...are of the form, "It doesn't matter if you don't like it, it's still bad/wrong/illegal/piracy/etc."
Am I the only one who's noticed that, regardless of what happens to the KKK, RACISM IS NEVER GOING TO GO AWAY?
Jesus F. Christ! It's not going to go away no matter what happens! Why don't people figure out how to DEAL WITH IT instead of whining about morality and law? God, this is getting annoying.
Remember, just because a million people are doing it and it's hard to stop, doesn't make it right.
Artists should be able to own copyrights and to sell them to whoever they want to if they feel the amount of money they are getting in return is worth the sale. You are undermining the value of the copyright artists have if you refuse to allow them to sell it.
A completely separate issue is whether the RIAA is a cartel, monopoly, etc. and uses evil, predatory and exclusionary tactics to make sure artists are unable to sell their music to anyone outside of them and are unable to make a living without selling out to the RIAA. Courtney Love's argument lies in this domain. This is a wholly different lawsuit which I'd like brought up sometime.
One person is a criminal. Ten people are a gang. A thousand people are a movement. 20 million people are a law-making and unstoppable force
Your argument can be used to defend the LA riots. Or the Nazi oppression of Jews - the fact that 20 million support something is completely irrelevant to whether it is legal or ethical.
Funny. If you had used a parody to prove a counter point, your post would have been moderated down as Flamebait. There are too many immature kids who can't stand counter opinions on Slashdot.
Hotmail allows you to automatically filter bulk email. Just click on the option for Bulk Mail and it uses its own heuristics to figure out which mail is Bulk Mail and you can choose to delete it without even reading it.
I was replying to the original poster who said that because DeCSS can easily be spread by printing it on a T-shirt and it is virtually impossible to contain it, that makes the case stupid.
My point was simply that just because something can't be contained doesn't make it legal or ethical. Racism can't be contained and millions practice it - that doesn't make it legal or ethical.
Note that I'm not saying spreading DeCSS is not legal or ethical - just that the fact that it can't be contained is not the _reason_ why it's legal and ethical.
That's completely independent of whether or not the deed being committed is an actual crime.
The fact that it can be on a T-shirt doesn't by itself make it right - legally or ethically. The fact that you can't stop it doesn't by itself make it right - legally or ethically. The fact that there are millions of people doing it doesn't by itself make it right - legally or ethically. These things combined, don't make something right - legally or ethically.
I can think of several things which fit these criteria and are still obviously wrong. Arguments like these confuse and detract from the main issue at hand and contribute to the perception of some people that the DeCSS code is being spread by anarchist kiddies instead of by people with a legitimate freedom issue.
I do hope you're only trolling. Otherwise, I'll have to say you obviously don't know the first about being left-handed. Your mind has much better control over your left hand than it does over your right. It's just like us righties have so little control over our left hands.
It doesn't matter whether or not it's a completely new skill you're trying to pick up. You just don't have the same degree of control over the hand that you need in order to get what you want to do done.
There are two parts to the argument. The first part is that just because you might end up buying the stuff eventually does not justify stealing it in the first place. If I shoplifted cigarettes to build up an addiction, that would still be wrong - both legally and morally. So pretending that you're doing no wrong just because you end up buying the music is bullshit. They'd give out free samples if they wanted you to do that and not if they don't want to. You can't just steal it because you're "evaluating" it to buy it. That's just plain wrong.
The second question is about whether stealing intellectual property is the same as physical property. When you "share" music, you are obtaining for free what you would otherwise have paid for - you are thus undermining its value. I can't just stowaway on an aircraft because it's not going to cost more for the airline company to take me along since they are flying there anyway. People work to produce intellectual property. By stealing intellectual property you are stealing their work and their effort. Yes, there is work involved in producing music and marketing it. The difference between that and Linux is that they DON'T WANT to give it away!
Maybe I should go ahead and steal some oil from an oilfield in Texas. There's plenty of oil there and I'm not actually hurting anyone by stealing some, right?
