Wow, the letter linked certainly is informative and damning, and you are correct, there are some big signatures at the bottom, but in the corporate world, it all means nothing. If you're so sure about it, and want to stick up for the GPL, then sue them. Us ranting about it here won't do anything at all. Even a letter to some mailing list, signed by some big names in Linux, means absolutely nothing to them, because there are no consequences to LinkSys for ignoring them. And that's the bottom line.
Responding to the accusations would cost money. Ignoring them, at this point, won't cost them a cent, because it's just a bunch of guys bitching and moaning on a mailing list, and here on Slashdot. Until someone with the stones (and the coin to back it up) steps up to the plate with some legal papers, absolutely nothing is going to happen.
That said, I have a question... what if a company contacts out some aspects of their firmware design to a third party, but the parent company themselves uses GPL'd software. Say I hire AcmeSoft to write a driver for me for a router I'm making. AcmeSoft delivers some statically-linked binaries to me (but no source code), which I statically link into the GPL'd source code and in-house source code that my guys have written. Now, I make all that GPL software and my in-house software freely available, but I can't make the source for that driver from AcmeSoft available, because I don't have it. While technically, I'm in violation of the GPL, but if I've done all I can (short of pressuring AcmeSoft for source (which they won't give me) or ditching Linux altogether), am I really such a bad guy?
Uh, how in the heck did this get modded "Insightful???" What if the answer to "how many downloads" is "100,000?" The kid was just screwed out of a hundred grand, and while a few people like it (0.0000167% of the population), it's obviously not enough to justify a "World Tour." How many of those people would shell out cash and show up at a concert, anyway? After all, they wouldn't even pony up a few bucks for the CD - they downloaded it instead, remember?
And exactly who is going to pay for this "world tour?" Will the proceeds cover the expenses?
A good artist will never starve because his art is priceless.
LOL! That's a nice, warm, fuzzy sentiment, but "priceless" music doesn't pay the rent, kid. Royalties do.
I respectfully hope that you're doing better in your other classes, and strongly urge you to stay in school.
sue poor people who can't afford to defend themselves in court.
I didn't realize being poor was a license to ignore the law. How about all those dirt-poor Chinese people selling pirated DVDs on the streets of Beijing? "Oh leave them alone - they're poor!"
"Yes, officer, I know I'm driving drunk, but I have a copy of last year's income tax return right here... look how poor I am! Can't you let it go this time?'
I wonder if they tell the kids the artists are starving since the RIAA gives them $0.00000083 for every CD sold.
You wonder if they lie to the students? Why would they do that? I don't think schools are in the habit of lying in their Civics classes. History and Science, maybe, but not Civics, AFAIK.
Unless of course they're one of the many artists who happen to sell more than a million albums. Not to mention publicity royalties, concert and merchandising revenues, airtime royalties, shilling for Nike, etc.
Am I supposed to feel sorry for J. Lo? How do you explain how even a mediocre artist like Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, or whatever he's called this week is so stinkin' rich?
You mean like book publishers? Boycott books! Picket in front of libraries! Take down the literacy cartel!
There's nothing wrong with being compensated for providing a service. Artists are (arguably) good at making music, not distributing it. The suits are good at distributing and marketing it, but not making it. So they get together and everybody wins. What's evil about that?
The "obvious" answer as to why they pursue these cases civilly instead of criminally is because no crime has been committed. Copyright infringement is not a criminal offense - it's a civil one.
Your answer would sell more papers though. Congrats for that. You might want to take off the tinfoil hat for the photo though.
Did you live with each of those girlfriends for 40 years, spawn several children with each, then go through a 3-month long bout of depression after each one died of old age while you remained relatively spry?
I think you underestimate just how long 2000 years is. That's a lot of lifetimes to live through.
So, a citizen of the Roman Empire circa 0 A.D. wouldn't be a bit surprised at the world of 2003? In any sphere; not just science, but art, politics, culture, etc.?
I'm sure he would be, if you just instantaneously picked him up and plopped him down somewhere in the here and now. But if he'd lived through 2003 years of very slow advancement of civilization (handicapped a great deal by the Church and its Inquisitions), he'd probably just be a lonely (you'd stop wasting time on friends and wives after the 5th or 6th set of them died) old guy wandering around, muttering "Please kill me" in ancient Greek.
[A rise in average global temperature] is what is unprecedented in the history of mankind.
