There appears to be a neverending conveyorbelt of excuses for Wikipedia's acute failure to be authoritative or reliable.
A encyclopedia will, even if written by experts, rarely be either authoritative or reliable. It will be at best a rough, selective summary, and usually one which misses much of what is current. An encyclopedia is, at best, a good starting point.
Let me make it clear - if Wikipedia is not reliable, but full of half-truths and errors, then its not simply useless, it's potentially dangerous.
Only if misused. The average library is full of half-truths and errors, and yet no (sane person) says libraries are dangerous. If you are using information you cannot directly evaluate from Wikipedia for any important use, you should be checking the sources cited (and discarding the information if it isn't cited), and evaluating the credibility of those sources and consulting them more fully.
An information resource that is unreliable as history IS PROPAGANDA.
No, its not. It's only "propaganda" if its all written to advance the interests of the same faction. Otherwise, it might contain propaganda (and Wikipedia no doubt in some cases does.) But as a whole it is not a work of propaganda.
You have no idea whether 1 out of 10,000 is inaccurate or 1 in 100 or 1 in 2. You have no idea whether the article has just been vandalized or whether key information is missing. I'm willing to bet that you don't expect surgeons make the same excuses that their work is generally acccurate apart from occasional slips which kill patients, or your college textbooks to have key formulae wrong after someone at the printers decided to improve an equation for the good of Mankind. It's the special pleading for Wikipedia that amazes me.
A free tertiary reference source is neither a surgeon nor a college textbook. Applying the standards applicable to either of those is inappropriate. Also, its not a ham-and-cheese sandwich, so you shouldn't eat it and expect it to taste like one. It's not inappropriate "special pleading" to suggest that things which are unalike in kind from other things should not be evaluated by the standards applicable to the other, unlike, things.
Wikipedia is, in practice, useful to me for things I care about (even though I have found, and corrected, errors.) I therefore think it has value, in many cases unique value for which no comparable resource of would offer a suitable, reasonable substitute.
Is it perfect? No. Are there other tools which are better for some uses? Certainly. Is it as inappropriate as any encyclopedia as an ultimate source? Certainly.
Is it valuable, and in some cases uniquely so? Yes, I'd say so.
A slightly less rose-tinted view of history suggests that corporate charters were granted when there was an assurance that the ruling prince of the city-state, or his cronies, would get a cut.
Since I was (though I didn't make this clear) referring to earlier US history, I'd say that's more of a view of a different part of history, but sure. And certainly neither the earlier US practice nor the more recent one was or is free from the corrupting influence of cash and the cronyism of the connected.
You completely miss the point. Its obvious that MS's (and most other corporations) sole goal is to maximize profit. The question is- should we, as society, allow such organizations to exist? Is it a wise move to allow such massive accumulation of wealth and power in what basicly amounts to a sociopathic organization? Or should standards of ethics and non-monetary issues be forced onto corporations by society (government)?
Its worth noting that it used to be that governments were far more restrictive about the corporate charters they would approve, and far more willing to revoke charters for corporations violating the public interest. The special privileges granted with a corporate charter were viewed more as a privilege granted in the public interest and conditioned on good behavior than as a virtual right the way they are now.
What we have now is not some intrinsic necessity for the corporate structure, a remnant of late 19th Century subservience to big business.
It's funny that you would mention cheese, since the cheese that most Americans and Canadians are familiar with is Cheddar -- the one and only cheese (to my knowledge) that is NOT pasteurized here.
I would bet that the "cheese" most Americans are familiar with is American cheese (or the even viler Velveeta-style 'Pasteurized Processed American Cheese Food'.
But Cheddar is certainly not the only kind of nonpasteurized cheese available in America.
It's a stupid idea. Filing is not about searching blindly in the style of google. Filing is about having a SYSTEM for categorising things, so that you can figure out what categories any given thing belongs in.
Filing is a concept of rather limited utility adapted to the needs of organizing physical documents that can only be in one place, which requires duplication of items when the same item logically fits into multiple categories in the system, and duplication of the entire set of records in order to view them based on a different organization (consider, e.g., the multiple sets of catalog cards in a precomputerized library.)
Directories are, I agree, a good way of replicating the utility and limitations of a filing system in a computer environment. However, there are a number of ways of avoiding some of those limitations, and tags/labels can be part of those.
Broadcasting to a TIVO is broadcasting, not distribution.
Look, I'm not saying that the RIAA is right, I'm trying to explain what the issue is that the judge decided RIAA had raised that, if proven, would would make any infringement by XM outside of the protection of the AHRA, and explaining the meaning of the relevant distinction between broadcasting and distribution.
