Thing is, the content owners will have to provide the "fingerprint," or at least the video from which the "fingerprint" will be made. Now, while I can see the bigger corporations taking the time, effort and money to do this for current and recent popular TV shows and movies, a lot of the more obscure stuff is still going to be around. Part of the fun and appeal of sites like YouTube is getting a chance to see or re-see more esoteric (i.e., not very commercially viable) clips -- old TV shows with a cult following, but no chance of being released on DVD; old commercials for no longer existent products; continuity clips (promos, station IDs, etc.); old local newscasts, etc. The rights to all of these things are still held by someone, somewhere, but much of it will still be up on YT -- just the stuff that no one (except for the small base of fanatics that appreciate it) cares about. I mean, is someone going to "fingerprint" every episode of "Hello, Larry" or some equally stinkeroo old show just in case someone uploads a few episodes that they recorded on their Betamax way back when?
You guys are slipping -- it took a whole 42 minutes for someone to come up with the obvious punny analogous reference. Should have been the first post. Get on the ball!
The article mentions "for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain" and it also mentions it has to have a value over $1000. I'm thinking it is an attempt to clamp down on piraters, the true pirates, the ones that steal and sell other people's copyrighted material.
But doesn't the MAFIAA already assert that every song track distributed on P2P has a value of thousands of bucks? And couldn't they claim that avoiding spending $15 on a CD by downloading it instead constitutes "private financial gain?"
However, intent needs to be proven, and the fact that it is "attempting" and not "actually committing" the infringement brings up some problems. How do you prove it exactly?
I'm thinking this leads to the criminalization of any tool that could be used to potentially breach copyright -- ripping software, duplicators, software that strips DRM. After all, the concept of fair use is pretty much dead in the water, so if you possess any of these hardware or software tools, obviously your "intent" is to infringe, hmm?
Never try to analyze a proposed law in terms of what it actually says and the logical interpretations that follow -- always look at it in terms of extrapolating the most convoluted and contrived possible "interpretation" that smart and well-paid lawyers could derive to serve the needs of a big client with a crusade and very deep pockets.
I would think older, simpler rocket designs would be more applicable to the needs of an emerging space power or rogue terrorist group. Why not censor and confiscate information about the older Titans that carried Gemini? Or the Redstone, Atlas, or even Little Joe rockets that propelled the Mercury program? Sure, they don't have the glamour or cachet of the Saturn V (which was, and still is, a beautiful machine), but I'm sure there are a lot of old technical manuals and such about those floating around. (I live in Central Florida, and have been to many estate sales of former NASA employees where there are tons of such material available. And, yes, I have profited quite nicely from them on eBay, thank you.)
But this is a futile effort -- 40 years of being in the public domain is a bit much to reverse and cover up now. Why do so many people still think that you can rein this stuff in after it's already been so widely disseminated? Especially in the Internet era -- it's like when someone wants something taken down from YouTube or some other site when millions have already viewed and downloaded the file, and copies and copies of copies and copies of copies of copies are multiplying like bunnies through the "tubes." Nowadays, once something is "out there" it's OUT, and you can no more undo the damage than you can "unexplode" a bomb.
The face-to-face equivalent of this is: you purchase a $5 item. You hand the clerk a $20 bill, He/she proceeds to give you three 20's in change instead of 3 5's. If you choose to say nothing and keep the money, then (1)is that "wrong," and (2)is that theft?
For the most part, honesty and fair play normally demands that you point out the error. After all, anyone can make a mistake when distracted, and the bottom line is that money will come out of the (probably very poorly paid) employee's pocket when the register doesn't balance at the end of the day. For me, I would be honest most of the time, but it depends on how I've been treated in the course of the transaction. For example, once at a Wal-Mart the clerk clearly rang the purchase up wrong, and gave me about $10 too much in change. When I politely tried to point that out to her, she got very huffy and defensive and insisted that I didn't know what I was talking about and that she did not make such mistakes. Needless to say, I pocketed THAT Hamilton. But is that "theft?" The possibility never occurred to me, and I've never heard of anyone being arrested for getting too much change and not returning it.
I still don't understand where "Christian==Republican" and "Non-religion==Democrat" came from....and where do other religions such as Muslim fit in? Can they only be Democrats? Or don't they actually belong to any political parties in the US?
You do realize there are shades of gray and things don't fall into a black/white paradigm, right?
