At home, I have a file server with four drives on RAID 5. The total storage is somewhere around 400 GB. I've got room for one more drive, I've been thinking about adding a 500 GB drive for backup. It's expensive, but far cheaper long-term than tape.
When I worked phone support for laptops, the policy was three within a centimeter, four in the arbitrary "center", or seven overall. If they won't warranty eight stuck pixels because some of them aren't "in the center" then their warranty sucks.
He should have been reduced to a suspension upon review of the case and his reasonable explanation, with the warning that any such behavior being observed in the future would result in a permanent ban.
Aside from that, the Laws would only apply if the robot were capable of making its own decisions.
And besides: who here didn't think that the first applications of advanced robots would be for warfare? DARPA was responsible for a LOT of the technology we take for granted today.
Then Blizzard needs to learn to differentiate between useful tools, macros, and hacks rather than banning the keyboards.
Just from RTFA, I'd have to say this guy takes the game too seriously and could use a break anyway...but then I think that about most people who play MMORPGs.
Aside from convenience and speed, you're forgetting another component: cost. Hard drives are significantly cheaper than tape, and don't require regular replacement.
At a previous job, our typical SAN solution was a fibre RAID (or two if super-redundant) that was backed up to a larger SATA array. A hard drive backup was about half the price of tape, significantly faster, and much more convenient. With RAID 5 and a hot spare (or two) the only downside of backing up to SATA is the lack of portability...but if you're buying a SAN in the price range that we sold, you probably had a second site and at least a T1 between them. We set up quite a few secondary backup systems at remote sites for incremental backups to be run overnight.
Amazon and other storage hosting solutions can provide an excellent extra level of resilience for data. At a monthly cost per TB amounting to less than a lot of admins make in a day, a lot of smaller-than-enterprise operations would consider it well worth the expense.
With the way technology is going I'd guess that pretty soon we wouldn't need any additional physical interface: the device could use imaging, or perhaps even read the movement of muscles in the forearm.
Against my body, yes. But with a touch screen you'll need to hold it away from your body...and to do that palm-down, you have to lift your elbow and hold your entire arm up. Doing it palm-up would just require you to lift your forearm, reducing fatigue.
Parents must police their own damn kids, and not complain to the government to do their job.
There's a careful balance that we have to maintain here. On the one side, it is NOT my responsibility to raise someone else's kids. I have enough of a job with my own. On the other hand, you'd have to be pretty stupid to say that--especially in today's society--parents have complete control over what their kids are exposed to.
As a society we should accept the responsibility of making it easier for parents to make the right decisions for their kids by making it harder for kids to access materials that may not be appropriate for them. Getting off the subject of games, if a kid wants to watch porn, there are plenty of people who will make it available to them regardless of age or maturity level. Now, some kids can handle porn maturely while others at the same age can't. Their parents should be deciding that, not us. The best thing we can do is stay out of it...as in not make the material available to the kids so that parents can make the call.
If we don't act responsibly, we have to accept that we are contributing to the problems of the generation who will lead the world when we retire.
Yeah, but I'm not sure they make straps that big.:D
(hey, if we're gonna be juvenile, we might as well do it right!)
Besides, I don't know about you, but I don't like to stare at my...uhh...self...while viewing porn.
I don't understand why they always insist on designing wearable computers like this to work from the back of the wrist the same way a wristwatch is worn. It would be far more ergonomic to turn your hand palm-up, and it would have the added benefit of giving the screen a measure of protection as it wouldn't be sticking out from your arm.
This is a very cool device, though. I'd buy one if I had the money and could see a practical use for it.
But I also think creators should be protected from large corporations by having a limited amount of time they can sell away their rights.
As IP is concerned, I'd like to see contracts be required to state an expected income level, and a royalty rate for income above and beyond the projected figure.
For example, if I write a song or make a movie or invent a gadget and some department of Sony comes along and buys it from me for $40,000, the contract might specify that they expect to make $2,000,000 off my IP. If it turns out to be the most popular song ever or the next iPod and nets them $200,000,000, I'd be entitled to a portion of that $198M that is above and beyond their projections. Corporations like to take advantage of naive people by pretending to pay a fair price while knowing full well that they'd have spent a much larger amount if it was demanded.
