This is true, however I'm wondering if one of our law-minded geeks out there can explain to me why film productions (legally) have to post a notification of filming, even if it's just two guys and a handcam?
Yeah, it's a great idea, but it's as likely as me becoming Miss America. ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR GOURD?
Dood, share what you're smoking over there...For one thing, I'm in my 50's, and for another, I think they'd freak at the beard... Ahh...you are. Nevermind...but this
"As punishment, all titles the the RIAA represent are now in the public domain. Next case." ...from the previous poster is absurd. It's not a good idea. The fact is a lot of artists would lose a lot of money, and we're not talking income here necessarily. Many of them may not be able to "pay off" their advances.
Kill the RIAA? Sure. Kill the major labels and their evil machine? Absolutely. But somebody please think of the childr...er...artists!
What am I agreeing to do?
To participate, you will need to agree to allow Microsoft to gather and record information about the use of your home computer on an ongoing basis. By agreeing to voluntarily participate in the Windows Feedback Program, you agree that:
* You will abide by all terms stated and referred to in the Terms of Use and Notices ("Agreement"), including granting Microsoft a license to use your data and feedback.
* You will install software provided to you by Microsoft to facilitate and allow data to be recorded, transmitted, and used by Microsoft.
* You will be invited to participate in occasional online surveys. Wait a minute... Does my shared data have a unique identifier?
Yes, we have a unique identifier for your data. This allows us to tell between one customer having an error 100 times and 100 customers having the same error once. Being able to make that distinction is very valuable in prioritizing how we improve our products. Is it just me, or does this sound like a BETA test to anyone else?
Not a solution for everyone, but the American Southwest is foolish for not moving faster on solar power. Clouds are rarely a problem and storing the energy for use at night is not all that difficult.
Besides which, people constantly presume that we need a centralized power industry to ensure our power needs...if alternative renewable sources could be produced more cheaply and efficiently people could have them installed directly where they work and live.
Solar panels on houses...windmills powering billboard lights in California...Desert streetlights run off of solar stored during the day...
I think Nuclear is going to make for a wonderful source of power once we finally get some serious work happening off-planet, but here on planet earth proper we are just swapping the storage of one material's dangerous wastes for another.
A series of things, unrealistic as they may sound, could certainly help us solve the growing energy crisis. If large economies could scale back energy use coupled with renewable energy creation appropriate for their locale, and if growing economies could start making some serious in-roads in that same direction, I think everyone could still benefit economically speaking (which is what most nations are concerned about...are the people employed? can they afford food? clothing? material goods? can we tax that?)
Certainly someone will come along and tell me "it's just not gonna happen, so we need nuclear." In that case we'll just have put off the human race's danger point for a little bit longer.
If we don't start thinking about the long term now we may never get the chance to think of it at all.
Well for tidal power there are a few problems.
1. They Bay of Fundy is kind of unusual. There is a lack of sites that are really that good.
So we wouldn't want to use it in the few places where it could be an effective means of creating electricity.
2. Enviromental impact. Tidal areas tend to be very sensitive. Better to slog around oil and gas. Much more environmentally friendly.
3. Cost. Except at few places tidal energy isn't very dense. It would require constructing huge systems. It's cheaper (and more important) to wait until we find an inexpensive, perfectly clean means of extracting energy from our environment.
Except that it ain't gonna happen.
It's nothing personal (for all I know your take may be that we simply use too much energy anyway and ought to cut back...a notion I wholeheartedly agree with.) I just think we need to start throwing these against the wall and seeing what sticks. I don't believe we're going to find a universal solution to much of anything, ever. We as the human race should be beyond such thinking now. In some places, this kind of power is viable, and if extra care needs to be taken to protect the ecosystem of such places, then let's take extra care and give it shot.
Why isn't Arizona, Xinjiang or Central Libya leading the world in solar energy? They get plenty of sunlight and have plenty of space to get it from? Why do people along window coasts constantly complain about the unsightliness of windmills that are virtually over the horizon? I'm not fond of nuclear on earth, but I think fission has tremendous potential for use in space.