You do realize that I was sarcastically decpicting in an exaggerated manner the narrow-minded attitudes of certain groups here in the U.S. for satirical and humorous purposes, and not expressing my personal opinion, right?
The reality is, if you are really concerned about what children have access to on the Internet, you should be able to activate a setting the would lock access to a separate DNS service and a set series of IP addresses that only provides content that has be accessed, reviewed and approved as fit for children web sites, as the web sites would have to be applicable to each of the age ranges for children, obviously what is fit for a young adult is not suitable for a toddler.
Leaving aside the fruitless bang-your-head-against-the-wall argument that it is the parents' responsibility to decide what is "fit" for their own children....."accessed, reviewed and approved" by WHOM? If it's the current administration, I smelleth a "faith-based" outsourcing here to insure that kids can only view appropriate history ("America is a Christian nation"), science ("We didn't evolve from no monkeys") and morality ("sex=bad and dirty; abstinence=good") to insure that the little tykes grow up to be good Republican Christians (and not agnostic Democrats or Wiccan Libertarians).
We've seen ample evidence that an IP address does not necessarily correlate to an individual. In an actual court case, the RIAA would have to also show that copyrighted material exists on the computer in question (through an actual forensic search of the hard drive), that the files were placed in a shared folder that can be accessed by others, that those same files have been actually distributed to others through a P2P network, that no one else has access to the computer in question, that the person in question was actually the one who placed the material there and that the computer has not been compromised through hacking of any kind, etc., etc., etc. WAY easier just to extort a quick $3K a pop through fear.
I wonder why certain schools are targeted, and certain individuals at that school. Are certain universities passed over because they have a law school? A savvy law or pre-law student may well see through the bullshit and give the RIAA a run for its money in court. (And may well have relatives who are lawyers and/or sympathetic professors willing to knowledgably defend them.) Someone in another message said that 30 letters had been sent to the college he works at. Now, unless that is one tiny little college, I find it hard to believe that only 30 students file-share. I wonder if they target specific schools and dorms within those schools because of the type of students likely to be caught up in the dragnet? (I.e., naive freshman, yes; senior pre-law student, no.)
It's not for nothing that so many of you refer to the RIAA as the MAFIAA. The tactics are the same. Tell me, who does the Mafia go after when they run a protection or extortion racket? The big corporation with a bevy of lawyers and a lot of power and influence? Or the small businessman, the store owner who has few resources, barely keeps his head above water, and may well be an immigrant of questionable status or otherwise afraid of losing what little he has? Bingo -- they go after the weak, ignorant, and vulnerable.
The RIAA has been VERY lucky so far in that they have only in a few cases gone after the "wrong" sort of target that will fight back. No matter how careful they are, hopefully sooner or later they will hit a few more people who can really make trouble for them.
...but Telefonica claimed that it could only turn over such information as part of a criminal prosecution or in matters of public security and national defense.
Isn't that how it's supposed to work here? (Or used to be, anyways...)
So $31M as a bare minimum to give people a full refund. That's certainly within MS's reach.
Considering as how a large portion of Hotmail accounts are obtained with totally bogus sign-up information, I'd be willing to bet most of that money would end up absolutely nowehere. The folks that use Hotmail to engage in dubious dialogue and activities behind a spouse/partner's back, or to register for throwaway one-time visits to sites that require an e-mail address, or just in general to have some small, pathetic level of pseudo-anonymity are not going to come out of the shadows to get their huge refund of a couple of bucks apiece.
And similar tools exist on Linux to capture the ALSA buffers. There's absolutely no way to prevent 'streamripping' with any DRM. The broadcast has to be decoded at the time of play -- there's no way around it. For that matter, these same techniques work with any DRM.
The bottom line here is that DRM schemes are inherently broken and can't be fixed. So let's just get rid of all DRM and be done with it, 'k Mafiaa?
DRM schemes are not "inherently broken" -- they work just fine for the majority of their target victims; i.e., the vast majority of computer users who wouldn't know an "ALSA buffer" from a fried egg and think "Linux" is a character in "Peanuts." (Hell, I can't tell you how many people I've encountered -- pretty intelligent folks -- who thought that there was absolutely no way to capture and save an image when "right-click disable" is used on a website.) DRM advocates know well that damn few people will have the knowledge, skills, or gumption to circumvent the DRM. If it requires more than two steps and/or knowledge any more advanced than it takes to send an e-mail, most folks will just swear, give up, and go see what's on YouTube.
