And, technically infeasible given that the indies are not, even collectively, probably enough to warrant financing major updates like this to the iTMS & its infrastructure. A major label joining the party makes it worth spending the money, because suddenly you've got a bunch of popular artists that will probably net them (apple & emi) quite a few additional sales. Coldplay, White Stripes, Norah Jones, Garth Brooks, and god help us, even Britney Spears, are going to move tracks in much higher quanitities than your average indie player.
Keep in mind, you're talking about a service that's sold a couple billion songs... adding 20,000 sales to that total because 10 indie artists got to sell DRM free isn't much of an impact. Having a major label willing to sell through this mechanism finances the infrastructure changes that will be necessary -- additional disk space & bandwidth, probably additional servers, changes to the interface to distinguish between "premium" and "drm" purchases (and let's not forget the internationalization), testing all of those changes, implementing the "$.30 per track upgrade" program, and testing all of this stuff to make sure that it actually works isn't going to be cheap for Apple... without major backing, it probably didn't make financial sense.
I just walk down to my friendly local neighborhood used CD store and buy them there. No DRM, much cheaper prices, and much better quality. But I guess in the current Big Box consumer culture of the US, if you can't get it at Best Buy, then it doesn't exist to most people. Sad.
And for those of us who live a 20-mile / 30 minute drive from the nearest "big-box" store, and at least that far to the nearest "used" store? And those of us who live in towns where there are no used CD stores? Look at a map of the US sometime... there's a whole country populated very sparsely outside the city you live in. You might have heard about it once or twice?
Your point about used CD stores is spurious and irrelevant to probably 3/4 of the population. If you have one nearby, great, take advantage of it and save money. When I have to spend $3-4 on gas (~40 miles, at ~25 miles per gallon = 1.6 gallons of gas... at the 3/26/07 national average of $2.61 / gallon, that's $4.18), plus a couple hours of my time just to get to a store to save $5 on a CD, the economics you're speaking of become remarkably unappealing. Which is why most of my music purchases are online through Amazon, or direct from the artist. iTunes has now just made the list of places I'll check for music, too, because of this announcement. Good bitrates (I don't have gear that anybody's likely to hear a difference on betwen 256kbps and any "lossless" format), and no DRM at pretty much the same prices as I'd pay to get the CD through Amazon? That's not a bad deal.
Create a situation in which the illegal alternative is preferable to the legal alternative. Sue those that break the law.
While I agree these lawsuits are a problem, I also have a problem with this line of reasoning. It implies that the only way these poor, beleaguered consumers can get their hands on any music is by downloading off the internet for free, when in fact, several other quite reasonable avenues exist:
Don't like DRM? Buy a CD / Casette tape at a store, or through an online reseller (i.e., Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc.).
Don't want to spend a lot of money for songs you don't want? Buy a single track online, through iTunes or similar service.
Hate DRM & want to buy a la carte? Emusic, or some other "DRM-free" online service.
Personally, I prefer purchasing a CD... I can then rip to MP3 for playing on my computer & ipod, and leave the CD stored nicely in my closet. This is a great alternative if you don't want to buy songs with DRM. However, if you don't like paying the $17.99 or more that a single CD will run you these days just to get one song, you can always buy online, burn & re-rip that single song, all for 99 cents, which is surely not unreasonable. Shit, a bottle of Coke costs more than that at your local 7-11.
Violating copyright laws by downloading through a P2P filesharing service is not the only way these people have of getting the songs, and your example makes it seem as if it is. While you may not *like* the options available to you, there are reasonable alternatives that allow you to purchase the tracks DRM-free or for a very cheap price, and in some cases, DRM-free AND for a cheap price. This is not to say that copyright laws are good, reasonable, and fair today... but if you violate them -- and surely 99% of the people sharing music online today know it's not kosher -- why would you be surprised when somebody hauls you into court for violating the terms of their copyright? So the lesson here is, don't violate the copyright laws unless you're willing to spend the time & money to be a test case, appealing all the way to the Supreme Court.
And, if DRM is truly a deal-breaker, then put your money where your mouth is: don't purchase, pirate, or listen to ANY music from artists & labels who sell their stuff in DRM'ed formats -- period. Shun them. Boycott them. Make obscene gestures at them. But don't give them a single penny, and don't give them an excuse to sue you for a single penny. Obey the absolute letter of copyright law -- neither a sharer nor a downloader be. Support indie artists & labels which do business in a manner you support; there's tons of them out there, and I'm sure you can find some you'd like, so why not spend your money supporting the arts, rather than supporting an industrial cartel that leaves you and most of the artists they purport to help poorer for the experience? The indie artists & DRM-unfriendly indie labels will gain industry clout, and you'll have the chance to hear new, exciting art, rather than the overwhelmingly sterile "sameness" that you hear on the Top-40 charts & radio today. Everybody benefits, except the RIAA.
Let me fix that for you. I think you meant to write:
No, I don't have any factual evidence of this to share, just prejudicial notions formed from my own wildly exaggerated anecdotal observations that things have been stolen at some of the places I've worked at.
