Pirates are like totally the foam of the earth! The only solution to computer piracy is that everyone get sentenced to one week as an indentured servant for each day they have had a pirated sony game/app. That way a wave of thousands upon thousands of indentured servants will fuel Sony's game mill and thus provide their dozens of legitimate customers with decent low price games
"In February 2007, The Florida Bar filed disbarment proceedings against Thompson over allegations of professional misconduct. The action was the result of separate grievances filed by people claiming that Thompson made defamatory, false statements and attempted to humiliate, embarrass, harass or intimidate them. According to the complaint, Thompson accused Alberto Cardenas of "distribution of pornography to children," claimed that the Alabama judge presiding over the Devin Moore case "breaks the rules, even the Alabama State Bar Rules, because he thinks that the rules don't apply to him," and sent a letter to Blank Rome's managing partner, saying, "Your law firm has actively and knowingly facilitated by various means the criminal distribution of sexual material to minors." Thompson claims that the complaints violate state religious protections because his advocacy is motivated by his Christian faith"
He'll just come up with new and creative ways to be a thorn in the side of gamers and freethinkers.... He just needs to find another manically deluded soul who either has a law degree or the money to pay for lawyers, and he'll be back.
While this might be true at least he is no longer allowed to use his status as a lawyer to harass people. And further more any lawyer that would act on his behalf risks equal punishment. In fact, if any lawyers are out there that want to work with him and use illegal and unethical acts to support cases based upon false accusations, unsubstantiated research and anecdotal evidence; then by all means I hope they all join hands and march into disbarment under his banner. Though more likely any lawyer who wish to have a career and a reputation, beyond any sort of misguided personal crusade, will avoid him like the plague.
Perhaps Jack Thomson will be back, and perhaps he will continue to cause noise regarding video games, but his disbarment, and the public airing of some of the things he did to deserve that disbarment; means that very few with grievances against the video game industry will want to be associated with him. Prohibiting him from practising law should hopefully be a warning to others that if they wish to present a case against something; then that case should be based upon reason and respect. And not lower themselves to such vile acts as Thomson engaged in.
I am saddened that serious matters are distracted from by someone such as he. I enjoy video games, but I think there is reason to debate and research the effects of gaming (and for that matter TV and other medias) effect on children and adolescents. Audiovisual media with interactive components have a massive potential to affect the mental development of children; for good or bad. Understanding how and why is important. Unfortunately self-righteous people like mister Thomson are on both sides of these issues and they continue to validate the existence of their counterparts.
A far better question would be Why are Universities given almost exclusive rights to award people certificates of knowledge. Having a document that proves you know what you need to know is essential to many industries and job markets today; but acquiring the knowledge does in most cases not require an University or any such "brick and mortar" institution (with some exceptions). Anyone with a will and access to the necessary material can learn. So it stands to reason that any institution that would adhere to certain guiding principles could verify, test and confirm someone's understanding of the subject in question.
I think overtime the authority to award degrees or Certificates will proliferate and diminish Universities position when it comes to verifying someone understanding. Maybe then they can finally focus solely on their intended function; providing the best environment for learning and teaching that they can.
I think a system a bit better than simply Copyright should be implemented. If I was a writer I would hope to maintain rights to my own work for as long as I live at least to a certain extend. While I can see the merit of letting people copy and publish your work unrestricted after some numbers of years (twenty-thirty years after original publication maybe) I would say that should only go for pure copies of the book/image. If say someone wanted to make a movie or TV adaptation of the work then as long as the author lives he/she should have rights to decide if it should be allowed and influence the adaptation.
When it comes to selling rights to publishers, movie studios or other corporations; then I am for much stronger legislation. If an author sells rights to a someone else then those rights should become public domain after a certain number of predefined years not exceeding a maximum number of years (say fifteen years or so).
Perhaps this is a bit simplistic and something a bit more detailed and robust is needed. All I can say is that at the moment copyright law, and the means used by large entities like Disney, are perhaps not in the best interest of the consumer, the artist and society in general. It is a serious subject that requires serious deliberation and debate; however at the moment most seem to show disinterest and large economic entities are allowed to deal as they very well please.