As usual, stuff gets blown all out of proportion here on Slashdot (don't get me wrong -- I love this place and visit it often, but y'all do have a habit of treating everything in a rather "chicken little" fashion).
I don't think this will ultimately affect most "little guy" sellers out there. Most companies don't care much what you do with an item once it's purchased from them -- they got their money, transaction over, they are concerned with selling more of them to more victims...errr...consumers. If you buy a widget from Company A, then decide you don't need it after all, and turn around and sell it cheaper to a friend, or through a newspaper ad, or at a garage sale, or on eBay, that's not a problem. Now, I can see the company being concerned if they sell in quantity at wholesale to a distributor who then undercuts them on the retail price he offers to others, but that's another ball o'wax.
The two examples given are not necessarily typical. To focus on one, Merle Norman....in a similar vein, I once knew someone who sold Mary Kay, and they are incredibly strict about how their products are perceived by the public -- they want to insure that their distribtors present a certain image, that the products are marketed and presented in a certain fashion, etc. So it may well be less about selling price and more about image. They have tried for many years prior to Leegin to prevent just any old yahoo from reselling their war paint because they may not properly represent the Mark Kay "mystique" -- this just gives them another takedown tool. I'm certain Merle Norman is probably simalarly anal about their products. Mass mega-companies like Revlon or Maybelline don't care if you bought a few tubes of Midnight Ebony mascara, used one a few times and decided it's not your color, then list the other unopened tubes on eBay to get rid of them.
Sometimes not fraud, but sheer ignorance...
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False Copyright Claims
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I sell out of print books on eBay. There is a certain historic African-American sorority that published a quite hard to find history of the organization -- tends to bring triple-digit prices when you can find a copy. I've been fortunate enough to twice have found a copy (once at an estate sale, once in a Goodwill), and both times when it was listed on eBay, I was INUNDATED with hostile messages from members of that sorority. Apparently, they believe that the fact that the book is copyrighted means that only THEY can sell copies, and only to fellow members -- as far as they are concerned, I don't have the right to read it or even posess it, let alone sell it! Both times, they lodged complaints with eBay who politely explained to them the right of resale and the fact that pretty much every used book sold, whether on eBay or in your local book nook, is copyrighted. But that didn't stop them from continuing to harass me and threaten me with legal action (take yer best shot, I told 'em). Really makes one wonder what sort of deep, dark secrets are in that book that they don't want any "outsiders" to get their hands on a copy!
And from recent testimony re: the NSA wiretapping it appears that Ashcroft was actually *less* disrespectful of the Constitution and rule of law than Gonzalez.
That's the really scary thing. When Ashcroft ruled the legal roost, I remember being appalled at some of his attitudes, priorities and actions, and was pleased to see him go. Then along came "Seedy Gonzalez." Never, ever believe that things have gotten as bad as they can -- they can always get worse.
And yet, is spite of your caution, there is still enough information on you with enough sources to eventually spread to those who want it. Absolute privacy and anonymity are impossible. My attitude is that I can't eliminate intrusions into my privacy -- I can only limit and control it to a certain extent. Could someone, anyone really, eventually "find" me if they wanted to? Sure, but they'll have to work a little harder to do it. It may be inevitable, but I damn sure won't make it easy if I have a choice.
All the arguments made for privacy are quite valid, but as in your example, I am a hermit of sorts, and for me personally, it's just a matter of my feeling that no one has a right to know MY business. I value my privacy strongly -- to me, my privacy is as much mine as any physical possession I own. Steal my privacy, and it's like stealing my TV or my computer or my wallet. I have committed no crimes, but I still don't want your nose in my business because it's MINE, period.
Unfortunately, I am very much in the minority. In a society in which people post personal (and I mean PERSONAL) details about their lives on MySpace, carry on intimate conversations at full volume on their cell phones in public places, and routinely hand over potentially misused information to total strangers to enter a contest or get 10% off their groceries, there's not much hope of making any headway on this issue with the general public. I'M the oddball, the freak, the eccentric, the weirdo, and I understand that. I don't LIKE it, but I understand.
As for the plain DVD transfer - I was actually thinking they'd do something like one-off transfers to VHS. That'd be even easier for all the older analoge stuff. It's pretty easy to make a DVD, but still more effort than the VHS. If they wanted to, I'm sure they could be annoying and use Betamax.
