Why should your recipients be subsidizing you to get your message accross? If you phone people, you're paying 100% of the cost to get your message to people. If you send out letters, again you're paying 100%. But when you send an email, the recipient is paying to receive your message.
Today it's commercial free speech, tomorrow political speech, and eventually, all free speech.
Email does not equal handing out fliers on the sidewalk. If I pass someone on the street protesting something, I can just continue walking by and ignore him/her. When I read my email, I am paying for the electricity to power my computer, the phone line to call my ISP, my ISP to provide my email service, etc, etc. The difference is that if I don't want to pay for unwanted spam, I should not have to. Spammers force their garbage onto me which I pay for and they purposely try to hide their identity so that I don't know who they are. Spam is not speech and you are doing a great disservice to everyone by trying to equate spam with some form of protected expression.
Sure, it's illegal, but to find and prosecute spammers requires: 1. Some technical knowledge, 2. a warrant to get info from their ISP. Even technical internet users will find that it's really hard to get #2.
Not necessarlly... Spam is usually trying to sell something and to sell something, the business needs to have some sort of identification, such as a phone number or address, for would-be suckers, er customers, to contact. Alls yous gottsa do is call 'em up and say "Hey, I want to buy this... where to I send the moola?" and BAM! You got 'em. They receive a court summons instead of a check. Now, getting them to pay up is another problem...
What this lawsuit indicates, to me, is that the RIAA, for all their talk about copyright protection, is really just trying to adapt the Internet to their old, tired, payola-centric business models.
You got that right. In the last 5 years, the RIAA and its members have started to become insignificant. A consumer multimedia PC is all that someone needs to record and mix their own music tracks and publish them to compact disc, creating an album that is as good as one of those published by the big labels. The RIAA's business depended on them having control of being able to record, distribute, and promote new music and that is why they could rob artists though "take it or leave it" contracts. Now, all the RIAA has going for them is their promotion machine, and even that is being negated by the Internet. Big business music is facing its own extinction. "Copyright protection" is just smoke and mirrors disguising the real reason they are suing anyone remotely relating to MP3 or music on the Internet. The real reason that they're going after Napster, Aimster, MP3.com, et al, is that today there's trading of RIAA music. Tommorow, they're be trading non-RIAA music and that has the suits shitting their pants. Copyright protection isn't the target; eliminating all possible competition is. The problem with the RIAA and their attempts to close the door on online music is that its impossible to stop now. How many people have bought broadband connections just for downloading MP3s or CD recorders to make CDs from MP3s. You can buy MP3 players everywhere now. Blank CDs are less that $2 a pop. The facade that the RIAA has built over music is crumbling down; they're no longer needed.
I don't know who's more greedy? Microsoft or the RIAA... its sort of a toss-up, I think. I doubt that the RIAA would begin mass distributing their beloved IP on a format that they do not have exculsive control over. For Windows Media, Microsoft is holding all the keys. I'm sure that the RIAA would rather have it so that THEY were holding them.
I see where Microsoft's plan is... and its just like IE. They give away the Windows Media tools (recording and playback) but they will only run on Windows (more specifically, Windows XP). Side note: did Microsoft ever release a *NIX version of IE? They had announced on for Solaris a while ago...
Well, they obviously didn't want their company to become worthless in a matter of minutes. Rambus' entire business is centered around leveraging its IP (patents) and, because of this ruling, their ability to do that is severely damaged. I like this quote from the article:
"It seems unlikely Rambus (memory) will ever be a high-volume, mainstream memory technology," he said.
This pretty much says the future of Rambus' business. IANAL, but it looks like RDRAM is the only thing they've got now (they have a desidingly negative ruling against them) and even Intel, its strongest backer, is conceding that RDRAM will never become the high-speed memory standard; DDR SDRAM is the future.
What I liked even more is that the MPAA lawyers said that they would release a non-CSS version of the DVD after the copyright expired. Suuurrreee... and then claim copyright protection on that, being that its a "new" work.
While this is true, I suspect the P3 1ghz announcement came to be in the following senario...
(Fade into Intel's Marketing Department)
Marketing Drone 1: Holy crap! AMD is set to announce their gigahertz Athlon processor. We MUST announce our own.
