Unless you are Cher or Elton John, you are not going to do well with the current copyright situation. You'll see your music sell a million albums and yet make a mysteriously small amount of money.
This is the meat but it goes into quite a bit of detail.
From the article:
Last year the worldwide sales of all 600 or so members of the Recording Industry Association of America totaled $14.5 billion--a bit less than, say, the annual revenues of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance. As for the tiny labels at South by Southwest, many of the dot-coms in attendance could have bought them outright for petty cash.
After the show I asked Cleaver if he was concerned about the fate of the music industry in the Internet age. "You must be kidding," he said. With some resignation he recounted the sneaky methods by which three record labels had ripped off the band or consigned its music to oblivion, a subject to which he has devoted several chapters of an unpublished autobiography he offered to send me.
(He had nicer things to say about his current label, Checkered Past.) Later I asked one of the music critics if Cleaver's tales of corporate malfeasance were true. More than true, I was told--they were typical. Not only is the total income from music copyright small, but individual musicians receive even less of the total than one would imagine. "It's relatively mild," Cleaver said later, "the screwing by Napster compared with the regular screwing."
Although many musicians resent it when people download their music free, most of them don't lose much money from the practice, because they earn so little from copyright. "Clearly, copyright can generate a huge amount of money for those people who write songs that become mass sellers," says Simon Frith, a rock scholar in the film-and-media department at the University of Stirling, in Scotland, and the editor of Music and Copyright (1993). But most musicians don't write multimillion-sellers. Last year, according to the survey firm Soundscan, just eighty-eight recordings--only.03 percent of the compact discs on the market-accounted for a quarter of all record sales. For the remaining 99.97 percent, Frith says, "copyright is really just a way of earning less than they would if they received a fee from the record company." Losing copyright would thus have surprisingly little direct financial impact on musicians. Instead, Frith says, the big loser would be the music industry, because today it "is entirely structured around contracts that control intellectual-property rights--control them rather ruthlessly, in fact."
The speed of light is a real and unbreakable rule as a result nothing more than 4 or 5 light years away is reachable.
Sure- you *might* be able to theoretically build a ship that could go further but all politics is local. Look at our politics- could we gather the will to build a 10 trillion dollar multi-generation star ship?
I think civ's do okay, never get off the planet the started on, and eventually die out from lack of resources, some kind of self destruction, or being wiped out by an external event.
With a paintball gun you can put a camera up to 30 to 40' up out of action very quickly. Other options include eggs (they set up particularly well in hot weather). Be creative.
Need to remember to a) Walk in. b) Wear a hat and bulky clothing.
For lower-lying cameras you have more primitive options (St. Louis Slugger).
The moral point is that we have numerous examples that Amazon is a stand up retailer and WOULD fix it. Any moral person should treat them appropriately.
Yea i finally upgraded to XP- because you can't buy 2k machines in best buy any more. I needed a new gaming machine (vertigo? some kinda oh yea. "Velocity"). It has dual processors- unlike 2000, I have no idea how fast it really is except by the price ($1299 vs $2199 so I assume it is not the fastest but have no idea how much slower it is).
I really want to move my gaming to consoles when Everquest finally kicks over.
When you change your daylight savings time rules-- there is no effective date so the rule applies backwards as well as forwards. Any reports you recalculate based on GMT converted to DST will not match the originals if hour by hour matters.
In other words, as of march 11th, 2007, the current DST rules also apply to March 11th of 1970 (when the change was really in April).
I think you left out "at a reasonable price" but otherwise agree.
If they were online, lossless without DRM but $2 bucks, a lot of folks are going to pirate them. If they were online, lossless without DRM at.25 cents, very few employed 1st world (and maybe 2nd world) citizens are going to pirate them.
The fact is the value of the songs once they are over a couple years old is really the bandwidth and storage costs plus a reasonable markup.
What's sick is that right now- today- they could be selling DVD's or USB drives with 1,200 songs on them for $20 all day long at a profit and they still want to charge vinyl & 1980's CD prices.
Say that the price was 13.00 but the checkout said 130.00 and you just clicked "okay" since prices are normally always correct.