They might find less people would oppose them if they weren't trying to have it both ways.
I agree. The RI/MPAA should really adopt the concept of licensing. If you buy a CD, that CD is your license. If you sell the CD, you've sold your license. If the CD is damaged beyond the ability to play, they should make a CD available to you at production cost to replace the damaged one (you would have to give the damaged CD back, of course).
It shouldn't matter to the industry what I do with the content I purchased. If they want to sell me a CD for $15, then the content just happened to be there and they gave it to me for free. If they want to sell me the content for $15, then the CD is just the delivery method and the content is mine.
I've never been given an EULA with a CD. Maybe they should start.
You can do whatever you want to the original device, but copying it is a patent violation, and illegal.
Here's the concept behind copyrights/IP/patent:
If you envision, design, prototype, test, and build something, you have a significant investment in the creation of the product beyond just the manufacture of it. If someone else could simply buy your first product, copy your design, and produce the same thing a week later, then all of your work has in effect been stolen. That's why people created IP laws.
Coca Cola's success is due to two things: it has a recipe people like, and an easily identifiable package. If neither the recipe (patent?) nor the package (trademark) were protected by law, there's nothing to stop me from copying one or both and producing an identical looking or tasting product and essentially "stealing" their marketshare without any significant effort.
Applying this back to music, there's a lot more to a recording than just the investment of time spent recording. Artists have a latent talent for music. They or someone else spent a great deal of time composing lyrics and/or music, and a great deal of time was spent practicing the music to perfection. That's all before anyone sat down in front of a microphone.
The creative process, the years of learning and practicing and developing a distinct style, the effort of forming a cohesive sound in a band...that is all completely original. It's the band's recipe; everything they play is based on that. Recording/performance investment aside, we're talking about a lifetime's effort in creating what you hear when an artist plays. Copyright protects those who create and record music because most people believe that an artist should have a right to control how their work is distributed in this age of technology.
If every musician stood on a street corner playing, and no one ever gave them any money and instead just recorded their performance for later playback, how long do you think most of them would be there? They've got bills to pay, too, and if music doesn't pay the bills don't expect to hear the quantity or the quality of music to which you are accustomed.
After reading some later posts, my impression of the game may have been wrong. Just wanted to put that out there before someone showed up to tell me how wrong I am:)
I agree, and I accept the purchase and should be free to do what I want with the item I buy. If I pay someone to have them broom my house, and then go and mimic their performance, should I pay them for that "right" to use my labor as I please?
No, and you're free to "mimic" any music you hear.
Why not? The copying is my time, the CD I buy is my property, the device I use to copy the CD is my property -- why should anyone have the right to prevent me from using my time as I please? For me, I'd rather pay someone else to perform these actions -- and The Pirate Bay is happy to do it for free. Of course, if I like the performance, I will be more than happy to pay the artist to make more performances, but I should not be required by law to do so.
The first part, you're absolutely right. The CD is yours, the time is yours, the device is yours. Copy away. It's the distribution that is wrong.
Now, what is it the Pirate Bay is copying that you own?
Bingo! And The Pirate Bay is the distributor who charges the least amount of money for distributing a product they created with their own labor: the MP3. The burger is the end result of the purchase, and I shouldn't have to pay the meat people over and over, or the trucking company over and over. I am buying the final product -- the burger. The same is true for the CD, I am buying the final product. No one should be able to tell me how I use my labor beyond that, if I want to use my labor to recreate or mimic an item (burger, CD, whatever).
The Pirate Bay was never authorized by the artist or anyone else to distribute the music.
Again: you are implying that you have to keep buying something. Last I checked, you buy a CD and you listen to it whenever you want. No additional fees, no residuals. YOU only pay ONCE. I don't know where you get the idea that it happens any other way.
And I believe this is the case if there was no copyright as well -- consumers will find the quality items they want and be willing to pay for them, regardless of what the law tells them. In fact, I don't think copyright is even working anymore -- people still pay because they know what is "right" not what they're afraid of what will happen to them.
People pay because most of them still don't know how to get "free" music since Napster changed and Kazaa went to crap.
So someone decided to sell their labor cheaper than another, and the more expensive laborer loses their job. I think this is what competition is.
