...sure, 'cause it's a LOT harder to move the mouse 'n' click icons in Linux than it is in Windows...
Ubuntu is harder to use than Windows not because there are huge differences in clicking and dragging icons, but because (well, at least in my experience) Ubuntu tends to screw up a lot more than Windows does. Even then, with Windows, you can often use some GUI to sort the problem out, often with a nice, noob-friendly help screen to help isolate the problem. With Ubuntu, I had to learn some command-line functions from external sources (i.e. the internet), and sometimes ask for help on forums when all seemed lost. I'm sorry, but I have to say that, in my humble experience as a Linux noob, Windows is easier.
Yeah, that MS-Paint has GIMP beat somethin' fierce. If you're thinking Adobe, enjoy paying $649 for functionality the average Ubuntu user has built-in.
You can get the GIMP for windows for free. If you want something far superior, you also have the option of paying $649 for photoshop, which isn't really supported on Ubuntu. That's just one example.
Hint: An Apache server is NOT a web server run by Native Americans. It's used by many providers for a reason. Guess what that reason is?
Reliable if you don't fiddle with it. Perfect for servers, not so for desktops.
Installed Ubuntu 6.10/XP dual-boot on my work and one of my home PCs. XP needed me to hunt down drivers for my video card, TV card, NIC, and sound card. Ubuntu recognized 'em all and I was watching TV on it 20 minutes later. Yay, TVtime!
I've found similar situations myself. It seems to me that Ubuntu is better at salvaging use from faulty hardware, while Windows, having more third-party support, supports more hardware. It's a case of quality versus quantity.
What's currently considered friendly is what you're used to. No more no less.
I'm not so sure. Give a man who's never touched a computer before a GUI and a command line, which do you think he will choose? Visual aids, and mapping out functions on screen are undeniably more new user friendly than a simple command line. We're visual creatures, and visual aides help. Now that leaves the question: what other user-friendliness conventions are similarly justified by our biology?
If they're so sucessful at their marketing then why are they crying about lost sales and lost revinue?
Because it takes a chunk of their sales, and has the potential to take an even bigger chunk in the future if no-one regulates it. Next question please.
Is it purely coincidence that CD sales started falling shortly AFTER the RIAA sued Napster to oblivion?
Yes. It's rising broadband speed and penetration that triggered rises in piracy and falls in sales. The people using napster mostly settled on some other P2P network. Next?
Or that studies show that P2P usere spend more money on music than non-P2P users?
No, but that's to be expected. It's not that pirating music makes you a bigger music consumer, it's that big music fans are likely to pirate music. Since piracy is so rampant these days, most of the people who don't pirate aren't really into music much. It's complete nonsense to assume reverse causality.
But I'm not surprised. People can twist statistics, coincidences, and correlations so that they pervert all manner of common sense and logic and produce something blatantly wrong. The RIAA assume pirated copy = lost sale, the pirates manage to come to the conclusion that by cannibalising the sales of their own supplier (the copyright holder), they can help the supplier. What a load of shit.
Even if there are some positive effects now, who's to say they won't evaporate in a few years? It's a system of guilt right now. If everyone was a rational consumer (i.e. short-sighted and unsentimental), everyone would pirate. Why not? It's the same product, only infinitely cheaper and there's next to no chance of getting caught if you take proper precautions. Guilt is the only thing tying this orgy of free music to the people who made it. Without people/companies like the RIAA actively and harshly reminding people that it's illegal and that it's damaging, all the while trying to prevent as much piracy as possible, what makes you think that we, as a society, would remember the artist 10 years on?
Heve you heard of Roger McGuinn, front man for the 1960s band "The Byrds"? His career was in the toilet, and he credits the old outlawed Napster for bringing his music to a whole new generation and revitalizing his career.
