It's one thing to think that you ought to be able to share music, but I tire quickly of Napster users trying to pretend like they're legally in the right on this one; the self-rightousness of it makes me gag. Face it: more than likely, you're sharing music illegally. If you can't deal with that, don't do it.
Yeah I'm sure governments were quickly tired by the women trying to get the ability to vote (and illegal protests) or people who wanted to end aparthide. Copyright holders want to extend their rights I want to protect and extend mine (fair use). This is my form of protest. Sure it may not be as exciting or dramatic as the other causes cited above, but you know in the comming years it may become just as important. That is what is truly sad. The want gustapo tactics, they'll get a war waged in the press, at public hearings, at the ballot box and most importantly, at the register.
There's one small difference you seem to be forgetting, civil disobedience only works when people are prepared to accept the consequences. You didn't hear the civil rights protesters whining because they got arrested. They expected to be arrested, because they were breaking the law. Napster isn't a protest, it's a way around the law. If it was a protest, people would be trying to get arrested to get the world to see what's going on and that it's wrong. Instead they spend all their time being anonymous and trying not to be booted from Napster, so they can still get music for free.
"But it doesn't work that way. In the "real world", access is something that is given, and it is assumed that if you have not been given access that you should have none. Why should we make special rules for the digital world? Unless you are given access, you have no right to be there."
I disagree. It IS different online. Think of FTP sites. Where would we be if we had to request access to all of those great publiclly available resources?
But isn't the anonymous logon a way of goving permission? It's isn't that you don't have to log on, you have to use a specific log on to get access. That log on gives people permission to log on. If something is just open, there isn't an implied permission given by a log on.
It's like needing a password to enter your house. I could make the password my name and tell everyone that is the password, and tell them to tell all their friends. They then have implied permission because they know the password I set up. They would still need the password, even if I left the door open, but they have it. But if I leave my door open, and there is no password, there isn't implied permission to enter.
If 'Sally' didn't want anyone and everyone using her read/write share, she shouldn't have left it wide open. It's that simple.
And if Sally didn't everyone to come into her yard and store stuff there, she shouldn't have left access open to anyone. She should have put an unbreakable fence and guard dogs. But it doesn't work that way. In the "real world", access is something that is given, and it is assumed that if you have not been given access that you should have none. Why should we make special rules for the digital world? Unless you are given access, you have no right to be there.
this guy sounds very similar to the assembler teacher I had in college. We would have numerous tests, quizzes, and projects throughout the quarter, but your grade was based solely on an interview at the end of the quarter. He would sit down with you and ask you some questions about the programs you had written. If you had a firm grasp of the material (which he basically already knew from class interaction) it was a 5 minute interview and you were done with an A. Of course then there was the poor guy who was in there for 45 minutes. No one ever saw him in a programming class again. Then for second quarter assembler, I had this same teacher. The entire quarter who devoted to a project. The class was broken up into groups and you designed a program. It could be anything you wanted (with his approval). The 8 of us ended up programming a version of the old Star Trek game where you went to the different sectors and fought Klingons. It had working sound, a Gui, opening movie, etc. I learned more about real programming in those 2 quarters than the rest of my college experience combined.
Virginia may be able to fire people who goof off, but that doesn't help them in sexual harrassment cases where someone was looking at porn. Unless they have an official policy against viewing "sexually explicit content" they can be held liable if someone does. It's a simple matter of having to cover your own ass.
Ahh, you bring up the question that I have on my mind. Really, why shouldn't he have been mucking around? Because you're not "supposed" to? Seriously, what's a good reason for him not to? I think it really comes down to why he was mucking around. If he was doing it because he was trying to see how secure his own private information was, I think he has a right to check that.
In theory this is true, but try it in real life. I have my money in the bank down the street. I still can't try to break in "just to see if my money is secure". To me, computer systems aren't really any different than property for this type of thing. You aren't allowed to muck around in either of them if they aren't yours, simply because we can't factor intent into it. If you get caught before you have done anything wrong, does that mean you weren't going to do anything? Or you just didn't get the chance to? It doesn't matter, because you shouldn't have been there in the first place.
This may be seen as O-T but, why do companies insist on prosecuting the "illegal entrant" who just plays around on the system, and does no damage other than, possibly, to a company's reputation? In fact, most of the hackers would just explore what they could do, and then send a post to people like Kevin Poulson, or Adrian Lamo describing a WEAKNESS that then allows the company to make a BETTER product? I think that companies that get cracked should prosecute FULLY and VIGOROUSLY, but companies that get hacked should say, "wow, that kinda sucks, thanks for letting us know and not being a thief!" Anyway, just a thought.
The answer is simply because you can't let anyone get away with it (in general). If someone hacks your system, doesn't seem to break anything, and simply sends you an anonymous message saying so, you REALLY don't know what went on. He may have taken data that you didn't notice, put a trojan or something else you didn't notice, opened up other security holes, etc. Just because someone says that they didn't do anything doesn't mean that they didn't. I think AOL went a bit far in prosecuting this guy if he actually did help them patch the hole, but it doesn't change the fact that he shouldn't have been mucking around on someone else's network to begin with.
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I can't see how this is a bad thing. When ILOVEYOU and MELISSA were running rampant, everyone screamed about how MS set everything on low security by default, and no one would change it. Now they decide to set security higher by default (which would avoid a lot of the problems) and now people are screaming about that. There is no perfect way to set security by default. The only way to have real security is to set it yourself. If people take what MS is giving them as security settings, that is their choice. If low default is bad, and high default is bad, what is good?
All righty then, Mr. Smarty Pants, why is it good? What extra service does the "rent" (vs. own) get you? What is it that would make me "buy" this rather than a version that doesn't auto-destruct? MS claims this is "an exciting new opportunity" -- for who? Their bankers?