Hee hee....I can see the same tactic being used with music recordings: "Your honor, we are still actively marketing this album. Why, just last week we shipped two cases of wax cylinders to the Wal-Mart in Walla Walla!"
A similar law should apply to "orphaned" print works -- books that are long out of print, and the copyright holder (if an individual) is long dead and his heirs untraceable, or, if a company, went out of business with no assignment or sale of rights to someone else. As long as a good faith effort is made to trace the rights holder(s), after a certain period of time the work should be considered abandoned and public domain. (Kind of like how a person can be declared dead if they are missing for 7 years...)
Or heck, have an 'availability clause'. If it's not available from the auther for a market standard price (within a standard deviation of newer publications?), the auther stands to loose his copyright*.
I will, for the moment, overlook "auther" and "loose...."
I used to wonder about the same concept when it comes to things like movies and TV shows. Particularly for TV shows, there is a lot of material out there that is under copyright, but is lying in a vault somewhere with no plans to market the footage because the perceived size of the potential market is too small. So, in effect, those shows are "held hostage" to those who would wish to view them. I thought it would be nice if a rights holder could lose his/her/its rights and the material could fall into the public domain if they fail to make a legitimate and substantial attempt to profit from the material for X number of years, clearly demonstrating that it is of no financial benefit to them. And note the words "legitimate and substantial" -- without them, I could see the rights being maintained by simply making a plain DVD transfer (no special features, no tweaking of the video quality, just stick it on a disc) and send, say, a dozen copies to one store in Dubuque and then say "see, we're making an attempt to sell it, so don't take our rights away!"
25 calls a month -- OK, in many cases, we might be dealing with an obsessed nitpicker here. But believe me, it is possible to legitimately hit that figure. I recently had a problem with my elderly mother's long-distance (I won't mention any names, but the letters "A," "T," and "T" come to mind). It was not a simple problem (it involved her having been slammed by Sprint some years ago, then getting funneled into the wrong plan when she went back to her original provider, etc.), but not nucelar physics, either. I logged every call. In ONE AFTERNOON, I made 12 calls to 5 different numbers and never talked to the same person twice. I got shuttled from department to department -- you need to call this number -- you need to call THAT number -- they can handle this -- no, we don't handle this anymore -- and person to person over and over. There was never any single person, or even single group or department, who seemed to have enough knowledge to solve the problem. (Which, BTW, was NEVER the problem of the person or department I was speaking to -- the finger was always pointed in some other direction within the corporate camp). So, I can imagine 25 calls in a month being legitimate.
How many books still have any significant amount of sales after 14 years? 1 percent? Half a percent? Or more like 1/100 of 1 percent? For the average book, if you haven't made any significant income from it in 14 years, it's time to move on. Especially since by then there are probably plenty of old remaindered copies at Goodwill or Salvation Army or your neighborhood flea market.
Don't get me wrong -- I admire J.K. Rowling's talent and creativity, but she's by far the exception and not the rule. How many gazillions of dollars has she made off Potter -- how much more can she possibly need? Copyright laws have been extended again and again not to provide any benefit to the typical creator, but to the Disney-esque mega-stars and corporations.
So, how does this differ from my setting up a table full of DVDs at the flea market with a sign reading "Free DVDs -- Take One," then asking the cops to bust you when you take one? The "honeypot" analogy just doesn't fly -- while just because an unlocked car with keys in the ignition doesn't give you the right to take it, it would be another thing entirely if the owner put a "Free Car" sign on it.
It's sad, too, because the only people who will get harrassed over this are probably not very net-savvy folks. Who would trust a website blatantly offering free movies? Most who engage in file sharing to any great degree would probably smell a trap right from the start.
While/.ers are fixated on the RIAA's harrassment of file sharers, don't forget that the organization's actvities extend to a lot of other areas. And if they are crossing the line and using dubious legal strategies in one, they are probably doing similar end runs around the legal system in others as well. I'd be willing to bet if you dug deeper, you'd find a lot of dirt. Surely there are at least a few disgruntled ex-employees who would be willing to do a little whistle blowing. The RIAA public pronouncements about file sharing do appeal to the general public who know little about the issue -- uncovering corruption and malfeasance in their other activities would go a long way towards turning public opinion against them and perhaps lead to a more general investigation that could ultimately bring down the cartel.