So if I take a camera into a concert and record it and sell copies of the recording for $1 a piece, that's okay? Even though my labor involved recording someone else's labor, that other person is just out of luck?
I'm currently working on a Sci-Fi novel which I will freely pass out in e-book format -- but some of the underlying politics and thoughts in the novel will be a great way to market my websites. My websites are a great way to market me. In the long run, the book will take me 300-400 hours to complete. Over my lifetime, the marketing potential is well over $100 per hour of what I'll likely gain, so I feel that the labor spent as a marketing potential is more than well spent.
And if someone decided to take your book, print it, and sell it, they should be able to without your permission. If they were to choose to change it a bit, that's up to them. After all, they're "mimicing" it, and mimicry isn't always exact.
I agree, but it should be noted that the games are rated (M) and that a lot of retailers (2/3, last I heard) do currently restrict the sale of M-rated games to adults.
The problem is that parents buy whatever their kids tell them to, then whine when they don't think it's appropriate.
As for bullies: I was bullied as a kid. Then I learned to fight and kicked the crap out of anyone in high school that tried to bully anyone.
If this game is as open-ended as GTA supposedly is, you should be able to be the anti-bully. But, then, GTA isn't really open-ended...you're never anything but a criminal.
Yet it doesn't matter -- it is still me using my own labor, my own money and my own knowledge to perform an act, on my own property. If an architect designs a building, do you pay residuals to the architect for the work they once did? When you pay a check-out line clerk for goods that you'll use, do you pay them residuals for the work they once did?
When you buy an album, do you pay residuals to the artist every time you listen to it? When you buy a broom, do you pay residuals to anyone every time you use it?
We're talking about a one-time purchase by you, the consumer. You're trying to take that apple and compare it to an orange.
Now I tell bands, artists, and content creators to find new ways to capitalize on their work. Just like a hamburger flipper has to continue working to earn an income, so should anyone else unless they can find a way to sell their services at a high enough price to give them a life of luxury without work. Why is the 10 hours a band spends recording a song possibly worth millions (only with government force) but the 10 hours a hamburger flipper spends worth $80?
The 10 hours is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. If you aren't willing to pay their asking price, don't buy it. But that doesn't entitle you to make copies of their performance without their permission.
A burger flipper gets paid minimum wage because there are a lot of people who will flip burgers, and the one who will do it for the least money gets the job.
You can go to McDonald's and buy a hamburger for $0.85. Yet there are restaurants that sell hamburgers for $10. What's the difference? Quality. There are a lot of artists, but only a few who are very talented. If those artists can make millions of dollars doing what they do, it's because consumers are willing to pay those millions of dollars for what they percieve to be a quality product.
I'm not looking for communism -- I'm looking to level the playing field of opportunity. We all work, and we should all find ways to sell that work.
If a band has a concert and someone records it and distributes that recording, people may opt to buy tickets for a concert they haven't "seen" before and that band won't be able to sell as many tickets. Nothing is physically being taken, yet their ability to produce revenue by performing can be impacted.
No, 'they' are NOT the ones who paid for it, WE - the consumer - fucking well are.
Oh? So which of the five recording sessions that I've been involved in did you finance?
We the consumers purchase the product of someone else's investment. That's how they make a profit off of THEIR investment.
In my opinion nobody except the artist(s)/creator(s) involved in MAKING the music in the first place should be able to decide how and whether their music is distributed in such a manner.
In a perfect world, that's how it would be. But artists allow others to take over those decisions because those other people finance the recording, production, and distribution of an album. The artist can't afford to themselves, the label can. It sucks but that's how it works.
The rest of the cunts you refer to simply treat music as a business, and I suppose the closest thing you can liken to them 'paying for' it in the first place was their INVESTMENT on which they expected to see a RETURN, i.e. they paid for fuck all mate, think about it.
Music is a business. The best artists can make a career out of music. Like everything else it's been industrialized so that there are far more people behind the artists than artists themselves. I'd love to see that change but I don't see how it could work any other way in today's society.
I believe (and I write often about) that Intellectual Property is nothing more than telling people what they are not allowed to do with their own labor on their own property. Imagine if lawn mowing was protected by copyright or a patent. Crazy? Yet I can't mimic the actions of others on my own property? Try singing Happy Birthday to a group of people -- its illegal.
