I think the most important thing about this entire endeavor is that it is the first Google product that plans on actually introducing a revenue stream besides advertising to the company (especially since the Google Pay Video system has more or less fell through at this point in time.)
I'm not quite sure what that means for the long-term health of the company, but I suspect that the more streams of revenue a company has, the more likely they are to become conservative, entrenched, and reluctant to embrace change. Google has managed to avoid all that because they've had a strong beam focus on a single revenue stream (ad dollars) - as they start matriculating, I suspect that beam focus will dissipate.
But then again, they're Google - they just work smarter than basically every other company out there today. So I put nothing out of their reach.
... which begs the question of having a system that encourages proxy bidding.
Proxy bidding says, "bid the maximum" but it implies, "or face the consequences of sniping." Just because people are irrational doesn't mean eBay's system is broken.
Uhh - did we really need any road infrastructure before the invention of the automobile? Note the 16th amendment (1913) came shortly after its invention. (Note we had to have an amendment because the Supreme Court had ruled the income tax unconstitutional.)
Trains and horses got most people where they were going.
Schools and hospitals used to be governed by the local towns.
Maybe it was the collection of income tax that led to the nationalization and urbanization of America. In fact, the major Powers That Be saw income tax as a way to push the taxation system away from the tariff / trade taxes we were using (which only taxed the wealthy corporate owners) into a system that taxed the lowliest worker, too (reducing the burden of the wealthy.) Of course this kind of backfired on them when we had those outrageous tax brackets of the 40s-70s, but then again, we kind of became a military-industrial complex, and guess what? Government sucks up a lot of money.
Anyway, I think your premise is backwards. We didn't need government to deal with those things until they decided they would deal with them for us - but needed our money to do it first.
I love that idea that if minimum wage was raised, Wal-Mart would be forced to cut workers, rather than reduce their huge profit line to meet the new line.
If I have one worker, and I pay him $15,000 a year, and I make a profit of $60,000 a year, and the government raises his minimum wage to $20,000 a year, I can still make a big profit and afford him.
That is the dichotomy which is nonexistent in that silly libertarian approach to the minimum wage. If minimum wage is raised, Wal-Mart doesn't have to cut marginalized jobs. They can also raise the costs of their products, or *gasp* not profit *as much* as they were. Profit is still profit. If you can pay a certain wage and make a profit, then that wage is not detrimental to the job market. Despite the Kool-Aid you're selling.
Of course the goal is to maximize profit, but it's maximizing it *under certain conditions*, which include providing your workers with a livable wage. If the only reason Wal-Mart executives take home huge paychecks (executive : laborer pay ratios are at an all-time high) and I have cheap goods at Wal-Mart is because they aren't paying their workers a livable wage, that's not a sufficient reason to continue paying their workers that same wage.
The truth (ie reality, not econ 101 theory) is that we have been on a major trend of reverse distribution of wealth - the rich get richer, the poor get poorer - for nearly 15 years in America. To suggest that somehow companies *won't have the money* to pay any additional wages forced upon them by Congress - and will have to cut jobs rather than pay their workers more - is so disingenuous as to be outrageous.
To be clear, I don't consider "deserving" something implies justice - so your entire post is rendered moot by semantics.
Perhaps we should come up with a better word than "deserved" to describe this and other scenarios.
If you are a rescue worker, and you enter a burning building, and you die as a result of your efforts to rescue others, you went up against some risks and poor odds and you lost.
What we are really talking about is expectations and the fulfillment of those expectations - not the expectations of the actor, but society's expectations. If a heavy smoker dies of lung cancer, no one is really *surprised* by this. Why? It's not because they "deserved" it in some great karmic sense, but certainly that was a predictable expectation. To suggest otherwise would fly in the face of science and common sense.
So when I say "deserved" it, I don't mean it in the same way as "she was asking for it" rape theories, but I do mean that we as a society are not surprised by the outcome of such risky behavior.
I wrote that piece using deserved as a proxy for "reasonably expected" - which was to highlight the fact that this girl acted unreasonably (just as heavy smokers and rescue workers do - in the latter's case, to their credit.) To read anything more into it than that is wrong, though I take the blame for that.
