You'd think they would have learned
on
LimeWire Lives Again
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· Score: 3, Insightful
This sort of evolutionary jump is precisely what happened when they sued Napster. These people must think that there is some sort of upper bound on technological development, and that if they keep suing, eventually file sharing will die.
Of course, these are the people who tried to block FM radio, so I guess I should not be too surprised.
What happened to the Democrat party defending American jobs?
The past 40 years happened. The Democrats have become tools of corporations, just like the Republicans, and so the interests of the majority of Americans who are not rich investors have fallen by the wayside.
I would not say that all patents need to be abolished, but rather than we need to reform the patent system so that it best serves society. Society is not best served by a system that grants patents on abstract math (which, when you get down to it, is exactly what a patent on an algorithm is), business methods, or gene sequences. Let's bring the patent system back in line, and only grant patents on machines or materials, and only in cases where a sufficiently high level of innovation can be demonstrated.
Even if you are an advocate of software and gene patents, the system as it is now needs reform -- there are so many patents that it is now less likely than not for a new product to violate one. We need fewer patents, much fewer, to the point where only a negligent inventor could unknowingly be in violation.
It's messed up that the EFF thinks that it's not okay to sue thousands of people at once
When those people all live in different jurisdictions, and some of them would have difficulty getting to the court where they are being sued, then no, it is not OK to sue them all at the same time. If the porn maker wants to sue all of these people, they should sue each one of them individually, in the proper jurisdiction; anything else is an abuse of the legal system.
A corporation is required to maximize the profits for its share holders. Ballmer is a major share holder. Of course Ballmer's profits matter more than public education.
When did grades stop being a measure of a student's understanding of the material? When did grades become a commodity that can be thrown away? If a student is goofing off and not bothering to learn the material, the student should get a low grade. If the student understands the material and can demonstrate that they understand the material, the student should get a high grade. Why should anything else make a difference?
My original point was simple: high school does not exist to educate students in the particular areas they take courses in. High school exists to train teenagers to follow instructions and do what those who have power over them tell them to do. If a student can "throw away half those grades" by failing to do assigned work, without any regard for whether or not the student actually learned the material, then how is what I am saying untrue?
Yeah right, you got poor grades on the test because you were too intelligent to do your homework and too advanced to be bothered learning the basics. Sure lots of people teach themselves but when they do very few of them realise that their teacher is just as ignorant as their student.
I did not get poor grades on tests, I consistently got very high grades on tests. I received poor overall grades in courses, because the grades high school students receive are only partially determined by their grades on tests.
Here, I'll put it this way for you: if a student is acing his exams, but not turning in homework assignments, what sort of grade should that student receive in the course? The way things are now, that student is looking at something in the C or D range.
If tens of thousands of dollars per song has failed to deter people, why would a fraction of that deter anyone?
The real answer is to ask, "What is the damage done to society by an individual person who uploads or downloads music?" If you take a good look, you will find that we have no shortage of new music, movies, or art, that celebrities are still wealthy, that non-celebrity artists are just as not-wealthy as they were before, and that the companies that are claiming to be suffering are actually turning profits -- enormous, record breaking profits in some cases. P2P users are not causing any harm to our society, so why are we treating them like criminals and ruining their lives?
Then exactly what incentive does the distributor (or author) have to produce anything
Distributors do not create things, they sell copies of things that other people created
Most artists do not derive a terribly large amount of income from their creations, and usually have to hold some other job to pay to the bills. Most artists create art for emotional, not economic, reasons.
What determines kids' destinies these days is how well they follow orders in high school; that is how high school grades are determined, which is how college admission is determined, which is how jobs are doled out. I know many people like myself: people who ignored their assignments in high school, and studied more interesting material. We all wound up getting poor grades, despite the fact that we were actually studying material that was more advanced than what we were supposed to be studying. The grades are not a reflection of a students' abilities. A student could ace every exam and get a D in a high school course. A student could be tutoring other students in a course, and get a D.