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Thing is, the content owners will have to provide the "fingerprint," or at least the video from which the "fingerprint" will be made. Now, while I can see the bigger corporations taking the time, effort and money to do this for current and recent popular TV shows and movies, a lot of the more obscure stuff is still going to be around. Part of the fun and appeal of sites like YouTube is getting a chance to see or re-see more esoteric (i.e., not very commercially viable) clips -- old TV shows with a cult following, but no chance of being released on DVD; old commercials for no longer existent products; continuity clips (promos, station IDs, etc.); old local newscasts, etc. The rights to all of these things are still held by someone, somewhere, but much of it will still be up on YT -- just the stuff that no one (except for the small base of fanatics that appreciate it) cares about. I mean, is someone going to "fingerprint" every episode of "Hello, Larry" or some equally stinkeroo old show just in case someone uploads a few episodes that they recorded on their Betamax way back when?
In other words, we're doomed?
Yeah, a perfectly good career down the tubes.
You guys are slipping -- it took a whole 42 minutes for someone to come up with the obvious punny analogous reference. Should have been the first post. Get on the ball!
The article mentions "for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain" and it also mentions it has to have a value over $1000. I'm thinking it is an attempt to clamp down on piraters, the true pirates, the ones that steal and sell other people's copyrighted material.
But doesn't the MAFIAA already assert that every song track distributed on P2P has a value of thousands of bucks? And couldn't they claim that avoiding spending $15 on a CD by downloading it instead constitutes "private financial gain?"
However, intent needs to be proven, and the fact that it is "attempting" and not "actually committing" the infringement brings up some problems. How do you prove it exactly?
I'm thinking this leads to the criminalization of any tool that could be used to potentially breach copyright -- ripping software, duplicators, software that strips DRM. After all, the concept of fair use is pretty much dead in the water, so if you possess any of these hardware or software tools, obviously your "intent" is to infringe, hmm?
Never try to analyze a proposed law in terms of what it actually says and the logical interpretations that follow -- always look at it in terms of extrapolating the most convoluted and contrived possible "interpretation" that smart and well-paid lawyers could derive to serve the needs of a big client with a crusade and very deep pockets.
I would think older, simpler rocket designs would be more applicable to the needs of an emerging space power or rogue terrorist group. Why not censor and confiscate information about the older Titans that carried Gemini? Or the Redstone, Atlas, or even Little Joe rockets that propelled the Mercury program? Sure, they don't have the glamour or cachet of the Saturn V (which was, and still is, a beautiful machine), but I'm sure there are a lot of old technical manuals and such about those floating around. (I live in Central Florida, and have been to many estate sales of former NASA employees where there are tons of such material available. And, yes, I have profited quite nicely from them on eBay, thank you.)
But this is a futile effort -- 40 years of being in the public domain is a bit much to reverse and cover up now. Why do so many people still think that you can rein this stuff in after it's already been so widely disseminated? Especially in the Internet era -- it's like when someone wants something taken down from YouTube or some other site when millions have already viewed and downloaded the file, and copies and copies of copies and copies of copies of copies are multiplying like bunnies through the "tubes." Nowadays, once something is "out there" it's OUT, and you can no more undo the damage than you can "unexplode" a bomb.
The face-to-face equivalent of this is: you purchase a $5 item. You hand the clerk a $20 bill, He/she proceeds to give you three 20's in change instead of 3 5's. If you choose to say nothing and keep the money, then (1)is that "wrong," and (2)is that theft?
For the most part, honesty and fair play normally demands that you point out the error. After all, anyone can make a mistake when distracted, and the bottom line is that money will come out of the (probably very poorly paid) employee's pocket when the register doesn't balance at the end of the day. For me, I would be honest most of the time, but it depends on how I've been treated in the course of the transaction. For example, once at a Wal-Mart the clerk clearly rang the purchase up wrong, and gave me about $10 too much in change. When I politely tried to point that out to her, she got very huffy and defensive and insisted that I didn't know what I was talking about and that she did not make such mistakes. Needless to say, I pocketed THAT Hamilton. But is that "theft?" The possibility never occurred to me, and I've never heard of anyone being arrested for getting too much change and not returning it.
I still don't understand where "Christian==Republican" and "Non-religion==Democrat" came from....and where do other religions such as Muslim fit in? Can they only be Democrats? Or don't they actually belong to any political parties in the US?
You do realize there are shades of gray and things don't fall into a black/white paradigm, right?