The point being that I think a little skepticism is healthy. I just worry that a lot of people are too dogmatic or pessimistic to give a lot of these ideas and technologies the old college try in an age where our options may be diminishing rapidly.
Couldn't the same be said about all the wind turbines we're setting up stopping/slowing the wind? Unfortunately it often is. I wonder if the same people who worry so much about the potential damage of these suggested solutions have considered that we do not exist in a static environment, and that we are a part of that environment. We affect the system and the system affects us because we are a component of the system.
I wonder how we are negatively affecting the system by eating animals / plants?
Irrigation seems to remove water from somewhere else...is agriculture worth it?
Yes, but capturing solar energy is no free lunch! The panels still come from somewhere
Look, it's all true. Any one thing is a trade off for another. In our current circumstance I don't think we're in too poor a shape if we give some of these alternative solutions a try. The alternative to that is to twiddle our thumbs waiting for the "perfect" solution (perpetual motion? zero-point energy?) that may never come.
I think it's time to stop throwing all our eggs in one basket anyway. A decent distribution of solutions is probably safer than seeking the ultimate, one-size-fits-all answer. Nature has understood diversification for millennia. Maybe we should take some notes.
Woah there, cowboy. Anecdotal evidence here, but I was one of those "younger generation" types in the era of the C64 and Commodore's BASIC was what got me interested in coding to begin with because it was easy. When I realized that I had gotten as far as I could with BASIC, I headed into assembly language / machine code to do the rest, which I believe was a valuable education. Why did I bother? Because of all those cool looking, cool sounding games. I wanted to make them. I wanted to know how they worked. I wanted to improve them.
It wasn't until Windows 95 (or possibly sometime during the console wars) that I think we saw the zeitgeist toward passive computer use. Once you couldn't look under the hood anymore, it was just too difficult to figure out how things worked.
I believe you have grossly underestimated the imagination of "the younger generation." If they have the tools, I believe they will use them. If all they are given is "SUPERFUNGAME" without the tools to play with it, that's when I think the creativity begins to slide in favor of passive entertainment. I think numerous comments on this article can back me up on this one.
f you look back, you see a lot of text based games, or ugly graphics by the standards of today, so it's no wonder that people do not understand. One thing that was true of most of the games back then, they all were NEW, and many really pushed the abilities of the computers of the time. Those that don't know anything much about film might watch Citizen Kane and say, "yeah, it's okay...don't know if it's the greatest film of all time, though." The film buffs, however, can look back and see it in context - the editing, the cinematography, and even the way it handled it's subject matter...movies simply weren't made like that up till that point, and it changed how many films were made thereafter.
The same argument goes for Progressive Rock in the late 60s / early 70s. It was all new, untried and unfettered territory. Anything was possible, and so bands tried everything. They created innovative and dare I say (as someone born after Prog Rock's heyday) timeless music in a way that has rarely been seen since (modern innovators including perhaps The Mars Volta and Radiohead.)
So it goes with the computers of that age...it was the paradigm of the time and that paradigm has changed for the worse. On the bright side, there seems to be a lot of experimentation with simplicity again in the hardware market (XO, Eee, and even the possibility of some phone companies letting up on their smart device lockdown) and linux is probably at it's strongest point yet which could open up opportunities for hackers young and old to take a small piece of that spirit back.
I think that's the BS we're sold when we're kids that there's this one career that'll make us happy,do what you love or passionate about and the money will follow and other such non sense. Of course, there's a minority folks out there who just love law, medicine, business, and other high paying careers that love to spout this crap. But the rest of us get into the work force and become horribly disillusioned. And then we look wistfully upon the blue collar guy who just works his 40hrs, while we're working our 60+ and we have to wonder was it really worth it? Going to school getting our balls busted and for what? 60+ hours a week and to have our jobs sent oversees somewhere. Mod this one up, someone.
