose to use the free software as encouragement until it gets to that point. If anything, Stallman is encouraging the communitizing of the people in free software, not the simple leeching of something that's free. In the long term, the former will help everyone. And if end users realize that, they can accept inferior software until it becomes superior.
What makes you think that during that 0.1% of the time there will be a cop around to stop them before they get into an accident? The problem is, most of these laws don't tend to stop people for the same reason rules at school don't work to stop bullying, there's rarely someone around at the time to stop the bullying and incur significant punishment on said bully. So, the teacher might catch the bully about to punch you, but the bully doesn't get expelled with a restraining order. At worse, they get detention. Then they'll just punch you after school. The only way such a law would work is if you started jailing everyone who remotely broke such laws such that they'd not be on the road the time of the 0.1% so they won't be in said accident. Like others have suggested, the best thing isn't to stop people from doing such things but instead to increase punishment if they were doing such things which resulted in the accident. Attempted anything laws just cannot sanely have the same bite.
>In the case of abusing a right, there is normally always a victim...
I'd take that a step further and say that in the case of abusing a right, there is always a victim. Rights, after all, are inherent properties that an individual possesses. Things like freedom of speech, a right to a fair trial, and a right to not be punished with cruelly or unusally clearly fall under these things. In fact, the Bill of Rights in the US is specifically worded to describe what rights the government *doesn't* have. The government, in reality, is only meant to cover laws that protect the rights of people. So, given all this, you have to be abusing a victim's rights for rights to be abused.
No where in the Constitution is there mention of a right to not be offended. Much of what people say (freedom of speech) offends others. Nor is there mention of a right to nudity. But, nudity is a form of expression just as wearing any specific design of clothes is. As such, it stands to reason that nudity would override any state law written to prevent public nudity.
The fact is, the bar in question is a quasi-public place (just like shopping malls), where the owner has the right to bar people from entry (not something allowed in a public place to be applied to produce a private place), but at the same time the bar is open to the public (it requires the owner actually telling you to leave before the police would consider your presence trespassing). Given the owner has the power to exclude, I don't see how the law even applies in this instance, anyways. If there are other pictures which do occur on public land, then the issue of freedom of speech/expression can be brought up.
> Also remember that a finished CD is the work of dozens or hundreds of people -- all of whom expect to be paid.
.wma files online, I'm stuck to the few digital players that support wma. There's tons of sellers of mp3 players (and there are a few ogg players). The only lucky part in all this is both .wma and .aac can be burned back to a CD-R.
Most bands now days are 4-5 people, tops. Add in a manager, workers to press the CDs out, accountants, etc (most of those being spread out across multiple bands), and you get maybe 10 people being paid. Oh wait, that's more like 5 since it's the band that ends up having to pay the managers, buy the CDs, pay for the CDs to be pressed, etc.
> Before you shout "those greedy bastards!", consider that many of them are like you and me... good people, who may have families to support and mortgages to pay. They do this by working, in some capacity, in the music industry.
Good. That's great for those people who actually *should* be working for the company. If their margins are so bad, that they lose a lot of money, they should be downsizing. Of course, it works out instead that most bands (not necessarily excluding indie bands) are "loaned" money by a label, and then the band in terms of the loan pays the label for a variety of things. As has been quoted many times, most CDs have to sell at least platinum level before the artist who made the song gets any actual profits (barring, of course, all the money they spent in the process of making the CD that wasn't necessary (though the labels pushing to help the artist spend their loan money on glitter to attract fans is common)).
> CDs are sold into the distribution channel for about $8 - $10. This leaves the record label with about a 50% or 60% gross margin -- typical for a lot of industries.
A lot of industries take a good that at production time costs less than $1 in raw materials, and dump out a product that costs 8-10 times as much with only a 50%-60% gross margin? Oh wait, a gross margin is gross profit/net sale. That's not a precentage. Were you trying to say only 50% of CDs are sold? Or that the $8 is 150% to 160% the price of the raw goods? Well, whatever, as neither of those explain the 8-10 fold increase in cost.