You do realize that I was sarcastically decpicting in an exaggerated manner the narrow-minded attitudes of certain groups here in the U.S. for satirical and humorous purposes, and not expressing my personal opinion, right?
The reality is, if you are really concerned about what children have access to on the Internet, you should be able to activate a setting the would lock access to a separate DNS service and a set series of IP addresses that only provides content that has be accessed, reviewed and approved as fit for children web sites, as the web sites would have to be applicable to each of the age ranges for children, obviously what is fit for a young adult is not suitable for a toddler.
Leaving aside the fruitless bang-your-head-against-the-wall argument that it is the parents' responsibility to decide what is "fit" for their own children....."accessed, reviewed and approved" by WHOM? If it's the current administration, I smelleth a "faith-based" outsourcing here to insure that kids can only view appropriate history ("America is a Christian nation"), science ("We didn't evolve from no monkeys") and morality ("sex=bad and dirty; abstinence=good") to insure that the little tykes grow up to be good Republican Christians (and not agnostic Democrats or Wiccan Libertarians).
We've seen ample evidence that an IP address does not necessarily correlate to an individual. In an actual court case, the RIAA would have to also show that copyrighted material exists on the computer in question (through an actual forensic search of the hard drive), that the files were placed in a shared folder that can be accessed by others, that those same files have been actually distributed to others through a P2P network, that no one else has access to the computer in question, that the person in question was actually the one who placed the material there and that the computer has not been compromised through hacking of any kind, etc., etc., etc. WAY easier just to extort a quick $3K a pop through fear.
I wonder why certain schools are targeted, and certain individuals at that school. Are certain universities passed over because they have a law school? A savvy law or pre-law student may well see through the bullshit and give the RIAA a run for its money in court. (And may well have relatives who are lawyers and/or sympathetic professors willing to knowledgably defend them.) Someone in another message said that 30 letters had been sent to the college he works at. Now, unless that is one tiny little college, I find it hard to believe that only 30 students file-share. I wonder if they target specific schools and dorms within those schools because of the type of students likely to be caught up in the dragnet? (I.e., naive freshman, yes; senior pre-law student, no.)
It's not for nothing that so many of you refer to the RIAA as the MAFIAA. The tactics are the same. Tell me, who does the Mafia go after when they run a protection or extortion racket? The big corporation with a bevy of lawyers and a lot of power and influence? Or the small businessman, the store owner who has few resources, barely keeps his head above water, and may well be an immigrant of questionable status or otherwise afraid of losing what little he has? Bingo -- they go after the weak, ignorant, and vulnerable.
The RIAA has been VERY lucky so far in that they have only in a few cases gone after the "wrong" sort of target that will fight back. No matter how careful they are, hopefully sooner or later they will hit a few more people who can really make trouble for them.
...but Telefonica claimed that it could only turn over such information as part of a criminal prosecution or in matters of public security and national defense.
Isn't that how it's supposed to work here? (Or used to be, anyways...)So $31M as a bare minimum to give people a full refund. That's certainly within MS's reach.
Considering as how a large portion of Hotmail accounts are obtained with totally bogus sign-up information, I'd be willing to bet most of that money would end up absolutely nowehere. The folks that use Hotmail to engage in dubious dialogue and activities behind a spouse/partner's back, or to register for throwaway one-time visits to sites that require an e-mail address, or just in general to have some small, pathetic level of pseudo-anonymity are not going to come out of the shadows to get their huge refund of a couple of bucks apiece.
And similar tools exist on Linux to capture the ALSA buffers. There's absolutely no way to prevent 'streamripping' with any DRM. The broadcast has to be decoded at the time of play -- there's no way around it. For that matter, these same techniques work with any DRM.
The bottom line here is that DRM schemes are inherently broken and can't be fixed. So let's just get rid of all DRM and be done with it, 'k Mafiaa?
DRM schemes are not "inherently broken" -- they work just fine for the majority of their target victims; i.e., the vast majority of computer users who wouldn't know an "ALSA buffer" from a fried egg and think "Linux" is a character in "Peanuts." (Hell, I can't tell you how many people I've encountered -- pretty intelligent folks -- who thought that there was absolutely no way to capture and save an image when "right-click disable" is used on a website.) DRM advocates know well that damn few people will have the knowledge, skills, or gumption to circumvent the DRM. If it requires more than two steps and/or knowledge any more advanced than it takes to send an e-mail, most folks will just swear, give up, and go see what's on YouTube.
