I don't blame you for feeling that way. I would ask this though.. using your example, if someone used your work in their schoolwork. I don't doubt that it would be an annoyance, maybe even an insult to you if you found out. How much ill would you wish on the kid in return though? Would you want him branded ineligible to use the internet for it? Would you want him (or his parents) fined the life crippling sums of money as the RIAA has been doing over a handful of songs? Would you want him thrown in prison? You sound like a reasonable person, I would guess you would not want these things.
How much harm would it really do to you? Is it likely all his classmates are going to keep copies of his homework? If they do will it really stop them from buying your CD? Is it likely they were all going to buy it anyway? How many might hear the song in his presentation for the first time, like it, ask him who it is and then go out and buy it?
While I understand that you own the original design and the right to distribute your work, anyone who buys it did actually pay to own something themselves. What rights would you expect that person to have? Do they really just own that one copy on that one piece of media? if they bought the song on CD should they not be allowed to listen on their iPod? If the original is damaged do they not have the right to keep a backup copy? Is it only allowable to play music when alone, or when solely in the company of others whom have also paid for the same music? How about that farmer in the UK who was sued for playing music to the cows? Should cows be buying CDs now? While you certainly own something which you made the effort to produce we all have some kind of ownership when we pay our hard earned cash for it do we not?
My point above is that copyright is currently broken. That doesn't say it couldn't be fixed and then supported. The future of copyright and patents however I believe is much darker than this. So much talk is about data. Music, such as your situation, Video and Software. It's easy to see why, technology has made copying such things trivial. How about actual tangible objects? How about things you can hold in your hand?
Already we have the DMCA being used to limit people's freedoms with electronic devices they have purchased. Look at TI suing people for talking about how to change the software on their calculators. They aren't copying the physical device, TI still gets their money. They are just using it in a way TI never intended. Most companies haven't actually tried to use the DMCA in this way yet but many hardware vendors are putting limits on how customers can use the devices they have purchased. Just look at the iPhone, or any cellphone for that matter. These are physical devices people paid for. How can one argue that the user is not also the owner?
The Internet was Pandora's box for copyright of intangible things like music. It's not going to end there. The day is coming where one will be able to take the design of a physical object, in digital form and produce said object at home. It may not be entirely free like copying music as raw materials will be necessary but it will be close enough to destroy the business models of most industries. Take a look at RepRap, CupCake CNC, etc... sure, they are fairly limited in what they can make now and not ready for grandma to use yet but look at the progress they have made in just a few years. How long will it be before pirated designs wind up on the internet? Even if ACTA and similar laws could prevent this, how long before they are passed hand to hand by USB stick or similar methods? Remember how popular mix tapes were before Napster?
Right or wrong, things are going to change. I hope you and all good people who currently rely on copyright for your livelihoods find a way to adapt and prosper. I also hope that not too many people are broken on either side in the fight to stop the inevitable.
Is that all bad? Things have been going downhill for a while now. Isn't this exactly what it's going to take to get the public engaged in these kinds of issues? It's what happens the day after this begins to get enforced that interests me. I'm more afraid of the copyright extremists pushing content in our schools than I am of this. They should have done that first then waited a generation for ACTA.
I like that thought... but unless you can get a very large number of people to participate it will probably backfire. You will probably get sued for damages or prosecuted under some harassment law or something like that. Meanwhile large corporations who go after individual's legal content will have too many lawyers to worry about that kind of stuff.
Yes, because Congress (R or D majorities) has been so good at keeping the president in check for the last decade! No way they would just rubber stamp whatever the president asks for.
I could say "The... bug is mitigated by default on most Linux distributions, thanks to their correct implementation of the mmap_min_addr feature."
I could compare the average time to fix a critical bug between the two platforms.
I could point out that we will never know what bugs Microsoft is sitting on without reporting.
I could point out how Windows servers just don't seem to work well if they aren't rebooted regularly while Linux boxes just seem to go until the hardware wears out.
I could point out that my wife's Vista box is 2 to 4 times faster than my Gentoo box in just about all hardware stats and yet I usually get about 10 times the framerate in games with 3D graphics.
I could point out all the hardware (printers, scanners, etc...) my Windows using friends and relatives threw out because there were no Vista drivers.
I could point out the ease of installing software with a good package manager.
I talk about the wealth of free software available for Linux (yes, some of it has Windows ports)
I could mention the price of Windows, or the prices of most of the popular software that most Windows users claim they need Windows for. (not really relevant when most people pirate it anyway though)
I might go on and on telling all sorts of true stories about Windows vs Linux but who would really want to read them.