Your nonsequitur about medical malpractice and "pain and suffering" are straw men. First, medical costs in this country have skyrocketed way out of proportion primarily due to a decreasing middle class. As more and more people move out of the middle class and back into the lower class, they can no longer afford insurance. Suddenly these people hit nature's lottery and are in a bad accident or require major heart surgery or something. They can't afford to pay, so they get the procedure and then file for bankruptcy, or fiddle around with debt collectors the rest of their lives. These nonpayments are then built in to the costs of all future procedures. Basically, hospitals have moved from a "let's charge everybody $50 for this procedure" model to "let's charge everybody $500 for this procedure and hope 10% pay up" model. This of course leads to higher insurance in an ever growing cycle that (how convenient) favors the wealthy.
But that's not why it's a straw man.
It's a straw man because it has nothing to do with class action lawsuits, and just because a lot of medical malpractice suits are fraud or frivolity (but really, the reason there are $150 million punitive damage awards out there is because the 12 people on juries are common folk, and they are just trying to get back theirs against the insurance companies who've put them all in their place), has absolutely no bearing on the validity of the lawsuit as a viable tool to affect change in corporations who break the law.
A class action lawsuit can be filed against a defendant if all the members of the class have been wronged by an illegal action taken by the defendant. These are cases revolving more around facts and rule of law than weepy mothers on the stand and he said, she said arguments.
If McAfee, Norton, or any OTHER company violated their EULAs, their contracts with computer vendors, or some other binding legal agreement with their users, they can be challenged in court, and forced to pay compensatory damages (basically, provide a free and easy tool to remove their software, or pay to have the software removed by a 3rd party at billable rates - which would you choose?) and punitive damages (to discourage them and others from making the same stupid mistake again.)
Notice I said "if." This is what could be determined in court. Read the EULA. Demonstrate the difficulty of uninstalling the program. Compare people's general expectations with regard to uninstalling software. Determine if McAfee did this intentionally or negligently. See if McAfee has made any attempts to fix this problem without being forced to by legal channels. These are all simple facts to verify, and once they are verified, a decision can be made as to whether it actually is illegal, and what McAfee needs to do to fix it. That is how the system works.
PS "pain and suffering" damages literally deal with pain and suffering. As in physical pain and physical suffering. It only applies to cases in which bodily harm or injury was caused by the defendant against the plaintiff, like in a car accident or on-the-job injury.
No, no, you *are* saying she deserved what she got. And she did. This is a scenario where the risks clearly outweigh the benefits, because the risks in this case *included* the very likely chance of rape and/or death. If she were abducted at the mall and raped at knifepoint, then she wouldn't deserve it, because "going to the mall" doesn't generally have very risky outcomes. But "meeting online strangers" does, and yes, she deserved it, 14 or not.
In this world, there are people who make stupid decisions who are not necessarily stupid people. You and I make them all the time, and if something bad comes our way because of them, then we deserve it. It's part of the human condition. Why is everyone so afraid to say somebody deserved something bad? She may be *less* deserving than an older girl because she is just 14 and (clearly very very) naive, but ultimately, she deserved it. Again, this isn't just for this specific scenario - if you are aware of the risks of a situation, and choose to engage in it anyway, you deserve whatever happens to you.
That's an equally comical statement. What he says is absolutely true. The market part is in you choosing whether to buy said content or not - not in whether or not you get a share in the content other people create.
Seriously, though, this kind of misrepresentation and misunderstanding is at the heart of the undercutting of strong arguments against DRM and anti-piracy draconian tactics.
When you buy the content, you also buy the DRM that comes with it. You can't say, "I want Spiderman 2 the movie, but I don't want the DRM." It's an all-or-nothing package. So you (the savvy consumer) either need to stand up in what you believe in, and not buy Spiderman 2 because it has DRM, or suck it up and buy Spiderman 2 with the DRM because you want it badly enough.
To suggest that somehow because content creators have a monopoly over their content, and choose to protect their content, that they are cheating you - when you have every right to create your own content, or buy alternative content, or not buy any content at all - is the definition of a straw man.
It simply comes down to put up or shut up. If you see DRM, don't buy it. But claiming copyright is a monopoly is ridiculous - it's a monopoly over a single piece of content, that you are not OBLIGATED to buy. What you are basically saying is I really really want that new DRM'ed music album, but without the DRM. If the copyright holder isn't willing to give you that *particular* album without DRM - tough luck to you. Go buy some other content.
