Not just from this case, but from the whole parade of file-sharing stories:
(1)If you're going to illegally download music, be prepared, able and willing to pay the RIAA settlement should you get caught. Chances are that you won't, but the possibility is always there. (Much like speeding -- everyone does it, you will rarely be caught if you do, but don't bitch when you get nailed and have to pay the fine.)
(2)Likewise, don't use your home PC or work laptop, or connect in any way that is traceable to you as an individual user. Glom onto some free wi-fi connections somewhere to do your dirty deeds, don't use the same one twice, and buy cheap, used, non-state-of-the-art-but functional laptops and swap/discard them often.
(3)Don't keep any downloaded tracks on any computer you own. Put them on an iPod, store backups on a flash drive or portable HDD; in short don't use anything that can't be easily "lost" in a public trash can somewhere if need be.
(4)Above all, if you're caught, don't even think of fighting it in court. Your grandiose dreams of beating the system and fighting what you may feel is unjust, outdated, and conifscatory copyright law are just that -- dreams. Don't think that a judge or jury is going to see things "your way" -- they are there to uphold the law, not change it. Don't expect them to understand or sympathize with your arcane theories and arguments. You can stand on your beliefs and fight on principle, but only if you are willing to get slapped down ever harder when you lose (and you will). Remember what the great philosopher Zonker Harris once said about using pot: "It may be right, or it may be wrong, but it sure is illegal."
(5)Most of all, if you are not willing to take the risk, or go through all the above, then just do without. There is plenty of music around that will not land you in a courtroom. Buy used CDs when you can afford them. Swap tracks with friends offline (not nearly as traceable as downloading.) Do business with DRM-free music sites and discover very talented artists who simply don't have a "name" that you recognize -- you might just find some little-known nuggets of musical gold there. Go to live concerts of local bands. See if there are any local college or alternative radio stations that play something other than the usual mass market crapola. Or learn to play an instrument and make your own music, by yourself and with friends. There should be plenty of music to keep you entertained and occupied without having to grab every over-produced, over-hyped, under-talented piece of popular dreck around.
So, this means that in the pre-digital era, I was supposed to have purchased an LP, cassette, 8-track, and reel-to-reel of each album, just to cover all my bases? Gosh and golly darn, I had no idea that copying my LPs to cassettes back then to listen to in the car was stealing! I'll be happy to hand over all those illegal copies to ya, just as soon as I can figure out which landfill they went into years ago....
I'd be the last to defend this wacko in general, and I can't read his pea brain to fathom his motives, but when dealing with images from websites that are to be used as some sort of evidence in a lawsuit or other court filing, it may be that simply providing a URL to the images has its potential pitfalls. Websites and links, especially for pr0n, come and go, and it would be pretty frustrating to provide the URLs, then to find that by the time someone gets around to viewing them, there's nothing but a 404 or some abandoned domain holding page there. Sure, maybe there's a cache of it on Google or Wayback or somewhere, but maybe there isn't. Then you have to try to see if there is a cache of the page sitting on some other server somewhere, and it gets more complicated.
Personally, if I had a legal case that depended on some image or text on a website, I'd rely not on an image, transcript, or URL reference, but would want to take a screenshot of a browser displaying the page in question, as well as the date and time stamp. That would seem to be of far more evidentiary value in the event that the site gets nuked in an attempt to cover someone's ass.
(And yes, I realize that last sentence left y'all wide open to make some humorous gay pr0n reference....have at it.)
Assume for the moment that the intended (as opposed to publicly stated) purpose of all those cameras is to prevent/fight crime. Even if so, any crime fighting tool is only as good as the people who use them. If you have a police force that is not very efficient at preventing or solving crimes to begin with, adding more equipment is probably not going to significantly improve their batting average.
Security cameras are not terribly useful (if at all) for preventing crime. They may be one potential tool (among many) to help solve a crime that has already occurred, and effect an arrest. But even that is problematic -- it assumes that the crime takes place in front of a camera, and that the perpetrator is sufficiently identifiable in the image, to the exclusion of others. If the image is blurry, or the thug wears dark glasses and a ski cap, or is only seen from the back or with poor lighting, you're SOL. Only if the criminal has something uniquely identifiable about him or her (an obvious or unusual physical defect or mannerism, a piece of clothing with a logo or writing that somehow narrows down the possibilities) is the image going to be of any use at all. Even then, it is not likely to be a case-breaking "smoking gun" piece of evidence (only on L&O or CSI do such lucky breaks tend to happen), but merely one small piece of evidence among many that, cumulatively, may be enough to convince a jury of someone's guilt. The image can sometimes give police a better idea of what happened and how it all went down -- it rarely is going to give them a better idea of who did it above and beyond what clues can be gained from any typical eyewitness' generic description (approximate height and weight, race, build,, sex, etc.)
