I haven't seen any lately. There was nothing like the old Aladdin's Castle. Dimly lit, cramped spaces between the games. The cool bleeps, blips, and other sounds the classics made, not the dorky speech tracks and explosions they put in them now. The game attendant was usually some twenty-something, who'd walk around wearing the red Aladdin's Castle vest carrying the big key ring with the keys to all the games. You would always plot how to get him to give you free credits. If you were lucky, he was really cool and would often rack up 20 or 30 credits for the regulars when there weren't a lot of people around. Life in the summer revolved around scraping together enough money to spend the afternoon at the mall playing games. You became expert at conning your parents into forking over $5.00 for some imagined excuse; "but Mom, I'm going down to the mall today with Brian and I need to eat lunch!" Lunch my ass. Every last quarter from the fiver was going to be slipped into the bowels of StarCastle, Zaxxon, or PacMan. Those were the days.
I didn't say that the classics weren't cloned. My point was that you could walk into an arcade 15-20 years ago and see a lot of diversity. There weren't any "genres" per se. The gameplay in the seven games I listed was fundamentally different from each other. Missile Command was unlike any other game, before or since. It was a great game, and very popular. Same thing with Crazy Climber. Today it is totally different. Your only choices are fighting, shooting, or driving. Mortal Kombat is SoulCaliber is Tekken is Karate Champ (which is the game all of the fighters derive from, and IMHO, was better than any of the current crop of fighters). They are all the same game, but with different graphics. -Vercingetorix
Who the hell marked the previous post as a troll?? He's totally on target. Most games today are seriously lacking in gameplay. They're built almost completely around flashy graphics. The game itself is an afterthought. Even worse than the PC game space is arcade games. Has anyone walked through an arcade lately? They're filled with dreck. There are really only three arcade games left; it's either fighting, driving, or shooting. That's it. How many iterations of Mortal Kombat do we need? In terms of gameplay, the vast majority of games today cannot touch classics like Pac-man, StarCastle, Rip-Off, Galaga, Defender, Missile Command, Robotron, Etc. (Notice how all seven games I just listed cannot be classified under one genre other than "arcade game?" Today you can classify virtually every arcade game as either a shooter, a driver, or a fighter)
Hate to brag (OK, not really), but I was the first person to finish Dragon's Lair back in 1983 at the Aladdin's Castle in the Burnsville Center mall in Burnsville, MN. Even had a crowd around me when I did it. One of the highlights of my life, actually.
Out of curiosity, just who, exactly, would they sue in the case of Gnutella? Or Freenet for that matter? And assuming they could find someone to sue, what impact would such a suit have on Gnutella or Freenet, even if the RIAA won such a suit?
"It's the same thing as sueing Apache because people are using it to distribute mp3s."
No it's not. In the case of Apache, far more people use it as a legitimate web server than as a mechanism to distribute MP3s. The primary purpose apache is used for is NOT MP3 distribution. In the Napster case, the exact opposite is true. Napster is used almost exclusively to transfer copyrighted material. The primary purpose something is used for is very important when determining its legality. The only real defense Napster has is the Audio Home Recording Act, but even there they are standing on shaky ground.
That being said, I still think it's pointless to go after Napster. Winning won't change the status quo.
Your comments bring an idea to mind that undermines Touretzky's argument. He's saying that essentially code is speech, and that if you ban one form, you must ban all forms. This is wrong. For example, you cannot yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, but there is nothing wrong with wearing a T-shirt the has "Fire!" printed on it and going to the movies. In both instances, the same thing is being said, but the context is different. I think the judge could quite easily rule that compiled object code capable of descrambling a DVD is illegal, while at the same time say that distributing the source code is perfectly legal.
The most rational outcome, however, seems to be that the judge should rule that DeCSS is legal in any form, but that pirating DVDs is not. If the MPAA wants to sue someone, they should go find people actually pirating movies.
I would leave tomorrow. I would leave my wife and kid to go, even if it meant I would never come back. They know that and understand it. The opportunity would be greater than anything mankind has had before. I could not help but go.
Uh, they're not trying to simulate *Martian* life. Rather, they are simulating what it would be like for *humans* to live on mars in the context of a manned mission. Why don't you read some of the actual information before posting, OK big fella?
As long as they're selling CDs, the watermark won't make a difference. All it takes is one person to go buy the CD anonymously, and then they can put it up on Gnutella for everyone else to get. Eventually it will be everywhere, and no one will have had to buy a watermarked digital version. Certainly there will be people who will pay to download the watermarked version, but it will do nothing to stop the free trading of music.
