This is one of the days where it's great to live in Europe. You see, EULAs are invalid here. In fact, they have been struck down times and again in court. Now the funny thing is that Bioware is in the US. Which means I'm not bound by their EULA, but if I slap one on my module, they're bound by that. <grin>
Uh, I don't own a PS, never did, probably never will. No idea why you come up with the PS in your "counterargument" - maybe it was the only one you could find?:-)
Now, to that other argument: What a great idea a single central site is has been proven again and again and again. Last I checked, we even had a term for it: Single Point of Failure.
Seriously, this just may be the end of the xbox, and is a major blow to M$ as a whole. Why? Because it removes what another poster has mentioned, the "invulnerability myth". No more bullying people around without the risk of backfire, billy.
And since M$ can't compete on a level playing field, the xbox just got shafted. Not that I'd shed a tear.
Yes, mass marketing has created media as we know them today. For all I know, the rest of human culture pretty much existed because of sponsorship (usually by nobles) or because the creators were just so crazy with it that they had to create something even though they had a day job. Obviously, both methods promote quality much better than what we have today. Also obviously, they don't allow for niche markets very much.
About the revenue models - my point was all along that if I had a choice, I'd be glad to make it. I like Opera for that reason.
And yes, I played Illuminati (but the board game, no longer in production I think). I also like to play with conspiracy theories somewhat. The thing about them is that they're just like TV news: Oversimplified accounts to bring a complex matter down to headline size.
A better board might be dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu - a mailing list I'm on that hasn't been about DVDs for quite a while now (was created during the high times of DeCSS).
I thought you americans would always sue everyone over pretty much everything - so where's the lawsuit? I'm fairly sure that over here in europe, where we still have some consumer protection laws, this CD would violate at least half of them (let's see - misleading advertisement, sale of known defective stuff, intent to damage private property...)
A class-action lawsuit (not possible in europe) could make you rich. Just claim the total sales volume of iMacs as the damage and sue on behalf of all iMac owners (it may or may not help to be one).
More seriously, why isn't there a lawsuit? Are corporations the only ones with a license to abuse the courts?
I, too, like this exchange going on long after the initial story dropped off the front page. But I guess we are coming to an end real soon, with all arguments exchanged.
Let me briefly go through yours back to front. Yes, the networks are not yet asking for subsidies, except if you count MPAA et al in among the crowd and new harsh "anti-piracy" laws a form of government subsidiaries. And, just to be fair, the networks are already receiving something for free: The use of the public airwaves.
The difference between taking my idea and marketing it as yours and taking my idea and using it in a way unforseen by me is mostly one of just reward. Taking ABC and broadcasting it as, say,/. TV, would be something I consider unethical, too. But if your business model rests on my stupidity and/or inability, then me enabling myself is not unethical. The whole point is that one is based on a shortcoming, on a one-sided deal. As I said so eloquently: If the one-sidedness is removed, I'd stop having an issue with it.
And yes, the main problem behind all this is that nobody can really make something of it. If I had the ultimate solution, I'd have written a book about it. The whole "intellectual property" debate is not becoming, it already is one of the turning points of our culture. Let me explain: In early cultures, knowledge was generally viewed as a public good. I'm not talking secret procedures to create some weird chemical, I'm talking folk-lore, stories, myth, but also everyday ideas like cooking receipts(sp?) or hunting tips. We still owe the openness (and probably success) of science to these times, as the open exchange of scientific ideas was started in times and places such as ancient greek. During the christian, i.e. dark, middle ages, knowledge became "dangerous" and/or reserved for the elite, i.e. the clergy. Books were kept away from the people. Even the language of science and religion was reserved for the few. We are, I believe, now at a point where both approaches are fighting with each other. It is interesting to note that the proponents of stronger "intellectual property" laws usually coincide with what is in the USofA the "religious right". That may or may not be a coincidence. Key point: The barriers to widespread knowledge that were artificially errected during the middle ages have finally fallen. Both language and the tools to acquire and distribute information are now - once again - available to large parts of the people.