I do agree that many shoplifters are leeches, but there are as many people who buy more because of it. I now have a whole case of Marlboro that I have only come to appreciate because I got the cigarettes for free. Had I not gotten them for free, from shoplifting them, I likely never would have had any interest since my primary addiction was 80% crack. I think it makes good marketing sense to allow people to shoplift cigarettes -- I am now CONSIDERING a purchase I would not have made. Call that leeching if you want, but I disagree.
I agree with you completely. What gets me most is the "holier than thou" attitude of these people who are trying to justify petty theft by claiming a moral high-ground.
ACs are very important to discussions. There are several times ACs have made insightful and informative posts that they wouldn't have otherwise made because they didn't want to reveal their identity, suffer the potential damage to karma, etc.
I support Anonymous Posting for this. The trolls are moderated down anyway.
I understand your intentions were noble even though there is a little bit of Karma Whoring involved (nothing wrong with Karma Whoring btw - we all do it).
My comment was just a joke. I guess I was Karma Whoring for the +1 Funny.
When I lived in India (about 4 years ago) I knew that traffic from my school to almost anywhere else in the world went through New York. Interestingly, a traceroute from the school I went to (IIT Bombay) to TIFR (also in Bombay) showed that the traffic was routed from my school to a UUNet router in New York, then after a series of hops to some place in Europe (I can't remember the country right now) back to Bombay. There was no direct connection between the two institutes. I know my information is way out of date and a lot has changed in that time but how far are we really? Especially since I doubt anyone (except possibly the Russians and Chinese) have ever seriously considered what would happen to their network connectivity in the absence of the US there are probably tons of hidden dependencies which no one is even really aware of.
I really do believe that the MPAA are fighting the DeCSS case because they are afraid it will allow DVDs to be pirated. The MPAA, etc., evil as many people like to portray them, do not hate Linux and have no reason to exclude Linux players. It's just the fact that until recently the market wasn't big enough for anyone to license players for Linux. There are a bunch of people doing that now: LEGALLY. Support those companies who are developing DVD players for Linux.
How is the MPAA to determine when piracy starts happening? How is it to quantify the loss in $ terms? How do you know right now that DeCSS is not being used to pirate DVDs?
It's not about pirating DVDs. It's about free speach, free thought, and freedom from corporate repression. Whenever a Big Company with billions of dollars says "You can't do this", our freedom is being eroded.
What if it was a little guy saying "you can't do this"? How would that make a difference? So if a corporation said "You can't kill a human being", would that be eroding your freedom? Would that be a freedom any reasonable person would support? Just putting restrictions on what you can and cannot do is not wrong, imho. And the fact that it is a big corporation with billions of dollars is completely irrelevant. You're just using imagery to conjure up the image of an evil foe by using metaphors commonly associated with evil.
The MPAA thought police are telling you what to say, what to think, and how to act. Most people are simply *controlled* by the entertainment industry, although most freedom-loving Linux geeks probably don't fall into that category. In a world full of media-controlled conformists, it is the duty of the non-conformists, the geeks, to rebel.
Oh, so if I disagree with you it's because I am controlled by the MPAA? Convenient, isn't it, if you say that anyone who disagrees with you is somehow controlled and everyone who agrees with you is free. I must have been sleeping when they came into my apartment and used those drugs on my head. No, my own independent thoughts on the subject can't be my own thoughts because I disagree with you.
While Dr. King may have given black people the right to drink out of a water fountain, we are giving people the right to *think* without the MPAA's gun to their head. Money can be as damaging as bullets, my friend, and Hollywood has no shortage of cash.
You still have the right to think (although, obviously you're not using it). This has nothing to do with the freedom of thought. Please stop pretending it does.
Note that I'm not saying I believe the MPAA should be able to control music and movies the way they do, I'm just posting against some amazingly fallacious logic I see - that seems to have nothing to do with the case at hand.
Slashdot Mirror
Drugs, crack, hash.
I guess then we'll just have to make sure every email we send out is flagged, won't we?
Kiddie porn, Natalie Portman, Communist Party, Karl Marx.
I just got myself a new signature.
1. You can only request certain songs, not all the songs that are available on a CD.
2. No, I don't believe that people would stop using Napster if CDs were "more reasonably" priced.
...are of the form, "It doesn't matter if you don't like it, it's still bad/wrong/illegal/piracy/etc."
