Whether it grows depends on the interest in the software. If he were to write and release a Builder's Mortage Banking software (fully complete version 1) under the GPL, it would not grow substantially because there would be little interest in it. Most programs who work on GPL project do so because they have a vested interest in the product, and that product would not appeal to most (if any) people. So it would sit mainly stagnant. If programmers did latch onto it, they would probably want to change the program to be more useful for something they are doing (say adding other types of loan features). While this may be good for the software in general (or bad because of bloat) it doesn't help the releaser at all, because they have no need of these features.
The GPL is a fine idea, but it only truely works on projects that will have wide and varied support. Niche projects won't flourish under the GPL unless it is a niche programmers like.
Nay of the "examples" given of life without standards (yours included) would be quickly resolved. If CDs didn't work in all players, those CDs would be purchased by people. Most things would become a defacto standard, because that is the only way to make money. See things such as VHS for an example (there were 2 competing systems, and one won, so now that is the defacto standard for home video recorders).
The other thing no one is bringing up is how things make it into a standard. Many standards leave out advanced features for various reasons. You have to break the standards then to make use of these features. While a standard is incredibly useful, the things that are left out could be just as useful, and may be left out because people can't agree on them (whether it be because they are copyrighted, or a fight between groups over which of two implementations is better).
As far as the packaged software is concerned, a copy of Windows (any version) Office (any version) or any other piece of software Microsoft donates to charity, the cost is the raw material involved in the package, and the cost of duplication for the content. Also by donating copies of software packages to charity, they bring down the total cost of production per unit.
Why would this be the case? When other companies donate material to charity, they are donated the cost is figured at the market cost (i.e. the full price that the product sells for). Why would this be any different? If a company donates 100 monitors to schools, the total donation will be the market price of the monitors, even though the market price may be 500 times higher than the actual cost of manufacturing the monitors. Why is it slashdotters only seem to complain about these things when MS does them? If AMD had donated $1,000,000 worth of CPUs, no one would bitch because it really only cost them $1,000 to make the CPUs and the rest is just padding on their bottom line.
By the way, where do your get the idea that the XBox is doing better than MS expected? Were MS's expectations really that low? It seems that it's doing just about as badly as everyone else expected (perhaps a little bit better) but still getting drubbed by Sony, which still sells (last I heard) three times as many PS2s as MS sells XBoxes. I think MS had higher expectations than that. It wasn't too long ago that Sony itself broke into the market when it had two well-established players and cornered the sucker.
MS figured to lose lots of money on the X-Box. They were entering a new market with zero following for themselves. They were a year behind the PS2, which already had a huge number of games out. But they had to release something to keep Sony from taking over the market completely. They new they would lose with the X-Box, simply because the PS2 started out so far ahead. But what they did was get their name out, and start to develop a following. People now know the X-Box, and have seen what it can do (which is pretty impressive). When they release the X-Box2, it will be around the same time Sony releases the PS3 (or maybe even before). This will let them battle it out on more even footing, and that is when the real battle will be. If they hadn't of released the X-Box, Sony would have completely dominated the markket and it would have been damn near impossible to release a system.
In actuality I'm refering to both. Your post brought up that people only buy a small amount of music, saying that people generally don't buy thousands of dollars of music at once. My point was that they may not buy it, but if they can download it they will. Whether it is "free" from Kazaa, or from a subscription service is moot. People don't buy thousands of dollars of CDs, but if you give them the option of running wild on a P2P service, they will download the equivalent of thousands of dollars of music. The subscription service will be similar in user experience to "free" P2P, so it is logical that if people go crazy d/ling from P2P, the same would apply when they got on the pay service.
And i agree for some people the point is whether they will have the songs when they quit the service, but other people just want the music now. It could be used to try out thousands of songs and artists a month, all for one low price. If they really like something, they will pay for the CD (or download from something like ITunes) if they quit the service. But the subscription service offers them unlimited music for a lower price than the pay service. If they are like most people, their musical whims switch so often that they are not listening to what they bought 1 year ago. If that is the case, then a subscription service is much better, because they can (theoretically) stay on top of the music trends at all times for $10 a month.
