There's a good body of prior art out there to invalidate many patents. All you need to do is work on an existing story archetype. That's a pretty wide range, covering the entire literary world to date.
According to Joseph Campbell, nearly all good stories conform to a standard cycle (the name of which eludes me right now), making all heroic-type stories unpatentable.
Shame about originality though. And also a shame that if someone comes to sue you, you've got to go through a long process to prove that you weren't copying their stuff. The one with the biggest legal bill will probably win.
What was wrong with copyright anyway? All works of fiction are under copyright, and there are existing ways to deal with transgressions. Plagiarism is anethema to real authors, as well.
So, you're sympathising with the music companies - the RIAA - who want to increase song prices for newer stuff? Given that Apple are resisting a price increase, I'd expect that the RIAA members aren't thrilled with them.
And talking bad about them? These are the people who did absolutely nothing, and get about 60 or 70 cents per track sold on iTunes. And then they want a cut in the iPod revenue for (again) doing absolutely nothing.
These are the people you defend in your post. As a consumer, I find it hard to sympathise with them, and since the iTMS opened here in Australia, I've bought more music in the last month than in the whole year to date. They should be *thanking* Apple.
You're right though - they are upset with Apple. It's just that there is no-one else yet who's gotten inside the front door, let alone made it to the table to negotiate with the companies. Apple's the only player in town at the moment, because they offer the player, the software and the store, and it's all so easy to use that anyone can master it all in minutes.
I'd like to see some real competition for Apple, but when companies like Creative just fail again and again in their quest for relevance in this market, there'll be no competition to speak of.
I work in a corporate environment, and we use MS Office for pretty much everything. I actually quite like Excel and Word, and have copies of them at home on my PC and Mac.
Having used Word since the days of Word 4 on the Mac, it's clear to me that the format has changed quite a lot over the years. That's evolution, and features are added.
"No bad thing," most would say. And I agree for the most part.
But when I try to open a really old Word file, the formatting is mangled, features are lost and I generally have to recover the ASCII text and re-create the file.
That's with Word. Excel is generally a lot better at this (in my experience), probably due to the highly structured data.
I'm under no illusions that a file that exists today in Word may not be readable in years to come. I believe that it almost certainly won't be - you just have to go far enough down the road for support to be dropped.
Any government should be able to produce documents *years* after they're originally written. That presents difficult storage requirements that most users never have to deal with. What format will text files use in 20 years, or 50 years? No-one knows, but people in government IT will be expected to convert old documents to it. The best way to plan for that is to use the most open formats available now. That means going to open, fully documented standards.
Re:Regulate Sales As Well As Content Creation
on
The ESRB Bites Back
·
· Score: 1
Tom, I don't give 12 year olds any money. For some reason parents tend to get a little nervous when I hang around the schoolyard, giving money to kids.
You missed my point. I know that video games aren't nearly as harmful as they're portrayed, but the image they have is pretty poor outside of gamers themselves. Making the industry *look* better is important right now, even if the changes are only cosmetic. The "think of the children" lobby is pretty strong, and antagonising them will only hurt the game industry.
If you bring such a comment to the table, you'd better have something more than "my friend said..." behind it.
There are no viruses for OS X. None. If you believe otherwise, prove it.
Regulate Sales As Well As Content Creation
on
The ESRB Bites Back
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Part of the problem seems to be that sales are pretty much unregulated, so any kid can go into a shop and buy anything.
The game creation industry might do everything right, put warnings on the labels and carefully ensure that their game doesn't exceed the rating they want to put on it, but if the sales staff at the local shop hand out copies of Doom III to ten-year-olds, then the rating system is completely in vain.
There should be a crackdown on the sales of games to minors too young to meet the rating age requirements. Enforcing that system at the point of sale would do a lot to help strengthen the image of the gaming industry.
Also, a strong rating system at point of sale means that if little Timmy goes off the rails because he played Quake 47 too much, then the parents can be asked who bought the game for him. If he can't have bought it, then...
And the content creation industry itself could do a lot to avoid being targeted. The hidden content revealed by the Hot Coffee mod was a truly stupid thing to do in many ways. If it's not part of the game, don't ship the content. Shipping sexual content in a video game, even hidden away and requiring a mod to uncover, will raise an army of parents screaming "think of the children" faster than Jack Thompson claims harassment when someone criticises him.