I realise there have been multiple cases of commercially failed copyrighted works that have been revitalised by piracy. The works have no perceived financial potential, so it doesn't hurt them when people steal the financial potential through piracy, and the whole thing ultimately ends up benefiting the artist if they get their career back on track. Unfortunately, most copyrighted works shared aren't failed, and don't benefit from the treatment. They just take the value away from an already very valuable work, which is very damaging. The onus is on the copyright holder to make the most of the copyrighted work and to tap every market. If they can't handle it properly, then they should either sell it to someone who can, or people will have to accept that it will be another of the mishandled copyright works that'll fall silently into the public domain. If the **AA were sensible, they'd create their own network, sharing out the songs/movies/TV shows not making any money (DRMed of course), and making observation based upon that. These situations are not, however, a launch pad to declare that piracy is mysteriously beneficial to the music business.
That's some damned weak logic, since LimeWire's real reason for existance (and the RIAA's opposition to it) is for independant artists to get their music out.
Weak logic? Stronger than yours by far (which is not saying much at all).
Number one, the RIAA doesn't need to crush competition that way. They can do it the usual way, by marketing, pandering to popular tastes, and sneakily circumventing payola laws. They've very successfully mined all significantly profitable music markets, with indie artists creating small dedicated niches. Crushing them wouldn't suddenly turn rabid indie fans toward them (quite the opposite in fact).
Number two, revenue lost to piracy is greater than revenue lost to indie artists. More importantly, piracy has much greater potential to grow unchecked. Because the RIAA members are corporations, and money is a corporation's food, water, and language, the long term costs of any destructive are as good measure as any for the intentions of a corporation. Therefore, they do it not to crush distribution of indie music, but to crush piracy.
Number three, indie artists have plenty of other (better) methods for distribution, ones where they could make some money, reach people who aren't already looking for them, and ones where their music won't be overwhelmed by illegal copyrighted content. Yet another reason why indie presence on Limewire isn't a threat to the RIAA.
Number four, it doesn't exactly matter what Limewire's purpose once was. Anyone with half a brain and some historical perspective would realise that any P2P network that doesn't actively filter unauthorised copyrighted content (yeah, good luck with that), will fill up with it.
As you can see your logic is just as faulty (if not moreso) than the people conducting this survey, or the RIAA.
Interesting you bring that up, because the article's main section is on the criticisms of the doctrine. These people are attempting to give up their rights. If they are inalienable, why do we feel the obligation to stop them? Can't "the creator", as referenced in the Declaration of Independence, stop them himself?
Firefox doesn't need a top to bottom rewrite, but I think your post does.
Now I find myself asking "Has this person done any real Slashdot posting?" It's a long process to develop an opinion. It requires months of observation of other opinions, selecting and assembling parts to create something beautiful, and then you must repost it over and over again, to make the full use of the months of development. Rarely does a slashdot post require a top to bottom rewrite, regardless of the problem.;)
... when I saw that a majority of the candidates listed had a tick under gun control. I was less pleasantly surprised when I realised that the tick meant they opposed gun control.
How counter-intuitive is that? The tick implies approval (not to mention it implies that the candidate made the right choice).
Question: Do you like (m)any copyrighted works out there (GPLed software included)?
If yes, then there's your answer. Copyrighted works are mostly distributed (and often created) because there is copyright, and the artist has some rights over it. If the artist didn't want those rights, well, they would've released it into the Public Domain, wouldn't they (or at least, with software, a BSD-style license that doesn't require recognition)? Those copyrighted works are a few of the millions of reasons to support copyright law.
If no, and you like to use these Torrent Sites for legitimate purposes, then fair enough. It seems unlikely, but I'm prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt. You can help the situation by spreading the message not to pirate, and perhaps the MPAA won't be so trigger-happy in the future. I'd also consider not supporting sites with such a high instance of pirated material, because they will inevitably come into the firing line. Then you won't have to complain every time another one comes under fire.
If by "current", you're referring to the DMCA, huge copyright terms, and other questionable recent changes to copyright law, then why are you telling us to "Burn it down"?