Seriously, my biggest problem growing up as far as planning for my future was figuring out "what I wanted to be when I grew up." Problem was that everyone else seemed to say or be satisfied with "finding that one passion." I had too many passions. Programming, Flying, Music, Languages, Astronomy...but everyone (counselors and many other adult types) kept telling me to "pick something."
Might not have been so frustrating if they had actually suggested that I could change my mind later if it didn't work out, but that certainly wasn't the paradigm of the time as it is today. Not that it was impossible at the time, but it just wasn't the generally accepted way of doing things.
Now, though, people seem to juggle multiple careers and it's the norm.
Conclusion? Find what you enjoy doing and do that. Live where you enjoy living and live there. If you can't find those things, just keep looking. The money? As long as you can make enough to live off of and you're happy with the rest of your life, who cares about the money?
Now if only following my own advice were so easy =D
I don't know anything about Telengard, but the only heat issues I ever had from the C64 during long sessions were from the power supply. My machine properly never got particularly warm.
I suppose I just wasn't "challenging" it enough. ^_^
I would just like to add to this that I do work in media an need to manipulate, store and backup huge files all the time. Clearly a drive with any restrictive feature on transfering said data would not be useful to me or my clients.
Really? Because that's exactly the way it was done up until about 100 years ago. Wealthy individuals (benefactors), institutions (universities, churches, museums, etc.), trusts, estates and endowments sponsored the production of art primarily as a benefit to the community the art (and artist) resided in, not as a vehicle for the generation of capital. I don't know if it would be an Entirely Bad Thing(tm) for the arts to have the profit motive taken out of it...
But wealthy benefactors did benefit, particularly in the realm of status. Also, commissioned works would often produce tangible returns by way of performance moneys or an object of physical value such as a painting. Furthermore, such benefactors would retain certain rights to the artists future work (depending on the nature of the arrangements.) If anything, wealthy benefactors were more like a precursor to todays major record labels, or perhaps a film or television producer.
Regarding institutions, it has also been in the interest of those institutions financially to fund high quality artistic work so as to ensure the survival and patronship of those institutions.
Trusts and estates, well...you got me there =)
If the profit motive for sponsors were eliminated and yet sponsors were still willing to put up money for such works, I would be all for it. Art, however, has always had an element of profit in it, whether for the artists, the sponsors or the market in general. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Whether or not there is money in art, there will always be good art and bad art. The question then becomes whether those that derive some benefit (enjoyment, profit, etc...) from that art should compensate those who have spent time, materials and effort to create the art for their time, materials and effort.
In support of your statement, and for those who live in the in United States, I'll provide a fairly simple piece of anecdotal evidence.
Remember those medium sized chain bookstores in malls and such during the 80s and 90s? Remember how all of a sudden big box giants Borders and Barnes & Noble rose up, bought them out, and have all but dissolved Waldenbooks, B. Dalton and the like? Notice how the big boxes are anchors for shopping centers and malls...and how many of them still have smaller versions of themselves just around the corner?
That's money...being made on books. Lots of books. Sure that could change in 10 years when someone comes out with the perfect paper like, DRM-free Wunder-Reader.
Right now, though, the printed word industry is probably as profitable and prolific as it's ever been.
Sorry I don't have cold hard numbers to make the case, but as someone who spent a decade and a half in the book business, I can tell you they are out there.
Write on contract only. The contract can be with a single person with a ton of dollars or a ton of people each with a single dollar, or somewhere in between. Once the work is finished, collect your money and then publish it to the public domain. Viola! Ease of duplication is no longer the creator's enemy -- it is now their friend as each person who copies the finished work is no longer stealing from the creator, they are promoting the creator.
It doesn't seem very likely that a single person with a ton of dollars is going to finance a book they have no financial return on. That said, if you can coax your fans to pony up an advance at $1 a piece (for example) you might have a pretty good business model going. Bands like Marillion are doing exactly that with some success right now, so I don't see why it wouldn't work in books.
1st Objection - How does an author get started? Who is going to pay a penny for an unknown author to write something?