IMHO, "intellectual property" is already dead, it just hasn't stopped moving yet, and in its death throws is moving about much more ferociously than ever before. But in a few decades, few will even remember that IP could stand for anything besides Internet Protocol.
The problem isn't that they don't like people watching their movies or listening to their music without paying. The problem is that they go way overboard with the actions to prevent it.
When you shoot everyone with the same hair colour as the bad guy, you shouldn't be surprised that people start to hate you.
anyone with physical access to the machine can install a version of the software which looks the same but has a back door. It used to be that only the original writers had that power,
Uh, not true. Tons of software have been backdoored without access to the source code. Just last year at Blackhat Europe, a very bright guy from Australia described in detail a method that could be used to backdoor a running process.
First of all, let me state clearly what my POV is: There is no intellectual property. Applying the concept of property to creations of the mind was the core mistake that we're still suffering from.
Now I don't think that the difference between physical or not is the key point. Taking my idea and saying its your own is just as unethical as taking my car. However, the difference that I still have my idea, but I lack my car, is also to be taken into account.
Once you free yourself of the property model, you can do both. Taking my idea is unethical, but it's not theft. It's something else. What it is depends on what exactly you do, and a property-model doesn't mirror that. e.g. taking my music and publishing it as your own is very different from taking my music and listening to it without paying.
So what is happening in the case of TV and advertisement? What happens is that the consumer is making a choice that he could not (easily) make earlier - watch some things, but not others. The business model of TV, however, was based on the unavailability of this choice. Is it unethical for the consumer? I don't think so. We have no voice in the kind of, frequency or placement of ads, therefore we are looking at a one-sided deal. What has changed is that we can suddenly change the deal, and that we do so is a clear sign that we don't consider the deal fair anymore. Mostly because TV has changed from "programs interrupted by some ads" to "non-stop advertising with some shows inbetween". Over time, the deal has slowly shifted in our disfavor, and now the technical means have appeared to show that we are not satisfied with it any longer.
An EULA would surely not be the solution. However, I want to offer a solution what would - IMHO - answer the ethics question:
Make advertisement programmable. Much like in Opera, give the TV viewer a place where he can say which and how many ads he is willing to take in. Make a simple ratings system that limits the program, e.g. people who don't want many ads only get the cheap programs and the premium content is only watchable if you view enough ads to pay your share. This, too, could be circumvented. But now suddenly I would consider it unethical to do so, because there has been an active agreement. It doesn't matter if that agreement is based on a 100-page contract or five clicks with the mouse.
To the final question: A difficult one to answer. I guess I would be unhappy if my own snakeoil business model suddenly evaporates. However, I think I would be bright enough to not whine in public about how unfair it is that people are a little smarter than I had hoped all the time.
Actually, mostly Tony Blair himself. Ever noticed how much the guy loves to be in the company of Bill Gates? In contrast, the german government had a left-swing in the last general elections, and with the leftist green party came a bunch of people into the parliament that had actually heard of or even - gasp - used Linux. Microsoft only realized when the parliament was publicly discussing using Linux for all its computers, and retaliated with massive lobbying, winning at least a compromise.
So this is only the latest event in a number of battles for the european governments.
The bookclub delivers a physical item. The choice for me is throwing it away or returning it. Obviously, returning it is the right thing to do.
TV (and, btw. I don't even own one, I discuss this because of the social/contract points) works differently. They broadcast all over the PUBLIC airwaves, and the costs are independent of the number of people listening in.
Yes, there is a certain working system that has been established. However, no deal was ever struck, so each side may bottle out at any time, no obligations. If people stop watching TV (which I did a couple years ago) or stop watching parts of TV, such as the ads, then too bad.
And no, I absolutely do not believe in law being the solution. On the contrary, there is no better proof that something is fucked then the need of a law about it.
