I could think of 2 thinks... 1. get notified about the session key being used so you don't have to brute force it 2. get an unencrypted copy of the data
How does Skype protect my privacy? Skype is encrypted end-to-end because it uses the public Internet to transport your voice calls and text messages and sometimes these calls are routed through other peers. Skype encryption ensures that no other party can eavesdrop on your call or read your instant messages. Skype uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES, also known as Rijndael) which is used by U.S. Government organizations to protect sensitive information. Skype uses 256-bit encryption, which has a total of 1.1 x 1077 possible keys, in order to actively encrypt the data in each Skype call or instant message. Skype uses 1024 bit RSA to negotiate symmetric AES keys. User public keys are certified by the Skype server at login using 1536 or 2048-bit RSA certificates.
So.. it seems they are using 256 bit AES for encryption.
I don't know about this user public key part.. seeing how I don't have to carry around a private key and can just login from anywhere with my username/password, that key seems to not be used for identifying users.
So, if the person who invests huge money in producing that content thinks you're right, and that they'll be better able to pay back their investors if more people get the work without paying for it, then surely they can waive their copyright and say, "Hey! Please feel free to copy this!" But for those that find that their work sells only a few copies before it's torrented all over the place and sales fall way off - why not leave them the choice?
So far there is no reason to believe that the fact that things appear on p2p networks affect sales. If you are going to tell me now how sales dropped over the last few years I'd like to point out that both the economy didn't do that well in that time, and people have been buying way more DVDs and can spend their money only once.
And, for those people so idealogically horrified by artists that want to retain copyright control, surely they don't like those people anyway, right? Why would they want to be entertained by someone for whom they have such disdain?
Which ignores the fact that in many cases the copyright is actually transfered to the record company.
That's the real heart of the hypocrisy, I think. The people that are so sure that free distribution of the creative work is better for everyone (including the people who are trying to earn a living from it)... if those people are making such a good case, then why aren't more artists giving away their work? Some are. The vast majority are not, or do so only under very specific circumstances. Why? Because the people that say it should be free are not very convincing about how the artist will be able to own a decent home or send their children to a nice college (or just buy a very nice new piece of digital recording equipment or $50,000 video editor for that matter) based on free distribution of their work
So it has een tried by few so far, and you compare the results with that of an industry that has been around for a century? That surely makes sense. Lets talk again about comparing those some 20 years from now or so to se what actually works better.
This of course completely ignores the fact that the large majority of artists that get to deal with record companies never get to make a profit from that, and of course the small fact that most musicians never get to get a contract from a record company, and those who can live from that, let alone actually buy that nice video mixer, are an extremely small minority.
Excellence _is_ the exception. This has nothing to do with any real or perceived evilness of the record companies.
I'm not claiming that recording companies are evil perse but I do not like quite a few of the 'anti piracy' arguments that are being used by them, and I think that some of the arguments are outright lies and that that is not very ethical to do.
I also believe that just as the ability to reprint books changed the world for writers, the invention of decent enough quality sound recording changed the world for mucisians (in both cases it didn't destroy them at all eventho it at first glance made most of them not needed anymore) and now the internet is changing the world for those who made their business out of distribution.
And then I believe that while copyright in itself is a usefull tool that can work in the advantage of all, its current implementation is hopelessly broken both due to basicly never expiring and failing to adapt to the current state of technology.
With regards to Prince, please go read what he has to say, it comes down to him not wanting to have anythign to do with them anymore. Also, getting rich seldom has to do with ethics, and if it does it is more often lack of ethics that makes one rich.
Evidently, but under copyright law the only person who has the right to distribute things (or to transfer that right) is the author. So the right to distribution and authorship are closely related.
That in no way means that distributing something is the same as claiming to be the author, and that was the claim you made (with the flawed napster example)
Yes and no. It would be true if all record companies and book publishers existed solely to generate as much profit as possible.
For as far as they are public companies, they have a duty to their shareholders to maximize profit. Good art is a nice to have thing in that, but commercial value is the deciding factor.
Yes, I noticed that, you seem to be confused about your attitudes towards the music industry. First you say they should be free to offer the service they're offering, then the next paragraph you make it sound like there is something unethical or unjust about that service. So what is it?
Asking money for their services is no problem. Letting artists pay the bill and then claiming to the public that the record companies pay it is not ethical.
Then, that paragraph was there to point out why most mucisians never make a proffit from a record, not to argue that what happened was ethical or not.
Artists can grant unlimited distribution today. Very few do. Why? Because the number of artists that have used this route to gain major success is almost zero (and I'm being generous here). The alternative route, via the record companies, simply has a much better track record.
Maybe, maybe not. maybe only a few tried so far.
Furthermore, the files most shared on the P2P networks are those by major artists; Britney, etc. The argument that P2P leads people to discover new music and bands and that this might bring those bands riches and fame is totally unfounded.
Riches and fame eh? well, getting that through the 'regular' way of recording companies doesn't have much of a chance either. THere are just not that many people who have what it takes to become that.
Dig deeper and you'll find that most of the money comes from sponsors and subsidies, even for rock music -- unless, of course, the band is fairly popular, but then they fall outside of the scope of this argument.
Ah yes, the tiny few artists who did well with record companies are in scope, and those who do well with other means are not? I get it now..
Right, because artists like Madonna, Kurt Cobain, Prince, Michael Jackson, Snoop Dog, N.E.R.D., Missy Elliott are all one trick ponies...