1st Answer - New authors just have to suck it up, the way the majority already do today and give away some of their work in order to develop a reputation.
Here comes the problem, though. What if a writer is quite good, but people decide not to pony up any money for this "up and coming author" simply because the work, free or not, is easily accessible.
It's true that some people will be willing to pay regardless of the availability of the work, but inevitably the DRM issue hinges on the problem of people "consuming" someone's work without providing any compensation. In some formats/genres/styles/demographics, it may be completely viable (Gabriel Garcia Marquez will probably be able to sell books) but in other environments the money may just not be there when the material is so accessible (what if the first Harry Potter Book were released in 2007 instead of 10 years earlier...would the future titles still sell as many copies as e-book technology becomes more viable, particularly with the rise of "smart" devices and wi-fi access, or would a large number of that audience just torrent the book?)
4th Objection - What if nobody is willing to pay the author's asking price?
4th Answer - That's business. Either lower the price, or cancel the offer. At least this way very little time and money gets spent on creating a product that no one wants to buy. It ain't a perfect system but at least the feedback comes from the actual consumers rather than some intermediate businessman whose only purpose is to sell eyeballs for advertising dollars.
Which really summarizes the state of the whole mess right now. It's not a perfect system but neither are any of the others. Each has flaws and merits and as we're seeing in the world of technology today there is room for many different business models. The key is to recognize that the old way of doing things isn't going to work anymore and to identify approaches that best serve their specific environments.
For my part, I don't like DRM either. I just want to see some viable alternatives that ensure that the content creator receives fair compensation for their work. Kudos for a valid suggestion from the responder that I hope more content creators takes a stab at.
Just to think; 50 years of research on the impact of violence in the media reveals that the prior 12,000+ years of civilization has been unmarred by violence.
Doesn't the question come down entirely, then, on whether or not Activision has clearly stated that the song is a soundalike? I don't own that particularly copy of Guitar Hero, but I do recall reading either on a label or perhaps in game that some of the songs were not original recordings (in more specific detail per song.)
If Activision has clearly stated this then it could certainly be asserted that they are not setting out to fool people into thinking it's somebody else.
Of course, I don't have all the facts on this case, but so far as what's being discussed on reliable old Wikip...er...Slashdot, that's my understanding of the law.
I think this all depends on what exactly is what here.
Anyone can make a soundalike recording, no matter how perfect, so long as:
(1) They are clearly marketing to consumers that the song is a soundalike and not the original recording and
(2) They are paying the appropriate royalties for the composition itself.
As stated in another response, the copyright for the sound recording is distinct and separate from the copyright for the composition. As long as Activision has clearly indicated that the song is a soundalike (and can presumably prove that it's a soundalike and not the original sound recording) and are paying royalties on the composition, I believe they are in the clear.
Naturally, IANAL, but you don't always have to be understand law.
Slashdot Mirror
This is true, however I'm wondering if one of our law-minded geeks out there can explain to me why film productions (legally) have to post a notification of filming, even if it's just two guys and a handcam?
One up.
They also really brought home that "F" word.
Dood, share what you're smoking over there...For one thing, I'm in my 50's, and for another, I think they'd freak at the beard... Ahh...you are. Nevermind...but this
"As punishment, all titles the the RIAA represent are now in the public domain. Next case." ...from the previous poster is absurd. It's not a good idea. The fact is a lot of artists would lose a lot of money, and we're not talking income here necessarily. Many of them may not be able to "pay off" their advances.
Kill the RIAA? Sure. Kill the major labels and their evil machine? Absolutely. But somebody please think of the childr...er...artists!
To participate, you will need to agree to allow Microsoft to gather and record information about the use of your home computer on an ongoing basis. By agreeing to voluntarily participate in the Windows Feedback Program, you agree that:
* You will abide by all terms stated and referred to in the Terms of Use and Notices ("Agreement"), including granting Microsoft a license to use your data and feedback.
* You will install software provided to you by Microsoft to facilitate and allow data to be recorded, transmitted, and used by Microsoft.