I'm not taking a position on whether what XM does with its service + the XM/MP3 player is, legally, distribution, I'm just pointing out that that is the question that was raised that makes it a disputed issue whether the AHRA applies.
Yes but that's the OP's point. Office 2007 is in many ways more different from previous versions than OO.org is, making it the perfect time to make the switch.
Unless OOo is better at reading and converting documents from previous versions of Office than MSO 2007, or at least not worse, which I doubt, it may be a better time to switch than anytime in the past, but most businesses still won't want to do it.
OOo is never going to be a "closer upgrade" than the next iteration of MS Office in the ways that matter most, so if its ever going to make a giant leap forward, what it'll probably need is a killer feature besides its price point that makes people willing to deal with the transition cost.
Many of the criticisms of OS X they struck off as irrelevant or persnickety went like this: "Why is the CD Eject button on the keyboard? That's clearly inferior to having a button on the actual drive."
Well, hardly, because if we lived in a strange alternate universe were Apple ruled the market people would be criticizing IBM clones for having the button on the drive.
The only sane time to want to eject a CD is to take it out and put it into a case or some other device, in which case you have to reach to the drive in any case; while I won't go so far as to say the button being on the keyboard is "clearly inferior", there's no real advantage to having it anywhere else.
OTOH, there should be a power-on switch on the keyboard. There is no reason for me to have to reach for my case to power the computer on. IIRC, Mac's do this right, though its been a long time since I've actually touched a Mac despite the fact that I prefer them in the abstract to Windows boxes, and I may be misremembering.
So would it be a similar situation if a radio station produced or gave away tape recorders that could be used to record their broadcasts?
Probably not.
What if the tape recorder were locked onto a particular FM frequency?
Maybe so, but its still not as locked as XM is, since if you go somewhere else, the same frequency will give you some other station (if any). The XM device and service are rather tightly integrated, which seems to be the key to the RIAA's chance of success here.
If the RIAA wins, satellite stations will be forced to either: 1) Not have recorders for their programming, or 2) Open their networks so hardware delivered by third parties and not "locked" to their networks can still access it with appropriate subscriber info, and have recording be provided by third party gear, or 3) Pay the RIAA more money to be "distributors" of music.
Judge is obligated to explain why an individual recording music from XM radio to MP3s should be legally differentiated from recording music from FM radio to cassettes--for personal use only on both cases.
No, because that's not the distinction on which this case was allowed to proceed to trial; its quite clear, in the AHRA, that digital and analog recording are protected identically.
The allegation that the judge found made it a triable question of fact whether the AHRA applied was the RIAA's allegation that XM's actions in providing the exclusive service and the device together made them a "distributor" of music in fixed form when they only paid for a license to "broadcast" ephemeral copies of the music.
That does not mean the judge accepts the argument, either. It means that the RIAA can attempt to prove the argument with facts. That's it.
You mean the way most walkman style devices, home stereos and portable "ghetto blaster" style radios have allowed you to record a radio station to tape for the last 30 years or so? Yeah it's not MP3. So what.
The important distinction relevant to why this case was sent to trial rather than being barred by the AHRA from square one is not that the tape recorder is not MP3. The important distinction is that the tape recorder is not provided to you by the subscription-only radio station whose songs you are recording, who has paid for a license to "broadcast" ephemeral copies of music to subscribers, but not a more expensive license to "distribute" fixed copies.
From the XM music station's studio to the place where the recorded music is stored in fixed form on the XM provided recorder.
Now, its important to remember here that the judge's ruling does not mean that, in consideration of all the facts, the AHRA does not apply. It means that viewing all the contested facts in the light most favorable to the RIAA, there is a claim stated which could, if proven, entitle the RIAA to recover.
And how is this any different from the built-in Tivo-clone in my DISH Network satellite box?
It may be a bit different because XM is even more integrated, as if DISH Network also owned all the TV stations it provided.
Those cases are bullshit just like this is though. Individuals are responsible for their own actions... it's ridiculous to think that my actions (getting drunk, driving, getting in a wreck) can in any way involuntarily impose any sort of legal obligation on someone else (bartender, bar owner).
Your actions don't. Their actions — continuing to serve you drinks when that caused a foreseeable hazard to other people — impose liability on them. As you note, individuals are responsible for their own actions: here, the law agrees, individuals are responsible for forseeable harms caused to others by their own actions.
If you are a parent, and your child gets abused by some predator through a social networking website, you are a bad parent.