Anyway, how many of those cameras may be decoys, or if working are not contantly and actively monitored? The only true benefit of security cameras is p.r. -- it gives the generally ignorant public a false sense of security.
This situation, more than any so far, blatantly exposes the true motives of the RIAA. They never intended for any of these cases to actually go to trial. The whole effort is a shakedown, a scare tactic to quickly extort some cash through intimidation and fear and hopefully provide a deterrent to others not to infringe. If they wanted to, they could build more solid cases with more convincing evidence, but that would take far more time, effort, and expense than they are willing to put into it. Believe it or not, their legal eagles are probably involved in far weightier and more important matters than suing a handful of file sharers. To build a case that will hold up in court for each and every one of these people would be extremely cost-ineffective.
To me, this is very much like credit card companies or other creditors who threaten to sue for collection of very small debts. They don't want to actually go to court to get that couple of thousand bucks you owe -- they know that the expenses of doing so would far outweigh the debt. (And getting a judgement is one thing -- actually collecting the money is another.) They merely hope that having a deputy show up at your front door with some scary looking legal papers in hand will be intimidating enough to motivate you to somehow scrape up some dough to settle the case.
Is a store legally allowed to make you show your receipt or look through your bags?
Dunno about the legality, but it's a pretty useless practice. I've been in stores where it is about 10-12 feet from register to exit, they see you paying at the register, they see you walk directly from the register to the exit, and then they still want to see your receipt. And most of the time, no one is matching up the receipt to the merchandise anyway -- they just look it over and then send you on. And some of them use that ubiquitous yellow highlighter to make a little mark on it -- how THAT accomplishes anything, I don't know. (Boy, that's a pretty complicated job -- standing at the door making little yellow marks on receipts -- don't imagine you need an advanced degree for that one...)
A retailer pushing unneeded, unnecessary, and overpriced accessories on a customer? Surely, this is a new tactic that has never been attempted before in the history of commerce.....
(....although some would say that's 2 minds more than I actually possess. But I digress...)
I applaud any successful circumvention of anything that restricts information to those who want to see it. But at the same time I'm starting to think that we shouldn't be shouting from the housetops about it -- this kind of publicly announced hack is just fuel for the fire to the folks that would ban all even remotely sexually material from the Net. It just gives them the chance to say "well, see, filters don't work worth a damn -- therefore, we must make it illegal for any explicit material to be on the Internet." Can't you hackers just keep your little mouths shut, let the moralists THINK that the filters work (while you quietly and discreetly circulate the hack), and let their ignorance be our bliss?
There already are legal procedures in place to balance personal privacy and security (keeping any miscellaneous yahoo from accessing your info for wrongdoing) with the needs of law enforcement. If someone has sufficient evidence that a particular domain holder is up to no good, then they can go before a judge and get a court order for the information to be released. That is how it is SUPPOSED to work in our system. If they don't have sufficient evidence to start with, then it is the proverbial fishing expedition and should not be allowed. It shouldn't be that hard -- after all, if their website is accessible, and clearly is in violation of some law, that should already be sufficient grounds and a slam dunk to get the info. Almost all registrars provide private domain registration, but also will happily cough up the goods if handed a legal order of some sort. That's the balance. Prosecutors can easily get the legal justification for what they want if they would bother to do so -- they just increasingly don't want to bother.
Unfortunately, in this day and age of warrentless wiretapping and the like by the Feds, I imagine investigators at every level are starting to press for wider powers and latitude in this area. They probably think "the Big Boys(TM) don't have to jump through all these hoops, so why should we have to?" Just another way in which the Bushies are cultivating a culture of "anything goes" when fighting the bad guys, and slowly eroding respect for the priciples and checks and balances that have protected us for so long.
I think what he's saying is that coupons.com has no standing under the DMCA as they are not the copyright holder of the images on the coupons. If the coupon is for a Proctor & Gamble product, then P&G could use the DMCA against him, but not the distributor of those coupons.