And isn't that really what this argument is about anyway? There are tons of people willing to provide you DRM-free content - they're called local bands, and local artists, and local filmmakers. But now you're just basically saying, "Hey, I only want major label / major studio content, but I don't want DRM on it," which isn't just idealistic, but untenable. And on top of that you're saying, "The only people who make content even worth having are major labels / major studios." So guess what, you run with the mainstreamers? They're not going to give you what you want.
So your only alternatives are create your own content, support content that is already DRM-free, or shut up and put on the "I'm a mainstream-loving DRM bitch" T-shirt. DRM is inevitable in some form; it doesn't have to be universal.
This entire "concern" over Apple and iTunes is entirely related to the idea of the MP3 as some sort of universal standard of music consumption. Even excusing the proprietary MPEG-3 compression standard rhetoric, most people see the argument as "a music file is a music file is a music file."
This stands in sharp contrast to a Nintendo cartridge vs. a PSP UMD vs. an XBox CD/DVD. In reality it's nothing more than sleight of hand, but to the end consumer (and unfortunately, most legislators), a company should have the right to dictate what game software they allow on their system, but should not have the right to dictate which music file types/DRM they allow on their system.
Obviously, the underlying assumption here is that any DRM that is controlled by one company (and unlicensable), rather than by an industry at large, is considered to be bad. Whether or not you believe to be this true will ultimately govern your own opinions on this case.
1) Totally for guys. The phallic rush, the manipulation, the aggressive music choices. They don't call it "wanking" for nothin'.
2) Seriously. Why mess with a great formula? Just keep releasing expansion packs, offer some Online Play for interactive jamming/competition, and the ability to record some karaoke for fun/Net trading. Lots of variation left within the first incarnation.
3) Since most other instruments require the use of the mouth (brass and woodwinds), the only instruments really left are drums and keys. Which, while fun, require you to sit down, thereby denying many of the joys of performing on Guitar Hero - the booty shakes, the leg kicks, the windmill, etc.
How come we can generate these awesomely tight relationships with other countries regarding IP and copyright laws, but we can't get Chinese companies to not use 15 hour work days and below-living-standard wages to produce goods?
Oh, I see. Because neither one is good for Rich White Guys. Carry on, then.
Seen it this way, there is no way you can screw the artists by downloading their songs from some pirate site
Umm, if someone is lying bleeding on the ground, and you come over and kick them in the gut, you are still screwing them, despite their obviously much more major screwing that did not come at the hands of you.
Don't combine rhetoric and relativism. It's very dangerous.
The RIAA is a *trade organization* comprised of members who DO have something to do with artist contracts. Everyone who is employed by the RIAA is acting under the direction of its member labels.
They are NOT the equivalent of some law firm hired by a company to lobby for them/do business.
They are the equivalent of Microsoft's in-house lawyers. While the actual employees of the RIAA may not have anything to do with contracts, they are direct employees of and proxies for those that do, not third party one-offs. So don't try to pass them off as some lobby group that attached itself to the labels as a vicarious entity.
It IS the label's public face, because it IS the labels. And, oh yes, many of Sony's and Universal's lawyers DO work for the MPAA and RIAA on their lobbying efforts.
No, I don't think the executives should be responsible (as in jail time) for the debts. But they shouldn't have any golden bungee cord/parachutes for driving a company into the ground. Almost all bankruptcy proceedings by major companies are preceded by hastily voted agreements to dish out "final payments" and bonuses for CEOs and other executives. THAT is where the problem lies. These people did no different - just on a smaller scale.
Executives of companies, and in particular Chief Executives, should have their pay tied squarely to the fate of the ship. While they should receive a salary that is higher than the highest non-executive (perhaps 50% more? Arbitrariness works both ways), if a company is doing poorly, an executive shouldn't expect to "take home millions", because they represent the company in abstract, and as such their entire endeavor (executing) is abstract - which means their pay should be just as abstract.
It really is that simple.
If you're "just" an employee, you *should* get paid a concrete value based on your time, talents, and output - and not on the success of the company.
If you're an executive, you *should* get paid an abstract value based on the success of the company - and not on your time, talents, or output.
What's really dumb is that large one-time payments to take control of companies preparing for a merger are causing CEOs of companies NOT preparing for mergers to try to "flip" their gig into a better paying one through consolidation and capitalization - which nets them a huge windfall, almost always at the expense of the labor force, with redundant jobs being eliminated. Not to mention this is a terrible strategy in the long run.