According to all these morally bankrupt folks, the business owes you nothing. From all my dealings with Amazon and all the other positive posts here on the board, it's clear Amazon would immediately address this.
That makes anyone who took advantage of this (fairly nice merchant) pretty scummy in my book.
I think the alternative should have been, "Please return the merchandise to us or we'll place your name on our website as a customer who ripped us off."
Um.. Just because someone is not nice doesn't mean you get to treat them immorally.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is about your behavior, not theirs. In many cases, you may need to be nice to people many times before it finally breaks through to them and they start acting better. In the real world, we often give up before that time (since we don't have the patience of a saint).
While I don't believe in gods, and I don't always suceed in practicing these principles, I do know that they are necessary for a healthy society.
On most occasions, the person thanks me for noticing their mistake and adds it (or in a few cases says "ah, man- never mind- just keep it").
However, on a couple occasions the clerk has started to argue with me to prove I'm mistaken about saying I need to pay more! At that point, I just let them win and say, "okay, you are right." and walk out with my free stuff. Sheesh.
They are designed some for fun- some to maintain a revenue stream. A fun game where you finish content too quickly won't hold your attention. Designing quality content takes a lot of man hours. Most the NPC's don't even have "eliza" level intelligence and the plots would be rejected on the benny hill show.
Mmogs are basically repeat an action a lot to get a rare item or to level up so you can qualify to solve a complicated puzzle with 40 other people. They used to be called MMorgs but roleplaying is almost non-existant on them these days. RP was VERY high the first few years. It was a very immersive and different game back then but after couple years of RP in a non-RP environment, most just stop.
A few people revel in ripping things off. The music industry (MI) will lose some money on them.
A lot of people have absolutely no morals and will do what costs them the least. MI will lose some money on them.
A lot of people are as moral as they can afford to be. MI will lose some money on them if people feel swapping non-drm'd titles is okay.
The folks folks who are very moral, it won't really matter unless the basic morality of the action is redefined by the culture (which I see a strong incentive to occur).
It might turn out to be the last big blast of sales income before music sales dry up.
The designer's personally observe the uber guilds and give them tips on encounters for cripe's sake.
We are all subject to so many different rules that your use of the term is completely meaningless.
Saying a person can't use money is completely arbitrary on your part unless you also include multi-boxing, macro programs, data-stream programs, being supported by the state or parents so you can play unlimited hours, and being on the east coast (so you get all the best camps first).
For the record, I've never done any of that or bought gold and I don't have a problem if anyone does that compared to all the other crappy things people do all the time.
Never "cheated" in my life- 7 years in EQ on one character in a major raiding guild (GM's say probably the oldest in the game).
I think the games are absolutely rigged to favor people with unlimited play hours. In the old days- I went 2 years without even seeing a lot of mobs since they spawned and were killed between 1pm and 3pm. I "cheated" by spending the money to go to a game convention and bend the designers ears about that and suggest a random spawn interval. When they implemented that it actually resulted in some of the older guilds breaking up since they were no longer guaranteed of targets to pick and choose from (so the game became "unfun" for them).
Unless they bring out a game where you are limited to 10 hours a week on a server, then anything you want to do to balance out the unfair advantage of unlimited play time (i.e. no job- rich, parents support them, in college (and failing most likely)) is fine by me.
Likewise, unless they have a way to stop multi-boxing (which is impossible) you are always going to face people who don't struggle like you do because they have 3 characters and always have a group.
Finally, many of the people in the winning guilds in EQ and WOW have massive cheating programs that interpret the data streams so they know exactly what mobs are up and what visable items they are carrying (as well as even automatically hunt and kill monsters in an area) via macroing.
So sure... try to play a "fair" game and see what it gets you.
Well, if you have 3 hours a week to play but you make $300 an hour, it only makes sense to pay $600 for a character suitable for the "cool" parts of the game.
Likewise, if camping the sword of uberness would take 59 hours or you can buy it for $177 dollars (1/2 hour of your time), the decision is easy.