Am I the only one who's noticed that, regardless of what happens to the KKK, RACISM IS NEVER GOING TO GO AWAY?
Jesus F. Christ! It's not going to go away no matter what happens! Why don't people figure out how to DEAL WITH IT instead of whining about morality and law? God, this is getting annoying.
Remember, just because a million people are doing it and it's hard to stop, doesn't make it right.
You're confusing two very different issues here:
Artists should be able to own copyrights and to sell them to whoever they want to if they feel the amount of money they are getting in return is worth the sale. You are undermining the value of the copyright artists have if you refuse to allow them to sell it.
A completely separate issue is whether the RIAA is a cartel, monopoly, etc. and uses evil, predatory and exclusionary tactics to make sure artists are unable to sell their music to anyone outside of them and are unable to make a living without selling out to the RIAA. Courtney Love's argument lies in this domain. This is a wholly different lawsuit which I'd like brought up sometime.
Actually, it's illegal to use a radar detector in many states.
One person is a criminal. Ten people are a gang. A thousand people are a movement. 20 million people are a law-making and unstoppable force
Your argument can be used to defend the LA riots. Or the Nazi oppression of Jews - the fact that 20 million support something is completely irrelevant to whether it is legal or ethical.
Funny. If you had used a parody to prove a counter point, your post would have been moderated down as Flamebait. There are too many immature kids who can't stand counter opinions on Slashdot.
The only alternative would have been to order the CD and try to send it back after opening and playing it.
Go out into the big Blue Room to Tower Records. You can sample CDs there.
It's one of the funniest things I've ever read!
Hotmail allows you to automatically filter bulk email. Just click on the option for Bulk Mail and it uses its own heuristics to figure out which mail is Bulk Mail and you can choose to delete it without even reading it.
I was replying to the original poster who said that because DeCSS can easily be spread by printing it on a T-shirt and it is virtually impossible to contain it, that makes the case stupid.
My point was simply that just because something can't be contained doesn't make it legal or ethical. Racism can't be contained and millions practice it - that doesn't make it legal or ethical.
Note that I'm not saying spreading DeCSS is not legal or ethical - just that the fact that it can't be contained is not the _reason_ why it's legal and ethical.
That's completely independent of whether or not the deed being committed is an actual crime.
The fact that it can be on a T-shirt doesn't by itself make it right - legally or ethically.
The fact that you can't stop it doesn't by itself make it right - legally or ethically.
The fact that there are millions of people doing it doesn't by itself make it right - legally or ethically.
These things combined, don't make something right - legally or ethically.
I can think of several things which fit these criteria and are still obviously wrong. Arguments like these confuse and detract from the main issue at hand and contribute to the perception of some people that the DeCSS code is being spread by anarchist kiddies instead of by people with a legitimate freedom issue.
I do hope you're only trolling. Otherwise, I'll have to say you obviously don't know the first about being left-handed. Your mind has much better control over your left hand than it does over your right. It's just like us righties have so little control over our left hands.
It doesn't matter whether or not it's a completely new skill you're trying to pick up. You just don't have the same degree of control over the hand that you need in order to get what you want to do done.
If Katz charges money for his articles does that mean that if I refuse to pay I will automatically be saved from reading them?
Bring it on, I can't wait!
There are two parts to the argument. The first part is that just because you might end up buying the stuff eventually does not justify stealing it in the first place. If I shoplifted cigarettes to build up an addiction, that would still be wrong - both legally and morally. So pretending that you're doing no wrong just because you end up buying the music is bullshit. They'd give out free samples if they wanted you to do that and not if they don't want to. You can't just steal it because you're "evaluating" it to buy it. That's just plain wrong.
The second question is about whether stealing intellectual property is the same as physical property. When you "share" music, you are obtaining for free what you would otherwise have paid for - you are thus undermining its value. I can't just stowaway on an aircraft because it's not going to cost more for the airline company to take me along since they are flying there anyway. People work to produce intellectual property. By stealing intellectual property you are stealing their work and their effort. Yes, there is work involved in producing music and marketing it. The difference between that and Linux is that they DON'T WANT to give it away!