But then, if the RIAA, who don't own a single copyright to any of the music in your shared public files, can sue you in proxy for the actual rights holders, and get away with it, then I suppose it wouldn't be too much farther of a stretch for coupons.com to act on behalf of the holders of copyrights to material on their coupons. At least, one makes about as much sense (i.e., close to zero) as the other.
Y'all are missing the real Catch-22 here. How could a passport substitute for Real ID? A passport is a federal document. Once Real ID is in effect, no doubt you will need one to obtain or renew a passport, no? So if you have no Real ID, you can't use your passport instead, because you will need the ID to get or renew the passport. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
This battle isn't over yet by far, because in addition to the few states that have explicitly refused to participate, many others are discussing it in their legislatures, and some of those are leaning towards saying "drop dead" to the Feds as well. Sooner or later, we will reach a critical mass of states that represent a significant enough percentage of the U.S. population (and, hence, of voters) that would be classified as second-class citizens, and that will put the kibosh on the whole mess. I just hope those legislatures have some backbone....
You can keep up with the current status of Real ID legislation in the various states at the Real Nightmare website.
The interesting thing in your scenario is that you knew enough about computers to be completely knowledgeable about open wireless connections and trojans but failed to secure access to your network and let someone else cheat the system by using your Internet from another residence.
Knowing and acting are very different things. How many people do you know who were more than aware of the need (and methods) to constantly and systematically bck up their data, then cried boo-hoo when they lost it in a crash?
I'm pretty sure both Stewart and Colbert have previously stated that they were pleased to see clips of their shows on YouTube, as it could only generate publicity and drive more viewers to the show. Unfortunately, neither gentleman holds the copyright to the shows, so their opinions might not carry much weight in this case. They may be the stars in front of the camera, but they are still basically employees.
College students are an inherently problematic target for what the **AA's are doing. One, they are not yet "mature" enough to "conform" to the adult status quo -- that usually takes place later on when paychecks, taxes, and family brings them back to Earth. Two, they are sowing their wild oats and see file-sharing as a minor pecadillo (if they see it as wrong at all) on a par with using their fake ID to drink when they're 19. Finally, they are still much more idealistic and full of that youthful vim and vigor that makes them believe they can change the world -- they haven't yet become jaded enough to just throw up their hands at injustice and take that "well, what can you do/that's the way the world works/you can't fight city hall/etc." attitude. If the "syndicate" were smart, they'd stick to extorting single mothers, low-income workers, children, the sick, and the elderly.
For all my life, I've noted that on J&J products that used the red cross logo, there was also a very explicit statement that the symbol did not indicate any connection with ARC. Corporations don't put such disclaimers on their packaging for fun -- there must have been some legal decision in the past that demanded it.
Once that threshold is crossed buying a physical DVD will be like buying a 45 record is today. Sure, you might know a place to get one but you have never visited the store.
I don't think the market for physical media will ever totally die out, or atrophy as quickly as some believe. Some people in this world actually prefer to own something more tangible than 1's and 0's on a hard drive -- something they can hold in their hand and put on a shelf -- something they can feel and see. That is, for example, why I believe e-books will not be dominant for a long, long time -- there is a certain pleasure in being able to hold something you own in your hand rather than merely possessing it in the abstract.
But then, I'm almost 50, so I have that "old fart" point of view...
I really think the solution is for media companies to limit what reaches the digital domain. You want a blockbuster movie the makes 100-200 million? Show it in theaters only. No DVD's at least for years. Then maybe capitalize on a new audience with DVDs.
You ignore the fact that for many movies (the non-"blockbusters" FTMP), most of the profit ultimately comes from DVD sales and not theaters. Maybe a Harry Potter movie or The Bourne Ultimatum could be milked for a while in theaters only, but most movies cease making any meaningful profit pretty quickly after being released.
Today you can download a DVD rip of a movie from a screener the day before the movie shows up in the theater. They are never going to be able to lock that down so the only answer is to not have the problem at all. Camera copies? That is already getting locked down. It is just reality that you can't secure digital copies and you can't trust users to not redistribute.
Nor can you trust technicians or other crew members seeking to make some extra dough to spirit out a copy of a completed (or close to final cut) flick and sell it to a DVD mill. With most editing and post-production work being done digitally, it's become easier, not harder. (Which would you rather try to sneak past the guards -- a disc or small portable HDD, or several reels of 35mm or 70mm film in cans?) And you can't eliminate screeners -- movies often rise or fall with the critics, and they have to have some way of seeing the film to hype it and tantalize potential viewers. You can't have all the critics, regardless of geography or logistics, physically travel to a secured theater to preview the film.