Marketing Drone 2: I'll call down to the engineers and see what we've got to match AMD.
(on phone)
Engineer: What?!?! We've just started making 600mhz chips. You're f-ing out of your mind!
Marketing Drone 2: But we must keep up with AMD! Can you build gigahertz processors?
Engineer: I'd estimate that about 0.5% of our current chip yield *could* make 1 gigahertz.
Marketing Drone 2: Great! I'm writing the press release right now. Get the bunny people up here!
Meanwhile back at the ranch...
Why do I think this is true? The P3 1ghz chip was very unstable compared to their other chips. They needed to write new BIOS code that disabled most of the preformance enhancing features just to get the chip to run. No, this wasn't misrepresentation, just the cold hard facts.
(First I'd like to mention that I totally despise cell phones in the first place and the cell phone owners who think that they NEED to always be talking on them.)
How long is a ring tone? 3 seconds. THREE SECONDS!!! That's around 6 quarter notes at the average of 120 beats per seconds. You can shoehorn those 6 notes into almost any music ever written or write your own music that contains it. The fact that those 3 seconds RESEMBLE another work should be inconsequental.
This is yet another example of someone trying to milk IP for all its worth which is not what copyright was designed for.
At first when I read the headline and blurb, I thought "Oh no! The bastards!" but then after reading up on the issue, came to another conclusion. Aparently, President Bush's itinary is claimed to have been posted to the web site. Obviously, if it is genuine, this is a very serious security breach of the Secret Service, whose job is, among other things, the protection of the President. They're trying to track the leak to the leaker to prevent it from happening again. Althouhg most of us probablly don't think too highly of George "What industry am I NOT in bed with" W. Bush, he still is the President of the United States and needs to be protected. So, at the risk of being labeled a troll, I've got to side with the G-men on this one.
Even better than a letter, find out when your congresspeople will be in their home office and go pay them a visit. Bring some props that have examples of source code and explain to them, in great detail yet understandable to them, why the DMCA is a bad law and how it impacts your freedom.
I think I know what they were trying to do. Like Macrovision, SDMI wanted to patent the ways to remove their watermarking system so that anyone who tried to could be sued for patent infringement, among other things. That's why they wanted the "winners" to sign over their rights to the solution. But, alas, they didn't expect someone to solve their puzzle and not want a shot at the money. And now, Professor Felton and company have a prior art that can bust any patent SDMI can come up with. These are the same patent games we've seen from Rambus and others.
There's a time and place for every fight but for a legal fight, this is neither the time or place. It is the time and place for the publicity battle. RIAA/SDMI can not possiblly label these very distinguished college professors cheats and theves as they have with the users of Napster. Hopefully, the public won't stand for manuvers such as these and there'll be an outcry agaist big entertainment. Hopefully.
Although I would have liked them to thumb their noses at RIAA/SDMI over this, it was a good decision. Read Professor Felten's statement again. He's trying to show how rediculous the recording industry is being.
SDMI made an open challenge to ANYONE ANYWHERE to break their watermarking system. They assumed that anyone who was successful would give them all rights to the results in exchange for the prize money. SDMI did not stipulate that you MUST give them them the results. These researchers took the FREELY AVAILABLE MUSIC FILES and broke them. They weren't intrested in the prize money so they didn't sign their work over to SDMI.
I think that Taco was hinting at hobbiests doing something like this using off-the-shelf components, like building their own PC. If that is the case, you don't need to have everything on one PCB, each device plugs into the motherboard, and is held together with a nifty software hack. Sure someone would sell these devices as one piece, but I'd imagine being able to build a clone (complete with open source software) yourself. Besides, with the improvements in manufacturing technology, we're almost to the point with electroncs that if it works the first time, its going to work for a very long time.
sniglet999> Dell's mboards are non standard, HP's mboards are nonstandard, I won't even MENTION Compaq (oops, just did.)
Yes, but I don't see Dell or HP or Compaq going out of business anytime soon. ClearCube (the company that makes this system) has one and only one product. While its a good idea, IMHO, its only one product. And a quarter of slow sales can result in them ceasing to exist.
