And they voluntarily sell the CD. No one forces them to sell that CD to every 10-year old with $15. Everyone knows that the medium is easily copied.
It's no better than leaving the keys in the lock on the outside of your car in the middle of New York in rush hour and then acting surprised when you come back two months later to find that someone took the car. What did you expect to happen?
When is the media industry going to be held up to the same reality as the rest of the world?
Copyright limits what you can do with the content unless you pay for the rights to license the content
Just like I said. You want to be able to charge the price of a sale while retaining all of the ownership of a rental. Just what is this artificial subversive "license" you speak of, and what jurisdiction does the federal government have to enforce it? Last I checked, the federal government is empowered by the Constitution. The Constitution makes mention of reserving exclusive rights to individual authors and inventors. This whole bit about licensing doesn't have a darn thing to do with securing exclusive rights to authors and inventors.
And don't give me any interstate commerce crap. This whole business with the RIAA is, at best, outside the jurisdiction of the federal government. At worst it's blatantly unconstitutional and if there's federal action being taken against anyone, it should be taken against the media industry and the RIAA for subverting the Constitution to take the exclusive rights from the original authors and inventors.
It allows for congress to enact laws that restrict the people's right
In general I've been agreeing with what you've been posting, but I must take issue with this.
The Constitution does not allow Congress to enact laws restricting the people's right to copy anything. The Constitution includes a clause which seeks to reserve, to the original authors and inventors, the exclusive rights to their respective works. Current copyright law does little more than define all the ways in which those rights can be, for lack of a better word, extorted from the original authors and inventors. There's almost nothing in modern copyright law which protects you as an author or inventor. In modern copyright law, your only protection as an author or inventor is to hope that you're independently wealthy so that you don't have to sign an all-encompassing IP agreement with your employer.
While the Constitution guarantees exclusive rights to you, as the original author or inventor, the courts and laws todays will never find in your favor should you have a battle with your employer over who owns the IP which you created.
When >95% of the financial resources in this nation are controlled by 5% of the population, it's quite easy to see which minority the government is protecting.
I can't make photocopies of books then sell those photocopies, for example.
File sharing is not reselling. There's no illegitimate monetary profit here.
The point is that taking music isn't necessarily the most effective way to fight the entertainment industry.</i>
The music was legally sold to a customer. That customer chose to share something which they bought ownership of. If the music industry wants to deal in rentals then they should make that clear at the point of sale.
As for fair use and copyright law: The federal government, the primary author of copyright law, is empowered by a single document: The Constitution. In this document, the rights are reserved to the individual authors and inventors. Rights are inalienable. You cannot sell or transfer your Constitutional rights. Admittedly, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of court cases where incompetent attorneys and incompetent judges have breached this natural law. But let's hold true to natural law and how the Constitution implements it.
What part of modern copyright law does anything to secure rights to the individual authors, inventors, and creators? At last glance, copyright law seems to do everything possible to give the established companies the upper hand in swindling those rights away.
Consider two statements: "I can sell my rights to RCA for $XYZ, which is enough to pay rent and buy food, or I can continue to take my chances at the local pub'n'grill and possibly be homeless in a few months." "I can sell my rights to King George and his men for a pittance which will allow me to keep my farmland and my home, or I can resist and they can burn the whole thing to the ground."
Current copyright law is the newer, kinder, gentler extortion... and nothing more.
If the music companies feel like they're being ripped off they're free to screen their customers more carefully. If they sell the product to the customers then they have no legitimate control over what the customers do with the product. This is a well known fact. This is not something that can be solved by suing customers after the fact. Face reality.
Go to some venture capitalists and tell them,"I have a great idea for a new product. There's one problem: the product is easily copied by anyone with a computer."
It's hardly pirating music when the media company freely sold the media to the consumer.
Is it also ok to steal cable television?
I feel no pity for media companies anymore. If they're worried about people stealing cable television, how about deactivating the wires carrying the signal? If they can't secure their product on the front end that is THEIR problem, not mine. Would you feel sorry for a car dealership which left the keys in the door locks of all its cars, overnight, every night, for a year?