The industry has an image that it needs to protect. A bad image means that at some point it will be regulated from outside. If you don't mind that so much, imagine Hilary Clinton and Jack Thompson appointing a board to regulate game content. That's a worst-case scenario, but it's all about public perception.
All the way from an unfilmable series of good books to a series of great films.
The pieces of the book that were chopped were sometimes good (Glorfindel), sometimes bad (Bombadil) but in the end not central to the story. I'd have loved the Scouring of the Shire as well, but that's the way it is.
It wasn't the absolutely perfect film trilogy it could have been, but it was pretty damn close. Using the books as screenplays would have turned out a horrible, unwatchable but incredibly accurate series of about six films. And the handful of fans that watched the final film would have wondered why the cinemas were so empty.
This may be one of those times when you have to just accept that a director like Jackson knows what he's doing better than some random guy somewhere on the Internet.
It's late, I've seen a lot of stuff lately I don't agree with, it's angried up the blood and I should be in bed long since. Seems like aging is making me more sensitive to jumping at shadows (says he at the ripe old age of nearly 35).
Your patience in not just flaming me is admirable, by the way.
It's purely a consequence of the tight grip the music industry wants to keep on its assets. Apple gain no benefit from locking down music in this manner. On the contrary, it seems as though they'd benefit from being able to transfer music from the iPod, to help spread iTunes and increase the iPod's usefulness.
And yet again someone brings up a monopoly that Apple have over the iPod. The same monopoly that every manufacturer has over their own products. This is no monopoly in any real, legal or useful sense.
There are other music players to buy, from other companies. The have about 25% of the market. There are other ways to buy music, either physically or online. Online sales are dwarfed by CD sales, although online no-one seems able to compete with Apple. You can even rent music for next to nothing. There are other ways to manage music. iTunes is one of a large number of applications. Many prefer it, but there are plenty of options for those who don't.
Where's the monopoly?
The fact seems to be that Apple have taken a large risk, and it paid off handsomely for them. The risk was doing the whole thing - store, organiser and portable player - and no-one else has even tried to compete across all three arenas. Apple have done something big, and even after several years to catch up, no-one's even made it to the track to compete.
This surprises me. I'd have thought Microsoft or Dell would step up, but they've brought nothing coherent to the table, just pieces of the whole.
And if a monopoly can actually be shown, where is the illegal use of monopoly power? Without both a real monopoly and illegal use of the power derived from it, there's no legal issue at all.
You bring the spectre of a monopoly in where it's neither necessary nor demonstrable.
The music industry would close down the iTMS if they saw this happening with Apple's blessing. It would be promoting copyright infringement and file sharing, which is exactly what anyone selling media has to step around.
It's easy to work around, but no company will allow this if they want to sell media as well. It's a recipe for disaster.
You keep saying that Apple has a monopoly on the Mac as if that means something.
Every single manufacturer has a 'monopoly' on the products they manufacture. That's not a surprise, it's an issue of poor definition.
Who else makes Macs? No-one. Is that bad? Only in the exact and precise same manner as in the cases of Ford cars, GMH cars, Sony Walkmans, Reebok sneakers, Bonds underwear and pretty much anything out there. You'll notice that any one of those examples has many other replacements, as does Apple's Macintosh. You can choose to go PC instead, and run PC software.
The choice is not an Apple Mac or nothing. It's down to what personal computer you want to use - an Apple Mac or a HP PC or a Dell PC or a homebuilt PC or...
There's absolutely no meaningful or useful definition of monopoly that includes the Macintosh, unless you can somehow show that a company with 3-5% of the marketshare is somehow controlling the purchasing decisions of the other 95-97%.
Apple have had some quality control issues, just as every other manufacturer since the beginning of time has had. That's not shocking or newsworthy though, because it continually reports better than any other personal computer manufacturer out there. Consumer reports keep rating Apple well every year and customers keep being (obstinately, you'll probably think) happy with Apple.
My current Mac, an iBook, has had chronic issues in the past eighteen months. My homebuilt PC has been fine though. And yet I keep using the Mac because it's better to use. I'm more productive with it, and it fits better into my daily life.