I agree! Therefore I suggest that all tlds and the whole domain for that matter be binary, 1s and 0s only. In preparation for my obviously superior domain scheme being implemented I am registering 01110011 01101100 01100001 01110011 01101000 01100100 01101111 01110100 00101110 01101111
01110010 01100111 today just to be an a$$ so there!
Just because a market is big enough to support business does not mean business will bother to support the market. If there is a perception that cellular integrated gps is "in" and standalones are obsolete then the pickings for hikers will be slim at best.
Look at video games on Linux. There are probably far more Linux Desktop users then there were home PC owners in the early 90s. There were plenty of companies making games for PCs back then. The industry supported them. But there are far more still on Windows or Mac now so what percentage of commercial games have native Linux versions?
Look at electronics part stores. Today we have the maker movement. We also are at an all time high number of licensed hams. But the perception is that DIY electronics and any non-cellular radio are obsolete. Most of the independant hobbyist stores are gone and Radio Shack is now mostly just a vendor of over priced cellphones tvs and computer accessories.
Good luck hikers.
Now, the military market is actually HUGE. There is money there and the manufacturers know it. Civilian GPS however has certain limitations built in so that we can't use them to make DIY weapons. I don't think much military surplus GPS gear is going to make it to the hikers market.
Nah, let's make him a mail server. Give him one of those old green and black text terminals. Give it an IP and make any requests to port 25 go to his screen. His job is to read the incoming SMTP commands and respond accordingly. He would then swivel his chair to a second terminal where he would use telnet to connect to port 25 of the destination servers and send the message on... manually. I'm sure he will get a special kick out of messages with attachments! He can do this eight hours a day 5 days a week (I can only be so sadistic even to him) for minimum wage applied towards his debt. No doubt the server will get backlogged quickly and I wouldn't expect him to keep up with it all. I would deduct for typos though.
I'm sure some Slashdotters could think of things to send via the Spamford Mail Server
I hate spam. I'd love to see all the spammers burn as much as anyone but...
Is the damage he has caused really worth $946 million? I'm sure somebody paid the $30 but there couldn't be THAT many. How much monetary value is there on having to clean a spam cluttered inbox? This reminds me of the RIAA and MPAA's methods of justifying their big money lawsuits against individuals. "No, a few songs are not worth 10s of thousands of dollars but we need big damages to discourage piracy."
Can we have it both ways? I don't really think so. This kind of ruling is dangerous because it validates using the same heavy handed tactics against the people we do like.
I agree in theory but what love to know what browser you use that doesn't crash these days. On Windows I have yet to find a non-crashing browser. On Linux the only two non-crashing browsers I've seen are Links and Lynx. Those are nice for researching Xorg issues or just when I really feel like geeking out but clearly not acceptable choices for day to day browsing. Now, I would be willing to believe that all or most of them do not crash of their own fault but Flash causes it. There's a lot out there to miss without Flash though these days.
I totally agree! Of course, the last time I ran either was probably 1997. On my old Pentium 75 Packard Bell. I really have no idea how they compare today! I just know that Photoshop fans are loud. Much like Apple fans and automotive testing wind tunnel fans. For the little bit of cropping, resizing and format conversion I do (plus maybe an occasional simple button) Gimp works just fine. And look Ma, no Wine!! Of course I am not in any kind of graphic editing business. Maybe if I was I would need Photoshop? Photoshop is expensive! $699 and that's their "lite" version!!! (CS4 vs CS4 extended) There's no way I could justify the money. I like that I don't have to steal my software. How many Photoshop users are there on Slashdot that actually paid for it? Yeah, I thought so....
So hows PSP doing these days? I used to like that.
Yes, this is true but crap != crapware, the latter is only a subset of crap until third parties start installing it on PCs before selling them. Then... yah, it's crapware.
Umm, if it were pre-installed (I've never seen that) isn't that exactly what iTunes would be? Unless it's installed by Apple on a Mac. Then it fails the third party test though all the rest is still there.
Hmmm... That could be kind of fun. Next I'd write a script to make it load Falun Gong sites all day just to keep some Chinese internet cop busy. Of course, I'd only do that while I'm here at home in the USA. If I were visiting I'd probably just stay offline for a while.
