In return for writing free software you get the free software everyone else is writing. Considering how much free software there is, that's a pretty hefty return.
Admittedly, from a very selfish point of view you'd get that even if you didn't contribute. So in that sense, yes, you get nothing. But frankly, if you think like that, nothing is exactly what you deserve.:-)
I don't think it's quite as black and white as that. You might visit a website because you're intrigued by something, not necessarily because you're already into it.
In this specific case, the guy told the court that 'he had been obsessed by women's necks from his early twenties but stopped being ashamed when he found other people on the internet who shared his perversion.' So there's an argument there that, without the websites in question, his obsession would never have developed the way it did.
As a few people have already mentioned this was all triggered by this murder. From that article:
After the verdict, his victim's mother launched a bitter attack on the internet sex sites which fuelled Coutts's perversion.
He had trawled for the most horrific "snuff " pornography and admitted subscribing to websites which glorified women being strangled, raped and killed under such titles as Necrobabes, Rapepassion, Hangingbitches and Deathbyasphyxia. Before and after the murder he spent hours looking on the internet for necrophilia, strangulation and "snuff " images and videos. Police found 5,000 pornographic images stored on his computer.
Liza Longhurst, 72, said she was horrified at how easily the porn could be accessed and demanded government action. As she made the call, computer experts warned there was virtually no regulation of hardcore adult pornography on the internet - and that the law which could be used to prosecute people for distributing or possessing such material was years out of date.
Since then various newspapers have been campaigning against that type of website. The Daily Mail had a front page story about how they'd managed to get a couple of them shut down (one through the provider, the other through the company they used to take credit card payments iirc). Although I expect the websites sprang back up somewhere else a few days later, but they neglected to mention that.
Just to buck the trend a bit - I actually thought Return of the King was by far the weakest of the three. It felt rushed - too many scenes had a 'we have to get this plot information across as quickly as possible and move on' quality to them, while other scenes seemed unnecessarily drawn out, complete with OTT slow-motion effects. Sure, he's trying to cram a lot of material in, but moving Shelob from the Two Towers to Return of the King didn't help, even after chopping out Saruman (and a very large part of the book at the same time). Dragging Arwen into the third film with slow, drawn-out scenes that don't really make sense didn't help either.
They got the general look right, and impressively so (perhaps with the exception of the very cheesy glowing green dead), however, in terms of script and direction, they could have done better. I was actually quite disappointed when I came out after seeing it. So for me, Peter Jackson didn't deserve a best director award for it. But that's just my opinion.
Oh, and the pipes in the score were bloody annoying sometimes.;-)
Ging-gang-google gave me this article from the website of the school of Law at UKMC.
Apparently what happened was that the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP) sent letters out in 1996 to camps - including Girl Scout ones - demanding they pay fees for singing any of their copyrighted songs (such as Edelweiss and Puff the Magic Dragon), saying, "They buy paper, twine and glue for their crafts - they can pay for the music, too. If offenders keep singing without paying, we will sue them if necessary."
Later they claimed that they hadn't meant to target Girl Scouts, just other camps - "the sort that bring in bands for square dances, have music by the pool... and are like sending your kid to a resort."
Yes, play.com next. And Amazon.com too possibly. The Guardian articles on this had this to say:
The BPI has also launched proceedings against Play.com, a Jersey-based online retailer of CDs, DVDs and video games, which operates on a similar basis.
And Amazon.com could be drawn into the row because it sells CDs to UK customers that are not available in this country, undercutting traditional high street retailers. The BPI could argue that they are acting without the consent of UK record companies.
It's one thing to argue that cheap imports that undercut the existing local releases are bad, it's another to say that imports of CDs that aren't even available here are. Yeesh.
The hope for the UK consumer is that the UK Consumers Association does take the major record labels to court, as it's reported to be considering doing, over the price difference between CDs here and elsewhere in the world. It really shouldn't be cheaper to buy CDs from Hong Kong/Canada/the US/etc. in the first place.
The user comments at download.com have more mention of the apparent spyware - to quote one comment:'The claim by the program vendor that this software is free of Spyware is utterly ridiculus. I installed it on a fresh install of Windows XP Pro. It installed "Websavings by Ebates" without the option to opt out.' But then, maybe that's just intrusive adware and not technically spyware - not being familiar with this ebates doobrey I wouldn't know.
On the RIAA comment, the download.com blurb states that 'Morpheus protects your privacy with integrated access to public proxy networks.' But I'm a bit skeptical about that myself.
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In return for writing free software you get the free software everyone else is writing. Considering how much free software there is, that's a pretty hefty return.
Admittedly, from a very selfish point of view you'd get that even if you didn't contribute. So in that sense, yes, you get nothing. But frankly, if you think like that, nothing is exactly what you deserve. :-)
I don't think it's quite as black and white as that. You might visit a website because you're intrigued by something, not necessarily because you're already into it.
In this specific case, the guy told the court that 'he had been obsessed by women's necks from his early twenties but stopped being ashamed when he found other people on the internet who shared his perversion.' So there's an argument there that, without the websites in question, his obsession would never have developed the way it did.
Just to buck the trend a bit - I actually thought Return of the King was by far the weakest of the three. It felt rushed - too many scenes had a 'we have to get this plot information across as quickly as possible and move on' quality to them, while other scenes seemed unnecessarily drawn out, complete with OTT slow-motion effects. Sure, he's trying to cram a lot of material in, but moving Shelob from the Two Towers to Return of the King didn't help, even after chopping out Saruman (and a very large part of the book at the same time). Dragging Arwen into the third film with slow, drawn-out scenes that don't really make sense didn't help either.
They got the general look right, and impressively so (perhaps with the exception of the very cheesy glowing green dead), however, in terms of script and direction, they could have done better. I was actually quite disappointed when I came out after seeing it. So for me, Peter Jackson didn't deserve a best director award for it. But that's just my opinion.
Oh, and the pipes in the score were bloody annoying sometimes. ;-)
Ging-gang-google gave me this article from the website of the school of Law at UKMC.
Apparently what happened was that the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP) sent letters out in 1996 to camps - including Girl Scout ones - demanding they pay fees for singing any of their copyrighted songs (such as Edelweiss and Puff the Magic Dragon), saying, "They buy paper, twine and glue for their crafts - they can pay for the music, too. If offenders keep singing without paying, we will sue them if necessary."
Later they claimed that they hadn't meant to target Girl Scouts, just other camps - "the sort that bring in bands for square dances, have music by the pool ... and are like sending your kid to a resort."
This has potential - kebab-making for the extreme sports enthusiast.
The user comments at download.com have more mention of the apparent spyware - to quote one comment:'The claim by the program vendor that this software is free of Spyware is utterly ridiculus. I installed it on a fresh install of Windows XP Pro. It installed "Websavings by Ebates" without the option to opt out.' But then, maybe that's just intrusive adware and not technically spyware - not being familiar with this ebates doobrey I wouldn't know.
On the RIAA comment, the download.com blurb states that 'Morpheus protects your privacy with integrated access to public proxy networks.' But I'm a bit skeptical about that myself.