As related to this article, if there were strong corporate laws in place, if a firm went under, executives would be forced to provide exit pay to lost employees and cover all of the firm's debts before filing for bankruptcy. It'd make them think twice before pulling shenanigans like this where they cut their losses and run on the labor beneath them.
It would hurt specific workers, but those iPods would still be in demand, and have to be produced somewhere. So some worker would pick up where these women left off. THAT is the value of labor laws; it continues the market at an acceptable level of human rights standards.
That's great until you have a large stagnant pool of principal which then becomes a tax drain on your country. You know, something like America, circa 2006.
Regardless of what the law says, Apple *ought to* hold itself to a higher standard as a US based company. The simple truth (as already mentioned in earlier posts) is that US trade laws flat out encourage outsourcing to countries with the most lax and minimal labor law standards.
Also, while the living wage might not be being violated, 15 hours a day, 6 days a week = a 90 hour work week. Even if that's not against Chinese law, it's fairly obvious these women are being exploited as merely tools of labor, and not treated as regular human beings who need, you know, lives beyond just sleeping and working.
But of course, if that means we can get our Nanos $50 cheaper, then so be it, right? It's very simple: force labor laws that actually create a standard of living (wages, hours, and safety) into all trade agreements. And companies are going apeshit over IP laws in foreign countries (witness the RIAA and AllOfMp3.com) that we have trade agreements with, but we can't be bothered to ensure labor standards before allowing companies to do business there. I say we just ratchet up the tariff on all Apple products made in China until both the company and the government have real statutes in place to protect these types of workers from that kind of laborious, empty, craptacular life.
I still don't get how NSA workers as American citizens can justify this kind of BS in their heads. They seriously must be the most sociopathic, mean-spirited, fascist-minded people in the country.
Seriously, as a citizen of this great country, I couldn't sleep at night if I were personally responsible in some way for collecting and aggregating this information.
In plain English terms: if you cut a price in half (50%) that means you were paying twice as much. So cutting the price by more than half - means you were paying more than twice as much.
While I agree with the sentiments of your post, I think that Rockstar cannot *afford* to make any sort of principled stand on including risque content without an obvious method of accessing it on a disc they have listed as M out in the public market. The reason for this is simple: the mod (in the eyes of the ESRB) moved the game from M to AO, which most retailers refuse to stock and sell.
If the Sesame Street game had a hack which revealed profane comments, I imagine the FTC would be inclined to leave their rating as an E and simply attach a disclaimer to the box or some other method of consumer protection. I think this is primarily because the FTC would be more inclined to believe that this sort of ratings violation was inadvertent and not desired by the programmers - whereas I'm sure Rockstar thought it was pretty cool up until they got hit with the AO.
Perhaps this is a double standard, and this certainly is the root behind the large debate on this site and on others. But the simple truth is that GTA:SA was already rated M for Mature and was viewed as borderline gratuitous. The sheer incompetence (or audacity!) of their programmers to leave material on the disc being sold that would compromise their tenuous rating led to them getting thumped proper.
This will discourage guerilla programmers from including other Hot Coffee mods in their programs and then leaking the hacks in hopes of getting publicity and sales. Ultimately this is rather principled stand by the FTC: all content on the disc, hidden or otherwise, intentional or not, must be provided to the ESRB, or the gamemakers may face sanctioning. This will capture a few "innocent victims" of incompetence and oversight (Rockstar), but it'll also stop other companies from trying the same avenue for profit. Which is a win-win for both parents and ultimately the industry.
I would heartily encourage more companies to make AO games that are actually as fun as GTA:SA. Perhaps by making this stigma more clear (some games *must* be played and viewed by adults first before kids can play them) we can get retailers to stock AO games that aren't just porn titles, and we as a society can make better (and more accurate) decisions about the games we play, and the games our kids play.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the most important thing about this entire endeavor is that it is the first Google product that plans on actually introducing a revenue stream besides advertising to the company (especially since the Google Pay Video system has more or less fell through at this point in time.)
I'm not quite sure what that means for the long-term health of the company, but I suspect that the more streams of revenue a company has, the more likely they are to become conservative, entrenched, and reluctant to embrace change. Google has managed to avoid all that because they've had a strong beam focus on a single revenue stream (ad dollars) - as they start matriculating, I suspect that beam focus will dissipate.