It's good for companies like the one I work at. As soon as a new version of MS Office is released they jump right out and buy it. It they can "lease" a copy for less than an upgrade, it makes great sense. It's the same concept as companies that lease computers instead of buying them. It's cheaper to pay a continual fee and always have a newer model than having to deal with the outdated stuff. Same concept.
Sure they could be positioning themselves, but my VC statement was a guess.
I want to know if they are actively persuing profit as we speak, or if they are simply trying to scrape together enough money to pay for their legal bills and hardware. They could very easily rake in the cash by including banner ads in their client, setting certain songs to rate higher in search returns in exchange for advertising cash from the bands, etc. Is any of this happening right now though is my question.
They currently aren't making any money, but I would bet my right testicle that the reason they aren't yet is because of their legal troubles. If they try to make money right now they are gaurunteed to lose the case. As long as they are not making any money, the court might decide their service is okay. Venture capitalists don't give money to companies that never plan to make money. If they can survive the court case they will be charging within a month, mark my words.
It doesn't strike you as a major difference that, in one case, we have a fanatic who wants to dominate the world, control all standards, and crush his competition, and on the other, we have a fanatic who wants to tear down the walls of secrecy, give us all the freedom to examine the tools we use, and give everyone, from the richest developers to the poorest college student, the same level of access? To me, freedom is choice, and RMs doesn't want anyone to have a choice. It's GNU or nothing. With true freedom, you can make your own choices and choose either the MS way or the RMS way, but neither of them want to give us that choice. Having only one choice is never freedom, no matter how good you think that choice is.
Maybe it's just me, but RMS seems as psycho as Bill Gates most of the time. He has the same basic philosophy as Microsoft (take over everything and make it fit with your agenda), and will accept nothing but complete and total compliance with what he feels is right. He has no concept of middle ground. Everything is not going to owned by MS and closed source, but everything will not be "Free" either. And everything shoudln't fall into either category.
What the judge is proposing is a statute of limitations of 6 months on such data. So even if it is backed up somewhere it won't be admissible as evidence
I don't see why electronic data should be any different than any other kind. If I write something down, it will still be admissible in 6 months. Same with something I say. Why should it be different if it's in an electronic format? If I throw something in the trash, is it forever gone? Not a chance. It's perfectly legal for the cops to search my trash, same with electronic files.
As far as true deleting goes, there are numerous programs that will do it for you. Many programs have a "shredder" function, which permanently deletes a file. It's no different than a paper copy. I can throw it away, but if I want to make sure it's really gone, I have to use a paper shredder. Same concept applies electronicly. I can delete it, but if I really want to make sure it's gone, I need to use a "file shredder". Just because it's electronic doesn't make it different.
Now I believe that the entire CPHack case is wrong and that the defendents shouldn't be found guilty, but this ruling makes very little sense to me. I mean, is it really trying to say that if one person does something illegal and ends up in court, and then other people do exactly the same, only the first person can be found guilty of that crime?
This seems to me to be morally indefensible. Copycat crime is just as wrong as the original and its perpetrators should suffer the same consequences as its originator. This seems to me to be just another crazy court decision in modern day America, land of the "free".
No, what it;s saying is if someone else is convicted of a crime, you can't appeal their case on the grounds that you may later be convicted of the same crime. These people weren't involved in the case at all, they were never mentioned, and the case was specific to Skala and Jansson. These people can't appeal the case because it doesn't apply to them. They would have to be taken to court and founbd guilty in a seperate trial (in which this case could be used as a precident), and they may win or lose that trial. Yo simply cannot appeal until you yourself has been found guilt.
Each unit of paper or telephone advertising delivered to the prospective consumer costs the advertiser something. Not so with e-mail. Even if the spammer is paying for metered uploads or connection time, adding recipients has a nearly negligible effect, since the body of the spam only has to be sent once
Each email sent costs something also. It costs for the computer it was sent on. It costs for the bandwidth to send it. Spam may be cheaper than normal advertising, but telemarketing was cheaper than mail ads. That doesn't mean it's not a legitamate form of advertising.
No, ISPs generally pay for a pipe the same way a user does. A T3 is a T3, no matter what is going through it. They don't pay per byte, or per minute, they pay for a pipe, and anything that pipe can hold is fair game.
This one tripped my BS meter. As far as I know, most ISPs charge their large-pipe customers for transfers over a certain amount. The same may apply to the ISPs themselves. Are you yourself an ISP with multiple backbone providers? Are you a backbone provider? Have you ever gotten a high-speed pipe for your home or business? Do you know anything about what you're talking about?
I myself don't work for an ISP, but I have many friends who do. They pay per pipe, just like we pay per dial-up (or whatever). The reason high-bandwidth connection are priced by bandwidth is usually that the ISP has to add additional pipes quickly when selling high-bandwidth pipes, and they can't oversell them nearly as much as dial-ups. Even with home/business high bandwidth connections, you usually don't pay per byte. You pay to have a set amount of bandwidth, with as much use of that set amount of bandwidth as you need.
The telemarketers pay the phone company for the phone bandwidth. The direct marketers pay bulk rate postage for every piece mailed. It is in fact the high volume of bulk mail and the massive amounts spent on it by direct marketers that keeps the price of a first-class stamp low in the US.
And the spammers pay their ISPs and phone bills. Everyone seems to forget that no one pays your ISP for you getting email. You pay for email when you send it (in the form of a phone line and ISP, or whoever you connect). If I send you an email, I don't have to your ISP to receive it, just like your ISP doesn't have to pay mine when you send me a message.
I don't like spam, but it is no worse than any other form of advertising. Coventional marketing has a lot of things that are far worse than spam.
since it costs nothing it is sent in huge quantities and sometimes multiple times
Kinda like all those mass mailing I get time and time again, or the multiple telemarketer calls I get every day?
They found a source of postage, paper, and phone service that costs nothing? Cool! Where do I sign up?
Yes, it's in the aisle right next to the free computer, phone line, and internet connection that the spammers use.
