Giving credit does not remove the requirement to get permission; it just tells the world who is going to sue you. Legally, that's true. Morally and ethically, there is no such requirement. If this had just been a case of attributed sampling without permission, the story would be no more notable than "Local Man Ticketed for Jaywalking".
Sampling without permission is fine, even outside a parody, as long as you give credit. If you don't give credit, you're lying about your song's authorship. If you do, you're just doing what every composer has done throughout history: building on the work of those who came before you.
The real problem here isn't that he built on someone else's work. That's just copying, and although copying without permission might be illegal in many cases, most of us realize it isn't unethical or immoral.
No, the real problem is that he didn't give credit. He's committing fraud against everyone who hears or buys the song, because he's claiming (at least implicitly) that he wrote the parts which he actually copied. Fraud is immoral, unethical, and illegal.
A world without copyright doesn't have to be a world with plagiarism. Copy freely, but give credit - to do otherwise, to claim that you wrote something that was actually written by someone else (or vice versa), is fraud.
So empirical people keep two sets of volume measurements?? More than that, actually... it gets a little confusing in the kitchen, where units like "cup" have the same names but different volumes depending on whether you're measuring liquid or dry ingredients. (At least they're supposed to be different. I use the same measures for both, and it all comes out fine.)
Still, the issue must arise sometimes, as when wondering how many gallons of water a 2 yards x 14''x 20'' bathtub can contain;) Well, since bathtubs aren't actually regular prisms, the best way to measure volume would be to fill it up and measure how much water you use. If you use buckets, they'll be marked in gallons. If you use a meter, it might show either gallons or cubic feet, but the conversion is just a simple scaling factor (and if you do this every day at the bathtub factory, you'll have it memorized soon enough).
Are we ever, even once, going to see an article that says "hi - look - the RIAA and MPAA may be arseholes, but they do have a point. software / movie / music / whatever piracy is a serious issue. how would YOU solve it?" No, because it's not a serious issue.
The only serious issue here is that all these businesses are founded on a contradiction: the idea that they can sell information, but their customers can't turn around and redistribute that information on their own. Anyone with a shred of foresight would have realized from the beginning that such a model is fundamentally flawed. If you want something to be concerned about, try asking yourself why it's worth fighting an endless uphill battle just to preserve those stillborn business models.
All patents and copyrights are nonsense and do no social good. And the waters of Noah's flood were held in a vast vapor canopy were held up because the gravity was less in 3500 BC when the flood happened and the dinosaurs drowned) Here's a tip for future reference: putting a false statement after a true one doesn't make the first statement any less true. It just makes you look dishonest.
Ok, here's a practical example: I'm a windsurfer. Knowing what a windsurf board will do when you stand on it is important - thus I know that if the windsurfer, board and rig weigh 90 kilos, any board under 90 litres in size is going to sink when used on fresh water. Doing a similar calculation using imperial units would be somewhat more complex. Thanks, that makes sense, although "somewhat more complex" just means multiplying by a constant.
I don't normally participate in this sort of debate but.. you have never needed to calculate the volume of anything? And wouldn't that result in a conversion between something like cubic inches and gallons? I've never needed to calculate the volume of anything in gallons. If I want to talk about the volume of my freezer or my closet, I'll use cubic inches or feet; using gallons would get me nothing but strange looks. Gallons are mainly for measuring liquids and the containers they come in.
Any container meant for holding water (or food) will be marked in large volume units (gallons, pints, or quarts, which are easily converted, especially by us geeks who are familiar with the number 2), and probably also marked in fluid ounces. Cubic length units are used in engineering, architecture, some appliance specs, etc. but not for measuring food.
And yes, it convenient to be able to compare the price of four containers with 500 ml each, with one container with 2 l, without having to use a calculator. We can just easily compare the price of four containers with 20 fl oz each to one container with 80 fl oz. There's no need for conversion - it's not as if some containers are marked in cubic inches and other containers of the same product are marked in gallons.
The whole point of the metric system was to make these conversions easy. 1 litre of water == 1000 cubic centimeters, or the volume of a box, 10cm x 10cm x 10cm. Hardly a challenging conversion. Sure. But my point is, you can't sell the metric system by telling people metric makes it easy to do the kind of conversions they never need to do, like converting cubic inches to gallons. The things for which we need to calculate volume are usually measured in cubic inches or cubic feet anyway.
