After reading Gene Kan's statement, I'm left thinking: he suggests a lot of possible ways for profit to be made on digital music. But will any work? If you could either pay for an MP3 or get one for free, would you pay? If you paid $1 for a track in MP3 format, wouldn't you be likely to share it with your friends, like you do with software? And, in case your answer was "No," don't you think there are several million people who are not as moral as you?
Will anyone buy a copy-protected MP3 when they could get an unprotected one for free? Are you going to be able to play them at home and at work, or will they be attached to one computer? If a file you paid $1 for suddenly won't play because it thinks you pirated it, can you return it? Will SDMI-protected files play on Linux? Will the player be free (as in anything)? Will anyone use the new, restrictive player instead of Winamp/xmms?
Would you pay $1.50, as Gene suggests, to a random Napster user? Would you give him your credit card? Or would you grab a free MP3 off Gnutella in half the time it would take to enter your payment details into a new pay-napster?
All this talk is well and good, but these are questions that need to be addressed if we're going to advocate that the music industry move towards these new technologies.
To be sure, another large factor in MOSR's decision is that they are supporters of Apple and of the Macintosh community.
OK, so why is Apple threatening them with litigation? Do they, for some strange reason, despise their supporters? This doesn't seem like the brightest thing to do.
Re:No - keywords don't work
on
Pirate DNS?
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· Score: 1
Take a look at Netword. They apparently have a patent on internet keywords. Says Netword CEO, "Netword invented Internet keywords..." (see here). They started out letting companies pay to have an English word go to their site. This is kind of like DNS, but much more commercial. Now, most common words seem to go to a directory listing by zip code, which is a nice feature, but it's a lot more like a local search engine than DNS. And besides, they claim to be the place for internet keywords, and even have a browser plug-in to make it like what you were saying, but have you ever heard of them? I didn't think so.
We should already know that you can't assume that a domain name will go where you think. Take, for example, The Pecan Grove Plantation community web site, which has very little to do with secure communication. This would also be true in any keyword system. It's not more logical or natural; it's still just a matter of who grabs the word first.
I often use foo@bar.com for random sites that require registration. I checked out bar.com and discovered that's it owned by some sort of domain squatter who "really meant to use all those domain names." Plus, mail to bar.com bounces for lack of proper mail handling. So I think that's a pretty good alternative.
Of course, that one's often already been used at a site, but not as often as you'd think.
I often see people here complain about proprietary software (usually Microsoft's) saying that software companies should be held accountable for their cra^Wsoftware just like makers of any other products are. This seems reasonable, so, for example, Microsoft could be liable for the recent spate of virii.
Is this not what the UCITA provides? It sounds like something we should advocate. But it's bad for GPL, and we can't say that it only should apply to proprietary software, because then right from the start, it solidifies the anti-OSS who-can-we-sue argument.
Sure it does. For example, you can copy a CD to tape, but you can't copy a CD to tape and sell it. I think that's the case with any sort of copying, unless the DMCA has come and made both illegal in certain cases.
I think the main objection is to sites making money off of linking to illegal content. To use everyone's favorite analogy, it's "Here's where to find crack" vs. "If you give me a dollar, I'll tell you where to find crack."
That's totally different. That case stated that a site cannot prevent you from linking to a page on their site. This case asks whether Federal Law can prevent you from linking to a particular web page.
And yes, you're right, finding MP3s on the web is so 1999.
... but the problem with open censorware lists is that the block list becomes a very valuable commodity.
This is only true if the software isn't open source. If the OSS community provided censorware that was done the Right Way (tm), then people and libraries could choose to use that instead of closed competitors. Junkbuster could probably do this with small modifications. And it could be admined the same way as I use it for cookies - I have an opt-in list, and whenever I go to a site that requires cookies, I add it in. So too, a parent or librarian could add in sites as their kids needed. We could even maintain a list online, so parents who've put time in to compiling lists could post them on the web, and other parents could have a head start.
The point is, once there is decent software for libraries and such to use, people will stop making and using broken or evil software.