So are they going to put a unique watermark on every CD pressed? And then are they going to keep a record of who I am when I buy it? What if I buy the CD at a record shop and pay cash? Are they going to make it illegal to buy CDs without showing identification? What's to prevent someone from buying a CD anonymously, ripping it, and then distributing the MP3s to their heart's content? Maybe we'll have to start licensing people to use CDs so we can keep a record of who has which watermarks. Or maybe, the idea is to get rid of physical media entirely. Never mind the billions of $$ people have invested in audio equipment. How many years is it since the introduction of CDs, and yet you can still buy brand new cassette tapes? I don't think CDs are going away any time soon, and as long as I can buy a CD anonymously with cash, I can rip the songs and distribute them, regardless of any watermarking scheme.
No one has a "right" to profit. Nowhere in the constitution is such a right given to anyone. You do have a right to try and make a profit by engaging in business, but succeeding and making money is not gauranteed. In a changing economy, the recording industry should have no expectation to continue making as much money as they currently do, nor should they have any expectation to be around five years from now. All they can hope to do is change the way they do business in order to adapt to the situation. If they fail at this, they should fall by the wayside to make room for others who do understand the new economy. This is the way the free market has always worked. Adapt or die. -Vercingetorix
"If an individual (or group of individuals) wishes to produce a work of art and limit it's distribution, that is their right."
That's not in the original spirit of copyright. The point of copyright was to grant a *LIMITED* monopoly for a short period of time to allow the creator to benefit and encourage the production of new ideas. Ultimately, the goal was to have the work enter into the public domain so others could build upon and improve the original ideas. This whole business of copyright extending for 70 years past the death of the author is farcical. How much right does a rotting corpse need to benefit from its prior work?
"Yes, one day there might not be a need for the corner record store anymore, but that will be the choice of the industry: distributors, retailers, and most importantly the artist."
And you are absolutely incorrect on this point. The free market does not work by industry deciding what happens. It is driven by what consumers want and what they are willing to pay. If the American public decides that music should be free, then it will be free, regardless of what the artists or industry would like. The market accomodates the consumer, not the other way around.
Your four examples are the exception that proves the rule. For each one on you list, their are likely thousands, if not millions of others who have not been able to make a living off of their "ideas."
But I do agree that it is the middle-men who ultimately muck things up. The question then, is, how do you fight to ensure that the money goes to the true creators and not the scabs who live off them? I think avoiding tools like Napster and being a good little corporate citizen is not the answer. The money will just keep flowing into the RIAA's pockets and nothing will change. The other response is to stop buying all RIAA products. This will also never work because the majority of conumers are too weak-willed and apathetic to carry-through with such a plan on a scale large enough to make a difference. The only other answer is to share files to your heart's content, until such time as the mechanisms are put in place by the creators of the work to enable them to receive *fair* payment for it (and an added salute if you independently send some $$ to the artist). Ultimately it is up to the consumers who drive the market to force the market to bend to their will. And the same goes for laws - successful legislation usually conforms to the general will of the public; laws which seek to constrain activities which the general public engages in have historically been doomed to failure.
"A good friend of mine owns a small independant music store in south east Michigan. Time and time again people (generally 15 - 25 year old) will come in bragging about how they aren't going to buy album X because they just got it off of Napster. Sure, that's good and all for them, but that's a good $3 - $4 straight out of the pocket of the store."
I don't want to sound like a hard-ass, but where is it written that a record store has any right to turn a profit? It seems to me, the only thing they have a right to do is run a business and hope it is successful. If they are losing money, then perhaps it's time they changed their line of business? It just might be that we are nearing a time when there is no longer a need for the corner record store. This might be a sad occurence, but it is neither good nor bad. It's simply the current state of the market. The same goes for big record labels. If the market squeezes them out, then they have two choices; either adapt and enter a new line of work, or simply go away. This whole affair of trying to legislate your profitiability and using the courts to support your business model is sickening.
"Suddenly it was possible to get rich by having and developing ideas"
It is not now, nor has it ever been, a realistic goal to get rich by the value of your ideas alone. Most artists and inventors do not profit very much from their ideas. 99% of the time, it is the owner of the press, distribution network, or manufacturing facility that gets rich, usually AT THE EXPENSE of the innovator. Copyright and patent are shams that were perverted from their orginal intent to promote the creation and distribution of new ideas, into a tool which allows a priviledged minority to exercise total control over ideas (usually other people's ideas).