If you want to argue that the receiver pays for it, at least there is something to that (although at least in the US, the practice of paying for bandwidth usage is almost completely dead).
In that case, all you folks who are paying bills for a Net connection ought to find out who is really getting the money -- it's obviously isn't the ISP, since "the practice of paying for bandwidth usage is almost completely dead" -- and put a stop to it.
(The expected rejoinder "I meant that people don't typically pay 'per-minute'" is beside the point. When you get spam, the spammer has stolen some of your ISPs bandwidth, and the ISP will pass the cost of that along to you one way or another.)
No, ISPs generally pay for a pipe the same way a user does. A T3 is a T3, no matter what is going through it. They don't pay per byte, or per minute, they pay for a pipe, and anything that pipe can hold is fair game. As for them "stealing" the ISPs bandwidth, the telemarketers "steal" phone bandwidth from the telephone company and the mail ads "steal" bandwidth from the post office, both of which they end up charging back to me.
Some people advertise responsibly via email
Yes; the ones who operate strictly opt-in mailing lists. I haven't seen anybody here complaining about those (and, in fact, they are themselves victims of spammer scum because they have to carefully distinguish their legitimate e-mail advertisements from the spam).
Just like some people use advertising in the real world irresponsibly, and other don't. I get ads from some companies 3 or 4 times a week. Does that mean all ads are bad? No, spam can be used or abused just like any other form of advertising.
Sure spam can be considered another form of advertising, but the difference is that there are no ethics in this form. There are various examples of lack of ethics in spam:
- since it costs nothing it is sent in huge quantities and sometimes multiple times
Kinda like all those mass mailing I get time and time again, or the multiple telemarketer calls I get every day?
- spammers are in the majority anonymous because they realise that this form of advertising is unpopular
Kinda like the telemarketer calls from "unknown name, unknown number", or the mail ads I receive that don't have a return address?
- they will not respect your right to be removed from their mailing list even when asked
Kinda like all the mail ads I receive where I can't get off their list? Ever try to get of a junk mail list? Who do you contact? Where do you contact them? And if you do manage to contact them, they don't ever take you of the list. Hell, most places don't even have a real list, they just send it to "Resident" at every address known to man.
- it is not even marked as an advert to ease filtering
Kind of like the telemarketers who start off asking me how my day was and then 2 minutes later start their sales? Or the ads I get i the mail without anything on the outside of the envelope marking it as an ad?
These arguements don't make spam any different that any other form of advertising. If you want to argue that the receiver pays for it, at least there is something to that (although at least in the US, the practice of paying for bandwidth usage is almost completely dead). Some people advertise responsibly via email, and others don't, you can't condemn them all because some people refuse to follow the rules.
The real big thing isn't that Darren Aronofsky is directing, it's that Frank Miller will be adapting Year One for the screenplay. As bad as B&R was, it was only partially directorial problems. The biggest problem was that the story was a giant piece off monkey crap. The best any director could have done with that script would be to make it "watchable", I doubt anyone alive could have made it "good". As long as they stick to Year One, and let Frank Miller actually have a say in how it is transfered, then there is a great basis for a movie, and then the director can take it from "good" to "great". Now, if only they had chosed "Dark Knight Returns" instead...
Really? I don't? Are you sure? Let me go check. **digs out my copy of the constitution** Let's see here . . . freedom of speech, religion, right to bear arms, no unreasonable search and seizure, oh! You're right - there is a section on copyright here. But that's funny - it seems to say that after 14 years, I do have the right to take other people's music without their permission. So where did this "artists life plus 700 million years" crap come from?
In all seriousness though, I will admit that many people download mp3's for the free music. But some people are practicing civil disobedience - hoping to draw attention to the fundamentally broken concept of intellectual property we have today. I don't want a society in which I must have permission to do anything, and get a license agreement on everything I buy, watch, hear, etc. And so, until intellectual property is fixed, I refuse to recognize it's validity, and do believe that downloading free music can be a form of civil disobedience.
So what your saying is by breaking the law you are trying to get instituted that you're practicing civil disobidience? Or are you making sure that you only download music that "should" be in the public domain? Or are you using this as an excuse to download new music and say by doing that you are trying to get the laws back to what they originally were, even though you're breaking what they originally were? The constituation says a lot of things, and a lot fo them are ignored. Do you think people in the US should have titles such as "Lord" or "Duke"? It's in the constitution, so it must be a great thing right? The constitution is a great document, and I'm glad it's there, but it is only called upon when convenient. If we have to uphold the constitution, then we have to uphold every single line of it. But that wouldn't suit your purposes, so we'll keep yelling about the part we like and ignoring the ones we don't.
So, how fair is Slashdot. IS this a case of a tool that can be used for illegal (or immoral in this case, at it has been shown to be legal), but can also be used for legal (and moral) activities and should be left alone? OR will everyone get up in arms because this isn't against the RIAA ir MPAA or Microsoft, but against the beloved GPL. They aren't resonsible for how their software is used, that's the user's job. They have no control over it. And they have no legal obligation to limit it's used to things that everyone else deems okay. This tool has to stay on the market, because it can be (and actually is) used for legal purposes.
Is there a chance of getting a virus with MP3s? Are the MP3 files huge like software?
The size of the software does not play into this at all. Similarly, viruses and trojan horses are not a big deal for pirated software anyway. (Ever heard of a CRC or MD5 hash? You can tell if the software is legit or not.)
How many people do you know have have downloaded a MP3 file on a 56k modem? Now compare that to the number of people who have downloaded 120MB (or usually more) software? The size has a huge affect on who will take the time (or can take the time) to download something. Most people get annoyed when they have to wait 5 minutes for an MP3, do you think they want to wait 5 hours, at broadband speed, for a game? And I realize the possibility of viruses is small, but to the average person, a virus is a deadly thing and could destroy everything and is everywhere. They still worry about it.
