you aren't just a pirate, you are a commercial copyright violator.
And here, all along, I thought that a pirate was a commercial copyright violator. After all, piracy, in the traditional sense when it comes to copyright infringement, has always been the manufacture and sale of copyrighted material.
Theft has usually been incorrectly used to define someone who infringes on a personal, non-commercial scale. But then again, the industry really treats all infringement, whether commercial or otherwise as the same thing. After all, in their eyes, anyone who doesn't work for big content is a thief and pirate, regardless to whether that individual actually is involved in copyright infringement, commercial or otherwise.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Doing the Math for Etsy, MPAA/RIAA Style
Sorry, cyber-freaks, but the rule of law applies in cyberspace with equal force.
I agree...it should be that way. Therefore we really don't need DMCA or SOPA, because existing Copyright laws already cover infringement and the penalties already exist. And say goodbye to any hopes of getting more money from internet radio, because existing laws already cover licensing of radio. I love how the industry says "rule of law applies in cyberspace with existing force," and then pretends that they need new laws to cover the internet.
You don't need new laws to cover cyberspace. Learn to use the existing laws you already have!
A few examples of legal behavior do not exonerate illegal behavior.
So what you are saying is that we shouldn't dump the tea into the harbor -- the tea doesn't belong to us, it belongs to England, as we do, and by us dumping the tea into the harbor, an illegal act which will get us hung for treason, we will not be exonerated by the fact that we want to be free of English tyranny and taxation without representation.
"The idealism of youth is usually replaced with the realism of life somewhere around 30."
I'm 36 and have gotten very tired of trying to convince you people to actually allow me to buy my entertainment without either trying to destroy my free speech or free market rights, so perhaps you're correct. The fact that my level of purchasing has reduced over the last few years has nothing to do with piracy, though.
37 and a die-hard conservative capitalist. This isn't a republican or a capitalist issue -- it is socialism, pure and simple. Someone is asking for the government to allow them to protect their state given monopoly from competition (legal or otherwise.) A true capitalist would look at this and cry. There are no state mandated monopoly rents in a capitalistic society. I am not that mean...authors and inventors should get 17 years to get their money back and potentially make money -- however there shall be no permanent assignments to corporations (the author/inventor may temporarily allow assignment of a copyright to a company to allow for that company to distribute, but that must be made through contract and the author/inventor can nullify that contract if the company doesn't provide the effort or another company comes along that provides a better deal.) How do companies make money -- by providing a better deal or by providing a deal good enough to begin with.
All the internet does is make it 1000 times worse - because now not only are you competing with other label acts for attention, you are now competing with every garage band, "remix artist", and button pushing sample player out there for the public's attention. Good luck with that, the noise level is going up, and the chance you get heard through it continues to drop.
And yet, musicians are still making money. The secret is to stop trying to copy everyone else and try to understand the root of the problem, which Mike says all the time -- Connect with your fans and give the customer a reason to buy.
Why is Felicia Day or Justin Bieber making money? Why are musicians and authors online making money? Could it be that instead of saying "I cannot make money because its too hard to connect with my fans because there are too many other people connecting with fans," you could go out there and figure out what it is that these folks are doing? I'll give you a hint, a lot of them started out not by pricing their stuff at $15 and throwing their hands up when they didn't make any money. A lot of them put their stuff out for free or for low cost, and then when people found their stuff, they liked it and bought a lot more. J.A. Konrath put out free books to entice customers...Felicia Day put out free webisodes...Justin Bieber uploaded free videos to YouTube. People saw their stuff and went crazy. Also, if you put your stuff out there and people don't buy it, maybe you should consider another line of work.
Let's see... right about 10 years since any of my money went to the RIAA. I stopped downloading about that time too.
I didn't jump that long ago, but I must say that the labels definitely killed emusic, and I was downloading music up until that time off of emusic. I liked it back with all there was was independent musicians, but then they started working with the labels and they jacked the price up, killed off redownloads (even when their piece of junk software failed to download the file properly,) and then dropped a majority of the independent musicians I listened to. They may still exist, but they are dead to me.