Simply put, if "cleaning staff thievery" was as common a problem as you describe, then janitorial contract companies wouldn't exist as a viable business model -- I'm not claiming it doesn't happen, but I will claim that it doesn't happen with anywhere near the frequency or severity you suggest that would warrant a company "planning" for this theft as part of the cost of doing business. But please, feel free to prove me wrong with data that doesn't rely on you recounting the tale of how an improperly secured laptop was stolen at a company you worked for one time.
Cleaning staff thievery is a hidden cost of hiring contract cleaning service.
Any actual data on this? Or is this a "fact" based on your assumption that anybody making a low wage must be a dishonest thief?
If you're concerned about laptops being stolen, you could just spend an extra $20 - 30 (probably less, if you buy in bulk) to buy a decent cable lock to secure that $1500 - 2500 laptop. And if you're concerned about employees' personal effects being stolen, provide them with a locking cabinet, for a small fraction of the thousands you'll spend on a desk & cubicle system for them.
The contract cleaning service doesn't care how many laptops walked out of your office until it gets so bad you are ready to fire their ass.
And if you're the company hiring the cleaning service, how many laptops have to "walk out" until it gets so bad you're ready to fire the cleaning service? Frankly if it were my company, it'd take ONE laptop disappearing after-hours for me to consider terminating the contract.
Think of it this way, if you pay an janitor (in pay and benefits) the same amount you pay the cleaning company you will be paying the highest rate for janitors in town. You can pick and choose an honest one. She or he will then have an incentive to keep the job (relatively high pay).
Actually, no, you probably won't be giving relatively high pay. The reason to outsource these sorts of jobs is because the cleaning companies are more efficient at it -- they buy supplies & material in bulk quanitities (at bulk rates) that would be overkill for a small office, and they hire janitorial staff that cleans multiple offices, further reducing the cost to each individual office. So instead of paying a full-time position for 2 hours of work a day, you pay for the hour or two a day you actually need someone to clean.
Except that the labels will see lower sales (from people buying indie labels/bands) and still scream "piracy is eating our profits!"
Which they still have to prove to sue people. If you have no music from the artists on that label on your computer, that's going to be pretty hard. Not to mention the fact that other indie labels reporting record profits will make it pretty hard to convince anybody with half a brain that piracy is rampant, and is destroying the entire recording industry. But even in spite of this point, I do agree -- telling the labels why they're losing a sale is quite important. Write a letter, make a call, sign a petition, by all means.
Plus it's a non-solution for people who actually like a particular artist. Yes, a lot of mainstream RIAA-label music is pop crap, but some of the artists are worth listening to, so what do you do if you still want music from $ARTIST but still want to vote with your dollars?
Then your principled stand for buying DRM-free music is not a principled stand. You're telling the record labels, "Well, I don't like DRM, but I *really* love this song, so I'll stomach the DRM you want to ram down my throat just this once." You tell the labels it's okay to do that, and you tell the artists that it's okay to sign to labels that do this. The point of this is, "How to get rid of DRM." If you want to get rid of DRM, and not just whine about it endlessly on/., you start by hitting the labels where it hurts: their bottom line. You refuse to support artists that sign to labels which refuse to release DRM-free tracks. I don't care if it's the second coming of Jimmy Page, you tell him, "Hey sorry, if you were selling your music DRM-free, I'd buy it. Until then, sorry... great music, enjoy hearing it on the radio, but until it's DRM-free, you won't get a cent out of me."
What you're proposing as a way of getting rid of DRM is pointless, because the MUSIC STORES DON'T CONTROL THE DRM. THE LABELS DICTATE THE TERMS. All you will succeed in doing is putting distributors out of business. And what the recording industry will do with THAT tidbit will be to trumpet, "Ha, see? They tried selling DRM-free music, and it wasn't a viable business model!"
The more pessismistic view is that there will always be enough ignorant or indifferent consumers of RIAA music that a personal boycott, even with telling the labels your reasons, will have little effect because of the huge number of consumers who don't care and will buy anyway.
Quite possibly. But if YOU are buying your music DRM-free, and helping to support a separate musical ecosystem in which songs are sold without DRM, why should you care if other people are ignorant and indifferent to the fine nuance of DRM policy? You can evangelize all you want, and I think it's a good idea... but if at the end of the day, you're not encumbered by DRM, why do you care? Don't support companies that do business in ways you don't approve of. If you're worried about endangered dolphins, you don't buy tuna from companies that don't practice dolphin-safe fishing, regardless of how much you like tuna, and you spread your message to the people around you in the hopes that they will be as equally motivated. It's really that simple.
To keep up the boycott aspect for those willing to do so, buy it, pursue support, then return it stating clearly your reasons for doing so.
So let me see if I've got this straight -- buy the music, giving the record company & distributor a chunk of cash -- in effect, a short term loan they don't have to pay interest on. Harass the distributor with spurious questions about DRM, and then "return" the music and demand your money back in a huff? Who's out more -- you, the distributor, or the record label? I'd say you've lost the most because of the simple amount of time it will take you to do this, and you still don't have the song you
Phone for support, act dumb. Drive that 75% up to 95%. If the cost of providing support exceeds revenue, maybe DRM will be dropped.