Bad comparison. The school or library own those computers. They are just allowing you to use them. Apple doesn't own your iPhone. That's why you paid for it! What's with this idea that companies that make stuff own it even after selling. It seems to be a generational thing, did a generation of parents fail to teach their kids the concepts of ownership, money and purchasing? If I loan you my car I have every right to put limitations on how you use it. If I sell you the car then tell you where you can and cannot go you have every right to tell me to STFU. It's really a simple concept, why don't people get it?
I don't want to look at what Germany, Japan and others have available. It makes me angry we don't get the same. Thanks a lot for telling me about the N900. I want to be ignorant now. LA LA LA LA LA finger in ears LA LA LA LA
Sounds more like a failing in the general public than a problem with geeks to me. It's not our fault if most people lack knowledge and imagination.
Truth is we could have a cellphone which replaces at least our netbooks if not our laptops today if the manufacturers would produce it and carriers were willing to let it on their networks. All we need are two features, a USB host port and an OS open enough to allow the community to write drivers.
OK, the screen would still be small and I don't think a projector is likely to be small enough to fit in the phone for a couple more years (not very far off). There are small pocket sized external projectors available today and rollup USB keyboards have been around forever. There's plenty of ways to do this. Personally I would like a Netbook sized device with extra storage, a netbook sized keyboard and either a netbook sized screen or a built in projector. There would be no processor, rather it would be a docking station for my phone. Ports for VGA, Keyboard and USB host would be in the back. Of course, the phone itself would have a USB port too. This would be an interim solution until we have nice rollup touch displays that allow my phone sized device to become a decent size tablet and then phone sized again. Even then I'll still want that USB host or better yet a faster, daisy-chainable equivalent. (like Firewire but with devices available to actually use it)
The real reason we don't have this is the carriers have grown accustomed to being able to charge for the same thing multiple times. You want "unlimitted" data to your cellphone? Sure, it's yours for somewhere between $45-80/month. You want to use the data on a larger screen? Same or similar price again plus you buy a USB or PCMCIA card.
I hate reality.
Cheesy, flat story characters are so much easier to deal with. Love them or hate them. Real people are heroes today, clueless assholes tomorrow.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't blame you for feeling that way. I would ask this though.. using your example, if someone used your work in their schoolwork. I don't doubt that it would be an annoyance, maybe even an insult to you if you found out. How much ill would you wish on the kid in return though? Would you want him branded ineligible to use the internet for it? Would you want him (or his parents) fined the life crippling sums of money as the RIAA has been doing over a handful of songs? Would you want him thrown in prison? You sound like a reasonable person, I would guess you would not want these things.
How much harm would it really do to you? Is it likely all his classmates are going to keep copies of his homework? If they do will it really stop them from buying your CD? Is it likely they were all going to buy it anyway? How many might hear the song in his presentation for the first time, like it, ask him who it is and then go out and buy it?
While I understand that you own the original design and the right to distribute your work, anyone who buys it did actually pay to own something themselves. What rights would you expect that person to have? Do they really just own that one copy on that one piece of media? if they bought the song on CD should they not be allowed to listen on their iPod? If the original is damaged do they not have the right to keep a backup copy? Is it only allowable to play music when alone, or when solely in the company of others whom have also paid for the same music? How about that farmer in the UK who was sued for playing music to the cows? Should cows be buying CDs now? While you certainly own something which you made the effort to produce we all have some kind of ownership when we pay our hard earned cash for it do we not?
My point above is that copyright is currently broken. That doesn't say it couldn't be fixed and then supported. The future of copyright and patents however I believe is much darker than this. So much talk is about data. Music, such as your situation, Video and Software. It's easy to see why, technology has made copying such things trivial. How about actual tangible objects? How about things you can hold in your hand?
Already we have the DMCA being used to limit people's freedoms with electronic devices they have purchased. Look at TI suing people for talking about how to change the software on their calculators. They aren't copying the physical device, TI still gets their money. They are just using it in a way TI never intended. Most companies haven't actually tried to use the DMCA in this way yet but many hardware vendors are putting limits on how customers can use the devices they have purchased. Just look at the iPhone, or any cellphone for that matter. These are physical devices people paid for. How can one argue that the user is not also the owner?
The Internet was Pandora's box for copyright of intangible things like music. It's not going to end there. The day is coming where one will be able to take the design of a physical object, in digital form and produce said object at home. It may not be entirely free like copying music as raw materials will be necessary but it will be close enough to destroy the business models of most industries. Take a look at RepRap, CupCake CNC, etc... sure, they are fairly limited in what they can make now and not ready for grandma to use yet but look at the progress they have made in just a few years. How long will it be before pirated designs wind up on the internet? Even if ACTA and similar laws could prevent this, how long before they are passed hand to hand by USB stick or similar methods? Remember how popular mix tapes were before Napster?