Truth be told, it's the first Mac I've had (since 1991) with any issues worth mentioning. I've owned a number of PCs in that time with issues though, so quality control is a positive for Apple in my experience.
And that's what your post boils down to - personal experience and opinion. No more valid than mine, but in both cases we have to bow before things like those positive consumer reports and the fact that Apple haven't been taken to court as an anti-competitive monopoly.
Which is something you have to admit. Apple are not a monopoly in any sense worth mentioning. Not a legal sense and certainly not a sense with any sanity behind it. But hey! Apple haters don't need logic! Apple are doomed! They're probably beleagured or something. The fact that they're doing well and people like them is too much for some people, who can't seem to handle any competition with their chosen platform.
Interesting point, but what if reducing costs in any one area caused a failure?
The expense is more in getting the thing there and tracking it from here than engineering it. Doubling the cost of materials and engineering is not an issue compared to the other costs and the cost of failure.
Cutting costs is dangerous too. It's the sort of thing that leads to "We service the aeroplane too often, and we never find any faults. If we cut our servicing by 50%, we can deliver increased profits to shareholders."
Which is fine.
Until the first thing goes wrong, at which point any savings are massively outweighed by the costs of failure.
We're far from a democratic utopia, but I'll always believe that a vote is the minimum a citizen should do to live in a democracy.
And if they don't want to, they don't actually *have* to vote. The law only mandates that they turn up to one of the many polling booths and have their name ticked off. They can legally walk out after that.
The vast majority don't do that though. They take the time to vote. I may not like their choices, but I think it's good that they at least *make* a choice. The government can actually claim a real mandate based on actual votes counted, rather than a representative sample of voters.
The licence does explicitly allow the burning of a purchased song to a CD, moving to unlimited iPods (only *to*, never *from*) and several other things besides. It's really not such a restrictive licence, and it's done with the full approval of the copyright holder.
The point about Apple being sued before the iTMS was here in Australia is interesting, because it would require a case to be mounted against people for transferring music they *purchased* from one medium to another. The industry would have a very hard time finding someone to prosecute (as there's no trail to follow) and then would have to be prepared for a public backlash when they sue people who bought their CDs.
There's little to no public concern over suing file-sharing pirates, but when they pick on people who are trying to be good, they'll suffer as a result.
One interesting thing that would come of such a suit is that Sony are going to be as liable. They produce portable digital players in one division, with all the software you need to rip to ATRAC format. In another division they hold copyright to their music and guard it jealously. It's not in their interests to highlight the difference between those two divisions by suing people for doing what their products let them do.
And they make CD and DVD burners in yet another division.
The sooner we get some good Fair Use rights under copyright law, the better.
Not too many mortars here in Australia, or people dying in violent protests. The government has been in power for about nine years too.
Really - the original poster's nickname is "aussie a" which should give you some hint to where he's from.
You do make a good point though. I too live in an electorate where the votes are about 60% in favour of one party. I happen to vote that way myself, but I've lived in others where my vote doesn't matter unless there are ten thousand more of me.
Of course, voting's compulsory here in Australia, which is a Very Good Thing. The minimum we should ask is that people vote and that the government's mandate is fairly based upon the popular vote. Of course, the ruling conservative government are making noises about making voting voluntary someday, but a spell in opposition will change their minds.
The price is steep compared to the US, but the message should not be to stay with physical media. We're seeing more and more "copy-controlled" discs these days, and they just don't rip so easily.
Also, despite parallel imports being around for ten years or so, I still see new release discs at $25-$35, much higher than the iTMS album price of $16.99. I think the music industry would absolutely *love* it if only physical media were sold and the Internet distribution model failed.
I'm going to give iTMS a good go and buy music from there. I'm no audiophile, and I think the sound quality is very good (except for some music with higher-pitched harmonics, but that's not so common).
I'll also investigate other options like emusic, which I'd never heard of before this topic came up. I absolutely won't buy anything in WMA format though (not so hot on the iBook), so my options are not huge.
iTunes itself is a global download, so we've had it for years now.
And since there's no Fair Use rights, but prosecution would be incredibly hard (the music industry has to find people who buy a CD and then rip it at home - there is no trail to follow) people like me have been merrily ripping their CDs to mp3 format for several years even though it's illegal to do so.