I understand their business model. But, I also understand they built their castle on quicksand. It held surprisingly well for a couple years, now it's shifting. Is it so hard to understand that I have no sympathy for their whinings?
Take a look at the things that are more expensive over here. It won't take you a long time to realize where the cartels are located. Yupp, USofA. DVDs are more expensive, because of Hollyweird. The major RIAA members are just as much american as the major MPAA members. The only thing I know off-hand that is more expensive in europe because of reasons european is gas/oil.
I'm sure you understand that it's your watching of commercials that pays for the content. Doesn't mean you have to watch the commercials, but then it isn't really fair that you watch the content either, is it? That, in effect, is the 'contract.'
No, it is not. You Have Been Brainwashed(tm).
A contract requires a meeting of wills, two sides agreeing on an exchange. In the case of TV, there is no agreement happening. They deliver stuff to my house. I didn't even ask for the stuff, much less did I ever agree to their shaky business model.
What they are claiming is a right because things always worked like that. That's where the dinosaurs come in - they could've claimed the same right. Probably did. Didn't make any difference, though.
How about showing European style ads with breasts showing? I hate American TV for how sanitized it is.
The problem is that as with all things advertisement, they just overdo it. The US is usually much worse in excessiveness than europe, so I don't want to even start imagining what your ads will look like once that has started. Well, I guess the tame ones will have a hardcore scene where they moan the product name all the time.
.. he does have a point, in that commercial TV is supported by.. surprise surprise, commercials!!
Yes, he does. So did the dinosaurs when they died because their environment changed. Well, except that I don't think they complained about it in interviews.
The world is changing, and if paid-by-advertisement doesn't work anymore, you should go and find a new business model.
I forsee that a law (or ten) will be made about this, maybe the "Television Advertisement Consumer Protection Act". Nobody will ask the question of whether something seemingly important enough for society to have a law about should not instead be supported financially, i.e. your taxes pay for the TV, but it comes ad-free. It's not that you're not paying already, it's just that the costs are hidden. For example in the fact that TV broadcast frequencies are given away for free, even though UMTS proved that frequencies are worth billions of dollars. So that's a multi-billion $ subsidiary to the TV networks already. And they still sing the old (and becoming boring fast) MPAA song "we're going to diiieeee!".
This is good news. I've been a Debian fan for a while, but being able to point to this posting as a proof of just how serious they take security (serious enough to delay a release) will make it much easier for me to push Debian in my work environment.
the article is one of those "got press release, changed a few words, printed it" pieces of "journalism". here's what I wrote to BBC in reply:
Dear Jane Wakefield,
In the article titled "Net pirates 'threaten software industry'", posted at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1 951000/1951231.stm on Monday, 29 April, 2002, 07:52 GMT 08:52 UK, you write down a few items that I don't consider to be entirely correct, and even more that are very one-sided.
Allow me to comment on some of these items:
> The warning was issued at a conference, organised by the Business > Software Alliance (BSA), which attracted delegates from firms such as > Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and Symantec.
This sounds like an accomplishment with credits to the BSA, except that the BSA is funded by the firms mentioned, especially Microsoft. Once you check the speakers list against the BSA membership list, you realize that what appears to be a conference is, in fact, a PR meeting. Pointing this out to the reader would have enabled him to take the points made by these "delegates" with the grain of salt they deserve.
> The meeting was told that in 2000 the software industry in Europe lost > $3bn to pirates.
I have always been interested in finding out just how BSA and other "independent" researchers arrive at these figures. They don't tell. Any credible claim should name its sources, shouldn't it?
> This figure is thought to be only a tiny fraction of the amount of > piracy that is going on every day on the internet.