But then again, they're Google - they just work smarter than basically every other company out there today. So I put nothing out of their reach.
Umm - the Portuguese word for "permanent" is "permanente." He knew the word.
.... now.
Resume Spelling Nazism
... which begs the question of having a system that encourages proxy bidding. Proxy bidding says, "bid the maximum" but it implies, "or face the consequences of sniping." Just because people are irrational doesn't mean eBay's system is broken.
Uhh - did we really need any road infrastructure before the invention of the automobile? Note the 16th amendment (1913) came shortly after its invention. (Note we had to have an amendment because the Supreme Court had ruled the income tax unconstitutional.)
Trains and horses got most people where they were going.
Schools and hospitals used to be governed by the local towns.
Maybe it was the collection of income tax that led to the nationalization and urbanization of America. In fact, the major Powers That Be saw income tax as a way to push the taxation system away from the tariff / trade taxes we were using (which only taxed the wealthy corporate owners) into a system that taxed the lowliest worker, too (reducing the burden of the wealthy.) Of course this kind of backfired on them when we had those outrageous tax brackets of the 40s-70s, but then again, we kind of became a military-industrial complex, and guess what? Government sucks up a lot of money.
Anyway, I think your premise is backwards. We didn't need government to deal with those things until they decided they would deal with them for us - but needed our money to do it first.
Great in theory, hilarious in reality.
I love that idea that if minimum wage was raised, Wal-Mart would be forced to cut workers, rather than reduce their huge profit line to meet the new line.
If I have one worker, and I pay him $15,000 a year, and I make a profit of $60,000 a year, and the government raises his minimum wage to $20,000 a year, I can still make a big profit and afford him.
That is the dichotomy which is nonexistent in that silly libertarian approach to the minimum wage. If minimum wage is raised, Wal-Mart doesn't have to cut marginalized jobs. They can also raise the costs of their products, or *gasp* not profit *as much* as they were. Profit is still profit. If you can pay a certain wage and make a profit, then that wage is not detrimental to the job market. Despite the Kool-Aid you're selling.
Of course the goal is to maximize profit, but it's maximizing it *under certain conditions*, which include providing your workers with a livable wage. If the only reason Wal-Mart executives take home huge paychecks (executive : laborer pay ratios are at an all-time high) and I have cheap goods at Wal-Mart is because they aren't paying their workers a livable wage, that's not a sufficient reason to continue paying their workers that same wage.
The truth (ie reality, not econ 101 theory) is that we have been on a major trend of reverse distribution of wealth - the rich get richer, the poor get poorer - for nearly 15 years in America. To suggest that somehow companies *won't have the money* to pay any additional wages forced upon them by Congress - and will have to cut jobs rather than pay their workers more - is so disingenuous as to be outrageous.
To be clear, I don't consider "deserving" something implies justice - so your entire post is rendered moot by semantics.
Perhaps we should come up with a better word than "deserved" to describe this and other scenarios.
If you are a rescue worker, and you enter a burning building, and you die as a result of your efforts to rescue others, you went up against some risks and poor odds and you lost.
What we are really talking about is expectations and the fulfillment of those expectations - not the expectations of the actor, but society's expectations. If a heavy smoker dies of lung cancer, no one is really *surprised* by this. Why? It's not because they "deserved" it in some great karmic sense, but certainly that was a predictable expectation. To suggest otherwise would fly in the face of science and common sense.
So when I say "deserved" it, I don't mean it in the same way as "she was asking for it" rape theories, but I do mean that we as a society are not surprised by the outcome of such risky behavior.
I wrote that piece using deserved as a proxy for "reasonably expected" - which was to highlight the fact that this girl acted unreasonably (just as heavy smokers and rescue workers do - in the latter's case, to their credit.) To read anything more into it than that is wrong, though I take the blame for that.
Your nonsequitur about medical malpractice and "pain and suffering" are straw men. First, medical costs in this country have skyrocketed way out of proportion primarily due to a decreasing middle class. As more and more people move out of the middle class and back into the lower class, they can no longer afford insurance. Suddenly these people hit nature's lottery and are in a bad accident or require major heart surgery or something. They can't afford to pay, so they get the procedure and then file for bankruptcy, or fiddle around with debt collectors the rest of their lives. These nonpayments are then built in to the costs of all future procedures. Basically, hospitals have moved from a "let's charge everybody $50 for this procedure" model to "let's charge everybody $500 for this procedure and hope 10% pay up" model. This of course leads to higher insurance in an ever growing cycle that (how convenient) favors the wealthy.