Apple are doing nothing necessarily wrong, as they could claim that their software could be used to organise either legitimate digital music or our own music that we created. Even the iPod could go under that sort of (fairly specious) claim.
It gets interesting when you look at Sony, who produce both music and portable digital players. Sometimes it seems like it's two companies, and they aren't friends!
A journalist who "hates Apple and everything they stand for" is not a journo at all, but merely a writer of opinions. We've got nearly a million of them here on Slashdot.
A journo is supposed to report factual information, not cover it over with biases. That's the failure of modern journolism - reporting opinions as facts and pretending that there's no difference. No journo worth their salt should do this.
And a really tech-savvy person will use the right tool for the job, whether it be a Mac, Windows, Linux or other platform. Saying that the Mac is never the right tool shows a lack of understanding and knowledge.
Who do you write for? Can you link to some of your articles?
Who here thinks that was a silly way to make a point? Show of hands? Everyone? Thought so. Of course, it's only me here right now, as I suspect was the case with the AC's post.
I've been looking forward to the iTunes Music Store. There are no legal options for me at all. Sure, there are some music stores out there, but they don't provide any options for Mac users or iPod users. The industry has intentionally ignored the biggest portable player market segment for no apparent reason. Looking past that roadblock, they still don't offer good selections - a recent survey in The Age showed that none included the current top 40 singles. That's not just weak - that's crap.
Apple may well be wasting their money, but it depends how much they've sunk into this venture and how good the uptake will be. In other countries with actual, real competition (ie not Australia) they've done very well indeed. The only differentiating factor here *may* be the lower population resulting in lower sales numbers. I don't know yet though.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a good body of prior art out there to invalidate many patents. All you need to do is work on an existing story archetype. That's a pretty wide range, covering the entire literary world to date.
According to Joseph Campbell, nearly all good stories conform to a standard cycle (the name of which eludes me right now), making all heroic-type stories unpatentable.
Shame about originality though. And also a shame that if someone comes to sue you, you've got to go through a long process to prove that you weren't copying their stuff. The one with the biggest legal bill will probably win.
What was wrong with copyright anyway? All works of fiction are under copyright, and there are existing ways to deal with transgressions. Plagiarism is anethema to real authors, as well.
Rubbish! Absolute tosh.
Macs *are* more expensive than PCs, but you have to look hard to get to double the cost, let alone ten times the cost.
Maybe you're buying Apple RAM. Silly sausage! *Never* buy RAM from a PC manufacturer! Always buy after-market RAM!
Hilarious stuff.
So, you're sympathising with the music companies - the RIAA - who want to increase song prices for newer stuff? Given that Apple are resisting a price increase, I'd expect that the RIAA members aren't thrilled with them.
And talking bad about them? These are the people who did absolutely nothing, and get about 60 or 70 cents per track sold on iTunes. And then they want a cut in the iPod revenue for (again) doing absolutely nothing.
These are the people you defend in your post. As a consumer, I find it hard to sympathise with them, and since the iTMS opened here in Australia, I've bought more music in the last month than in the whole year to date. They should be *thanking* Apple.
You're right though - they are upset with Apple. It's just that there is no-one else yet who's gotten inside the front door, let alone made it to the table to negotiate with the companies. Apple's the only player in town at the moment, because they offer the player, the software and the store, and it's all so easy to use that anyone can master it all in minutes.
I'd like to see some real competition for Apple, but when companies like Creative just fail again and again in their quest for relevance in this market, there'll be no competition to speak of.
I work in a corporate environment, and we use MS Office for pretty much everything. I actually quite like Excel and Word, and have copies of them at home on my PC and Mac.
Having used Word since the days of Word 4 on the Mac, it's clear to me that the format has changed quite a lot over the years. That's evolution, and features are added.
"No bad thing," most would say. And I agree for the most part.
But when I try to open a really old Word file, the formatting is mangled, features are lost and I generally have to recover the ASCII text and re-create the file.
That's with Word. Excel is generally a lot better at this (in my experience), probably due to the highly structured data.
I'm under no illusions that a file that exists today in Word may not be readable in years to come. I believe that it almost certainly won't be - you just have to go far enough down the road for support to be dropped.