There will always be people who feel the need to "do something" about "evil" on the internet, and as long as there are, there will be people to buy this kind of software. As long as we keep pointing out why the software is broken, people will keep coming out with software that's supposed to be better. If we want to fight censorware, we need to argue about why censorware is wrong in general, not why this or that specific software is broken.
That having been said, I think the reason is that any censorware, present or future, puts the decision of what is and is not appropriate for me or my kids into the hands of people who don't know me and don't share my values.
Open censorware (with open block lists) is a possible solution to this. This way, parents, who should be deciding what their children will see, can actually make real decisions, rather than have to abide by whatever decisions Mattel or whoever else makes for them.
It's just as wrong for a company to insist that my kids shouldn't see a certain site as it is for anti-censorware advocates to insist that my kids should be able to see anything. The right thing to do is to give parents the choice to make that call.
According to their webpage, csoft.net offers colocation for $30/mo. I am not running something extremely mission critical, but high uptime is nice. Does anyone know if this is for real, and if it's any good? They don't seem to respond to emails.
Why didn't they try to charge a long time ago? Is there a rule, similar to the trademark dilution idea, that if you don't protest people violating your patent for 10 years, then it's assumed that you don't care?
I agree that fun 404s have become a nice amusement on the web. At least they avoid the two biggest problems with standard ones: telling people to contact the sysadmin, especially on a many-user machine, and telling people they must've typed something wrong, when people almost never type URLs.
I wonder if there's a way to search an image for text. Let's say you want to leave the document in image form, say, to preserve the original look, perhaps for historical documents. If it's all in the same font, I wonder if it's possible to do a "text search" by searching the image for the appropriate patterns in the image. This may be a reproduction of how OCR works, although I think it's a separate functionality that could be quite useful in some circumstances.
Any thoughts from image gurus on the viability of this?
If Mr. Valenti, who, due to his position in the industry, is very much involved in copyright and other legal issues, doesn't know if all the copying scenarios Mr. Garbus asked about are legal, then how the heck are we, simple upstanding citizens, supposed to know what's legal?
First, I always upgrade KDE in the hopes that the new version will suck less than the current one. On occasion , that's been the case. Second, I already have some apps, like licq, waiting for the new Qt to be upgraded so I can install a recent (and more functional) version. So when a stable KDE comes out for the new Qt, I'll upgrade.
True. I never much liked linux naming conventions, which tended to favor arbitrary sounding acronyms over attractive names. For example, WinAmp vs. xmms, or Windows Explorer vs. kfm. I'm glad to see KDE at least moving towards names like Konqueror rather than kwb or some such. Plus, with competing widget sets, it's convenient to know right off the bat which goes with what.
It annoys me that, since new versions of any sort of Kfoo require the next version of Qt, that upgrades of KDE apps are all or nothing - ie. when the KDE 2.0 comes out, I'll upgrade Qt, break all KDE apps, and then start searching the web for the new versions of "non-included" apps like Knapster, Kicq, etc. I don't really like having many different versions of libraries (Qt 1.4, 1.41, 2.0, 2.1-beta, 2.1-thursday, etc.) on my machine, plus, RPM makes this quite difficult even if I wanted to. Does anyone have a graceful solution?
Cnet headline is misleading
on
Napster Wars
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· Score: 1
They are not asking Napster to "pull" the songs, which would involve removing the files from users' machines. They are asking Napster to stop "facilitating or assisting others in, the copying, downloading, uploading, transmission or distribution of copyrighted musical works." This could mean anything from filename grepping to unplugging their servers. I suppose that's up to the judge. But it is practical, at least to a degree, and it certainly inconveniences Napster, which I'd bet is the main goal of the RIAA.
The article says that the EU will "force companies based outside the region to charge value-added (VAT) tax." How exactly can a foreign jurisdiction force me, in the US, to do anything? Besides, every web site that sells something can't be expected to know and enforce the tax laws of every country in the world. I don't see how anyone outside the EU will take this seriously.
