Not as long as it's still being broadcast over the air for free. Sure, you could pay $2 for a 320x240 version of "Lost"... or you could get an antenna and a set-top box and watch it at 1920x1080 for free.
As long as you can do that, there's nothing immoral or unethical about sharing or downloading TV shows. You're simply using someone else's recording equipment instead of your own (with their permission), just like borrowing someone else's notes for a class you missed.
For 100mb less than what you'll find on bittorrent (albiet not in 16:9) you get the whole program without ads, and also (and this is in my opinion pretty big) no intrusive messages along the bottom or top of the screen placed by the television network. [...] If you were to download what is basically a TV rip from Bittorrent, these advertisements are unavoidable even if the normal ads are cut.
I've never seen any "intrusive messages" in downloaded versions of Lost. The only thing marring those HDTV rips is a transparent ABC logo in the corner of the screen, but otherwise, the quality is far better than you can get from 320x240. It might just be a matter of time before the networks start cluttering up HDTV broadcasts with banner ads.. but for now, BitTorrent still seems like a better deal.
Don't bother downloading the first season for $34, just get the DVDs. You can compress them down if you want to watch TV on the train or something, but still watch it at DVD resolution (and at the correct aspect ratio) when you're at home.
if, on the other hand, you're doing something like A[i][j], the compiler has to generate two deref ops plus pay the cost of whatever cache misses result from using the two levels of indirection --- in this case, working with pointer / index arithmetic relative to the base address is a big win.
That's true for jagged arrays, but IIRC, statically allocated multidimensional arrays in C are not jagged. A[i][j] is equivalent to A[i*c+j] (or maybe A[i+j*c], whatever).
is it ok for a 9 year old to go to bang bus or ass diver?
How many 9 year olds do you know who'd even want to go to such a site?
Anyone who's old enough to be interested is old enough to see it. If they're not interested, they know where the Back button is, and they aren't going to be scarred for life because they accidentally found a porn site.
or, just possibly, no way! gosh! gasp! there are actually level-headed reasonable parents who want to let their kids on the web without getting them caught up on double penetration action...
Exactly what do you think would happen if their kids were to get "caught up on" such action? Would their heads explode? Would they start foaming at the mouth, or would they be doomed to a life of criminal insanity?
Please, do tell. I've heard a lot of talk about how kids need to be "protected" from "inappropriate" content, but no one has ever explained just what would happen if they weren't.
Last I checked, Cingular/ATT don't let you bring your own phone. T-mobile *might*, as they're tiny here in the US, but are owned by Deutsch Mobile, a Euro firm that has a clue. Verizon won't, because they're CDMA and they seek to 'value add' by only having crippled phones on their network.
Check again - Verizon will activate many phones from other carriers. If they give you a hard time about it in the store, you can just activate it online. Sprint PCS, on the other hand, refuses to activate any phone they didn't sell, even if it's the exact same model.
No, we don't have multi-standard TVs. We do, however, have half-assed PAL/NTSC conversion even (perhaps especially) in the cheapest of off-brand DVD players, and region free codes available from videohelp.com. My Phillips DVP 642 is region free, has no problem playing European DVDs, and only cost $50.
CLR bytecode has a few advantages over Java bytecode. For example, generics: C# preserves generic type information for the JITter to use, so List actually has a different layout and its methods compile to different machine code than List. In Java, they're the same class except the compiler does type checking and automatic casts for you, which has performance implications. I suppose this could be fixed by making the Java compiler treat generics like templates, duplicating the class for each instantiation.
CLR bytecode can also work with pointers, so you can compile any C++ code in VC++.NET and produce IL bytecode (or do something similar with C#'s unsafe code blocks). Can't do that in Java.
Most people remember Leonardo Da Vinci for his paintings and inventions, but did you know Da Vinci's Notebook also has history's first recorded biography of The Sneak?
If you look at the large incompatibilities between Visual Basic and VB.NET you'll see that.NET is not really that language independent and that each language is really more of a "skined" version of C#.
Mm, not really. C++/CIL (nee Managed C++) is closer to the metal of.NET. VB.NET has a ton of late binding support, C++ has pointers to boxed types, both have named indexers.. none of which are in C#.
Why use Mono/.NET when you have ruby, perl, php, and python? All of which are cross platform?
Why use C++ when you have JavaScript? Why use Haskell when you have BASH? They're apples and oranges.
