Couldn't someone sue them for this, since it's being done so discreetly?
Probably, but MacroVision would have a pretty good argument against them: they're doing this scientifically. If they told everyone, "hey, this new CD has copy protection, tell us what you think," there would be TONS of people like "no, the sound is worse, money back please."
Whereas if they do it quietly ("blind" experiment), they'll get a much more accurate picture of whether people are genuinely affected by the loss of sound quality.
A better question is about the ethics it takes to turn thousands of customers into research subjects without permission, probably without any debriefing after the experiment is over. D'oh.
I don't begrudge authors and publishers a living. I actively support it by buying an enormous number of books, including printed books of material that I can get online.
You know, it's funny -- you are, and I am, and so are a lot of other people I know. Whether it's books, CDs, DVDs, vinyl records, or whatever, I know people with HUGE media collections. They collect their media of choice either to support the artists, or because they simply can't stand to be without these 160 albums or these 233 books or whatever. These are people who realize the importance of their actions, and voluntarily participate in the system to make it keep going.
This seems less and less satisfactory to the media companies each day. They don't seem to even recognize the voluntary choice of people to help out in this way; it's all about enforcing "THE LAW" against those deviants who don't participate. The problem with this is, it devalues the choices of people who are good participants. If I buy 2 cds every week, how am I supposed to feel when the RIAA tells me I'm not allowed to space shift it, by suing the pants off MP3.com? I'm sickened by their action to reduce my rights to access music I paid for. Legitimately, volutarily.
Actions like this, whether by the RIAA or the American Association of Publishers, insult their valid media buyers. What they really need is an era of "benefit of the doubt" given to the people who pay their bills. Damn it, what ever happened to pleasing the customer? If, instead of extending your hand to your friends, you hold a gun to your enemies, then soon all you'll have is enemies. Extreme excersize of control against any form of rebellion practically insists that the rebellion take place.
No, of course not. It's not that any particular offense should be allowed to go unchecked and unpunished, it's the broader realization that not every offense will be checked and punished. I'm not saying "this judge is stupid, people should be allowed to defy copyright." It's more analogous to the judge demanding that every weapons producer (including potentially harmful tools like hammers and jacknives) halt operations until they can 100% gaurantee that no one uses their products to do harm.
What is the purpose of the MS CD/product keys anyways? Are they individually serialized for individual copy of the product? If they are the same on the product level (not unique for distinct copies), then what is the point in preventing piracy with them?
What is the point? I really couldn't tell you. However, I do know that the windows 2000 CD key that came with my new laptop was *exactly the same* as the windows 2000 CD key for some workstations I installed at work. As far as I can tell, every copy of win2k workstation shares a CD key!
At first I thought it was different with windows NT; every copy of that I'd seen had a different CD key. But guess what? There's actually a single key that's used for debugging/mass installation of windows NT, that also happens to work for any MS product with the format 3digits-7digits. So I don't know how the hell this is supposed to prevent copying.
Because you call it "content." As if someone's (everyone's) artistic creations are simply filler for your computer or TV or car stereo. My presence on slashdot aside, the internet is not the be-all and end-all of personal interaction and fulfillment.
Quite frankly, most of the so-called "content" out there sucks, because of precisely that attitude: new media company comes along with a snazzy new business plan, and needs some stuff to fill it up. So they hire underemployed musicians, writers, and visual artists to "produce some content." There's nothing artistic about the transaction. Business needs filler, content provider obliges, money changes hands. End of story.
You can argue that it's always been this way, that art hasn't degenerated seriously since the onset of the internet. Overall, I suppose you'd be right; there's always been trashy "art." But electronic connectivity has ushered in a new wave of "hurry up and get it out the door" that's at direct opposition to insightful, well-thought art, music, and literature. Before the sound-scan system put in place at record stores across the country, there was bad pop music. But the system's introduction increased the fervor with which everyone tracked the pop charts, and it's been years of straight garbage since. There was bad reporting before CNN, but now it's become the de facto standard and news organizations compare bottom lines with them.