* You will be invited to participate in occasional online surveys. Wait a minute...
Does my shared data have a unique identifier?
Yes, we have a unique identifier for your data. This allows us to tell between one customer having an error 100 times and 100 customers having the same error once. Being able to make that distinction is very valuable in prioritizing how we improve our products. Is it just me, or does this sound like a BETA test to anyone else?
Not a solution for everyone, but the American Southwest is foolish for not moving faster on solar power. Clouds are rarely a problem and storing the energy for use at night is not all that difficult.
Besides which, people constantly presume that we need a centralized power industry to ensure our power needs...if alternative renewable sources could be produced more cheaply and efficiently people could have them installed directly where they work and live.
Solar panels on houses...windmills powering billboard lights in California...Desert streetlights run off of solar stored during the day...
Here, here.
I think Nuclear is going to make for a wonderful source of power once we finally get some serious work happening off-planet, but here on planet earth proper we are just swapping the storage of one material's dangerous wastes for another.
A series of things, unrealistic as they may sound, could certainly help us solve the growing energy crisis. If large economies could scale back energy use coupled with renewable energy creation appropriate for their locale, and if growing economies could start making some serious in-roads in that same direction, I think everyone could still benefit economically speaking (which is what most nations are concerned about...are the people employed? can they afford food? clothing? material goods? can we tax that?)
Certainly someone will come along and tell me "it's just not gonna happen, so we need nuclear." In that case we'll just have put off the human race's danger point for a little bit longer.
If we don't start thinking about the long term now we may never get the chance to think of it at all.
So we wouldn't want to use it in the few places where it could be an effective means of creating electricity.
2. Enviromental impact. Tidal areas tend to be very sensitive. Better to slog around oil and gas. Much more environmentally friendly.
3. Cost. Except at few places tidal energy isn't very dense. It would require constructing huge systems. It's cheaper (and more important) to wait until we find an inexpensive, perfectly clean means of extracting energy from our environment.
Except that it ain't gonna happen.
It's nothing personal (for all I know your take may be that we simply use too much energy anyway and ought to cut back...a notion I wholeheartedly agree with.) I just think we need to start throwing these against the wall and seeing what sticks. I don't believe we're going to find a universal solution to much of anything, ever. We as the human race should be beyond such thinking now. In some places, this kind of power is viable, and if extra care needs to be taken to protect the ecosystem of such places, then let's take extra care and give it shot.
Why isn't Arizona, Xinjiang or Central Libya leading the world in solar energy? They get plenty of sunlight and have plenty of space to get it from? Why do people along window coasts constantly complain about the unsightliness of windmills that are virtually over the horizon? I'm not fond of nuclear on earth, but I think fission has tremendous potential for use in space.
The point being that I think a little skepticism is healthy. I just worry that a lot of people are too dogmatic or pessimistic to give a lot of these ideas and technologies the old college try in an age where our options may be diminishing rapidly.
I wonder how we are negatively affecting the system by eating animals / plants?
Irrigation seems to remove water from somewhere else...is agriculture worth it?
Yes, but capturing solar energy is no free lunch! The panels still come from somewhere
Look, it's all true. Any one thing is a trade off for another. In our current circumstance I don't think we're in too poor a shape if we give some of these alternative solutions a try. The alternative to that is to twiddle our thumbs waiting for the "perfect" solution (perpetual motion? zero-point energy?) that may never come.
I think it's time to stop throwing all our eggs in one basket anyway. A decent distribution of solutions is probably safer than seeking the ultimate, one-size-fits-all answer. Nature has understood diversification for millennia. Maybe we should take some notes.
Woah there, cowboy. Anecdotal evidence here, but I was one of those "younger generation" types in the era of the C64 and Commodore's BASIC was what got me interested in coding to begin with because it was easy. When I realized that I had gotten as far as I could with BASIC, I headed into assembly language / machine code to do the rest, which I believe was a valuable education. Why did I bother? Because of all those cool looking, cool sounding games. I wanted to make them. I wanted to know how they worked. I wanted to improve them.