As far as only being able to give binary code to your customers ActiveState's Perl Dev Kit allows you to do just this (even though it's not free, but still less expensive than a license for Visual Studio.NET). I'm sure someone has written a decompiler for PDK binaries but the same thing could be done for.NET applications.
Actually, you can pre-compile.NET/Mono apps with a tool called ngen, which translates the IL code to native machine code to reduce startup time and make it harder to decompile.
What will happen when C# 2.0 comes out? My guess is Linux will be playing catchup again and meanwhile windows will look like a better alternative to businesses standardizing on C# because their geeks mentioned how great Mono is.
Actually, Mono already supports the features of C# 2.0. The Whidbey beta has been out for over a year, you know.
I mean, this sort of intentional corruption is exactly what Merkle hash trees are good at preventing.
I don't think changing the hash algorithm would help. BT is already quite capable of identifying and rejecting corrupted blocks (unlike, say, Kazaa), and a hashed block can already be 1K or smaller depending on the size of the torrent. The problem is, HBO is running so many rogue nodes that you spend half your time downloading and rejecting corrupted blocks.
There is a 'scarce' good here. It's the ability to hear the music well after the fact of its performance.
That isn't scarce. Scarce goods are the ones whose quantity is limited. If I buy a car from the lot, that's one less car for someone else to buy. If I buy a million barrels of oil, that's a million less for someone else to buy, and eventually the price will go up as the supply goes down. But if I download a song, that doesn't limit anyone else's ability to download the same one - the supply of any given song is unlimited.
I find it fascinating that the internet/computers have made this 'scarce' good largely un-scarce given the easy at duplication/distribution.
Computers didn't start it: look at sheet music, player pianos, records, cassette tapes, and CDs. Hell, look at humming and singing. Music has never been scarce, even though the equipment to reproduce it has often been expensive.
What? If I'm under 18 I can commit any crime I want without consequences?
Nope, that's not what I said at all, nor is it how things work in real life in the majority of cases where minors aren't tried as adults. I guess you haven't heard of the juvenile justice system.
If you're going to be a thief, don't complain when someone tries to stop you from stealing their stuff. Anyone who complains about this is an immature idiot.
No, there's still a reason to be worried about this, even if you're a staunch supporter of copyright. This tactic can be applied to any torrent. Today it's HBO interfering with illegal downloads of the show they're trying to sell to subscribers, but tomorrow it could be Microsoft/SCO interfering with legitimate downloads of Linux ISOs, or the MPAA interfering with some independent director who's chose to distribute his film over the internet. Eventually, BitTorrent client authors will have to solve the problem.
Not all commercial versions of music sold from stores has DRM. Indeed, most music stores still do not have an online delivery option. I have yet to buy a CD that I could not copy/rip, and rarely do I want to do that.
That's hardly an alternative. What if I just want a single track? I can get it for $1 from Apple, get it for $1 from another online store and (perhaps illegally) file off the DRM so it works in my hypothetical iPod, or pay $13 for the CD and then rip it myself. Even if I could find it on a CD single (which is unlikely these days), those still cost at least 5 times as much as downloading the individual track.
I was always taught that theft was taking someone else stuff without permission.
Your teacher left out the most important part: theft is taking someone else's stuff away from them without permission.
Theft is wrong because someone has to have exclusive rights to decide how that stuff will be used, since it can only be in one place at a time. If you take his stuff without permission, you deny him the ability to choose how and where he wants to use it. OTOH, if you make a copy without permission, you haven't limited anyone else's choices.
Yes, making backups would fall under that categorization, but its pretty much acceptable as long as you don't give them away, or if you do, you delete the other copies.
So you're saying this form of "theft" is acceptable in common everyday situations? That doesn't sound like theft to me.
You arrogant idiots. All you do is nitpick at everything. It's wrong, don't deny it. You're not paying for something that costs money.
It costs money, huh? Doesn't seem like it, I can download all kinds of stuff for free without even reducing the supply...;)
I think you mean "not paying for something that someone wants you to pay for". Sorry, I'm not morally obligated to pay someone for the right to feed a string of bits into my MP3 player or DVD player, just because they want my money. You can't own a number, whether it's 5 digits or 5 billion digits.
OK, so what do you call the category that includes all of copyright infringement, patent infringement, and trademark infringement, as well as theft of services, petty theft, and grand theft; and robbery, burglary, and shoplifting? Or does no such category exist in your mind?
I don't think there is such a category. I guess you could call it "crime", or "doing things other people don't like", but why bother? There's no connection between infringing a patent and stealing a car.