Now I tend to just download music directly from the artists website -- but I do a hell of a lot less of that too, because many artists still use the label website to sell their crap, and I am tired of having to get a new credit card every three months because another label website gets hacked and my credit card is used to buy trips to foreign locales and DirectTV boxes shipped to PO Boxes or safe-houses in the Bronx. If they don't take a third party payment and they require me to provide a user-id and password, I don't give them any money. Wish the bands out there would figure this out -- their labels are screwing them and they are screwing their customers.
However, how much (superficial) change is required before it's a new invention and not a modified version of an old one.
Since we're wishing, my wish would be that the requirement be based on the content industry's interpretation of Remix's. If you cannot build it from scratch in a vacuum, and there is anything that looks remotely like someone else's work, then it should be rejected. That way those who are truly inventive will be rewarded.
The bad news is we've basically invalidated every patent since the invention of the wheel...but I'm good with that. Have to draw the line somewhere.
This is good point If you cant give me what I want for free then that is your problem. you're business model is messed up.
I don't think most of the gamers think this way. I certainly don't. Give me a game that I can play right now (in other words, it runs correctly on my hardware and the DRM doesn't keep me from playing it the way I want, on the OS I want,) and one that I will enjoy, and I'll spend $60 on it. The last game I purchased in the store (for $40,) was Portal 2, and I loved that game and played it over and over again. Steam's DRM is less than desirable, but it wasn't bad enough to piss me off (and the game ran under virtualization fine.) Most of the games out now, though, use DRM which just doesn't work on my OS (Linux with Windows Virtualization,) or craps out during game play, so I don't buy them (I don't use them illegally either.) Instead, I spend the money I would have spent on the game on GoG or other sites where I can buy awesome 12 year old games without DRM.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, let's give up on all laws then.
Please read your own link...your link disagrees with you.
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Where in the Constitution does the Constitution specifically state Copyright or artificial monopolies? I got challenged on this once...and I was just like you..."it says it!" But then I read the Constitution and the link you provided among other links I found and realized that at no point within the Constitution does it actually say Copyright or define artificial monopolies. It just gives Congress the power to do so...which AC points out.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, let's give up on all laws then.
I chose a traffic ticket to show that we frequently let a single person, a cop in this case, make a quick decision about someone's guilt. Then,if there's any argument, people can ask a judge to check out the evidence.
When a cop writes a ticket, at least in California where I am very familiar with the process, they are in no way making any decision about someone's guilt. They saw something that they thought was a traffic violation, and pulled over the individual to issue a ticket. It is the traffic court judge that determines guilt based on the incident (or in many cases, the individual who was ticketed who either agrees that they are guilty and pays the ticket, or determines that it isn't worth fighting the ticket and pays off the ticket to make it go away.)
However, this is apples and oranges as to my knowledge, Congress has not yet given the entertainment industry authority to issue citations for violations of traffic laws (or violations of copyright.) A police officer has received training and has the experience to do so, and is held accountable for their actions. I have yet to see the entertainment industry go through a rigorous 10 month training academy on how to prosecute infringements or be accountable for their actions in this...as I suspect if they were, they'd be far less aggressive as they could lose their livelihood and go to jail for malicious prosecution and civil rights violations over some of the current issues.
I think you'll find they did buy it, just at no cost, they still had to click on checkout and buy.
Also, it will be down to the plaintiff to prove lost sales, if this went to court, which I'm pretty sure the author has said it's not.
Absolutely agree, but along these lines -- can't Amazon just null the purchase and remove the books from the person's account? They've done this before (although with a lot of gnashing of teeth by their customers,) and it would seem that this would be the place where removing the book would be semi-justifiable. If the people still want the book, then they could pay for it (and of course, very few probably would.)
I've downloaded free books from Amazon before (not the public domain ones, but the current ones that are listed as $0.00 on their website.) I had no clue at the time whether the author wanted it available for free or not -- and I'd be pissed if they disappeared from my collection since some of them were really good books (though I have since bought a bunch of books from the same author I downloaded for free, which I wouldn't have done if he hadn't offered his books for free.)