Let's consider this critically for a moment. Theft is taking someone else's property without their consent.
At some point, the media producer sold the media to a distributor. Legally. That distributor then sold the media to the retail outlet. Legally. That retail outlet then sold the media to a customer. Legally. That customer then shared the media with you. Sharing is not theft.
All arguments based on the artificial concept of a license agreement aside... Just what part of this process was stealing?
What is a license agreement? There are two types of transactions: one in which ownership is transferred (sale), and one in which ownership is not transferred (rental). This business about a license agreement is a subversive technique attempting to obfuscate a rental as a sale in order to charge sale prices. 90% of the population would never exchange money for a CD if they knew it were an elaborate rental scam.
The only really fair lawsuit is one of false advertising against the media companies. They advertise sales but they really offer rentals. The fact that the rentals don't have a return date or late fees is irrelevant--Blockbuster does it.
Pray tell me how we're supposed to do that when the very first people who get their grubby paws on our dollars, via taxes, are the people who are writing blatantly plutocratic laws. If we were ruled by dictators who held mock elections every four years, how would you recommend fighting them? By participating in the polls? By voting with our dollars?
Will you please think about the reality of the situation for once? Spare me the holier-than-thou "it's the law" junk. The reality is this: if the media companies were so darn concerned with their intellectual property then they should control the distribution on the front end by whatever means they feel they can implement profitably. This business about suing customers after the point of sale is ridiculous.
I will emphasize again, for the millionth time: Face reality. Once the media company sells something to me then it is mine and I will do with it whatever I darn well please. If they don't like it they're free to not sell it to me in the first place. Once they've sold this music to the masses, however, I no longer feel any pity for them. No one's forcing them to participate in a business model which is horribly out-of-step with the technology of the day.
I'm on board with another ugly scenario presented here.
Writers of malicious software are always several dozen steps ahead of the average consumer by nature. They will figure out how to circumvent the TC implementations and then use those very restrictions to prevent the users from diagnosing and removing them.
In a sick sort of way this may be economically profitable for companies who write security software. But the whole system is definitely not in the best interest of society.
you ignore my obvious point that practices that can be construed as Socialist does not mean the political party that enacted them IS Socialist in philosophy
If it swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, you can call it whatever you like, but it's still a duck.
The whole point of my original screed is to recognise there are distinct (if elusive), definitive differences between Fascism, Socialism, and Communism.
Oh? Last you responded to me you didn't point out anything distinctive between the three except to point to examples of regimes which have been traditionally labelled as one or another. No where did you ever even make an attempt at defining what distinguishes one, in principle, from the others. You keep using the words "communism, fascism, and socialism" over and over and over... but in every instance they're part of context. No where do you ever offer a concrete definition for any of them.
You're a product of the times, in that fashion, because everyone else in politics is just like you. With fewer concrete definitions being offered the debate is open to rage on (including your usual quota of derogatory remarks and insults) as long as you have posts left today.
The reason why political scientists makes those distinctions
Over and over and over you invoke political scientists and distinctions... yet you never make any. if the ability to sidestep the requirement for a solid definition makes a political scientist, then perhaps they should be renamed political charlatans.
Too bad you never make any attempt at defining the meaning. Your entire platform is full of muddied associations.
is the imposition of "equal" redistribution of wealth amongst its citizens
And, in every implementation of communism in the modern world, this is accomplished by setting up a system to benefit commercial enterprise, regulated by the government, with the purported goal of equalizing the incomes of the working class. Have you ever studied the way things work in real life, or do you always insist on arguing based on what you read verbatim out of someone else's textbook?
But Sweden did not take EVERYTHING from everyone
No where in socialist ideals is everything taken from everyone. Socialism has graduated degrees and different avenues of implementation. But, as is usual, you ignore this very blatant reality so that you can continue to argue your vague textbook definitions.