We're not talking about doing something other people do. Bands sing covers of famous bands all the time. You sing in the shower, you whistle your favorite song. No one is stopping you from doing that.
Making a copy of a recording of an artist's performance is NOT the same as mimicing that performance.
I installed Linux on a laptop the other day. It didn't detect my wireless card. I couldn't find Linux drivers for my wireless card. Linux can't use my wireless card.
Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP can.
Tell me again why I should use Linux?
Actually, I do use Linux, I'm illustrating a point: product support for Linux is erratic, applications can be hard to find, and documentation is woefully inadequate for inexperienced users. You can make a pretty desktop and package all the right applications to make the OS a lot more appealing (Ubuntu) but you still have a VERY complex and potentially confusing operating system just below the surface, and if a novice user runs into a problem with it that can't be fixed with the included tools, they're suddenly WAY outside their comfort zone and find themselves being directed to open console windows and type commands and just generally follow instructions they barely comprehend.
Windows' help system is designed for the people who don't know what they're doing. There is very little that has to be done at the command line, and the only thing you might ever get from Microsoft that is intimidating is a registry hack, and those are few and far between and rarely impact new users.
You "physically own" a CD, and you can do whatever you want with that physical object. You can put it in a player, you can give it to a friend, you can smash it with a hammer. You can even put it in a computer and make digital copies of it. But once you make copies of those digital copies and distribute them to other people, you aren't dealing with your physical property at all, are you?
The freedom to do what you want with products you physically own is a great freedom
I really dislike this sentiment.
You physically own a CD. The contents of that CD, you simply own the right to listen to them. Where the RIAA is making a mistake is they are trying to limit your ability to listen to the music with DRM and copy protection, but that's another long rambling post for another time. The music is NOT yours to distribute. Other people invested large amounts of time, money, and resources into recording and producing the music that you paid for...they are the ones who paid for it, they are the ones who have a right to distribute it.
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At home, I have a file server with four drives on RAID 5. The total storage is somewhere around 400 GB. I've got room for one more drive, I've been thinking about adding a 500 GB drive for backup. It's expensive, but far cheaper long-term than tape.
Eight stuck pixels is excessive.
When I worked phone support for laptops, the policy was three within a centimeter, four in the arbitrary "center", or seven overall. If they won't warranty eight stuck pixels because some of them aren't "in the center" then their warranty sucks.
He should have been reduced to a suspension upon review of the case and his reasonable explanation, with the warning that any such behavior being observed in the future would result in a permanent ban.
Aside from that, the Laws would only apply if the robot were capable of making its own decisions.
And besides: who here didn't think that the first applications of advanced robots would be for warfare? DARPA was responsible for a LOT of the technology we take for granted today.
Then Blizzard needs to learn to differentiate between useful tools, macros, and hacks rather than banning the keyboards.
Just from RTFA, I'd have to say this guy takes the game too seriously and could use a break anyway...but then I think that about most people who play MMORPGs.
Aside from convenience and speed, you're forgetting another component: cost. Hard drives are significantly cheaper than tape, and don't require regular replacement.
At a previous job, our typical SAN solution was a fibre RAID (or two if super-redundant) that was backed up to a larger SATA array. A hard drive backup was about half the price of tape, significantly faster, and much more convenient. With RAID 5 and a hot spare (or two) the only downside of backing up to SATA is the lack of portability...but if you're buying a SAN in the price range that we sold, you probably had a second site and at least a T1 between them. We set up quite a few secondary backup systems at remote sites for incremental backups to be run overnight.
Amazon and other storage hosting solutions can provide an excellent extra level of resilience for data. At a monthly cost per TB amounting to less than a lot of admins make in a day, a lot of smaller-than-enterprise operations would consider it well worth the expense.
With the way technology is going I'd guess that pretty soon we wouldn't need any additional physical interface: the device could use imaging, or perhaps even read the movement of muscles in the forearm.
Against my body, yes. But with a touch screen you'll need to hold it away from your body...and to do that palm-down, you have to lift your elbow and hold your entire arm up. Doing it palm-up would just require you to lift your forearm, reducing fatigue.
:p
I find palm-up more comfortable, so there
Parents must police their own damn kids, and not complain to the government to do their job.