Basically, the system is designed to punish people who are too far from what is expected -- regardless of whether it is a case of being unable to keep up with the material, or being too advanced. Conformity is the name of the game, and anyone who fails to fall into a specific range of abilities is supposed to be weeded out. You can be intelligent, but you have to do what you are told, and if you are told to do something that is trivial and boring, that is just too bad.
High school basically exists to ensure that people will be ready to do as they are told, nothing more. The rest of the society is just looking at high school grades to ensure that the person they accept to college or offer a job to will perform as commanded, nothing more or less.
Yes, I know that, but for a lot of people, "I use Linux!" implies the availability of an X server.
Personally, I rarely do anything that really depends on X being X, so my reaction is essentially "huh, I wonder how that'll work out."
Speaking for yourself; I see plenty of people who depend on X being X, and plenty of people who are being advised to depend on X being X. A move to Wayland will create all kind of confusion for those people, who implicitly assume that any Linux distro which has a graphical environment is using X.
Because not all the applications people want to forward are written for Wayland; one that comes to mind is a VLSI tool from Cadence, which is proprietary software that is often encountered in EE curricula (for VLSI courses and whatnot), which I doubt will be updated to Wayland any time soon. People have come to rely on an X server, specifically, being available to them.
...but I still know a LOT of people who forward X over SSH, and there are still a lot of professors who are advising their students (at least in the engineering schools I have seen) to do the same. I guess this is one of those times that just saying, "I use Linux!" will not convey what people think.
You must be thinking of some other case; the way I see it, if the settlement terms involved her paying more than a hundred or so dollars, it is entirely unreasonable.
Perhaps a copyright system that only applies to commercial use of creative works? You know, it is overwhelmingly common for music, art, movies, and so forth to be used commercially. Maybe the copyright system should only apply in situations where a person can be shown to have profited by using or distributing a creative work, but did not get the appropriate permission to do so?
Sorry, but we live in an age where copying is something that happens automatically whenever people use their computers. If you sent me an electronic copy of a book you wrote, my computer would automatically copy the book multiple times as part of its normal operation; I would also very likely make further copies when I back up my files, migrate to a new computer, and so forth.
The problem here is that people keep trying to define a difference between the sort of copying that is part of a computer's normal and routine operation, and sharing files with other people. It is an extreme blurry line -- multiple people may use one computer system, or a multiple computers with multiple users may be connected to the same LAN, or a computer might be connected to more than one LAN, or to the Internet, etc. Exactly where do you intend to define copying as a violation of the right you claim to have over dictating copying? If I have a digital copy of your book, can my roommate who shares a computer with me read it? Can my roommate copy it from my home directory to his home directory? Can we both read it at the same time, using two separate digital copies? What if we have two computers, connected to some sort of computer network; can the book be copied from one computer to the other? What if we have one computer with two processors and two hard drives? What if we have many computers in some sort of cluster? What if we are using a distributed OS?
Which is precisely why we need to redesign the entire copyright system, and rethink all the principles on which it was based. Copyrights were created at a time when only people who possessed specialized industrial equipment could produce copies efficiently; that age ended, and the only thing our elected representatives in congress could think to do about it was to strengthen copyright law.
Perhaps because the punishment is grossly out of proportion with the crime itself? Seriously, I think people need to take a reality check, and realize that any amount in excess of $100 is entirely unreasonable. What she allegedly did caused less harm to society than a parking violation, and that is how it should be treated.
Copyrights were never really meant to target individual citizens; copyright is a regulation on businesses, and should only be applied to businesses. The way the RIAA is suing individuals is a disgrace, and their lawyers should be reprimanded for abusing the court system.
Not that anyone really cares about what is best for the people of the United States.
Slashdot Mirror
The point was actually about the existence of Rusty n Edie's in the first place: filesharing without the Internet.
Hm let's see...proprietary...proprietary...proprietary...I think we can see what the problem is here.
Proprietary software is designed to keep people divided like this.
the only way to destroy filesharing is to destroy the internet
Even that is not really true; consider this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_n_Edie's
This sort of evolutionary jump is precisely what happened when they sued Napster. These people must think that there is some sort of upper bound on technological development, and that if they keep suing, eventually file sharing will die.