But that's not why it's a straw man.
It's a straw man because it has nothing to do with class action lawsuits, and just because a lot of medical malpractice suits are fraud or frivolity (but really, the reason there are $150 million punitive damage awards out there is because the 12 people on juries are common folk, and they are just trying to get back theirs against the insurance companies who've put them all in their place), has absolutely no bearing on the validity of the lawsuit as a viable tool to affect change in corporations who break the law.
A class action lawsuit can be filed against a defendant if all the members of the class have been wronged by an illegal action taken by the defendant. These are cases revolving more around facts and rule of law than weepy mothers on the stand and he said, she said arguments.
If McAfee, Norton, or any OTHER company violated their EULAs, their contracts with computer vendors, or some other binding legal agreement with their users, they can be challenged in court, and forced to pay compensatory damages (basically, provide a free and easy tool to remove their software, or pay to have the software removed by a 3rd party at billable rates - which would you choose?) and punitive damages (to discourage them and others from making the same stupid mistake again.)
Notice I said "if." This is what could be determined in court. Read the EULA. Demonstrate the difficulty of uninstalling the program. Compare people's general expectations with regard to uninstalling software. Determine if McAfee did this intentionally or negligently. See if McAfee has made any attempts to fix this problem without being forced to by legal channels. These are all simple facts to verify, and once they are verified, a decision can be made as to whether it actually is illegal, and what McAfee needs to do to fix it. That is how the system works.
PS "pain and suffering" damages literally deal with pain and suffering. As in physical pain and physical suffering. It only applies to cases in which bodily harm or injury was caused by the defendant against the plaintiff, like in a car accident or on-the-job injury.
No, no, you *are* saying she deserved what she got. And she did. This is a scenario where the risks clearly outweigh the benefits, because the risks in this case *included* the very likely chance of rape and/or death. If she were abducted at the mall and raped at knifepoint, then she wouldn't deserve it, because "going to the mall" doesn't generally have very risky outcomes. But "meeting online strangers" does, and yes, she deserved it, 14 or not.
In this world, there are people who make stupid decisions who are not necessarily stupid people. You and I make them all the time, and if something bad comes our way because of them, then we deserve it. It's part of the human condition. Why is everyone so afraid to say somebody deserved something bad? She may be *less* deserving than an older girl because she is just 14 and (clearly very very) naive, but ultimately, she deserved it. Again, this isn't just for this specific scenario - if you are aware of the risks of a situation, and choose to engage in it anyway, you deserve whatever happens to you.
That's an equally comical statement. What he says is absolutely true. The market part is in you choosing whether to buy said content or not - not in whether or not you get a share in the content other people create.
Seriously, though, this kind of misrepresentation and misunderstanding is at the heart of the undercutting of strong arguments against DRM and anti-piracy draconian tactics.
When you buy the content, you also buy the DRM that comes with it. You can't say, "I want Spiderman 2 the movie, but I don't want the DRM." It's an all-or-nothing package. So you (the savvy consumer) either need to stand up in what you believe in, and not buy Spiderman 2 because it has DRM, or suck it up and buy Spiderman 2 with the DRM because you want it badly enough.
To suggest that somehow because content creators have a monopoly over their content, and choose to protect their content, that they are cheating you - when you have every right to create your own content, or buy alternative content, or not buy any content at all - is the definition of a straw man.
It simply comes down to put up or shut up. If you see DRM, don't buy it. But claiming copyright is a monopoly is ridiculous - it's a monopoly over a single piece of content, that you are not OBLIGATED to buy. What you are basically saying is I really really want that new DRM'ed music album, but without the DRM. If the copyright holder isn't willing to give you that *particular* album without DRM - tough luck to you. Go buy some other content.
And isn't that really what this argument is about anyway? There are tons of people willing to provide you DRM-free content - they're called local bands, and local artists, and local filmmakers. But now you're just basically saying, "Hey, I only want major label / major studio content, but I don't want DRM on it," which isn't just idealistic, but untenable. And on top of that you're saying, "The only people who make content even worth having are major labels / major studios." So guess what, you run with the mainstreamers? They're not going to give you what you want.