A communist gov't confiscates all industry and thus controls business and the economy
That's what I said, except I'm no longer vulnerable to the artificial difference between an industry which is regulated by the government and one which is owned by the government. Take the blinders off someday. You might have to concede losing an argument (probably a first for you) but you'll end up better for it.
A socialist gov't controls industry
It is a communist government which controls industry. Socialism and communism are often inseparable. With your pea-sized brain and your blinders on I'm not surprised that you've never made the distinction.
You really think any political scientist uses that to define Fascism? You fucking retard
Not really. Political scientists like you tend to get off on argument and abusive language, as you've demonstrated. You don't really care about a succinct definition.
Have you ever had a conversation where every single one of your statements didn't end in an insult? You need serious psychological assistance for your anger problem and your inferiority complex.
Did you notice that I make clear distinctions between my Debian installs and my LFS installs? When I install Debian, I actively try to avoid making significant changes to/etc -- like test driving Debian's stock performance. You just trolling to be a knob. Sadly, your behavior isn't unusual on Slashdot or in the world.
The lsmod list on my LFS 2.6.13 install has 13 modules. That's still more than I had on my 2.4 series.
I was on the same track. I was stuck in 2.4 land for a long time just because I had gotten my systems to the point where every piece of hardware worked and I knew how to get it all working again if I upgraded my kernel. Like you, I had trouble with the 2.6 kernel upgrade. I tried it once (circa 2.6.4) and it was a catastrophe for my wireless cards (madwifi and centrino). Finally I let Debian sid put in 2.6.12, and it seems all the 3rd party drivers have upgraded to the 2.6 bandwagon.
Configuration: I could run through the 2.4 configure tree in 20 mins or less. It takes me at least twice that in 2.6. Too much IP and an effed up broken patent/copyright system creating too many incompatible devices at levels that aren't easily segmented into kernel layers.
Compilation: Yeah. It takes a lot longer.
Performance: I noticed that mouse response in X is a lot faster. That's probably an artificial representative, though. I haven't really noticed load or response times to be much different from 2.4 to 2.6. Running on 400 MHz machines, I still notice this when it actually improves.
Modules: On a Debian 2.4 kernel I had maybe 12 modules loaded. On a LFS 2.4 kernel I had maybe 4. On Debian 2.6 kernel I have 91 modules loaded and many of them are for hardware which I don't have (see the section on configuration: there are too many devices which look the same to the kernel but are different due to IP pissing matches).
Udev: I hate it. I don't hotplug. I don't want to hotplug. Hotplugging is evil. My system shouldn't be doing anything with a device until I say I'm good and ready for it. Except for hotplugging, there's no real need for udev.
Mostly I'm upgrading to 2.6 because I can't afford to be left in the dust.
PS. No real LFS'er would call it Linux-from-scratch. Lose the hyphens.
Such a strong denial response. You don't need to be shown the proof. You have the proof. This is not denial. This is incredulity. Until the parent made their post you were certain you had hidden the evidence where no one could find it. Now you're shocked that someone figured out the scam and you're hoping to God they don't have the proof. You're thinking, right now,"If they do have the proof then I'm fscked."
Which is about the greatest fantasy adventure game put together. Especially the soundtrack. I still remember the main screen tune, it still plays in my head, and it still gives me goosebumps.
Why anyone would want to stick with 98 is beyond me
Because 98SE can be made into a surprisingly thin and fast OS. There were problems that were inherent in the industry back in '98-'02: problems with vid card drivers, and DX, and the competing 3D implementations (nV vs. ATI). Once all of this sorted itself out 98SE has become, in my opinion, the nicest Microsoft OS for a single user home computer.
There are problems when newer programs expect the system to have user privelege separation but this is usually fixed by restarting the program or, at worst, a reboot.