How is this informative? If you want to succeed in driving online music sales out of existence, which will in turn cause the RIAA to scream even more about piracy, and start slapping even more people with lawsuits, then great.
How about, if you don't like DRM, you don't purchase music from artists & labels which support DRM? Shift that money to indie labels & independent artists that don't use DRM, and suddenly you'll see small labels become much more influential. You can drive a wedge into the recording industry associations by spending your money on labels that do business in a way you agree with; fucking over the resellers and driving them out of business is not the way to reach any desirable end state.
I don't care if Jessica Simpson is offering to personally give you a hummer for every DRM'ed track you buy... if DRM (or more precisely, the lack of it) is important to you, then don't buy it.
Thanks for telling me all about your home computer setup. I'm really impressed that you have so many PCs. And your tv's and stereo systems? I'm fair quivering with excitement!
Just one question... In what way does all of this address my point that everybody who keeps saying "Dell should offer Linux," turns around and in the next breath also claims, "Nobody who can put Linux on themselves would bother with a Dell system, anyway, though"?
Oh, and if you want a Linux system from Dell? Various Dell n-Series systems are available preinstalled & quite configurable with Red Hat. Or, you can choose the FreeDOS version, which comes pretty much a blank slate, and you can install and twiddle bits to your heart's content. Or, you can even take advantage of all the crap & spyware that gets installed by default, and take the Windows system that has had its price reduced by all that crapware, and then just build a linux system right over it.
Please don't expound any further on Operating System related matters. You clearly have no clue what you're talking about.
These mythical people, Dell's customers for preloaded Linux, the ones who don't demand the ability to "roll their own"? Yeah, when they're offered a choice of Windows or Linux, they're going to say, "Oh, whatever everybody else uses," or "The same thing as I use at work, of course!" And I guarantee that that will be Windows, 95% or more of the time.
The people bitching at Dell for these Linux desktops are not dear old mom & pop who just want a cheap, easy to use system. It's the Linux power users who are offended that they can't just go to Dell and buy a preconfigured cheap system that's guaranteed to work with their favorite distro. The same people that every one of you people saying "Dell should sell preconfigured Linux boxes," are also saying "would probably never buy these systems from Dell, anyway."
Do you really think that Dell doesn't realize this?
Do you *really* expect a MINING INDUSTRY organization to pay for advertising that reads
"Mining: Next to agriculture, it's kind of all right."
Or maybe...
"Mining: We do some stuff that's occasionally useful."
Come on man... you're entirely too offended by a marketing slogan. The point of this marketing slogan is to remind you of all the little things you take for granted everyday that are produced from mined products. And since we all know that marketing is an exercise in casting positive light on something in order to create a favorable impression in the minds of the (consuming) public, why is it surprising that they're not jocking agriculture & knowledge work too in their marketing slogan?
I really do think everybody knows that their bananas don't come from the Banana Mines of Sierra Leone.
How is this even remotely interesting? Your argument is that to be "truly" a successful business model, everybody must use the product / service? That's a curious definition of a business model, because I can point to at least half a dozen people I know who wouldn't eat at McDonald's if you paid them, and who prefer other brands of tissues than Kleenex. Your definition of ubiquity as success is ridiculous, because it's impossible.
Is there room in the market for iTMS to grow? Absolutely. Could they grow bigger/faster without DRM? Perhaps... Steve Jobs seems to think so, at least. But to look at a profitable, popular service, and dismiss it as "unsuccessful" using this reasoning is fallacious, because not even McDonald's meets your definition of "successful like McDonald's".
I have a question, and I mean this in all seriousness -- it's not an attempt to troll you, or flame, so please read it as such.
It's a question I don't quite know how I'd answer, and I'm interested in your take on it: if you're doing something in the "pure" science realm, which has NO practical / applied value to anybody, except scratching a scientists' itch to "know" something... does that really justify government funding? The government is funding science by taking money from its citizens (through taxes) and giving that money to scientists. If the scientists are doing stuff with that money that has no potential for "applied" benefit to the people that are paying for it, isn't that a bit wasteful?
On the one hand, I understand that knowledge of how the universe works has some intrinsic value, but if it's a purely academic question, does it warrant government funding? And I don't mean stuff that is too costly or with an ROI period that's too long for private enterprise to be willing to tackle it... I'm thinking here about the realm of "pure" science that you're alluding to.
It's simply the background noise of a waning presidency. [ . . . ] He can do as he damn well pleases, so let's try not to piss him off too much, shall we?
Yes, because this is the first time in history that the IRS has attempted to collect taxes from people who weren't reporting their income properly -- Katy bar the door! Pass the ammunition, and praise the Lord, it's a vast right-wing conspiracy with Karl Rove and Dick Cheney pulling the strings!
I know this is Slashdot, where any negative mention of Microsoft and/or Republicans gets you modded "+1 Insightful", but get some perspective, man. Seriously.