> But the net margin is much lower, after accrual for price protection, channel marketing, returns and the like. This is why many, if not most, CDs don't end up turning a profit, and if a CD loses money, the record company eats the loss.
"Price protection"? Is that code for predatory price protection (aka, price fixing)? That phrase doesn't show up in my dictionary. Now, channel marketing I'd assume is meant to mean simply marketing. Advertising comes out the money loaned to the artist, so there's no direct loss for advertising in net profits. Indirectly, of course, not selling enough CDs (or having enough returned) will mean the artist doesn't make enough royalties to pay back the loan which could mean a loss.
>>"Sell me a song I like for $0.50 and I'm a happy camper!"
>Me, too, and I think prices will ultimately end up around there. But in the meantime, paying $1 does not fill me with sufficient outrage to allow me to justify piracy.
You know of a place that sells regular mp3s for $1? I don't have a Mac, nor Windows, and Windows Media Player doesn't work in WINE, so that leaves me out of most if not all of the online music stores. You point out that I have to buy a CD player to listen to a CD, so why complain about Windows/Mac? CD players can be bought from a whole host of different companies. There's actual competition as far as that goes. If I start using iTunes, though, I'm stuck using an iPod to have portage digitally encoded music. And if I get
>>"Let me use that song in any way I see fit (as long as I'm not trading it around like a joint at a frat party) and I'm certain the RIAA/MPAA can make a buck and keep their customers from
> Those poor home users who are not technically savvy are pretty screwed. They won't be able to figure out *nix and don't want to pay the bucks for Apple. Uh, you do realize that as far as the non-tech savvy go, Windows, a good GUI *nix distro, and Apple are only about equal ground, right? I'm sure you can claim that each is better in certain areas, but they're all the same in the nature of configuration you have to do in a gui (which is horribly difficult to communicate over the phone)--unless you're doing the actions yourself you're likely to forget the exact words. Command-line can be easier because you can tell them exactly what to type, but then you have to be using their OS for the same reason as a gui, the exact words used between versions change. The fact is, there's only two really good solutions to this. The first is, as Roblimo's article suggest, to just let the user do it themselves--the suggestion about restoring to manufacturer's base install even baring security updates isn't good, but that's more to do with users actually installing stuff and there being no way for a program to automatically "fix" the right things; if there was, you'd never need the button in the first place. The second solution is to have the user think for a change. In that, describe where things are located. Instead of saying "Options", say "Options" or "Preferences" or something like that. Humans, even the non-tech savvy, have pretty good pattern matching skills and should be able to find things better if you admit that the name is around something. Over time, those you help will begin to realize that the above are synonymous for the most part, that you speak vaguely about some things and more distinctly about others which should limit them wandering off when you say something distinct (they'll come back and tell you they can't find it instead of guessing that you meant "" instead), and they might even begin to learn how to do things themselves. After all, if you're slightly more verbose about how things are related (like saying how folder options are a windows explorer thing for which the "My Computer" icon uses) that coupled with the pattern matching they had to do should indirectly force them to learn something which might mean they're able to fix the problem themselves. Of course, the fact that a lot of Windows things (can't speak for Macs, since I've virtually never configured one) are so intermixed might make it next to impossible to allow for some nature of cognitive grouping to occur which would allow for the non-tech savvy to know that if they want to alter X they should look for an "Options" item in X and program Y, a "parent", won't have it. In a sad sort of way, mixing gtk+ and qt elements actually help draw the line between programs better for configuration purposes (kcontrol is still evil).
The wording of the patent(s) involved talks about the creation of long file names to pair short file names. As such, a read-only driver would be clearly outside of the scope of the patent. Ironically, the wording is so vague that an 8.3 old fat could be interpreted as covered under the patent (the patent makes mention only that lfn pairs are only a possible, not a necessary, so simply denying lfn creation would still fall in scope of the patent (the resulting file structure would be the same in both cases)).
And the Cancel button could be "Fuck me!". In the end, with a computer it's the same thing, right?