It is important to make the distinction between filesharing (P2P or otherwise) and piracy. Piracy is the distribution of copyrighted material for free (or that is the essence of how I understand the term). Filesharing is just distributing files from your computer/server/client that others might be interested in downloading; it makes no distinction between what type of material this is.
The files so distributed are available reflected upon their popularity; the more people downloading something, the more likely it is to be commonly available. Therefore Metallica or current popmusic will by easier by far to get at than your local garage band. In fact if you are not specifically looking for your local garage band it's presence will just drown among all the other things you are not looking for.
What the author seem to miss, or don't mention, is that marketing will always give you an edge over all the other competitors for attention. However, filesharing and the emergence of the internet, and decentralize distribution, gives Your Local Garage Band tools that are nodoubt incredible powerful. They can reach just about every person on the planet with an unrestricted, or only marginally restricted, internet line. Through filesharing and the internet they can effectively and cheaply make copies available for download (purchased or otherwise) at a scale that would be impossible for any musician a decade or more ago.
That being said as a local garage band you can not just put up a torrent and except everyone to jump at it. You have to be decent musicians (in a way that is appealing to someone somewhere); and you have to get someone that like your type of music to listen to it, to tell their friends about it, and to talk about it online. The only way anyone will ever go download your music, and thus distribute it for you, is if they know about it and know were to find it.
While the music industry, at least the part most of us refer to when they write "the music industry" at sites like Slashdot, have a HUGE advantage when it comes to telling people about the music/product they are selling. An advantage that a new unknown band will never have. The best outcome those new bands can hope for is that the established industry collapses totally; giving everyone a more equal chance to wave their arms for attention. But you should never underestimate the number of people and bands waving their arms desperately to be noticed.
I pirated Demigod (before the official release date); played it single player for about three hours; on the fourteenth I bought the game through Stardocks Impulse service (like Steam).
The game seem to be very nice, gotten some really funny games now to (though there are still issues that need to be rectified; though things are much better than they were just a few days ago). Also as I understand it they are working hard on completing a demo so people can try it out legally.
Have you confused socialism with Soviet-style communism?
There seems to be a lot of that going around. People seem to wilfully ignore the fact that there are so many brands of socialism that it almost render the term meaningless. Saying or implying that it is absolutely inevitable that implementing some economical control or oversight will lead to a totalitarian regime.
I hope this party gains traction in sweden and isn't just a fad.
If the the economical interests behind many of the anti-piracy actions undertaken continue to push for legislation and convictions in a way that is seen to be unfairly harsh, or cause an unfair invasion of privacy, then it wouldn't surprise me if the party continued to grow.
It would perhaps be advisable to find a better way to combat piracy than simply punishing people and creating "examples". It's a simplistic answer to questions concerning the future of how we distribute, create, sell and buy music, software, movies, literature and other products and services. Parts of the music and movie industry in particular seem to be trying to throw their weight around in a more and more heavy handed manner; in an effort to preserve their revenue stream without trying to adapt properly to the developments in technology.
At least this is how I perceive things to be at the moment. Hopefully at some point we will be effort or accident arrive at a solution that allows artists to benefit and allow customers access to their material in a way that is felt to be fair by both parties, as well as the middle men that help in meaningful ways.
They'll probably find it an go; "oh my how did those primitive people two thousand years ago build this?!? They can not possible have been smart enough to figure it out on their own; it must have been aliens!"
It's pretty much an established fact that piracy in general drops drastically among people in their late twenties compared to people in their teens or early twenties. Basically when people start making money they tend to spend more of it.
Yes piracy probably siphons away some profit from the artists. However there are lots of music I would NEVER have heard or encountered if I didn't get it from a mate, who got it from some other dude. Hell I have found music on YouTube that I have ended up buying because I like it. The only thing limiting my purchase of music, or for that matter books and computer games, is my budget.
I have friends who are serious musicians who actually checked piratebay regularly when they released their last CD, seeing people actually downloading it made them very happy. Because for them, as unestablished musicians, exposure is king.