There's a careful balance that we have to maintain here. On the one side, it is NOT my responsibility to raise someone else's kids. I have enough of a job with my own. On the other hand, you'd have to be pretty stupid to say that--especially in today's society--parents have complete control over what their kids are exposed to.
As a society we should accept the responsibility of making it easier for parents to make the right decisions for their kids by making it harder for kids to access materials that may not be appropriate for them. Getting off the subject of games, if a kid wants to watch porn, there are plenty of people who will make it available to them regardless of age or maturity level. Now, some kids can handle porn maturely while others at the same age can't. Their parents should be deciding that, not us. The best thing we can do is stay out of it...as in not make the material available to the kids so that parents can make the call.
If we don't act responsibly, we have to accept that we are contributing to the problems of the generation who will lead the world when we retire.
Yeah, but I'm not sure they make straps that big. :D
(hey, if we're gonna be juvenile, we might as well do it right!)
Besides, I don't know about you, but I don't like to stare at my...uhh...self...while viewing porn.
The application I'd like to see it in is IT. With wifi, that thing could replace the tech's laptop and greatly reduce their load.
Reference picture
I don't understand why they always insist on designing wearable computers like this to work from the back of the wrist the same way a wristwatch is worn. It would be far more ergonomic to turn your hand palm-up, and it would have the added benefit of giving the screen a measure of protection as it wouldn't be sticking out from your arm.
This is a very cool device, though. I'd buy one if I had the money and could see a practical use for it.
But I also think creators should be protected from large corporations by having a limited amount of time they can sell away their rights.
As IP is concerned, I'd like to see contracts be required to state an expected income level, and a royalty rate for income above and beyond the projected figure.
For example, if I write a song or make a movie or invent a gadget and some department of Sony comes along and buys it from me for $40,000, the contract might specify that they expect to make $2,000,000 off my IP. If it turns out to be the most popular song ever or the next iPod and nets them $200,000,000, I'd be entitled to a portion of that $198M that is above and beyond their projections. Corporations like to take advantage of naive people by pretending to pay a fair price while knowing full well that they'd have spent a much larger amount if it was demanded.
I think you mean to address the MPAA.
The RIAA doesn't really have a lot to do with DVDs.
They might find less people would oppose them if they weren't trying to have it both ways.
I agree. The RI/MPAA should really adopt the concept of licensing. If you buy a CD, that CD is your license. If you sell the CD, you've sold your license. If the CD is damaged beyond the ability to play, they should make a CD available to you at production cost to replace the damaged one (you would have to give the damaged CD back, of course).
It shouldn't matter to the industry what I do with the content I purchased. If they want to sell me a CD for $15, then the content just happened to be there and they gave it to me for free. If they want to sell me the content for $15, then the CD is just the delivery method and the content is mine.
I've never been given an EULA with a CD. Maybe they should start.
You can do whatever you want to the original device, but copying it is a patent violation, and illegal.
Here's the concept behind copyrights/IP/patent:
If you envision, design, prototype, test, and build something, you have a significant investment in the creation of the product beyond just the manufacture of it. If someone else could simply buy your first product, copy your design, and produce the same thing a week later, then all of your work has in effect been stolen. That's why people created IP laws.
Coca Cola's success is due to two things: it has a recipe people like, and an easily identifiable package. If neither the recipe (patent?) nor the package (trademark) were protected by law, there's nothing to stop me from copying one or both and producing an identical looking or tasting product and essentially "stealing" their marketshare without any significant effort.
Applying this back to music, there's a lot more to a recording than just the investment of time spent recording. Artists have a latent talent for music. They or someone else spent a great deal of time composing lyrics and/or music, and a great deal of time was spent practicing the music to perfection. That's all before anyone sat down in front of a microphone.
The creative process, the years of learning and practicing and developing a distinct style, the effort of forming a cohesive sound in a band...that is all completely original. It's the band's recipe; everything they play is based on that. Recording/performance investment aside, we're talking about a lifetime's effort in creating what you hear when an artist plays. Copyright protects those who create and record music because most people believe that an artist should have a right to control how their work is distributed in this age of technology.