Do you insist on making distinctions between the different types of intellectual property theft (notice how easily that term slips off the tongue)?
Your tongue must be different from mine. "Intellectual property" seems like such a contrived and vague term.. copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets are legally quite different, even though they all involve granting monopolies on intangible things.
Do you insist on making distinctions between the different kinds of theft involving stolen physical property? I don't see how you can justify one but not the other.
All forms of [physical property] theft are essentially the same: taking an object away from someone else. A certain act of theft might fall under one law or another depending on the object's value or the manner in which it was taken, but it's always essentially the same act.
What makes it wrong isn't the fact that the thief gets something for free, but that it's taken away from its owner, who by definition has exclusive rights to decide how it may be used (since, as a physical object, it can only be in one place at a time).
Or we could just drop the stupid argument and call it "theft." Your call.
"Copyright infringement" is a perfectly good term; it's accurate and precise. I see no reason why an honest person would refuse to use it.
Nice comparison....completely wrong but nice. If you don't pay for the food...then yes it is *theft*.
Of course, with music, there is no scarce good - no "food". There is only a service, the act of writing/performing/recording a song, and that service was performed long before the MP3 file ever hit the internet. If you refuse to pay someone today for a service they performed in the past (without arranging any payment with you), that's not theft.
Theft in this sense doesn't include what we know as "identity theft," for example, and I just don't see that it's useful to speak of theft in such terms unless you're in a black robe writing a court opinion.
Frankly, "identity theft" is a misnomer too. Identity theft is just a form of fraud. I can't think of any situation where it'd be useful to speak of "theft" in a sense that included fraud as well as stealing.
How about let's not call it theft, and call it "wrongful appropriation of goods" instead? That should make everyone happy, legalists and colloquialists alike, right?
Not really. Music isn't a good, it's information. You can't appropriate a song any more than you can appropriate the first 5 million digits of pi. Perhaps "unlawful use of information"... or hey, here's a thought: let's call it "copyright infringement".
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Not as long as it's still being broadcast over the air for free. Sure, you could pay $2 for a 320x240 version of "Lost"... or you could get an antenna and a set-top box and watch it at 1920x1080 for free.
As long as you can do that, there's nothing immoral or unethical about sharing or downloading TV shows. You're simply using someone else's recording equipment instead of your own (with their permission), just like borrowing someone else's notes for a class you missed.
For 100mb less than what you'll find on bittorrent (albiet not in 16:9) you get the whole program without ads, and also (and this is in my opinion pretty big) no intrusive messages along the bottom or top of the screen placed by the television network. [...] If you were to download what is basically a TV rip from Bittorrent, these advertisements are unavoidable even if the normal ads are cut.
I've never seen any "intrusive messages" in downloaded versions of Lost. The only thing marring those HDTV rips is a transparent ABC logo in the corner of the screen, but otherwise, the quality is far better than you can get from 320x240. It might just be a matter of time before the networks start cluttering up HDTV broadcasts with banner ads.. but for now, BitTorrent still seems like a better deal.
Don't bother downloading the first season for $34, just get the DVDs. You can compress them down if you want to watch TV on the train or something, but still watch it at DVD resolution (and at the correct aspect ratio) when you're at home.
if, on the other hand, you're doing something like A[i][j], the compiler has to generate two deref ops plus pay the cost of whatever cache misses result from using the two levels of indirection --- in this case, working with pointer / index arithmetic relative to the base address is a big win.
That's true for jagged arrays, but IIRC, statically allocated multidimensional arrays in C are not jagged. A[i][j] is equivalent to A[i*c+j] (or maybe A[i+j*c], whatever).
is it ok for a 9 year old to go to bang bus or ass diver?
How many 9 year olds do you know who'd even want to go to such a site?
Anyone who's old enough to be interested is old enough to see it. If they're not interested, they know where the Back button is, and they aren't going to be scarred for life because they accidentally found a porn site.
or, just possibly, no way! gosh! gasp! there are actually level-headed reasonable parents who want to let their kids on the web without getting them caught up on double penetration action...
Exactly what do you think would happen if their kids were to get "caught up on" such action? Would their heads explode? Would they start foaming at the mouth, or would they be doomed to a life of criminal insanity?
Please, do tell. I've heard a lot of talk about how kids need to be "protected" from "inappropriate" content, but no one has ever explained just what would happen if they weren't.