Almost everyone I know who has started downloading music (and doesn;t have a dial-up connection) has ended up downloading massive amount of music. People will only buy 1 or 2 CDs in a week (at most), but it is nothing to download 4 or 5 CDs worth of music in a week. People don;t buy because of the inherent cost. They will download much more, because they realize there is no inherent cost to downloading (they have already paid their 10 dollars). Most people will download more music than they will buy.
I find interesting the arguements that aren't being used though. The MS system would allow you to try out any CD or artist, which is what every claims is so great about P2P. As far as I know, you have to buy a song on Apple's service to hear the entire thing. Also, while everyone is saying how great it is to be able to get a whole album for $9.99, what happened to the "fact" that almost all albums contain only 1 or 2 good songs. Everyone is pointing out you can buy whole albums cheaper than songs, but the whole idea of this service was you could buy individual songs because most albums sucked.
While your idea may work in some cases, simple logic says it doesn't apply hear. The simple facts are 90% (I'm estimating here) of the movies released are released by MPAA members. Of these movies, probably 50% break even or make money (while in the theatre). IF more people were seeing more movies, the majoprity of the movies they would see are the owns from MPAA members that aren't making money. They may go and see an independant film, but more likely they will see the latest Eddie Murphy flop, simply because it is more acccessible, and they remember Beverly Hills Cop and that was funny.
Independent movies are small not because they are outside the MPAA, but because most people have no interest in them. They are made for niche market people, and the makers realize most people would not have an interest in the movie (because, unfortunately, most people are too busy seeing the latest Jim Carey crapfest or watching the Matrix Reloaded SFX fest instead of seeing movies with plots and characters).
When can we finally give up the FUD of "MS crashes all the time"? Anyone who has used a later MS OS (Win2k or XP) can easily see they crash very rarely. I have had my Redhat install have more problems than my Windows install in the past 6 months, and on the MS system most of the problems have been 3rd party software while on the Linux most of the problems have been the OS itself. The reason systems crash is that there are many pieces, written by many different people, interacting with each other. This is the same whether the OS is Linux of Windows. The harping on the instability of Windows does nothing but hurt the Linux cause, since anyone who actually uses a newer version of Windows knows that the person has no basis in reality.
Yes, they can sue for anything before they released their GPLed version of Linux (and possibly afterward if the court finds that they did not have knowledge they were distributing their IP in the kernel, which would invalidate the GPL release). Just because they later released it under another license does not validate the unauthorized use of their IP in earlier instances (if their IP was actually used). Also, it would not authorize the use of their IP unless it is a direct descendent from their distro. The only way to leagally use the code (again, if the courts don't invalidate their GPL release of it) is to take it directly from their distro. Technically speaking, you couldn't take the same code from an earlier distro by someone else, because they did not have the rights to release it under the GPL at that time. Of course proving you got it from a distro that was not theirs will be hard if not impossible (unless your release predates their release). And, of course, IANAL.
I posted comments on Slashdot, and you reproduced it in your post. I didn't give you permission to repost it, yet you did anyway. You redistributed it for the world to read. By your reasoning, what you did was redistribute my works without my permission. What I write is copyrighted, and only I own the rights to it. I decide how it can be distributed, and I didn't give you permission to quote it in your response.
But his post (and this one) would fall into fair use. There are times you can distribute works, and they are covered in Fair Use laws. You can distribute them for educational purposes, or for the purposes of criticism. I could take the lyrics and write a critque of them and would be perfectly, legally correct. But I cannot just take something and distribute it to people for any reason I deem correct.
If no one pays attention to the lyrics, why are there all these sites that have lyrics on them? Seems like a moot point if no one cares about them?
Fair use laws still apply to lyrics just like anything else. Reprinting the lyrics to the entire song for non-review, non-critical, or non-educational purposes in no way falls under fair use. This is less about making money and more about being able to control your own works. If you take pictures of your family and put them on your website, I don't have the authority to take those pictures and repost them on my site because you own those pictures. This is the same thing. These people are taking artwork created by one person and using it without permission.