If I interpret "tiny fraction" as less than 10%, I'm at $30bn EVERY DAY, or about 11 trillion per year. The GDP of the UK in 2000 was $1.36 trillion. So these people are telling you that internet piracy is a business 10 times the size of the whole UK economy? Obviously that is, if you excuse the word, bullshit. The sentence does, however, create the impression that internet piracy is unbelievably huge. Even so, $30bn is more than Microsoft's worldwide net profits, and a considerable percentage of the total net earnings of europe's software industry. A claim of this size better be substantiated by serious facts and sources. Where are they?
> "We can't estimate how much piracy is on the net but in one day we > found a million sites under a search for one of the codenames for > pirated software," said a BSA spokesperson.
One of the "codenames" is "warez" and does indeed return about 4,230,000 hits when put into google. However, what kind of point does that make? "Buckingham Palace" returns 99,300 hits, but as far as I am aware, there is only one.
More to the point, a search engine just tells you how many sites mention a given topic. Ironically, the BSA's own websites, both at bsa.org and national sites such as bsa.de or bsa.org.tr appear in the above-mentioned search for "warez", because they use the "bad word". A majority of the "real" warez sites are just traps with pornographic advertisement. A little research would have taken an hour or two and been quite revealing.
Warez sites are very real. The BSA, however, having an agenda, is greatly exagerating both their number and capabilities.
Finally, here are a few choice quotes that should have really ticked you off to the fact that the figures are made up:
> The meeting was told that in 2000 the software industry in Europe > lost $3bn to pirates. [...] > Europe has a greater rate of piracy than the US - around 34% [...] > It is forecast to grow from £35bn in 2000
Maybe math works differently in america, but even without a calculator I can see that $3bn isn't 34% of $50bn.
It sorries me when I see journalists lifting whole articles almost verbatim out of corporate press releases. It is especially not the kind of reporting I expect from a respectable news source like BBC.
For the record, I am a computer security professional with a telco company. I have been working professionally on the internet for over 5 years, and I have seen the warez scene both from inside (when I was a teenager) and from the outside now that I deal with people abusing our computer resources for these purposes or help the law enforcement agencies to track criminals through our systems.
Piracy is real, no question about it. The BSA, however, justifies its very existence by a gross exageration of the facts, and as a very interested party should not be believed too much.
The engine has been out for Linux for quite a long time. I'm a mapper for one game project that uses the torque engine, and I know I haven't been hallucinating the past weeks when I was working on my maps on my Linux machine.
What has been released recently (last week or so) was the beta client of Realm Wars, a community-developed game using the torque engine. That's a huge difference, especially since that doesn't mean squat about Legends or any other of the torque-based games currently in development.
Why not read the Grundgesetz, the constitution of Germany? You may be interested in article 5, which guarantees freedom of speech, details what it extends to (e.g. explicitly includes writing and pictures, but also the right to acquire information) and where the limits are (violation of other laws and defamation).
There is freedom of speech in Germany, as part of the constitution. The main difference is that free speech is considered to be one of many rights, not "the #1 amendment", so it is more often weighted against other rights. As we all know, once lawyers start to weigh and argue about things, anything can happen and right or wrong isn't really a matter anymore.
The GPL in no way inhibits intellectual property. It is simply a software license that imposes contractual conditions on the use of software. It is only unusual in that it does not require payment.
Actually, what's special about the GPL is not the no-cost aspect (which many non-free licenses share, including some Micro$oft EULAs), but that it gives you rights instead of taking them away. The only requirement (i.e. "the deal") is that you in turn must pass on these rights.
Free beer is easy to get from any beverages company on a marketing run.
YES THEY ARE. They are trying to restrict my right to know of a second-hand book for sale
uh, no. You still have the right to know about the 2nd hand book sale. You'll just have to find out on your own. You have a right to information (not sure, I know that in my country I do), but you don't have a right to be spoon-fed every little bit of it.
Slashdot Mirror
This is one of the days where it's great to live in Europe. You see, EULAs are invalid here. In fact, they have been struck down times and again in court.