Are you trolling, or are you really that ignorant? Do you have any idea how old the Earth is, or even how long "mankind" has been kicking around? This is not "unprecedented," it's not the last time it will happen, and it might not even be our fault. And you're advocating pouring billions of dollars into.... into what, exactly? Just something, eh? Would that make you feel better? Just knowing that someone, somewhere, was spending a pile of money doing something to try to stop whatever it is that's happening, even though it's a well-known natural cycle in the planet's life?
With the right investing you could live nicely on [$1 million] for the rest of your life without working.
I disagree. While one might be able to get by on $1 million, they certainly wouldn't be "living nicely." Let's do the math.
You invest that $1 million. You've quit your job, and the million is all you've got, so you're not going to invest it in anything risky. You tuck it into a nice little balanced mutual fund that consistenly yields about 7%. So every year, you get $70,000. Now, you want your nest egg to keep up with inflation, don't you? So you want it to grow by 3% per year, meaning you've got to leave $30,000 of that dough in your investment. So that leaves you with $40,000.
Of course, that's income, and Uncle Sam wants his cut. He takes his $15,000 (conservative estimate), leaving you with $25,000.
Now, praytell, how does one "live nicely" on $25,000/year?
This should come as a very harsh wakeup call for all you techies out there squandering your money, living under false delusions about investing. You will need a LARGE amount of money to retire.
One final depressing note: the numbers I just gave you sound bleak, but remember, they're in today's dollars. If you won't be retiring for another 20 years, that million will buy you even less, because the $25,000 cut you get to keep of it every year will buy you a helluvalot less in 20 years than it would today. Figure on aiming for $4 million just to pay your bills 20 years from now.
IANAL, but I've read the act several times, as well as several interpretations, and I think you're right. The article makes his critical, legal flaw right here:
Every song on my hard drive comes from a CD in my collection or from a CD in someone else's collection which I have found on a P2P network. In either case I will have made the copy and will claim safe harbor under the "private copying" provision. If you find that song in my shared folder and make a copy this will also be "private copying."
This is making a "copy of a copy," and is NOT covered by the Act. The Act very specifically says that you may make a copy of my original CD, but NOT from a copy of my CD. For example, if I were to make a copy of a CD I bought (to protect the original), I am free to lend you the original for you to copy, but if I were to give you my copy to copy, that would constitute infringement.
The.mp3 files on my hard drive are NOT the "originals," by any interpretation. They are copies. Therefore, even though you are grabbing them off my hard drive yourself, you are grabbing copies and not the original, and therefore this is NOT protected by the Act.
Look, the Beatles were arguably the greatest band ever. Their music is amazing.
Why do people worship old pop bands as if they were some untouchable example of musical perfection, while simultaneously scorning the modern day equivalents? The Beatles were nothing more than a 60's N'Sync. They were "Pop" music. Actually, with them bursting onto the scene, the term "pop" music was pretty much coined, just for them.
They were entertaining to listen to, but so is Britney, sometimes. Let's keep some perspective here.
While I concur that "Trinity and Beyond" is a very fascinating and compelling movie, I must jump in and correct your number.
The Hiroshima bomb was barely a kiloton.
You're way off. It was 15 kilotons. Still "tiny" compared to thermonuclear (hydrogen) bombs, but obviously much, much more than "barely a kiloton."
Also, you refer to "atomic, hydrogen, and thermonuclear bombs." I may be mistaken, but I believe that a hydrogen bomb is a "thermonuclear" bomb. They're the same thing. Atomic == Fission. Hydrogen == Fusion == Thermonuclear.
Lucky I am Canadian...and pay that fee with my blank cds thats lets me more legally do that.
WRONG. The CD levy in Canada does not make it legal for you to download and burn music. It only makes it legal for you to borrow a CD from a friend and copy it. It does not extend do copies (meaning you cannot copy a copy - you have to borrow the original and copy it). And you have to do the copying yourself - your friend is not allowed to copy one of his CDs for you and give you the copy.
The RIAA is launching these lawsuits, not the RIAA. This is like saying that Microsoft wants to know which of its programs are most frequently pirated, therefore it is hypocritical of the BSA to try and stop software piracy. Not quite.
Also, this could turn out to be somewhat of a "self-fulfilling prophesy." People tend to search out and download the latest tunes they hear on the radio, so the radio plays more of those tunes, so more people share and download them, so the radio plays....
... that there was some kind of "-1 Self Righteous/Redundant/Pedantic" hybrid mod.
It seems that whenever someone says "stealing mp3's," someone else jumps out and says "It's not 'stealing!'"