If I hear someone reciting poetry can I then distribute it? I once heard Henry Rollins do spoken word, is it okay if I record it and put the exact text of what he said on the net? If I go to a book-reading, can I record the author and transcribe it onto a webpage? After all, he read the book to me, so he must want me to know what it says, so I can tell everyone else as well.
This is the work of a person, and they have the right ot control how it is used. Maybe they want to put it on their web page so they can profit from it instead of you? Maybe they want to release a lyrics book? This is a work of art created by someone, and you have no right to decide what should be done with it.
I don't know why anyone is surprised by this. Lyrics are basically poems, and no one would argue that poetry isn't covered by copyright. If I wanted to put up a page of poetry, I would have to contact the individual copyright holders and get their permission. Why is it people think music is somehow different from other forms of art and can be readily and freely stolen?
I'm not up on exactly what type of "spam" the emailers are sending, but I think everyone needs to realize there are legitimate emailers and spammers.
I hate spammers. They send out mass emailings to huge lists they buy (or they make up), usually through open relays and they refuse to take you off their lists. On the other hand there are some (I'm not usre how many) legitimate emailers who actually get their lists from things people sign up for. They send legitimate email through legitimate email servers and have legitimate ways to get yourself removed from their lists.
The crusanders need to realize that mass emailing is like hacking, there are white, black, and grey hats. If I sign up for Yahoo and check the boxes saying I want to receive email about something, it is not spam, no matter how much I whine about it. If I can respond to the email and request to be taken off a list and actually be taken off of it, then it isn't spam. Not all commercial email is spam.
As easy as it is to rail against spammers and paint all commercial email with the same brush, shouldn't we see if the people listed are following the appropriate rules, or if they are breaking them before we try and bury them?
But that bin has a stated purpose (food for the poor, toys for kids, etc). P2P is just the exchange of files, the types of files or what is in them doesn't matter, at least that is what we have been told. They don't care whether the files are copyrighted material that is illegal to share, old folk songs in the public domain, or stuff the artists want on there. P2P is just a method for sharing files, and the contents of the files don't matter. But suddenly the contents of the files matter when they are masqueraded as copyrighted material but really aren't? It seems if you care enough to sue to try and stop the RIAA from sharing fake copyrighted material (which is illegal to share on the service) you by default should have to at least make an effort to stop people from sharing the actual copyrighted material. To do otherwise seems like an admission that the purpose of your service is to allow people to trade copyrighted works against the copyright holders wishes.
Maybe I'm wrong, but don't the P2P companies keep claiming that they have no control over what is shared, and it is for sharing any file people want? Then why would it be wrong for the RIAA to share these files? And better yet, why would they care enough to sue, since according to them, they have no control and want no control, yet they want to control what the RIAA puts on there? If they can do that (even by lawsuit) shouldn't they have to control what other users put on, including copyrighted material?
As long as you are not using your X-Box to play pirated games (or access other copyrighted material), you are not using it to circumvent anything. You are free to do anything you want with your X-Box. This includes paint it, put a blue LED in it, or even put a modchip in it. Now if that modchip contains code copyrighted by MS (which they always do as far as I know) then you are violating not only the DMCA, but copyright laws as well. You can freely remove the X-Box chip and place a blank one in (not that it will do you any good). But the modchips contain a modified version of the X-Box BIOS, and that makes them illegal, even without the DMCA.
They would pay for an iPod because it holds many MP3s. That is like asking why people would pay for a bag to carry their CDs, but not a new monitor. One really doesn't have much to do with the other.
