Here's an idea: don't trade your freedom just to gain access to video games. Don't fall for the bait and switch. You can play games on your desktop, which as far as I know is not designed to restrict your use of it.
First of all, nobody is free to use their console as they please, until we have the freedom to remove, disable, or bypass Sony's restriction systems. That is why jailbreaking is so important; right now, the legality of jailbreaking and jailbreaking devices is in limbo.
That being said, fine, Sony can refuse me PSN services. I never wanted PSN services, I just wanted to use my PS3 without Sony's annoying and pointless (from the user's perspective) hypervisor.
Except that the primary reason that the constitution allows for the creation of a copyright system -- that's right, allows it, it is not mandated and copyrights are not a natural right -- is to benefit the general public by promoting the production of art and useful sciences. It is not because we specifically want authors or anyone else to be paid; that is simply a means to an end.
When copyrights were only relevant to people in certain industries, nobody had to worry about their natural rights being threatened. Now that copyrights are relevant to everyone, we have a situation in which people need to worry about losing their right to speak freely (yes, this does include the right to repeat what others have said, with or without attribution), their right to use the tools in their own homes, and so forth. Copyright law is also extremely complex, and the average citizen has neither the experience nor the resources to adequately defend themselves in court if they are sued for copyright infringement. The copyright system has also served to limit the effect of technologies that could otherwise have improved public access to arts and sciences (which was the whole point of the copyright system) -- the Internet, for example, should make it possible for anyone to access articles in scientific journals, but in many cases that does not happen, and only people at universities are granted access.
Authors are not obsolete; the publishing industry, based on paying authors by profiting on the inability of people to copy written works, is obsolete. If authors cannot be paid by any other means, then yes, their profession is as obsolete as scribes' and lamplighters'. Personally, I think authors will either continue writing because they enjoy the art (in fact, most of the authors I have met have not seen enough payment for their works to quit their day jobs) or find another way to make money as writers.
Do I have a suggestion for them? No, because I am not an author. I have only one request: stop restricting my rights just to keep the old business model alive. Natural rights are more important than copyrights and more important than any single industry remaining profitable.
There is this little thing call copyright law. It has to do with the RIGHT to COPY something. They have a right to loan out their single copy, but not more than one.
A relic of an age where making mass numbers of copies required expensive industrial equipment. Now the majority of people have the necessary equipment in their living rooms.
The world has changed, and it is time to start updating the law to reflect those changes. You know, like how we updated plenty of other laws to keep pace a changing world, new technologies, and so forth? Oh, wait, I forget, copyrights are special.
How is an author going to be paid for their time writing the books if we allow one person to purchase the book, and then lend it to an infinite number of people at once?
Well, I was thinking that they might get paid the same way that scriveners, lamplighters, and blacksmiths are paid.
Do we tell those writers, "tough shit, start waiting tables and give up the writing thing if you're not popular?"
Well, that is pretty much what we told scriveners, lamplighters, blacksmiths, and dozens of other professionals whose professions were rendered obsolete by technology. If authors do not want to write because they enjoy the art, well, that is unfortunate, but there are a whole lot of people out there who do just enjoy the art and write even when it is not profitable.
if you actually would suggest that, you've just neatly gutted the bulk of the sci-fi and fantasy genres, which I believe tend to be pretty popular around this part of the intartubes.
Oh yeah? Do you have some sort of proof that, without viciously strong copyrights, scifi and fantasy authors would not bother? If they do not enjoy the art, and are only in it to make money, then I guess they should find an industry that doesn't need special laws that restrict everyone's natural rights just to remain profitable. Of course, I can think of a few writers who might continue writing even if we took the copyright system away, like Cory Doctorow:
It is voluntary in that it will not count against you; however, the information contained within another person's account may be considered positively for them, and thus they will be more competitive. Welcome to the standard deception of the people who invent these policies; notice that instead of saying, "OK, bad policy, we are rescinding it," they said, "OK, we'll stop to make sure that the information is only being used appropriately!" Everything about their response is meant to divert attention away from the fact that the policy itself is a problem.
Oh, it is standard deception. No, they will not take into consideration whether or not you disclosed your username and password, but they will allow the information that such access would grant them to count for you in the interview. You were not rejected for failing to provide the username and password; you were rejected because someone you are competing with for the job did and they saw positive things in his profile.
You say "they" as if the people who run the government are an entirely different species than everyone else. In the USA, "they" derive their power from the consent (albeit a rather apathetic consent) of the people "they" govern.