Any of you older geeks remember when the Motel 6 chain (way before Tom Bodett and "we'll leave the light on for you") used to have coin-operated TVs? Really -- you put a quarter in the slot, and it worked for an hour or something. Well, this sounds like a technology that the media barons would love to bring back -- every time you want to watch a TV show, put a coin in the slot. Every time you want to watch a DVD or listen to a CD -- plop in another quarter.
Look, the bottom line on this is...I can understand media providers wanting to limit file sharing -- I may or may not agree with it, but I can understand it. I can understand them wanting to bring down the DVD mills that pump out umpteen pirated copies of the latest Hollywood crap (though not their wanting to arrest a teenager for taping a 20-second clip with her camcorder). But once I have paid for the content, and it is in my home or at least in my personal possession, I should be able to do pretty much any damn thing I please with it, as long as I am not distributing copies, either through the Net or at the local flea market. If I want to make a backup copy, I should be able to. If I want to format-shift to enhance or simplify my personal use of the media, fine. If I want to rip some movies onto my laptop to watch on a plane or in a Holiday Inn on vacation, that should be perfectly kosher. The line should be rock solid between copying for distribution and copying for personal use.
Problem is, the same technology that enables copying or format shifting for personal use also enables mass copyright infringment, if one is inclined to do so. They know that machines and software don't care about why they are being used -- there's no way to tell a box o'electronics that this copy is OK, but that one isn't -- you can't program a machine to recognize intent. So, the only solution in the eyes of the corporate world is to make ALL copying and format shifting both illegal and as close to impossible as they can.
Slashdot Mirror
Not just from this case, but from the whole parade of file-sharing stories:
(1)If you're going to illegally download music, be prepared, able and willing to pay the RIAA settlement should you get caught. Chances are that you won't, but the possibility is always there. (Much like speeding -- everyone does it, you will rarely be caught if you do, but don't bitch when you get nailed and have to pay the fine.)
(2)Likewise, don't use your home PC or work laptop, or connect in any way that is traceable to you as an individual user. Glom onto some free wi-fi connections somewhere to do your dirty deeds, don't use the same one twice, and buy cheap, used, non-state-of-the-art-but functional laptops and swap/discard them often.
(3)Don't keep any downloaded tracks on any computer you own. Put them on an iPod, store backups on a flash drive or portable HDD; in short don't use anything that can't be easily "lost" in a public trash can somewhere if need be.
(4)Above all, if you're caught, don't even think of fighting it in court. Your grandiose dreams of beating the system and fighting what you may feel is unjust, outdated, and conifscatory copyright law are just that -- dreams. Don't think that a judge or jury is going to see things "your way" -- they are there to uphold the law, not change it. Don't expect them to understand or sympathize with your arcane theories and arguments. You can stand on your beliefs and fight on principle, but only if you are willing to get slapped down ever harder when you lose (and you will). Remember what the great philosopher Zonker Harris once said about using pot: "It may be right, or it may be wrong, but it sure is illegal."
(5)Most of all, if you are not willing to take the risk, or go through all the above, then just do without. There is plenty of music around that will not land you in a courtroom. Buy used CDs when you can afford them. Swap tracks with friends offline (not nearly as traceable as downloading.) Do business with DRM-free music sites and discover very talented artists who simply don't have a "name" that you recognize -- you might just find some little-known nuggets of musical gold there. Go to live concerts of local bands. See if there are any local college or alternative radio stations that play something other than the usual mass market crapola. Or learn to play an instrument and make your own music, by yourself and with friends. There should be plenty of music to keep you entertained and occupied without having to grab every over-produced, over-hyped, under-talented piece of popular dreck around.
So, this means that in the pre-digital era, I was supposed to have purchased an LP, cassette, 8-track, and reel-to-reel of each album, just to cover all my bases? Gosh and golly darn, I had no idea that copying my LPs to cassettes back then to listen to in the car was stealing! I'll be happy to hand over all those illegal copies to ya, just as soon as I can figure out which landfill they went into years ago....