Maybe I should go ahead and steal some oil from an oilfield in Texas. There's plenty of oil there and I'm not actually hurting anyone by stealing some, right?
I do agree that many shoplifters are leeches, but there are as many people who buy more because of it. I now have a whole case of Marlboro that I have only come to appreciate because I got the cigarettes for free. Had I not gotten them for free, from shoplifting them, I likely never would have had any interest since my primary addiction was 80% crack. I think it makes good marketing sense to allow people to shoplift cigarettes -- I am now CONSIDERING a purchase I would not have made. Call that leeching if you want, but I disagree.
I agree with you completely. What gets me most is the "holier than thou" attitude of these people who are trying to justify petty theft by claiming a moral high-ground.
I'm sure I can find prior art for the use of the word sting..
ACs are very important to discussions. There are several times ACs have made insightful and informative posts that they wouldn't have otherwise made because they didn't want to reveal their identity, suffer the potential damage to karma, etc.
I support Anonymous Posting for this. The trolls are moderated down anyway.
I understand your intentions were noble even though there is a little bit of Karma Whoring involved (nothing wrong with Karma Whoring btw - we all do it).
My comment was just a joke. I guess I was Karma Whoring for the +1 Funny.
+1, KarmaWhore ;-)
This is a result of the radical isolation and harassment of geeks who felt like outsider in a neo-apocalyptic Columbine-esque highschool.
When I lived in India (about 4 years ago) I knew that traffic from my school to almost anywhere else in the world went through New York. Interestingly, a traceroute from the school I went to (IIT Bombay) to TIFR (also in Bombay) showed that the traffic was routed from my school to a UUNet router in New York, then after a series of hops to some place in Europe (I can't remember the country right now) back to Bombay. There was no direct connection between the two institutes. I know my information is way out of date and a lot has changed in that time but how far are we really? Especially since I doubt anyone (except possibly the Russians and Chinese) have ever seriously considered what would happen to their network connectivity in the absence of the US there are probably tons of hidden dependencies which no one is even really aware of.
I really do believe that the MPAA are fighting the DeCSS case because they are afraid it will allow DVDs to be pirated. The MPAA, etc., evil as many people like to portray them, do not hate Linux and have no reason to exclude Linux players. It's just the fact that until recently the market wasn't big enough for anyone to license players for Linux. There are a bunch of people doing that now: LEGALLY. Support those companies who are developing DVD players for Linux.
How is the MPAA to determine when piracy starts happening? How is it to quantify the loss in $ terms? How do you know right now that DeCSS is not being used to pirate DVDs?
It's not about pirating DVDs. It's about free speach, free thought, and freedom from corporate repression. Whenever a Big Company with billions of dollars says "You can't do this", our freedom is being eroded.
What if it was a little guy saying "you can't do this"? How would that make a difference? So if a corporation said "You can't kill a human being", would that be eroding your freedom? Would that be a freedom any reasonable person would support? Just putting restrictions on what you can and cannot do is not wrong, imho. And the fact that it is a big corporation with billions of dollars is completely irrelevant. You're just using imagery to conjure up the image of an evil foe by using metaphors commonly associated with evil.
The MPAA thought police are telling you what to say, what to think, and how to act. Most people are simply *controlled* by the entertainment industry, although most freedom-loving Linux geeks probably don't fall into that category. In a world full of media-controlled conformists, it is the duty of the non-conformists, the geeks, to rebel.
Oh, so if I disagree with you it's because I am controlled by the MPAA? Convenient, isn't it, if you say that anyone who disagrees with you is somehow controlled and everyone who agrees with you is free. I must have been sleeping when they came into my apartment and used those drugs on my head. No, my own independent thoughts on the subject can't be my own thoughts because I disagree with you.
While Dr. King may have given black people the right to drink out of a water fountain, we are giving people the right to *think* without the MPAA's gun to their head. Money can be as damaging as bullets, my friend, and Hollywood has no shortage of cash.
You still have the right to think (although, obviously you're not using it). This has nothing to do with the freedom of thought. Please stop pretending it does.
Note that I'm not saying I believe the MPAA should be able to control music and movies the way they do, I'm just posting against some amazingly fallacious logic I see - that seems to have nothing to do with the case at hand.