It is unfortunate, but a lot of the worst abuses of the rights and freedoms that Americans are supposed to have are widely supported by the people themselves. Try telling someone that the War on Drugs may not be constitutional, or that too many people are in jail, or that prison sentences are too long, or that the police have too much power, or that there are just too many laws, and see the sort of reaction that you will get; with the exception of my libertarian friends (I am not a libertarian), I am almost exclusively met with expressions shock when I make any such statements. The concept of a society in which our freedoms are not curtailed further with each passing year seems to make people uncomfortable; that is why the government gets away with it.
It is not an attempt to create one port to rule them all; it is an attempt to keep Apple computers separate from every other PC out there. You know, so that people will continue to think that a Mac is something different than a PC.
I don't see anyone crying because Radios replaced bandstands, Digital cameras replaced film, or Cars replaced manure-spewing horses.
Perhaps you should open your eyes? I know of at least one person who laments each of the above. They may not be in the majority, but they certainly do exist.
The arcade was a product of an age when advanced graphics (basically: 16 bit) required an expensive machine, because home consoles (Atari, Intellivision) looked like crap. You went to the arcade to be awed by the sights and sounds.
...with your friends (the kind you meet up with in real life, not online).
That's no longer the case, because now you can bring the advanced graphics home. Hence no reason to visit the arcade and blow 100 dollars worth of quarters. Technology advanced - obsolete crap died out.
Funny, I do not remember arcades being required to feature obsolete games or game systems. There is no technical reason why an arcade could not host FPS tournaments, with modern and brand new games. The draw of arcades has always been spending time with friends, outside of your home.
Now, this is not to say that arcades should not compete with console games in the home. I view arcades as being in a similar position to movie theaters, in that both are forced to compete with home entertainment systems. Perhaps arcades should push for early access to new games, the way movie theaters show movies before DVD releases. There is no reason for arcades to disappear entirely, certainly not in a city as large and densely populated as New York.
As it turns out, you can modify a car so that it is not street legal, and you can then send information on how you did that to other people. This is a free speech issue: Geohot did not break into Sony offices or commit any sort of industrial espionage in order to compute the signing key; his only apparent violation of the law was to post a copy of what he had computed on the web. When posting something you computed becomes illegal, then there is a serious free speech problem.
Funny, when last I checked, if you reverse engineer Coca Cola and discover their secret formula, you are allowed to disseminate that information. What makes a crypto key any different? Geohot did not break into any Sony offices to compute the key.
What is your point? That these companies have a business model that is based on not selling their products for a profit? That they want to use the force of law to force that business model to be profitable?
When you went to school, college, uni, did some body just give you a pc...and tell you to get on with it?
As it so happens, that is exactly the situation I was in when I received my first computer. I was 13, my uncle and my mother agreed that I should have access to a computer, and as a birthday present they gave me one. My mother insisted it remain in the living room, which was fine since all I really wanted to do was learn more about programming, which I did without supervision. On a few occasions, I did do some serious damage to the software, and I found ways to fix things without asking for help (not that my mother could have provided much help); I was not discouraged when this happened, although maybe I am a special case.
It is not that I think this approach is going to churn out an expert, but it went a long way toward encouraging me to study computer science later in life. This is not much different than giving a child books to read or simple math puzzles to solve. It is not meant to be a formal education, it is meant to foster an interest that can be developed later in life, through formal education (where you get bite sized pieces). As I said, I might be a special case, since corrupted software, crashes, and even physical damage never discouraged me, nor did problems that I had no idea how to solve, but I seriously doubt that a teenager with a real interest in computers (or any other subject) is going to quit just because things occasionally go wrong.
I know how I will raise my children: they will not get a smartphone, because I am not going to hand a $300 cell phone to a child. When my children get their first jobs, even if it is just walking around the neighborhood mowing lawns, they can save their money and buy their own smartphones if they want.
Or you could just give them their own, low-end computer (perhaps one that is very old) and they can tinker around with that. Then you will not have to worry about whether or not they are going to delete the family photo album that you did not bother to back up.
What gets me the most is the justification they used: they claimed that he was victimizing the children in the video. It is beyond just irrational, it is scientology-level nonsense.
There is no reason to assume that Last.FM can profitably raise its prices, or that it could raise its prices enough to afford paying Apple's 30% fee without losing more customers than it would gain. What if Last.FM is already operating at or very near to the equilibrium price point?
Does Last.FM make computers? No. Does Apple make computers? Yes. Do some of Apple's computer products feature restriction systems that allow Apple to prevent Last.FM from competing for the users of those devices? You bet.
Blame stupidity -- I doubt that the people who devised this program would object to having their own movements tracked by GPS, and so they never considered how this program would impact the students' future perception of their rights.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's an idea: don't trade your freedom just to gain access to video games. Don't fall for the bait and switch. You can play games on your desktop, which as far as I know is not designed to restrict your use of it.