Or, perhaps ltlw0lf bought the games because he dislikes those studios' current outputs and GOG managed to make the old game more valuable by guaranteeing compatibility with modern OSes...
I do not like the current outputs because of DRM alone. Publishers that produce their software without DRM get my money. I've been burned so many times by DRM that I will never, ever buy a commercial game (even one that I really want) if it uses any DRM. Even Steam is pissing me off at the moment (why should I have to log into steam in order to play my game -- yes I know there is an offline mode, but it doesn't always work correctly.) When I buy a game, I expect it to work (with minor configuration on my part to bring it up to work on the modern OS or run it within a VM,) but usually DRM gets in the way and prevents me from playing the game.
Well, let's see. So Baldur's Gate came out in 1998, I'll say it was about $50 that day? In GoG updated Baldur's Gate costs $10 in 2011 (+expansion set in GoG).
I bought the original game at $39.99 (which had no expansions.) The expansions cost roughly $20 each...but I didn't purchase them. The gold/platinum came out which had everything (game+expansions) for around $20. I bought the platinum version off of GOG for $5.00 (it was a package deal, one of their 50% off weekend deals.) So....
Original game $39.99, plus expansions which would have cost $20 each, for $5.00. Total out of pocket, $44.99.
However, I've been buying a lot of games on GoG that I never bought when it first came out, so I believe I have more than broken even.
I'd like to see GoG (which I have given money to in the past YAY for Return to Krondor... but anyways...) get games like Mech Commander 2 (which _still_ has a semi-strong following of fans after Microsoft opensourced the game years ago.
I've been buying a lot of old games from GOG, including a number of games I bought when they were brand new (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, the Wing Commander Series, and a bunch of other ones...) And I've been playing them like crazy (Chris Sawyer's Locomotion and Master of Orion have easily seen a couple days worth of game play.)
The fact that they have no DRM and no requirement for the CD to be in the drive makes their offering worth buying the games over again. Most of the games had DRM on the CD...and some of the ones I bought on GoG...the original CD with the game I bought years ago for far more didn't work anymore because of crappy DRM or poor OS support.
If GoG could provide a place for old game-mods/addons/etc in addition to what they already provide, it would make old games even MORE valuable.
They do have some of that...they have a forum for each game. It seems like it would be easy to add mod threads to the forum. Not sure if anyone has done so yet (don't see any with the few games I looked at.)
Re: Everyone Should Be Forced To Use Their Real Names
The comparison in quality between commenters using real names and those who don’t is like night and day. Make everyone use their real names, I say, and the ROI on your site will literally shoot through the sky. The roof’s the limit.
Well, it certainly would make your job easier. If everyone here was using their real names, it would make it easier for you to target your lawsuits at those who advocate "freetardiness" or whatever (of course, you are still going to have to narrow down which "Mike Smith" made a comment, but you get the picture.
I like the Anonymity, even though many here try to use that Anonymity to derail thoughtful discussions and troll. For the bad, there certainly is a lot of good too. In other words, some of my best friends are anonymous cowards.
Re: Re: Re: "Free" and "open access" works if /someone/ puts in money.
My money is on multiple personality disorder.
IANAP, but I believe Bipolar is much more likely. Potentially Schizophrenia, which would account for the paranoia and incoherent babbling (they think what they are saying makes sense, but nobody can understand them.)
On the post: As Expected, RIAA Threatens Site That Claims To Let You Sell Used MP3s
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
And here, all along, I thought that a pirate was a commercial copyright violator. After all, piracy, in the traditional sense when it comes to copyright infringement, has always been the manufacture and sale of copyrighted material.
Theft has usually been incorrectly used to define someone who infringes on a personal, non-commercial scale. But then again, the industry really treats all infringement, whether commercial or otherwise as the same thing. After all, in their eyes, anyone who doesn't work for big content is a thief and pirate, regardless to whether that individual actually is involved in copyright infringement, commercial or otherwise.