Any government should be able to produce documents *years* after they're originally written. That presents difficult storage requirements that most users never have to deal with. What format will text files use in 20 years, or 50 years? No-one knows, but people in government IT will be expected to convert old documents to it. The best way to plan for that is to use the most open formats available now. That means going to open, fully documented standards.
Tom, I don't give 12 year olds any money. For some reason parents tend to get a little nervous when I hang around the schoolyard, giving money to kids.
You missed my point. I know that video games aren't nearly as harmful as they're portrayed, but the image they have is pretty poor outside of gamers themselves. Making the industry *look* better is important right now, even if the changes are only cosmetic. The "think of the children" lobby is pretty strong, and antagonising them will only hurt the game industry.
No, he didn't.
If you bring such a comment to the table, you'd better have something more than "my friend said..." behind it.
There are no viruses for OS X. None. If you believe otherwise, prove it.
Part of the problem seems to be that sales are pretty much unregulated, so any kid can go into a shop and buy anything.
The game creation industry might do everything right, put warnings on the labels and carefully ensure that their game doesn't exceed the rating they want to put on it, but if the sales staff at the local shop hand out copies of Doom III to ten-year-olds, then the rating system is completely in vain.
There should be a crackdown on the sales of games to minors too young to meet the rating age requirements. Enforcing that system at the point of sale would do a lot to help strengthen the image of the gaming industry.
Also, a strong rating system at point of sale means that if little Timmy goes off the rails because he played Quake 47 too much, then the parents can be asked who bought the game for him. If he can't have bought it, then...
And the content creation industry itself could do a lot to avoid being targeted. The hidden content revealed by the Hot Coffee mod was a truly stupid thing to do in many ways. If it's not part of the game, don't ship the content. Shipping sexual content in a video game, even hidden away and requiring a mod to uncover, will raise an army of parents screaming "think of the children" faster than Jack Thompson claims harassment when someone criticises him.
The industry has an image that it needs to protect. A bad image means that at some point it will be regulated from outside. If you don't mind that so much, imagine Hilary Clinton and Jack Thompson appointing a board to regulate game content. That's a worst-case scenario, but it's all about public perception.
"My car gets 30 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!"
-- Grandpa Simpson, on metric measurements
He sure did "chop the LOTR."
All the way from an unfilmable series of good books to a series of great films.
The pieces of the book that were chopped were sometimes good (Glorfindel), sometimes bad (Bombadil) but in the end not central to the story. I'd have loved the Scouring of the Shire as well, but that's the way it is.
It wasn't the absolutely perfect film trilogy it could have been, but it was pretty damn close. Using the books as screenplays would have turned out a horrible, unwatchable but incredibly accurate series of about six films. And the handful of fans that watched the final film would have wondered why the cinemas were so empty.
This may be one of those times when you have to just accept that a director like Jackson knows what he's doing better than some random guy somewhere on the Internet.
Sorry for the unexpected argument.
It's late, I've seen a lot of stuff lately I don't agree with, it's angried up the blood and I should be in bed long since. Seems like aging is making me more sensitive to jumping at shadows (says he at the ripe old age of nearly 35).
Your patience in not just flaming me is admirable, by the way.
Not at all.
It's purely a consequence of the tight grip the music industry wants to keep on its assets. Apple gain no benefit from locking down music in this manner. On the contrary, it seems as though they'd benefit from being able to transfer music from the iPod, to help spread iTunes and increase the iPod's usefulness.
And yet again someone brings up a monopoly that Apple have over the iPod. The same monopoly that every manufacturer has over their own products. This is no monopoly in any real, legal or useful sense.
There are other music players to buy, from other companies. The have about 25% of the market.
There are other ways to buy music, either physically or online. Online sales are dwarfed by CD sales, although online no-one seems able to compete with Apple. You can even rent music for next to nothing.
There are other ways to manage music. iTunes is one of a large number of applications. Many prefer it, but there are plenty of options for those who don't.
Where's the monopoly?
The fact seems to be that Apple have taken a large risk, and it paid off handsomely for them. The risk was doing the whole thing - store, organiser and portable player - and no-one else has even tried to compete across all three arenas. Apple have done something big, and even after several years to catch up, no-one's even made it to the track to compete.
This surprises me. I'd have thought Microsoft or Dell would step up, but they've brought nothing coherent to the table, just pieces of the whole.