The only way to reduce piracy further is from services like Amazon to make it easy, practical, affordable and most of all quick to get it. Personally I wouldn't mind having an online database where I could buy and register the music I have purchased so I can download it again whenever, wherever, I need or want to hear it.
One thing is absolutely certain though, whatever else happens; people like music. People will pay for something they like. And people, despite any piracy statistic, still show up to concerts and festivals and spend immense amounts of money each year purchasing Band branded posters, shirts, skirts, pins and whatever else you stick a cool logo onto. So I definitely agree "the death of the industry is not at hand"; however, as you say, the current incarnation of the industrial part of the music industry will have to change or die; probably a bit of both anyway.
If we are allowed to chose between existing products and future imagined products then I want a anti-gravity pod that can teleport and is fuelled by love and gravy.
Maybe I am totally on the wrong track here but don't the fact that they can't use Lead in some of the alloys contribute to the lifespan of some computer parts?
As I understand it aluminium alloys created without lead and then used in computers degenerate several magnitudes quicker than alloys with lead. The process is apparently that the aluminium start sprouting tiny tiny "hairs" and when one of these connects to another one of these coming from somewhere else in the machine then it's thank you and good night for that part.
Anyway the reason I mentioned this is because apparently with intensive use 5-7 years is how long parts in your computer takes to make a connection and after that it is LED OFF (see what I did there?) Of course unless you have a computer constructed before the mid nineties (I think that was the point); since they use lead in their alloys this isn't something that will affect them (though a range of other issues will).
Perhaps they created marriage to stop the spread of STDs. Maybe, back in the days, they tried the free sex approach and discovered that syphilis and others were a bit of a bitch. A free-sex society don't work quite as well if you don't have prevention like condoms available.
Though as you mentioned, could also be that rulers insisted on monogamy from their mates to ensure that any offspring came from the right father. Always hard to confirm parentage if you don't have access to at least a basic lab.
Personally as long as something is done well it don't have to be new. If the new incarnation of Star Trek is well made and entertaining, then I nothing is better than that. It is far easier for "established" licenses to get the budget movies like this get. Of course I wouldn't mind seeing something darker and more gritty than Star Trek within the realm of science fiction. But at least a well made movie constructed on an old concept is better than a crap movie based upon a new concept.
I would agree with this. There is nothing wrong with charging fees to access an extensive database of works. But if Google are to be given exclusive rights to those works for the foreseeable future that would be a negative as far as public domain ownership is concerned.
In fact I would say that long-term corporate ownership of works of literature (in particular after the author is dead and buried) is an abomination.
While the creation of such a database would be a good thing, in my mind, I do not think it anyone should have sole control of the works contained there in; at least not for very long. I admire and respect the financial burden such a system will cost to create and maintain, particularity during the starting phases.
However I feel that if Google are to be given any rights over works as the ones mentioned then it should be for a limited time only. Perhaps as a reward for taking the initiate and as way for them to profit from their endeavour. But as I said, only for, say 5-10 years, after that the rights to any such material should be freely available to everyone.
In any regards I would consider any sort of long-term or permanent rights given to Google would be a very bad thing.
I should have specified that the data I had in mind was things that are, or should be, available to everyone; but can only be accesses through archaic means at the present moment. What individuals to do preserve their own private personal data or pictures is non of my concern.
I reckon one way to ensure that data is more secure, for instance the pictures in this case, is to make it available to sites like Wikipedia. Thus creating another place were the data is stored; and it becomes easily accessible to many. I would like to see this continue, perhaps not only through wikipedia; but it is a good start.
That is a good question. My sister is twenty-four, my parents have a picture of her when she was about six or seven where she is naked. Those that make them criminal perverts?