Now the funny thing is that Bioware is in the US. Which means I'm not bound by their EULA, but if I slap one on my module, they're bound by that. <grin>
Now there is only one important question that I'd have expected to see here, and possibly with an answer already:
Does it work in Wine or WineX ?
I cannot help but chuckle at PS2 fanboys.
:-)
Uh, I don't own a PS, never did, probably never will. No idea why you come up with the PS in your "counterargument" - maybe it was the only one you could find?
Now, to that other argument: What a great idea a single central site is has been proven again and again and again. Last I checked, we even had a term for it: Single Point of Failure.
Seriously, this just may be the end of the xbox, and is a major blow to M$ as a whole. Why? Because it removes what another poster has mentioned, the "invulnerability myth". No more bullying people around without the risk of backfire, billy.
And since M$ can't compete on a level playing field, the xbox just got shafted. Not that I'd shed a tear.
Yes, mass marketing has created media as we know them today. For all I know, the rest of human culture pretty much existed because of sponsorship (usually by nobles) or because the creators were just so crazy with it that they had to create something even though they had a day job.
Obviously, both methods promote quality much better than what we have today. Also obviously, they don't allow for niche markets very much.
About the revenue models - my point was all along that if I had a choice, I'd be glad to make it. I like Opera for that reason.
And yes, I played Illuminati (but the board game, no longer in production I think). I also like to play with conspiracy theories somewhat. The thing about them is that they're just like TV news: Oversimplified accounts to bring a complex matter down to headline size.
A better board might be dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu - a mailing list I'm on that hasn't been about DVDs for quite a while now (was created during the high times of DeCSS).
I thought you americans would always sue everyone over pretty much everything - so where's the lawsuit? I'm fairly sure that over here in europe, where we still have some consumer protection laws, this CD would violate at least half of them (let's see - misleading advertisement, sale of known defective stuff, intent to damage private property...)
A class-action lawsuit (not possible in europe) could make you rich. Just claim the total sales volume of iMacs as the damage and sue on behalf of all iMac owners (it may or may not help to be one).
More seriously, why isn't there a lawsuit? Are corporations the only ones with a license to abuse the courts?
So who has ever given real data to any of these "free" (read: you pay with your valuable data) sites? I'd consider this a stupidity tax.
I, too, like this exchange going on long after the initial story dropped off the front page. But I guess we are coming to an end real soon, with all arguments exchanged.
/. TV, would be something I consider unethical, too. But if your business model rests on my stupidity and/or inability, then me enabling myself is not unethical.
Let me briefly go through yours back to front.
Yes, the networks are not yet asking for subsidies, except if you count MPAA et al in among the crowd and new harsh "anti-piracy" laws a form of government subsidiaries. And, just to be fair, the networks are already receiving something for free: The use of the public airwaves.
The difference between taking my idea and marketing it as yours and taking my idea and using it in a way unforseen by me is mostly one of just reward. Taking ABC and broadcasting it as, say,
The whole point is that one is based on a shortcoming, on a one-sided deal. As I said so eloquently: If the one-sidedness is removed, I'd stop having an issue with it.
And yes, the main problem behind all this is that nobody can really make something of it. If I had the ultimate solution, I'd have written a book about it. The whole "intellectual property" debate is not becoming, it already is one of the turning points of our culture.
Let me explain: In early cultures, knowledge was generally viewed as a public good. I'm not talking secret procedures to create some weird chemical, I'm talking folk-lore, stories, myth, but also everyday ideas like cooking receipts(sp?) or hunting tips. We still owe the openness (and probably success) of science to these times, as the open exchange of scientific ideas was started in times and places such as ancient greek.
During the christian, i.e. dark, middle ages, knowledge became "dangerous" and/or reserved for the elite, i.e. the clergy. Books were kept away from the people. Even the language of science and religion was reserved for the few.