Nope, and there are more examples, tho finding examples from the last 15 years is a lot more difficult then ones from 30 years ago, and those are all still the exception and not the rule.
You may want to go listen to Prince for a bit to hear some more about recording companies and ethics and what they really do for an artist btw, he has some interesting experience to share there.
This is what copyright is. Copyright is the exclusive right of an author to distribute his work. If I distribute your work without your permission, I am implying that I have the right to distribute your work, in other words, that I'm the author (or at least have reached some sort of understanding with you regarding distribution of your work).
Right to distribute is not the same as having created a work. It is pretty normal that the distributor and creator are not the same. People are pretty much used to the fact that there is a song writer and one or more mucisians creating a work and that those are usually not the ones distributing the result.
Please stop twisting things to suit your argument.
"Better" applies to functional work such as chairs and software. It doesn't really apply to art. The market is a pretty good judge of the functionality of a product like a chair or a piece of software, but it's a remarkably poor judge of the value of a work of art.
Commercial enterprices interested in making money instead of art are also a very bad judge of the value of a work of art (unless you mean the direct commercial value maybe)
If promoting art is the idea then maybe look again at that dreaded state funded public broadcasting corporation in the UK for an example of how that can be done.
You say this like it's some kind of injustice. Why shouldn't the record companies charge for their services? Basically they're extending huge credits to extremely risky clients. For every artist who makes it and generates sufficient revenue there are dozens who end up never making any money and who are written off.
And why did you forget to read and quote the lines just above it where I stated that I believe that it is quite valid for recording companies to charge for their services.
Are you just picking a few things you disagree with in order to repeat your argument over and over or something?
Yes; but how does unlimited distribution make this any easier?
Unlimited distribution makes it easier to get a larger public to know you and may very well help getting more people to see you perform live also.
What you must ask yourself is where the money comes from. You will find that in almost all cases it comes from direct or indirect subsidies and/or sponsorships.
But sponsorships are exactly what record companies provide. The only difference is that in the case of record companies, the deal is a lot more transparent and the requirements of the record companies are a lot more stringent. But then, the potential payoff is a lot bigger
Sponsorship and subsidies are quite important for symphonic music here, a lot less so for rock music.
This may be a bit less transparant maybe then record companies, the resulting art is generally of a much higher value then the next one trick pony act comming out of those recording companies.
But honestly, a decent street mucisian overhere can already make the equivalent of a few 100 USD a day. Maybe not a fantastic income, but definitely enough to live on. Quite a few are not good enough to manage that, but as with any profession, you can only live from it as long as you are good enough (or demand is high enough so that standards drop).
If there were no copyright protection on the film, a cinema chain would be under no obligation to compensate the film maker.
They have to get the film first. There is no reason why the film maker cannot guarantee proper compensation by means of a contract there.
Oh, the cinema chain is going to copy it from another chain? I'm sure that other chain is wanting to let go of part of its customers... (not to mention that the same contract mentioned earlier can solve this at least legally)
This is a bigger issue for DVDs indeed. I do buy originals of those as well (eventho where I live it is perfectly legal to borrow/rent them and copy them for your own use) because of many reasons, wanting to compensate the creator of the work being just one. Nice merchandice being another, wanting to 'own an original' also being an important one at times.
Right - so long as everyone around the world has the integrity to pay for the work anyway. That won't happen.
I think I showed pretty well why that is not true in case of cinemas, and why there are more reasons then that to go buy a DVD or CD.
I'm not trying to redress the argument to suit my needs.
Yes you did. You changed it from copying and/or distributing (for proffit or not) into taking credit for creating a work.
You say that you don't care whether someone copies your work and makes money off of it, because you assume that people will come to you when the need new work.
You are right about what I said, but the reason you give is not correct. I hope people will come to me for new works because I have the ability to create them. If someone else can do that better then obviously people will go to someone else.
The person who distributed the work could try to write something new, fine with me, I trust my ability to do that better however.
Just for your info, I am not against copyright as such, but I do not believe current copyright law is serving its stated purpose, and I do not believe it is just either. If you want to know what I'd think to be better, look here
So according to you musicians can't make money at all: the record companies rip them off and customers don't buy direct. The problem with this view is that it doesn't reflect reality.
That view reflects reality for the large majority of musicians out there. As said, there are exceptions, but for each such exception, you can find thousands of examples of the opposite.
I am not going to judge if record companies rip them off, and I can see there being a valid argument in record companies providing a service which if the artist wants/needs it, has a price.
Matter of fact is that virtually all artists contracted by recording companies have to pay a very substantial part of the cost of producing and marketing a record, and a record has to sell extremely well to break even on that. It is not unusual to start record sales with a substantial debt, and end it with a smaller debt. Ending with a proffit is not the rule however. (interestingly, record companies claim this as being one of the reasons why they need the huge proffit margins on CDs and the like, while in virtually all cases the artists pay most of the bill for it)
This is somewhat different with smaller recording companies (cost of marketing is lower when there is less marketing done for example), but it is still not easy at all to make a proffit, let alone a living from that.
On the other hand, I have half a dozen people in my friends circle alone who live from performing music (mostly rock and symphonic)
The picture you are painting is really only true for the very very tiny group of extremely well selling musicians.