Slashdot Mirror
Pirates are like totally the foam of the earth! The only solution to computer piracy is that everyone get sentenced to one week as an indentured servant for each day they have had a pirated sony game/app. That way a wave of thousands upon thousands of indentured servants will fuel Sony's game mill and thus provide their dozens of legitimate customers with decent low price games
"In February 2007, The Florida Bar filed disbarment proceedings against Thompson over allegations of professional misconduct. The action was the result of separate grievances filed by people claiming that Thompson made defamatory, false statements and attempted to humiliate, embarrass, harass or intimidate them. According to the complaint, Thompson accused Alberto Cardenas of "distribution of pornography to children," claimed that the Alabama judge presiding over the Devin Moore case "breaks the rules, even the Alabama State Bar Rules, because he thinks that the rules don't apply to him," and sent a letter to Blank Rome's managing partner, saying, "Your law firm has actively and knowingly facilitated by various means the criminal distribution of sexual material to minors." Thompson claims that the complaints violate state religious protections because his advocacy is motivated by his Christian faith"
He'll just come up with new and creative ways to be a thorn in the side of gamers and freethinkers. ... He just needs to find another manically deluded soul who either has a law degree or the money to pay for lawyers, and he'll be back.
While this might be true at least he is no longer allowed to use his status as a lawyer to harass people. And further more any lawyer that would act on his behalf risks equal punishment. In fact, if any lawyers are out there that want to work with him and use illegal and unethical acts to support cases based upon false accusations, unsubstantiated research and anecdotal evidence; then by all means I hope they all join hands and march into disbarment under his banner. Though more likely any lawyer who wish to have a career and a reputation, beyond any sort of misguided personal crusade, will avoid him like the plague.
Perhaps Jack Thomson will be back, and perhaps he will continue to cause noise regarding video games, but his disbarment, and the public airing of some of the things he did to deserve that disbarment; means that very few with grievances against the video game industry will want to be associated with him. Prohibiting him from practising law should hopefully be a warning to others that if they wish to present a case against something; then that case should be based upon reason and respect. And not lower themselves to such vile acts as Thomson engaged in.
I am saddened that serious matters are distracted from by someone such as he. I enjoy video games, but I think there is reason to debate and research the effects of gaming (and for that matter TV and other medias) effect on children and adolescents. Audiovisual media with interactive components have a massive potential to affect the mental development of children; for good or bad. Understanding how and why is important. Unfortunately self-righteous people like mister Thomson are on both sides of these issues and they continue to validate the existence of their counterparts.
A far better question would be Why are Universities given almost exclusive rights to award people certificates of knowledge. Having a document that proves you know what you need to know is essential to many industries and job markets today; but acquiring the knowledge does in most cases not require an University or any such "brick and mortar" institution (with some exceptions). Anyone with a will and access to the necessary material can learn. So it stands to reason that any institution that would adhere to certain guiding principles could verify, test and confirm someone's understanding of the subject in question.
I think overtime the authority to award degrees or Certificates will proliferate and diminish Universities position when it comes to verifying someone understanding. Maybe then they can finally focus solely on their intended function; providing the best environment for learning and teaching that they can.
I think a system a bit better than simply Copyright should be implemented. If I was a writer I would hope to maintain rights to my own work for as long as I live at least to a certain extend. While I can see the merit of letting people copy and publish your work unrestricted after some numbers of years (twenty-thirty years after original publication maybe) I would say that should only go for pure copies of the book/image. If say someone wanted to make a movie or TV adaptation of the work then as long as the author lives he/she should have rights to decide if it should be allowed and influence the adaptation.
When it comes to selling rights to publishers, movie studios or other corporations; then I am for much stronger legislation. If an author sells rights to a someone else then those rights should become public domain after a certain number of predefined years not exceeding a maximum number of years (say fifteen years or so).
Perhaps this is a bit simplistic and something a bit more detailed and robust is needed. All I can say is that at the moment copyright law, and the means used by large entities like Disney, are perhaps not in the best interest of the consumer, the artist and society in general. It is a serious subject that requires serious deliberation and debate; however at the moment most seem to show disinterest and large economic entities are allowed to deal as they very well please.
It is important to make the distinction between filesharing (P2P or otherwise) and piracy. Piracy is the distribution of copyrighted material for free (or that is the essence of how I understand the term). Filesharing is just distributing files from your computer/server/client that others might be interested in downloading; it makes no distinction between what type of material this is.
