But until we actually have a problem, i.e. a loss of content generation, why are we trying to fix the problem?
Content providers are constantly saying that without strong protections, we will have no content.... But there isn't ANY evidence of this, and one cannot even imagine how this could even come about.
In fact, the opposite is quite literally and provably true. The more protections we have on content, the less choice we have for content... content "protections" restrict what content we can enjoy/know/leverage, and pulling content from the market that "infringes" existing content limits how content/knowledge can be embedded into new media/technology/products.
Re: Re: This is just one crack in the system, more to come...
Even if the IP impacted is just a few things, such as the patents on certain medications, we will still be afforded with a before and after picture around such IP.
For example, the article says that U.S. pharmaceutical patents would be ignored. If that means all U.S. pharmaceutical patents (the article isn't that specific) then certainly that is a big enough domain of IP to study. And if Brazil has strong IP laws of their own in pharmaceutical products, you should within the same country be able to compare activities (manufacture/sales/research) largely protected by Brazil's system with activities (manufacture/sales/research) now largely unprotected where the key IP happens to be held in the U.S.
Some of these activities would be in Brazil and some would be in the U.S.
The basic point remains, that anytime you poke at a system and make changes that can be measured in terms of dollars, you should be able to study the effects as such changes move through the system. Strong IP proponents go beyond just saying certain companies would be hurt. They claim that productivity and GDP would be hurt (i.e. they assume no other economic activity will step in and "file the gap" as it were).
With changes in copyright, I think you have the same question. Will the ability to use U.S. copyrighted works freely, and to reproduce them freely, actually reduce sales of such works? Or will it act like advertising, increasing demand for "official" products and similar products?
Again we will have a before and after picture, if they really go through with this. And again, poke at the system, and we get the opportunity to study what happens.
This is just one crack in the system, more to come...
I personally think this is great! Because if a country this size ignores US IP laws for a long enough time, we will be able to quantify the supposed negative impact on the production of IP that results. If we cannot detect any, either here in the US or in Brazil, what does that say about the effectiveness of strong IP laws?
Clearly it will be easier to just use US IP rather than develop your own. Will content and engineering suffer in Brazil as a result? Income will be lost in the US. Will IBM and Microsoft and Google and Apple and Hollywood suffer measurable losses in their desires to innovate?
This is so stupid. The idea that ACTA is going to *protect American* technology shows a complete disconnect with what is happening in the world.
We are sending Chinese and Indian Engineers home; we don't want them in the U.S. By 2020, most IP will be developed OUTSIDE the U.S.
So who understands this? International Corporations. They don't care if their IP is developed in China, India, European, etc. They don't even care if the money flows away from the U.S. They only care that money flows into their bank accounts, in whatever country provides the best tax haven.
We are not trying to take advantage of the rest of the world with ACTA. We are giving everything away to corporate interests.
The Game is the "beneficial main effect"... DRM is that list side effects you have to live with.
DRM doesn't bring *anything* to the customer. I do enterprise software. Someone tells me I need to set up and run a license server and register their products with said server to use their products (think Rational), I say forget it.
Why should I have to buy resources and pay staff to police the use of your product??? If a customer of mine HAS to have such products, I hold my nose and do it. BUT I gripe about it each and every day, every time we can't work because there is some issue with their license server.
What literally blows my mind is how often a customer accepts this and demands the suite of products DRM'ed to the point it costs each project thousands of lost dollars, lost man hours, and delayed project schedules.
Zoloft side effects: Some of the more common side effects may include:
Abdominal pain, agitation, anxiety, constipation, decreased sex drive, diarrhea or loose stools, difficulty with ejaculation, dizziness, dry mouth, fatigue, gas, headache, and decreased appetite are some of the more common Zoloft side effects. And, they also may include increased sweating, indigestion, insomnia, nausea, nervousness, rash, pain, sleepiness, sore throat, tingling or pins and needles, tremor, vision problems and vomiting.
Those are just the common side effects. Yet people see the commercials and buy this stuff up.
I'd like to point out that once upon a time a Label sold a product... A plastic disk, a cassette, or vinyl disk. They loaded this stuff up in trucks, shipped it around, and then it took up room in a store. We walked in, took it to the front, bought it, and then carried it home in a bag.