It wasn't until Windows 95 (or possibly sometime during the console wars) that I think we saw the zeitgeist toward passive computer use. Once you couldn't look under the hood anymore, it was just too difficult to figure out how things worked.
I believe you have grossly underestimated the imagination of "the younger generation." If they have the tools, I believe they will use them. If all they are given is "SUPERFUNGAME" without the tools to play with it, that's when I think the creativity begins to slide in favor of passive entertainment. I think numerous comments on this article can back me up on this one.
The same argument goes for Progressive Rock in the late 60s / early 70s. It was all new, untried and unfettered territory. Anything was possible, and so bands tried everything. They created innovative and dare I say (as someone born after Prog Rock's heyday) timeless music in a way that has rarely been seen since (modern innovators including perhaps The Mars Volta and Radiohead.)
So it goes with the computers of that age...it was the paradigm of the time and that paradigm has changed for the worse. On the bright side, there seems to be a lot of experimentation with simplicity again in the hardware market (XO, Eee, and even the possibility of some phone companies letting up on their smart device lockdown) and linux is probably at it's strongest point yet which could open up opportunities for hackers young and old to take a small piece of that spirit back.
Anyone still make music with the C64?
Seriously, my biggest problem growing up as far as planning for my future was figuring out "what I wanted to be when I grew up." Problem was that everyone else seemed to say or be satisfied with "finding that one passion." I had too many passions. Programming, Flying, Music, Languages, Astronomy...but everyone (counselors and many other adult types) kept telling me to "pick something."
Might not have been so frustrating if they had actually suggested that I could change my mind later if it didn't work out, but that certainly wasn't the paradigm of the time as it is today. Not that it was impossible at the time, but it just wasn't the generally accepted way of doing things.
Now, though, people seem to juggle multiple careers and it's the norm.
Conclusion? Find what you enjoy doing and do that. Live where you enjoy living and live there. If you can't find those things, just keep looking. The money? As long as you can make enough to live off of and you're happy with the rest of your life, who cares about the money?
Now if only following my own advice were so easy =D
I don't know anything about Telengard, but the only heat issues I ever had from the C64 during long sessions were from the power supply. My machine properly never got particularly warm.
I suppose I just wasn't "challenging" it enough. ^_^
Well, there were numerous fastloaders for the hacking inclined.
And back then, weren't we all hackers...just a little bit? Cuz I think you had to be to get anything done!
I would just like to add to this that I do work in media an need to manipulate, store and backup huge files all the time. Clearly a drive with any restrictive feature on transfering said data would not be useful to me or my clients.
Correct me if my latin is faulty, but "qui bono"?
But wealthy benefactors did benefit, particularly in the realm of status. Also, commissioned works would often produce tangible returns by way of performance moneys or an object of physical value such as a painting. Furthermore, such benefactors would retain certain rights to the artists future work (depending on the nature of the arrangements.) If anything, wealthy benefactors were more like a precursor to todays major record labels, or perhaps a film or television producer.
Regarding institutions, it has also been in the interest of those institutions financially to fund high quality artistic work so as to ensure the survival and patronship of those institutions.
Trusts and estates, well...you got me there =)
If the profit motive for sponsors were eliminated and yet sponsors were still willing to put up money for such works, I would be all for it. Art, however, has always had an element of profit in it, whether for the artists, the sponsors or the market in general. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Whether or not there is money in art, there will always be good art and bad art. The question then becomes whether those that derive some benefit (enjoyment, profit, etc...) from that art should compensate those who have spent time, materials and effort to create the art for their time, materials and effort.
Or what about "There'snothingmoreuselessthanalockwithavoiceprint."
I'd like my geek card validated now. Thank you.
- (Destined to be modded into obscurity.)
And would then have to manipulate every photo of any noteworthiness whatsoever.
Occam, anyone?
In support of your statement, and for those who live in the in United States, I'll provide a fairly simple piece of anecdotal evidence.