The files so distributed are available reflected upon their popularity; the more people downloading something, the more likely it is to be commonly available. Therefore Metallica or current popmusic will by easier by far to get at than your local garage band. In fact if you are not specifically looking for your local garage band it's presence will just drown among all the other things you are not looking for.
What the author seem to miss, or don't mention, is that marketing will always give you an edge over all the other competitors for attention. However, filesharing and the emergence of the internet, and decentralize distribution, gives Your Local Garage Band tools that are nodoubt incredible powerful. They can reach just about every person on the planet with an unrestricted, or only marginally restricted, internet line. Through filesharing and the internet they can effectively and cheaply make copies available for download (purchased or otherwise) at a scale that would be impossible for any musician a decade or more ago.
That being said as a local garage band you can not just put up a torrent and except everyone to jump at it. You have to be decent musicians (in a way that is appealing to someone somewhere); and you have to get someone that like your type of music to listen to it, to tell their friends about it, and to talk about it online. The only way anyone will ever go download your music, and thus distribute it for you, is if they know about it and know were to find it.
While the music industry, at least the part most of us refer to when they write "the music industry" at sites like Slashdot, have a HUGE advantage when it comes to telling people about the music/product they are selling. An advantage that a new unknown band will never have. The best outcome those new bands can hope for is that the established industry collapses totally; giving everyone a more equal chance to wave their arms for attention. But you should never underestimate the number of people and bands waving their arms desperately to be noticed.
Wrong. They have legitimate access. The server did not ask for any unique account or identification. It just lets anyone in.
That's obviously wrong since Demigod asks for my Impulse logon name and password then I select Mulitplayer/Internet play.
I pirated Demigod (before the official release date); played it single player for about three hours; on the fourteenth I bought the game through Stardocks Impulse service (like Steam).
The game seem to be very nice, gotten some really funny games now to (though there are still issues that need to be rectified; though things are much better than they were just a few days ago). Also as I understand it they are working hard on completing a demo so people can try it out legally.
Have you confused socialism with Soviet-style communism?
There seems to be a lot of that going around. People seem to wilfully ignore the fact that there are so many brands of socialism that it almost render the term meaningless. Saying or implying that it is absolutely inevitable that implementing some economical control or oversight will lead to a totalitarian regime.
I hope this party gains traction in sweden and isn't just a fad.
If the the economical interests behind many of the anti-piracy actions undertaken continue to push for legislation and convictions in a way that is seen to be unfairly harsh, or cause an unfair invasion of privacy, then it wouldn't surprise me if the party continued to grow.
It would perhaps be advisable to find a better way to combat piracy than simply punishing people and creating "examples". It's a simplistic answer to questions concerning the future of how we distribute, create, sell and buy music, software, movies, literature and other products and services. Parts of the music and movie industry in particular seem to be trying to throw their weight around in a more and more heavy handed manner; in an effort to preserve their revenue stream without trying to adapt properly to the developments in technology.
At least this is how I perceive things to be at the moment. Hopefully at some point we will be effort or accident arrive at a solution that allows artists to benefit and allow customers access to their material in a way that is felt to be fair by both parties, as well as the middle men that help in meaningful ways.
Blasphemer! The Glorious String demands you be purified by Super-Hot fire!
They'll probably find it an go; "oh my how did those primitive people two thousand years ago build this?!? They can not possible have been smart enough to figure it out on their own; it must have been aliens!"
Gamers don't need support contracts, and they'll go nuts if you try to cram advertising down their throats.
With some notable exceptions like quakelive.com
It's pretty much an established fact that piracy in general drops drastically among people in their late twenties compared to people in their teens or early twenties. Basically when people start making money they tend to spend more of it.
Yes piracy probably siphons away some profit from the artists. However there are lots of music I would NEVER have heard or encountered if I didn't get it from a mate, who got it from some other dude. Hell I have found music on YouTube that I have ended up buying because I like it. The only thing limiting my purchase of music, or for that matter books and computer games, is my budget.