I'm a self-admitted Linux zealot but I still keep a 98SE install on my drives. I haven't booted to update it in four or five months but, as of the last update, it was pretty stable, ran as fast as Win2k/XP, worked with MSO2k+updates, and didn't force all of MSs neat new (useless) featureware onto my desktop.
it was eaten up with crapware
I bet I can break Debian by doing what crapware does--overloading processes and mangling libraries. Admittedly, on Debian you have to do it technically and on 98SE it's readily available on the web as a one-click install. That's really not the OSs fault. Putting a 98SE box behind a Linux router with any competent implementation of iptables rules makes a 98SE box a very nice home cruiser. All the convenience of Windows behind all the security of Linux.
an X crash... wipes out all your unsaved work and demands a reboot,
Perhaps you could enlighten me as to why an X crash demands a reboot or even wipes out all your work. My work? I use emacs inside a screen. Even if X dies a horrible death (which I've managed to pull off twice in the last six months by purposely attempting to use drivers labelled as experimental or not quite for my card) it's no different than if your ftpd choked. Restart and move on.
While it can happen... it's VERY rare that choking X will damage the console environment. One reliable method to make this happen is to attempt to manually set the timings for the Svideo TV-out on a Radeon 7500. X loses its timings and the timing for the console display gets mutilated.
And the thing is that lots of non-computer-geek people really like web applications
True. This is a case of people only get fat when the availability of food is high. Webapps are fat. Computing power is readily available.
I personally abhorr the near unanimous adoption of webapps across many industries. Take the insecurity of the world wide web, couple it with the featureware of most browsers, factor in bugs and/or poor design in the underlying OS, and then write Yet Another Translation Layer which will give any app on the web access to vital components of the underlying operating system.
Slashdot Mirror
The GPL does not discourage sharing. The media industry does. There's a difference.
It's no better than leaving the keys in the lock on the outside of your car in the middle of New York in rush hour and then acting surprised when you come back two months later to find that someone took the car. What did you expect to happen?
When is the media industry going to be held up to the same reality as the rest of the world?
And don't give me any interstate commerce crap. This whole business with the RIAA is, at best, outside the jurisdiction of the federal government. At worst it's blatantly unconstitutional and if there's federal action being taken against anyone, it should be taken against the media industry and the RIAA for subverting the Constitution to take the exclusive rights from the original authors and inventors.
The Constitution does not allow Congress to enact laws restricting the people's right to copy anything. The Constitution includes a clause which seeks to reserve, to the original authors and inventors, the exclusive rights to their respective works. Current copyright law does little more than define all the ways in which those rights can be, for lack of a better word, extorted from the original authors and inventors. There's almost nothing in modern copyright law which protects you as an author or inventor. In modern copyright law, your only protection as an author or inventor is to hope that you're independently wealthy so that you don't have to sign an all-encompassing IP agreement with your employer.
While the Constitution guarantees exclusive rights to you, as the original author or inventor, the courts and laws todays will never find in your favor should you have a battle with your employer over who owns the IP which you created.
When >95% of the financial resources in this nation are controlled by 5% of the population, it's quite easy to see which minority the government is protecting.
Don't you think?
The music was legally sold to a customer. That customer chose to share something which they bought ownership of. If the music industry wants to deal in rentals then they should make that clear at the point of sale.
As for fair use and copyright law: The federal government, the primary author of copyright law, is empowered by a single document: The Constitution. In this document, the rights are reserved to the individual authors and inventors. Rights are inalienable. You cannot sell or transfer your Constitutional rights. Admittedly, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of court cases where incompetent attorneys and incompetent judges have breached this natural law. But let's hold true to natural law and how the Constitution implements it.
What part of modern copyright law does anything to secure rights to the individual authors, inventors, and creators? At last glance, copyright law seems to do everything possible to give the established companies the upper hand in swindling those rights away.
Consider two statements: "I can sell my rights to RCA for $XYZ, which is enough to pay rent and buy food, or I can continue to take my chances at the local pub'n'grill and possibly be homeless in a few months."
"I can sell my rights to King George and his men for a pittance which will allow me to keep my farmland and my home, or I can resist and they can burn the whole thing to the ground."