So your only alternatives are create your own content, support content that is already DRM-free, or shut up and put on the "I'm a mainstream-loving DRM bitch" T-shirt. DRM is inevitable in some form; it doesn't have to be universal.
This entire "concern" over Apple and iTunes is entirely related to the idea of the MP3 as some sort of universal standard of music consumption. Even excusing the proprietary MPEG-3 compression standard rhetoric, most people see the argument as "a music file is a music file is a music file."
This stands in sharp contrast to a Nintendo cartridge vs. a PSP UMD vs. an XBox CD/DVD. In reality it's nothing more than sleight of hand, but to the end consumer (and unfortunately, most legislators), a company should have the right to dictate what game software they allow on their system, but should not have the right to dictate which music file types/DRM they allow on their system.
Obviously, the underlying assumption here is that any DRM that is controlled by one company (and unlicensable), rather than by an industry at large, is considered to be bad. Whether or not you believe to be this true will ultimately govern your own opinions on this case.
3 Observations on Guitar Hero
1) Totally for guys. The phallic rush, the manipulation, the aggressive music choices. They don't call it "wanking" for nothin'.
2) Seriously. Why mess with a great formula? Just keep releasing expansion packs, offer some Online Play for interactive jamming/competition, and the ability to record some karaoke for fun/Net trading. Lots of variation left within the first incarnation.
3) Since most other instruments require the use of the mouth (brass and woodwinds), the only instruments really left are drums and keys. Which, while fun, require you to sit down, thereby denying many of the joys of performing on Guitar Hero - the booty shakes, the leg kicks, the windmill, etc.
How come we can generate these awesomely tight relationships with other countries regarding IP and copyright laws, but we can't get Chinese companies to not use 15 hour work days and below-living-standard wages to produce goods?
Oh, I see. Because neither one is good for Rich White Guys. Carry on, then.
Umm, if someone is lying bleeding on the ground, and you come over and kick them in the gut, you are still screwing them, despite their obviously much more major screwing that did not come at the hands of you.
Don't combine rhetoric and relativism. It's very dangerous.
The RIAA is a *trade organization* comprised of members who DO have something to do with artist contracts. Everyone who is employed by the RIAA is acting under the direction of its member labels.
They are NOT the equivalent of some law firm hired by a company to lobby for them/do business.
They are the equivalent of Microsoft's in-house lawyers. While the actual employees of the RIAA may not have anything to do with contracts, they are direct employees of and proxies for those that do, not third party one-offs. So don't try to pass them off as some lobby group that attached itself to the labels as a vicarious entity.
It IS the label's public face, because it IS the labels. And, oh yes, many of Sony's and Universal's lawyers DO work for the MPAA and RIAA on their lobbying efforts.
Looks like your sig has been rendered obsolete.
No, I don't think the executives should be responsible (as in jail time) for the debts. But they shouldn't have any golden bungee cord/parachutes for driving a company into the ground. Almost all bankruptcy proceedings by major companies are preceded by hastily voted agreements to dish out "final payments" and bonuses for CEOs and other executives. THAT is where the problem lies. These people did no different - just on a smaller scale.
Executives of companies, and in particular Chief Executives, should have their pay tied squarely to the fate of the ship. While they should receive a salary that is higher than the highest non-executive (perhaps 50% more? Arbitrariness works both ways), if a company is doing poorly, an executive shouldn't expect to "take home millions", because they represent the company in abstract, and as such their entire endeavor (executing) is abstract - which means their pay should be just as abstract.
It really is that simple.
If you're "just" an employee, you *should* get paid a concrete value based on your time, talents, and output - and not on the success of the company.
If you're an executive, you *should* get paid an abstract value based on the success of the company - and not on your time, talents, or output.
What's really dumb is that large one-time payments to take control of companies preparing for a merger are causing CEOs of companies NOT preparing for mergers to try to "flip" their gig into a better paying one through consolidation and capitalization - which nets them a huge windfall, almost always at the expense of the labor force, with redundant jobs being eliminated. Not to mention this is a terrible strategy in the long run.
As related to this article, if there were strong corporate laws in place, if a firm went under, executives would be forced to provide exit pay to lost employees and cover all of the firm's debts before filing for bankruptcy. It'd make them think twice before pulling shenanigans like this where they cut their losses and run on the labor beneath them.