As for what Apple's service (and the RIAA's service, don't forget that they are a part of this as well) will make a long term difference, we don't know. It may make P2P obsolete, or it may make no difference at all. There is nothing saying that the people using their service are the ones using P2P. The real test will be to see what happens in a year. Is there a significant decrease in the number of P2P users? Are people still buying from iTunes? Saying tha=ey did good their first week is no proof at all, as it could be just the fun of something new, a completely seperate group of people buying the music (who don't currently use P2P), or just a small group of people buying a lot of music.
iTunes is doing very well right now, but that is to be expected. It is only a week or 2 old. The test is to see how many people are still buying from it in a year or so. And the true test will be to see if the P2P sharing programs have a decrease in usage. It very well could be a small number of people who are using iTunes and purchasing a large amount, while the majority of people are still getting their music from Kazaa. Once iTunes opens to Windows users, we should see a noticable decrease in the amount of P2P traffic if the hype is true and people are buying their music. We'll have to wait and see if it happens, but I'm not holding my breath.
But the common theory is that if people could get these things online at a reasonable price, then they would buy them, and the only reason people are stealing them is that they are not available from the content owners(not that I buy into that, but that is the argument). Without DRM, people will just take the music/movie/whatever that one person buys, throw it on Kazaa (or whatever the next big P2P program is) and then people still won't buy it. So if you believe the rhetoric from the P2P defenders, once people can buy these things online, you won't have to worry as much about the bootlegs, since that will be an extreme minority. In theory, if the companies are comfortable that they can sell their stuff online and not have it appear on a P2P service in 10 minutes, then they will, and people will buy instead of pirating. Mind you I don't believe this will happen, because I think most people use P2P because they are cheap and want something for nothing, but that is what theory is anyway.
I agree that there are many problems with the patents that the patent office grants. They often grant patents on things that are obviously trivial and/or have prior art, and often people and corps try to use the patent wrongly to gouge money from people. But that is a problem in the patent office that should be addressed there. You should not throw out the concept of patents because the current patent office is operating incorrectly. You should work to correct the way the patent office is operating.
Do not throw away a good concept because it is currently being administered badly. That would be like discontinuing healthcare because you feel the doctors and hospitals are operating incorrectly. Work to solve the actual problem, which is the patent office, not to stop the workable and useful concept behind the entire idea.
While it is true that technical innovation are built on top of other ideas, the driving force behind many technical innovations (as well as most other things on earth) is money. Having a limited monopoly on a creation encourages people and organization to invest more into R&D, because they realise they will have the opportunity to make back that money. There would be nothing stopping people from releasing their discoveries and patents to be used freely if they so which. There would be nothing stopping OSS from using patents that are either free, or paying to use other peoples discoveries. But it would also encourage more research, as a company would know it has 5 years (or however long it would be) to make their money back. Very few people/organizations can sink millions of dollars into research the "next big thing" with the expectation they will receive nothing in return.
Software patents should be run similar to drug patents. I short, set amount of time that the inventor controls the product, then it is fair game for anyone to copy.
But what about if you're accused of piracy when you have a vast library of legal songs? Are they going to properly cross-reference their user-list, or just continue to send nastygrams to anyone whom they suspect of having Mp3's?
So far, I have yet to hear of anyone being accused of "having" MP3s. Every person that has even been approached (that I know of) has either been downloading MP3s or distributing MP3s through P2P. Distribution is illegal, as you say, but so is downloading. It is not illegal to possess MP3s, as long as you have the legal right to them, and no one has been prosecuted for that.
It hurts everyone else because you prove their arguement for them. If people actually boycotted movies instead of stealing them, the MPAA (and RIAA and whoever else) couldn't blame their losses on piracy. If people aren't watching pirated movies (or only a few people are), then they can't claim they are losing money because of the pirates, and will be forced to either do something to change things or die a slow death. As long as you are willing to prove that they are losing money to pirates, they can keep going to congress and getting more draconian laws passed.
How exactly would this solve the problem? What would happen is people would subscribe, download the files, and then put them in their Kazaa shared folder. Most people would still use Kazaa, since you now have high quality MP3s from the "official" service on Kazaa for free. Why should they pay when someone else will and share it for free?
The real problem is most people want something for nothing. They want to be able to get the songs for free instead of having to pay for them. If they offer non-DRM caopies of the songs for download, these will just be made available for free, so most people still won;t pay.