The sick thing of it is, this will probably NOT be used as a reason to say, "We really should reduce taxes & cut government spending proportionately, because these taxes hurt these small businesses," it'll be an excuse for many to say, "Well, we just need to put MORE taxes on thos filthy rich people like Bill Gates. They can afford to have their profits squeezed some more."
Not really a sales tax... a sales tax is typically added as a % of the cost of the product, and goes directly to the state in which the tax is levied.
This is an income tax, which means that of the profits a person makes, they will need to declare that income on a tax form, and pay a % of that to the government as taxes. In effect, the government is coming along and saying, "Yes, you owe us 20% of that income as taxes." This isn't really a "new" tax, as you're supposed to declare all income on your yearly tax forms. What it sounds like is an enforcement effort to collect taxes from people who aren't currently paying them.
Net result is that this will force the smaller-volume sellers to either raise their prices to offset the chunk now going to taxes, take less profits (20% goes to taxes, effectively reducing their income by 20%), or simply close up shop because they can't maintain a reasonable profit margin while paying taxes.
All of your counterexamples conveniently overlook the first bullet point: That a crime be "sufficiently serious" to warrant extradition. Distilling whiskey in your own home for your own consumption, or even a mugging, are not typically "serious" enough to warrant extradition.
You can parse this any way you like, but I'm guessing you're not a lawyer, and neither am I -- this guy has been appealing extradition for 3 years, so it's not like he was whisked away out of his home in the middle of the night to be brought to the US to stand trial. He's had the chance to make all these arguments, and probably many more, and the Australian court system found that none of them outweighed the evidence presented with the request for extradition.
This case is simply NOT out of the ordinary, or evidence of some sinister dark cabal controlling the governments of Australia and the US.
You're very wrong, for a very simple reason -- it's not a crime in both countries. The Australian police would have no cause to arrest you. Nor would the US be able to argue that some harm was caused to parties in the US by your actions.
There exists a prima facie case against the individual sought.
The event in question qualifies as a crime in both countries.
The extradited person can reasonably expect a fair trial in the recipient country.
The likely penalty will be proportionate to the crime.
You can argue that the penalty for this guy's alleged copyright infringement is disproportionate, or completely unfair, but to say there's something fishy about the guy being extradited flies in the face of existing extradition treaties & the copyright laws of both Australia & US.
Apparently, Australia has copyright laws, too. Given that, and the even-more-recent Australia-US Free Trade Agreement of 2004, the guy could have easily seen this coming. If you engage in activities that are illegal, and you are caught doing so, why is it a surprise that you'd be arrested? And if your actions primarily, substantially, harmed American software companies, why is it any surprise that the US would request that Australia extradite you, so that you can face charges in the US for harming those American companies?
Generally, an extradition treaty requires that a country seeking extradition be able to show that:
- The relevant crime is sufficiently serious.
- There exists a prima facie case against the individual sought.
- The event in question qualifies as a crime in both countries.
- The extradited person can reasonably expect a fair trial in the recipient country.
- The likely penalty will be proportionate to the crime.
So, that's "why the US", even though "this guy was never in the US." You can argue that it's not fair, and that his crimes don't fit the requirements for extradition, but this is absolutely nothing surprising under current laws and treaties.
For the same reason that, if you come to the US, kill someone, and then flee to Australia, the United States will attempt to extradite you to face charges of murder. Yes, I know it's not "the same thing" -- software piracy & murder are vastly different. But the legal processes involved are exactly the same. You violate a US law in some way, if the US tracks you down in Australia, it will ask the Australian police to arrest you, and then extradite you to the US to face charges.
FTFA, the initial arrest by Australian agents was coordinated as part of "Operation Buccaneer", in which police in the US, Britain, Australia, and several other countries served warrants & arrested people as part of the same investigation.
I'll leave it to better legal minds than mine to decide whether the guy deserves to spend 10 years in jail, or pay a $500,000 fine.
Great points. And as someone who recently read GTD, and decided to give cleaning out my 4000+ email inbox a shot, it's honestly one of the first times that i've felt seriously on top of everything I need to do in a long time. Turning off the notifications and putting my blackberry on "silent" mode for incoming messages was crucial to this.
What I've found is that responding immediately to constant interrupts only serves to reinforce the notion among my co-workers that I'm constantly interruptible (This may sound like a "No shit, sherlock" moment, but it really is something you lose sight of when you're constantly being interrupted). Only checking my inbox once every hour or two and turning off all the beeps & notifications has worked wonders on my ability to focus & get things done, and it's also helped to break my co-workers of the notion that they can interrupt me at any moment they feel it's necessary.
Yes, I was talking, quite specifically, about how Stallman praising the governments of Venezuela & Cuba for loving freedom, and how I thought it was a crock of shit. If you can point me to a place where Stallman praises the US government for loving freedom, I'll gladly express my reservations about THAT statement there.
Your point would be well-made, except I wasn't talking about the Attorney General, President, Vice President, or anybody else. But you know, feel free to attack more straw men.