If by "current" and "copyright", you're referring to the behaviour of the **AA and other copyright groups, then why not actually isolate the behaviour you don't like, and make that illegal instead? Unless signing up creative talents and lowering the barrier of entry of art-creation to something manageable is offensive to you, then I see no reason why we need to go after copyright law for their behaviour. It's called slicing off your nose despite your face.
That still seems quite limited, although if you're in Australia then I guess it's better than what most people are using...
Oh yeah, I guess it could be. Of course, I personally have only ever used around 4.7 GB in one month on peak, but if you're truly a heavy user I guess it would be. Our Internet speeds and penetration are certainly not considered world-leading. Not everyone has access to ADSL2+ here, only the richer suburbs (I'm kinda lucky that my area has very recently undergone some urban renewal). It's often expensive. My plan was by far the best value I could find for $40/month, with all the others having greatly reduced speeds, or download limits of 1GB or less. Mostly that's thanks to Telstra. Thankfully, we have just elected a government that has laid out a solid plan to significantly upgrade our internet infrastructure, and will hopefully won't screw over consumers and competitors like Telstra does.
... why we are still having this argument? I would have thought this would be an open and shut case. People complain about low sample rate, other people show those people that it's scientifically impossible for a person to hear the difference. Are there just different people each time, who have never heard of Nyquist's theorem? Or do they feel that science isn't representing their experience? This isn't a troll; I'd really like to know.
Consider this vs competing ISPs who offer twice the speed and bandwidth for half the price.
That's putting it mildly. Compare that to mine:
ADSL2+, 24/1Mbps, 8GB limit on peak (12pm-12am), 32GB other times, $3.00 per GB excess usage, uploaded data not counted, all for $40/month. I won't tell my ISP, or else I'll be accused of advertising for them, but you can see the difference.
Their only credit is they manage to push communication technology into the public sector before anyone else. The ugly side is that they charge like a wounded bull for the privilege. Their prices are exorbitant, their contracts are insulting, and the data allotments for their internet services (as well as their excess usage charges) would be laughable if there weren't so many people tied to them.
I found out recently that someone I know was taking internet from them. $30 per month for dialup. No shit. Not only that, but there was some confusion about her contract period which would be at least 12 months, if not 24. They also have a $30 per month broadband service, but it also comes with a contract (for 12-24 months, I can't remember which), and 200MB of downloads at 256kbps. What's worse is that they advertise in huge lettering that it actually costs $14.95 per month, when is states in the small print that that pricing only applies to the first few months. That's the years old technology. The newer stuff like satellite or wireless cost north of $100 per month for 1-2GB per month allotments.
The government should be ours, and the commons should be ours.
Ours personally, I mean. We first have to consult everyone else, or at least their representatives, before we can make any difference. I'm afraid that outside Slashdot and a few other minor groups, copyright reform isn't an issue, let alone an important one.
What about murder and manslaughter? Are you against the distinction? What about breaking and entering without actually breaking anything (i.e. picking the lock and entering a home)? Should that be punishable? How about possessing credit card numbers that don't belong to you? They haven't actually stolen anything, they're just thinking about stealing some money off them.
The fact is that thought is often taken into account in law, and for a very good reason. The thought component (the premeditation, the overt acts, etc) are a good indication that they disregard the law, and that because of that, they may well do the same crime (or even another one) again. Why not punish them that extra bit more? It'll keep 'em off the street for longer. And if they do it again, well, hopefully they'll be tried as a repeat offender.
I pretty much agree with all that. I just have one thing to add:
In other words, this gets more into the realm of "messy and not guaranteed", which is why I feel all media should be available in the clear somewhere -- or at least, should be available entirely locked-down, but with all the keys there, too.
Perhaps instead, the DRM's keys/algorithm, or at least a standard binary that could decode the DRM, should be stored by the government. Only a few bytes, or at most, a few megabytes for an entire media format. That would eliminate the need for huge amounts of space and the large maintenance costs. The problem lies with the exceptions like the ones you mentioned (deliberate errors, and unreadable sectors). Then, they may have to provide a clear version, perhaps paying a small once-off upkeep fee in their taxes.