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Whether it grows depends on the interest in the software. If he were to write and release a Builder's Mortage Banking software (fully complete version 1) under the GPL, it would not grow substantially because there would be little interest in it. Most programs who work on GPL project do so because they have a vested interest in the product, and that product would not appeal to most (if any) people. So it would sit mainly stagnant. If programmers did latch onto it, they would probably want to change the program to be more useful for something they are doing (say adding other types of loan features). While this may be good for the software in general (or bad because of bloat) it doesn't help the releaser at all, because they have no need of these features.
The GPL is a fine idea, but it only truely works on projects that will have wide and varied support. Niche projects won't flourish under the GPL unless it is a niche programmers like.
Nay of the "examples" given of life without standards (yours included) would be quickly resolved. If CDs didn't work in all players, those CDs would be purchased by people. Most things would become a defacto standard, because that is the only way to make money. See things such as VHS for an example (there were 2 competing systems, and one won, so now that is the defacto standard for home video recorders).
The other thing no one is bringing up is how things make it into a standard. Many standards leave out advanced features for various reasons. You have to break the standards then to make use of these features. While a standard is incredibly useful, the things that are left out could be just as useful, and may be left out because people can't agree on them (whether it be because they are copyrighted, or a fight between groups over which of two implementations is better).
As far as the packaged software is concerned, a copy of Windows (any version) Office (any version) or any other piece of software Microsoft donates to charity, the cost is the raw material involved in the package, and the cost of duplication for the content. Also by donating copies of software packages to charity, they bring down the total cost of production per unit.
Why would this be the case? When other companies donate material to charity, they are donated the cost is figured at the market cost (i.e. the full price that the product sells for). Why would this be any different? If a company donates 100 monitors to schools, the total donation will be the market price of the monitors, even though the market price may be 500 times higher than the actual cost of manufacturing the monitors. Why is it slashdotters only seem to complain about these things when MS does them? If AMD had donated $1,000,000 worth of CPUs, no one would bitch because it really only cost them $1,000 to make the CPUs and the rest is just padding on their bottom line.
By the way, where do your get the idea that the XBox is doing better than MS expected? Were MS's expectations really that low? It seems that it's doing just about as badly as everyone else expected (perhaps a little bit better) but still getting drubbed by Sony, which still sells (last I heard) three times as many PS2s as MS sells XBoxes. I think MS had higher expectations than that. It wasn't too long ago that Sony itself broke into the market when it had two well-established players and cornered the sucker.
MS figured to lose lots of money on the X-Box. They were entering a new market with zero following for themselves. They were a year behind the PS2, which already had a huge number of games out. But they had to release something to keep Sony from taking over the market completely. They new they would lose with the X-Box, simply because the PS2 started out so far ahead. But what they did was get their name out, and start to develop a following. People now know the X-Box, and have seen what it can do (which is pretty impressive). When they release the X-Box2, it will be around the same time Sony releases the PS3 (or maybe even before). This will let them battle it out on more even footing, and that is when the real battle will be. If they hadn't of released the X-Box, Sony would have completely dominated the markket and it would have been damn near impossible to release a system.
In actuality I'm refering to both. Your post brought up that people only buy a small amount of music, saying that people generally don't buy thousands of dollars of music at once. My point was that they may not buy it, but if they can download it they will. Whether it is "free" from Kazaa, or from a subscription service is moot. People don't buy thousands of dollars of CDs, but if you give them the option of running wild on a P2P service, they will download the equivalent of thousands of dollars of music. The subscription service will be similar in user experience to "free" P2P, so it is logical that if people go crazy d/ling from P2P, the same would apply when they got on the pay service.
And i agree for some people the point is whether they will have the songs when they quit the service, but other people just want the music now. It could be used to try out thousands of songs and artists a month, all for one low price. If they really like something, they will pay for the CD (or download from something like ITunes) if they quit the service. But the subscription service offers them unlimited music for a lower price than the pay service. If they are like most people, their musical whims switch so often that they are not listening to what they bought 1 year ago. If that is the case, then a subscription service is much better, because they can (theoretically) stay on top of the music trends at all times for $10 a month.