I'd be the last to defend this wacko in general, and I can't read his pea brain to fathom his motives, but when dealing with images from websites that are to be used as some sort of evidence in a lawsuit or other court filing, it may be that simply providing a URL to the images has its potential pitfalls. Websites and links, especially for pr0n, come and go, and it would be pretty frustrating to provide the URLs, then to find that by the time someone gets around to viewing them, there's nothing but a 404 or some abandoned domain holding page there. Sure, maybe there's a cache of it on Google or Wayback or somewhere, but maybe there isn't. Then you have to try to see if there is a cache of the page sitting on some other server somewhere, and it gets more complicated.
Personally, if I had a legal case that depended on some image or text on a website, I'd rely not on an image, transcript, or URL reference, but would want to take a screenshot of a browser displaying the page in question, as well as the date and time stamp. That would seem to be of far more evidentiary value in the event that the site gets nuked in an attempt to cover someone's ass.
(And yes, I realize that last sentence left y'all wide open to make some humorous gay pr0n reference....have at it.)
Assume for the moment that the intended (as opposed to publicly stated) purpose of all those cameras is to prevent/fight crime. Even if so, any crime fighting tool is only as good as the people who use them. If you have a police force that is not very efficient at preventing or solving crimes to begin with, adding more equipment is probably not going to significantly improve their batting average.
Security cameras are not terribly useful (if at all) for preventing crime. They may be one potential tool (among many) to help solve a crime that has already occurred, and effect an arrest. But even that is problematic -- it assumes that the crime takes place in front of a camera, and that the perpetrator is sufficiently identifiable in the image, to the exclusion of others. If the image is blurry, or the thug wears dark glasses and a ski cap, or is only seen from the back or with poor lighting, you're SOL. Only if the criminal has something uniquely identifiable about him or her (an obvious or unusual physical defect or mannerism, a piece of clothing with a logo or writing that somehow narrows down the possibilities) is the image going to be of any use at all. Even then, it is not likely to be a case-breaking "smoking gun" piece of evidence (only on L&O or CSI do such lucky breaks tend to happen), but merely one small piece of evidence among many that, cumulatively, may be enough to convince a jury of someone's guilt. The image can sometimes give police a better idea of what happened and how it all went down -- it rarely is going to give them a better idea of who did it above and beyond what clues can be gained from any typical eyewitness' generic description (approximate height and weight, race, build,, sex, etc.)
Anyway, how many of those cameras may be decoys, or if working are not contantly and actively monitored? The only true benefit of security cameras is p.r. -- it gives the generally ignorant public a false sense of security.
I wonder how many people are going to see this and immediately think about that hot girl that lives upstairs?
Actually, I'm on the second floor, so she's downstairs. But otherwise....um....yeah.This situation, more than any so far, blatantly exposes the true motives of the RIAA. They never intended for any of these cases to actually go to trial. The whole effort is a shakedown, a scare tactic to quickly extort some cash through intimidation and fear and hopefully provide a deterrent to others not to infringe. If they wanted to, they could build more solid cases with more convincing evidence, but that would take far more time, effort, and expense than they are willing to put into it. Believe it or not, their legal eagles are probably involved in far weightier and more important matters than suing a handful of file sharers. To build a case that will hold up in court for each and every one of these people would be extremely cost-ineffective.
To me, this is very much like credit card companies or other creditors who threaten to sue for collection of very small debts. They don't want to actually go to court to get that couple of thousand bucks you owe -- they know that the expenses of doing so would far outweigh the debt. (And getting a judgement is one thing -- actually collecting the money is another.) They merely hope that having a deputy show up at your front door with some scary looking legal papers in hand will be intimidating enough to motivate you to somehow scrape up some dough to settle the case.
Is a store legally allowed to make you show your receipt or look through your bags?
Dunno about the legality, but it's a pretty useless practice. I've been in stores where it is about 10-12 feet from register to exit, they see you paying at the register, they see you walk directly from the register to the exit, and then they still want to see your receipt. And most of the time, no one is matching up the receipt to the merchandise anyway -- they just look it over and then send you on. And some of them use that ubiquitous yellow highlighter to make a little mark on it -- how THAT accomplishes anything, I don't know. (Boy, that's a pretty complicated job -- standing at the door making little yellow marks on receipts -- don't imagine you need an advanced degree for that one...)
A retailer pushing unneeded, unnecessary, and overpriced accessories on a customer? Surely, this is a new tactic that has never been attempted before in the history of commerce.....