We are, I believe, now at a point where both approaches are fighting with each other. It is interesting to note that the proponents of stronger "intellectual property" laws usually coincide with what is in the USofA the "religious right". That may or may not be a coincidence.
Key point: The barriers to widespread knowledge that were artificially errected during the middle ages have finally fallen. Both language and the tools to acquire and distribute information are now - once again - available to large parts of the people.
IMHO, "intellectual property" is already dead, it just hasn't stopped moving yet, and in its death throws is moving about much more ferociously than ever before. But in a few decades, few will even remember that IP could stand for anything besides Internet Protocol.
The problem isn't that they don't like people watching their movies or listening to their music without paying. The problem is that they go way overboard with the actions to prevent it.
When you shoot everyone with the same hair colour as the bad guy, you shouldn't be surprised that people start to hate you.
anyone with physical access to the machine can install a version of the software which looks the same but has a back door. It used to be that only the original writers had that power,
Uh, not true. Tons of software have been backdoored without access to the source code. Just last year at Blackhat Europe, a very bright guy from Australia described in detail a method that could be used to backdoor a running process.
First of all, let me state clearly what my POV is: There is no intellectual property. Applying the concept of property to creations of the mind was the core mistake that we're still suffering from.
Now I don't think that the difference between physical or not is the key point. Taking my idea and saying its your own is just as unethical as taking my car. However, the difference that I still have my idea, but I lack my car, is also to be taken into account.
Once you free yourself of the property model, you can do both. Taking my idea is unethical, but it's not theft. It's something else. What it is depends on what exactly you do, and a property-model doesn't mirror that. e.g. taking my music and publishing it as your own is very different from taking my music and listening to it without paying.
So what is happening in the case of TV and advertisement? What happens is that the consumer is making a choice that he could not (easily) make earlier - watch some things, but not others. The business model of TV, however, was based on the unavailability of this choice.
Is it unethical for the consumer? I don't think so. We have no voice in the kind of, frequency or placement of ads, therefore we are looking at a one-sided deal. What has changed is that we can suddenly change the deal, and that we do so is a clear sign that we don't consider the deal fair anymore. Mostly because TV has changed from "programs interrupted by some ads" to "non-stop advertising with some shows inbetween". Over time, the deal has slowly shifted in our disfavor, and now the technical means have appeared to show that we are not satisfied with it any longer.
An EULA would surely not be the solution. However, I want to offer a solution what would - IMHO - answer the ethics question:
Make advertisement programmable. Much like in Opera, give the TV viewer a place where he can say which and how many ads he is willing to take in. Make a simple ratings system that limits the program, e.g. people who don't want many ads only get the cheap programs and the premium content is only watchable if you view enough ads to pay your share.
This, too, could be circumvented. But now suddenly I would consider it unethical to do so, because there has been an active agreement. It doesn't matter if that agreement is based on a 100-page contract or five clicks with the mouse.
To the final question: A difficult one to answer. I guess I would be unhappy if my own snakeoil business model suddenly evaporates. However, I think I would be bright enough to not whine in public about how unfair it is that people are a little smarter than I had hoped all the time.
Actually, mostly Tony Blair himself. Ever noticed how much the guy loves to be in the company of Bill Gates?
In contrast, the german government had a left-swing in the last general elections, and with the leftist green party came a bunch of people into the parliament that had actually heard of or even - gasp - used Linux. Microsoft only realized when the parliament was publicly discussing using Linux for all its computers, and retaliated with massive lobbying, winning at least a compromise.
So this is only the latest event in a number of battles for the european governments.
As part of my DeCSS page, I once took a small sample of DVD prices. Check it out here and look for the "Price Fixing" chapter (about one page down).
The bookclub delivers a physical item. The choice for me is throwing it away or returning it. Obviously, returning it is the right thing to do.
TV (and, btw. I don't even own one, I discuss this because of the social/contract points) works differently. They broadcast all over the PUBLIC airwaves, and the costs are independent of the number of people listening in.