The same gear can't work because 1900 MHz is already used in the US for cell phones (PCS band).
I've personally played GTA, then later caught myself wanting to swerve erratically on a real road.
I've never had that problem. Perhaps you shouldn't be driving.
Ah, you're right. My mistake.
Last I checked, Cingular/ATT don't let you bring your own phone. T-mobile *might*, as they're tiny here in the US, but are owned by Deutsch Mobile, a Euro firm that has a clue. Verizon won't, because they're CDMA and they seek to 'value add' by only having crippled phones on their network.
Check again - Verizon will activate many phones from other carriers. If they give you a hard time about it in the store, you can just activate it online. Sprint PCS, on the other hand, refuses to activate any phone they didn't sell, even if it's the exact same model.
No, we don't have multi-standard TVs. We do, however, have half-assed PAL/NTSC conversion even (perhaps especially) in the cheapest of off-brand DVD players, and region free codes available from videohelp.com. My Phillips DVP 642 is region free, has no problem playing European DVDs, and only cost $50.
CLR bytecode has a few advantages over Java bytecode. For example, generics: C# preserves generic type information for the JITter to use, so List actually has a different layout and its methods compile to different machine code than List. In Java, they're the same class except the compiler does type checking and automatic casts for you, which has performance implications. I suppose this could be fixed by making the Java compiler treat generics like templates, duplicating the class for each instantiation.
CLR bytecode can also work with pointers, so you can compile any C++ code in VC++.NET and produce IL bytecode (or do something similar with C#'s unsafe code blocks). Can't do that in Java.
Most people remember Leonardo Da Vinci for his paintings and inventions, but did you know Da Vinci's Notebook also has history's first recorded biography of The Sneak?
If you look at the large incompatibilities between Visual Basic and VB.NET you'll see that .NET is not really that language independent and that each language is really more of a "skined" version of C#.
.NET. VB.NET has a ton of late binding support, C++ has pointers to boxed types, both have named indexers.. none of which are in C#.
Mm, not really. C++/CIL (nee Managed C++) is closer to the metal of
Why use Mono/.NET when you have ruby, perl, php, and python? All of which are cross platform?
.NET). I'm sure someone has written a decompiler for PDK binaries but the same thing could be done for .NET applications.
.NET/Mono apps with a tool called ngen, which translates the IL code to native machine code to reduce startup time and make it harder to decompile.
Why use C++ when you have JavaScript? Why use Haskell when you have BASH? They're apples and oranges.
As far as only being able to give binary code to your customers ActiveState's Perl Dev Kit allows you to do just this (even though it's not free, but still less expensive than a license for Visual Studio
Actually, you can pre-compile
What will happen when C# 2.0 comes out? My guess is Linux will be playing catchup again and meanwhile windows will look like a better alternative to businesses standardizing on C# because their geeks mentioned how great Mono is.
Actually, Mono already supports the features of C# 2.0. The Whidbey beta has been out for over a year, you know.
Interesting.. it looks like Tiger tree hashes are already used in Gnutella2 and Direct Connect.
I mean, this sort of intentional corruption is exactly what Merkle hash trees are good at preventing.
I don't think changing the hash algorithm would help. BT is already quite capable of identifying and rejecting corrupted blocks (unlike, say, Kazaa), and a hashed block can already be 1K or smaller depending on the size of the torrent. The problem is, HBO is running so many rogue nodes that you spend half your time downloading and rejecting corrupted blocks.
There is a 'scarce' good here. It's the ability to hear the music well after the fact of its performance.
That isn't scarce. Scarce goods are the ones whose quantity is limited. If I buy a car from the lot, that's one less car for someone else to buy. If I buy a million barrels of oil, that's a million less for someone else to buy, and eventually the price will go up as the supply goes down. But if I download a song, that doesn't limit anyone else's ability to download the same one - the supply of any given song is unlimited.
I find it fascinating that the internet/computers have made this 'scarce' good largely un-scarce given the easy at duplication/distribution.
Computers didn't start it: look at sheet music, player pianos, records, cassette tapes, and CDs. Hell, look at humming and singing. Music has never been scarce, even though the equipment to reproduce it has often been expensive.
What? If I'm under 18 I can commit any crime I want without consequences?
Nope, that's not what I said at all, nor is it how things work in real life in the majority of cases where minors aren't tried as adults. I guess you haven't heard of the juvenile justice system.