Perhaps a more practical example? How long will it take me to walk the 5km into town given that I walk at 5km/hour? Simple. You're joking, right?
Seems to me you don't use a Mac, its not only the software on the phone but also installers, updates, syncing, network play PC vs handheld, VOIP and video chat, etc. Actually, I'm typing this on a Mac right now.. I use my PowerBook more than my PC. It seems to me you don't install software on your phone - very few phone apps need anything to do with a home computer.
I partially agree on the games but i did a quick Google on Palm and games and i found only windows installers what proves my point. It only proves you don't know much about mobile devices. You don't need an installer to put a game on your Palm. It's just a file; you can copy it with any Palm syncing software, which is available on all platforms.
If switching to the metric system means having to convert cubic centimeters to liters all the time, count me out.
I don't know offhand how many cubic inches are in a gallon. If I had to figure it out, I'd use a calculator--but I've never needed to make such a conversion, so who cares?
You'd also have to regulate tuition, among other things. One of the main objections to the voucher programs that have been implemented is that if all the worthwhile private schools cost, say, $10,000 a year, a voucher for $3000 is essentially no more than a handout to rich families who can afford to make up the difference from their own pockets. Poor families would have no choice but to keep sending their kid to public school, but that school would be even worse than it was before, because all the rich kids took their funding with them to private school.
Expandability is nice in theory but how in the world can Apple enforce a good osX integration next to the Windows version What are you talking about? It's about running apps on the phone. Maybe some of them will integrate with apps on the PC, but the majority won't. I can download a few dozen apps for my phone, and no more than a handful have anything to do with PC integration - most of them are games.
apps that don't crash and don't suck up all the power in 15 min? So what? If you download a Java program onto your J2ME phone, and it crashes or sucks up your battery power, then you uninstall it. Don't you realize these issues have already been addressed for every other phone on the market?
The iPod is exactly the same thing, no external software or plugins but it worked out very good. The iPod is also closed, as you're surely aware - you can't just sign up as an iPod games developer, you have to be "chosen". The difference is that the iPod doesn't have the same kind of competition; you can't get another MP3 player for the same price that does everything the iPod does but is also an open platform.
The iPhone, however, does have to compete with Treos, Blackberries, Windows Mobile devices, etc. at the same or lower price.
As for the "seeing a chance to make a buck" comment - why do you think they're in the business in the first place? Is Cingular providing a GSM network because they're interested in the greater good? Is Apple releasing the Apple iPhone because they're interested in encouraging people to develop great FOSS? No to both - they're commercial enterprises, and they're trying to make money from this investment. Why do you think most carriers have phones that can run unsigned Java applets? Why do you think every carrier lets you install your own software on your smartphone instead of having to buy it from them? They're commercial enterprises too, but oddly enough, they don't feel the need to grab you by the balls at every turn. They offer that functionality for free because that's what customers want; they don't want to pay $500 for a phone and another $5 each time they add a new feature.
Then I suppose OS X is a third party app too, since the person who wrote it isn't the person who sold you your Mac. Look, if those "third parties" have to get approval from the first party to start development, and they have to go through the first party to reach you, they aren't third parties in any meaningful sense. They may as well be a separate division of Apple, because they have to follow all of Apple's rules, and Apple has veto power over everything they do.
First, WTF is a "3P app"?
Apple will probably work together with devs and sell the software on iTunes for $5. Apple has no interest in a bunch of software that sells for $99, works only with Windows and has a few 1000 users. $5 is still a lot, when you consider that most of those apps could be free if they didn't have to go through an expensive certification process. $5 means you won't be downloading apps left and right to try them out. And of course, that process also means a lot of apps simply won't get developed, because they don't have enough appeal to make back the initial investment, or enough developer manpower to get the app polished enough to be certified.