That isn't a wrong assumption; it's a legal one. Just because you don't happen to like the legality doesn't make it wrong. Clearly the vast majority of Americans are just fine with paying authors and musicians for their work and have no problem with reasonable copyright laws.
Legal is not the same as right.
I have no problem with REASONABLE copyright laws either, but first of all I do not believe copyright law to be reasonable as it is, and second, I do not believe it is needed in any form that resembles what it is now.
That most people don't mind current copyright law is because of ignorance, not because they actually know what it is about.
So I write a book, you distribute for free, and I get...what? A condescending pat on the back from you because I bowed down before your false moral position? And that feeds my family...how?
What actually makes you think you have a right to earn your money with writing a book? There are many things I do, like to do, and find usefull to do without getting compensation for them, I just don't turn them into a job.
I have a better idea. We stick with the current idea of copyright and you protest the idea by refusing to purchase anything that's copyrighted. That way we're both happy.
Come back when we actually get to see the advantages copyright is supposed to have for society, ie, when there is a REASONABLE term to copyright (and reasonable is definitely not longer then 50 years)
Indeed. I created it, therefore it's mine.
Someone wants back that great idea called a wheel and such..
You don't get it; I won't just copy your work, I'll claim credit for it, so that people come to me for new work, not to me.
That is not what is going on, don't try to change things to make them fit your argument.
You can redistribute my work without having to pay me, regardless of asking money for it. Claiming you made it is something else, and seperate from copyright, it is an outright lie.
This is exactly what has happened with Napster and it's descendants: when people hear a great tune, they don't go to the artist; they go to Napster to get more.
No it is entirely unlike what Napster did. Napster replaced the labels, not the artist. They never claimed to produce the work himself.
People did not and do not usually go to artists to buy their work, especially not musicians. People go to a distributor for that, and artists have to plea with distributors to get their work published.
The revenue an artist can expect from a performance is marginal. Oftentimes artists will perform for free just to get some exposure. And regardless, most people don't pay to see something they've never heard of.
I suggest you go ask to some artists, what you are saying here is not true for the large majority of artists, famous or not. Exceptions are mostly those who do not perform live and the few who manage to sell milions of copies of a record. In general, selling records (CDs or whatever) is not and has never been profittable for musicians.
For any example you can find where it was in fact proffitable, there are at least a few thousand examples where it was not proffitable.
Selling records is proffitable for record companies however.
In that case you won't mind sending me all your work so I can resell it. Of course I won't compensate you; after all, you were already compensated.
I don't mind you copying my work when you find it. If you want me to do the service of sending it to you then pay me for it.
When's the last time you paid a writer or a musician to write a book or a song for you?
I'd change the question a bit. What was the last time I payed an artist to do something regardless of copyright? About 5 days ago now (last saterday while watching a live performance)
You're describing a false dichotomy. There's a vast middle ground between working for free and suing people for a living. It's called selling your work in a marketplace that recognizes the value of the creation in question. We have that, still, sort of.
Well, you might consider doing something called a live performance, and have people pay for seeing and hearing it? I know, it means actually having to work for the money but that is really what most of us have to do.
I create quite a bit of interlectual property myself, and I often get payed by the hour for doing so. Once it is created, its there, and no more efford from my side is required. I just fail to see why I should get compensated still from that point of on, I already did get compensated.
Availability of my work to others just means more peopel get to see it, and more peopel ask me to create something new that they have a need for.
People who create information for a living do not benefit when they cannot be paid for their work.
Abolishing copyright alltogether does in no way mean such people cannot be payed for their work, it does however mean that they will not receive royalties (ie, they are not going to be payed again and again and again and again for the same work, rather, like everyone else basicly, they will get payed for the time they spent once)
And if the people who produce professsional quality information (novelists, musicians, film makers, and so on) have to, say, flip burgers because everyone except them get the "advantage" of their work being unpaid for, then we'll have a society where the best brains and talent either go to waste, or are your pet information/entertainment slaves.
Nothing says they have to produce it for free and if they do not want to then they go do somethign else. Nothing is turning anyone into whatever kind of slave, stop trying to make silly emotional claims.
You make the wrong assumption that just because someone happens to be able to write (for example) that that also means they have to be payed for each time someone obtains a copy of their writing in order for the writer to get compensated.
This model did work for a while untill those who represent all those lovely film makers, writers, musicsians etc, managed to get the copyright term extended into the absurd.
You may not like this, but copyright, and any other interlectual property 'rights' are government granted exclusive rights, granted ONLY because it serves society to grant them, not to 'protect' the creator, that is a mere side effect.
That this is such, and that those are not 'natural rights' as you are trying to suggest is too bad for you, but is clear from the fact that the concept of physical property only has to be codified in law to get rid of physical property, while interlectual property as a concept needs to be codified in law to exist at all (note I am talking about the concept, not about all kinds of laws regulating the concept)
But why would you look at it that way? Because it bolsters the whole "information wants to be free" pablum that's used to make people feel better about ripping off artists?
Ask a question if you are interested in an answer, which you don't seem to be.
I suggest you go read up on this whole Open Source thing, and see how sharing information can work. None of it has anything to do with ripping off anyones creative work at all, rather, it has to do with the people creating that work sharing it on purpose, and seeing a huge payback as a result.
Before you judge a new model that is completely unlike the model you have been using so far, I strongly suggest you try to actually understand the new model.