Now they want to sell only the content for the same price.
Now many people think, well, that's okay. With MP3's there isn't any physical media to buy, nothing to transport into trucks.
But that isn't true. The customer pays for the internet connection they use to "transport" the content. And the customer provides the media (disk space or whatever) on which the content gets stored.
With DRM, the customer has to buy the hardware to run it to protect the content for the content company.
So IF the pie is the physical embodiment of the content in this story, then who is it nibbling at the pie without paying? I'd say that once upon a time, the content providers once supplied the pie. But in this new world, they expect the customer to do so. And even as the customer does so, they claim the customer is stealing if they don't pay as much as they ever did.
Which is odd.... Content is like a recipe... and the labels used to deliver a piping hot pie made with that recipe. But no more. Now I just get the content/recipe. Why should I pay just as much for just the content while supplying my own berries and flour and butter and lard and sugar (I prefer a butter/lard crust) as I did when I used to get the actual pie?
I have often wondered about this. I know people that have great credit scores, and I know other people with poor credit scores. Not all of the first folks would I lend money to, and quite a number of the latter are totally solid.
I have done searches in the past for actual third party, independent studies done to prove that these "credit scores" (that are so central to what interest rates people pay, and who banks will loan money to) actually measure the risk of a loan.
A real study would (I believe) show that credit scores are in reality a terrible measure of risk. They are instead a way for banks, insurance companies, etc. to collude with each other on interest rates, insurance rates, etc.
Obviously if someone has walked away repeatedly from debts, their scores are going to tank and they are a poor risk. But the guy that is late a few times on a payment, (particularly a mortgage payment) or has refused to pay a fraudulent bill or charge isn't necessarily a bad risk.
But I don't think these credit score companies make any real effort to investigate issues like these. It isn't in their interests to do so, as they get paid for their reports regardless of what kind of crap on an individual they are serving up. Banks don't care, because inaccurate reports (they are most certainly never "inaccurate" in favor of the individual) just mean that they charge individuals for being "risky" when in fact they are not (can you say free money?).
The government obviously can't make them do their job. They can't even make them adhere to some basic ethical guidelines (per the story here).
So why do we as citizens allow this farce to continue to soak the public? It isn't anything other than a thinly veiled tax on everyone getting a loan, paid to one, two, or three government sanctioned monopolies, whose product is a means for banks to collude together to jack a significant percentage of the population.
I know someone that works for Sun. Sun was giving all kinds of stuff away (Java, Solaris, even their chip designs) and having a hard time making money.
I run an open source project. The Sun person has the view that giving your stuff away killed Sun and made them into fodder for Oracle. They think my open source project can't make me any money for the same reasons, that free is unsustainable....
But it is sustainable! I mean, for me! And that is because I am not carrying the corporate overhead! It is me, my source, my project, and others that produce for the project! I don't have to figure out how to cover Jonathan "pony tail" Schwartz's multi-million dollar compensation... I just have to have enough consulting, work, and licensing fees to make the living I want to make!
What I produce is a Rules Engine. *I* don't care what it does to IBM's ILog market (a competing project!). I don't even care that my technology supports a billion dollar project for Texas that doesn't pay me a dime. I don't care how hard it makes it for IBM to try and edge my free product out of Texas in exchange for their "per cpu" license fees!
I expect that *free* makes it really tough for companies to play the same game as yesteryears past. What is unsustainable then is yesteryear's game plan. Gotta be leaner, gotta cut your overhead costs, gotta come up with more value than simply an installation disk for your way overpriced, buggy software.
The same goes for music, news, and all other things digital. If Corporate Content can't figure out how to make a dime in the face of cheap, instant, world wide digital product delivery, then Corporate Content can just die as far as I am concerned. Plenty of folks like me know how to produce in this world, and are happy to do so.
Even if you only think the courts are useful, this remains an example of something in government that "works"....
Government isn't any different from corporations, organized religion, the boy/girl scouts, universities, political parties, interest groups, labor unions, etc. etc.
If people, power, and money are involved, things will get screwed up. The great idea embedded in the constitution is the idea that we can minimize screw ups by pitting three different branches against each other in a system of checks and balances.
The courts by themselves are worthless without enforcement, which is worthless without a system of laws. Government serves as a check against corporations in a perfect world, because without such checks and balances, corporations can get out of hand just like government.