I guess I'm an idealist, because I view this as something of a tragedy for all those art forms and the press. And I don't blame "the internet" as such, but I do believe the fast-forward culture brought with it is at least partly to blame. So, I will and do support artists whose work I respect, both local and worldwide; I buy books I like, from the author directly when possible, and I buy tons and tons of music. There's a few peices of visual art I'm considering buying. But no, I will not pay for "content."
stricter environmental regulations and general health and sanitation? A Playstion running Linux... won't do you much good if you have no food because your farmland has extremely high levels of toxic chemicals in the soil, or if easily curable diseases... are killing off most of the population.
okay, but what if the local political head honcho poo-poos environmental regulations, saying they'll cut into your farm profits? I spent some time in Kenya, and the farmers love heavy chemical fertilizers and pesticides: they make the plants grow big and healthy! Regulations require popular support, and to make the right choice, the populace must be informed.
High levels of toxins in the soil? How are farmers to know that this is the problem? Do they run chemical analyses themselves? No. Again, the information has to come from somewhere. I agree that maybe installing Playstations everywhere might be a slightly fanciful method of accomplishing this, but you can't really argue that those other things take priority over better information transfer
-- the information is a prerequisite for improvement in a lot of cases.
And why is this exactly? It's because the PS2 hardware device is a loss-leader, or at least a very-thin-profit-margin leader. They are basically sold only so that people will go out and buy Sony Playstation games, which, at $50+ for a DVDROM, are certainly sold at quite a profit.
So, I'm certainly not saying it's morally wrong to take PS2s, install linux, and ship 'em to the big bad "third world" (which is also getting a lot of solar cells, what's with that place these days?). What I'm saying is, the parade can't go on forever. If sony sells 10M of these things and only 2M people are using them for gaming, the price could increase significantly. Then, at the very least, the low-cost benefit would be gone. Worst case, Sony would discontinue the platform altogether.
What I'd rather see is some stripped-down hardware (like P2's with 64M and 4G) shipped over for this kind of use. This kind of thing could probably be gotten as donations from corporations that are surplussing it (ie, throwing it away), and they could even claim it as a tax write-off. Everyone wins.
Microsoft reps that it is painless to get the key to register and open you computer back up, but have you CALLED Microsoft recently?
Which is why everyone should stop calling them, and instead get your "product activation" in my #w@arez channel. Unlike M$, we don't charge anything for any of your computers, except we'd really appreciated it if you would "share" your PhotoShop 6 cd key.
I know! And there's another one (at least one other) about "loose bowels" or something. If I ever got to psychotherapy, I'm going to ask the Doc what he/she would conclude from my defacatory habits.
Microsoft did not have any representatives available to comment on the license issue.
Um... huh? I can just imagine the microsofty's response:
MS: Okay, you're writing an article on the what now? [covers handset] Hey, has anyone heard of an open-source ban? [back to reporter] Huh, sorry, no one knows anything about that right now.
Or maybe the author just called tech support, and was rebuffed by the "no representatives currently available" message?
Is it even a valid component of a licensing agreement to dictate what kind of programs you're allowed to produce with this SDK? There are precedents for license agreements being thrown out, for example, ones that say "you may not review this [widget] without prior consent." In some jurisdictions, that's not a valid restriction.
But I'm not sure how (if...?) this argument could be applied to the MS license under consideration. On one hand, their primary objective is to ensure that none of the SDK code gets "trapped" in a GPL program which is obligated to release its (and therefore MS's) source. This represents a poor understanding of the GPL, but given this interpretation, this could be a reasonably reponse.
In a broader sense, though, as the yahoo article and all of us seem to be arguing, this is an attempt to squelch the use of open source software by outright banning its use. However, it seems about as silly as a license saying "MS Word may not be used to type an article which disparages Microsoft or its products," or "you may not use Sprint long distance minutes to advise others not to use Sprint long distance." I mean, those provisions wouldn't be legal, would they?
Maybe a better comparison is to the right to reverse engineer. Courts have ruled (tons of citations in this article) that it's legal to reverse engineer, for example, video game systems, even though the manufacturer obviously objects. Basically, it seems like IP owners, including microsoft, put in tons of garbage restraints in their licenses in an attempt to expand their IP rights by essentially seeing what gets through.
Also, as per that article, this could be seen as "a lockout device to restrain competition," which would make it illegal.
And for this reason, the MMPI is actually a ridiculous test to give to any AI system at this point. Have you ever READ the MMPI? I'd link to a copy online, but it's carefully guarded intellectual property, and costs hundreds of dollars to administer and score. But here's the NCS page with a Q&A about it if you want some particulars.