Or maybe not. Bad things happen to children of basically responsible parents, too; no one is perfect. But when something bad happens to a child, its fairly natural for parents to want to say that someone else should have prevented it, otherwise they have to face the question of whether they somehow failed.
Whats real funny is that when there is a story about how parents use tools to monitor what there children do online, everyone on \. cries foul about the breach of privacy.
No, "everyone" doesn't. Some people do. Probably not the same people who complain that parents are responsible for knowing what their children do online.
There are many different people on Slashdot. You will consistently see one group taking a position in one thread inconsistent with the position taken by a different group in a different thread. That's because people on Slashdot disagree on lots of stuff.
How can the judge say that the AHRA does not apply here? Digital recording is to digital radio as analog recording is to analog radio.
Digitial isn't the issue; the AHRA expressly protects digital technology the same as analog. What the judge held made the case triable (which does not mean the AHRA doesn't apply, it only means the facts which would determine that are legally contested and must be determined through trial) is the RIAA's claimes relative to XM's position as service provider, not just an equipment provider.
It looks like this is saying that you can't sue the makers of any recording device based no the noncommercial use of an infringing consumer. (Not it doesn't stop them from suing the consumer).
First, it does stop you from suing the consumer, which was rather the point of the media tax and the AHRA in the first place.
Second, the RIAA's claim is that XM isn't being sued for manufacturing the equipment, they are being sued for illegal "distribution" of copyrighted content because the combination of equipment and service they provide makes them a distributor, not merely a broadcaster, and they've only paid for a license to broadcast.
If it succeeds, the RIAA probably won't have struck a lasting blow against recording satellite-broadcast music, but may strike an unintentional blow against integration of content delivery services with recording services and hardware, which might indirectly promote interoperability and open standards.
Satellite radio may have been the big music companies salvation. If they hurt them with actions like this it may finally be over.
Even if timeshifting is the "killer app" that makes the difference between survival and death for satellite radio, an unfavorable decision for XM here won't kill satellite radio. It may force it, however, to find a way to be more "open" so that either account ID information or perhaps a receiver module that can plug into third party hardware that provides various functionality (including, potentially, recording) is provided by the subscription, but the consumer hardware, or at least key portions of it, are purchased independently from third parties.
No, the reason the judge found that the RIAA's allegations were not barred by the AHRA is because they alleged that XM through its subscription scheme combined with the recorders it provides has become a distribution service.
So... when are they gonna sue Sony et al for producing those wonderful boom boxes with tape decks from the early 90s?
They won't, because those don't get Songs exclusively from the Sony subscription radio network.
That's the key difference from the normal case protected by the AHRA that the RIAA alleged and that the judge here found justified sending the case to trial.
If the music industry gets it's way, then the content producers could sue the cable companies for distributing DVR products...
Possibly. XM isn't situated exactly like a cable company; its something of a combination of a set of TV stations and a cable company. Whether any precendent this case sets would be applicable against a cable company is less than clear in advance. But it could be, at least.
Say goodbye to Tivo...MythTV...etc.
Probably not. Tivo and MythTV are both distributed independently of cable companies. Unless Betamax is overruled, they will probably be legal products and services provided independently from the provider of access to the content however this case goes.
Do judges normally give their opinions about a case before it has begun?
The case "began" as soon as it was filed, this ruling is not before the case began. Judges often are called upon to make legal rulings before a case proceeds to trial, as here, which would include determining whether or not, on the facts alleged, the entire cause of action is prohibited by a statute and therefore the case must be thrown out.
Now, admittedly, the summary would have been more accurate if it said "The judge held that, assuming the truth of the factual allegations made by the RIAA, the suit was not clearly barred, as a matter of law, by the AHRA."
This does not mean that the judge agrees with the RIAA's fact claims: presenting evidence to controvert fact claims and resolving the truth of those is a matter for trial.
People who would be sued for infringement either for recording off the air or for simply manufacturing or distributing a recording device.
XM here isn't in the same position as an independent equipment manufacturer, nor of a usual broadcaster.
I don't think its at all clear that they fall within protected categories in the AHRA, at 17 USC 1008:
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
XM is being sued as a service provider, not for the manufacture of the equipment.
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A encyclopedia will, even if written by experts, rarely be either authoritative or reliable. It will be at best a rough, selective summary, and usually one which misses much of what is current. An encyclopedia is, at best, a good starting point.