I have friends who are serious musicians who actually checked piratebay regularly when they released their last CD, seeing people actually downloading it made them very happy. Because for them, as unestablished musicians, exposure is king.
The only way to reduce piracy further is from services like Amazon to make it easy, practical, affordable and most of all quick to get it. Personally I wouldn't mind having an online database where I could buy and register the music I have purchased so I can download it again whenever, wherever, I need or want to hear it.
One thing is absolutely certain though, whatever else happens; people like music. People will pay for something they like. And people, despite any piracy statistic, still show up to concerts and festivals and spend immense amounts of money each year purchasing Band branded posters, shirts, skirts, pins and whatever else you stick a cool logo onto. So I definitely agree "the death of the industry is not at hand"; however, as you say, the current incarnation of the industrial part of the music industry will have to change or die; probably a bit of both anyway.
If we are allowed to chose between existing products and future imagined products then I want a anti-gravity pod that can teleport and is fuelled by love and gravy.
Maybe I am totally on the wrong track here but don't the fact that they can't use Lead in some of the alloys contribute to the lifespan of some computer parts?
As I understand it aluminium alloys created without lead and then used in computers degenerate several magnitudes quicker than alloys with lead. The process is apparently that the aluminium start sprouting tiny tiny "hairs" and when one of these connects to another one of these coming from somewhere else in the machine then it's thank you and good night for that part.
Anyway the reason I mentioned this is because apparently with intensive use 5-7 years is how long parts in your computer takes to make a connection and after that it is LED OFF (see what I did there?) Of course unless you have a computer constructed before the mid nineties (I think that was the point); since they use lead in their alloys this isn't something that will affect them (though a range of other issues will).
Perhaps they created marriage to stop the spread of STDs. Maybe, back in the days, they tried the free sex approach and discovered that syphilis and others were a bit of a bitch. A free-sex society don't work quite as well if you don't have prevention like condoms available.
Though as you mentioned, could also be that rulers insisted on monogamy from their mates to ensure that any offspring came from the right father. Always hard to confirm parentage if you don't have access to at least a basic lab.
Not a bad idea. Though I was thinking more along the line of the Gap Series; that deserves to be made into several movies if you ask me.
Personally as long as something is done well it don't have to be new. If the new incarnation of Star Trek is well made and entertaining, then I nothing is better than that. It is far easier for "established" licenses to get the budget movies like this get. Of course I wouldn't mind seeing something darker and more gritty than Star Trek within the realm of science fiction. But at least a well made movie constructed on an old concept is better than a crap movie based upon a new concept.
I would agree with this. There is nothing wrong with charging fees to access an extensive database of works. But if Google are to be given exclusive rights to those works for the foreseeable future that would be a negative as far as public domain ownership is concerned.
In fact I would say that long-term corporate ownership of works of literature (in particular after the author is dead and buried) is an abomination.
While the creation of such a database would be a good thing, in my mind, I do not think it anyone should have sole control of the works contained there in; at least not for very long. I admire and respect the financial burden such a system will cost to create and maintain, particularity during the starting phases.
However I feel that if Google are to be given any rights over works as the ones mentioned then it should be for a limited time only. Perhaps as a reward for taking the initiate and as way for them to profit from their endeavour. But as I said, only for, say 5-10 years, after that the rights to any such material should be freely available to everyone.
In any regards I would consider any sort of long-term or permanent rights given to Google would be a very bad thing.
Prepare for fallout!
I should have specified that the data I had in mind was things that are, or should be, available to everyone; but can only be accesses through archaic means at the present moment. What individuals to do preserve their own private personal data or pictures is non of my concern.
I reckon one way to ensure that data is more secure, for instance the pictures in this case, is to make it available to sites like Wikipedia. Thus creating another place were the data is stored; and it becomes easily accessible to many. I would like to see this continue, perhaps not only through wikipedia; but it is a good start.
That is a good question. My sister is twenty-four, my parents have a picture of her when she was about six or seven where she is naked. Those that make them criminal perverts?