That said, it's fucked up. One of my roommates had to take it once (aside: we moved him out the next semester:), and he let us read it. There are 567 "yes/no" questions, and the first one is "I enjoy reading sports car magazines." Others include such obviously gender biased items as "I sometimes wear women's clothing." Basically, my point is, it's a very US-centric test designed to "catch" people who think differently than our definition of "normal." I suspect that the AI device wouldn't even have a coherent answer to many of the questions, since it's never lived in American culture, and doesn't have a childhood to be analysed as "traumatic," etc etc.
I can't see anything useful coming from this except perhaps a false reassurance that "this system won't go nuts like HAL-9000."
(yes, this is posted under another message below, but it fits better here.)
Right. The MMPI is actually a ridiculous test to give to any AI system at this point. Have you ever READ the MMPI? I'd link to a copy online, but it's carefully guarded intellectual property, and costs hundreds of dollars to administer and score. But here's the NCS page with a Q&A about it if you want some particulars.
That said, it's fucked up. One of my roommates had to take it once (aside: we moved him out the next semester:), and he let us read it. There are 567 "yes/no" questions, and the first one is "I enjoy reading sports car magazines." Others include such obviously gender biased items as "I sometimes wear women's clothing." Basically, my point is, it's a very US-centric test designed to "catch" people who think differently than our definition of "normal." I suspect that the AI device wouldn't even have a coherent answer to many of the questions, since it's never lived in American culture, and doesn't have a childhood to be analysed as "traumatic," etc etc.
I can't see anything useful coming from this except perhaps a false reassurance that "this system won't go nuts like HAL-9000."
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Re:Is the absence of bio-engineering justifiable?
on
Eco-Terrorism
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· Score: 1
And on and on. You can do a google search as well as I can, and you'll even find some counterpoints.
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Re:Is the absence of bio-engineering justifiable?
on
Eco-Terrorism
·
· Score: 1
But we aren't going to come even *close* to wiping out as many species that other species or "natural" events have pushed out through history.
That is, at the very best, a disingenuous statement. At worst, outright false. While it may be true that more species have died throughout the history of earth than have since the industrial revolution, there is evidence that more species have become extinct in the last 2 centuries than did when the dinosaurs died out. Problem is, it's hard to take a longitudinal view when we're in the middle of the phenomenon -- industrial humans have changed the earth significantly, in terms of biodiversity, but the effects of this change will continue to develop for centuries.
Besides, even if it's true that humans haven't wiped out as many species as "natural events," why try to break the record? When is enough enough?
So just because it made the judicial system look bad... they overturned the decision anyways in the interest of maintaining integrity in the judicial process?
Hm. Maybe now they'll have to use the same standard when examining Judge Kaplan's behavior during the 2600 DeCSS case?
but another part of me thinks - and this is kinda harsh - that famine is just our planet's way of saying "we've got too many people here."
Hey! Good point! Guess that explains why famines happen mostly in sparsely populated areas! Cuz I guess the earth just "knows" that there are too many people in China and so decides to take out a few million in a less important area like East Africa.
Yeah, K, but the next paragraph describes how they expect this to put them solidly in the red (or keep them there) for the next entire fiscal year. Of course "Revenue != profit," but it seems a strange move indeed to abandon what you acknowledge to be your strongest revenue stream. If they were selling some of the hardware as a loss leader, why not bring the prices up some instead of leaving the business altogether? Anyway, I'm not an insider at VA, I don't know what they're thinking, but this seems to indicate that there's major trouble within.
Slashdot Mirror
Probably, but MacroVision would have a pretty good argument against them: they're doing this scientifically. If they told everyone, "hey, this new CD has copy protection, tell us what you think," there would be TONS of people like "no, the sound is worse, money back please."
Whereas if they do it quietly ("blind" experiment), they'll get a much more accurate picture of whether people are genuinely affected by the loss of sound quality.
A better question is about the ethics it takes to turn thousands of customers into research subjects without permission, probably without any debriefing after the experiment is over. D'oh.
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Except the ones who would perpetuate homophobia with federal money.
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You know, it's funny -- you are, and I am, and so are a lot of other people I know. Whether it's books, CDs, DVDs, vinyl records, or whatever, I know people with HUGE media collections. They collect their media of choice either to support the artists, or because they simply can't stand to be without these 160 albums or these 233 books or whatever. These are people who realize the importance of their actions, and voluntarily participate in the system to make it keep going.