Almost everyone I know who has started downloading music (and doesn;t have a dial-up connection) has ended up downloading massive amount of music. People will only buy 1 or 2 CDs in a week (at most), but it is nothing to download 4 or 5 CDs worth of music in a week. People don;t buy because of the inherent cost. They will download much more, because they realize there is no inherent cost to downloading (they have already paid their 10 dollars). Most people will download more music than they will buy.
I find interesting the arguements that aren't being used though. The MS system would allow you to try out any CD or artist, which is what every claims is so great about P2P. As far as I know, you have to buy a song on Apple's service to hear the entire thing. Also, while everyone is saying how great it is to be able to get a whole album for $9.99, what happened to the "fact" that almost all albums contain only 1 or 2 good songs. Everyone is pointing out you can buy whole albums cheaper than songs, but the whole idea of this service was you could buy individual songs because most albums sucked.
While your idea may work in some cases, simple logic says it doesn't apply hear. The simple facts are 90% (I'm estimating here) of the movies released are released by MPAA members. Of these movies, probably 50% break even or make money (while in the theatre). IF more people were seeing more movies, the majoprity of the movies they would see are the owns from MPAA members that aren't making money. They may go and see an independant film, but more likely they will see the latest Eddie Murphy flop, simply because it is more acccessible, and they remember Beverly Hills Cop and that was funny.
Independent movies are small not because they are outside the MPAA, but because most people have no interest in them. They are made for niche market people, and the makers realize most people would not have an interest in the movie (because, unfortunately, most people are too busy seeing the latest Jim Carey crapfest or watching the Matrix Reloaded SFX fest instead of seeing movies with plots and characters).
When can we finally give up the FUD of "MS crashes all the time"? Anyone who has used a later MS OS (Win2k or XP) can easily see they crash very rarely. I have had my Redhat install have more problems than my Windows install in the past 6 months, and on the MS system most of the problems have been 3rd party software while on the Linux most of the problems have been the OS itself. The reason systems crash is that there are many pieces, written by many different people, interacting with each other. This is the same whether the OS is Linux of Windows. The harping on the instability of Windows does nothing but hurt the Linux cause, since anyone who actually uses a newer version of Windows knows that the person has no basis in reality.
Yes, they can sue for anything before they released their GPLed version of Linux (and possibly afterward if the court finds that they did not have knowledge they were distributing their IP in the kernel, which would invalidate the GPL release). Just because they later released it under another license does not validate the unauthorized use of their IP in earlier instances (if their IP was actually used). Also, it would not authorize the use of their IP unless it is a direct descendent from their distro. The only way to leagally use the code (again, if the courts don't invalidate their GPL release of it) is to take it directly from their distro. Technically speaking, you couldn't take the same code from an earlier distro by someone else, because they did not have the rights to release it under the GPL at that time. Of course proving you got it from a distro that was not theirs will be hard if not impossible (unless your release predates their release). And, of course, IANAL.
I posted comments on Slashdot, and you reproduced it in your post. I didn't give you permission to repost it, yet you did anyway. You redistributed it for the world to read. By your reasoning, what you did was redistribute my works without my permission. What I write is copyrighted, and only I own the rights to it. I decide how it can be distributed, and I didn't give you permission to quote it in your response.
But his post (and this one) would fall into fair use. There are times you can distribute works, and they are covered in Fair Use laws. You can distribute them for educational purposes, or for the purposes of criticism. I could take the lyrics and write a critque of them and would be perfectly, legally correct. But I cannot just take something and distribute it to people for any reason I deem correct.
If no one pays attention to the lyrics, why are there all these sites that have lyrics on them? Seems like a moot point if no one cares about them?
Fair use laws still apply to lyrics just like anything else. Reprinting the lyrics to the entire song for non-review, non-critical, or non-educational purposes in no way falls under fair use. This is less about making money and more about being able to control your own works. If you take pictures of your family and put them on your website, I don't have the authority to take those pictures and repost them on my site because you own those pictures. This is the same thing. These people are taking artwork created by one person and using it without permission.