Red herring... the point he's trying to make is that including dependencies in the app so you don't have to track 90-odd dependencies independently. No GUI? Here's the equivalent of "drag & drop":
It's not necessarily a bad idea on a desktop system, and is certainly easily implemented via command line cp/mv rather than "drag & drop".
I've worked with Fedora Core, Gentoo, and Ubuntu, and -- at least in the past -- I've been frustrated by package managers on Linux that either don't allow me to update to the latest/greatest because it's not in the repository, or that force me to stop using the package managers and begin installing by hand because I needed to upgrade a managed package to a newer version that wasn't in the repo, which then raised hell with all my dependency chains because I had to upgrade dependencies outside the tool, as well. It can be frustrating, and at this point, once I tend towards the "install minimal desktop functionality from the installer, build anything else you need from raw source after." It's possible that the dependency chains have become better managed, but I was frustrated by the slow rate of new versions being made available in the repository, and the problems I ran into as soon as I tried upgrading a previously managed package outside the manager.
He preaches the same rhetoric to everyone, equally, without bias or prejudice.
Where I come from, if you simply change the context of that statement a little, we call those people "whores" or "sluts", depending on whether or not they get paid.
I find it deliciously refreshing to find that a person who claims to believe in freedom and distribution is willing to advocate it to all peoples, rather than restricting the distribution of that freedom.
I find it jarringly dissonant to hear someone who preaches that restricting "freedoms" is evil and unethical also engage in congratulating a group of people for loving freedom, when they clearly do not love freedom. They like the "free as in beer" aspect of Open Source. It will help them run their government with less money, which will either enrich the ruling parties, or pay for more crackdowns & repressive strategies.
Praising people who regularly jail dissidents for loving freedom just makes my stomach turn. And I think Stallman has done himself, and OSS, a huge disservice by being seen as an enabler for these sorts of people. No, he can't restrict them from using the software, you're right. But he could have made a very public, very deliberate statement to the people inviting him, and published an open letter saying, "I value freedom, and so I cannot ethically bring myself to speak at your event, since it's clear to me that your governments do not value freedom." What a coup, both for OSS PR ("the software with a conscience." Allowing them to paint Microsoft as the enabler of oppressive regimes), and for the general cause of freedom. And all he would have had to do was write a polite, firm letter for release to major news outlets, and then sit on his ass at home and not go spout off to a bunch of goons & thugs about what great guys they are for loving freedom.
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And, technically infeasible given that the indies are not, even collectively, probably enough to warrant financing major updates like this to the iTMS & its infrastructure. A major label joining the party makes it worth spending the money, because suddenly you've got a bunch of popular artists that will probably net them (apple & emi) quite a few additional sales. Coldplay, White Stripes, Norah Jones, Garth Brooks, and god help us, even Britney Spears, are going to move tracks in much higher quanitities than your average indie player.
Keep in mind, you're talking about a service that's sold a couple billion songs... adding 20,000 sales to that total because 10 indie artists got to sell DRM free isn't much of an impact. Having a major label willing to sell through this mechanism finances the infrastructure changes that will be necessary -- additional disk space & bandwidth, probably additional servers, changes to the interface to distinguish between "premium" and "drm" purchases (and let's not forget the internationalization), testing all of those changes, implementing the "$.30 per track upgrade" program, and testing all of this stuff to make sure that it actually works isn't going to be cheap for Apple... without major backing, it probably didn't make financial sense.
Your point about used CD stores is spurious and irrelevant to probably 3/4 of the population. If you have one nearby, great, take advantage of it and save money. When I have to spend $3-4 on gas (~40 miles, at ~25 miles per gallon = 1.6 gallons of gas... at the 3/26/07 national average of $2.61 / gallon, that's $4.18), plus a couple hours of my time just to get to a store to save $5 on a CD, the economics you're speaking of become remarkably unappealing. Which is why most of my music purchases are online through Amazon, or direct from the artist. iTunes has now just made the list of places I'll check for music, too, because of this announcement. Good bitrates (I don't have gear that anybody's likely to hear a difference on betwen 256kbps and any "lossless" format), and no DRM at pretty much the same prices as I'd pay to get the CD through Amazon? That's not a bad deal.
- Don't like DRM? Buy a CD / Casette tape at a store, or through an online reseller (i.e., Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc.).
- Don't want to spend a lot of money for songs you don't want? Buy a single track online, through iTunes or similar service.
- Hate DRM & want to buy a la carte? Emusic, or some other "DRM-free" online service.
Personally, I prefer purchasing a CD... I can then rip to MP3 for playing on my computer & ipod, and leave the CD stored nicely in my closet. This is a great alternative if you don't want to buy songs with DRM. However, if you don't like paying the $17.99 or more that a single CD will run you these days just to get one song, you can always buy online, burn & re-rip that single song, all for 99 cents, which is surely not unreasonable. Shit, a bottle of Coke costs more than that at your local 7-11.Violating copyright laws by downloading through a P2P filesharing service is not the only way these people have of getting the songs, and your example makes it seem as if it is. While you may not *like* the options available to you, there are reasonable alternatives that allow you to purchase the tracks DRM-free or for a very cheap price, and in some cases, DRM-free AND for a cheap price. This is not to say that copyright laws are good, reasonable, and fair today... but if you violate them -- and surely 99% of the people sharing music online today know it's not kosher -- why would you be surprised when somebody hauls you into court for violating the terms of their copyright? So the lesson here is, don't violate the copyright laws unless you're willing to spend the time & money to be a test case, appealing all the way to the Supreme Court.