If every musician stood on a street corner playing, and no one ever gave them any money and instead just recorded their performance for later playback, how long do you think most of them would be there? They've got bills to pay, too, and if music doesn't pay the bills don't expect to hear the quantity or the quality of music to which you are accustomed.
After reading some later posts, my impression of the game may have been wrong. Just wanted to put that out there before someone showed up to tell me how wrong I am :)
I agree, and I accept the purchase and should be free to do what I want with the item I buy. If I pay someone to have them broom my house, and then go and mimic their performance, should I pay them for that "right" to use my labor as I please?
No, and you're free to "mimic" any music you hear.
Why not? The copying is my time, the CD I buy is my property, the device I use to copy the CD is my property -- why should anyone have the right to prevent me from using my time as I please? For me, I'd rather pay someone else to perform these actions -- and The Pirate Bay is happy to do it for free. Of course, if I like the performance, I will be more than happy to pay the artist to make more performances, but I should not be required by law to do so.
The first part, you're absolutely right. The CD is yours, the time is yours, the device is yours. Copy away. It's the distribution that is wrong.
Now, what is it the Pirate Bay is copying that you own?
Bingo! And The Pirate Bay is the distributor who charges the least amount of money for distributing a product they created with their own labor: the MP3. The burger is the end result of the purchase, and I shouldn't have to pay the meat people over and over, or the trucking company over and over. I am buying the final product -- the burger. The same is true for the CD, I am buying the final product. No one should be able to tell me how I use my labor beyond that, if I want to use my labor to recreate or mimic an item (burger, CD, whatever).
The Pirate Bay was never authorized by the artist or anyone else to distribute the music.
Again: you are implying that you have to keep buying something. Last I checked, you buy a CD and you listen to it whenever you want. No additional fees, no residuals. YOU only pay ONCE. I don't know where you get the idea that it happens any other way.
And I believe this is the case if there was no copyright as well -- consumers will find the quality items they want and be willing to pay for them, regardless of what the law tells them. In fact, I don't think copyright is even working anymore -- people still pay because they know what is "right" not what they're afraid of what will happen to them.
People pay because most of them still don't know how to get "free" music since Napster changed and Kazaa went to crap.
So someone decided to sell their labor cheaper than another, and the more expensive laborer loses their job. I think this is what competition is.
So if I take a camera into a concert and record it and sell copies of the recording for $1 a piece, that's okay? Even though my labor involved recording someone else's labor, that other person is just out of luck?
I'm currently working on a Sci-Fi novel which I will freely pass out in e-book format -- but some of the underlying politics and thoughts in the novel will be a great way to market my websites. My websites are a great way to market me. In the long run, the book will take me 300-400 hours to complete. Over my lifetime, the marketing potential is well over $100 per hour of what I'll likely gain, so I feel that the labor spent as a marketing potential is more than well spent.
And if someone decided to take your book, print it, and sell it, they should be able to without your permission. If they were to choose to change it a bit, that's up to them. After all, they're "mimicing" it, and mimicry isn't always exact.
I agree, but it should be noted that the games are rated (M) and that a lot of retailers (2/3, last I heard) do currently restrict the sale of M-rated games to adults.
The problem is that parents buy whatever their kids tell them to, then whine when they don't think it's appropriate.
As for bullies: I was bullied as a kid. Then I learned to fight and kicked the crap out of anyone in high school that tried to bully anyone.
If this game is as open-ended as GTA supposedly is, you should be able to be the anti-bully. But, then, GTA isn't really open-ended...you're never anything but a criminal.
Yet it doesn't matter -- it is still me using my own labor, my own money and my own knowledge to perform an act, on my own property. If an architect designs a building, do you pay residuals to the architect for the work they once did? When you pay a check-out line clerk for goods that you'll use, do you pay them residuals for the work they once did?
When you buy an album, do you pay residuals to the artist every time you listen to it? When you buy a broom, do you pay residuals to anyone every time you use it?
We're talking about a one-time purchase by you, the consumer. You're trying to take that apple and compare it to an orange.
Now I tell bands, artists, and content creators to find new ways to capitalize on their work. Just like a hamburger flipper has to continue working to earn an income, so should anyone else unless they can find a way to sell their services at a high enough price to give them a life of luxury without work. Why is the 10 hours a band spends recording a song possibly worth millions (only with government force) but the 10 hours a hamburger flipper spends worth $80?