(....although some would say that's 2 minds more than I actually possess. But I digress...)
I applaud any successful circumvention of anything that restricts information to those who want to see it. But at the same time I'm starting to think that we shouldn't be shouting from the housetops about it -- this kind of publicly announced hack is just fuel for the fire to the folks that would ban all even remotely sexually material from the Net. It just gives them the chance to say "well, see, filters don't work worth a damn -- therefore, we must make it illegal for any explicit material to be on the Internet." Can't you hackers just keep your little mouths shut, let the moralists THINK that the filters work (while you quietly and discreetly circulate the hack), and let their ignorance be our bliss?
There already are legal procedures in place to balance personal privacy and security (keeping any miscellaneous yahoo from accessing your info for wrongdoing) with the needs of law enforcement. If someone has sufficient evidence that a particular domain holder is up to no good, then they can go before a judge and get a court order for the information to be released. That is how it is SUPPOSED to work in our system. If they don't have sufficient evidence to start with, then it is the proverbial fishing expedition and should not be allowed. It shouldn't be that hard -- after all, if their website is accessible, and clearly is in violation of some law, that should already be sufficient grounds and a slam dunk to get the info. Almost all registrars provide private domain registration, but also will happily cough up the goods if handed a legal order of some sort. That's the balance. Prosecutors can easily get the legal justification for what they want if they would bother to do so -- they just increasingly don't want to bother.
Unfortunately, in this day and age of warrentless wiretapping and the like by the Feds, I imagine investigators at every level are starting to press for wider powers and latitude in this area. They probably think "the Big Boys(TM) don't have to jump through all these hoops, so why should we have to?" Just another way in which the Bushies are cultivating a culture of "anything goes" when fighting the bad guys, and slowly eroding respect for the priciples and checks and balances that have protected us for so long.
Treaty? We don' need no steenkin' treaties!
Ah......say no more.
I think what he's saying is that coupons.com has no standing under the DMCA as they are not the copyright holder of the images on the coupons. If the coupon is for a Proctor & Gamble product, then P&G could use the DMCA against him, but not the distributor of those coupons.
But then, if the RIAA, who don't own a single copyright to any of the music in your shared public files, can sue you in proxy for the actual rights holders, and get away with it, then I suppose it wouldn't be too much farther of a stretch for coupons.com to act on behalf of the holders of copyrights to material on their coupons. At least, one makes about as much sense (i.e., close to zero) as the other.
Reformatting the hard drive is a "routine maintenance measure?" Just what kinda hunk o'junk machine you got there, sport?
The key word in your statement is "now"......
Y'all are missing the real Catch-22 here. How could a passport substitute for Real ID? A passport is a federal document. Once Real ID is in effect, no doubt you will need one to obtain or renew a passport, no? So if you have no Real ID, you can't use your passport instead, because you will need the ID to get or renew the passport. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
This battle isn't over yet by far, because in addition to the few states that have explicitly refused to participate, many others are discussing it in their legislatures, and some of those are leaning towards saying "drop dead" to the Feds as well. Sooner or later, we will reach a critical mass of states that represent a significant enough percentage of the U.S. population (and, hence, of voters) that would be classified as second-class citizens, and that will put the kibosh on the whole mess. I just hope those legislatures have some backbone....
You can keep up with the current status of Real ID legislation in the various states at the Real Nightmare website.
The interesting thing in your scenario is that you knew enough about computers to be completely knowledgeable about open wireless connections and trojans but failed to secure access to your network and let someone else cheat the system by using your Internet from another residence.
Knowing and acting are very different things. How many people do you know who were more than aware of the need (and methods) to constantly and systematically bck up their data, then cried boo-hoo when they lost it in a crash?
I'm pretty sure both Stewart and Colbert have previously stated that they were pleased to see clips of their shows on YouTube, as it could only generate publicity and drive more viewers to the show. Unfortunately, neither gentleman holds the copyright to the shows, so their opinions might not carry much weight in this case. They may be the stars in front of the camera, but they are still basically employees.
I would rather have seen him dragged out of the White House in chains and prison stripes. But I'll accept this...
BTW, when is someone going to come up with a more original exit excuse than the standard "to spend more time with my family?"
Those of you in the so-called Western "democracies," save this article and read it often. For it is your future.