Is there a system as simple as Napster to use for getting software?
Uhhh, yeah it's called Gnutella (and other similar file-sharing programs). There's nothing about Napster that makes it unique to sharing music files. The same concept can and will be applied to other files. And there's usenet, IRC, HTTP, FTP, etc.
If you think any of those is as easy as Napster, you've saddly mistaken. I know people in the IT industry who don't use Gnutella, because it's too hard to find a decent server and find what you want. Napster is a simple centralized place to download MP3 files that can be played immediately. There is nothing that is as easy and quick as Napster.
The software industry would be destroyed if this were true. On top of that, getting music by Napster is not exactly "free." You have to do the work to locate the songs, especially if you're compiling an entire album, and the quality of the music is unknown or not guaranteed.
Still, presuming it is "free" as you say, most people are honest enough to buy the album, especially if it is considered "illegal" for them to download it on Napster.
Do you count the trouble of going to the store and buying a CD into it's cost? It's the same thing as finding it on Napster, except it's harder and uses gas and more time. As for all the people that Napster being "illegal" will stop, um....it's "illegal" now. Everyone knows that pirating MP3s is illegal and it's not stopping anyone. Most people will tell you it's illegal, but they don't worry about it. It's just the few who think they are "justified" in doing it that claim that pirating MP3s isn't illegal.
That's not a logical argument. I think we can safely say that most everyone on the internet could use Napster to download music. And those same people could also buy a music CD if they wanted.
There are hundreds of millions of people using the internet, and it's growing all the time.
How many people use Napster? A million? Two million? How many of those people actually pirated an entire CD album they hadn't already bought on CD? Ten thousand? Fifty thousand?
Not everyone on the NEt can use Napster. There are many people who can't install a simple program without help. Do you think these people are going to download and install Napster by themselves? And if only 2 million people use Napster, I would bet money that 1,999,999 at least have downloaded pirated music. HEll, you can't find anything else on Napster. As for the actually number of users...as of the press release on July 28, there were 20 million users of Napster. And I would bet that 99.99% of them have downloaded a copyrighted MP3. You don't need to download a whole CD, you only need to download a song. It could be the single that you didn't want to buy, or the song of that soundtrack that you liked, not a complete CD. And what happens as the NEt grows? When 75% of people are on the net, how many people will be using Napster?
Again, I did not say anything about CD sales on the rise. But I'm glad you brought it up... If Napster really was having a measurable impact on CD sales, they would have gone down, regardless of how you measure causation or correlation.
What constitues "measurable"? IF without Napster CD sales would have gone up by double what they did (and I'm making this figure up for arguement) would that not have been a "measurable" impact? You yourself admit that not everyone has access to Napster. So if only say 10% of the US used Napster instead of buying CDs, that means if total sales jumped by 1% Napster didn't have an affect, even though those 10% of the people would have bought CDs and didn't? That's simple insane. Anything that drives sales down has a "measurable" affect, it doesn't matter if total sales went up or not, if they would have been higher without that "detriment".
This is also hogwash. Compressed music is a second-rate substitute for the real thing. If I were to download a track from a Napster user, I would be getting considerably less than what the owner of the original CD paid for. It would be good enough for my car or the crappy speakers on my office PC, but painfully inadequate for when I want to sit down at home at my stereo and listen. Maybe when we have the bandwidth to transfer uncompressed CDs the way MP3s are transferred now, they might have a point, but still not a very good one
Maybe to audiophiles, but the average person can't tell a difference between a 128bit MP3 and the CD version. I know I can't. Everyone I talk to says that MP3 is "CD quality". That certainly says to me they can't tell the difference, and if they can, it's not enough to bother them. Only audiophiles with $5000 stero setups notice or care about the difference.
The fundamental flaw in all anti-piracy reasoning is that if a user illegally copies a thousand dollars worth of CDs, the music industry has lost a thousand dollars. The fact of the matter is that most people don't have a thousand dollars to spend on CDs every week, especially their core audience, who are teenagers and college students. If every MP3 in the world were magically erased and all sources were cut off, it would not translate into sales.
No, it doesn't translate into $1000 of sales, but I would bet it translates into at least 1 CD sale lost. If you download $1000 worth of music, chances are there is something in that $1000 you would have paid for if you couldn't get it for free. I wouldn't suggest it's a 1 to 1 ratio, but I would guess that there is some correlation.
Why not? Encryption and SDMI will not stop piraters of music, it will only prevent regular people from easily listening to the music for which they've already paid... just like DVD.
No, it won't stop everyone from pirating music, but it will stop a lot of people. There is no way to stop everyone from doing anything, but if you can limit a large number of people froim doing it, that's still a good thing.
Yeah, just like nobody buys software nowadays, it's all pirated in usenet and IRC, and all the software companies are losing money! Right?
These are too fields that are completely different. Is there a chance of getting a virus with MP3s? Are the MP3 files huge like software? Is there a system as simple as Napster to use for getting software? What are the chances of getting non-working pirated software as compared to non-working MP3s? These two things aren't in the same ballpark, hell, their not even playing the same sport.
What they need to do is: release their albums in high quality, MP3 (or similar unsecured digital music format), for a discount over CD's. Most people, if given the opportunity, would pay for the music, and support their favorite artists.
Some people would download songs off of Napster. Some of those people will then buy the album if they like it, and others will not. We are talking about a minority of people.
Right now, Napster usage is high, but nothing compared to the amount of people actually buying CD's in stores. Napster usage would be reduced dramatically if the labels were selling inexpensive MP3 albums ($5 - $10). They'd be making money hand over fist.