The real problem is that none of this will actually happen in the next 10 years, and we are arguing over what isn't exactly ours.
And the ability for a government to monitor its citizens is a necessary foundation to enforcing the law. The first is not "wrong", it's a fundamental right that has been increasingly recognised lately.
Of course, I don't believe that for a second, but stating that "monitoring the government is not wrong" will not stop those who do.
When the average employee works, they get one (maybe a few) bosses checking up on them. They can easily get used to each boss's quirks and preferences, and learn not to rub them the wrong way.
The average government employee has 200 million employers watching him. They have the resources to watch him 24/7. Not only that, but many of them are opinionated and trigger-happy (mostly metaphorically speaking), and the group sends conflicting messages to the poor lowly employee. Politics is a hard game.
My point is that this is how absurdly innaccurate their methods are, that they might not even notice.
Ah, I see. Yes there is a risk of that, but I also don't think it would take long to correct. I mean, exactly how hard is it to check up on piracy? If they were to look at the Pirate Bay and see only 100% legal torrents, or look at Limewire, and see no pirated content, or check up on any of the smaller centralisations of pirated media, it would get them suspicious enough to check up on the rest. It wouldn't take them long to realise that they're having great difficulty finding IP addresses to prosecute.
They recommend Vista. Worse than that -- every article they've written about OSes is under the assumption that Vista is the natural, logical choice of an upgrade, and the only reason you wouldn't upgrade is if you didn't want to spend the time or the money.
I don't know if you're actually going to debate that point -- I know a lot of people did, when I posted about it. But I take that as proof that it's impossible to be independent and unbiased, and yet have a clue what you're talking about.
I guess you'd need multiple studies from people who aren't affiliated with any copyright holders, the government (since they have vested interests in protecting IP), or civil liberties groups. They'd have to try to make it as scientific as possible, and eliminate as much bias as possible. This isn't a subjective matter like "which operating system is best" or whatever the report was aiming to find out. This is about documenting numbers from reasonably fair samples. It could work.
Except that iTunes cannot and has not been copied (legally) in how it talks to the iPod, or how it talks to its music store.
Therefore, leaving iTunes involves leaving any of your music which was DRM'd, and leaving your iPod -- or doing something illegal, and which very likely won't work.
It was never a problem with legality. My point was that a P2P client, legal or otherwise, could match and ultimately surpass a store. People could take their DRMed media with them because the P2P network designers don't have to give a flying f*ck about any copyright laws, including the DMCA, or patents (which I assume protect the access to the iPod).
I also think you underestimate the attraction of not requiring a credit card. Some people just don't like sending out sensitive information over the internet, even if it is reasonably secure. Other people don't have credit cards, like children or people with bad credit history. It's a major inconvenience to them. IIRC, the whole point of this thread was to demonstrate how hard it is to beat piracy, and the difference between paying a tiny amount and paying nothing is huge.
Example: I love Firely. I love Battlestar Galactica, and I love Heroes. But right now, I would have to give all of them up to avoid both DRM and piracy.
Unfortunately, you may have to. The issue of mainstream content and DRM is an issue between the owners and the customers. I still think that the owners have the right to lock it down, deprive it of some of its own natural value, and have less people buying it. If they want to be stupid, so be it. If they are actually not being quite as stupid as they seem, well, it's their right to do that too.
I think we've both said what needs to be said, so I guess that pretty much exhausts that thread.
See, the problem is, Windows continues to lock us in, more and more. Every bit of lock-in will move those limits again. This has been going on for years.
Obviously some of us are feeling the heat. The EU anti-trust cases are evidence enough of that. People in the US are slower to respond, but they don't really value their privacy or consumer choice as adamantly as Europeans tend to do. Basically, I think you can only warm the frog so much before it's flesh starts to boil, and it jumps out in terror. Everyone has t
No surprise here, US schools have become so much about teaching to the test that kids are being taught not to think, but just blindly, mindlessly obey.