Why spend 200 hours of your life killing rats and weak monsters (oh the incredible fun) when you can just start at 20th level for 100 bucks?
If those 200 hours were entertaining- maybe. But typically they are insanely mindless grinding with no fun factor at all.
In fact, most folks power level in some fashion once they get one character up to a decent level even tho it reduces the "fun".
In many of them the members of the class get nothing but a worthless coupon while the lawyers walk away with millions.
Then, the product prices are raised to cover those costs so in reality *I* am paying the lawyers.
You want the companies to be held accountable- fine. But you pay me 4 million dollars- I'll do my best to find something wrong with every company. This does nothing but make everything we want to do more expensive, and drive any kind of risky product off the market even if I want to buy it knowing it is risky.
My honda element got some sort of stupid class about the windshield-- well hell, it's got a nearly flat windshield- of course it's going to take rock hits harder. I knew that going in. Any damn fool who looks at the slope of the windshield vs a four door is going to know it's going to take more dings.
What do they have to do- put a big red sign that says "THIS WINDSHIELD IS FAIRLY VERTICAL AND WILL GET DINGED BY ROCKS MORE"?
these cases really upset me. I get mail all the time showing the lawyers are going to make 4 to 16 million dollars and as a member of the class I'll get less than a hundred bucks. I do not join the class. I know ultimately, i'm going to be paying higher prices because of this crap.
Well of course it deals with americans, but i'm interested to hear what the "basic rights" views of those countries are with regard to use of copyrighted material as well. Please feel free to contribute them.
No man... they are really hostile to any new theory that threatens the ones their work is based on. Even to the point of actively suppressing them and trying to destroy the scientists pushing them.
Imagine you have a great gold mine of grant money and salary and some new theory threatens all that.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200009/file-sharin
Unless you are Cher or Elton John, you are not going to do well with the current copyright situation. You'll see your music sell a million albums and yet make a mysteriously small amount of money.
This is the meat but it goes into quite a bit of detail.
From the article:
Last year the worldwide sales of all 600 or so members of the Recording Industry Association of America totaled $14.5 billion--a bit less than, say, the annual revenues of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance. As for the tiny labels at South by Southwest, many of the dot-coms in attendance could have bought them outright for petty cash.
After the show I asked Cleaver if he was concerned about the fate of the music industry in the Internet age. "You must be kidding," he said. With some resignation he recounted the sneaky methods by which three record labels had ripped off the band or consigned its music to oblivion, a subject to which he has devoted several chapters of an unpublished autobiography he offered to send me.
(He had nicer things to say about his current label, Checkered Past.) Later I asked one of the music critics if Cleaver's tales of corporate malfeasance were true. More than true, I was told--they were typical. Not only is the total income from music copyright small, but individual musicians receive even less of the total than one would imagine. "It's relatively mild," Cleaver said later, "the screwing by Napster compared with the regular screwing."
Although many musicians resent it when people download their music free, most of them don't lose much money from the practice, because they earn so little from copyright. "Clearly, copyright can generate a huge amount of money for those people who write songs that become mass sellers," says Simon Frith, a rock scholar in the film-and-media department at the University of Stirling, in Scotland, and the editor of Music and Copyright (1993). But most musicians don't write multimillion-sellers. Last year, according to the survey firm Soundscan, just eighty-eight recordings--only
Which shows Gallagher is a human being and your co-worker is thoughtless and rude.
The speed of light is a real and unbreakable rule as a result nothing more than 4 or 5 light years away is reachable.
Sure- you *might* be able to theoretically build a ship that could go further but all politics is local. Look at our politics- could we gather the will to build a 10 trillion dollar multi-generation star ship?
I think civ's do okay, never get off the planet the started on, and eventually die out from lack of resources, some kind of self destruction, or being wiped out by an external event.
With a paintball gun you can put a camera up to 30 to 40' up out of action very quickly.
Other options include eggs (they set up particularly well in hot weather).
Be creative.
Need to remember to
a) Walk in.
b) Wear a hat and bulky clothing.
For lower-lying cameras you have more primitive options (St. Louis Slugger).
They believe they should have all of your money.