Most people would buy something that they can get for free? I don't know what planet you're living on, but most people I know take free over paid any day. Napster usage is not as high as CD sales, then again not nearly as many people have access to Napster. Only half the households in the US have a computer, which eliminates a HUGE amount of people right there. And yes, people are still buying CDs, but that doesn't mean Napster doesn't have a negative affect. Correlation is not causation. There are a million reason why CD sales went up last year, and there is nothing I've seen that can draw a direct connection between Napster use and CD sales going up. The question isn't how many CDs were sold last year, it's how many would have been sold if Napster (and the resulting MP3 explosion) would not have happened.
No this isn't what we wanted. I'll tell you what I want: See, I got this song off napster that I really like, except that like a lot of the crap on napster it's got some pops and clicks in it and the last six seconds are cut off. I want to be able to pay the artist $5 and get a nice clean copy, complete with digital signature and MD5sum to ensure that there aren't any bits missing. That's what I'm willing to pay for. But for some reason, they aren't selling. Which is a shame because I'd be willing to buy. I'll tell you what I won't buy tho: I won't buy some SDMI crap that won't play on my Linux box.
Okay, let me get this right. You get a "bad" copy off Napster, and want to pay for a good MP3 copy. Which you then share on Napster. So the next person who downloads that song (from you) gets a perfect copy. This person then has no reason to go and pay for a "good" copy, they already have one. If the song is popular, your copy spreads like wildfire, and no one needs to buy the "good" copy, they already have it. So, how exactly does this make money for the labels?
As the RIAA has gone after Napster, everyone has been talking about how they would buy digital music if is was available. Well, that's what they are trying to do. They are trying to make music available online, and to make it secure. They simply cannot release the music in an unsecure format. The only thing that would accomplish to make the music easy to put on Napster (or whatever). Someone would buy the music, and the first thing they would do is put it in with all of their other MP3s, shared on Napster. Then everyone else finds it on Napster, and has no need to buy it (and this is especially true for digital music, as you have exactly what you would be purchasing). So the only way to offer music online and to have a chance to make any profit is to offer it is some kind of either encrypted or watermarked format. If you want music available for download (legally), there is no other way.
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Yeah I'm sure governments were quickly tired by the women trying to get the ability to vote (and illegal protests) or people who wanted to end aparthide. Copyright holders want to extend their rights I want to protect and extend mine (fair use). This is my form of protest. Sure it may not be as exciting or dramatic as the other causes cited above, but you know in the comming years it may become just as important. That is what is truly sad. The want gustapo tactics, they'll get a war waged in the press, at public hearings, at the ballot box and most importantly, at the register.
There's one small difference you seem to be forgetting, civil disobedience only works when people are prepared to accept the consequences. You didn't hear the civil rights protesters whining because they got arrested. They expected to be arrested, because they were breaking the law. Napster isn't a protest, it's a way around the law. If it was a protest, people would be trying to get arrested to get the world to see what's going on and that it's wrong. Instead they spend all their time being anonymous and trying not to be booted from Napster, so they can still get music for free.
I disagree. It IS different online. Think of FTP sites. Where would we be if we had to request access to all of those great publiclly available resources?
But isn't the anonymous logon a way of goving permission? It's isn't that you don't have to log on, you have to use a specific log on to get access. That log on gives people permission to log on. If something is just open, there isn't an implied permission given by a log on.
It's like needing a password to enter your house. I could make the password my name and tell everyone that is the password, and tell them to tell all their friends. They then have implied permission because they know the password I set up. They would still need the password, even if I left the door open, but they have it. But if I leave my door open, and there is no password, there isn't implied permission to enter.
And if Sally didn't everyone to come into her yard and store stuff there, she shouldn't have left access open to anyone. She should have put an unbreakable fence and guard dogs. But it doesn't work that way. In the "real world", access is something that is given, and it is assumed that if you have not been given access that you should have none. Why should we make special rules for the digital world? Unless you are given access, you have no right to be there.
this guy sounds very similar to the assembler teacher I had in college. We would have numerous tests, quizzes, and projects throughout the quarter, but your grade was based solely on an interview at the end of the quarter. He would sit down with you and ask you some questions about the programs you had written. If you had a firm grasp of the material (which he basically already knew from class interaction) it was a 5 minute interview and you were done with an A. Of course then there was the poor guy who was in there for 45 minutes. No one ever saw him in a programming class again. Then for second quarter assembler, I had this same teacher. The entire quarter who devoted to a project. The class was broken up into groups and you designed a program. It could be anything you wanted (with his approval). The 8 of us ended up programming a version of the old Star Trek game where you went to the different sectors and fought Klingons. It had working sound, a Gui, opening movie, etc. I learned more about real programming in those 2 quarters than the rest of my college experience combined.
Virginia may be able to fire people who goof off, but that doesn't help them in sexual harrassment cases where someone was looking at porn. Unless they have an official policy against viewing "sexually explicit content" they can be held liable if someone does. It's a simple matter of having to cover your own ass.
In theory this is true, but try it in real life. I have my money in the bank down the street. I still can't try to break in "just to see if my money is secure". To me, computer systems aren't really any different than property for this type of thing. You aren't allowed to muck around in either of them if they aren't yours, simply because we can't factor intent into it. If you get caught before you have done anything wrong, does that mean you weren't going to do anything? Or you just didn't get the chance to? It doesn't matter, because you shouldn't have been there in the first place.
The answer is simply because you can't let anyone get away with it (in general). If someone hacks your system, doesn't seem to break anything, and simply sends you an anonymous message saying so, you REALLY don't know what went on. He may have taken data that you didn't notice, put a trojan or something else you didn't notice, opened up other security holes, etc. Just because someone says that they didn't do anything doesn't mean that they didn't. I think AOL went a bit far in prosecuting this guy if he actually did help them patch the hole, but it doesn't change the fact that he shouldn't have been mucking around on someone else's network to begin with.
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I can't see how this is a bad thing. When ILOVEYOU and MELISSA were running rampant, everyone screamed about how MS set everything on low security by default, and no one would change it. Now they decide to set security higher by default (which would avoid a lot of the problems) and now people are screaming about that. There is no perfect way to set security by default. The only way to have real security is to set it yourself. If people take what MS is giving them as security settings, that is their choice. If low default is bad, and high default is bad, what is good?