Of course, these are the people who tried to block FM radio, so I guess I should not be too surprised.
What happened to the Democrat party defending American jobs?
The past 40 years happened. The Democrats have become tools of corporations, just like the Republicans, and so the interests of the majority of Americans who are not rich investors have fallen by the wayside.
I would not say that all patents need to be abolished, but rather than we need to reform the patent system so that it best serves society. Society is not best served by a system that grants patents on abstract math (which, when you get down to it, is exactly what a patent on an algorithm is), business methods, or gene sequences. Let's bring the patent system back in line, and only grant patents on machines or materials, and only in cases where a sufficiently high level of innovation can be demonstrated.
Even if you are an advocate of software and gene patents, the system as it is now needs reform -- there are so many patents that it is now less likely than not for a new product to violate one. We need fewer patents, much fewer, to the point where only a negligent inventor could unknowingly be in violation.
It's messed up that the EFF thinks that it's not okay to sue thousands of people at once
When those people all live in different jurisdictions, and some of them would have difficulty getting to the court where they are being sued, then no, it is not OK to sue them all at the same time. If the porn maker wants to sue all of these people, they should sue each one of them individually, in the proper jurisdiction; anything else is an abuse of the legal system.
A corporation is required to maximize the profits for its share holders. Ballmer is a major share holder. Of course Ballmer's profits matter more than public education.
When did grades stop being a measure of a student's understanding of the material? When did grades become a commodity that can be thrown away? If a student is goofing off and not bothering to learn the material, the student should get a low grade. If the student understands the material and can demonstrate that they understand the material, the student should get a high grade. Why should anything else make a difference?
My original point was simple: high school does not exist to educate students in the particular areas they take courses in. High school exists to train teenagers to follow instructions and do what those who have power over them tell them to do. If a student can "throw away half those grades" by failing to do assigned work, without any regard for whether or not the student actually learned the material, then how is what I am saying untrue?
Yeah right, you got poor grades on the test because you were too intelligent to do your homework and too advanced to be bothered learning the basics. Sure lots of people teach themselves but when they do very few of them realise that their teacher is just as ignorant as their student.
I did not get poor grades on tests, I consistently got very high grades on tests. I received poor overall grades in courses, because the grades high school students receive are only partially determined by their grades on tests.
Here, I'll put it this way for you: if a student is acing his exams, but not turning in homework assignments, what sort of grade should that student receive in the course? The way things are now, that student is looking at something in the C or D range.
If tens of thousands of dollars per song has failed to deter people, why would a fraction of that deter anyone?
The real answer is to ask, "What is the damage done to society by an individual person who uploads or downloads music?" If you take a good look, you will find that we have no shortage of new music, movies, or art, that celebrities are still wealthy, that non-celebrity artists are just as not-wealthy as they were before, and that the companies that are claiming to be suffering are actually turning profits -- enormous, record breaking profits in some cases. P2P users are not causing any harm to our society, so why are we treating them like criminals and ruining their lives?
Then exactly what incentive does the distributor (or author) have to produce anything
What determines kids' destinies these days is how well they follow orders in high school; that is how high school grades are determined, which is how college admission is determined, which is how jobs are doled out. I know many people like myself: people who ignored their assignments in high school, and studied more interesting material. We all wound up getting poor grades, despite the fact that we were actually studying material that was more advanced than what we were supposed to be studying. The grades are not a reflection of a students' abilities. A student could ace every exam and get a D in a high school course. A student could be tutoring other students in a course, and get a D.
Basically, the system is designed to punish people who are too far from what is expected -- regardless of whether it is a case of being unable to keep up with the material, or being too advanced. Conformity is the name of the game, and anyone who fails to fall into a specific range of abilities is supposed to be weeded out. You can be intelligent, but you have to do what you are told, and if you are told to do something that is trivial and boring, that is just too bad.