First of all, nobody is free to use their console as they please, until we have the freedom to remove, disable, or bypass Sony's restriction systems. That is why jailbreaking is so important; right now, the legality of jailbreaking and jailbreaking devices is in limbo.
That being said, fine, Sony can refuse me PSN services. I never wanted PSN services, I just wanted to use my PS3 without Sony's annoying and pointless (from the user's perspective) hypervisor.
Except that the primary reason that the constitution allows for the creation of a copyright system -- that's right, allows it, it is not mandated and copyrights are not a natural right -- is to benefit the general public by promoting the production of art and useful sciences. It is not because we specifically want authors or anyone else to be paid; that is simply a means to an end.
When copyrights were only relevant to people in certain industries, nobody had to worry about their natural rights being threatened. Now that copyrights are relevant to everyone, we have a situation in which people need to worry about losing their right to speak freely (yes, this does include the right to repeat what others have said, with or without attribution), their right to use the tools in their own homes, and so forth. Copyright law is also extremely complex, and the average citizen has neither the experience nor the resources to adequately defend themselves in court if they are sued for copyright infringement. The copyright system has also served to limit the effect of technologies that could otherwise have improved public access to arts and sciences (which was the whole point of the copyright system) -- the Internet, for example, should make it possible for anyone to access articles in scientific journals, but in many cases that does not happen, and only people at universities are granted access.
Well, at least it "fits on pen tip" rather than "fit on pen tip."
Authors are not obsolete; the publishing industry, based on paying authors by profiting on the inability of people to copy written works, is obsolete. If authors cannot be paid by any other means, then yes, their profession is as obsolete as scribes' and lamplighters'. Personally, I think authors will either continue writing because they enjoy the art (in fact, most of the authors I have met have not seen enough payment for their works to quit their day jobs) or find another way to make money as writers.
Do I have a suggestion for them? No, because I am not an author. I have only one request: stop restricting my rights just to keep the old business model alive. Natural rights are more important than copyrights and more important than any single industry remaining profitable.
There is this little thing call copyright law. It has to do with the RIGHT to COPY something. They have a right to loan out their single copy, but not more than one.
A relic of an age where making mass numbers of copies required expensive industrial equipment. Now the majority of people have the necessary equipment in their living rooms.
The world has changed, and it is time to start updating the law to reflect those changes. You know, like how we updated plenty of other laws to keep pace a changing world, new technologies, and so forth? Oh, wait, I forget, copyrights are special.
How is an author going to be paid for their time writing the books if we allow one person to purchase the book, and then lend it to an infinite number of people at once?
Well, I was thinking that they might get paid the same way that scriveners, lamplighters, and blacksmiths are paid.
Do we tell those writers, "tough shit, start waiting tables and give up the writing thing if you're not popular?"
Well, that is pretty much what we told scriveners, lamplighters, blacksmiths, and dozens of other professionals whose professions were rendered obsolete by technology. If authors do not want to write because they enjoy the art, well, that is unfortunate, but there are a whole lot of people out there who do just enjoy the art and write even when it is not profitable.
if you actually would suggest that, you've just neatly gutted the bulk of the sci-fi and fantasy genres, which I believe tend to be pretty popular around this part of the intartubes.
Oh yeah? Do you have some sort of proof that, without viciously strong copyrights, scifi and fantasy authors would not bother? If they do not enjoy the art, and are only in it to make money, then I guess they should find an industry that doesn't need special laws that restrict everyone's natural rights just to remain profitable. Of course, I can think of a few writers who might continue writing even if we took the copyright system away, like Cory Doctorow:
http://craphound.com/
This is a very good thing.
Except for the whole DRM part.
It is voluntary in that it will not count against you; however, the information contained within another person's account may be considered positively for them, and thus they will be more competitive. Welcome to the standard deception of the people who invent these policies; notice that instead of saying, "OK, bad policy, we are rescinding it," they said, "OK, we'll stop to make sure that the information is only being used appropriately!" Everything about their response is meant to divert attention away from the fact that the policy itself is a problem.
Oh, it is standard deception. No, they will not take into consideration whether or not you disclosed your username and password, but they will allow the information that such access would grant them to count for you in the interview. You were not rejected for failing to provide the username and password; you were rejected because someone you are competing with for the job did and they saw positive things in his profile.
You say "they" as if the people who run the government are an entirely different species than everyone else. In the USA, "they" derive their power from the consent (albeit a rather apathetic consent) of the people "they" govern.