Copyrights aren't government regulation, because the copyright holder can do whatever they want with it, including waive it entirely.
They are, go read your local version of copyright law. If it weren't for that law, copyright would not exist, whereas no laws are needed at all for the notion of physical property to exist. Again, you may not like this, but notion of copyright is not universal,
It is a property right, because it protects that which people have created - their property - should they choose to exercise that right.
You assume that what you created is yours. I doubt we are going to have any disagreement when it comes to physical objects, but I rather think you are completely failing to understand that quite a few people do not believe that this applies to ideas and expressions of those ideas. You have a choice between sharing it or not sharing it, and that is really where it ends. Anything beyond that is artificial.
In short, your argument is based on assumptions that are at the least not shared by everyone, and in some cases those assumptions are obviously wrong.
... Which does not change the fact that a layer 7 filter, such as an HTTP proxy, takes quite a bit more processing power than a simple IP-based (layer 3) ACL on a router.
Definitely, but cost != technically difficult.
In short, of course the parent's heard of a proxy. Of course it's easy *to set up* and the tools are available. Now, build me one that can handle multiple OC-48 pipes without slowing down traffic
I have setup such things using a cluster of proxy servers. it will cost you a bit, but it is not technocally difficult, and far from 'almost unheard of' as the gp implied.
and won't piss off paying customers by caching pages with old information (such as pages that a web designer is working on, or cnn.com).
Something that used to be a problem in the past but seldom if ever occurs with a properly deployed caching proxy nowadays, in part due to web pages being able to advise proxies about caching, and in part due to proxies having gotten a bit smarter about it.
When it still happens it is often the desire to save bandwidth and be aggressive instead of conservative with regards to caching policies, that cause such problems. One 'ISP' that shows how to not do it is AOL, but that doesn't mean it can't work.
Also, for realtime filtering of urls with a proxy, there is no requirement for caching and in fact caching is just a nice (and often usefull) extra option you get when using a http proxy, but is not the reason why proxy servers exist.
but dissmissing people who point out the problems with full disclosure is just plain irresponsible.
Lets see what we have here:
A company first denying the existance of a problem, then going to quite some length to downplay its possible impact
Another company, and an individual, having told the first company about that problem for months, inviting them over for a demonstration etc.
Now, 6 months after this started, the information became public. If it hadn't become public, there would still have no reason for Cisco to admit that one of its more famous claims regardign security was in fact not true.
THis actually shows why full disclosure does work, and is the only way to get certain things fixed. That doesn't mean that people should go public with everything they find, but it does quite show that unless things become public, companies have no incentive to actually address problems.
You should realize that what Mike Lynn demonstrated is not so much a specific exploit, but a potential consequence of vulnerabilities in IOS. It can be triggered with the specific exploit he used, but it can also be triggered from other future exploits.
Cisco simply believed this consequence to be impossible, and only after having seen it 'live' and after it has been described publicly, they are taking it seriously.
Now, if you have some information that Cisco has known about these flaws for sometime, and has been trying to cover it up, then by all means, please share
I'd think that them having a fix for the vulnerability for about 6 months might just indicate that they were aware of it.
The issue here is not the vulnerability itself, but the fact that Cisco has tried to deny and when that failed downplay the potential impact of it.
What is at stake here is their belief that it is impossible to exploit bugs in IOS such that you can run arbitrary code. This is an issue for any vulnerability found in IOS, and Lynn showed it is possible.
If you'd have read the article, you'd have seen that Cisco was definitely aware of it all, and for more then a few days. Complete belief in their own capabilities, and complete denial of what they were being told by others is the problem.
Creating a DoS condition is fine, but has no real value to a hacker other than the few obvious ones used by packet warriors. Being able to fully compromise a router and install your software is much more interesting and valuable.
No argument about it being way more usefull to get full control over a router, but being able to DOS it is quite usefull to a hacker, esp. when there happen to be some nameservers behind the router for example
the individual says, "by the way, it was much worse then I initially told you and I plan to talk about it in about 2 months". At that point, you would need some time to understand what the issues are an formulate a response.
I think that the issue was more Cisco refusing to accep that the vulnerability was way serious, and tried to downplay it.
You would be right if Cisco would have been listening from the start.
By disseminating information about how to attack a software/firmware vulnerability you are not reducing the risk of using that product unless someone can stop using that product without impacting their business negatively.
In quite a few cases this results in the problem being fixed by the producer. Result is that the risk is in fact reduced.
And of course if you have a vested interest in them not using it, or using something else then there is another even more serious issue there -- can you see the potential problem here? Banks, in the previous example, would all be free to hire independants to rave about the insecurity of their competing banks and dig for flaws)
Look again. There is an entire industry of 'research institutes' and spin masters dedicated to doing just that.
Advertising is regulated, and that puts some limits on it, but what you say is happening all the time really.
Slashdot Mirror
I could think of 2 thinks...
1. get notified about the session key being used so you don't have to brute force it
2. get an unencrypted copy of the data
Either way, life gets a lot easier.
Im sorry but how is that relavent to them tapping VoIP?
Skype uses AES for encrypting conversations so if you want to tap such a conversation you supposedly have to decrypt it.
From a Skype VoIP FAQ:
How does Skype protect my privacy?
Skype is encrypted end-to-end because it uses the public Internet to transport your voice calls and text messages and sometimes these calls are routed through other peers. Skype encryption ensures that no other party can eavesdrop on your call or read your instant messages.