Notice they don't deny that it's wrong, or that it's taking something without paying for it, or acquiring something they didn't earn and don't deserve - they just want some props for picking up on a ridiculously trivial legal technicality.
It just gets a little tired, seeing the same stupid thing, over and over, you know? You see a few do the same thing with the word "pirate", too. And of course, there's the devoted fanatics over the semantics of the "hacker/cracker" pair. It never ceases to amaze me how every time one of them posts, they seem to sincerely believe they're the first person to ever try to explain the difference.
The bottom line is that these people really have nothing of substance to offer regarding the underlying debate, so they resort to ranting about the language. In my book, they're just one small step above spelling/grammar flames.
I think you're missing the point. Imagine you're living in a 10,000 sq. ft. mansion with 2 butlers, a cook, and a 26 year old supermodel wife. You come home from the office around 8:00 PM driving your Porsche 911 Turbo, pull into your 8-car garage and park between the Beamer and the Caddy, then sit down to a nice meal. After supper, you've got a teleconference in the study with the board members and 3 VC investors looking for an explanation of a recent dip in share value. You want to wrap up the meeting quickly, because you and your lovely wife are leaving on a chartered flight for a 5-day vacation in Italy to see her family.
Now, at exactly what f***ing point do you think Joe Billionaire is going to sit down and search Kazaa for the latest Madonna tripe? What in the hell makes you think he just doesn't hand his son a fistful of hundreds and ask him to pick up the CD the next time he's in town (along with a few for himself, of course)?
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, the letter linked certainly is informative and damning, and you are correct, there are some big signatures at the bottom, but in the corporate world, it all means nothing. If you're so sure about it, and want to stick up for the GPL, then sue them. Us ranting about it here won't do anything at all. Even a letter to some mailing list, signed by some big names in Linux, means absolutely nothing to them, because there are no consequences to LinkSys for ignoring them. And that's the bottom line.
... what if a company contacts out some aspects of their firmware design to a third party, but the parent company themselves uses GPL'd software. Say I hire AcmeSoft to write a driver for me for a router I'm making. AcmeSoft delivers some statically-linked binaries to me (but no source code), which I statically link into the GPL'd source code and in-house source code that my guys have written. Now, I make all that GPL software and my in-house software freely available, but I can't make the source for that driver from AcmeSoft available, because I don't have it. While technically, I'm in violation of the GPL, but if I've done all I can (short of pressuring AcmeSoft for source (which they won't give me) or ditching Linux altogether), am I really such a bad guy?
Responding to the accusations would cost money. Ignoring them, at this point, won't cost them a cent, because it's just a bunch of guys bitching and moaning on a mailing list, and here on Slashdot. Until someone with the stones (and the coin to back it up) steps up to the plate with some legal papers, absolutely nothing is going to happen.
That said, I have a question
In the US, a company can fire anyone it wants, for whatever reason it wants, except for the following:
ANY OTHER REASON is perfectly fair game.
Uh, how in the heck did this get modded "Insightful???" What if the answer to "how many downloads" is "100,000?" The kid was just screwed out of a hundred grand, and while a few people like it (0.0000167% of the population), it's obviously not enough to justify a "World Tour." How many of those people would shell out cash and show up at a concert, anyway? After all, they wouldn't even pony up a few bucks for the CD - they downloaded it instead, remember?
And exactly who is going to pay for this "world tour?" Will the proceeds cover the expenses?
A good artist will never starve because his art is priceless.
LOL! That's a nice, warm, fuzzy sentiment, but "priceless" music doesn't pay the rent, kid. Royalties do.
I respectfully hope that you're doing better in your other classes, and strongly urge you to stay in school.
only in supporting artists conforming to some corporate identity.
Uh, which "corporate identity" does Marilyn Manson "conform" to?
sue poor people who can't afford to defend themselves in court.
... look how poor I am! Can't you let it go this time?'
I didn't realize being poor was a license to ignore the law. How about all those dirt-poor Chinese people selling pirated DVDs on the streets of Beijing? "Oh leave them alone - they're poor!"
"Yes, officer, I know I'm driving drunk, but I have a copy of last year's income tax return right here
I wonder if they tell the kids the artists are starving since the RIAA gives them $0.00000083 for every CD sold.
You wonder if they lie to the students? Why would they do that? I don't think schools are in the habit of lying in their Civics classes. History and Science, maybe, but not Civics, AFAIK.