The system in its entirety is propriatery, leaving you to the mercy of them for replacement parts. If you invest in their system then the company goes under, you're stuck with a very expensive system with no supply of parts. You can't just run out and buy a "Big Joe's Computer Parts" brand motherboard in a repair pinch.
While this looks neat (it seems that it could be used over existing Cat5 network wires) and everything is centralized, its a risky investment.
The RIAA/SDMI released all watermarked music tracks, of which some contained watermarks currently in production, with a challenge to crack them. Obviously, they assumed that no one would be able to crack it or anyone who did would give up all claim to their work for some money (probablly so that RIAA/SDMI could patent any way to remove the watermark, ala Macrovision). They didn't count on someone taking up the challenge (or using their publiclly released materials) for purely academic research and are now trying to plug the hold in the dam before it bursts.
Man... is the RIAA really stupid or just playing stupid to get public opinion on their said agaist those evil hackers from Priceton?
Either way, their big secret is out, just like the MPAA's CSS secret, and the knowlege of it is not going to disappear.
Here is the real problem that the MPAA (and RIAA) have gotten themselves into: yes, they are trying intimidation tatics to discourage others from infringing on their precious copyrights. The problem with this is that they're creating a slippery slope for themselves. They've put themselves on a path of going after individual offenders, one which they can not get off of. Why can't they? Two reasons: answer to shareholders and save face. They've put themsleves on a path of destruction because they are in danger of pissing off enough of their customers that they eventually cease to exist. Remember, when it all comes down to it, every one that they target is a protential customer. Who, after being cease and desist'ed or sued, will put more money into that company's coffers willingly?
That brings me to my real point... If you want to fight the (MP/RI)AA, you've got to use the same tatics they use. Talk to your representatives in government and, more importantly, spread some anti-PR. Write into your local newspapers. Tired of them labeling you as cheats and theaves? Spread some FUD of your own. "We're not theives, we're your CUSTOMERS!"
This is good stuff. I especially like the way they used Cat5 for all the cables and then their use (voice or data) only depends on what is plugged into the other end, which means you have a very versitile system (add an additional phone line to a room, such as for a fax, really easilly).
I also really like Linksys's line of networking products. Their broadband router (for cable modem or DSL) is simple to set up and they have wireless and wired hubs that will stack right on top.
There are so many products out there now that there is no reason why you shouldn't have a home LAN. If you don't mind wiring your house, I'd very much reccomend that you go the wired route.
The problems with America's youth all come back to the parents. Bullying in schools and being desensitized to violence are part of the problem, but most of it lies in the parents. Today, most parents would rather be their kid's best friends then their parents... disipline takes a back seat to "oooh... I don't want to hurt little Johnny's feelings" and kids are getting away with bad behavior because the parents aren't willing to step in.
Bullying wouldn't be a problem if the parents of the bullies would step in and disipline their kids so that they would learn that bullying is wrong and won't do it to others.
This problem is part of a larger problem with out society as a whole. We want everything to be easy and always be comfortable. We want a pill to take care of all our problems (with this I am refering to the overuse of Ritalin to "cure" overactive kids). Everyone everywhere wants to point a finger at someone else and blame them for the problems. The reality is that the solution to the problem lies within all of us, no violence on TV or in videogames. We need to take a hard look at the direction that out society is going in.
If the RIAA makes the allowed somgs list, then they are, indirectly, claiming copyright on all songs that should be allowed but are left out. They can be seriously busted for this since they have no claim to the song. Go ahead, RIAA... but you may see yourself in court, this time from behind the defendant's table.
You want ot send the RIAA a messag? Start doing this NOW... go out to your local mass-market store (let's leave the mom and pop - if there are any left - alone) and buy a CD. Scratch it. Take it back saying it was scratched. Since most places will only let you return opened music for another of the same CD, get another. Scratch it. Lather, rince, repeat indefinately. If the store catches on tell them "I don't know... the lot must be bad or something."
The store returns it to their vendor (the recording company) who replaces the defective CD for another one. Yes, you're huring the store a little bit but you're hurting the recording company even more.
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Why should your recipients be subsidizing you to get your message accross? If you phone people, you're paying 100% of the cost to get your message to people. If you send out letters, again you're paying 100%. But when you send an email, the recipient is paying to receive your message.