If you're going to be a thief, don't complain when someone tries to stop you from stealing their stuff. Anyone who complains about this is an immature idiot.
No, there's still a reason to be worried about this, even if you're a staunch supporter of copyright. This tactic can be applied to any torrent. Today it's HBO interfering with illegal downloads of the show they're trying to sell to subscribers, but tomorrow it could be Microsoft/SCO interfering with legitimate downloads of Linux ISOs, or the MPAA interfering with some independent director who's chose to distribute his film over the internet. Eventually, BitTorrent client authors will have to solve the problem.
Not all commercial versions of music sold from stores has DRM. Indeed, most music stores still do not have an online delivery option. I have yet to buy a CD that I could not copy/rip, and rarely do I want to do that.
That's hardly an alternative. What if I just want a single track? I can get it for $1 from Apple, get it for $1 from another online store and (perhaps illegally) file off the DRM so it works in my hypothetical iPod, or pay $13 for the CD and then rip it myself. Even if I could find it on a CD single (which is unlikely these days), those still cost at least 5 times as much as downloading the individual track.
I was always taught that theft was taking someone else stuff without permission.
Your teacher left out the most important part: theft is taking someone else's stuff away from them without permission.
Theft is wrong because someone has to have exclusive rights to decide how that stuff will be used, since it can only be in one place at a time. If you take his stuff without permission, you deny him the ability to choose how and where he wants to use it. OTOH, if you make a copy without permission, you haven't limited anyone else's choices.
Yes, making backups would fall under that categorization, but its pretty much acceptable as long as you don't give them away, or if you do, you delete the other copies.
So you're saying this form of "theft" is acceptable in common everyday situations? That doesn't sound like theft to me.
You arrogant idiots. All you do is nitpick at everything. It's wrong, don't deny it. You're not paying for something that costs money.
;)
It costs money, huh? Doesn't seem like it, I can download all kinds of stuff for free without even reducing the supply...
I think you mean "not paying for something that someone wants you to pay for". Sorry, I'm not morally obligated to pay someone for the right to feed a string of bits into my MP3 player or DVD player, just because they want my money. You can't own a number, whether it's 5 digits or 5 billion digits.
OK, so what do you call the category that includes all of copyright infringement, patent infringement, and trademark infringement, as well as theft of services, petty theft, and grand theft; and robbery, burglary, and shoplifting? Or does no such category exist in your mind?
I don't think there is such a category. I guess you could call it "crime", or "doing things other people don't like", but why bother? There's no connection between infringing a patent and stealing a car.
Do you insist on making distinctions between the different types of intellectual property theft (notice how easily that term slips off the tongue)?
Your tongue must be different from mine. "Intellectual property" seems like such a contrived and vague term.. copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets are legally quite different, even though they all involve granting monopolies on intangible things.
Do you insist on making distinctions between the different kinds of theft involving stolen physical property? I don't see how you can justify one but not the other.
All forms of [physical property] theft are essentially the same: taking an object away from someone else. A certain act of theft might fall under one law or another depending on the object's value or the manner in which it was taken, but it's always essentially the same act.
What makes it wrong isn't the fact that the thief gets something for free, but that it's taken away from its owner, who by definition has exclusive rights to decide how it may be used (since, as a physical object, it can only be in one place at a time).
Or we could just drop the stupid argument and call it "theft." Your call.
"Copyright infringement" is a perfectly good term; it's accurate and precise. I see no reason why an honest person would refuse to use it.
Nice comparison....completely wrong but nice. If you don't pay for the food...then yes it is *theft*.
Of course, with music, there is no scarce good - no "food". There is only a service, the act of writing/performing/recording a song, and that service was performed long before the MP3 file ever hit the internet. If you refuse to pay someone today for a service they performed in the past (without arranging any payment with you), that's not theft.
Theft in this sense doesn't include what we know as "identity theft," for example, and I just don't see that it's useful to speak of theft in such terms unless you're in a black robe writing a court opinion.
Frankly, "identity theft" is a misnomer too. Identity theft is just a form of fraud. I can't think of any situation where it'd be useful to speak of "theft" in a sense that included fraud as well as stealing.
How about let's not call it theft, and call it "wrongful appropriation of goods" instead? That should make everyone happy, legalists and colloquialists alike, right?
Not really. Music isn't a good, it's information. You can't appropriate a song any more than you can appropriate the first 5 million digits of pi. Perhaps "unlawful use of information"... or hey, here's a thought: let's call it "copyright infringement".