I'm surprised no one mentioned this anime series. Platonic Chain obviously never covers the issue of privacy as the series is meant to be light-hearted, but the sort of information you could gain from cell phone tracking and security cameras would be pretty amazing information. The biggest thing, though, is I don't think it'd help law enforcement nearly as much as people think.
It's the same issue with trying to track down a worm: information overload. A central core of people monitoring the world would never work simply because jumping on all misdemeaners which are happening all the time would so quickly clog up the legal system. The end result would be a rather large increase in the court system size. After people begin to realize they would be caught for their actions, the court system would become underwhelmed with actual cases.
At about that point, the court system workers (like any other "company") would try to artifically inflate the number of cases to justify their size and prevent downsizing. The end result would be either lighter punishments to get more offenders out on the street again to capture or stricter laws (thankfully the latter would require legistlation conspiracy which would limit the potentional).
And what about the people who are part of the court system? They'd probably be exempt from monitoring because of how it might effect their decision.. Overall, petty crime would go down and more nefarious crimes would just be done more privately. The only reliable way to stop crime from petty to nefarious is p2p monitoring. Nothing else can scale well or be blocked through associative allignment--ie, narcotics agents dress up like narcotics pushers to fit in for a reason. Arm-chair management wouldn't work unless everywhere in the world had a camera, split the world into three groups, and had each group watch the others. That at the local level still reverts back to p2p.
If I could moderate your comment above 5, I'd like to see it as at least a 7 just because it does describe a very real and important aspect of society.
The problem is, what you're talking about isn't the same thing as the issue at hand. The issue isn't society as a whole which is subdivided into groups that do tasks but the actual subdivision that's made up a variety of different actors.
Now, the original poster didn't specifically state what the company he worked for does, so it's not clear (though it's probably unlikely) if he's part of the pool of talented people which make up a subdivision. In most democratic societies, these subdivisions are called companies of an industry. Members of a subdivision often are centralized into a few specific companies, but over time most every company ends up needing at least one member of a subdivision to have a knowledge person of a trade to advise and guide them when interacting with the industry from which they come.
Now, subdivisions include things like craftsman, artists, and resource cultivators for the most part which produce "tangible" goods that are the foundation of trade which is the foundation of how our capitalistic society functions. The problem is that lawyers and management, ie the "ruling class", don't have any real part directly in the production of any good.
Instead, lawyers provide the glue to interact with the outer society from a legal standpoint and management is there to interact with other businesses and to generally lead a company in some direction for an industry. A large problem comes in, though, that management often seems so distant from the actual subdivision they represent that they will often make rather incompetent mistakes.
Upper management of most conglomerate companies in fact are more or less forced into this situation. While each smaller division of the company may be competent in the subdivision they represent, the lead management has only the distant and possibly unequal represented lower managers to rely upon for advice on guiding the company. In such a position, any reasonable competent manager person could take their place without any noticable effect, especially given that such a position in management is often based enormously on deligation of responsibilities.
The very lowest class of skilled workers at the bottom, however, as a whole are not easily replacable. It is true, obviously, that at such a position individuals are easily replaced. This fact is the core foundation for the production of unions to allow the skill labor to not be easily replaced under management which is totally divorced from producing actual products that reasonable ensure the continued existence of jobs.
Given that the individual sounded like a network guide more than anything else, I'm lead to believe he was part of the branched computer networking industry that exists in most companies. In that position, he is easily replacable. At the same time, wounded a member of the respected networking industry could have as serious repercussions as illy firing a lawyer without just backing. The next serious step is for the computer networking subdivision to network to form allies of trust from which to probably black list irresponsible companies.
Sorry, it was Compaq, not Phoenix. IBM did open up their BIOS, though. They did it so they could claim anyone who made an IBM clone had commited copyright infringement of their BIOS.
> to ... impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner
If the dll is written very badly then anything that relies on the dll as part of a technological measure is impaired. The copyrighted work being impaired is not the dll but the copyrighted work protected by the dll. The maker of DeCSS can't claim copyright as protection for DeCSS because DeCSS doesn't impair itself. DeCSS does impair CSS, though, which is the issue.