Napster became popular because of its ease of use (there weren't any songs on Napster before people started using it, so they must have been attracted by something else, right?). In fact, last time I checked, there was significantly more material available via Gnutella. What will likely happen is that people will use a variety of alternatives for awhile, but eventually one that's really simple to use will rise to the top. I expect that one will have a high degree of decentralization as well, to inhibit the ability of the RIAA to shut it down.
That, to me, is the funniest thing about this. By taking an antagonistic stance, the RIAA is probably doing more to ensure that powerful, anonymous, distributed file-sharing networks will be created than anyone elese. They fired the first shot in the digital distribution war, and amazingly they were pointing the gun at themselves.
Not to take away anything from the EFF's legal effectiveness in this case, because I do think putting Touretzky on the stand was a brillinat move, but I think this case (if the defense wins) will have been won as much by the MPAA's utter failure to present a decent argument as it was by the EFF's defense. I mean really, when your star "anti-piracy investigator" can't even provide evidence of a single DeCSS-pirated DVD, and 99% of whose testimony consists of "I don't recall," you could have had OOG THE OPEN SOURCE CAVEMAN serve as your defense lawyer and still win.
When considering the issue of whether source and object code are distinct things, or simply different expressions of the same thing, don't you think that the opinion of a computer science professor holds far more weight than the opinion of a journalist with no formal training in computer science? The relative value of someone's opinion has nothing to do with how much stake they have in the question.
I'm sure someone convicted of murder has a very strong opinion on what his or her sentence should be, and they certainly have a greater stake in that decision than anyone else, but ultimately their opinion is pretty much irrelevant.
I would say Touretsky's testimony was probably the most valuable offered during the whole trial, since he was able to make it starkly clear that this really is about free speech, and not about copying DVDs. The DMCA simply has no power to override your 1st amendment rights, and the judge's decision in this case could set the precedent to either nullify, or at least take a significant bite out of the DMCA. If the judge makes a ruling that states, in effect, that the DeCSS code constitutes protected speech, then the MPAA will have no recourse but to go after the actual pirates, instead of software developers and journalists.
Check out Qpass. They're the system that drives the likes of NY Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal Interactive, Corbis, etc. They've been successfully handling micropayments for three years now.
Reminds me of fruit stands in Oregon. You can go to fruit farms and often they will have no one manning the stall. Just a box of money and a sign asking you to weigh and pay for what you want. Anyone could take what they want and not pay, or worse, grab the box of cash. But they don't.
Actually, the 41,000 figure was after one day. It was released yesterday, not a week ago. So in one day, he *netted* (not grossed - he doesn't have to pay a dime to a publisher) $32,000 from one chapter of a book. Sounds to me like a raging success. And this for a work that was written years ago and will never be considered one of his better pieces.
Now imagine that he released the first chapter of the next Dark Tower novel. I'd wager he'd get over a million downloads the first day (probably more like 2-3 million) and most of them would pay.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't seen any lately. There was nothing like the old Aladdin's Castle. Dimly lit, cramped spaces between the games. The cool bleeps, blips, and other sounds the classics made, not the dorky speech tracks and explosions they put in them now. The game attendant was usually some twenty-something, who'd walk around wearing the red Aladdin's Castle vest carrying the big key ring with the keys to all the games. You would always plot how to get him to give you free credits. If you were lucky, he was really cool and would often rack up 20 or 30 credits for the regulars when there weren't a lot of people around. Life in the summer revolved around scraping together enough money to spend the afternoon at the mall playing games. You became expert at conning your parents into forking over $5.00 for some imagined excuse; "but Mom, I'm going down to the mall today with Brian and I need to eat lunch!" Lunch my ass. Every last quarter from the fiver was going to be slipped into the bowels of StarCastle, Zaxxon, or PacMan. Those were the days.
-Vercingetorix
I didn't say that the classics weren't cloned. My point was that you could walk into an arcade 15-20 years ago and see a lot of diversity. There weren't any "genres" per se. The gameplay in the seven games I listed was fundamentally different from each other. Missile Command was unlike any other game, before or since. It was a great game, and very popular. Same thing with Crazy Climber. Today it is totally different. Your only choices are fighting, shooting, or driving. Mortal Kombat is SoulCaliber is Tekken is Karate Champ (which is the game all of the fighters derive from, and IMHO, was better than any of the current crop of fighters). They are all the same game, but with different graphics.