This seems less and less satisfactory to the media companies each day. They don't seem to even recognize the voluntary choice of people to help out in this way; it's all about enforcing "THE LAW" against those deviants who don't participate. The problem with this is, it devalues the choices of people who are good participants. If I buy 2 cds every week, how am I supposed to feel when the RIAA tells me I'm not allowed to space shift it, by suing the pants off MP3.com? I'm sickened by their action to reduce my rights to access music I paid for. Legitimately, volutarily.
Actions like this, whether by the RIAA or the American Association of Publishers, insult their valid media buyers. What they really need is an era of "benefit of the doubt" given to the people who pay their bills. Damn it, what ever happened to pleasing the customer? If, instead of extending your hand to your friends, you hold a gun to your enemies, then soon all you'll have is enemies. Extreme excersize of control against any form of rebellion practically insists that the rebellion take place.
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Plus the United States DVDs probably didn't work in space... damn region encoding...
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highway patrol funding cut until they gaurantee 100% of traffic doesn't speed
Sony shut down until 100% of VCR owners do not illegally copy tapes
No law has 100% compliance, I don't see why napster, a private company, should be the first to make it happen. Jesus Christ.
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You know, it's a really sad state of affairs when this seems like a major breakthrough. Anyone should have the right to sell dual-boot systems.
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What is the point? I really couldn't tell you. However, I do know that the windows 2000 CD key that came with my new laptop was *exactly the same* as the windows 2000 CD key for some workstations I installed at work. As far as I can tell, every copy of win2k workstation shares a CD key!
At first I thought it was different with windows NT; every copy of that I'd seen had a different CD key. But guess what? There's actually a single key that's used for debugging/mass installation of windows NT, that also happens to work for any MS product with the format 3digits-7digits. So I don't know how the hell this is supposed to prevent copying.
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Because you call it "content." As if someone's (everyone's) artistic creations are simply filler for your computer or TV or car stereo. My presence on slashdot aside, the internet is not the be-all and end-all of personal interaction and fulfillment.
Quite frankly, most of the so-called "content" out there sucks, because of precisely that attitude: new media company comes along with a snazzy new business plan, and needs some stuff to fill it up. So they hire underemployed musicians, writers, and visual artists to "produce some content." There's nothing artistic about the transaction. Business needs filler, content provider obliges, money changes hands. End of story.
You can argue that it's always been this way, that art hasn't degenerated seriously since the onset of the internet. Overall, I suppose you'd be right; there's always been trashy "art." But electronic connectivity has ushered in a new wave of "hurry up and get it out the door" that's at direct opposition to insightful, well-thought art, music, and literature. Before the sound-scan system put in place at record stores across the country, there was bad pop music. But the system's introduction increased the fervor with which everyone tracked the pop charts, and it's been years of straight garbage since. There was bad reporting before CNN, but now it's become the de facto standard and news organizations compare bottom lines with them.
I guess I'm an idealist, because I view this as something of a tragedy for all those art forms and the press. And I don't blame "the internet" as such, but I do believe the fast-forward culture brought with it is at least partly to blame. So, I will and do support artists whose work I respect, both local and worldwide; I buy books I like, from the author directly when possible, and I buy tons and tons of music. There's a few peices of visual art I'm considering buying. But no, I will not pay for "content."
---
okay, but what if the local political head honcho poo-poos environmental regulations, saying they'll cut into your farm profits? I spent some time in Kenya, and the farmers love heavy chemical fertilizers and pesticides: they make the plants grow big and healthy! Regulations require popular support, and to make the right choice, the populace must be informed.
High levels of toxins in the soil? How are farmers to know that this is the problem? Do they run chemical analyses themselves? No. Again, the information has to come from somewhere. I agree that maybe installing Playstations everywhere might be a slightly fanciful method of accomplishing this, but you can't really argue that those other things take priority over better information transfer -- the information is a prerequisite for improvement in a lot of cases.
---
And why is this exactly? It's because the PS2 hardware device is a loss-leader, or at least a very-thin-profit-margin leader. They are basically sold only so that people will go out and buy Sony Playstation games, which, at $50+ for a DVDROM, are certainly sold at quite a profit.
So, I'm certainly not saying it's morally wrong to take PS2s, install linux, and ship 'em to the big bad "third world" (which is also getting a lot of solar cells, what's with that place these days?). What I'm saying is, the parade can't go on forever. If sony sells 10M of these things and only 2M people are using them for gaming, the price could increase significantly. Then, at the very least, the low-cost benefit would be gone. Worst case, Sony would discontinue the platform altogether.