Current copyright law is the newer, kinder, gentler extortion... and nothing more.
No one's being ripped off.
If the music companies feel like they're being ripped off they're free to screen their customers more carefully. If they sell the product to the customers then they have no legitimate control over what the customers do with the product. This is a well known fact. This is not something that can be solved by suing customers after the fact. Face reality.
Go to some venture capitalists and tell them,"I have a great idea for a new product. There's one problem: the product is easily copied by anyone with a computer."
I feel no pity for media companies anymore. If they're worried about people stealing cable television, how about deactivating the wires carrying the signal? If they can't secure their product on the front end that is THEIR problem, not mine. Would you feel sorry for a car dealership which left the keys in the door locks of all its cars, overnight, every night, for a year?
At some point, the media producer sold the media to a distributor. Legally. That distributor then sold the media to the retail outlet. Legally. That retail outlet then sold the media to a customer. Legally. That customer then shared the media with you. Sharing is not theft.
All arguments based on the artificial concept of a license agreement aside... Just what part of this process was stealing?
What is a license agreement? There are two types of transactions: one in which ownership is transferred (sale), and one in which ownership is not transferred (rental). This business about a license agreement is a subversive technique attempting to obfuscate a rental as a sale in order to charge sale prices. 90% of the population would never exchange money for a CD if they knew it were an elaborate rental scam.
The only really fair lawsuit is one of false advertising against the media companies. They advertise sales but they really offer rentals. The fact that the rentals don't have a return date or late fees is irrelevant--Blockbuster does it.
Will you please think about the reality of the situation for once? Spare me the holier-than-thou "it's the law" junk. The reality is this: if the media companies were so darn concerned with their intellectual property then they should control the distribution on the front end by whatever means they feel they can implement profitably. This business about suing customers after the point of sale is ridiculous.
I will emphasize again, for the millionth time: Face reality. Once the media company sells something to me then it is mine and I will do with it whatever I darn well please. If they don't like it they're free to not sell it to me in the first place. Once they've sold this music to the masses, however, I no longer feel any pity for them. No one's forcing them to participate in a business model which is horribly out-of-step with the technology of the day.
Writers of malicious software are always several dozen steps ahead of the average consumer by nature. They will figure out how to circumvent the TC implementations and then use those very restrictions to prevent the users from diagnosing and removing them.
In a sick sort of way this may be economically profitable for companies who write security software. But the whole system is definitely not in the best interest of society.
Oh? Last you responded to me you didn't point out anything distinctive between the three except to point to examples of regimes which have been traditionally labelled as one or another. No where did you ever even make an attempt at defining what distinguishes one, in principle, from the others. You keep using the words "communism, fascism, and socialism" over and over and over... but in every instance they're part of context. No where do you ever offer a concrete definition for any of them.
You're a product of the times, in that fashion, because everyone else in politics is just like you. With fewer concrete definitions being offered the debate is open to rage on (including your usual quota of derogatory remarks and insults) as long as you have posts left today.
Over and over and over you invoke political scientists and distinctions... yet you never make any. if the ability to sidestep the requirement for a solid definition makes a political scientist, then perhaps they should be renamed political charlatans.
And, in every implementation of communism in the modern world, this is accomplished by setting up a system to benefit commercial enterprise, regulated by the government, with the purported goal of equalizing the incomes of the working class. Have you ever studied the way things work in real life, or do you always insist on arguing based on what you read verbatim out of someone else's textbook?
No where in socialist ideals is everything taken from everyone. Socialism has graduated degrees and different avenues of implementation. But, as is usual, you ignore this very blatant reality so that you can continue to argue your vague textbook definitions.
That's what I said, except I'm no longer vulnerable to the artificial difference between an industry which is regulated by the government and one which is owned by the government. Take the blinders off someday. You might have to concede losing an argument (probably a first for you) but you'll end up better for it.
It is a communist government which controls industry. Socialism and communism are often inseparable. With your pea-sized brain and your blinders on I'm not surprised that you've never made the distinction.