Only if misused. The average library is full of half-truths and errors, and yet no (sane person) says libraries are dangerous. If you are using information you cannot directly evaluate from Wikipedia for any important use, you should be checking the sources cited (and discarding the information if it isn't cited), and evaluating the credibility of those sources and consulting them more fully.
No, its not. It's only "propaganda" if its all written to advance the interests of the same faction. Otherwise, it might contain propaganda (and Wikipedia no doubt in some cases does.) But as a whole it is not a work of propaganda.
A free tertiary reference source is neither a surgeon nor a college textbook. Applying the standards applicable to either of those is inappropriate. Also, its not a ham-and-cheese sandwich, so you shouldn't eat it and expect it to taste like one. It's not inappropriate "special pleading" to suggest that things which are unalike in kind from other things should not be evaluated by the standards applicable to the other, unlike, things.
Wikipedia is, in practice, useful to me for things I care about (even though I have found, and corrected, errors.) I therefore think it has value, in many cases unique value for which no comparable resource of would offer a suitable, reasonable substitute.
Is it perfect? No. Are there other tools which are better for some uses? Certainly. Is it as inappropriate as any encyclopedia as an ultimate source? Certainly.
Is it valuable, and in some cases uniquely so? Yes, I'd say so.
Since I was (though I didn't make this clear) referring to earlier US history, I'd say that's more of a view of a different part of history, but sure. And certainly neither the earlier US practice nor the more recent one was or is free from the corrupting influence of cash and the cronyism of the connected.
Its worth noting that it used to be that governments were far more restrictive about the corporate charters they would approve, and far more willing to revoke charters for corporations violating the public interest. The special privileges granted with a corporate charter were viewed more as a privilege granted in the public interest and conditioned on good behavior than as a virtual right the way they are now.
What we have now is not some intrinsic necessity for the corporate structure, a remnant of late 19th Century subservience to big business.
I would bet that the "cheese" most Americans are familiar with is American cheese (or the even viler Velveeta-style 'Pasteurized Processed American Cheese Food'.
But Cheddar is certainly not the only kind of nonpasteurized cheese available in America.
Filing is a concept of rather limited utility adapted to the needs of organizing physical documents that can only be in one place, which requires duplication of items when the same item logically fits into multiple categories in the system, and duplication of the entire set of records in order to view them based on a different organization (consider, e.g., the multiple sets of catalog cards in a precomputerized library.)
Directories are, I agree, a good way of replicating the utility and limitations of a filing system in a computer environment. However, there are a number of ways of avoiding some of those limitations, and tags/labels can be part of those.
Look, I'm not saying that the RIAA is right, I'm trying to explain what the issue is that the judge decided RIAA had raised that, if proven, would would make any infringement by XM outside of the protection of the AHRA, and explaining the meaning of the relevant distinction between broadcasting and distribution.
I'm not taking a position on whether what XM does with its service + the XM/MP3 player is, legally, distribution, I'm just pointing out that that is the question that was raised that makes it a disputed issue whether the AHRA applies.
Normal broadcasting circumstances.
No, broadcasting is ephemeral, distribution is fixed.
Unless OOo is better at reading and converting documents from previous versions of Office than MSO 2007, or at least not worse, which I doubt, it may be a better time to switch than anytime in the past, but most businesses still won't want to do it.
OOo is never going to be a "closer upgrade" than the next iteration of MS Office in the ways that matter most, so if its ever going to make a giant leap forward, what it'll probably need is a killer feature besides its price point that makes people willing to deal with the transition cost.
The only sane time to want to eject a CD is to take it out and put it into a case or some other device, in which case you have to reach to the drive in any case; while I won't go so far as to say the button being on the keyboard is "clearly inferior", there's no real advantage to having it anywhere else.
OTOH, there should be a power-on switch on the keyboard. There is no reason for me to have to reach for my case to power the computer on. IIRC, Mac's do this right, though its been a long time since I've actually touched a Mac despite the fact that I prefer them in the abstract to Windows boxes, and I may be misremembering.
Probably not.
Maybe so, but its still not as locked as XM is, since if you go somewhere else, the same frequency will give you some other station (if any). The XM device and service are rather tightly integrated, which seems to be the key to the RIAA's chance of success here.
If the RIAA wins, satellite stations will be forced to either:
1) Not have recorders for their programming, or
2) Open their networks so hardware delivered by third parties and not "locked" to their networks can still access it with appropriate subscriber info, and have recording be provided by third party gear, or
3) Pay the RIAA more money to be "distributors" of music.
No, because that's not the distinction on which this case was allowed to proceed to trial; its quite clear, in the AHRA, that digital and analog recording are protected identically.