Skype uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES, also known as Rijndael) which is used by U.S. Government organizations to protect sensitive information. Skype uses 256-bit encryption, which has a total of 1.1 x 1077 possible keys, in order to actively encrypt the data in each Skype call or instant message. Skype uses 1024 bit RSA to negotiate symmetric AES keys. User public keys are certified by the Skype server at login using 1536 or 2048-bit RSA certificates.
So.. it seems they are using 256 bit AES for encryption.
I don't know about this user public key part.. seeing how I don't have to carry around a private key and can just login from anywhere with my username/password, that key seems to not be used for identifying users.
why do they need to screw with our hardware installing global backdoors for hackers and viruses alike!
Because even the feds still have some trouble doing realtime decryption of aes without some help of a backdoor?
didn't think the mods would go so crazy about it :-)
:)
THey didn't.. they already are crazy as it is
So, if the person who invests huge money in producing that content thinks you're right, and that they'll be better able to pay back their investors if more people get the work without paying for it, then surely they can waive their copyright and say, "Hey! Please feel free to copy this!" But for those that find that their work sells only a few copies before it's torrented all over the place and sales fall way off - why not leave them the choice?
So far there is no reason to believe that the fact that things appear on p2p networks affect sales. If you are going to tell me now how sales dropped over the last few years I'd like to point out that both the economy didn't do that well in that time, and people have been buying way more DVDs and can spend their money only once.
And, for those people so idealogically horrified by artists that want to retain copyright control, surely they don't like those people anyway, right? Why would they want to be entertained by someone for whom they have such disdain?
Which ignores the fact that in many cases the copyright is actually transfered to the record company.
That's the real heart of the hypocrisy, I think. The people that are so sure that free distribution of the creative work is better for everyone (including the people who are trying to earn a living from it)... if those people are making such a good case, then why aren't more artists giving away their work? Some are. The vast majority are not, or do so only under very specific circumstances. Why? Because the people that say it should be free are not very convincing about how the artist will be able to own a decent home or send their children to a nice college (or just buy a very nice new piece of digital recording equipment or $50,000 video editor for that matter) based on free distribution of their work
So it has een tried by few so far, and you compare the results with that of an industry that has been around for a century? That surely makes sense. Lets talk again about comparing those some 20 years from now or so to se what actually works better.
This of course completely ignores the fact that the large majority of artists that get to deal with record companies never get to make a profit from that, and of course the small fact that most musicians never get to get a contract from a record company, and those who can live from that, let alone actually buy that nice video mixer, are an extremely small minority.
Excellence _is_ the exception. This has nothing to do with any real or perceived evilness of the record companies.
I'm not claiming that recording companies are evil perse but I do not like quite a few of the 'anti piracy' arguments that are being used by them, and I think that some of the arguments are outright lies and that that is not very ethical to do.
I also believe that just as the ability to reprint books changed the world for writers, the invention of decent enough quality sound recording changed the world for mucisians (in both cases it didn't destroy them at all eventho it at first glance made most of them not needed anymore) and now the internet is changing the world for those who made their business out of distribution.
And then I believe that while copyright in itself is a usefull tool that can work in the advantage of all, its current implementation is hopelessly broken both due to basicly never expiring and failing to adapt to the current state of technology.
With regards to Prince, please go read what he has to say, it comes down to him not wanting to have anythign to do with them anymore. Also, getting rich seldom has to do with ethics, and if it does it is more often lack of ethics that makes one rich.
Evidently, but under copyright law the only person who has the right to distribute things (or to transfer that right) is the author. So the right to distribution and authorship are closely related.
That in no way means that distributing something is the same as claiming to be the author, and that was the claim you made (with the flawed napster example)
Yes and no. It would be true if all record companies and book publishers existed solely to generate as much profit as possible.
For as far as they are public companies, they have a duty to their shareholders to maximize profit. Good art is a nice to have thing in that, but commercial value is the deciding factor.
Yes, I noticed that, you seem to be confused about your attitudes towards the music industry. First you say they should be free to offer the service they're offering, then the next paragraph you make it sound like there is something unethical or unjust about that service. So what is it?
Asking money for their services is no problem. Letting artists pay the bill and then claiming to the public that the record companies pay it is not ethical.
Then, that paragraph was there to point out why most mucisians never make a proffit from a record, not to argue that what happened was ethical or not.
Artists can grant unlimited distribution today. Very few do. Why? Because the number of artists that have used this route to gain major success is almost zero (and I'm being generous here). The alternative route, via the record companies, simply has a much better track record.
Maybe, maybe not. maybe only a few tried so far.
Furthermore, the files most shared on the P2P networks are those by major artists; Britney, etc. The argument that P2P leads people to discover new music and bands and that this might bring those bands riches and fame is totally unfounded.
Riches and fame eh? well, getting that through the 'regular' way of recording companies doesn't have much of a chance either. THere are just not that many people who have what it takes to become that.
Dig deeper and you'll find that most of the money comes from sponsors and subsidies, even for rock music -- unless, of course, the band is fairly popular, but then they fall outside of the scope of this argument.
Ah yes, the tiny few artists who did well with record companies are in scope, and those who do well with other means are not? I get it now..
Right, because artists like Madonna, Kurt Cobain, Prince, Michael Jackson, Snoop Dog, N.E.R.D., Missy Elliott are all one trick ponies...