High school basically exists to ensure that people will be ready to do as they are told, nothing more. The rest of the society is just looking at high school grades to ensure that the person they accept to college or offer a job to will perform as commanded, nothing more or less.
Fortunately, X is not Linux, and Linux is not X
Yes, I know that, but for a lot of people, "I use Linux!" implies the availability of an X server.
Personally, I rarely do anything that really depends on X being X, so my reaction is essentially "huh, I wonder how that'll work out."
Speaking for yourself; I see plenty of people who depend on X being X, and plenty of people who are being advised to depend on X being X. A move to Wayland will create all kind of confusion for those people, who implicitly assume that any Linux distro which has a graphical environment is using X.
Because not all the applications people want to forward are written for Wayland; one that comes to mind is a VLSI tool from Cadence, which is proprietary software that is often encountered in EE curricula (for VLSI courses and whatnot), which I doubt will be updated to Wayland any time soon. People have come to rely on an X server, specifically, being available to them.
...but I still know a LOT of people who forward X over SSH, and there are still a lot of professors who are advising their students (at least in the engineering schools I have seen) to do the same. I guess this is one of those times that just saying, "I use Linux!" will not convey what people think.
Downloading and distributing music is illegal
So is parking your car in the wrong place.
We all know why the amount is so high
Yes, we do: modern copyright law was written for the benefit of businesses like the RIAA's members, rather than for the benefit of society.
If examples are made of them, they will eventually slow down.
Thus explaining why so many people use illegal drugs, despite nearly a century of prohibition and "making examples of" people who break those laws.
I'm not even sure I'd know how to use a painting commercially...
By selling copies of it? By using it as part of an advertisement?
reasonable settlement terms.
You must be thinking of some other case; the way I see it, if the settlement terms involved her paying more than a hundred or so dollars, it is entirely unreasonable.
Perhaps a copyright system that only applies to commercial use of creative works? You know, it is overwhelmingly common for music, art, movies, and so forth to be used commercially. Maybe the copyright system should only apply in situations where a person can be shown to have profited by using or distributing a creative work, but did not get the appropriate permission to do so?
You can't legally COPY someones work
Sorry, but we live in an age where copying is something that happens automatically whenever people use their computers. If you sent me an electronic copy of a book you wrote, my computer would automatically copy the book multiple times as part of its normal operation; I would also very likely make further copies when I back up my files, migrate to a new computer, and so forth.
The problem here is that people keep trying to define a difference between the sort of copying that is part of a computer's normal and routine operation, and sharing files with other people. It is an extreme blurry line -- multiple people may use one computer system, or a multiple computers with multiple users may be connected to the same LAN, or a computer might be connected to more than one LAN, or to the Internet, etc. Exactly where do you intend to define copying as a violation of the right you claim to have over dictating copying? If I have a digital copy of your book, can my roommate who shares a computer with me read it? Can my roommate copy it from my home directory to his home directory? Can we both read it at the same time, using two separate digital copies? What if we have two computers, connected to some sort of computer network; can the book be copied from one computer to the other? What if we have one computer with two processors and two hard drives? What if we have many computers in some sort of cluster? What if we are using a distributed OS?
Which is precisely why we need to redesign the entire copyright system, and rethink all the principles on which it was based. Copyrights were created at a time when only people who possessed specialized industrial equipment could produce copies efficiently; that age ended, and the only thing our elected representatives in congress could think to do about it was to strengthen copyright law.
Perhaps because the punishment is grossly out of proportion with the crime itself? Seriously, I think people need to take a reality check, and realize that any amount in excess of $100 is entirely unreasonable. What she allegedly did caused less harm to society than a parking violation, and that is how it should be treated.
Copyrights were never really meant to target individual citizens; copyright is a regulation on businesses, and should only be applied to businesses. The way the RIAA is suing individuals is a disgrace, and their lawyers should be reprimanded for abusing the court system.
Not that anyone really cares about what is best for the people of the United States.
I thought that the $54k amount was the amount that she had to pay. How exactly is she now required to pay so much more?