In short, what is the killer (phone)-app the iPhone won't have and millions of users will want? The killer app is expandability. It's not about one particular program, it's about being able to use your phone for new and interesting things as they come along. That's why people are willing to pay $500 for a smartphone.
have you ever done any mobile development, or gone through the certification process? with most carriers, it's neither terribly expensive nor terribly involved (although they certainly tend to move a lot slower than i'd like). I've only looked into Verizon's, since I have a Verizon phone, and it looked pretty complicated to me. I've described the basics of their process in other posts here. I was considering writing a Z-machine interpreter, but how many people are going to buy one of those? A dozen? It just isn't worth the investment.
yes i'd like it to be a more free platform instead, yes, some people simply have a philosophical objection to paying for things. Don't write it off as a mere "objection to paying for things". This is a case of carriers and manufacturers actively getting in the way of a free exchange. Developers want to give their software away for free, but because of this process, they can't realistically do that.
besides, we've got a few months yet before this is all clear. can't we just give them a bit of time? Why are you so eager to give Apple the benefit of the doubt when it's clear from experience that a closed platform means you get a small selection of expensive apps? It's not as if Apple invented this concept; you can see it in action at the US's second largest wireless carrier.
Whoever modded this comment INSIGHTFUL was misguided. Look, Apple is NOT Verizon. Yes they both want to make gobs of money but only one of those companies TRULY cares about designing great user interfaces and experiences for their products and actually knows how to do it and has a long track record of doing it and it sure as hell is NOT Verizon! I've been happy with the interfaces on all my Verizon phones, but that's beside the point.
Look, Apple might not literally be the same company as Verizon, but they have just as much experience with locking down their platform. (How many companies are making games for the iPod? Where do you download the SDK?) "Designing great user interfaces and experiences" has nothing to do with the key issue here, which is that the iPhone costs as much as a smartphone but lacks the one thing that makes a smartphone worth paying that much for: expandability. If you just want a phone that plays media, browses the web, and takes pictures, you can get one for a lot less.
What Apple brought to Cingular is something all the telcos would love to get....simplicity. I hate to break it to you, but Cingular already has plenty of simple phones. Every carrier does. And they don't cost $500.
I'm guessing that software is going to be sold through iTMS and be checked out by Apple before being sold. Kinda like how the iPod is right now. Yeah, Electronic Arts makes iPod games, but you better damn believe that Apple makes sure they work and makes sure that they work well. Think about that for a second. Have you ever seen an SDK for writing iPod games? If you wanted to start writing and selling iPod games, is that even possible? Plenty of longtime Mac game developers have approached Apple about it and been brushed off.
That's even less open than Verizon's iron-fisted Get It Now. At least there's a well-defined process for writing Get It Now apps--it just costs a lot of time and money to go through--but there's none for the iPod.
Is there any reason to believe the iPhone development process will be any more transparent? Is it a realistic goal for any individual or small company to write and sell their own iPhone apps, even if they're willing to jump through all of Apple's hoops and give Cingular 90% of the selling price? Or will the only iPhone developers be one or two companies that Apple reaches out to on their own (with an NDA)?
As I mentioned at the end of the paragraph you quoted, VZW doesn't lock down their smartphones like this. They do, however, lock down their other phones: if you want a game or applet, you can't write your own or download a free one from the web; you have to buy one from Get It Now. Verizon is well known for locking down their phones to force you into their store, which other carriers don't do (e.g. Cingular customers can install all the Java crapplets they want for free).
I'm not knocking Verizon - I've been a happy customer of theirs for years. When my New Every Two comes up in a couple months, I'll be getting a phone that does nearly everything the iPhone does for $400 less.
Jobs is looking for the top buyers who will pay nearly anything for a phone that just plain works and has simple email/text messaging and maybe a web browser. In this market, the iPod is really just a bonus. As the other poster mentioned, you don't need to spend $500 if that's all you want. You can get a phone that'll do those things for free by signing a two year contract. It'll have a lite just-barely-HTML browser instead of the fancy zooming Safari browser, but for reading headlines, checking stocks and movie times, etc. it's all you need.
My only question is, is this a GSM phone that will let me change out the chip so I can use it around the world? It is a GSM phone, yes, although that doesn't mean it can't still be locked to Cingular.
mostly because I've been waiting for a "real" video ipod I don't think this is it. It has a bigger screen, but only 8 GB of storage in the $600 model - that's 4-5 movies if you don't put any music on it at all.
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Sampling without permission is fine, even outside a parody, as long as you give credit. If you don't give credit, you're lying about your song's authorship. If you do, you're just doing what every composer has done throughout history: building on the work of those who came before you.