Nope, and there are more examples, tho finding examples from the last 15 years is a lot more difficult then ones from 30 years ago, and those are all still the exception and not the rule.
You may want to go listen to Prince for a bit to hear some more about recording companies and ethics and what they really do for an artist btw, he has some interesting experience to share there.
This is what copyright is. Copyright is the exclusive right of an author to distribute his work. If I distribute your work without your permission, I am implying that I have the right to distribute your work, in other words, that I'm the author (or at least have reached some sort of understanding with you regarding distribution of your work).
Right to distribute is not the same as having created a work. It is pretty normal that the distributor and creator are not the same. People are pretty much used to the fact that there is a song writer and one or more mucisians creating a work and that those are usually not the ones distributing the result.
Please stop twisting things to suit your argument.
"Better" applies to functional work such as chairs and software. It doesn't really apply to art. The market is a pretty good judge of the functionality of a product like a chair or a piece of software, but it's a remarkably poor judge of the value of a work of art.
Commercial enterprices interested in making money instead of art are also a very bad judge of the value of a work of art (unless you mean the direct commercial value maybe)
If promoting art is the idea then maybe look again at that dreaded state funded public broadcasting corporation in the UK for an example of how that can be done.
You say this like it's some kind of injustice. Why shouldn't the record companies charge for their services? Basically they're extending huge credits to extremely risky clients. For every artist who makes it and generates sufficient revenue there are dozens who end up never making any money and who are written off.
And why did you forget to read and quote the lines just above it where I stated that I believe that it is quite valid for recording companies to charge for their services.
Are you just picking a few things you disagree with in order to repeat your argument over and over or something?
Yes; but how does unlimited distribution make this any easier?
Unlimited distribution makes it easier to get a larger public to know you and may very well help getting more people to see you perform live also.
What you must ask yourself is where the money comes from. You will find that in almost all cases it comes from direct or indirect subsidies and/or sponsorships.
But sponsorships are exactly what record companies provide. The only difference is that in the case of record companies, the deal is a lot more transparent and the requirements of the record companies are a lot more stringent. But then, the potential payoff is a lot bigger
Sponsorship and subsidies are quite important for symphonic music here, a lot less so for rock music.
This may be a bit less transparant maybe then record companies, the resulting art is generally of a much higher value then the next one trick pony act comming out of those recording companies.
But honestly, a decent street mucisian overhere can already make the equivalent of a few 100 USD a day. Maybe not a fantastic income, but definitely enough to live on. Quite a few are not good enough to manage that, but as with any profession, you can only live from it as long as you are good enough (or demand is high enough so that standards drop).
If there were no copyright protection on the film, a cinema chain would be under no obligation to compensate the film maker.
They have to get the film first. There is no reason why the film maker cannot guarantee proper compensation by means of a contract there.
Oh, the cinema chain is going to copy it from another chain? I'm sure that other chain is wanting to let go of part of its customers... (not to mention that the same contract mentioned earlier can solve this at least legally)
This is a bigger issue for DVDs indeed. I do buy originals of those as well (eventho where I live it is perfectly legal to borrow/rent them and copy them for your own use) because of many reasons, wanting to compensate the creator of the work being just one. Nice merchandice being another, wanting to 'own an original' also being an important one at times.
Right - so long as everyone around the world has the integrity to pay for the work anyway. That won't happen.
I think I showed pretty well why that is not true in case of cinemas, and why there are more reasons then that to go buy a DVD or CD.
I'm not trying to redress the argument to suit my needs.
Yes you did. You changed it from copying and/or distributing (for proffit or not) into taking credit for creating a work.
You say that you don't care whether someone copies your work and makes money off of it, because you assume that people will come to you when the need new work.
You are right about what I said, but the reason you give is not correct. I hope people will come to me for new works because I have the ability to create them. If someone else can do that better then obviously people will go to someone else.
The person who distributed the work could try to write something new, fine with me, I trust my ability to do that better however.
Just for your info, I am not against copyright as such, but I do not believe current copyright law is serving its stated purpose, and I do not believe it is just either. If you want to know what I'd think to be better, look here
So according to you musicians can't make money at all: the record companies rip them off and customers don't buy direct. The problem with this view is that it doesn't reflect reality.
That view reflects reality for the large majority of musicians out there. As said, there are exceptions, but for each such exception, you can find thousands of examples of the opposite.
I am not going to judge if record companies rip them off, and I can see there being a valid argument in record companies providing a service which if the artist wants/needs it, has a price.
Matter of fact is that virtually all artists contracted by recording companies have to pay a very substantial part of the cost of producing and marketing a record, and a record has to sell extremely well to break even on that. It is not unusual to start record sales with a substantial debt, and end it with a smaller debt. Ending with a proffit is not the rule however. (interestingly, record companies claim this as being one of the reasons why they need the huge proffit margins on CDs and the like, while in virtually all cases the artists pay most of the bill for it)
This is somewhat different with smaller recording companies (cost of marketing is lower when there is less marketing done for example), but it is still not easy at all to make a proffit, let alone a living from that.
On the other hand, I have half a dozen people in my friends circle alone who live from performing music (mostly rock and symphonic)
The picture you are painting is really only true for the very very tiny group of extremely well selling musicians.