Hmmm... smells like TROLL. Ok, I'll bite.
Today it's commercial free speech, tomorrow political speech, and eventually, all free speech.
Email does not equal handing out fliers on the sidewalk. If I pass someone on the street protesting something, I can just continue walking by and ignore him/her. When I read my email, I am paying for the electricity to power my computer, the phone line to call my ISP, my ISP to provide my email service, etc, etc. The difference is that if I don't want to pay for unwanted spam, I should not have to. Spammers force their garbage onto me which I pay for and they purposely try to hide their identity so that I don't know who they are. Spam is not speech and you are doing a great disservice to everyone by trying to equate spam with some form of protected expression.
Sure, it's illegal, but to find and prosecute spammers requires: 1. Some technical knowledge, 2. a warrant to get info from their ISP. Even technical internet users will find that it's really hard to get #2.
Not necessarlly... Spam is usually trying to sell something and to sell something, the business needs to have some sort of identification, such as a phone number or address, for would-be suckers, er customers, to contact. Alls yous gottsa do is call 'em up and say "Hey, I want to buy this... where to I send the moola?" and BAM! You got 'em. They receive a court summons instead of a check. Now, getting them to pay up is another problem...
What this lawsuit indicates, to me, is that the RIAA, for all their talk about copyright protection, is really just trying to adapt the Internet to their old, tired, payola-centric business models.
You got that right. In the last 5 years, the RIAA and its members have started to become insignificant. A consumer multimedia PC is all that someone needs to record and mix their own music tracks and publish them to compact disc, creating an album that is as good as one of those published by the big labels. The RIAA's business depended on them having control of being able to record, distribute, and promote new music and that is why they could rob artists though "take it or leave it" contracts. Now, all the RIAA has going for them is their promotion machine, and even that is being negated by the Internet. Big business music is facing its own extinction. "Copyright protection" is just smoke and mirrors disguising the real reason they are suing anyone remotely relating to MP3 or music on the Internet. The real reason that they're going after Napster, Aimster, MP3.com, et al, is that today there's trading of RIAA music. Tommorow, they're be trading non-RIAA music and that has the suits shitting their pants. Copyright protection isn't the target; eliminating all possible competition is. The problem with the RIAA and their attempts to close the door on online music is that its impossible to stop now. How many people have bought broadband connections just for downloading MP3s or CD recorders to make CDs from MP3s. You can buy MP3 players everywhere now. Blank CDs are less that $2 a pop. The facade that the RIAA has built over music is crumbling down; they're no longer needed.
I don't know who's more greedy? Microsoft or the RIAA... its sort of a toss-up, I think. I doubt that the RIAA would begin mass distributing their beloved IP on a format that they do not have exculsive control over. For Windows Media, Microsoft is holding all the keys. I'm sure that the RIAA would rather have it so that THEY were holding them.
I see where Microsoft's plan is... and its just like IE. They give away the Windows Media tools (recording and playback) but they will only run on Windows (more specifically, Windows XP). Side note: did Microsoft ever release a *NIX version of IE? They had announced on for Solaris a while ago...
Well, they obviously didn't want their company to become worthless in a matter of minutes. Rambus' entire business is centered around leveraging its IP (patents) and, because of this ruling, their ability to do that is severely damaged. I like this quote from the article:
"It seems unlikely Rambus (memory) will ever be a high-volume, mainstream memory technology," he said.
This pretty much says the future of Rambus' business. IANAL, but it looks like RDRAM is the only thing they've got now (they have a desidingly negative ruling against them) and even Intel, its strongest backer, is conceding that RDRAM will never become the high-speed memory standard; DDR SDRAM is the future.
What I liked even more is that the MPAA lawyers said that they would release a non-CSS version of the DVD after the copyright expired. Suuurrreee... and then claim copyright protection on that, being that its a "new" work.
While this is true, I suspect the P3 1ghz announcement came to be in the following senario...
(Fade into Intel's Marketing Department)
Marketing Drone 1: Holy crap! AMD is set to announce their gigahertz Athlon processor. We MUST announce our own.
Marketing Drone 2: I'll call down to the engineers and see what we've got to match AMD.