Yes, there is a certain working system that has been established. However, no deal was ever struck, so each side may bottle out at any time, no obligations. If people stop watching TV (which I did a couple years ago) or stop watching parts of TV, such as the ads, then too bad.
And no, I absolutely do not believe in law being the solution. On the contrary, there is no better proof that something is fucked then the need of a law about it.
I understand their business model. But, I also understand they built their castle on quicksand. It held surprisingly well for a couple years, now it's shifting. Is it so hard to understand that I have no sympathy for their whinings?
Take a look at the things that are more expensive over here. It won't take you a long time to realize where the cartels are located. Yupp, USofA. DVDs are more expensive, because of Hollyweird. The major RIAA members are just as much american as the major MPAA members.
The only thing I know off-hand that is more expensive in europe because of reasons european is gas/oil.
I'm sure you understand that it's your watching of commercials that pays for the content. Doesn't mean you have to watch the commercials, but then it isn't really fair that you watch the content either, is it? That, in effect, is the 'contract.'
No, it is not. You Have Been Brainwashed(tm).
A contract requires a meeting of wills, two sides agreeing on an exchange. In the case of TV, there is no agreement happening. They deliver stuff to my house. I didn't even ask for the stuff, much less did I ever agree to their shaky business model.
What they are claiming is a right because things always worked like that. That's where the dinosaurs come in - they could've claimed the same right. Probably did. Didn't make any difference, though.
How about showing European style ads with breasts showing? I hate American TV for how sanitized it is.
The problem is that as with all things advertisement, they just overdo it. The US is usually much worse in excessiveness than europe, so I don't want to even start imagining what your ads will look like once that has started. Well, I guess the tame ones will have a hardcore scene where they moan the product name all the time.
Yes, he does. So did the dinosaurs when they died because their environment changed. Well, except that I don't think they complained about it in interviews.
The world is changing, and if paid-by-advertisement doesn't work anymore, you should go and find a new business model.
I forsee that a law (or ten) will be made about this, maybe the "Television Advertisement Consumer Protection Act". Nobody will ask the question of whether something seemingly important enough for society to have a law about should not instead be supported financially, i.e. your taxes pay for the TV, but it comes ad-free. It's not that you're not paying already, it's just that the costs are hidden. For example in the fact that TV broadcast frequencies are given away for free, even though UMTS proved that frequencies are worth billions of dollars. So that's a multi-billion $ subsidiary to the TV networks already.
And they still sing the old (and becoming boring fast) MPAA song "we're going to diiieeee!".
This is good news. I've been a Debian fan for a while, but being able to point to this posting as a proof of just how serious they take security (serious enough to delay a release) will make it much easier for me to push Debian in my work environment.
the article is one of those "got press release, changed a few words, printed it" pieces of "journalism". here's what I wrote to BBC in reply:
1 951000/1951231.stm
Dear Jane Wakefield,
In the article titled "Net pirates 'threaten software industry'", posted at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_
on Monday, 29 April, 2002, 07:52 GMT 08:52 UK, you write down a few items that I don't consider to be entirely correct, and even more that are very one-sided.
Allow me to comment on some of these items:
> The warning was issued at a conference, organised by the Business
> Software Alliance (BSA), which attracted delegates from firms such as
> Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and Symantec.
This sounds like an accomplishment with credits to the BSA, except that the BSA is funded by the firms mentioned, especially Microsoft. Once you check the speakers list against the BSA membership list, you realize that what appears to be a conference is, in fact, a PR meeting.
Pointing this out to the reader would have enabled him to take the points made by these "delegates" with the grain of salt they deserve.
> The meeting was told that in 2000 the software industry in Europe lost
> $3bn to pirates.
I have always been interested in finding out just how BSA and other "independent" researchers arrive at these figures. They don't tell. Any credible claim should name its sources, shouldn't it?