A quick look at Wikipedia just made things even more confusing.
It usually does.....
As usual, stuff gets blown all out of proportion here on Slashdot (don't get me wrong -- I love this place and visit it often, but y'all do have a habit of treating everything in a rather "chicken little" fashion).
I don't think this will ultimately affect most "little guy" sellers out there. Most companies don't care much what you do with an item once it's purchased from them -- they got their money, transaction over, they are concerned with selling more of them to more victims...errr...consumers. If you buy a widget from Company A, then decide you don't need it after all, and turn around and sell it cheaper to a friend, or through a newspaper ad, or at a garage sale, or on eBay, that's not a problem. Now, I can see the company being concerned if they sell in quantity at wholesale to a distributor who then undercuts them on the retail price he offers to others, but that's another ball o'wax.
The two examples given are not necessarily typical. To focus on one, Merle Norman....in a similar vein, I once knew someone who sold Mary Kay, and they are incredibly strict about how their products are perceived by the public -- they want to insure that their distribtors present a certain image, that the products are marketed and presented in a certain fashion, etc. So it may well be less about selling price and more about image. They have tried for many years prior to Leegin to prevent just any old yahoo from reselling their war paint because they may not properly represent the Mark Kay "mystique" -- this just gives them another takedown tool. I'm certain Merle Norman is probably simalarly anal about their products. Mass mega-companies like Revlon or Maybelline don't care if you bought a few tubes of Midnight Ebony mascara, used one a few times and decided it's not your color, then list the other unopened tubes on eBay to get rid of them.
I sell out of print books on eBay. There is a certain historic African-American sorority that published a quite hard to find history of the organization -- tends to bring triple-digit prices when you can find a copy. I've been fortunate enough to twice have found a copy (once at an estate sale, once in a Goodwill), and both times when it was listed on eBay, I was INUNDATED with hostile messages from members of that sorority. Apparently, they believe that the fact that the book is copyrighted means that only THEY can sell copies, and only to fellow members -- as far as they are concerned, I don't have the right to read it or even posess it, let alone sell it! Both times, they lodged complaints with eBay who politely explained to them the right of resale and the fact that pretty much every used book sold, whether on eBay or in your local book nook, is copyrighted. But that didn't stop them from continuing to harass me and threaten me with legal action (take yer best shot, I told 'em). Really makes one wonder what sort of deep, dark secrets are in that book that they don't want any "outsiders" to get their hands on a copy!
And from recent testimony re: the NSA wiretapping it appears that Ashcroft was actually *less* disrespectful of the Constitution and rule of law than Gonzalez.
That's the really scary thing. When Ashcroft ruled the legal roost, I remember being appalled at some of his attitudes, priorities and actions, and was pleased to see him go. Then along came "Seedy Gonzalez." Never, ever believe that things have gotten as bad as they can -- they can always get worse.
And yet, is spite of your caution, there is still enough information on you with enough sources to eventually spread to those who want it. Absolute privacy and anonymity are impossible. My attitude is that I can't eliminate intrusions into my privacy -- I can only limit and control it to a certain extent. Could someone, anyone really, eventually "find" me if they wanted to? Sure, but they'll have to work a little harder to do it. It may be inevitable, but I damn sure won't make it easy if I have a choice.
All the arguments made for privacy are quite valid, but as in your example, I am a hermit of sorts, and for me personally, it's just a matter of my feeling that no one has a right to know MY business. I value my privacy strongly -- to me, my privacy is as much mine as any physical possession I own. Steal my privacy, and it's like stealing my TV or my computer or my wallet. I have committed no crimes, but I still don't want your nose in my business because it's MINE, period.
Unfortunately, I am very much in the minority. In a society in which people post personal (and I mean PERSONAL) details about their lives on MySpace, carry on intimate conversations at full volume on their cell phones in public places, and routinely hand over potentially misused information to total strangers to enter a contest or get 10% off their groceries, there's not much hope of making any headway on this issue with the general public. I'M the oddball, the freak, the eccentric, the weirdo, and I understand that. I don't LIKE it, but I understand.
As for the plain DVD transfer - I was actually thinking they'd do something like one-off transfers to VHS. That'd be even easier for all the older analoge stuff. It's pretty easy to make a DVD, but still more effort than the VHS. If they wanted to, I'm sure they could be annoying and use Betamax.