That isn't a wrong assumption; it's a legal one. Just because you don't happen to like the legality doesn't make it wrong. Clearly the vast majority of Americans are just fine with paying authors and musicians for their work and have no problem with reasonable copyright laws.
Legal is not the same as right.
I have no problem with REASONABLE copyright laws either, but first of all I do not believe copyright law to be reasonable as it is, and second, I do not believe it is needed in any form that resembles what it is now.
That most people don't mind current copyright law is because of ignorance, not because they actually know what it is about.
So I write a book, you distribute for free, and I get...what? A condescending pat on the back from you because I bowed down before your false moral position? And that feeds my family...how?
What actually makes you think you have a right to earn your money with writing a book? There are many things I do, like to do, and find usefull to do without getting compensation for them, I just don't turn them into a job.
I have a better idea. We stick with the current idea of copyright and you protest the idea by refusing to purchase anything that's copyrighted. That way we're both happy.
Come back when we actually get to see the advantages copyright is supposed to have for society, ie, when there is a REASONABLE term to copyright (and reasonable is definitely not longer then 50 years)
Indeed. I created it, therefore it's mine.
Someone wants back that great idea called a wheel and such..
What? That sort of material can't be performed live? Huh. I guess we'll just have to give it up, then.
Why not watch it in a cinema, thats what I did (regardless of the fact that I already had a copy of it before I saw it in the cinema)
You may even consider buying the DVDs if you want to provide some encouragement..
This still does not require copyright.
You don't get it; I won't just copy your work, I'll claim credit for it, so that people come to me for new work, not to me.
That is not what is going on, don't try to change things to make them fit your argument.
You can redistribute my work without having to pay me, regardless of asking money for it. Claiming you made it is something else, and seperate from copyright, it is an outright lie.
This is exactly what has happened with Napster and it's descendants: when people hear a great tune, they don't go to the artist; they go to Napster to get more.
No it is entirely unlike what Napster did. Napster replaced the labels, not the artist. They never claimed to produce the work himself.
People did not and do not usually go to artists to buy their work, especially not musicians. People go to a distributor for that, and artists have to plea with distributors to get their work published.
The revenue an artist can expect from a performance is marginal. Oftentimes artists will perform for free just to get some exposure. And regardless, most people don't pay to see something they've never heard of.
I suggest you go ask to some artists, what you are saying here is not true for the large majority of artists, famous or not. Exceptions are mostly those who do not perform live and the few who manage to sell milions of copies of a record. In general, selling records (CDs or whatever) is not and has never been profittable for musicians.
For any example you can find where it was in fact proffitable, there are at least a few thousand examples where it was not proffitable.
Selling records is proffitable for record companies however.
In that case you won't mind sending me all your work so I can resell it. Of course I won't compensate you; after all, you were already compensated.
I don't mind you copying my work when you find it. If you want me to do the service of sending it to you then pay me for it.
When's the last time you paid a writer or a musician to write a book or a song for you?
I'd change the question a bit. What was the last time I payed an artist to do something regardless of copyright? About 5 days ago now (last saterday while watching a live performance)
You're describing a false dichotomy. There's a vast middle ground between working for free and suing people for a living. It's called selling your work in a marketplace that recognizes the value of the creation in question. We have that, still, sort of.
Well, you might consider doing something called a live performance, and have people pay for seeing and hearing it? I know, it means actually having to work for the money but that is really what most of us have to do.
I create quite a bit of interlectual property myself, and I often get payed by the hour for doing so. Once it is created, its there, and no more efford from my side is required. I just fail to see why I should get compensated still from that point of on, I already did get compensated.
Availability of my work to others just means more peopel get to see it, and more peopel ask me to create something new that they have a need for.
People who create information for a living do not benefit when they cannot be paid for their work.
Abolishing copyright alltogether does in no way mean such people cannot be payed for their work, it does however mean that they will not receive royalties (ie, they are not going to be payed again and again and again and again for the same work, rather, like everyone else basicly, they will get payed for the time they spent once)
And if the people who produce professsional quality information (novelists, musicians, film makers, and so on) have to, say, flip burgers because everyone except them get the "advantage" of their work being unpaid for, then we'll have a society where the best brains and talent either go to waste, or are your pet information/entertainment slaves.
Nothing says they have to produce it for free and if they do not want to then they go do somethign else. Nothing is turning anyone into whatever kind of slave, stop trying to make silly emotional claims.
You make the wrong assumption that just because someone happens to be able to write (for example) that that also means they have to be payed for each time someone obtains a copy of their writing in order for the writer to get compensated.
This model did work for a while untill those who represent all those lovely film makers, writers, musicsians etc, managed to get the copyright term extended into the absurd.
You may not like this, but copyright, and any other interlectual property 'rights' are government granted exclusive rights, granted ONLY because it serves society to grant them, not to 'protect' the creator, that is a mere side effect.
That this is such, and that those are not 'natural rights' as you are trying to suggest is too bad for you, but is clear from the fact that the concept of physical property only has to be codified in law to get rid of physical property, while interlectual property as a concept needs to be codified in law to exist at all (note I am talking about the concept, not about all kinds of laws regulating the concept)
But why would you look at it that way? Because it bolsters the whole "information wants to be free" pablum that's used to make people feel better about ripping off artists?
Ask a question if you are interested in an answer, which you don't seem to be.
I suggest you go read up on this whole Open Source thing, and see how sharing information can work. None of it has anything to do with ripping off anyones creative work at all, rather, it has to do with the people creating that work sharing it on purpose, and seeing a huge payback as a result.