I dunno. I'm a relatively recent product of the school system, and I was taught to think for myself, especially in later years. I was taught to argue my own opinions in English, taught to formulate my own theories in History (and sometimes in Geography), even in maths I locked horns with the teacher when I thought he was wrong (and often I was right).
The only subject that I was ever taught to mindlessly obey was computers. I hated the administrator, because he flatly refused to acknowledge what I perceived to be my superior skillz with computers, and that he was, in fact, I dinosaur who refused to change to a better OS like Linux. It took me a while to realise how difficult it is maintaining a computer system in your spare time between classes, with a bunch of know-it-alls giving him unsound advice. The best way was to make everyone follow the same set of rules to minimise the hassle.
In short, I'm not at all surprised that the student got detention. Students come to the school knowing how to think for themselves in the computer arena, they just need to learn obedience as well.
At the risk of going around in circles here, I find the blame for this one lies entirely with the media guys.
I guess it doesn't really matter who we blame. I hope we can accept we have a deadlock here, and hopefully one of the two parties will break it soon.
I think I understand your point -- that if piracy was less of a problem, they might do that. But I think it's actually pretty unrelated, at this point. I think that if piracy completely stopped tomorrow, there'd still be some RIAA lawsuit on Monday.
The only thing I can think they would sue for is for someone using one of the fair use rights. Y'know, one of the ones they're trying to crush. If they tried, I think their case would be thrown out of court blindingly fast, assuming in this theoretical world, sympathies change as fast as the piracy trend. There would be little more reason for sympathy for the RIAA by the government or the people who elect them.
I would tend to think that the average individual probability is actually not very much lower than it would be without piracy as a mitigating factor.
It is. My point was that it isn't mitigating enough.
But this would be very difficult to prove even if we had statistics, and we don't, so I guess there's not really a conclusion to be had here, other than agree-to-disagree.
Agreed. I would like to see some independent research done about piracy and its fallout, but I haven't actually found anything yet. Oh well, I'll keep an eye out. I'm sure Slashdot will jump on such a study as soon as it's released.
If you mean "is Internet piracy..." then the answer is "Yes."
Understand that I don't mean they need tougher laws and tougher techniques. I mean they need fundamentally different ones.
Yes, but you can't simply say they're significantly different and expect them to change. They need to know how it's different, and why that difference discounts the approach they were using. What is it about Internet piracy that makes suing so ineffective?
No, don't answer that, I'm fairly sure that any world in which it could be enforced is a world I don't want to live in.
Precisely my point.
Well, by that logic, "convention" is all that's keeping Windows around, so I'd say it's a damned strong force.
No, Windows is not just held in place by convention, but by several conventions. Namely, protocols, standards, and specifications that others cannot easily share. They've locked themselves in through anticompetitive behaviour. You can't easily use two operating systems on the same computer, especially at full speed. iTunes, by contrast, can and has been copied in interface and functionality, and can be used comfortably with any other competitor. Apple doesn't have to be any part of it.
In which case, your experience is still much worse than a store in that you never know what you're getting, in terms of both content and bandwidth. The webpage is actually a really good solution to the problem of both a central tracker (so the downloads generally go very fast) and a known-good quality (in that people can generally comment on these torrents, so you're warned away from the bad ones.)
So why not combine the benefits? Make the client share tracking information, implement a comment/moderation system, enjoy the benefits of both systems. But I get your point. There will always be some variability, but at least there'll be no risk of credit card fraud.
Going back up, this started with you suggesting that DRM'd media isn't that bad as long as there's competing DRM-free media. I'm saying that "not that bad" is not really what you want to aspire to -- why not make all media DRM-free?