> This figure is thought to be only a tiny fraction of the amount of
> piracy that is going on every day on the internet.
If I interpret "tiny fraction" as less than 10%, I'm at $30bn EVERY DAY, or about 11 trillion per year. The GDP of the UK in 2000 was $1.36 trillion. So these people are telling you that internet piracy is a business 10 times the size of the whole UK economy?
Obviously that is, if you excuse the word, bullshit. The sentence does, however, create the impression that internet piracy is unbelievably huge.
Even so, $30bn is more than Microsoft's worldwide net profits, and a considerable percentage of the total net earnings of europe's software industry. A claim of this size better be substantiated by serious facts and sources. Where are they?
> "We can't estimate how much piracy is on the net but in one day we
> found a million sites under a search for one of the codenames for
> pirated software," said a BSA spokesperson.
One of the "codenames" is "warez" and does indeed return about 4,230,000 hits when put into google.
However, what kind of point does that make? "Buckingham Palace" returns 99,300 hits, but as far as I am aware, there is only one.
More to the point, a search engine just tells you how many sites mention a given topic. Ironically, the BSA's own websites, both at bsa.org and national sites such as bsa.de or bsa.org.tr appear in the above-mentioned search for "warez", because they use the "bad word". A majority of the "real" warez sites are just traps with pornographic advertisement. A little research would have taken an hour or two and been quite revealing.
Warez sites are very real. The BSA, however, having an agenda, is greatly exagerating both their number and capabilities.
Finally, here are a few choice quotes that should have really ticked you off to the fact that the figures are made up:
> The meeting was told that in 2000 the software industry in Europe
> lost $3bn to pirates.
[...]
> Europe has a greater rate of piracy than the US - around 34%
[...]
> It is forecast to grow from £35bn in 2000
Maybe math works differently in america, but even without a calculator I can see that $3bn isn't 34% of $50bn.
It sorries me when I see journalists lifting whole articles almost verbatim out of corporate press releases. It is especially not the kind of reporting I expect from a respectable news source like BBC.
For the record, I am a computer security professional with a telco company. I have been working professionally on the internet for over 5 years, and I have seen the warez scene both from inside (when I was a teenager) and from the outside now that I deal with people abusing our computer resources for these purposes or help the law enforcement agencies to track criminals through our systems.
Piracy is real, no question about it. The BSA, however, justifies its very existence by a gross exageration of the facts, and as a very interested party should not be believed too much.
The story is incorrect.
The engine has been out for Linux for quite a long time. I'm a mapper for one game project that uses the torque engine, and I know I haven't been hallucinating the past weeks when I was working on my maps on my Linux machine.
What has been released recently (last week or so) was the beta client of Realm Wars, a community-developed game using the torque engine. That's a huge difference, especially since that doesn't mean squat about Legends or any other of the torque-based games currently in development.
Why not read the Grundgesetz, the constitution of Germany? You may be interested in article 5, which guarantees freedom of speech, details what it extends to (e.g. explicitly includes writing and pictures, but also the right to acquire information) and where the limits are (violation of other laws and defamation).
There is freedom of speech in Germany, as part of the constitution. The main difference is that free speech is considered to be one of many rights, not "the #1 amendment", so it is more often weighted against other rights.
As we all know, once lawyers start to weigh and argue about things, anything can happen and right or wrong isn't really a matter anymore.
Actually, what's special about the GPL is not the no-cost aspect (which many non-free licenses share, including some Micro$oft EULAs), but that it gives you rights instead of taking them away. The only requirement (i.e. "the deal") is that you in turn must pass on these rights.
Free beer is easy to get from any beverages company on a marketing run.
YES THEY ARE. They are trying to restrict my right to know of a second-hand book for sale
uh, no. You still have the right to know about the 2nd hand book sale. You'll just have to find out on your own.
You have a right to information (not sure, I know that in my country I do), but you don't have a right to be spoon-fed every little bit of it.