All righty then, Mr. Smarty Pants, why is it good? What extra service does the "rent" (vs. own) get you? What is it that would make me "buy" this rather than a version that doesn't auto-destruct? MS claims this is "an exciting new opportunity" -- for who? Their bankers?
It's good for companies like the one I work at. As soon as a new version of MS Office is released they jump right out and buy it. It they can "lease" a copy for less than an upgrade, it makes great sense. It's the same concept as companies that lease computers instead of buying them. It's cheaper to pay a continual fee and always have a newer model than having to deal with the outdated stuff. Same concept.
I want to know if they are actively persuing profit as we speak, or if they are simply trying to scrape together enough money to pay for their legal bills and hardware. They could very easily rake in the cash by including banner ads in their client, setting certain songs to rate higher in search returns in exchange for advertising cash from the bands, etc. Is any of this happening right now though is my question.
They currently aren't making any money, but I would bet my right testicle that the reason they aren't yet is because of their legal troubles. If they try to make money right now they are gaurunteed to lose the case. As long as they are not making any money, the court might decide their service is okay. Venture capitalists don't give money to companies that never plan to make money. If they can survive the court case they will be charging within a month, mark my words.
It doesn't strike you as a major difference that, in one case, we have a fanatic who wants to dominate the world, control all standards, and crush his competition, and on the other, we have a fanatic who wants to tear down the walls of secrecy, give us all the freedom to examine the tools we use, and give everyone, from the richest developers to the poorest college student, the same level of access?
To me, freedom is choice, and RMs doesn't want anyone to have a choice. It's GNU or nothing. With true freedom, you can make your own choices and choose either the MS way or the RMS way, but neither of them want to give us that choice. Having only one choice is never freedom, no matter how good you think that choice is.
Maybe it's just me, but RMS seems as psycho as Bill Gates most of the time. He has the same basic philosophy as Microsoft (take over everything and make it fit with your agenda), and will accept nothing but complete and total compliance with what he feels is right. He has no concept of middle ground. Everything is not going to owned by MS and closed source, but everything will not be "Free" either. And everything shoudln't fall into either category.
I don't see why electronic data should be any different than any other kind. If I write something down, it will still be admissible in 6 months. Same with something I say. Why should it be different if it's in an electronic format? If I throw something in the trash, is it forever gone? Not a chance. It's perfectly legal for the cops to search my trash, same with electronic files.
As far as true deleting goes, there are numerous programs that will do it for you. Many programs have a "shredder" function, which permanently deletes a file. It's no different than a paper copy. I can throw it away, but if I want to make sure it's really gone, I have to use a paper shredder. Same concept applies electronicly. I can delete it, but if I really want to make sure it's gone, I need to use a "file shredder". Just because it's electronic doesn't make it different.
This seems to me to be morally indefensible. Copycat crime is just as wrong as the original and its perpetrators should suffer the same consequences as its originator. This seems to me to be just another crazy court decision in modern day America, land of the "free".
No, what it;s saying is if someone else is convicted of a crime, you can't appeal their case on the grounds that you may later be convicted of the same crime. These people weren't involved in the case at all, they were never mentioned, and the case was specific to Skala and Jansson. These people can't appeal the case because it doesn't apply to them. They would have to be taken to court and founbd guilty in a seperate trial (in which this case could be used as a precident), and they may win or lose that trial. Yo simply cannot appeal until you yourself has been found guilt.
Each email sent costs something also. It costs for the computer it was sent on. It costs for the bandwidth to send it. Spam may be cheaper than normal advertising, but telemarketing was cheaper than mail ads. That doesn't mean it's not a legitamate form of advertising.
No, ISPs generally pay for a pipe the same way a user does. A T3 is a T3, no matter what is going through it. They don't pay per byte, or per minute, they pay for a pipe, and anything that pipe can hold is fair game.
This one tripped my BS meter. As far as I know, most ISPs charge their large-pipe customers for transfers over a certain amount. The same may apply to the ISPs themselves. Are you yourself an ISP with multiple backbone providers? Are you a backbone provider? Have you ever gotten a high-speed pipe for your home or business? Do you know anything about what you're talking about?
I myself don't work for an ISP, but I have many friends who do. They pay per pipe, just like we pay per dial-up (or whatever). The reason high-bandwidth connection are priced by bandwidth is usually that the ISP has to add additional pipes quickly when selling high-bandwidth pipes, and they can't oversell them nearly as much as dial-ups. Even with home/business high bandwidth connections, you usually don't pay per byte. You pay to have a set amount of bandwidth, with as much use of that set amount of bandwidth as you need.
The telemarketers pay the phone company for the phone bandwidth. The direct marketers pay bulk rate postage for every piece mailed. It is in fact the high volume of bulk mail and the massive amounts spent on it by direct marketers that keeps the price of a first-class stamp low in the US.
And the spammers pay their ISPs and phone bills. Everyone seems to forget that no one pays your ISP for you getting email. You pay for email when you send it (in the form of a phone line and ISP, or whoever you connect). If I send you an email, I don't have to your ISP to receive it, just like your ISP doesn't have to pay mine when you send me a message.
I don't like spam, but it is no worse than any other form of advertising. Coventional marketing has a lot of things that are far worse than spam.
Kinda like all those mass mailing I get time and time again, or the multiple telemarketer calls I get every day?
They found a source of postage, paper, and phone service that costs nothing? Cool! Where do I sign up?
Yes, it's in the aisle right next to the free computer, phone line, and internet connection that the spammers use.
If you want to argue that the receiver pays for it, at least there is something to that (although at least in the US, the practice of paying for bandwidth usage is almost completely dead).