And if a monopoly can actually be shown, where is the illegal use of monopoly power? Without both a real monopoly and illegal use of the power derived from it, there's no legal issue at all.
You bring the spectre of a monopoly in where it's neither necessary nor demonstrable.
Which other company sells the music and the playback devices?
Apple have to be careful about this, where a company such as Creative doesn't have to keep the music industry on-side.
The music industry would close down the iTMS if they saw this happening with Apple's blessing. It would be promoting copyright infringement and file sharing, which is exactly what anyone selling media has to step around.
It's easy to work around, but no company will allow this if they want to sell media as well. It's a recipe for disaster.
You keep saying that Apple has a monopoly on the Mac as if that means something.
Every single manufacturer has a 'monopoly' on the products they manufacture. That's not a surprise, it's an issue of poor definition.
Who else makes Macs? No-one. Is that bad? Only in the exact and precise same manner as in the cases of Ford cars, GMH cars, Sony Walkmans, Reebok sneakers, Bonds underwear and pretty much anything out there. You'll notice that any one of those examples has many other replacements, as does Apple's Macintosh. You can choose to go PC instead, and run PC software.
The choice is not an Apple Mac or nothing. It's down to what personal computer you want to use - an Apple Mac or a HP PC or a Dell PC or a homebuilt PC or...
There's absolutely no meaningful or useful definition of monopoly that includes the Macintosh, unless you can somehow show that a company with 3-5% of the marketshare is somehow controlling the purchasing decisions of the other 95-97%.
Apple have had some quality control issues, just as every other manufacturer since the beginning of time has had. That's not shocking or newsworthy though, because it continually reports better than any other personal computer manufacturer out there. Consumer reports keep rating Apple well every year and customers keep being (obstinately, you'll probably think) happy with Apple.
My current Mac, an iBook, has had chronic issues in the past eighteen months. My homebuilt PC has been fine though. And yet I keep using the Mac because it's better to use. I'm more productive with it, and it fits better into my daily life.
Truth be told, it's the first Mac I've had (since 1991) with any issues worth mentioning. I've owned a number of PCs in that time with issues though, so quality control is a positive for Apple in my experience.
And that's what your post boils down to - personal experience and opinion. No more valid than mine, but in both cases we have to bow before things like those positive consumer reports and the fact that Apple haven't been taken to court as an anti-competitive monopoly.
Which is something you have to admit. Apple are not a monopoly in any sense worth mentioning. Not a legal sense and certainly not a sense with any sanity behind it. But hey! Apple haters don't need logic! Apple are doomed! They're probably beleagured or something. The fact that they're doing well and people like them is too much for some people, who can't seem to handle any competition with their chosen platform.
Interesting point, but what if reducing costs in any one area caused a failure?
The expense is more in getting the thing there and tracking it from here than engineering it. Doubling the cost of materials and engineering is not an issue compared to the other costs and the cost of failure.
Cutting costs is dangerous too. It's the sort of thing that leads to "We service the aeroplane too often, and we never find any faults. If we cut our servicing by 50%, we can deliver increased profits to shareholders."
Which is fine.
Until the first thing goes wrong, at which point any savings are massively outweighed by the costs of failure.
We're far from a democratic utopia, but I'll always believe that a vote is the minimum a citizen should do to live in a democracy.
And if they don't want to, they don't actually *have* to vote. The law only mandates that they turn up to one of the many polling booths and have their name ticked off. They can legally walk out after that.
The vast majority don't do that though. They take the time to vote. I may not like their choices, but I think it's good that they at least *make* a choice. The government can actually claim a real mandate based on actual votes counted, rather than a representative sample of voters.
Oxen's comment is the first time I've ever made this request, but to any mods who read it, please mod it up! It's brilliant.
It's worth at least a +6 (Miraculous)
So, did they find the bit where God signed his name and copyrighted it?
(c) God, 5800BC
The author asserts His moral rights over this work.
Resemblence to all persons in history is expressly intentional.
For Ethel.
The licence does explicitly allow the burning of a purchased song to a CD, moving to unlimited iPods (only *to*, never *from*) and several other things besides. It's really not such a restrictive licence, and it's done with the full approval of the copyright holder.