Right or wrong, things are going to change. I hope you and all good people who currently rely on copyright for your livelihoods find a way to adapt and prosper. I also hope that not too many people are broken on either side in the fight to stop the inevitable.
Is that all bad? Things have been going downhill for a while now. Isn't this exactly what it's going to take to get the public engaged in these kinds of issues? It's what happens the day after this begins to get enforced that interests me. I'm more afraid of the copyright extremists pushing content in our schools than I am of this. They should have done that first then waited a generation for ACTA.
I like that thought... but unless you can get a very large number of people to participate it will probably backfire. You will probably get sued for damages or prosecuted under some harassment law or something like that. Meanwhile large corporations who go after individual's legal content will have too many lawyers to worry about that kind of stuff.
"Murder charges for the gun or kitchen equipment makers too." We already have that, where ya been?
Yes, because Congress (R or D majorities) has been so good at keeping the president in check for the last decade! No way they would just rubber stamp whatever the president asks for.
Wheww... Glad we don't have to worry there.
I could say "The... bug is mitigated by default on most Linux distributions, thanks to their correct implementation of the mmap_min_addr feature."
I could compare the average time to fix a critical bug between the two platforms.
I could point out that we will never know what bugs Microsoft is sitting on without reporting.
I could point out how Windows servers just don't seem to work well if they aren't rebooted regularly while Linux boxes just seem to go until the hardware wears out.
I could point out that my wife's Vista box is 2 to 4 times faster than my Gentoo box in just about all hardware stats and yet I usually get about 10 times the framerate in games with 3D graphics.
I could point out all the hardware (printers, scanners, etc...) my Windows using friends and relatives threw out because there were no Vista drivers.
I could point out the ease of installing software with a good package manager.
I talk about the wealth of free software available for Linux (yes, some of it has Windows ports)
I could mention the price of Windows, or the prices of most of the popular software that most Windows users claim they need Windows for. (not really relevant when most people pirate it anyway though)
I might go on and on telling all sorts of true stories about Windows vs Linux but who would really want to read them.
Oh, man, how will us westerners get our fill of burkini babe pics?
I agree! Therefore I suggest that all tlds and the whole domain for that matter be binary, 1s and 0s only. In preparation for my obviously superior domain scheme being implemented I am registering 01110011 01101100 01100001 01110011 01101000 01100100 01101111 01110100 00101110 01101111 01110010 01100111 today just to be an a$$ so there!
Just because a market is big enough to support business does not mean business will bother to support the market. If there is a perception that cellular integrated gps is "in" and standalones are obsolete then the pickings for hikers will be slim at best. Look at video games on Linux. There are probably far more Linux Desktop users then there were home PC owners in the early 90s. There were plenty of companies making games for PCs back then. The industry supported them. But there are far more still on Windows or Mac now so what percentage of commercial games have native Linux versions? Look at electronics part stores. Today we have the maker movement. We also are at an all time high number of licensed hams. But the perception is that DIY electronics and any non-cellular radio are obsolete. Most of the independant hobbyist stores are gone and Radio Shack is now mostly just a vendor of over priced cellphones tvs and computer accessories. Good luck hikers. Now, the military market is actually HUGE. There is money there and the manufacturers know it. Civilian GPS however has certain limitations built in so that we can't use them to make DIY weapons. I don't think much military surplus GPS gear is going to make it to the hikers market.
Nah, let's make him a mail server. Give him one of those old green and black text terminals. Give it an IP and make any requests to port 25 go to his screen. His job is to read the incoming SMTP commands and respond accordingly. He would then swivel his chair to a second terminal where he would use telnet to connect to port 25 of the destination servers and send the message on... manually. I'm sure he will get a special kick out of messages with attachments! He can do this eight hours a day 5 days a week (I can only be so sadistic even to him) for minimum wage applied towards his debt. No doubt the server will get backlogged quickly and I wouldn't expect him to keep up with it all. I would deduct for typos though. I'm sure some Slashdotters could think of things to send via the Spamford Mail Server
Hmm...
I hate spam. I'd love to see all the spammers burn as much as anyone but...
Is the damage he has caused really worth $946 million? I'm sure somebody paid the $30 but there couldn't be THAT many. How much monetary value is there on having to clean a spam cluttered inbox? This reminds me of the RIAA and MPAA's methods of justifying their big money lawsuits against individuals. "No, a few songs are not worth 10s of thousands of dollars but we need big damages to discourage piracy."