The real problem here isn't that he built on someone else's work. That's just copying, and although copying without permission might be illegal in many cases, most of us realize it isn't unethical or immoral.
No, the real problem is that he didn't give credit. He's committing fraud against everyone who hears or buys the song, because he's claiming (at least implicitly) that he wrote the parts which he actually copied. Fraud is immoral, unethical, and illegal.
A world without copyright doesn't have to be a world with plagiarism. Copy freely, but give credit - to do otherwise, to claim that you wrote something that was actually written by someone else (or vice versa), is fraud.
The only serious issue here is that all these businesses are founded on a contradiction: the idea that they can sell information, but their customers can't turn around and redistribute that information on their own. Anyone with a shred of foresight would have realized from the beginning that such a model is fundamentally flawed. If you want something to be concerned about, try asking yourself why it's worth fighting an endless uphill battle just to preserve those stillborn business models. All patents and copyrights are nonsense and do no social good. And the waters of Noah's flood were held in a vast vapor canopy were held up because the gravity was less in 3500 BC when the flood happened and the dinosaurs drowned) Here's a tip for future reference: putting a false statement after a true one doesn't make the first statement any less true. It just makes you look dishonest.
Any container meant for holding water (or food) will be marked in large volume units (gallons, pints, or quarts, which are easily converted, especially by us geeks who are familiar with the number 2), and probably also marked in fluid ounces. Cubic length units are used in engineering, architecture, some appliance specs, etc. but not for measuring food.
If switching to the metric system means having to convert cubic centimeters to liters all the time, count me out.
I don't know offhand how many cubic inches are in a gallon. If I had to figure it out, I'd use a calculator--but I've never needed to make such a conversion, so who cares?
You'd also have to regulate tuition, among other things. One of the main objections to the voucher programs that have been implemented is that if all the worthwhile private schools cost, say, $10,000 a year, a voucher for $3000 is essentially no more than a handout to rich families who can afford to make up the difference from their own pockets. Poor families would have no choice but to keep sending their kid to public school, but that school would be even worse than it was before, because all the rich kids took their funding with them to private school.
The iPhone, however, does have to compete with Treos, Blackberries, Windows Mobile devices, etc. at the same or lower price.
Then I suppose OS X is a third party app too, since the person who wrote it isn't the person who sold you your Mac. Look, if those "third parties" have to get approval from the first party to start development, and they have to go through the first party to reach you, they aren't third parties in any meaningful sense. They may as well be a separate division of Apple, because they have to follow all of Apple's rules, and Apple has veto power over everything they do.
Look, Apple might not literally be the same company as Verizon, but they have just as much experience with locking down their platform. (How many companies are making games for the iPod? Where do you download the SDK?) "Designing great user interfaces and experiences" has nothing to do with the key issue here, which is that the iPhone costs as much as a smartphone but lacks the one thing that makes a smartphone worth paying that much for: expandability. If you just want a phone that plays media, browses the web, and takes pictures, you can get one for a lot less. What Apple brought to Cingular is something all the telcos would love to get....simplicity. I hate to break it to you, but Cingular already has plenty of simple phones. Every carrier does. And they don't cost $500.
That's even less open than Verizon's iron-fisted Get It Now. At least there's a well-defined process for writing Get It Now apps--it just costs a lot of time and money to go through--but there's none for the iPod.
Is there any reason to believe the iPhone development process will be any more transparent? Is it a realistic goal for any individual or small company to write and sell their own iPhone apps, even if they're willing to jump through all of Apple's hoops and give Cingular 90% of the selling price? Or will the only iPhone developers be one or two companies that Apple reaches out to on their own (with an NDA)?
If you have to buy them from your carrier (or Apple), they aren't third-party apps, no matter who wrote them. They're outsourced first-party apps.
As I mentioned at the end of the paragraph you quoted, VZW doesn't lock down their smartphones like this. They do, however, lock down their other phones: if you want a game or applet, you can't write your own or download a free one from the web; you have to buy one from Get It Now. Verizon is well known for locking down their phones to force you into their store, which other carriers don't do (e.g. Cingular customers can install all the Java crapplets they want for free).
I'm not knocking Verizon - I've been a happy customer of theirs for years. When my New Every Two comes up in a couple months, I'll be getting a phone that does nearly everything the iPhone does for $400 less.