It would hurt specific workers, but those iPods would still be in demand, and have to be produced somewhere. So some worker would pick up where these women left off. THAT is the value of labor laws; it continues the market at an acceptable level of human rights standards.
That's great until you have a large stagnant pool of principal which then becomes a tax drain on your country. You know, something like America, circa 2006.
If Mickey D employees work over 40 hours, they get overtime pay (i.e. time and a half.) So someone who worked 90 hours would get
40 hours at * $5.25 an hour (minimum wage) = $210 +
50 hours at * $7.88 an hour (time and a half) = $394.
That's $600 a week, which translates into roughly $2,400 a month, over $30,000 a year, and essentially a lower middle class job.
Oh, and they can live wherever they want, eat whatever they want, and you know, DON'T HAVE TO WORK 90 HOURS TO MAKE A LIVING WAGE.
But if you want to compare the two some more, go right ahead.
Regardless of what the law says, Apple *ought to* hold itself to a higher standard as a US based company. The simple truth (as already mentioned in earlier posts) is that US trade laws flat out encourage outsourcing to countries with the most lax and minimal labor law standards.
Also, while the living wage might not be being violated, 15 hours a day, 6 days a week = a 90 hour work week. Even if that's not against Chinese law, it's fairly obvious these women are being exploited as merely tools of labor, and not treated as regular human beings who need, you know, lives beyond just sleeping and working.
But of course, if that means we can get our Nanos $50 cheaper, then so be it, right? It's very simple: force labor laws that actually create a standard of living (wages, hours, and safety) into all trade agreements. And companies are going apeshit over IP laws in foreign countries (witness the RIAA and AllOfMp3.com) that we have trade agreements with, but we can't be bothered to ensure labor standards before allowing companies to do business there. I say we just ratchet up the tariff on all Apple products made in China until both the company and the government have real statutes in place to protect these types of workers from that kind of laborious, empty, craptacular life.
I still don't get how NSA workers as American citizens can justify this kind of BS in their heads. They seriously must be the most sociopathic, mean-spirited, fascist-minded people in the country.
Seriously, as a citizen of this great country, I couldn't sleep at night if I were personally responsible in some way for collecting and aggregating this information.
More proof that community ISP co-operatives are the wave of the future. Everybody put $50 in the hat for Fiber to the Premises ...
Dude.
Original Price = X.
New Price = 2/5X. (Slashed priced by 60%)
Original Price = 5/2 New Price.
5/2 = 250%.
In plain English terms: if you cut a price in half (50%) that means you were paying twice as much. So cutting the price by more than half - means you were paying more than twice as much.
While I agree with the sentiments of your post, I think that Rockstar cannot *afford* to make any sort of principled stand on including risque content without an obvious method of accessing it on a disc they have listed as M out in the public market. The reason for this is simple: the mod (in the eyes of the ESRB) moved the game from M to AO, which most retailers refuse to stock and sell.
If the Sesame Street game had a hack which revealed profane comments, I imagine the FTC would be inclined to leave their rating as an E and simply attach a disclaimer to the box or some other method of consumer protection. I think this is primarily because the FTC would be more inclined to believe that this sort of ratings violation was inadvertent and not desired by the programmers - whereas I'm sure Rockstar thought it was pretty cool up until they got hit with the AO.
Perhaps this is a double standard, and this certainly is the root behind the large debate on this site and on others. But the simple truth is that GTA:SA was already rated M for Mature and was viewed as borderline gratuitous. The sheer incompetence (or audacity!) of their programmers to leave material on the disc being sold that would compromise their tenuous rating led to them getting thumped proper.
This will discourage guerilla programmers from including other Hot Coffee mods in their programs and then leaking the hacks in hopes of getting publicity and sales. Ultimately this is rather principled stand by the FTC: all content on the disc, hidden or otherwise, intentional or not, must be provided to the ESRB, or the gamemakers may face sanctioning. This will capture a few "innocent victims" of incompetence and oversight (Rockstar), but it'll also stop other companies from trying the same avenue for profit. Which is a win-win for both parents and ultimately the industry.
I would heartily encourage more companies to make AO games that are actually as fun as GTA:SA. Perhaps by making this stigma more clear (some games *must* be played and viewed by adults first before kids can play them) we can get retailers to stock AO games that aren't just porn titles, and we as a society can make better (and more accurate) decisions about the games we play, and the games our kids play.