On the post: A Look At Three Popular Sites That May Be In Trouble Under SOPA
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Doing the Math for Etsy, MPAA/RIAA Style
I agree...it should be that way. Therefore we really don't need DMCA or SOPA, because existing Copyright laws already cover infringement and the penalties already exist. And say goodbye to any hopes of getting more money from internet radio, because existing laws already cover licensing of radio. I love how the industry says "rule of law applies in cyberspace with existing force," and then pretends that they need new laws to cover the internet.
You don't need new laws to cover cyberspace. Learn to use the existing laws you already have!
On the post: Thoughts On The House Judiciary Committee's Hearings On SOPA
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
My guess, shill screeds. Don't be surprised when he comes back later to sue Mike over "illegally distributing" the drivel he keeps posting here.
On the post: Thoughts On The House Judiciary Committee's Hearings On SOPA
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Seconded.
On the post: A Look At The Testimony Given At Today's SOPA Lovefest Congressional Hearings... With A Surprise From MasterCard
Re: Re: Re: Re: It's old fashioned, but...
So what you are saying is that we shouldn't dump the tea into the harbor -- the tea doesn't belong to us, it belongs to England, as we do, and by us dumping the tea into the harbor, an illegal act which will get us hung for treason, we will not be exonerated by the fact that we want to be free of English tyranny and taxation without representation.
Don't be such an obvious idiot.
Hi kettle. You know we are both black, don't you?
On the post: New Study Shows Majority Of Americans Against SOPA; Believe Extreme Copyright Enforcement Is Unreasonable
Re: Re: Re: Actually...
I'm 36 and have gotten very tired of trying to convince you people to actually allow me to buy my entertainment without either trying to destroy my free speech or free market rights, so perhaps you're correct. The fact that my level of purchasing has reduced over the last few years has nothing to do with piracy, though.
37 and a die-hard conservative capitalist. This isn't a republican or a capitalist issue -- it is socialism, pure and simple. Someone is asking for the government to allow them to protect their state given monopoly from competition (legal or otherwise.) A true capitalist would look at this and cry. There are no state mandated monopoly rents in a capitalistic society. I am not that mean...authors and inventors should get 17 years to get their money back and potentially make money -- however there shall be no permanent assignments to corporations (the author/inventor may temporarily allow assignment of a copyright to a company to allow for that company to distribute, but that must be made through contract and the author/inventor can nullify that contract if the company doesn't provide the effort or another company comes along that provides a better deal.) How do companies make money -- by providing a better deal or by providing a deal good enough to begin with.
On the post: The Future Under SOPA: Group Too Lazy To Police Own Copyrights Seeks To Block Access To Grooveshark's Legal Music Service
Re: Re: What would you do?
And yet, musicians are still making money. The secret is to stop trying to copy everyone else and try to understand the root of the problem, which Mike says all the time -- Connect with your fans and give the customer a reason to buy.
Why is Felicia Day or Justin Bieber making money? Why are musicians and authors online making money? Could it be that instead of saying "I cannot make money because its too hard to connect with my fans because there are too many other people connecting with fans," you could go out there and figure out what it is that these folks are doing? I'll give you a hint, a lot of them started out not by pricing their stuff at $15 and throwing their hands up when they didn't make any money. A lot of them put their stuff out for free or for low cost, and then when people found their stuff, they liked it and bought a lot more. J.A. Konrath put out free books to entice customers...Felicia Day put out free webisodes...Justin Bieber uploaded free videos to YouTube. People saw their stuff and went crazy. Also, if you put your stuff out there and people don't buy it, maybe you should consider another line of work.
On the post: The Future Under SOPA: Group Too Lazy To Police Own Copyrights Seeks To Block Access To Grooveshark's Legal Music Service
Re: Re:
I didn't jump that long ago, but I must say that the labels definitely killed emusic, and I was downloading music up until that time off of emusic. I liked it back with all there was was independent musicians, but then they started working with the labels and they jacked the price up, killed off redownloads (even when their piece of junk software failed to download the file properly,) and then dropped a majority of the independent musicians I listened to. They may still exist, but they are dead to me.