The allegation that the judge found made it a triable question of fact whether the AHRA applied was the RIAA's allegation that XM's actions in providing the exclusive service and the device together made them a "distributor" of music in fixed form when they only paid for a license to "broadcast" ephemeral copies of the music.
That does not mean the judge accepts the argument, either. It means that the RIAA can attempt to prove the argument with facts. That's it.
The important distinction relevant to why this case was sent to trial rather than being barred by the AHRA from square one is not that the tape recorder is not MP3. The important distinction is that the tape recorder is not provided to you by the subscription-only radio station whose songs you are recording, who has paid for a license to "broadcast" ephemeral copies of music to subscribers, but not a more expensive license to "distribute" fixed copies.
From the XM music station's studio to the place where the recorded music is stored in fixed form on the XM provided recorder.
Now, its important to remember here that the judge's ruling does not mean that, in consideration of all the facts, the AHRA does not apply. It means that viewing all the contested facts in the light most favorable to the RIAA, there is a claim stated which could, if proven, entitle the RIAA to recover.
It may be a bit different because XM is even more integrated, as if DISH Network also owned all the TV stations it provided.
Your actions don't. Their actions — continuing to serve you drinks when that caused a foreseeable hazard to other people — impose liability on them. As you note, individuals are responsible for their own actions: here, the law agrees, individuals are responsible for forseeable harms caused to others by their own actions.
Or maybe not. Bad things happen to children of basically responsible parents, too; no one is perfect. But when something bad happens to a child, its fairly natural for parents to want to say that someone else should have prevented it, otherwise they have to face the question of whether they somehow failed.
No, "everyone" doesn't. Some people do. Probably not the same people who complain that parents are responsible for knowing what their children do online.
There are many different people on Slashdot. You will consistently see one group taking a position in one thread inconsistent with the position taken by a different group in a different thread. That's because people on Slashdot disagree on lots of stuff.
Digitial isn't the issue; the AHRA expressly protects digital technology the same as analog. What the judge held made the case triable (which does not mean the AHRA doesn't apply, it only means the facts which would determine that are legally contested and must be determined through trial) is the RIAA's claimes relative to XM's position as service provider, not just an equipment provider.
First, it does stop you from suing the consumer, which was rather the point of the media tax and the AHRA in the first place.
Second, the RIAA's claim is that XM isn't being sued for manufacturing the equipment, they are being sued for illegal "distribution" of copyrighted content because the combination of equipment and service they provide makes them a distributor, not merely a broadcaster, and they've only paid for a license to broadcast.
If it succeeds, the RIAA probably won't have struck a lasting blow against recording satellite-broadcast music, but may strike an unintentional blow against integration of content delivery services with recording services and hardware, which might indirectly promote interoperability and open standards.
Even if timeshifting is the "killer app" that makes the difference between survival and death for satellite radio, an unfavorable decision for XM here won't kill satellite radio. It may force it, however, to find a way to be more "open" so that either account ID information or perhaps a receiver module that can plug into third party hardware that provides various functionality (including, potentially, recording) is provided by the subscription, but the consumer hardware, or at least key portions of it, are purchased independently from third parties.
No, the reason the judge found that the RIAA's allegations were not barred by the AHRA is because they alleged that XM through its subscription scheme combined with the recorders it provides has become a distribution service.
They won't, because those don't get Songs exclusively from the Sony subscription radio network.
That's the key difference from the normal case protected by the AHRA that the RIAA alleged and that the judge here found justified sending the case to trial.
The case "began" as soon as it was filed, this ruling is not before the case began. Judges often are called upon to make legal rulings before a case proceeds to trial, as here, which would include determining whether or not, on the facts alleged, the entire cause of action is prohibited by a statute and therefore the case must be thrown out.
Now, admittedly, the summary would have been more accurate if it said "The judge held that, assuming the truth of the factual allegations made by the RIAA, the suit was not clearly barred, as a matter of law, by the AHRA."
This does not mean that the judge agrees with the RIAA's fact claims: presenting evidence to controvert fact claims and resolving the truth of those is a matter for trial.
It might affect the ability of Cable/Satellite TV providers to provide DVR equipment and service as part of their subscription packages.
People who would be sued for infringement either for recording off the air or for simply manufacturing or distributing a recording device.
XM here isn't in the same position as an independent equipment manufacturer, nor of a usual broadcaster.
I don't think its at all clear that they fall within protected categories in the AHRA, at 17 USC 1008:
XM is being sued as a service provider, not for the manufacture of the equipment.