And, if DRM is truly a deal-breaker, then put your money where your mouth is: don't purchase, pirate, or listen to ANY music from artists & labels who sell their stuff in DRM'ed formats -- period. Shun them. Boycott them. Make obscene gestures at them. But don't give them a single penny, and don't give them an excuse to sue you for a single penny. Obey the absolute letter of copyright law -- neither a sharer nor a downloader be. Support indie artists & labels which do business in a manner you support; there's tons of them out there, and I'm sure you can find some you'd like, so why not spend your money supporting the arts, rather than supporting an industrial cartel that leaves you and most of the artists they purport to help poorer for the experience? The indie artists & DRM-unfriendly indie labels will gain industry clout, and you'll have the chance to hear new, exciting art, rather than the overwhelmingly sterile "sameness" that you hear on the Top-40 charts & radio today. Everybody benefits, except the RIAA.
If you're concerned about laptops being stolen, you could just spend an extra $20 - 30 (probably less, if you buy in bulk) to buy a decent cable lock to secure that $1500 - 2500 laptop. And if you're concerned about employees' personal effects being stolen, provide them with a locking cabinet, for a small fraction of the thousands you'll spend on a desk & cubicle system for them.
And if you're the company hiring the cleaning service, how many laptops have to "walk out" until it gets so bad you're ready to fire the cleaning service? Frankly if it were my company, it'd take ONE laptop disappearing after-hours for me to consider terminating the contract.
Actually, no, you probably won't be giving relatively high pay. The reason to outsource these sorts of jobs is because the cleaning companies are more efficient at it -- they buy supplies & material in bulk quanitities (at bulk rates) that would be overkill for a small office, and they hire janitorial staff that cleans multiple offices, further reducing the cost to each individual office. So instead of paying a full-time position for 2 hours of work a day, you pay for the hour or two a day you actually need someone to clean.
Which they still have to prove to sue people. If you have no music from the artists on that label on your computer, that's going to be pretty hard. Not to mention the fact that other indie labels reporting record profits will make it pretty hard to convince anybody with half a brain that piracy is rampant, and is destroying the entire recording industry. But even in spite of this point, I do agree -- telling the labels why they're losing a sale is quite important. Write a letter, make a call, sign a petition, by all means.
Then your principled stand for buying DRM-free music is not a principled stand. You're telling the record labels, "Well, I don't like DRM, but I *really* love this song, so I'll stomach the DRM you want to ram down my throat just this once." You tell the labels it's okay to do that, and you tell the artists that it's okay to sign to labels that do this. The point of this is, "How to get rid of DRM." If you want to get rid of DRM, and not just whine about it endlessly on /., you start by hitting the labels where it hurts: their bottom line. You refuse to support artists that sign to labels which refuse to release DRM-free tracks. I don't care if it's the second coming of Jimmy Page, you tell him, "Hey sorry, if you were selling your music DRM-free, I'd buy it. Until then, sorry... great music, enjoy hearing it on the radio, but until it's DRM-free, you won't get a cent out of me."
What you're proposing as a way of getting rid of DRM is pointless, because the MUSIC STORES DON'T CONTROL THE DRM. THE LABELS DICTATE THE TERMS. All you will succeed in doing is putting distributors out of business. And what the recording industry will do with THAT tidbit will be to trumpet, "Ha, see? They tried selling DRM-free music, and it wasn't a viable business model!"
Quite possibly. But if YOU are buying your music DRM-free, and helping to support a separate musical ecosystem in which songs are sold without DRM, why should you care if other people are ignorant and indifferent to the fine nuance of DRM policy? You can evangelize all you want, and I think it's a good idea... but if at the end of the day, you're not encumbered by DRM, why do you care? Don't support companies that do business in ways you don't approve of. If you're worried about endangered dolphins, you don't buy tuna from companies that don't practice dolphin-safe fishing, regardless of how much you like tuna, and you spread your message to the people around you in the hopes that they will be as equally motivated. It's really that simple.
So let me see if I've got this straight -- buy the music, giving the record company & distributor a chunk of cash -- in effect, a short term loan they don't have to pay interest on. Harass the distributor with spurious questions about DRM, and then "return" the music and demand your money back in a huff? Who's out more -- you, the distributor, or the record label? I'd say you've lost the most because of the simple amount of time it will take you to do this, and you still don't have the song you
How is this informative? If you want to succeed in driving online music sales out of existence, which will in turn cause the RIAA to scream even more about piracy, and start slapping even more people with lawsuits, then great.
How about, if you don't like DRM, you don't purchase music from artists & labels which support DRM? Shift that money to indie labels & independent artists that don't use DRM, and suddenly you'll see small labels become much more influential. You can drive a wedge into the recording industry associations by spending your money on labels that do business in a way you agree with; fucking over the resellers and driving them out of business is not the way to reach any desirable end state.