The point about Apple being sued before the iTMS was here in Australia is interesting, because it would require a case to be mounted against people for transferring music they *purchased* from one medium to another. The industry would have a very hard time finding someone to prosecute (as there's no trail to follow) and then would have to be prepared for a public backlash when they sue people who bought their CDs.
There's little to no public concern over suing file-sharing pirates, but when they pick on people who are trying to be good, they'll suffer as a result.
One interesting thing that would come of such a suit is that Sony are going to be as liable. They produce portable digital players in one division, with all the software you need to rip to ATRAC format. In another division they hold copyright to their music and guard it jealously. It's not in their interests to highlight the difference between those two divisions by suing people for doing what their products let them do.
And they make CD and DVD burners in yet another division.
The sooner we get some good Fair Use rights under copyright law, the better.
Not too many mortars here in Australia, or people dying in violent protests. The government has been in power for about nine years too.
Really - the original poster's nickname is "aussie a" which should give you some hint to where he's from.
You do make a good point though. I too live in an electorate where the votes are about 60% in favour of one party. I happen to vote that way myself, but I've lived in others where my vote doesn't matter unless there are ten thousand more of me.
Of course, voting's compulsory here in Australia, which is a Very Good Thing. The minimum we should ask is that people vote and that the government's mandate is fairly based upon the popular vote. Of course, the ruling conservative government are making noises about making voting voluntary someday, but a spell in opposition will change their minds.
The price is steep compared to the US, but the message should not be to stay with physical media. We're seeing more and more "copy-controlled" discs these days, and they just don't rip so easily.
Also, despite parallel imports being around for ten years or so, I still see new release discs at $25-$35, much higher than the iTMS album price of $16.99. I think the music industry would absolutely *love* it if only physical media were sold and the Internet distribution model failed.
I'm going to give iTMS a good go and buy music from there. I'm no audiophile, and I think the sound quality is very good (except for some music with higher-pitched harmonics, but that's not so common).
I'll also investigate other options like emusic, which I'd never heard of before this topic came up. I absolutely won't buy anything in WMA format though (not so hot on the iBook), so my options are not huge.
iTunes itself is a global download, so we've had it for years now.
And since there's no Fair Use rights, but prosecution would be incredibly hard (the music industry has to find people who buy a CD and then rip it at home - there is no trail to follow) people like me have been merrily ripping their CDs to mp3 format for several years even though it's illegal to do so.
Apple are doing nothing necessarily wrong, as they could claim that their software could be used to organise either legitimate digital music or our own music that we created. Even the iPod could go under that sort of (fairly specious) claim.
It gets interesting when you look at Sony, who produce both music and portable digital players. Sometimes it seems like it's two companies, and they aren't friends!
Oh God, I can't erase the memory! It was so awful, so banal to hear dramatic lines delivered in such bored tones.
And those were the winners.
I know these aren't professionals, but is it really so hard to inject some emotion?
A journalist who "hates Apple and everything they stand for" is not a journo at all, but merely a writer of opinions. We've got nearly a million of them here on Slashdot.
A journo is supposed to report factual information, not cover it over with biases. That's the failure of modern journolism - reporting opinions as facts and pretending that there's no difference. No journo worth their salt should do this.
And a really tech-savvy person will use the right tool for the job, whether it be a Mac, Windows, Linux or other platform. Saying that the Mac is never the right tool shows a lack of understanding and knowledge.
Who do you write for? Can you link to some of your articles?
Who here thinks that was a silly way to make a point? Show of hands?
Everyone? Thought so. Of course, it's only me here right now, as I suspect was the case with the AC's post.
I've been looking forward to the iTunes Music Store. There are no legal options for me at all. Sure, there are some music stores out there, but they don't provide any options for Mac users or iPod users. The industry has intentionally ignored the biggest portable player market segment for no apparent reason. Looking past that roadblock, they still don't offer good selections - a recent survey in The Age showed that none included the current top 40 singles. That's not just weak - that's crap.
Apple may well be wasting their money, but it depends how much they've sunk into this venture and how good the uptake will be. In other countries with actual, real competition (ie not Australia) they've done very well indeed. The only differentiating factor here *may* be the lower population resulting in lower sales numbers. I don't know yet though.
We'll just have to wait and see.