Before you judge a new model that is completely unlike the model you have been using so far, I strongly suggest you try to actually understand the new model.
Copyrights aren't government regulation, because the copyright holder can do whatever they want with it, including waive it entirely.
They are, go read your local version of copyright law. If it weren't for that law, copyright would not exist, whereas no laws are needed at all for the notion of physical property to exist. Again, you may not like this, but notion of copyright is not universal,
It is a property right, because it protects that which people have created - their property - should they choose to exercise that right.
You assume that what you created is yours. I doubt we are going to have any disagreement when it comes to physical objects, but I rather think you are completely failing to understand that quite a few people do not believe that this applies to ideas and expressions of those ideas. You have a choice between sharing it or not sharing it, and that is really where it ends. Anything beyond that is artificial.
In short, your argument is based on assumptions that are at the least not shared by everyone, and in some cases those assumptions are obviously wrong.
Unless you have only one or at most a few wireless clients that setup can be fine. In all other cases you should use something else then PSK
... Which does not change the fact that a layer 7 filter, such as an HTTP proxy, takes quite a bit more processing power than a simple IP-based (layer 3) ACL on a router.
Definitely, but cost != technically difficult.
In short, of course the parent's heard of a proxy. Of course it's easy *to set up* and the tools are available. Now, build me one that can handle multiple OC-48 pipes without slowing down traffic
I have setup such things using a cluster of proxy servers. it will cost you a bit, but it is not technocally difficult, and far from 'almost unheard of' as the gp implied.
and won't piss off paying customers by caching pages with old information (such as pages that a web designer is working on, or cnn.com).
Something that used to be a problem in the past but seldom if ever occurs with a properly deployed caching proxy nowadays, in part due to web pages being able to advise proxies about caching, and in part due to proxies having gotten a bit smarter about it.
When it still happens it is often the desire to save bandwidth and be aggressive instead of conservative with regards to caching policies, that cause such problems. One 'ISP' that shows how to not do it is AOL, but that doesn't mean it can't work.
Also, for realtime filtering of urls with a proxy, there is no requirement for caching and in fact caching is just a nice (and often usefull) extra option you get when using a http proxy, but is not the reason why proxy servers exist.
While not unheard of, it requires a whole lot more processing power because you need to monitor the stream and parse text headers.
Ever heard about http proxy servers and transparant proxying?
In case of http its really easy since the tools for doing it are readily available and have been for a long time.
but dissmissing people who point out the problems with full disclosure is just plain irresponsible.
Lets see what we have here:
A company first denying the existance of a problem, then going to quite some length to downplay its possible impact
Another company, and an individual, having told the first company about that problem for months, inviting them over for a demonstration etc.
Now, 6 months after this started, the information became public. If it hadn't become public, there would still have no reason for Cisco to admit that one of its more famous claims regardign security was in fact not true.
THis actually shows why full disclosure does work, and is the only way to get certain things fixed. That doesn't mean that people should go public with everything they find, but it does quite show that unless things become public, companies have no incentive to actually address problems.
You should realize that what Mike Lynn demonstrated is not so much a specific exploit, but a potential consequence of vulnerabilities in IOS. It can be triggered with the specific exploit he used, but it can also be triggered from other future exploits.
Cisco simply believed this consequence to be impossible, and only after having seen it 'live' and after it has been described publicly, they are taking it seriously.
Now, if you have some information that Cisco has known about these flaws for sometime, and has been trying to cover it up, then by all means, please share
I'd think that them having a fix for the vulnerability for about 6 months might just indicate that they were aware of it.
The issue here is not the vulnerability itself, but the fact that Cisco has tried to deny and when that failed downplay the potential impact of it.
What is at stake here is their belief that it is impossible to exploit bugs in IOS such that you can run arbitrary code. This is an issue for any vulnerability found in IOS, and Lynn showed it is possible.
If you'd have read the article, you'd have seen that Cisco was definitely aware of it all, and for more then a few days. Complete belief in their own capabilities, and complete denial of what they were being told by others is the problem.
Creating a DoS condition is fine, but has no real value to a hacker other than the few obvious ones used by packet warriors. Being able to fully compromise a router and install your software is much more interesting and valuable.
No argument about it being way more usefull to get full control over a router, but being able to DOS it is quite usefull to a hacker, esp. when there happen to be some nameservers behind the router for example
the individual says, "by the way, it was much worse then I initially told you and I plan to talk about it in about 2 months". At that point, you would need some time to understand what the issues are an formulate a response.
I think that the issue was more Cisco refusing to accep that the vulnerability was way serious, and tried to downplay it.
You would be right if Cisco would have been listening from the start.
By disseminating information about how
to attack a software/firmware vulnerability
you are not reducing the risk of using that
product unless someone can stop using that
product without impacting their business
negatively.
In quite a few cases this results in the problem being fixed by the producer. Result is that the risk is in fact reduced.
And of course if you have
a vested interest in them not using it,
or using something else then there is another
even more serious issue there -- can you
see the potential problem here? Banks, in
the previous example, would all be free to
hire independants to rave about the insecurity
of their competing banks and dig for flaws)
Look again. There is an entire industry of 'research institutes' and spin masters dedicated to doing just that.
Advertising is regulated, and that puts some limits on it, but what you say is happening all the time really.