Because, on the same token, there doesn't need to not be DRM either. If media companies really want it, they
Slashdot Mirror
But I'm not surprised. People can twist statistics, coincidences, and correlations so that they pervert all manner of common sense and logic and produce something blatantly wrong. The RIAA assume pirated copy = lost sale, the pirates manage to come to the conclusion that by cannibalising the sales of their own supplier (the copyright holder), they can help the supplier. What a load of shit.
Even if there are some positive effects now, who's to say they won't evaporate in a few years? It's a system of guilt right now. If everyone was a rational consumer (i.e. short-sighted and unsentimental), everyone would pirate. Why not? It's the same product, only infinitely cheaper and there's next to no chance of getting caught if you take proper precautions. Guilt is the only thing tying this orgy of free music to the people who made it. Without people/companies like the RIAA actively and harshly reminding people that it's illegal and that it's damaging, all the while trying to prevent as much piracy as possible, what makes you think that we, as a society, would remember the artist 10 years on?I realise there have been multiple cases of commercially failed copyrighted works that have been revitalised by piracy. The works have no perceived financial potential, so it doesn't hurt them when people steal the financial potential through piracy, and the whole thing ultimately ends up benefiting the artist if they get their career back on track. Unfortunately, most copyrighted works shared aren't failed, and don't benefit from the treatment. They just take the value away from an already very valuable work, which is very damaging. The onus is on the copyright holder to make the most of the copyrighted work and to tap every market. If they can't handle it properly, then they should either sell it to someone who can, or people will have to accept that it will be another of the mishandled copyright works that'll fall silently into the public domain. If the **AA were sensible, they'd create their own network, sharing out the songs/movies/TV shows not making any money (DRMed of course), and making observation based upon that. These situations are not, however, a launch pad to declare that piracy is mysteriously beneficial to the music business.
Number one, the RIAA doesn't need to crush competition that way. They can do it the usual way, by marketing, pandering to popular tastes, and sneakily circumventing payola laws. They've very successfully mined all significantly profitable music markets, with indie artists creating small dedicated niches. Crushing them wouldn't suddenly turn rabid indie fans toward them (quite the opposite in fact).
Number two, revenue lost to piracy is greater than revenue lost to indie artists. More importantly, piracy has much greater potential to grow unchecked. Because the RIAA members are corporations, and money is a corporation's food, water, and language, the long term costs of any destructive are as good measure as any for the intentions of a corporation. Therefore, they do it not to crush distribution of indie music, but to crush piracy.
Number three, indie artists have plenty of other (better) methods for distribution, ones where they could make some money, reach people who aren't already looking for them, and ones where their music won't be overwhelmed by illegal copyrighted content. Yet another reason why indie presence on Limewire isn't a threat to the RIAA.
Number four, it doesn't exactly matter what Limewire's purpose once was. Anyone with half a brain and some historical perspective would realise that any P2P network that doesn't actively filter unauthorised copyrighted content (yeah, good luck with that), will fill up with it.
As you can see your logic is just as faulty (if not moreso) than the people conducting this survey, or the RIAA.
That's true. I've uninstalled my AV software, and I haven't been notified once that my computer's infected. Plus it's cheaper too!
Interesting you bring that up, because the article's main section is on the criticisms of the doctrine. These people are attempting to give up their rights. If they are inalienable, why do we feel the obligation to stop them? Can't "the creator", as referenced in the Declaration of Independence, stop them himself?
... when I saw that a majority of the candidates listed had a tick under gun control. I was less pleasantly surprised when I realised that the tick meant they opposed gun control.
How counter-intuitive is that? The tick implies approval (not to mention it implies that the candidate made the right choice).
These people are free to choose to restrict their own freedoms. If they want to do this, who are we to try to stop them?
If yes, then there's your answer. Copyrighted works are mostly distributed (and often created) because there is copyright, and the artist has some rights over it. If the artist didn't want those rights, well, they would've released it into the Public Domain, wouldn't they (or at least, with software, a BSD-style license that doesn't require recognition)? Those copyrighted works are a few of the millions of reasons to support copyright law.