Unless of course they're one of the many artists who happen to sell more than a million albums. Not to mention publicity royalties, concert and merchandising revenues, airtime royalties, shilling for Nike, etc.
Am I supposed to feel sorry for J. Lo? How do you explain how even a mediocre artist like Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, or whatever he's called this week is so stinkin' rich?
You mean like book publishers? Boycott books! Picket in front of libraries! Take down the literacy cartel!
There's nothing wrong with being compensated for providing a service. Artists are (arguably) good at making music, not distributing it. The suits are good at distributing and marketing it, but not making it. So they get together and everybody wins. What's evil about that?
The answer is obvious.
You're right, it is.
It's all about money.
Uh... what!?!?
The "obvious" answer as to why they pursue these cases civilly instead of criminally is because no crime has been committed. Copyright infringement is not a criminal offense - it's a civil one.
Your answer would sell more papers though. Congrats for that. You might want to take off the tinfoil hat for the photo though.
Did you live with each of those girlfriends for 40 years, spawn several children with each, then go through a 3-month long bout of depression after each one died of old age while you remained relatively spry?
I think you underestimate just how long 2000 years is. That's a lot of lifetimes to live through.
So, a citizen of the Roman Empire circa 0 A.D. wouldn't be a bit surprised at the world of 2003? In any sphere; not just science, but art, politics, culture, etc.?
I'm sure he would be, if you just instantaneously picked him up and plopped him down somewhere in the here and now. But if he'd lived through 2003 years of very slow advancement of civilization (handicapped a great deal by the Church and its Inquisitions), he'd probably just be a lonely (you'd stop wasting time on friends and wives after the 5th or 6th set of them died) old guy wandering around, muttering "Please kill me" in ancient Greek.
[A rise in average global temperature] is what is unprecedented in the history of mankind.
.... into what, exactly? Just something, eh? Would that make you feel better? Just knowing that someone, somewhere, was spending a pile of money doing something to try to stop whatever it is that's happening, even though it's a well-known natural cycle in the planet's life?
Are you trolling, or are you really that ignorant? Do you have any idea how old the Earth is, or even how long "mankind" has been kicking around? This is not "unprecedented," it's not the last time it will happen, and it might not even be our fault. And you're advocating pouring billions of dollars into
Do you know what percentage of our atmosphere is CO2? Less than one half of one percent. 0.4%.
I've read credible studies that conclude that we are not generating ENOUGH CO2.
The actions you propose are EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE, and based on logic that is sketchy, at best.
With the right investing you could live nicely on [$1 million] for the rest of your life without working.
I disagree. While one might be able to get by on $1 million, they certainly wouldn't be "living nicely." Let's do the math.
You invest that $1 million. You've quit your job, and the million is all you've got, so you're not going to invest it in anything risky. You tuck it into a nice little balanced mutual fund that consistenly yields about 7%. So every year, you get $70,000. Now, you want your nest egg to keep up with inflation, don't you? So you want it to grow by 3% per year, meaning you've got to leave $30,000 of that dough in your investment. So that leaves you with $40,000.
Of course, that's income, and Uncle Sam wants his cut. He takes his $15,000 (conservative estimate), leaving you with $25,000.
Now, praytell, how does one "live nicely" on $25,000/year?
This should come as a very harsh wakeup call for all you techies out there squandering your money, living under false delusions about investing. You will need a LARGE amount of money to retire.
One final depressing note: the numbers I just gave you sound bleak, but remember, they're in today's dollars. If you won't be retiring for another 20 years, that million will buy you even less, because the $25,000 cut you get to keep of it every year will buy you a helluvalot less in 20 years than it would today. Figure on aiming for $4 million just to pay your bills 20 years from now.
Cars, movie theaters, gas stations, airplanes, and now hospitals. Perhaps the list of where you CAN use your cellphone would be shorter?
IANAL, but I've read the act several times, as well as several interpretations, and I think you're right. The article makes his critical, legal flaw right here:
.mp3 files on my hard drive are NOT the "originals," by any interpretation. They are copies. Therefore, even though you are grabbing them off my hard drive yourself, you are grabbing copies and not the original, and therefore this is NOT protected by the Act.
Every song on my hard drive comes from a CD in my collection or from a CD in someone else's collection which I have found on a P2P network. In either case I will have made the copy and will claim safe harbor under the "private copying" provision. If you find that song in my shared folder and make a copy this will also be "private copying."