What I'd rather see is some stripped-down hardware (like P2's with 64M and 4G) shipped over for this kind of use. This kind of thing could probably be gotten as donations from corporations that are surplussing it (ie, throwing it away), and they could even claim it as a tax write-off. Everyone wins.
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Which is why everyone should stop calling them, and instead get your "product activation" in my #w@arez channel. Unlike M$, we don't charge anything for any of your computers, except we'd really appreciated it if you would "share" your PhotoShop 6 cd key.
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I know! And there's another one (at least one other) about "loose bowels" or something. If I ever got to psychotherapy, I'm going to ask the Doc what he/she would conclude from my defacatory habits.
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Um... huh? I can just imagine the microsofty's response:
MS: Okay, you're writing an article on the what now? [covers handset] Hey, has anyone heard of an open-source ban? [back to reporter] Huh, sorry, no one knows anything about that right now.
Or maybe the author just called tech support, and was rebuffed by the "no representatives currently available" message?
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But I'm not sure how (if...?) this argument could be applied to the MS license under consideration. On one hand, their primary objective is to ensure that none of the SDK code gets "trapped" in a GPL program which is obligated to release its (and therefore MS's) source. This represents a poor understanding of the GPL, but given this interpretation, this could be a reasonably reponse.
In a broader sense, though, as the yahoo article and all of us seem to be arguing, this is an attempt to squelch the use of open source software by outright banning its use. However, it seems about as silly as a license saying "MS Word may not be used to type an article which disparages Microsoft or its products," or "you may not use Sprint long distance minutes to advise others not to use Sprint long distance." I mean, those provisions wouldn't be legal, would they?
Maybe a better comparison is to the right to reverse engineer. Courts have ruled (tons of citations in this article) that it's legal to reverse engineer, for example, video game systems, even though the manufacturer obviously objects. Basically, it seems like IP owners, including microsoft, put in tons of garbage restraints in their licenses in an attempt to expand their IP rights by essentially seeing what gets through.
Also, as per that article, this could be seen as "a lockout device to restrain competition," which would make it illegal.
---
That said, it's fucked up. One of my roommates had to take it once (aside: we moved him out the next semester:), and he let us read it. There are 567 "yes/no" questions, and the first one is "I enjoy reading sports car magazines." Others include such obviously gender biased items as "I sometimes wear women's clothing." Basically, my point is, it's a very US-centric test designed to "catch" people who think differently than our definition of "normal." I suspect that the AI device wouldn't even have a coherent answer to many of the questions, since it's never lived in American culture, and doesn't have a childhood to be analysed as "traumatic," etc etc.
I can't see anything useful coming from this except perhaps a false reassurance that "this system won't go nuts like HAL-9000."
(yes, this is posted under another message below, but it fits better here.)
---
That said, it's fucked up. One of my roommates had to take it once (aside: we moved him out the next semester:), and he let us read it. There are 567 "yes/no" questions, and the first one is "I enjoy reading sports car magazines." Others include such obviously gender biased items as "I sometimes wear women's clothing." Basically, my point is, it's a very US-centric test designed to "catch" people who think differently than our definition of "normal." I suspect that the AI device wouldn't even have a coherent answer to many of the questions, since it's never lived in American culture, and doesn't have a childhood to be analysed as "traumatic," etc etc.
I can't see anything useful coming from this except perhaps a false reassurance that "this system won't go nuts like HAL-9000."
---
Global extinction rate: SPECIES: UNPRECEDENTED EXTINCTION RATE, AND IT'S INCREASING
And on and on. You can do a google search as well as I can, and you'll even find some counterpoints.
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That is, at the very best, a disingenuous statement. At worst, outright false. While it may be true that more species have died throughout the history of earth than have since the industrial revolution, there is evidence that more species have become extinct in the last 2 centuries than did when the dinosaurs died out. Problem is, it's hard to take a longitudinal view when we're in the middle of the phenomenon -- industrial humans have changed the earth significantly, in terms of biodiversity, but the effects of this change will continue to develop for centuries.
Besides, even if it's true that humans haven't wiped out as many species as "natural events," why try to break the record? When is enough enough?
---
Hm. Maybe now they'll have to use the same standard when examining Judge Kaplan's behavior during the 2600 DeCSS case?
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Hey! Good point! Guess that explains why famines happen mostly in sparsely populated areas! Cuz I guess the earth just "knows" that there are too many people in China and so decides to take out a few million in a less important area like East Africa.
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