In that case, all you folks who are paying bills for a Net connection ought to find out who is really getting the money -- it's obviously isn't the ISP, since "the practice of paying for bandwidth usage is almost completely dead" -- and put a stop to it.
(The expected rejoinder "I meant that people don't typically pay 'per-minute'" is beside the point. When you get spam, the spammer has stolen some of your ISPs bandwidth, and the ISP will pass the cost of that along to you one way or another.)
No, ISPs generally pay for a pipe the same way a user does. A T3 is a T3, no matter what is going through it. They don't pay per byte, or per minute, they pay for a pipe, and anything that pipe can hold is fair game. As for them "stealing" the ISPs bandwidth, the telemarketers "steal" phone bandwidth from the telephone company and the mail ads "steal" bandwidth from the post office, both of which they end up charging back to me.
Some people advertise responsibly via email
Yes; the ones who operate strictly opt-in mailing lists. I haven't seen anybody here complaining about those (and, in fact, they are themselves victims of spammer scum because they have to carefully distinguish their legitimate e-mail advertisements from the spam).
Just like some people use advertising in the real world irresponsibly, and other don't. I get ads from some companies 3 or 4 times a week. Does that mean all ads are bad? No, spam can be used or abused just like any other form of advertising.
- since it costs nothing it is sent in huge quantities and sometimes multiple times
Kinda like all those mass mailing I get time and time again, or the multiple telemarketer calls I get every day?
- spammers are in the majority anonymous because they realise that this form of advertising is unpopular
Kinda like the telemarketer calls from "unknown name, unknown number", or the mail ads I receive that don't have a return address?
- they will not respect your right to be removed from their mailing list even when asked
Kinda like all the mail ads I receive where I can't get off their list? Ever try to get of a junk mail list? Who do you contact? Where do you contact them? And if you do manage to contact them, they don't ever take you of the list. Hell, most places don't even have a real list, they just send it to "Resident" at every address known to man.
- it is not even marked as an advert to ease filtering
Kind of like the telemarketers who start off asking me how my day was and then 2 minutes later start their sales? Or the ads I get i the mail without anything on the outside of the envelope marking it as an ad?
These arguements don't make spam any different that any other form of advertising. If you want to argue that the receiver pays for it, at least there is something to that (although at least in the US, the practice of paying for bandwidth usage is almost completely dead). Some people advertise responsibly via email, and others don't, you can't condemn them all because some people refuse to follow the rules.
The real big thing isn't that Darren Aronofsky is directing, it's that Frank Miller will be adapting Year One for the screenplay. As bad as B&R was, it was only partially directorial problems. The biggest problem was that the story was a giant piece off monkey crap. The best any director could have done with that script would be to make it "watchable", I doubt anyone alive could have made it "good". As long as they stick to Year One, and let Frank Miller actually have a say in how it is transfered, then there is a great basis for a movie, and then the director can take it from "good" to "great". Now, if only they had chosed "Dark Knight Returns" instead...
In all seriousness though, I will admit that many people download mp3's for the free music. But some people are practicing civil disobedience - hoping to draw attention to the fundamentally broken concept of intellectual property we have today. I don't want a society in which I must have permission to do anything, and get a license agreement on everything I buy, watch, hear, etc. And so, until intellectual property is fixed, I refuse to recognize it's validity, and do believe that downloading free music can be a form of civil disobedience.
So what your saying is by breaking the law you are trying to get instituted that you're practicing civil disobidience? Or are you making sure that you only download music that "should" be in the public domain? Or are you using this as an excuse to download new music and say by doing that you are trying to get the laws back to what they originally were, even though you're breaking what they originally were? The constituation says a lot of things, and a lot fo them are ignored. Do you think people in the US should have titles such as "Lord" or "Duke"? It's in the constitution, so it must be a great thing right? The constitution is a great document, and I'm glad it's there, but it is only called upon when convenient. If we have to uphold the constitution, then we have to uphold every single line of it. But that wouldn't suit your purposes, so we'll keep yelling about the part we like and ignoring the ones we don't.
So, how fair is Slashdot. IS this a case of a tool that can be used for illegal (or immoral in this case, at it has been shown to be legal), but can also be used for legal (and moral) activities and should be left alone? OR will everyone get up in arms because this isn't against the RIAA ir MPAA or Microsoft, but against the beloved GPL. They aren't resonsible for how their software is used, that's the user's job. They have no control over it. And they have no legal obligation to limit it's used to things that everyone else deems okay. This tool has to stay on the market, because it can be (and actually is) used for legal purposes.
The size of the software does not play into this at all. Similarly, viruses and trojan horses are not a big deal for pirated software anyway. (Ever heard of a CRC or MD5 hash? You can tell if the software is legit or not.)
How many people do you know have have downloaded a MP3 file on a 56k modem? Now compare that to the number of people who have downloaded 120MB (or usually more) software? The size has a huge affect on who will take the time (or can take the time) to download something. Most people get annoyed when they have to wait 5 minutes for an MP3, do you think they want to wait 5 hours, at broadband speed, for a game? And I realize the possibility of viruses is small, but to the average person, a virus is a deadly thing and could destroy everything and is everywhere. They still worry about it.
Is there a system as simple as Napster to use for getting software?
Uhhh, yeah it's called Gnutella (and other similar file-sharing programs). There's nothing about Napster that makes it unique to sharing music files. The same concept can and will be applied to other files. And there's usenet, IRC, HTTP, FTP, etc.
If you think any of those is as easy as Napster, you've saddly mistaken. I know people in the IT industry who don't use Gnutella, because it's too hard to find a decent server and find what you want. Napster is a simple centralized place to download MP3 files that can be played immediately. There is nothing that is as easy and quick as Napster.
The software industry would be destroyed if this were true. On top of that, getting music by Napster is not exactly "free." You have to do the work to locate the songs, especially if you're compiling an entire album, and the quality of the music is unknown or not guaranteed.