(on phone)
Engineer: What?!?! We've just started making 600mhz chips. You're f-ing out of your mind!
Marketing Drone 2: But we must keep up with AMD! Can you build gigahertz processors?
Engineer: I'd estimate that about 0.5% of our current chip yield *could* make 1 gigahertz.
Marketing Drone 2: Great! I'm writing the press release right now. Get the bunny people up here!
Meanwhile back at the ranch...
Why do I think this is true? The P3 1ghz chip was very unstable compared to their other chips. They needed to write new BIOS code that disabled most of the preformance enhancing features just to get the chip to run. No, this wasn't misrepresentation, just the cold hard facts.
(First I'd like to mention that I totally despise cell phones in the first place and the cell phone owners who think that they NEED to always be talking on them.)
How long is a ring tone? 3 seconds. THREE SECONDS!!! That's around 6 quarter notes at the average of 120 beats per seconds. You can shoehorn those 6 notes into almost any music ever written or write your own music that contains it. The fact that those 3 seconds RESEMBLE another work should be inconsequental.
This is yet another example of someone trying to milk IP for all its worth which is not what copyright was designed for.
At first when I read the headline and blurb, I thought "Oh no! The bastards!" but then after reading up on the issue, came to another conclusion. Aparently, President Bush's itinary is claimed to have been posted to the web site. Obviously, if it is genuine, this is a very serious security breach of the Secret Service, whose job is, among other things, the protection of the President. They're trying to track the leak to the leaker to prevent it from happening again. Althouhg most of us probablly don't think too highly of George "What industry am I NOT in bed with" W. Bush, he still is the President of the United States and needs to be protected. So, at the risk of being labeled a troll, I've got to side with the G-men on this one.
Even better than a letter, find out when your congresspeople will be in their home office and go pay them a visit. Bring some props that have examples of source code and explain to them, in great detail yet understandable to them, why the DMCA is a bad law and how it impacts your freedom.
I think I know what they were trying to do. Like Macrovision, SDMI wanted to patent the ways to remove their watermarking system so that anyone who tried to could be sued for patent infringement, among other things. That's why they wanted the "winners" to sign over their rights to the solution. But, alas, they didn't expect someone to solve their puzzle and not want a shot at the money. And now, Professor Felton and company have a prior art that can bust any patent SDMI can come up with. These are the same patent games we've seen from Rambus and others.
There's a time and place for every fight but for a legal fight, this is neither the time or place. It is the time and place for the publicity battle. RIAA/SDMI can not possiblly label these very distinguished college professors cheats and theves as they have with the users of Napster. Hopefully, the public won't stand for manuvers such as these and there'll be an outcry agaist big entertainment. Hopefully.
Although I would have liked them to thumb their noses at RIAA/SDMI over this, it was a good decision. Read Professor Felten's statement again. He's trying to show how rediculous the recording industry is being.
NO! They are NOT right.
SDMI made an open challenge to ANYONE ANYWHERE to break their watermarking system. They assumed that anyone who was successful would give them all rights to the results in exchange for the prize money. SDMI did not stipulate that you MUST give them them the results. These researchers took the FREELY AVAILABLE MUSIC FILES and broke them. They weren't intrested in the prize money so they didn't sign their work over to SDMI.
1. Call or write your congressman and senators.
2. Join the EFF.
3. Get the word out (write to the editors of papers) about what is going on.
I think that Taco was hinting at hobbiests doing something like this using off-the-shelf components, like building their own PC. If that is the case, you don't need to have everything on one PCB, each device plugs into the motherboard, and is held together with a nifty software hack. Sure someone would sell these devices as one piece, but I'd imagine being able to build a clone (complete with open source software) yourself. Besides, with the improvements in manufacturing technology, we're almost to the point with electroncs that if it works the first time, its going to work for a very long time.
sniglet999> Dell's mboards are non standard, HP's mboards are nonstandard, I won't even MENTION Compaq (oops, just did.)
Yes, but I don't see Dell or HP or Compaq going out of business anytime soon. ClearCube (the company that makes this system) has one and only one product. While its a good idea, IMHO, its only one product. And a quarter of slow sales can result in them ceasing to exist.