Just so you know what they believe.
I grant you the legal point.
The moral point is that we have numerous examples that Amazon is a stand up retailer and WOULD fix it.
Any moral person should treat them appropriately.
Yea i finally upgraded to XP- because you can't buy 2k machines in best buy any more. I needed a new gaming machine (vertigo? some kinda oh yea. "Velocity"). It has dual processors- unlike 2000, I have no idea how fast it really is except by the price ($1299 vs $2199 so I assume it is not the fastest but have no idea how much slower it is).
I really want to move my gaming to consoles when Everquest finally kicks over.
Note:
When you change your daylight savings time rules-- there is no effective date so the rule applies backwards as well as forwards. Any reports you recalculate based on GMT converted to DST will not match the originals if hour by hour matters.
In other words, as of march 11th, 2007, the current DST rules also apply to March 11th of 1970 (when the change was really in April).
I know.. I was making a joke about the entire .02 cent thread a few months back too. It was a cell phone that the guy was arguing with.
I take it that you work for a cell phone company. /smirk.
I think you left out "at a reasonable price" but otherwise agree.
.25 cents, very few employed 1st world (and maybe 2nd world) citizens are going to pirate them.
If they were online, lossless without DRM but $2 bucks, a lot of folks are going to pirate them.
If they were online, lossless without DRM at
The fact is the value of the songs once they are over a couple years old is really the bandwidth and storage costs plus a reasonable markup.
What's sick is that right now- today- they could be selling DVD's or USB drives with 1,200 songs on them for $20 all day long at a profit and they still want to charge vinyl & 1980's CD prices.
Exactly
Say that the price was 13.00 but the checkout said 130.00 and you just clicked "okay" since prices are normally always correct.
According to all these morally bankrupt folks, the business owes you nothing. From all my dealings with Amazon and all the other positive posts here on the board, it's clear Amazon would immediately address this.
That makes anyone who took advantage of this (fairly nice merchant) pretty scummy in my book.
I think the alternative should have been,
"Please return the merchandise to us or we'll place your name on our website as a customer who ripped us off."
Um..
Just because someone is not nice doesn't mean you get to treat them immorally.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is about your behavior, not theirs. In many cases, you may need to be nice to people many times before it finally breaks through to them and they start acting better. In the real world, we often give up before that time (since we don't have the patience of a saint).
While I don't believe in gods, and I don't always suceed in practicing these principles, I do know that they are necessary for a healthy society.
On most occasions, the person thanks me for noticing their mistake and adds it (or in a few cases says "ah, man- never mind- just keep it").
However, on a couple occasions the clerk has started to argue with me to prove I'm mistaken about saying I need to pay more! At that point, I just let them win and say, "okay, you are right." and walk out with my free stuff. Sheesh.
They are designed some for fun- some to maintain a revenue stream. A fun game where you finish content too quickly won't hold your attention. Designing quality content takes a lot of man hours. Most the NPC's don't even have "eliza" level intelligence and the plots would be rejected on the benny hill show.
Mmogs are basically repeat an action a lot to get a rare item or to level up so you can qualify to solve a complicated puzzle with 40 other people. They used to be called MMorgs but roleplaying is almost non-existant on them these days. RP was VERY high the first few years. It was a very immersive and different game back then but after couple years of RP in a non-RP environment, most just stop.
I'm not sure if they are mistaken or not.
A few people revel in ripping things off. The music industry (MI) will lose some money on them.
A lot of people have absolutely no morals and will do what costs them the least. MI will lose some money on them.
A lot of people are as moral as they can afford to be. MI will lose some money on them if people feel swapping non-drm'd titles is okay.
The folks folks who are very moral, it won't really matter unless the basic morality of the action is redefined by the culture (which I see a strong incentive to occur).
It might turn out to be the last big blast of sales income before music sales dry up.
Subject to the same rules.
LOL
The designer's personally observe the uber guilds and give them tips on encounters for cripe's sake.
We are all subject to so many different rules that your use of the term is completely meaningless.