I don't care if Jessica Simpson is offering to personally give you a hummer for every DRM'ed track you buy... if DRM (or more precisely, the lack of it) is important to you, then don't buy it .
Dear Steve,
Thanks for telling me all about your home computer setup. I'm really impressed that you have so many PCs. And your tv's and stereo systems? I'm fair quivering with excitement!
Just one question... In what way does all of this address my point that everybody who keeps saying "Dell should offer Linux," turns around and in the next breath also claims, "Nobody who can put Linux on themselves would bother with a Dell system, anyway, though"?
Oh, and if you want a Linux system from Dell? Various Dell n-Series systems are available preinstalled & quite configurable with Red Hat. Or, you can choose the FreeDOS version, which comes pretty much a blank slate, and you can install and twiddle bits to your heart's content. Or, you can even take advantage of all the crap & spyware that gets installed by default, and take the Windows system that has had its price reduced by all that crapware, and then just build a linux system right over it.
Please don't expound any further on Operating System related matters. You clearly have no clue what you're talking about.
These mythical people, Dell's customers for preloaded Linux, the ones who don't demand the ability to "roll their own"? Yeah, when they're offered a choice of Windows or Linux, they're going to say, "Oh, whatever everybody else uses," or "The same thing as I use at work, of course!" And I guarantee that that will be Windows, 95% or more of the time.
The people bitching at Dell for these Linux desktops are not dear old mom & pop who just want a cheap, easy to use system. It's the Linux power users who are offended that they can't just go to Dell and buy a preconfigured cheap system that's guaranteed to work with their favorite distro. The same people that every one of you people saying "Dell should sell preconfigured Linux boxes," are also saying "would probably never buy these systems from Dell, anyway."
Do you really think that Dell doesn't realize this?
Or maybe...
Come on man... you're entirely too offended by a marketing slogan. The point of this marketing slogan is to remind you of all the little things you take for granted everyday that are produced from mined products. And since we all know that marketing is an exercise in casting positive light on something in order to create a favorable impression in the minds of the (consuming) public, why is it surprising that they're not jocking agriculture & knowledge work too in their marketing slogan?
I really do think everybody knows that their bananas don't come from the Banana Mines of Sierra Leone.
How is this even remotely interesting? Your argument is that to be "truly" a successful business model, everybody must use the product / service? That's a curious definition of a business model, because I can point to at least half a dozen people I know who wouldn't eat at McDonald's if you paid them, and who prefer other brands of tissues than Kleenex. Your definition of ubiquity as success is ridiculous, because it's impossible.
Is there room in the market for iTMS to grow? Absolutely. Could they grow bigger/faster without DRM? Perhaps... Steve Jobs seems to think so, at least. But to look at a profitable, popular service, and dismiss it as "unsuccessful" using this reasoning is fallacious, because not even McDonald's meets your definition of "successful like McDonald's".
I have a question, and I mean this in all seriousness -- it's not an attempt to troll you, or flame, so please read it as such.
It's a question I don't quite know how I'd answer, and I'm interested in your take on it: if you're doing something in the "pure" science realm, which has NO practical / applied value to anybody, except scratching a scientists' itch to "know" something... does that really justify government funding? The government is funding science by taking money from its citizens (through taxes) and giving that money to scientists. If the scientists are doing stuff with that money that has no potential for "applied" benefit to the people that are paying for it, isn't that a bit wasteful?
On the one hand, I understand that knowledge of how the universe works has some intrinsic value, but if it's a purely academic question, does it warrant government funding? And I don't mean stuff that is too costly or with an ROI period that's too long for private enterprise to be willing to tackle it... I'm thinking here about the realm of "pure" science that you're alluding to.
I know this is Slashdot, where any negative mention of Microsoft and/or Republicans gets you modded "+1 Insightful", but get some perspective, man. Seriously.
Oh, so you have nothing else to offer? Well, thanks for participating!
The sick thing of it is, this will probably NOT be used as a reason to say, "We really should reduce taxes & cut government spending proportionately, because these taxes hurt these small businesses," it'll be an excuse for many to say, "Well, we just need to put MORE taxes on thos filthy rich people like Bill Gates. They can afford to have their profits squeezed some more."
Not really a sales tax... a sales tax is typically added as a % of the cost of the product, and goes directly to the state in which the tax is levied.
This is an income tax, which means that of the profits a person makes, they will need to declare that income on a tax form, and pay a % of that to the government as taxes. In effect, the government is coming along and saying, "Yes, you owe us 20% of that income as taxes." This isn't really a "new" tax, as you're supposed to declare all income on your yearly tax forms. What it sounds like is an enforcement effort to collect taxes from people who aren't currently paying them.
Net result is that this will force the smaller-volume sellers to either raise their prices to offset the chunk now going to taxes, take less profits (20% goes to taxes, effectively reducing their income by 20%), or simply close up shop because they can't maintain a reasonable profit margin while paying taxes.