If no, and you like to use these Torrent Sites for legitimate purposes, then fair enough. It seems unlikely, but I'm prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt. You can help the situation by spreading the message not to pirate, and perhaps the MPAA won't be so trigger-happy in the future. I'd also consider not supporting sites with such a high instance of pirated material, because they will inevitably come into the firing line. Then you won't have to complain every time another one comes under fire.
If by "current", you're referring to the DMCA, huge copyright terms, and other questionable recent changes to copyright law, then why are you telling us to "Burn it down"?
If by "current" and "copyright", you're referring to the behaviour of the **AA and other copyright groups, then why not actually isolate the behaviour you don't like, and make that illegal instead? Unless signing up creative talents and lowering the barrier of entry of art-creation to something manageable is offensive to you, then I see no reason why we need to go after copyright law for their behaviour. It's called slicing off your nose despite your face.
... why we are still having this argument? I would have thought this would be an open and shut case. People complain about low sample rate, other people show those people that it's scientifically impossible for a person to hear the difference. Are there just different people each time, who have never heard of Nyquist's theorem? Or do they feel that science isn't representing their experience? This isn't a troll; I'd really like to know.
ADSL2+, 24/1Mbps, 8GB limit on peak (12pm-12am), 32GB other times, $3.00 per GB excess usage, uploaded data not counted, all for $40/month. I won't tell my ISP, or else I'll be accused of advertising for them, but you can see the difference.
Their only credit is they manage to push communication technology into the public sector before anyone else. The ugly side is that they charge like a wounded bull for the privilege. Their prices are exorbitant, their contracts are insulting, and the data allotments for their internet services (as well as their excess usage charges) would be laughable if there weren't so many people tied to them.
I found out recently that someone I know was taking internet from them. $30 per month for dialup. No shit. Not only that, but there was some confusion about her contract period which would be at least 12 months, if not 24. They also have a $30 per month broadband service, but it also comes with a contract (for 12-24 months, I can't remember which), and 200MB of downloads at 256kbps. What's worse is that they advertise in huge lettering that it actually costs $14.95 per month, when is states in the small print that that pricing only applies to the first few months. That's the years old technology. The newer stuff like satellite or wireless cost north of $100 per month for 1-2GB per month allotments.
Not to mention, I hear it's terribly slow.
What about murder and manslaughter? Are you against the distinction? What about breaking and entering without actually breaking anything (i.e. picking the lock and entering a home)? Should that be punishable? How about possessing credit card numbers that don't belong to you? They haven't actually stolen anything, they're just thinking about stealing some money off them.
The fact is that thought is often taken into account in law, and for a very good reason. The thought component (the premeditation, the overt acts, etc) are a good indication that they disregard the law, and that because of that, they may well do the same crime (or even another one) again. Why not punish them that extra bit more? It'll keep 'em off the street for longer. And if they do it again, well, hopefully they'll be tried as a repeat offender.
The real problem is that none of this will actually happen in the next 10 years, and we are arguing over what isn't exactly ours.
And the ability for a government to monitor its citizens is a necessary foundation to enforcing the law. The first is not "wrong", it's a fundamental right that has been increasingly recognised lately.
Of course, I don't believe that for a second, but stating that "monitoring the government is not wrong" will not stop those who do.
When the average employee works, they get one (maybe a few) bosses checking up on them. They can easily get used to each boss's quirks and preferences, and learn not to rub them the wrong way.
The average government employee has 200 million employers watching him. They have the resources to watch him 24/7. Not only that, but many of them are opinionated and trigger-happy (mostly metaphorically speaking), and the group sends conflicting messages to the poor lowly employee. Politics is a hard game.
Ah, I see. Yes there is a risk of that, but I also don't think it would take long to correct. I mean, exactly how hard is it to check up on piracy? If they were to look at the Pirate Bay and see only 100% legal torrents, or look at Limewire, and see no pirated content, or check up on any of the smaller centralisations of pirated media, it would get them suspicious enough to check up on the rest. It wouldn't take them long to realise that they're having great difficulty finding IP addresses to prosecute.