Not really. Political scientists like you tend to get off on argument and abusive language, as you've demonstrated. You don't really care about a succinct definition.
Have you ever had a conversation where every single one of your statements didn't end in an insult? You need serious psychological assistance for your anger problem and your inferiority complex.
Did you notice that I make clear distinctions between my Debian installs and my LFS installs? When I install Debian, I actively try to avoid making significant changes to /etc -- like test driving Debian's stock performance. You just trolling to be a knob. Sadly, your behavior isn't unusual on Slashdot or in the world.
The lsmod list on my LFS 2.6.13 install has 13 modules. That's still more than I had on my 2.4 series.
I was on the same track. I was stuck in 2.4 land for a long time just because I had gotten my systems to the point where every piece of hardware worked and I knew how to get it all working again if I upgraded my kernel. Like you, I had trouble with the 2.6 kernel upgrade. I tried it once (circa 2.6.4) and it was a catastrophe for my wireless cards (madwifi and centrino). Finally I let Debian sid put in 2.6.12, and it seems all the 3rd party drivers have upgraded to the 2.6 bandwagon.
Configuration: I could run through the 2.4 configure tree in 20 mins or less. It takes me at least twice that in 2.6. Too much IP and an effed up broken patent/copyright system creating too many incompatible devices at levels that aren't easily segmented into kernel layers.
Compilation: Yeah. It takes a lot longer.
Performance: I noticed that mouse response in X is a lot faster. That's probably an artificial representative, though. I haven't really noticed load or response times to be much different from 2.4 to 2.6. Running on 400 MHz machines, I still notice this when it actually improves.
Modules: On a Debian 2.4 kernel I had maybe 12 modules loaded. On a LFS 2.4 kernel I had maybe 4. On Debian 2.6 kernel I have 91 modules loaded and many of them are for hardware which I don't have (see the section on configuration: there are too many devices which look the same to the kernel but are different due to IP pissing matches).
Udev: I hate it. I don't hotplug. I don't want to hotplug. Hotplugging is evil. My system shouldn't be doing anything with a device until I say I'm good and ready for it. Except for hotplugging, there's no real need for udev.
Mostly I'm upgrading to 2.6 because I can't afford to be left in the dust.
PS. No real LFS'er would call it Linux-from-scratch. Lose the hyphens.
It works the same way in political debate.
It works the same way in debates with your boss.
I applaud you.
I was hoping that someone would mention Chuckles. Thank you very much. :)
Except that the subject is Hoosiers, who happen to be residents of Indiana, not FL.
There are problems when newer programs expect the system to have user privelege separation but this is usually fixed by restarting the program or, at worst, a reboot.
I'm a self-admitted Linux zealot but I still keep a 98SE install on my drives. I haven't booted to update it in four or five months but, as of the last update, it was pretty stable, ran as fast as Win2k/XP, worked with MSO2k+updates, and didn't force all of MSs neat new (useless) featureware onto my desktop.
I bet I can break Debian by doing what crapware does--overloading processes and mangling libraries. Admittedly, on Debian you have to do it technically and on 98SE it's readily available on the web as a one-click install. That's really not the OSs fault. Putting a 98SE box behind a Linux router with any competent implementation of iptables rules makes a 98SE box a very nice home cruiser. All the convenience of Windows behind all the security of Linux.
While it can happen... it's VERY rare that choking X will damage the console environment. One reliable method to make this happen is to attempt to manually set the timings for the Svideo TV-out on a Radeon 7500. X loses its timings and the timing for the console display gets mutilated.
I digress...
Except this was Valparaiso, FL, not Valpo, IN.
That's a really lame attempt at trolling, guys.
I personally abhorr the near unanimous adoption of webapps across many industries. Take the insecurity of the world wide web, couple it with the featureware of most browsers, factor in bugs and/or poor design in the underlying OS, and then write Yet Another Translation Layer which will give any app on the web access to vital components of the underlying operating system.
It just doesn't sound like a good idea to me.