Still, presuming it is "free" as you say, most people are honest enough to buy the album, especially if it is considered "illegal" for them to download it on Napster.
Do you count the trouble of going to the store and buying a CD into it's cost? It's the same thing as finding it on Napster, except it's harder and uses gas and more time. As for all the people that Napster being "illegal" will stop, um....it's "illegal" now. Everyone knows that pirating MP3s is illegal and it's not stopping anyone. Most people will tell you it's illegal, but they don't worry about it. It's just the few who think they are "justified" in doing it that claim that pirating MP3s isn't illegal.
That's not a logical argument. I think we can safely say that most everyone on the internet could use Napster to download music. And those same people could also buy a music CD if they wanted.
There are hundreds of millions of people using the internet, and it's growing all the time.
How many people use Napster? A million? Two million? How many of those people actually pirated an entire CD album they hadn't already bought on CD? Ten thousand? Fifty thousand?
Not everyone on the NEt can use Napster. There are many people who can't install a simple program without help. Do you think these people are going to download and install Napster by themselves? And if only 2 million people use Napster, I would bet money that 1,999,999 at least have downloaded pirated music. HEll, you can't find anything else on Napster. As for the actually number of users...as of the press release on July 28, there were 20 million users of Napster. And I would bet that 99.99% of them have downloaded a copyrighted MP3. You don't need to download a whole CD, you only need to download a song. It could be the single that you didn't want to buy, or the song of that soundtrack that you liked, not a complete CD. And what happens as the NEt grows? When 75% of people are on the net, how many people will be using Napster?
Again, I did not say anything about CD sales on the rise. But I'm glad you brought it up... If Napster really was having a measurable impact on CD sales, they would have gone down, regardless of how you measure causation or correlation.
What constitues "measurable"? IF without Napster CD sales would have gone up by double what they did (and I'm making this figure up for arguement) would that not have been a "measurable" impact? You yourself admit that not everyone has access to Napster. So if only say 10% of the US used Napster instead of buying CDs, that means if total sales jumped by 1% Napster didn't have an affect, even though those 10% of the people would have bought CDs and didn't? That's simple insane. Anything that drives sales down has a "measurable" affect, it doesn't matter if total sales went up or not, if they would have been higher without that "detriment".
Maybe to audiophiles, but the average person can't tell a difference between a 128bit MP3 and the CD version. I know I can't. Everyone I talk to says that MP3 is "CD quality". That certainly says to me they can't tell the difference, and if they can, it's not enough to bother them. Only audiophiles with $5000 stero setups notice or care about the difference.
The fundamental flaw in all anti-piracy reasoning is that if a user illegally copies a thousand dollars worth of CDs, the music industry has lost a thousand dollars. The fact of the matter is that most people don't have a thousand dollars to spend on CDs every week, especially their core audience, who are teenagers and college students. If every MP3 in the world were magically erased and all sources were cut off, it would not translate into sales.
No, it doesn't translate into $1000 of sales, but I would bet it translates into at least 1 CD sale lost. If you download $1000 worth of music, chances are there is something in that $1000 you would have paid for if you couldn't get it for free. I wouldn't suggest it's a 1 to 1 ratio, but I would guess that there is some correlation.
No, it won't stop everyone from pirating music, but it will stop a lot of people. There is no way to stop everyone from doing anything, but if you can limit a large number of people froim doing it, that's still a good thing.
Yeah, just like nobody buys software nowadays, it's all pirated in usenet and IRC, and all the software companies are losing money! Right?
These are too fields that are completely different. Is there a chance of getting a virus with MP3s? Are the MP3 files huge like software? Is there a system as simple as Napster to use for getting software? What are the chances of getting non-working pirated software as compared to non-working MP3s? These two things aren't in the same ballpark, hell, their not even playing the same sport.
What they need to do is: release their albums in high quality, MP3 (or similar unsecured digital music format), for a discount over CD's. Most people, if given the opportunity, would pay for the music, and support their favorite artists.
Some people would download songs off of Napster. Some of those people will then buy the album if they like it, and others will not. We are talking about a minority of people.
Right now, Napster usage is high, but nothing compared to the amount of people actually buying CD's in stores. Napster usage would be reduced dramatically if the labels were selling inexpensive MP3 albums ($5 - $10). They'd be making money hand over fist.
Most people would buy something that they can get for free? I don't know what planet you're living on, but most people I know take free over paid any day. Napster usage is not as high as CD sales, then again not nearly as many people have access to Napster. Only half the households in the US have a computer, which eliminates a HUGE amount of people right there. And yes, people are still buying CDs, but that doesn't mean Napster doesn't have a negative affect. Correlation is not causation. There are a million reason why CD sales went up last year, and there is nothing I've seen that can draw a direct connection between Napster use and CD sales going up. The question isn't how many CDs were sold last year, it's how many would have been sold if Napster (and the resulting MP3 explosion) would not have happened.
Okay, let me get this right. You get a "bad" copy off Napster, and want to pay for a good MP3 copy. Which you then share on Napster. So the next person who downloads that song (from you) gets a perfect copy. This person then has no reason to go and pay for a "good" copy, they already have one. If the song is popular, your copy spreads like wildfire, and no one needs to buy the "good" copy, they already have it. So, how exactly does this make money for the labels?
As the RIAA has gone after Napster, everyone has been talking about how they would buy digital music if is was available. Well, that's what they are trying to do. They are trying to make music available online, and to make it secure. They simply cannot release the music in an unsecure format. The only thing that would accomplish to make the music easy to put on Napster (or whatever). Someone would buy the music, and the first thing they would do is put it in with all of their other MP3s, shared on Napster. Then everyone else finds it on Napster, and has no need to buy it (and this is especially true for digital music, as you have exactly what you would be purchasing). So the only way to offer music online and to have a chance to make any profit is to offer it is some kind of either encrypted or watermarked format. If you want music available for download (legally), there is no other way.