Saying a person can't use money is completely arbitrary on your part unless you also include multi-boxing, macro programs, data-stream programs, being supported by the state or parents so you can play unlimited hours, and being on the east coast (so you get all the best camps first).
For the record, I've never done any of that or bought gold and I don't have a problem if anyone does that compared to all the other crappy things people do all the time.
You keep telling yourself that.
Never "cheated" in my life- 7 years in EQ on one character in a major raiding guild (GM's say probably the oldest in the game).
I think the games are absolutely rigged to favor people with unlimited play hours. In the old days- I went 2 years without even seeing a lot of mobs since they spawned and were killed between 1pm and 3pm. I "cheated" by spending the money to go to a game convention and bend the designers ears about that and suggest a random spawn interval. When they implemented that it actually resulted in some of the older guilds breaking up since they were no longer guaranteed of targets to pick and choose from (so the game became "unfun" for them).
Unless they bring out a game where you are limited to 10 hours a week on a server, then anything you want to do to balance out the unfair advantage of unlimited play time (i.e. no job- rich, parents support them, in college (and failing most likely)) is fine by me.
Likewise, unless they have a way to stop multi-boxing (which is impossible) you are always going to face people who don't struggle like you do because they have 3 characters and always have a group.
Finally, many of the people in the winning guilds in EQ and WOW have massive cheating programs that interpret the data streams so they know exactly what mobs are up and what visable items they are carrying (as well as even automatically hunt and kill monsters in an area) via macroing.
So sure... try to play a "fair" game and see what it gets you.
Also there is this.
Unemployed guy- or chinese guy who can live on 60 cents an hour can afford to play 16 hours a day so they "win" hands down every time.
But... you can step into a winning position for 700 bucks and join a guild doing high end content.
If you don't, you will never make it on top of a real job and family.
Well, if you have 3 hours a week to play but you make $300 an hour, it only makes sense to pay $600 for a character suitable for the "cool" parts of the game.
Likewise, if camping the sword of uberness would take 59 hours or you can buy it for $177 dollars (1/2 hour of your time), the decision is easy.
Why spend 200 hours of your life killing rats and weak monsters (oh the incredible fun) when you can just start at 20th level for 100 bucks?
If those 200 hours were entertaining- maybe. But typically they are insanely mindless grinding with no fun factor at all.
In fact, most folks power level in some fashion once they get one character up to a decent level even tho it reduces the "fun".
You missed my point entirely.
It's not about me getting more.
These cases should not even take place.
In many of them the members of the class get nothing but a worthless coupon while the lawyers walk away with millions.
Then, the product prices are raised to cover those costs so in reality *I* am paying the lawyers.
You want the companies to be held accountable- fine. But you pay me 4 million dollars- I'll do my best to find something wrong with every company. This does nothing but make everything we want to do more expensive, and drive any kind of risky product off the market even if I want to buy it knowing it is risky.
My honda element got some sort of stupid class about the windshield-- well hell, it's got a nearly flat windshield- of course it's going to take rock hits harder. I knew that going in. Any damn fool who looks at the slope of the windshield vs a four door is going to know it's going to take more dings.
What do they have to do- put a big red sign that says "THIS WINDSHIELD IS FAIRLY VERTICAL AND WILL GET DINGED BY ROCKS MORE"?
these cases really upset me.
I get mail all the time showing the lawyers are going to make 4 to 16 million dollars and as a member of the class I'll get less than a hundred bucks. I do not join the class. I know ultimately, i'm going to be paying higher prices because of this crap.
Well of course it deals with americans, but i'm interested to hear what the "basic rights" views of those countries are with regard to use of copyrighted material as well. Please feel free to contribute them.
Actually lots of civil disobedience takes place in large numbers because folks feel safe from punishment while still being able to make their point.
It usually gets pretty ugly when the police says to hell with it an starts arresting them anyway.
But clearly pot laws at a rock concert and pot laws in the police station are enforced differently.
No man... they are really hostile to any new theory that threatens the ones their work is based on. Even to the point of actively suppressing them and trying to destroy the scientists pushing them.
Imagine you have a great gold mine of grant money and salary and some new theory threatens all that.