As a simple example, imagine a competitor's product was being pirated and the chief fault was a dll made by MS. Even if the fault was unintentional, under the DMCA MS was at fault.
>> detailing the nature of the security-related fixes
>DMCA violation.
I know the comment was made in jest, but you actually raised an actual technical issue. If you were to write a program that relies on some MS dll for a copyright protection scheme and the dll ends up having a serious security flaw, could you sue MS for producing software the circumvents a copyright protection scheme? Afterall, fundamentally it's the dll that's making the copyright protection scheme insecure, providing for the circumvention. An analogy might be that if a law made it illegal to make a device to circumvent a lock to get into a house. and the one major door manufacturer makes doors so fundamentally flawed that all locks attached to it are inately circumventable; doesn't that make the door a form of circumvention device?
If it doesn't follow the red book audio CD specifications, I personally wouldn't abbreviatedly call it a CD. Against such, it is possible for a "CD" to have DRM protections.
The original poster, though, went onto details about digitized music being a form of DRM. If you use DRM in the vaguest possible extent to mean any technological means require hardware to use a copyrighted work, then yes it's a DRM. DRM, though, is meant to specify a form of control usually in the form of encryption that limits a user's ability to use or modify to use a work.
In that regard, CSS could be seen as an independent form of DRM. Something that calls home would be a dependent form. It is possible to encode a CD into just about any format you please, including cassette tapes or printed out wave forms. iTunes' format is limited to only support CD burning. Of course, once it's a CD you can do whatever you please with it, but the issue remains that the original form is limited. Also, my understanding is to play a song requires calling home which would make it a dependent DRM.
You might then ask yourself, does this mean that if there doesn't exist an to that is a form of drm? The answer to this is actually pretty simple. If something about , like a patent or other legal obfusciation, prevents a person from writing the converter to where does not prevent a persom from writing the converter through a patent or other legal obfusciation, then is likely a DRM. Therefore, even though an mp3 to mod converter doesn't exist, mp3s aren't a DRM in themselves. Of course, there may be artifical limitations on a file format (like internal pointers that are only 8-bit therefore not allowing any reasonable conversion) but since the above is not a legal limitation, it's not a DRM.
Basically, DRM is a method of using law outside of copyright to protect a copyrighted work because there is a lack of faith in copyright functioning. Whether or not there is justifiable reason for lack of faith, I think that DRM should be fundamentally outlawed as it goes against the right to use a copyrighted work as covered under First Sale Doctrine (something that was affirmed by the Supreme Court, haveing been brought up because of real contracts during the reign of books as the leading edge of copyright law mangling).
The only way in which I can see DRM as being legal is if it's clear one is renting a song instead of buying it, in which case it's clearly up to the renter and rentee to discuss terms. If people are unwilling to rent a copyrighted work because they don't like the concept, I don't see how copyright owners can somehow have the right to claim they are selling under copyright with renter like conditions. That's paramount to fraud.
Well, 30hrs of TV translates into an easy 450 min (15min/hr*30hr). Admittedly, you can't exactly switch away to another channel (well, not without another computer.. :)), but there's still bathroom breaks, watching tv and possibly clicking stuff as you do, or going to the fridge.
In more direct monetary terms, 90 minutes works out to be about $7.73 for a minimum wage (still $5.15?) worker as opportunity cost. So, that works out to the user being better off for 6 years. Of course, if you have the money to buy a computer then the whole value point is moot.
You've got to remember that at the time manned flight in anything beyond hot air balloons was in the same realm as fusion is today. Ie, lots of research, lots of failed attempts to produce a viable product, and more than a few people screwed over in the process. At the time, so many failed attempts had occurred it was just assumed that it was impossible. The last thing Scientific America wanted to do was print the story up and look like another idiot.
:)
Meanwhile, the Wright brothers were intentionally as secretive as possible because even if they were to patent a lot of their ideas, it's still pretty conceivable that a venture capitalist funding their ideas would have been too overbearing for their tastes. So, they worked in secret. The only thing about your statement that rings true is it'd possible not be as obscure thanks to scientific tabloids which don't have a reputation to worry about. There are at least a few of those online, right?