It is unfortunate, but a lot of the worst abuses of the rights and freedoms that Americans are supposed to have are widely supported by the people themselves. Try telling someone that the War on Drugs may not be constitutional, or that too many people are in jail, or that prison sentences are too long, or that the police have too much power, or that there are just too many laws, and see the sort of reaction that you will get; with the exception of my libertarian friends (I am not a libertarian), I am almost exclusively met with expressions shock when I make any such statements. The concept of a society in which our freedoms are not curtailed further with each passing year seems to make people uncomfortable; that is why the government gets away with it.
It is not an attempt to create one port to rule them all; it is an attempt to keep Apple computers separate from every other PC out there. You know, so that people will continue to think that a Mac is something different than a PC.
I don't see anyone crying because Radios replaced bandstands, Digital cameras replaced film, or Cars replaced manure-spewing horses.
Perhaps you should open your eyes? I know of at least one person who laments each of the above. They may not be in the majority, but they certainly do exist.
The arcade was a product of an age when advanced graphics (basically: 16 bit) required an expensive machine, because home consoles (Atari, Intellivision) looked like crap. You went to the arcade to be awed by the sights and sounds.
That's no longer the case, because now you can bring the advanced graphics home. Hence no reason to visit the arcade and blow 100 dollars worth of quarters. Technology advanced - obsolete crap died out.
Funny, I do not remember arcades being required to feature obsolete games or game systems. There is no technical reason why an arcade could not host FPS tournaments, with modern and brand new games. The draw of arcades has always been spending time with friends, outside of your home.
Now, this is not to say that arcades should not compete with console games in the home. I view arcades as being in a similar position to movie theaters, in that both are forced to compete with home entertainment systems. Perhaps arcades should push for early access to new games, the way movie theaters show movies before DVD releases. There is no reason for arcades to disappear entirely, certainly not in a city as large and densely populated as New York.
As it turns out, you can modify a car so that it is not street legal, and you can then send information on how you did that to other people. This is a free speech issue: Geohot did not break into Sony offices or commit any sort of industrial espionage in order to compute the signing key; his only apparent violation of the law was to post a copy of what he had computed on the web. When posting something you computed becomes illegal, then there is a serious free speech problem.
In any case the business plan is clearly still viable, there isn't anything wrong with it at all.
No, the business plan is not viable, it is propped up by laws like the DMCA.
Funny, when last I checked, if you reverse engineer Coca Cola and discover their secret formula, you are allowed to disseminate that information. What makes a crypto key any different? Geohot did not break into any Sony offices to compute the key.
What is your point? That these companies have a business model that is based on not selling their products for a profit? That they want to use the force of law to force that business model to be profitable?
I feel absolutely no remorse for these companies.
When you went to school, college, uni, did some body just give you a pc...and tell you to get on with it?
As it so happens, that is exactly the situation I was in when I received my first computer. I was 13, my uncle and my mother agreed that I should have access to a computer, and as a birthday present they gave me one. My mother insisted it remain in the living room, which was fine since all I really wanted to do was learn more about programming, which I did without supervision. On a few occasions, I did do some serious damage to the software, and I found ways to fix things without asking for help (not that my mother could have provided much help); I was not discouraged when this happened, although maybe I am a special case.
It is not that I think this approach is going to churn out an expert, but it went a long way toward encouraging me to study computer science later in life. This is not much different than giving a child books to read or simple math puzzles to solve. It is not meant to be a formal education, it is meant to foster an interest that can be developed later in life, through formal education (where you get bite sized pieces). As I said, I might be a special case, since corrupted software, crashes, and even physical damage never discouraged me, nor did problems that I had no idea how to solve, but I seriously doubt that a teenager with a real interest in computers (or any other subject) is going to quit just because things occasionally go wrong.
I know how I will raise my children: they will not get a smartphone, because I am not going to hand a $300 cell phone to a child. When my children get their first jobs, even if it is just walking around the neighborhood mowing lawns, they can save their money and buy their own smartphones if they want.
Or you could just give them their own, low-end computer (perhaps one that is very old) and they can tinker around with that. Then you will not have to worry about whether or not they are going to delete the family photo album that you did not bother to back up.
Or you could just use end to end encryption. PGP or S/MIME are pretty easy to set up...
What gets me the most is the justification they used: they claimed that he was victimizing the children in the video. It is beyond just irrational, it is scientology-level nonsense.
There is no reason to assume that Last.FM can profitably raise its prices, or that it could raise its prices enough to afford paying Apple's 30% fee without losing more customers than it would gain. What if Last.FM is already operating at or very near to the equilibrium price point?
Does Last.FM make computers? No. Does Apple make computers? Yes. Do some of Apple's computer products feature restriction systems that allow Apple to prevent Last.FM from competing for the users of those devices? You bet.
Blame stupidity -- I doubt that the people who devised this program would object to having their own movements tracked by GPS, and so they never considered how this program would impact the students' future perception of their rights.