Now I tend to just download music directly from the artists website -- but I do a hell of a lot less of that too, because many artists still use the label website to sell their crap, and I am tired of having to get a new credit card every three months because another label website gets hacked and my credit card is used to buy trips to foreign locales and DirectTV boxes shipped to PO Boxes or safe-houses in the Bronx. If they don't take a third party payment and they require me to provide a user-id and password, I don't give them any money. Wish the bands out there would figure this out -- their labels are screwing them and they are screwing their customers.
/end equally pissed off rant.
On the post: South African Recording Industry Association Kicks Off 'Shoot The Pirate' Campaign; Amazed That Real Violence Ensues
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Since we're wishing, my wish would be that the requirement be based on the content industry's interpretation of Remix's. If you cannot build it from scratch in a vacuum, and there is anything that looks remotely like someone else's work, then it should be rejected. That way those who are truly inventive will be rewarded.
The bad news is we've basically invalidated every patent since the invention of the wheel...but I'm good with that. Have to draw the line somewhere.
On the post: Epic Games On The Future Of Triple-A Game Development Marketing And Pricing
Re:
I don't think most of the gamers think this way. I certainly don't. Give me a game that I can play right now (in other words, it runs correctly on my hardware and the DRM doesn't keep me from playing it the way I want, on the OS I want,) and one that I will enjoy, and I'll spend $60 on it. The last game I purchased in the store (for $40,) was Portal 2, and I loved that game and played it over and over again. Steam's DRM is less than desirable, but it wasn't bad enough to piss me off (and the game ran under virtualization fine.) Most of the games out now, though, use DRM which just doesn't work on my OS (Linux with Windows Virtualization,) or craps out during game play, so I don't buy them (I don't use them illegally either.) Instead, I spend the money I would have spent on the game on GoG or other sites where I can buy awesome 12 year old games without DRM.
On the post: Viacom Exec: 'Everyone Knows A Rogue Site When They See One'… Except He Doesn't
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, let's give up on all laws then.
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Where in the Constitution does the Constitution specifically state Copyright or artificial monopolies? I got challenged on this once...and I was just like you..."it says it!" But then I read the Constitution and the link you provided among other links I found and realized that at no point within the Constitution does it actually say Copyright or define artificial monopolies. It just gives Congress the power to do so...which AC points out.
On the post: Viacom Exec: 'Everyone Knows A Rogue Site When They See One'… Except He Doesn't
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, let's give up on all laws then.
When a cop writes a ticket, at least in California where I am very familiar with the process, they are in no way making any decision about someone's guilt. They saw something that they thought was a traffic violation, and pulled over the individual to issue a ticket. It is the traffic court judge that determines guilt based on the incident (or in many cases, the individual who was ticketed who either agrees that they are guilty and pays the ticket, or determines that it isn't worth fighting the ticket and pays off the ticket to make it go away.)
However, this is apples and oranges as to my knowledge, Congress has not yet given the entertainment industry authority to issue citations for violations of traffic laws (or violations of copyright.) A police officer has received training and has the experience to do so, and is held accountable for their actions. I have yet to see the entertainment industry go through a rigorous 10 month training academy on how to prosecute infringements or be accountable for their actions in this...as I suspect if they were, they'd be far less aggressive as they could lose their livelihood and go to jail for malicious prosecution and civil rights violations over some of the current issues.
On the post: Viacom Exec: 'Everyone Knows A Rogue Site When They See One'… Except He Doesn't
Re: Re: There is no such thing as infringing speech.
He is paid to consistently miss the point?
FUD kinda works that way. So long as it causes one person to be uncertain about their legal rights, I believe his paymasters are happy.
On the post: Viacom Exec: 'Everyone Knows A Rogue Site When They See One'… Except He Doesn't
Re: Obviously non-obvious
If they get the point of view gun, then we're all boned. Well, slightly less than half of us.