-Vercingetorix
Who the hell marked the previous post as a troll?? He's totally on target. Most games today are seriously lacking in gameplay. They're built almost completely around flashy graphics. The game itself is an afterthought. Even worse than the PC game space is arcade games. Has anyone walked through an arcade lately? They're filled with dreck. There are really only three arcade games left; it's either fighting, driving, or shooting. That's it. How many iterations of Mortal Kombat do we need? In terms of gameplay, the vast majority of games today cannot touch classics like Pac-man, StarCastle, Rip-Off, Galaga, Defender, Missile Command, Robotron, Etc. (Notice how all seven games I just listed cannot be classified under one genre other than "arcade game?" Today you can classify virtually every arcade game as either a shooter, a driver, or a fighter)
-Vercingetorix
They had those here in the states too. I wonder who copied who :) I remember playing it. I especially loved the sound of the torpedos.
-Vercingetorix
Hate to brag (OK, not really), but I was the first person to finish Dragon's Lair back in 1983 at the Aladdin's Castle in the Burnsville Center mall in Burnsville, MN. Even had a crowd around me when I did it. One of the highlights of my life, actually.
-Vercingetorix
Out of curiosity, just who, exactly, would they sue in the case of Gnutella? Or Freenet for that matter? And assuming they could find someone to sue, what impact would such a suit have on Gnutella or Freenet, even if the RIAA won such a suit?
-Vercingetorix
No it's not. In the case of Apache, far more people use it as a legitimate web server than as a mechanism to distribute MP3s. The primary purpose apache is used for is NOT MP3 distribution. In the Napster case, the exact opposite is true. Napster is used almost exclusively to transfer copyrighted material. The primary purpose something is used for is very important when determining its legality. The only real defense Napster has is the Audio Home Recording Act, but even there they are standing on shaky ground.
That being said, I still think it's pointless to go after Napster. Winning won't change the status quo.
-Vercingetorix
The most rational outcome, however, seems to be that the judge should rule that DeCSS is legal in any form, but that pirating DVDs is not. If the MPAA wants to sue someone, they should go find people actually pirating movies.
-Vercingetorix
I'd be scared anytime someone invokes precedent from a $cientology case to back up their argument. Creepy.
-Vercingetorix
I think we should get the code printed on the side of an 18" dildo. I'd like to see that introduced as evidence.
-Vercingetorix
I would leave tomorrow. I would leave my wife and kid to go, even if it meant I would never come back. They know that and understand it. The opportunity would be greater than anything mankind has had before. I could not help but go.
-Vercingetorix
Uh, they're not trying to simulate *Martian* life. Rather, they are simulating what it would be like for *humans* to live on mars in the context of a manned mission. Why don't you read some of the actual information before posting, OK big fella?
-Vercingetorix
As long as they're selling CDs, the watermark won't make a difference. All it takes is one person to go buy the CD anonymously, and then they can put it up on Gnutella for everyone else to get. Eventually it will be everywhere, and no one will have had to buy a watermarked digital version. Certainly there will be people who will pay to download the watermarked version, but it will do nothing to stop the free trading of music.
-Vercingetorix
So are they going to put a unique watermark on every CD pressed? And then are they going to keep a record of who I am when I buy it? What if I buy the CD at a record shop and pay cash? Are they going to make it illegal to buy CDs without showing identification? What's to prevent someone from buying a CD anonymously, ripping it, and then distributing the MP3s to their heart's content? Maybe we'll have to start licensing people to use CDs so we can keep a record of who has which watermarks. Or maybe, the idea is to get rid of physical media entirely. Never mind the billions of $$ people have invested in audio equipment. How many years is it since the introduction of CDs, and yet you can still buy brand new cassette tapes? I don't think CDs are going away any time soon, and as long as I can buy a CD anonymously with cash, I can rip the songs and distribute them, regardless of any watermarking scheme.
-Vercingetorix
No one has a "right" to profit. Nowhere in the constitution is such a right given to anyone. You do have a right to try and make a profit by engaging in business, but succeeding and making money is not gauranteed. In a changing economy, the recording industry should have no expectation to continue making as much money as they currently do, nor should they have any expectation to be around five years from now. All they can hope to do is change the way they do business in order to adapt to the situation. If they fail at this, they should fall by the wayside to make room for others who do understand the new economy. This is the way the free market has always worked. Adapt or die.