Hee hee....I can see the same tactic being used with music recordings: "Your honor, we are still actively marketing this album. Why, just last week we shipped two cases of wax cylinders to the Wal-Mart in Walla Walla!"
A similar law should apply to "orphaned" print works -- books that are long out of print, and the copyright holder (if an individual) is long dead and his heirs untraceable, or, if a company, went out of business with no assignment or sale of rights to someone else. As long as a good faith effort is made to trace the rights holder(s), after a certain period of time the work should be considered abandoned and public domain. (Kind of like how a person can be declared dead if they are missing for 7 years...)
Or heck, have an 'availability clause'. If it's not available from the auther for a market standard price (within a standard deviation of newer publications?), the auther stands to loose his copyright*.
I will, for the moment, overlook "auther" and "loose...."
I used to wonder about the same concept when it comes to things like movies and TV shows. Particularly for TV shows, there is a lot of material out there that is under copyright, but is lying in a vault somewhere with no plans to market the footage because the perceived size of the potential market is too small. So, in effect, those shows are "held hostage" to those who would wish to view them. I thought it would be nice if a rights holder could lose his/her/its rights and the material could fall into the public domain if they fail to make a legitimate and substantial attempt to profit from the material for X number of years, clearly demonstrating that it is of no financial benefit to them. And note the words "legitimate and substantial" -- without them, I could see the rights being maintained by simply making a plain DVD transfer (no special features, no tweaking of the video quality, just stick it on a disc) and send, say, a dozen copies to one store in Dubuque and then say "see, we're making an attempt to sell it, so don't take our rights away!"25 calls a month -- OK, in many cases, we might be dealing with an obsessed nitpicker here. But believe me, it is possible to legitimately hit that figure. I recently had a problem with my elderly mother's long-distance (I won't mention any names, but the letters "A," "T," and "T" come to mind). It was not a simple problem (it involved her having been slammed by Sprint some years ago, then getting funneled into the wrong plan when she went back to her original provider, etc.), but not nucelar physics, either. I logged every call. In ONE AFTERNOON, I made 12 calls to 5 different numbers and never talked to the same person twice. I got shuttled from department to department -- you need to call this number -- you need to call THAT number -- they can handle this -- no, we don't handle this anymore -- and person to person over and over. There was never any single person, or even single group or department, who seemed to have enough knowledge to solve the problem. (Which, BTW, was NEVER the problem of the person or department I was speaking to -- the finger was always pointed in some other direction within the corporate camp). So, I can imagine 25 calls in a month being legitimate.
How many books still have any significant amount of sales after 14 years? 1 percent? Half a percent? Or more like 1/100 of 1 percent? For the average book, if you haven't made any significant income from it in 14 years, it's time to move on. Especially since by then there are probably plenty of old remaindered copies at Goodwill or Salvation Army or your neighborhood flea market.
Don't get me wrong -- I admire J.K. Rowling's talent and creativity, but she's by far the exception and not the rule. How many gazillions of dollars has she made off Potter -- how much more can she possibly need? Copyright laws have been extended again and again not to provide any benefit to the typical creator, but to the Disney-esque mega-stars and corporations.
So, how does this differ from my setting up a table full of DVDs at the flea market with a sign reading "Free DVDs -- Take One," then asking the cops to bust you when you take one? The "honeypot" analogy just doesn't fly -- while just because an unlocked car with keys in the ignition doesn't give you the right to take it, it would be another thing entirely if the owner put a "Free Car" sign on it.
It's sad, too, because the only people who will get harrassed over this are probably not very net-savvy folks. Who would trust a website blatantly offering free movies? Most who engage in file sharing to any great degree would probably smell a trap right from the start.
While /.ers are fixated on the RIAA's harrassment of file sharers, don't forget that the organization's actvities extend to a lot of other areas. And if they are crossing the line and using dubious legal strategies in one, they are probably doing similar end runs around the legal system in others as well. I'd be willing to bet if you dug deeper, you'd find a lot of dirt. Surely there are at least a few disgruntled ex-employees who would be willing to do a little whistle blowing. The RIAA public pronouncements about file sharing do appeal to the general public who know little about the issue -- uncovering corruption and malfeasance in their other activities would go a long way towards turning public opinion against them and perhaps lead to a more general investigation that could ultimately bring down the cartel.
Or am I dreaming here?
I thought we had already established that it was the Ferengi?