The system in its entirety is propriatery, leaving you to the mercy of them for replacement parts. If you invest in their system then the company goes under, you're stuck with a very expensive system with no supply of parts. You can't just run out and buy a "Big Joe's Computer Parts" brand motherboard in a repair pinch.
While this looks neat (it seems that it could be used over existing Cat5 network wires) and everything is centralized, its a risky investment.
The RIAA/SDMI released all watermarked music tracks, of which some contained watermarks currently in production, with a challenge to crack them. Obviously, they assumed that no one would be able to crack it or anyone who did would give up all claim to their work for some money (probablly so that RIAA/SDMI could patent any way to remove the watermark, ala Macrovision). They didn't count on someone taking up the challenge (or using their publiclly released materials) for purely academic research and are now trying to plug the hold in the dam before it bursts.
Man... is the RIAA really stupid or just playing stupid to get public opinion on their said agaist those evil hackers from Priceton?
Either way, their big secret is out, just like the MPAA's CSS secret, and the knowlege of it is not going to disappear.
Here is the real problem that the MPAA (and RIAA) have gotten themselves into: yes, they are trying intimidation tatics to discourage others from infringing on their precious copyrights. The problem with this is that they're creating a slippery slope for themselves. They've put themselves on a path of going after individual offenders, one which they can not get off of. Why can't they? Two reasons: answer to shareholders and save face. They've put themsleves on a path of destruction because they are in danger of pissing off enough of their customers that they eventually cease to exist. Remember, when it all comes down to it, every one that they target is a protential customer. Who, after being cease and desist'ed or sued, will put more money into that company's coffers willingly?
That brings me to my real point... If you want to fight the (MP/RI)AA, you've got to use the same tatics they use. Talk to your representatives in government and, more importantly, spread some anti-PR. Write into your local newspapers. Tired of them labeling you as cheats and theaves? Spread some FUD of your own. "We're not theives, we're your CUSTOMERS!"
This is good stuff. I especially like the way they used Cat5 for all the cables and then their use (voice or data) only depends on what is plugged into the other end, which means you have a very versitile system (add an additional phone line to a room, such as for a fax, really easilly).
I also really like Linksys's line of networking products. Their broadband router (for cable modem or DSL) is simple to set up and they have wireless and wired hubs that will stack right on top.
There are so many products out there now that there is no reason why you shouldn't have a home LAN. If you don't mind wiring your house, I'd very much reccomend that you go the wired route.
I'm shocked. I'm sure that he'd find some way to connect them. Or at least geek oppression.
The problems with America's youth all come back to the parents. Bullying in schools and being desensitized to violence are part of the problem, but most of it lies in the parents. Today, most parents would rather be their kid's best friends then their parents... disipline takes a back seat to "oooh... I don't want to hurt little Johnny's feelings" and kids are getting away with bad behavior because the parents aren't willing to step in.
Bullying wouldn't be a problem if the parents of the bullies would step in and disipline their kids so that they would learn that bullying is wrong and won't do it to others.
This problem is part of a larger problem with out society as a whole. We want everything to be easy and always be comfortable. We want a pill to take care of all our problems (with this I am refering to the overuse of Ritalin to "cure" overactive kids). Everyone everywhere wants to point a finger at someone else and blame them for the problems. The reality is that the solution to the problem lies within all of us, no violence on TV or in videogames. We need to take a hard look at the direction that out society is going in.
IANAL... blah..blah...
If the RIAA makes the allowed somgs list, then they are, indirectly, claiming copyright on all songs that should be allowed but are left out. They can be seriously busted for this since they have no claim to the song. Go ahead, RIAA... but you may see yourself in court, this time from behind the defendant's table.
You want ot send the RIAA a messag? Start doing this NOW... go out to your local mass-market store (let's leave the mom and pop - if there are any left - alone) and buy a CD. Scratch it. Take it back saying it was scratched. Since most places will only let you return opened music for another of the same CD, get another. Scratch it. Lather, rince, repeat indefinately. If the store catches on tell them "I don't know... the lot must be bad or something."
The store returns it to their vendor (the recording company) who replaces the defective CD for another one. Yes, you're huring the store a little bit but you're hurting the recording company even more.