It looks like the site has a max number of users, so here's the abstract, and a mirror (please be gentle).
A method of tracking a web browser across distinct domains of a network of computers includes the step of identifying, at a first server computer with a first domain name, a first request from the web browser. The web browser is then assigned a unique identification code. The unique identification code is then conveyed to a second server with a second domain name that is distinct from the first domain name. A request by the web browser to the second server computer is associated with the web browser via the unique identification code. In this way, the web browser is tracked across distinct domains of the World Wide Web. As a result, the web browser can be passively tracked to identify content preferences and interests associated with the individual using the web browser.
I don't know that much about how the ad systems work, but it sounds like they're basically describing cookies, which are stored in a central server. This sounds a lot more far-reaching than just ads, say, to all sites using cookies. Certainly, storing cookies on machine B instead of machine A sounds pretty obvious to me.
Some of the stories of this type revolve around copyright and some revolve around trademark. I assume these are not the same thing. (Any "IAAL" care to comment?) Fair use applies to copyright, but not trademark. Right? Also, people often mention an obligation for companies to protect their marks from dilution, in other words, forcing them to send C&D letters to fans. This only applies to trademark. Right?
So, what is the issue here? I think it's important to understand the underlying issue before going nuts.
And, if it is as it seems to me, and the issue here is trademark, then, what is an amicable solution to a law (protection against dilution) that forces companies to fight use of marks, or lose them?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm betting this answers your question. (Perhaps this is one of the side-affects that doomsayers warned about when Andover bought slashdot.)
Will anyone buy a copy-protected MP3 when they could get an unprotected one for free? Are you going to be able to play them at home and at work, or will they be attached to one computer? If a file you paid $1 for suddenly won't play because it thinks you pirated it, can you return it? Will SDMI-protected files play on Linux? Will the player be free (as in anything)? Will anyone use the new, restrictive player instead of Winamp/xmms?
Would you pay $1.50, as Gene suggests, to a random Napster user? Would you give him your credit card? Or would you grab a free MP3 off Gnutella in half the time it would take to enter your payment details into a new pay-napster?
All this talk is well and good, but these are questions that need to be addressed if we're going to advocate that the music industry move towards these new technologies.
OK, so why is Apple threatening them with litigation? Do they, for some strange reason, despise their supporters? This doesn't seem like the brightest thing to do.
We should already know that you can't assume that a domain name will go where you think. Take, for example, The Pecan Grove Plantation community web site, which has very little to do with secure communication. This would also be true in any keyword system. It's not more logical or natural; it's still just a matter of who grabs the word first.
Of course, that one's often already been used at a site, but not as often as you'd think.
Is this not what the UCITA provides? It sounds like something we should advocate. But it's bad for GPL, and we can't say that it only should apply to proprietary software, because then right from the start, it solidifies the anti-OSS who-can-we-sue argument.
Sure it does. For example, you can copy a CD to tape, but you can't copy a CD to tape and sell it. I think that's the case with any sort of copying, unless the DMCA has come and made both illegal in certain cases.
I think the main objection is to sites making money off of linking to illegal content. To use everyone's favorite analogy, it's "Here's where to find crack" vs. "If you give me a dollar, I'll tell you where to find crack."
And yes, you're right, finding MP3s on the web is so 1999.
This is only true if the software isn't open source. If the OSS community provided censorware that was done the Right Way (tm), then people and libraries could choose to use that instead of closed competitors. Junkbuster could probably do this with small modifications. And it could be admined the same way as I use it for cookies - I have an opt-in list, and whenever I go to a site that requires cookies, I add it in. So too, a parent or librarian could add in sites as their kids needed. We could even maintain a list online, so parents who've put time in to compiling lists could post them on the web, and other parents could have a head start.
The point is, once there is decent software for libraries and such to use, people will stop making and using broken or evil software.
That having been said, I think the reason is that any censorware, present or future, puts the decision of what is and is not appropriate for me or my kids into the hands of people who don't know me and don't share my values.