All of your counterexamples conveniently overlook the first bullet point: That a crime be "sufficiently serious" to warrant extradition. Distilling whiskey in your own home for your own consumption, or even a mugging, are not typically "serious" enough to warrant extradition.
You can parse this any way you like, but I'm guessing you're not a lawyer, and neither am I -- this guy has been appealing extradition for 3 years, so it's not like he was whisked away out of his home in the middle of the night to be brought to the US to stand trial. He's had the chance to make all these arguments, and probably many more, and the Australian court system found that none of them outweighed the evidence presented with the request for extradition.
This case is simply NOT out of the ordinary, or evidence of some sinister dark cabal controlling the governments of Australia and the US.
I'll post this again, because people seem to be having trouble with the typical standards governing extradition. "Generally, an extradition treaty requires that a country seeking extradition be able to show that:"
You can argue that the penalty for this guy's alleged copyright infringement is disproportionate, or completely unfair, but to say there's something fishy about the guy being extradited flies in the face of existing extradition treaties & the copyright laws of both Australia & US.
Extradition treaties are nothing new. Generally, an extradition treaty requires that a country seeking extradition be able to show that: So, that's "why the US", even though "this guy was never in the US." You can argue that it's not fair, and that his crimes don't fit the requirements for extradition, but this is absolutely nothing surprising under current laws and treaties.
For the same reason that, if you come to the US, kill someone, and then flee to Australia, the United States will attempt to extradite you to face charges of murder. Yes, I know it's not "the same thing" -- software piracy & murder are vastly different. But the legal processes involved are exactly the same. You violate a US law in some way, if the US tracks you down in Australia, it will ask the Australian police to arrest you, and then extradite you to the US to face charges.
FTFA, the initial arrest by Australian agents was coordinated as part of "Operation Buccaneer", in which police in the US, Britain, Australia, and several other countries served warrants & arrested people as part of the same investigation.
I'll leave it to better legal minds than mine to decide whether the guy deserves to spend 10 years in jail, or pay a $500,000 fine.
Great points. And as someone who recently read GTD, and decided to give cleaning out my 4000+ email inbox a shot, it's honestly one of the first times that i've felt seriously on top of everything I need to do in a long time. Turning off the notifications and putting my blackberry on "silent" mode for incoming messages was crucial to this.
What I've found is that responding immediately to constant interrupts only serves to reinforce the notion among my co-workers that I'm constantly interruptible (This may sound like a "No shit, sherlock" moment, but it really is something you lose sight of when you're constantly being interrupted). Only checking my inbox once every hour or two and turning off all the beeps & notifications has worked wonders on my ability to focus & get things done, and it's also helped to break my co-workers of the notion that they can interrupt me at any moment they feel it's necessary.
Yes, I was talking, quite specifically, about how Stallman praising the governments of Venezuela & Cuba for loving freedom, and how I thought it was a crock of shit. If you can point me to a place where Stallman praises the US government for loving freedom, I'll gladly express my reservations about THAT statement there.
In the meantime, grind your axe elsewhere, troll.
Your point would be well-made, except I wasn't talking about the Attorney General, President, Vice President, or anybody else. But you know, feel free to attack more straw men.
Red herring... the point he's trying to make is that including dependencies in the app so you don't have to track 90-odd dependencies independently. No GUI? Here's the equivalent of "drag & drop":
/usr/local /usr/local
$ cp app.tar
$ cd
$ tar -xf app.tar
$ export PATH=/usr/local/bin:${PATH}
$ app
It's not necessarily a bad idea on a desktop system, and is certainly easily implemented via command line cp/mv rather than "drag & drop".
I've worked with Fedora Core, Gentoo, and Ubuntu, and -- at least in the past -- I've been frustrated by package managers on Linux that either don't allow me to update to the latest/greatest because it's not in the repository, or that force me to stop using the package managers and begin installing by hand because I needed to upgrade a managed package to a newer version that wasn't in the repo, which then raised hell with all my dependency chains because I had to upgrade dependencies outside the tool, as well. It can be frustrating, and at this point, once I tend towards the "install minimal desktop functionality from the installer, build anything else you need from raw source after." It's possible that the dependency chains have become better managed, but I was frustrated by the slow rate of new versions being made available in the repository, and the problems I ran into as soon as I tried upgrading a previously managed package outside the manager.
Praising people who regularly jail dissidents for loving freedom just makes my stomach turn. And I think Stallman has done himself, and OSS, a huge disservice by being seen as an enabler for these sorts of people. No, he can't restrict them from using the software, you're right. But he could have made a very public, very deliberate statement to the people inviting him, and published an open letter saying, "I value freedom, and so I cannot ethically bring myself to speak at your event, since it's clear to me that your governments do not value freedom." What a coup, both for OSS PR ("the software with a conscience." Allowing them to paint Microsoft as the enabler of oppressive regimes), and for the general cause of freedom. And all he would have had to do was write a polite, firm letter for release to major news outlets, and then sit on his ass at home and not go spout off to a bunch of goons & thugs about what great guys they are for loving freedom.