If I hear someone reciting poetry can I then distribute it? I once heard Henry Rollins do spoken word, is it okay if I record it and put the exact text of what he said on the net? If I go to a book-reading, can I record the author and transcribe it onto a webpage? After all, he read the book to me, so he must want me to know what it says, so I can tell everyone else as well.
This is the work of a person, and they have the right ot control how it is used. Maybe they want to put it on their web page so they can profit from it instead of you? Maybe they want to release a lyrics book? This is a work of art created by someone, and you have no right to decide what should be done with it.
I don't know why anyone is surprised by this. Lyrics are basically poems, and no one would argue that poetry isn't covered by copyright. If I wanted to put up a page of poetry, I would have to contact the individual copyright holders and get their permission. Why is it people think music is somehow different from other forms of art and can be readily and freely stolen?
I'm not up on exactly what type of "spam" the emailers are sending, but I think everyone needs to realize there are legitimate emailers and spammers.
I hate spammers. They send out mass emailings to huge lists they buy (or they make up), usually through open relays and they refuse to take you off their lists. On the other hand there are some (I'm not usre how many) legitimate emailers who actually get their lists from things people sign up for. They send legitimate email through legitimate email servers and have legitimate ways to get yourself removed from their lists.
The crusanders need to realize that mass emailing is like hacking, there are white, black, and grey hats. If I sign up for Yahoo and check the boxes saying I want to receive email about something, it is not spam, no matter how much I whine about it. If I can respond to the email and request to be taken off a list and actually be taken off of it, then it isn't spam. Not all commercial email is spam.
As easy as it is to rail against spammers and paint all commercial email with the same brush, shouldn't we see if the people listed are following the appropriate rules, or if they are breaking them before we try and bury them?
But that bin has a stated purpose (food for the poor, toys for kids, etc). P2P is just the exchange of files, the types of files or what is in them doesn't matter, at least that is what we have been told. They don't care whether the files are copyrighted material that is illegal to share, old folk songs in the public domain, or stuff the artists want on there. P2P is just a method for sharing files, and the contents of the files don't matter. But suddenly the contents of the files matter when they are masqueraded as copyrighted material but really aren't? It seems if you care enough to sue to try and stop the RIAA from sharing fake copyrighted material (which is illegal to share on the service) you by default should have to at least make an effort to stop people from sharing the actual copyrighted material. To do otherwise seems like an admission that the purpose of your service is to allow people to trade copyrighted works against the copyright holders wishes.
Maybe I'm wrong, but don't the P2P companies keep claiming that they have no control over what is shared, and it is for sharing any file people want? Then why would it be wrong for the RIAA to share these files? And better yet, why would they care enough to sue, since according to them, they have no control and want no control, yet they want to control what the RIAA puts on there? If they can do that (even by lawsuit) shouldn't they have to control what other users put on, including copyrighted material?
As long as you are not using your X-Box to play pirated games (or access other copyrighted material), you are not using it to circumvent anything. You are free to do anything you want with your X-Box. This includes paint it, put a blue LED in it, or even put a modchip in it. Now if that modchip contains code copyrighted by MS (which they always do as far as I know) then you are violating not only the DMCA, but copyright laws as well. You can freely remove the X-Box chip and place a blank one in (not that it will do you any good). But the modchips contain a modified version of the X-Box BIOS, and that makes them illegal, even without the DMCA.
They would pay for an iPod because it holds many MP3s. That is like asking why people would pay for a bag to carry their CDs, but not a new monitor. One really doesn't have much to do with the other.