College students are an inherently problematic target for what the **AA's are doing. One, they are not yet "mature" enough to "conform" to the adult status quo -- that usually takes place later on when paychecks, taxes, and family brings them back to Earth. Two, they are sowing their wild oats and see file-sharing as a minor pecadillo (if they see it as wrong at all) on a par with using their fake ID to drink when they're 19. Finally, they are still much more idealistic and full of that youthful vim and vigor that makes them believe they can change the world -- they haven't yet become jaded enough to just throw up their hands at injustice and take that "well, what can you do/that's the way the world works/you can't fight city hall/etc." attitude. If the "syndicate" were smart, they'd stick to extorting single mothers, low-income workers, children, the sick, and the elderly.
For all my life, I've noted that on J&J products that used the red cross logo, there was also a very explicit statement that the symbol did not indicate any connection with ARC. Corporations don't put such disclaimers on their packaging for fun -- there must have been some legal decision in the past that demanded it.
Once that threshold is crossed buying a physical DVD will be like buying a 45 record is today. Sure, you might know a place to get one but you have never visited the store.
I don't think the market for physical media will ever totally die out, or atrophy as quickly as some believe. Some people in this world actually prefer to own something more tangible than 1's and 0's on a hard drive -- something they can hold in their hand and put on a shelf -- something they can feel and see. That is, for example, why I believe e-books will not be dominant for a long, long time -- there is a certain pleasure in being able to hold something you own in your hand rather than merely possessing it in the abstract.
But then, I'm almost 50, so I have that "old fart" point of view...
I really think the solution is for media companies to limit what reaches the digital domain. You want a blockbuster movie the makes 100-200 million? Show it in theaters only. No DVD's at least for years. Then maybe capitalize on a new audience with DVDs.
You ignore the fact that for many movies (the non-"blockbusters" FTMP), most of the profit ultimately comes from DVD sales and not theaters. Maybe a Harry Potter movie or The Bourne Ultimatum could be milked for a while in theaters only, but most movies cease making any meaningful profit pretty quickly after being released.
Today you can download a DVD rip of a movie from a screener the day before the movie shows up in the theater. They are never going to be able to lock that down so the only answer is to not have the problem at all. Camera copies? That is already getting locked down. It is just reality that you can't secure digital copies and you can't trust users to not redistribute.
Nor can you trust technicians or other crew members seeking to make some extra dough to spirit out a copy of a completed (or close to final cut) flick and sell it to a DVD mill. With most editing and post-production work being done digitally, it's become easier, not harder. (Which would you rather try to sneak past the guards -- a disc or small portable HDD, or several reels of 35mm or 70mm film in cans?) And you can't eliminate screeners -- movies often rise or fall with the critics, and they have to have some way of seeing the film to hype it and tantalize potential viewers. You can't have all the critics, regardless of geography or logistics, physically travel to a secured theater to preview the film.
Any of you older geeks remember when the Motel 6 chain (way before Tom Bodett and "we'll leave the light on for you") used to have coin-operated TVs? Really -- you put a quarter in the slot, and it worked for an hour or something. Well, this sounds like a technology that the media barons would love to bring back -- every time you want to watch a TV show, put a coin in the slot. Every time you want to watch a DVD or listen to a CD -- plop in another quarter.
Look, the bottom line on this is...I can understand media providers wanting to limit file sharing -- I may or may not agree with it, but I can understand it. I can understand them wanting to bring down the DVD mills that pump out umpteen pirated copies of the latest Hollywood crap (though not their wanting to arrest a teenager for taping a 20-second clip with her camcorder). But once I have paid for the content, and it is in my home or at least in my personal possession, I should be able to do pretty much any damn thing I please with it, as long as I am not distributing copies, either through the Net or at the local flea market. If I want to make a backup copy, I should be able to. If I want to format-shift to enhance or simplify my personal use of the media, fine. If I want to rip some movies onto my laptop to watch on a plane or in a Holiday Inn on vacation, that should be perfectly kosher. The line should be rock solid between copying for distribution and copying for personal use.
Problem is, the same technology that enables copying or format shifting for personal use also enables mass copyright infringment, if one is inclined to do so. They know that machines and software don't care about why they are being used -- there's no way to tell a box o'electronics that this copy is OK, but that one isn't -- you can't program a machine to recognize intent. So, the only solution in the eyes of the corporate world is to make ALL copying and format shifting both illegal and as close to impossible as they can.
Right, we're doomed.