Open censorware (with open block lists) is a possible solution to this. This way, parents, who should be deciding what their children will see, can actually make real decisions, rather than have to abide by whatever decisions Mattel or whoever else makes for them.
It's just as wrong for a company to insist that my kids shouldn't see a certain site as it is for anti-censorware advocates to insist that my kids should be able to see anything. The right thing to do is to give parents the choice to make that call.
According to their webpage, csoft.net offers colocation for $30/mo. I am not running something extremely mission critical, but high uptime is nice. Does anyone know if this is for real, and if it's any good? They don't seem to respond to emails.
Why didn't they try to charge a long time ago? Is there a rule, similar to the trademark dilution idea, that if you don't protest people violating your patent for 10 years, then it's assumed that you don't care?
I agree that fun 404s have become a nice amusement on the web. At least they avoid the two biggest problems with standard ones: telling people to contact the sysadmin, especially on a many-user machine, and telling people they must've typed something wrong, when people almost never type URLs.
Any thoughts from image gurus on the viability of this?
If Mr. Valenti, who, due to his position in the industry, is very much involved in copyright and other legal issues, doesn't know if all the copying scenarios Mr. Garbus asked about are legal, then how the heck are we, simple upstanding citizens, supposed to know what's legal?
First, I always upgrade KDE in the hopes that the new version will suck less than the current one. On occasion , that's been the case. Second, I already have some apps, like licq, waiting for the new Qt to be upgraded so I can install a recent (and more functional) version. So when a stable KDE comes out for the new Qt, I'll upgrade.
True. I never much liked linux naming conventions, which tended to favor arbitrary sounding acronyms over attractive names. For example, WinAmp vs. xmms, or Windows Explorer vs. kfm. I'm glad to see KDE at least moving towards names like Konqueror rather than kwb or some such. Plus, with competing widget sets, it's convenient to know right off the bat which goes with what.
It annoys me that, since new versions of any sort of Kfoo require the next version of Qt, that upgrades of KDE apps are all or nothing - ie. when the KDE 2.0 comes out, I'll upgrade Qt, break all KDE apps, and then start searching the web for the new versions of "non-included" apps like Knapster, Kicq, etc. I don't really like having many different versions of libraries (Qt 1.4, 1.41, 2.0, 2.1-beta, 2.1-thursday, etc.) on my machine, plus, RPM makes this quite difficult even if I wanted to. Does anyone have a graceful solution?
They are not asking Napster to "pull" the songs, which would involve removing the files from users' machines. They are asking Napster to stop "facilitating or assisting others in, the copying, downloading, uploading, transmission or distribution of copyrighted musical works." This could mean anything from filename grepping to unplugging their servers. I suppose that's up to the judge. But it is practical, at least to a degree, and it certainly inconveniences Napster, which I'd bet is the main goal of the RIAA.
The article says that the EU will "force companies based outside the region to charge value-added (VAT) tax." How exactly can a foreign jurisdiction force me, in the US, to do anything? Besides, every web site that sells something can't be expected to know and enforce the tax laws of every country in the world. I don't see how anyone outside the EU will take this seriously.
I don't know that much about how the ad systems work, but it sounds like they're basically describing cookies, which are stored in a central server. This sounds a lot more far-reaching than just ads, say, to all sites using cookies. Certainly, storing cookies on machine B instead of machine A sounds pretty obvious to me.
Some of the stories of this type revolve around copyright and some revolve around trademark. I assume these are not the same thing. (Any "IAAL" care to comment?) Fair use applies to copyright, but not trademark. Right? Also, people often mention an obligation for companies to protect their marks from dilution, in other words, forcing them to send C&D letters to fans. This only applies to trademark. Right?
So, what is the issue here? I think it's important to understand the underlying issue before going nuts.
And, if it is as it seems to me, and the issue here is trademark, then, what is an amicable solution to a law (protection against dilution) that forces companies to fight use of marks, or lose them?
In unix, you'd do "file foo". If it says "MP3," that's good. If it says "ASCII virus text," that's bad.
Is there some equivalent in Windows, or does everything go by file extension?