Remember those medium sized chain bookstores in malls and such during the 80s and 90s? Remember how all of a sudden big box giants Borders and Barnes & Noble rose up, bought them out, and have all but dissolved Waldenbooks, B. Dalton and the like? Notice how the big boxes are anchors for shopping centers and malls...and how many of them still have smaller versions of themselves just around the corner?
That's money...being made on books. Lots of books. Sure that could change in 10 years when someone comes out with the perfect paper like, DRM-free Wunder-Reader.
Right now, though, the printed word industry is probably as profitable and prolific as it's ever been.
Sorry I don't have cold hard numbers to make the case, but as someone who spent a decade and a half in the book business, I can tell you they are out there.
I think I smell a meme.
No...nevermind...that's my laptop battery.
It doesn't seem very likely that a single person with a ton of dollars is going to finance a book they have no financial return on. That said, if you can coax your fans to pony up an advance at $1 a piece (for example) you might have a pretty good business model going. Bands like Marillion are doing exactly that with some success right now, so I don't see why it wouldn't work in books.
1st Objection - How does an author get started? Who is going to pay a penny for an unknown author to write something? 1st Answer - New authors just have to suck it up, the way the majority already do today and give away some of their work in order to develop a reputation.
Here comes the problem, though. What if a writer is quite good, but people decide not to pony up any money for this "up and coming author" simply because the work, free or not, is easily accessible.
It's true that some people will be willing to pay regardless of the availability of the work, but inevitably the DRM issue hinges on the problem of people "consuming" someone's work without providing any compensation. In some formats/genres/styles/demographics, it may be completely viable (Gabriel Garcia Marquez will probably be able to sell books) but in other environments the money may just not be there when the material is so accessible (what if the first Harry Potter Book were released in 2007 instead of 10 years earlier...would the future titles still sell as many copies as e-book technology becomes more viable, particularly with the rise of "smart" devices and wi-fi access, or would a large number of that audience just torrent the book?)
4th Objection - What if nobody is willing to pay the author's asking price? 4th Answer - That's business. Either lower the price, or cancel the offer. At least this way very little time and money gets spent on creating a product that no one wants to buy. It ain't a perfect system but at least the feedback comes from the actual consumers rather than some intermediate businessman whose only purpose is to sell eyeballs for advertising dollars.
Which really summarizes the state of the whole mess right now. It's not a perfect system but neither are any of the others. Each has flaws and merits and as we're seeing in the world of technology today there is room for many different business models. The key is to recognize that the old way of doing things isn't going to work anymore and to identify approaches that best serve their specific environments.
For my part, I don't like DRM either. I just want to see some viable alternatives that ensure that the content creator receives fair compensation for their work. Kudos for a valid suggestion from the responder that I hope more content creators takes a stab at.
Just to think; 50 years of research on the impact of violence in the media reveals that the prior 12,000+ years of civilization has been unmarred by violence.
Doesn't the question come down entirely, then, on whether or not Activision has clearly stated that the song is a soundalike? I don't own that particularly copy of Guitar Hero, but I do recall reading either on a label or perhaps in game that some of the songs were not original recordings (in more specific detail per song.)
If Activision has clearly stated this then it could certainly be asserted that they are not setting out to fool people into thinking it's somebody else.
Of course, I don't have all the facts on this case, but so far as what's being discussed on reliable old Wikip...er...Slashdot, that's my understanding of the law.
I think this all depends on what exactly is what here.
Anyone can make a soundalike recording, no matter how perfect, so long as:
(1) They are clearly marketing to consumers that the song is a soundalike and not the original recording and
(2) They are paying the appropriate royalties for the composition itself.
As stated in another response, the copyright for the sound recording is distinct and separate from the copyright for the composition. As long as Activision has clearly indicated that the song is a soundalike (and can presumably prove that it's a soundalike and not the original sound recording) and are paying royalties on the composition, I believe they are in the clear.
Naturally, IANAL, but you don't always have to be understand law.