I guess you'd need multiple studies from people who aren't affiliated with any copyright holders, the government (since they have vested interests in protecting IP), or civil liberties groups. They'd have to try to make it as scientific as possible, and eliminate as much bias as possible. This isn't a subjective matter like "which operating system is best" or whatever the report was aiming to find out. This is about documenting numbers from reasonably fair samples. It could work.
It was never a problem with legality. My point was that a P2P client, legal or otherwise, could match and ultimately surpass a store. People could take their DRMed media with them because the P2P network designers don't have to give a flying f*ck about any copyright laws, including the DMCA, or patents (which I assume protect the access to the iPod).
I also think you underestimate the attraction of not requiring a credit card. Some people just don't like sending out sensitive information over the internet, even if it is reasonably secure. Other people don't have credit cards, like children or people with bad credit history. It's a major inconvenience to them. IIRC, the whole point of this thread was to demonstrate how hard it is to beat piracy, and the difference between paying a tiny amount and paying nothing is huge.
Unfortunately, you may have to. The issue of mainstream content and DRM is an issue between the owners and the customers. I still think that the owners have the right to lock it down, deprive it of some of its own natural value, and have less people buying it. If they want to be stupid, so be it. If they are actually not being quite as stupid as they seem, well, it's their right to do that too.
I think we've both said what needs to be said, so I guess that pretty much exhausts that thread.
Obviously some of us are feeling the heat. The EU anti-trust cases are evidence enough of that. People in the US are slower to respond, but they don't really value their privacy or consumer choice as adamantly as Europeans tend to do. Basically, I think you can only warm the frog so much before it's flesh starts to boil, and it jumps out in terror. Everyone has t
The only subject that I was ever taught to mindlessly obey was computers. I hated the administrator, because he flatly refused to acknowledge what I perceived to be my superior skillz with computers, and that he was, in fact, I dinosaur who refused to change to a better OS like Linux. It took me a while to realise how difficult it is maintaining a computer system in your spare time between classes, with a bunch of know-it-alls giving him unsound advice. The best way was to make everyone follow the same set of rules to minimise the hassle.
In short, I'm not at all surprised that the student got detention. Students come to the school knowing how to think for themselves in the computer arena, they just need to learn obedience as well.
... that the guy explaining that Flash is the web's failure has a link to a YouTube video in his sig?
I guess it doesn't really matter who we blame. I hope we can accept we have a deadlock here, and hopefully one of the two parties will break it soon.
The only thing I can think they would sue for is for someone using one of the fair use rights. Y'know, one of the ones they're trying to crush. If they tried, I think their case would be thrown out of court blindingly fast, assuming in this theoretical world, sympathies change as fast as the piracy trend. There would be little more reason for sympathy for the RIAA by the government or the people who elect them.
It is. My point was that it isn't mitigating enough.
Agreed. I would like to see some independent research done about piracy and its fallout, but I haven't actually found anything yet. Oh well, I'll keep an eye out. I'm sure Slashdot will jump on such a study as soon as it's released.
Yes, but you can't simply say they're significantly different and expect them to change. They need to know how it's different, and why that difference discounts the approach they were using. What is it about Internet piracy that makes suing so ineffective?
Precisely my point.
No, Windows is not just held in place by convention, but by several conventions. Namely, protocols, standards, and specifications that others cannot easily share. They've locked themselves in through anticompetitive behaviour. You can't easily use two operating systems on the same computer, especially at full speed. iTunes, by contrast, can and has been copied in interface and functionality, and can be used comfortably with any other competitor. Apple doesn't have to be any part of it.
So why not combine the benefits? Make the client share tracking information, implement a comment/moderation system, enjoy the benefits of both systems. But I get your point. There will always be some variability, but at least there'll be no risk of credit card fraud.
Because, on the same token, there doesn't need to not be DRM either. If media companies really want it, they