On the post: Are There Any Legal Issues If Amazon Accidentally Gives Away Thousands Of Your Ebooks For Free?
Re: Re:
Also, it will be down to the plaintiff to prove lost sales, if this went to court, which I'm pretty sure the author has said it's not.
Absolutely agree, but along these lines -- can't Amazon just null the purchase and remove the books from the person's account? They've done this before (although with a lot of gnashing of teeth by their customers,) and it would seem that this would be the place where removing the book would be semi-justifiable. If the people still want the book, then they could pay for it (and of course, very few probably would.)
I've downloaded free books from Amazon before (not the public domain ones, but the current ones that are listed as $0.00 on their website.) I had no clue at the time whether the author wanted it available for free or not -- and I'd be pissed if they disappeared from my collection since some of them were really good books (though I have since bought a bunch of books from the same author I downloaded for free, which I wouldn't have done if he hadn't offered his books for free.)
On the post: Despite Publisher Apprehension, Good Old Games Proves A Market For Old DRM-Free Games Exists
Re: Re: Re: Re: Good to see
I do not like the current outputs because of DRM alone. Publishers that produce their software without DRM get my money. I've been burned so many times by DRM that I will never, ever buy a commercial game (even one that I really want) if it uses any DRM. Even Steam is pissing me off at the moment (why should I have to log into steam in order to play my game -- yes I know there is an offline mode, but it doesn't always work correctly.) When I buy a game, I expect it to work (with minor configuration on my part to bring it up to work on the modern OS or run it within a VM,) but usually DRM gets in the way and prevents me from playing the game.
On the post: Despite Publisher Apprehension, Good Old Games Proves A Market For Old DRM-Free Games Exists
Re: Re: Re: Re: Good to see
I bought the original game at $39.99 (which had no expansions.) The expansions cost roughly $20 each...but I didn't purchase them. The gold/platinum came out which had everything (game+expansions) for around $20. I bought the platinum version off of GOG for $5.00 (it was a package deal, one of their 50% off weekend deals.) So....
Original game $39.99, plus expansions which would have cost $20 each, for $5.00. Total out of pocket, $44.99.
However, I've been buying a lot of games on GoG that I never bought when it first came out, so I believe I have more than broken even.
On the post: Despite Publisher Apprehension, Good Old Games Proves A Market For Old DRM-Free Games Exists
Re: Good to see
I've been buying a lot of old games from GOG, including a number of games I bought when they were brand new (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, the Wing Commander Series, and a bunch of other ones...) And I've been playing them like crazy (Chris Sawyer's Locomotion and Master of Orion have easily seen a couple days worth of game play.)
The fact that they have no DRM and no requirement for the CD to be in the drive makes their offering worth buying the games over again. Most of the games had DRM on the CD...and some of the ones I bought on GoG...the original CD with the game I bought years ago for far more didn't work anymore because of crappy DRM or poor OS support.
If GoG could provide a place for old game-mods/addons/etc in addition to what they already provide, it would make old games even MORE valuable.
They do have some of that...they have a forum for each game. It seems like it would be easy to add mod threads to the forum. Not sure if anyone has done so yet (don't see any with the few games I looked at.)
On the post: Anonymous Commenters: Cowards Or Contributors?
Re: Everyone Should Be Forced To Use Their Real Names
Well, it certainly would make your job easier. If everyone here was using their real names, it would make it easier for you to target your lawsuits at those who advocate "freetardiness" or whatever (of course, you are still going to have to narrow down which "Mike Smith" made a comment, but you get the picture.
I like the Anonymity, even though many here try to use that Anonymity to derail thoughtful discussions and troll. For the bad, there certainly is a lot of good too. In other words, some of my best friends are anonymous cowards.
On the post: Academic Publishing Profits Enough To Fund Open Access To Every Research Article In Every Field
Re: Re: Re: "Free" and "open access" works if /someone/ puts in money.
IANAP, but I believe Bipolar is much more likely. Potentially Schizophrenia, which would account for the paranoia and incoherent babbling (they think what they are saying makes sense, but nobody can understand them.)
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