This is making a "copy of a copy," and is NOT covered by the Act. The Act very specifically says that you may make a copy of my original CD, but NOT from a copy of my CD. For example, if I were to make a copy of a CD I bought (to protect the original), I am free to lend you the original for you to copy, but if I were to give you my copy to copy, that would constitute infringement.
The
Any other legal novices wanna chime in?
Being that the last letter in RIAA stands for "America",
Which one stands for "Artists?" Hmm, interesting. How about the MPAA? Surely one of those A's stands for "Artists," no?
Then why do they keep mentioning them in the commercials? <MAUDE_FLANDERS>Won't somebody puh-leeeease think of the Artists!<MAUDE_FLANDERS>
Look, the Beatles were arguably the greatest band ever. Their music is amazing.
Why do people worship old pop bands as if they were some untouchable example of musical perfection, while simultaneously scorning the modern day equivalents? The Beatles were nothing more than a 60's N'Sync. They were "Pop" music. Actually, with them bursting onto the scene, the term "pop" music was pretty much coined, just for them.
They were entertaining to listen to, but so is Britney, sometimes. Let's keep some perspective here.
While I concur that "Trinity and Beyond" is a very fascinating and compelling movie, I must jump in and correct your number.
The Hiroshima bomb was barely a kiloton.
You're way off. It was 15 kilotons. Still "tiny" compared to thermonuclear (hydrogen) bombs, but obviously much, much more than "barely a kiloton."
Also, you refer to "atomic, hydrogen, and thermonuclear bombs." I may be mistaken, but I believe that a hydrogen bomb is a "thermonuclear" bomb. They're the same thing. Atomic == Fission. Hydrogen == Fusion == Thermonuclear.
Lucky I am Canadian...and pay that fee with my blank cds thats lets me more legally do that.
WRONG. The CD levy in Canada does not make it legal for you to download and burn music. It only makes it legal for you to borrow a CD from a friend and copy it. It does not extend do copies (meaning you cannot copy a copy - you have to borrow the original and copy it). And you have to do the copying yourself - your friend is not allowed to copy one of his CDs for you and give you the copy.
Reference: http://neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtml
The RIAA is launching these lawsuits, not the RIAA.
Doh! That second "RIAA" should be "labels". I don't even think "Preview" would have helped me there, my head just wasn't on straight.
The RIAA is launching these lawsuits, not the RIAA. This is like saying that Microsoft wants to know which of its programs are most frequently pirated, therefore it is hypocritical of the BSA to try and stop software piracy. Not quite.
....
Also, this could turn out to be somewhat of a "self-fulfilling prophesy." People tend to search out and download the latest tunes they hear on the radio, so the radio plays more of those tunes, so more people share and download them, so the radio plays
... that there was some kind of "-1 Self Righteous/Redundant/Pedantic" hybrid mod.
It seems that whenever someone says "stealing mp3's," someone else jumps out and says "It's not 'stealing!'"
Notice they don't deny that it's wrong, or that it's taking something without paying for it, or acquiring something they didn't earn and don't deserve - they just want some props for picking up on a ridiculously trivial legal technicality.
It just gets a little tired, seeing the same stupid thing, over and over, you know? You see a few do the same thing with the word "pirate", too. And of course, there's the devoted fanatics over the semantics of the "hacker/cracker" pair. It never ceases to amaze me how every time one of them posts, they seem to sincerely believe they're the first person to ever try to explain the difference.
The bottom line is that these people really have nothing of substance to offer regarding the underlying debate, so they resort to ranting about the language. In my book, they're just one small step above spelling/grammar flames.
I think you're missing the point. Imagine you're living in a 10,000 sq. ft. mansion with 2 butlers, a cook, and a 26 year old supermodel wife. You come home from the office around 8:00 PM driving your Porsche 911 Turbo, pull into your 8-car garage and park between the Beamer and the Caddy, then sit down to a nice meal. After supper, you've got a teleconference in the study with the board members and 3 VC investors looking for an explanation of a recent dip in share value. You want to wrap up the meeting quickly, because you and your lovely wife are leaving on a chartered flight for a 5-day vacation in Italy to see her family.
Now, at exactly what f***ing point do you think Joe Billionaire is going to sit down and search Kazaa for the latest Madonna tripe? What in the hell makes you think he just doesn't hand his son a fistful of hundreds and ask him to pick up the CD the next time he's in town (along with a few for himself, of course)?
You think people downloading music are doing it becaues they "need" to?
You think people who have amassed the financial resources to confront the RIAA have time to sit around and download music? Try again.