As for what Apple's service (and the RIAA's service, don't forget that they are a part of this as well) will make a long term difference, we don't know. It may make P2P obsolete, or it may make no difference at all. There is nothing saying that the people using their service are the ones using P2P. The real test will be to see what happens in a year. Is there a significant decrease in the number of P2P users? Are people still buying from iTunes? Saying tha=ey did good their first week is no proof at all, as it could be just the fun of something new, a completely seperate group of people buying the music (who don't currently use P2P), or just a small group of people buying a lot of music.
iTunes is doing very well right now, but that is to be expected. It is only a week or 2 old. The test is to see how many people are still buying from it in a year or so. And the true test will be to see if the P2P sharing programs have a decrease in usage. It very well could be a small number of people who are using iTunes and purchasing a large amount, while the majority of people are still getting their music from Kazaa. Once iTunes opens to Windows users, we should see a noticable decrease in the amount of P2P traffic if the hype is true and people are buying their music. We'll have to wait and see if it happens, but I'm not holding my breath.
But the common theory is that if people could get these things online at a reasonable price, then they would buy them, and the only reason people are stealing them is that they are not available from the content owners(not that I buy into that, but that is the argument). Without DRM, people will just take the music/movie/whatever that one person buys, throw it on Kazaa (or whatever the next big P2P program is) and then people still won't buy it. So if you believe the rhetoric from the P2P defenders, once people can buy these things online, you won't have to worry as much about the bootlegs, since that will be an extreme minority. In theory, if the companies are comfortable that they can sell their stuff online and not have it appear on a P2P service in 10 minutes, then they will, and people will buy instead of pirating. Mind you I don't believe this will happen, because I think most people use P2P because they are cheap and want something for nothing, but that is what theory is anyway.
I agree that there are many problems with the patents that the patent office grants. They often grant patents on things that are obviously trivial and/or have prior art, and often people and corps try to use the patent wrongly to gouge money from people. But that is a problem in the patent office that should be addressed there. You should not throw out the concept of patents because the current patent office is operating incorrectly. You should work to correct the way the patent office is operating.
Do not throw away a good concept because it is currently being administered badly. That would be like discontinuing healthcare because you feel the doctors and hospitals are operating incorrectly. Work to solve the actual problem, which is the patent office, not to stop the workable and useful concept behind the entire idea.
While it is true that technical innovation are built on top of other ideas, the driving force behind many technical innovations (as well as most other things on earth) is money. Having a limited monopoly on a creation encourages people and organization to invest more into R&D, because they realise they will have the opportunity to make back that money. There would be nothing stopping people from releasing their discoveries and patents to be used freely if they so which. There would be nothing stopping OSS from using patents that are either free, or paying to use other peoples discoveries. But it would also encourage more research, as a company would know it has 5 years (or however long it would be) to make their money back. Very few people/organizations can sink millions of dollars into research the "next big thing" with the expectation they will receive nothing in return.
Software patents should be run similar to drug patents. I short, set amount of time that the inventor controls the product, then it is fair game for anyone to copy.
But what about if you're accused of piracy when you have a vast library of legal songs? Are they going to properly cross-reference their user-list, or just continue to send nastygrams to anyone whom they suspect of having Mp3's?
So far, I have yet to hear of anyone being accused of "having" MP3s. Every person that has even been approached (that I know of) has either been downloading MP3s or distributing MP3s through P2P. Distribution is illegal, as you say, but so is downloading. It is not illegal to possess MP3s, as long as you have the legal right to them, and no one has been prosecuted for that.
It hurts everyone else because you prove their arguement for them. If people actually boycotted movies instead of stealing them, the MPAA (and RIAA and whoever else) couldn't blame their losses on piracy. If people aren't watching pirated movies (or only a few people are), then they can't claim they are losing money because of the pirates, and will be forced to either do something to change things or die a slow death. As long as you are willing to prove that they are losing money to pirates, they can keep going to congress and getting more draconian laws passed.
How exactly would this solve the problem? What would happen is people would subscribe, download the files, and then put them in their Kazaa shared folder. Most people would still use Kazaa, since you now have high quality MP3s from the "official" service on Kazaa for free. Why should they pay when someone else will and share it for free?
The real problem is most people want something for nothing. They want to be able to get the songs for free instead of having to pay for them. If they offer non-DRM caopies of the songs for download, these will just be made available for free, so most people still won;t pay.