-Vercingetorix
That's not in the original spirit of copyright. The point of copyright was to grant a *LIMITED* monopoly for a short period of time to allow the creator to benefit and encourage the production of new ideas. Ultimately, the goal was to have the work enter into the public domain so others could build upon and improve the original ideas. This whole business of copyright extending for 70 years past the death of the author is farcical. How much right does a rotting corpse need to benefit from its prior work?
"Yes, one day there might not be a need for the corner record store anymore, but that will be the choice of the industry: distributors, retailers, and most importantly the artist."
And you are absolutely incorrect on this point. The free market does not work by industry deciding what happens. It is driven by what consumers want and what they are willing to pay. If the American public decides that music should be free, then it will be free, regardless of what the artists or industry would like. The market accomodates the consumer, not the other way around.
-Vercingetorix
But I do agree that it is the middle-men who ultimately muck things up. The question then, is, how do you fight to ensure that the money goes to the true creators and not the scabs who live off them? I think avoiding tools like Napster and being a good little corporate citizen is not the answer. The money will just keep flowing into the RIAA's pockets and nothing will change. The other response is to stop buying all RIAA products. This will also never work because the majority of conumers are too weak-willed and apathetic to carry-through with such a plan on a scale large enough to make a difference. The only other answer is to share files to your heart's content, until such time as the mechanisms are put in place by the creators of the work to enable them to receive *fair* payment for it (and an added salute if you independently send some $$ to the artist). Ultimately it is up to the consumers who drive the market to force the market to bend to their will. And the same goes for laws - successful legislation usually conforms to the general will of the public; laws which seek to constrain activities which the general public engages in have historically been doomed to failure.
-Vercingetorix
I don't want to sound like a hard-ass, but where is it written that a record store has any right to turn a profit? It seems to me, the only thing they have a right to do is run a business and hope it is successful. If they are losing money, then perhaps it's time they changed their line of business? It just might be that we are nearing a time when there is no longer a need for the corner record store. This might be a sad occurence, but it is neither good nor bad. It's simply the current state of the market. The same goes for big record labels. If the market squeezes them out, then they have two choices; either adapt and enter a new line of work, or simply go away. This whole affair of trying to legislate your profitiability and using the courts to support your business model is sickening.
-Vercingetorix
It is not now, nor has it ever been, a realistic goal to get rich by the value of your ideas alone. Most artists and inventors do not profit very much from their ideas. 99% of the time, it is the owner of the press, distribution network, or manufacturing facility that gets rich, usually AT THE EXPENSE of the innovator. Copyright and patent are shams that were perverted from their orginal intent to promote the creation and distribution of new ideas, into a tool which allows a priviledged minority to exercise total control over ideas (usually other people's ideas).
-Vercingetorix
That, to me, is the funniest thing about this. By taking an antagonistic stance, the RIAA is probably doing more to ensure that powerful, anonymous, distributed file-sharing networks will be created than anyone elese. They fired the first shot in the digital distribution war, and amazingly they were pointing the gun at themselves.
-Vercingetorix
Not to take away anything from the EFF's legal effectiveness in this case, because I do think putting Touretzky on the stand was a brillinat move, but I think this case (if the defense wins) will have been won as much by the MPAA's utter failure to present a decent argument as it was by the EFF's defense. I mean really, when your star "anti-piracy investigator" can't even provide evidence of a single DeCSS-pirated DVD, and 99% of whose testimony consists of "I don't recall," you could have had OOG THE OPEN SOURCE CAVEMAN serve as your defense lawyer and still win.
-Vercingetorix
I'm sure someone convicted of murder has a very strong opinion on what his or her sentence should be, and they certainly have a greater stake in that decision than anyone else, but ultimately their opinion is pretty much irrelevant.
I would say Touretsky's testimony was probably the most valuable offered during the whole trial, since he was able to make it starkly clear that this really is about free speech, and not about copying DVDs. The DMCA simply has no power to override your 1st amendment rights, and the judge's decision in this case could set the precedent to either nullify, or at least take a significant bite out of the DMCA. If the judge makes a ruling that states, in effect, that the DeCSS code constitutes protected speech, then the MPAA will have no recourse but to go after the actual pirates, instead of software developers and journalists.
-Vercingetorix
Check out Qpass. They're the system that drives the likes of NY Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal Interactive, Corbis, etc. They've been successfully handling micropayments for three years now.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
Now imagine that he released the first chapter of the next Dark Tower novel. I'd wager he'd get over a million downloads the first day (probably more like 2-3 million) and most of them would pay.
Regardless, it did better than anyone predicted.
-Vercingetorix