The 10 hours is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. If you aren't willing to pay their asking price, don't buy it. But that doesn't entitle you to make copies of their performance without their permission.
A burger flipper gets paid minimum wage because there are a lot of people who will flip burgers, and the one who will do it for the least money gets the job.
You can go to McDonald's and buy a hamburger for $0.85. Yet there are restaurants that sell hamburgers for $10. What's the difference? Quality. There are a lot of artists, but only a few who are very talented. If those artists can make millions of dollars doing what they do, it's because consumers are willing to pay those millions of dollars for what they percieve to be a quality product.
I'm not looking for communism -- I'm looking to level the playing field of opportunity. We all work, and we should all find ways to sell that work.
If a band has a concert and someone records it and distributes that recording, people may opt to buy tickets for a concert they haven't "seen" before and that band won't be able to sell as many tickets. Nothing is physically being taken, yet their ability to produce revenue by performing can be impacted.
Do you really think that *shouldn't* be illegal?
No, 'they' are NOT the ones who paid for it, WE - the consumer - fucking well are.
Oh? So which of the five recording sessions that I've been involved in did you finance?
We the consumers purchase the product of someone else's investment. That's how they make a profit off of THEIR investment.
In my opinion nobody except the artist(s)/creator(s) involved in MAKING the music in the first place should be able to decide how and whether their music is distributed in such a manner.
In a perfect world, that's how it would be. But artists allow others to take over those decisions because those other people finance the recording, production, and distribution of an album. The artist can't afford to themselves, the label can. It sucks but that's how it works.
The rest of the cunts you refer to simply treat music as a business, and I suppose the closest thing you can liken to them 'paying for' it in the first place was their INVESTMENT on which they expected to see a RETURN, i.e. they paid for fuck all mate, think about it.
Music is a business. The best artists can make a career out of music. Like everything else it's been industrialized so that there are far more people behind the artists than artists themselves. I'd love to see that change but I don't see how it could work any other way in today's society.
I believe (and I write often about) that Intellectual Property is nothing more than telling people what they are not allowed to do with their own labor on their own property. Imagine if lawn mowing was protected by copyright or a patent. Crazy? Yet I can't mimic the actions of others on my own property? Try singing Happy Birthday to a group of people -- its illegal.
We're not talking about doing something other people do. Bands sing covers of famous bands all the time. You sing in the shower, you whistle your favorite song. No one is stopping you from doing that.
Making a copy of a recording of an artist's performance is NOT the same as mimicing that performance.
Here's why Linux still won't catch on:
I installed Linux on a laptop the other day. It didn't detect my wireless card. I couldn't find Linux drivers for my wireless card. Linux can't use my wireless card.
Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP can.
Tell me again why I should use Linux?
Actually, I do use Linux, I'm illustrating a point: product support for Linux is erratic, applications can be hard to find, and documentation is woefully inadequate for inexperienced users. You can make a pretty desktop and package all the right applications to make the OS a lot more appealing (Ubuntu) but you still have a VERY complex and potentially confusing operating system just below the surface, and if a novice user runs into a problem with it that can't be fixed with the included tools, they're suddenly WAY outside their comfort zone and find themselves being directed to open console windows and type commands and just generally follow instructions they barely comprehend.
Windows' help system is designed for the people who don't know what they're doing. There is very little that has to be done at the command line, and the only thing you might ever get from Microsoft that is intimidating is a registry hack, and those are few and far between and rarely impact new users.
Something I forgot:
You "physically own" a CD, and you can do whatever you want with that physical object. You can put it in a player, you can give it to a friend, you can smash it with a hammer. You can even put it in a computer and make digital copies of it. But once you make copies of those digital copies and distribute them to other people, you aren't dealing with your physical property at all, are you?
The freedom to do what you want with products you physically own is a great freedom
I really dislike this sentiment.
You physically own a CD. The contents of that CD, you simply own the right to listen to them. Where the RIAA is making a mistake is they are trying to limit your ability to listen to the music with DRM and copy protection, but that's another long rambling post for another time. The music is NOT yours to distribute. Other people invested large amounts of time, money, and resources into recording and producing the music that you paid for...they are the ones who paid for it, they are the ones who have a right to distribute it.