The argument you are making presents me with certain thoughts such as: - you are a shallow reader - You missed the points of the majority of the posts you defamed - you give fellow/.'ers no credit - and "let's get a reality check" ok....Mom Seriously, there are a lot of pertinetn issues being brought to the table here, most of which are missed (as I notice they get buried under self-righteous bullshit such as your post) and I think that the overall "answer" that has been reached is that there are so many issues that come up when discussing such a topic, that it is impossilbe to simply side with the "goood guys" or "bad guys." It'll be a long time until there are outlets for media distribution online that meet the specs of users and vendors.
I think that is a good compliment/add-on to what I worte (not to say that one of our comments had more merit than the other) I think you're right, and I did think of the blatency (hello...Napster) I mean, I love Napster, but I often think of how pissed off it must make record execs. I did note the whole thing about the ever-growing community of MP3-ers but, after all, if my dad is going to copy music, he is going to tape it, not get the MP3. I think there is a still-larger majority of people out there who do not use MP3, may know that it's wrong due to all the bad press , but who will still tape a friend's CD, becasue they simply do not see the connection. And now I sound like a bleeding heart for the RIAA, which is the level I did NOT want to bring playing Devil's Advocate to... oh well, must be my conscience, as a matter of fact, I have to go load another playlist into WinAmp, this one just ran out - how appropriate
Ok, the scapegoat argument I have to agree with, however, I think the REAL reason that MP3 et. al. are being attacked by the industry with various "cpoyright protection" measures (read: profit protection) is that, for the first time, the industry has a window into how rife the piracy is. I mean, think about it, if you want to take the methodology of the industry into account and attempt to assess lost revenues as a result of piracy, I think the estimate based on copied analog tapes or copied CD's would put the figure associated with MP3 to shame. Fact is, if the industry doesn't see it, it isn't happening as far as they are concerned, but, since it is in their face by way of listings of MP3s being part of public domain, of course they are going to do something about it, or attempt to. This is not to say that I agree, I just think that the argument needs to be put into perspective. Nobody is singling out digital music per se, nor are they preying on the community of people that enjoy such music (an ever-expanding community, I might add) it is simply that they are trying to act on the only source of piracy that they have an ability to assess and possibly, control - I say good luck to them - they can try to slow us down but we're a pretty resillient bunch....
Lest we all forget, there was also a recent story citing that Germany, bastion of righteousness, was going to ban certain MS OS's due to the fact that parts of the OS's in question were developed by scientology-based software co's Anyone remember that?
XML, as wonderful and dynamic and potentially-world-saving as it is, is far from standardized. In addition to this, the only serious developments I've seen of any semblance of an XML search engine are being developed and marketed to be used by businesses in their intranets because, well, that's where the $$$ is.... So, in short, my opinion is XML is the only possible savior of exponetially expanding undocumented, unserchable content, it just needs more attention from the user/consumer commuinity.
Thank you. Now, can someone pleazse tell this to the "rest" of the world. I have worked in support and never ceased to glean amazement from the faith people placed in their disk. Yes, that is singular, the one that contains, oh, I dunno, their resume, thesis and any other irreplaceable data they might want to carry around in a nunprotected fashion in their back pocket. I'm surprised such a class action suit has neve been levied on support techs, seeing as we're the ones who always get blamed....
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The argument you are making presents me with certain thoughts such as: - you are a shallow reader - You missed the points of the majority of the posts you defamed - you give fellow /.'ers no credit - and "let's get a reality check" ok....Mom Seriously, there are a lot of pertinetn issues being brought to the table here, most of which are missed (as I notice they get buried under self-righteous bullshit such as your post) and I think that the overall "answer" that has been reached is that there are so many issues that come up when discussing such a topic, that it is impossilbe to simply side with the "goood guys" or "bad guys." It'll be a long time until there are outlets for media distribution online that meet the specs of users and vendors.
I think that is a good compliment/add-on to what I worte (not to say that one of our comments had more merit than the other) I think you're right, and I did think of the blatency (hello...Napster) I mean, I love Napster, but I often think of how pissed off it must make record execs. I did note the whole thing about the ever-growing community of MP3-ers but, after all, if my dad is going to copy music, he is going to tape it, not get the MP3. I think there is a still-larger majority of people out there who do not use MP3, may know that it's wrong due to all the bad press , but who will still tape a friend's CD, becasue they simply do not see the connection. And now I sound like a bleeding heart for the RIAA, which is the level I did NOT want to bring playing Devil's Advocate to... oh well, must be my conscience, as a matter of fact, I have to go load another playlist into WinAmp, this one just ran out - how appropriate
Ok, the scapegoat argument I have to agree with, however, I think the REAL reason that MP3 et. al. are being attacked by the industry with various "cpoyright protection" measures (read: profit protection) is that, for the first time, the industry has a window into how rife the piracy is. I mean, think about it, if you want to take the methodology of the industry into account and attempt to assess lost revenues as a result of piracy, I think the estimate based on copied analog tapes or copied CD's would put the figure associated with MP3 to shame. Fact is, if the industry doesn't see it, it isn't happening as far as they are concerned, but, since it is in their face by way of listings of MP3s being part of public domain, of course they are going to do something about it, or attempt to. This is not to say that I agree, I just think that the argument needs to be put into perspective. Nobody is singling out digital music per se, nor are they preying on the community of people that enjoy such music (an ever-expanding community, I might add) it is simply that they are trying to act on the only source of piracy that they have an ability to assess and possibly, control - I say good luck to them - they can try to slow us down but we're a pretty resillient bunch....
Lest we all forget, there was also a recent story citing that Germany, bastion of righteousness, was going to ban certain MS OS's due to the fact that parts of the OS's in question were developed by scientology-based software co's Anyone remember that?
XML, as wonderful and dynamic and potentially-world-saving as it is, is far from standardized. In addition to this, the only serious developments I've seen of any semblance of an XML search engine are being developed and marketed to be used by businesses in their intranets because, well, that's where the $$$ is.... So, in short, my opinion is XML is the only possible savior of exponetially expanding undocumented, unserchable content, it just needs more attention from the user/consumer commuinity.
Thank you. Now, can someone pleazse tell this to the "rest" of the world. I have worked in support and never ceased to glean amazement from the faith people placed in their disk. Yes, that is singular, the one that contains, oh, I dunno, their resume, thesis and any other irreplaceable data they might want to carry around in a nunprotected fashion in their back pocket. I'm surprised such a class action suit has neve been levied on support techs, seeing as we're the ones who always get blamed....