Can we have it both ways? I don't really think so. This kind of ruling is dangerous because it validates using the same heavy handed tactics against the people we do like.
I agree in theory but what love to know what browser you use that doesn't crash these days. On Windows I have yet to find a non-crashing browser. On Linux the only two non-crashing browsers I've seen are Links and Lynx. Those are nice for researching Xorg issues or just when I really feel like geeking out but clearly not acceptable choices for day to day browsing. Now, I would be willing to believe that all or most of them do not crash of their own fault but Flash causes it. There's a lot out there to miss without Flash though these days.
I totally agree! Of course, the last time I ran either was probably 1997. On my old Pentium 75 Packard Bell. I really have no idea how they compare today! I just know that Photoshop fans are loud. Much like Apple fans and automotive testing wind tunnel fans. For the little bit of cropping, resizing and format conversion I do (plus maybe an occasional simple button) Gimp works just fine. And look Ma, no Wine!! Of course I am not in any kind of graphic editing business. Maybe if I was I would need Photoshop? Photoshop is expensive! $699 and that's their "lite" version!!! (CS4 vs CS4 extended) There's no way I could justify the money. I like that I don't have to steal my software. How many Photoshop users are there on Slashdot that actually paid for it? Yeah, I thought so.... So hows PSP doing these days? I used to like that.
Yes, this is true but crap != crapware, the latter is only a subset of crap until third parties start installing it on PCs before selling them. Then... yah, it's crapware.
Umm, if it were pre-installed (I've never seen that) isn't that exactly what iTunes would be? Unless it's installed by Apple on a Mac. Then it fails the third party test though all the rest is still there.
That will be in GPL v4
I dunno, given the choice between an american grandmother and an average american 20-something I'll bet on the grandmother any day.
Hmmm... That could be kind of fun. Next I'd write a script to make it load Falun Gong sites all day just to keep some Chinese internet cop busy. Of course, I'd only do that while I'm here at home in the USA. If I were visiting I'd probably just stay offline for a while.
Bad comparison. The school or library own those computers. They are just allowing you to use them. Apple doesn't own your iPhone. That's why you paid for it! What's with this idea that companies that make stuff own it even after selling. It seems to be a generational thing, did a generation of parents fail to teach their kids the concepts of ownership, money and purchasing? If I loan you my car I have every right to put limitations on how you use it. If I sell you the car then tell you where you can and cannot go you have every right to tell me to STFU. It's really a simple concept, why don't people get it?
I don't want to look at what Germany, Japan and others have available. It makes me angry we don't get the same. Thanks a lot for telling me about the N900. I want to be ignorant now. LA LA LA LA LA finger in ears LA LA LA LA
There are multiple kinds of geeks. Actually, if you over analyze it the word geek pretty much loses all meaning.
Sounds more like a failing in the general public than a problem with geeks to me. It's not our fault if most people lack knowledge and imagination.
Truth is we could have a cellphone which replaces at least our netbooks if not our laptops today if the manufacturers would produce it and carriers were willing to let it on their networks. All we need are two features, a USB host port and an OS open enough to allow the community to write drivers.
OK, the screen would still be small and I don't think a projector is likely to be small enough to fit in the phone for a couple more years (not very far off). There are small pocket sized external projectors available today and rollup USB keyboards have been around forever. There's plenty of ways to do this. Personally I would like a Netbook sized device with extra storage, a netbook sized keyboard and either a netbook sized screen or a built in projector. There would be no processor, rather it would be a docking station for my phone. Ports for VGA, Keyboard and USB host would be in the back. Of course, the phone itself would have a USB port too. This would be an interim solution until we have nice rollup touch displays that allow my phone sized device to become a decent size tablet and then phone sized again. Even then I'll still want that USB host or better yet a faster, daisy-chainable equivalent. (like Firewire but with devices available to actually use it)
The real reason we don't have this is the carriers have grown accustomed to being able to charge for the same thing multiple times. You want "unlimitted" data to your cellphone? Sure, it's yours for somewhere between $45-80/month. You want to use the data on a larger screen? Same or similar price again plus you buy a USB or PCMCIA card.
What? Where is a democracy that lasted 150 years?
I hate reality. Cheesy, flat story characters are so much easier to deal with. Love them or hate them. Real people are heroes today, clueless assholes tomorrow.
I'll bet this AC posted from his mama's basement, a concrete lined hole in the soil of oh.. hmm... lemme guess.. the United States.