I can appreciate the whole "government is bad" mentality on so many different levels, because of the many things government seems to be clueless about. But you can't check your brain in at the door and oppose any government action just because they are "government".
As a general rule, government should get involved when there are no market/social pressures or dynamics sufficient to insure that the "right thing" is done. Exammples? Civil rights, Or Freedom of Religion (don't be fooled by current culture... It didn't exist when the constitution was written!). Or the Interstate highways... How could that reasonably been done by private industry? Right of ways had to be secured, money provided, and toll free access granted. The trips to the moon. Nasa for the most part.
None of this is perfect, but it was done pretty well for the most part here in the U.S.
"What about monitoring that doesn't necessarily record activity as much as it does prevent piracy?"
What does that even mean? How do you prevent piracy, when piracy is indistinguishable from a legitimate exchange of data?
If I encrypt a data exchange with another person, am I passing along a pirated copy of Avatar? Or just passing along a home movie? Is it a home movie, or a discussion of the results of an Olympic event? Does the home movie include an entire Beatles song playing in the background?
Or perhaps it is the last will and testament in video I intend to send to my lawyer.
Nobody can tell without monitoring the contents of exactly what the data exchange holds.
Prevent piracy == no privacy. Of course, we know that if the content is media content produced in the U.S. than it IS copyrighted content. All content is copyrighted!!! So to prevent piracy, the following MUST be done:
1) Identify both parties of any data exchange.
2) Determine what rights are required for both sending and receiving the data (Either party may possibly validate or invalidate the exchange).
3) Consult some database to determine if either of the individuals involved have the rights necessary to validate the data exchange.
4) If they do, allow the data exchange.
With this 'simple' algorithm, we can do that "monitoring that doesn't necessarily record activity as much as it does prevent piracy" of which you speak. Note that none of the four steps above require us to record the data exchange. They simply reduce the effective through put of our biggest data pipes to about 300 Baud...
This generation isn't any different than any other generation. Nobody is saying that everything should be free.
You claim that "you pay for what you get"...
Now days *I* pay to access the Internet, and *I* pay to download a song onto a computer that *I* bought and store the song on a hard drive *I* paid for. In the past, Labels pressed a round chunk of vinyl, put it into a cover with cover art, shipped it across the country, where a guy was paid to show it off to me, and I bought it.
Now the Labels want *ME* to pay for all of that, and pay them the same money I did in the past!
And at the same time, story after story comes out about labels NOT paying artists what they are owed.
So get off your high horse. Labels aren't any more interested in paying artists than I am interested in paying Labels. I happily pay artists *directly* for their work. And if a label is involved, I do without.
From the article, "New media has to give the consumer what they want and the consumer is in a world where they want things right here, right now - and if you don't give it to them, they'll steal it."
What a stupid way to put it. More accurately, there isn't much of a barrier between what a consumer demands and what a consumer can have. Far and away, most people will pay a reasonable fee for the option to simply have access to content, be it music, movies, books, news, whatever.
Increasingly, we as consumers know we can easily access all of these content sources on a host of platforms. Like mobile phones, game consoles, laptops, touch pads (assuming that the iPad actually sells, and gets some competition), etc. We hardly have to do anything to get the features we want. We can rip DVDs to get content into our iPods; we can record streamed music to put it into our MP3 players; We can print online books into PDF files. We can OCR scanned books to make them searchable.
If I can't get content in the form or mode that I want, I can legally buy the content, legally buy the computer, legally download the software, and (it seems) "steal" it from its legal form into the illegal form I want.
Time Warner is betting that they can put up a thread between the legal sources of their content, and nobody is going to walk walk through that thread to get that same content in the from they wanted in the first place.
We are not far from having Terabytes of storage in our mobile phones. Streaming is really only a solution that will attract customers as content providers are willing to make it better and easier than forcing customers into putting music themselves onto their mobile device. But train the market in that direction, and they will get good at it.
I am 98% converted to podcasts. Content is available and easy and legal without labels. Others I know are in gray areas, moving legal content perhaps against contracts of service to devices where they want it. And I am sure there are plenty of people that simply download content as they see fit.
There is a difference between an open network and an open computer. I don't have enough information here to know if he was actually sharing folders in an unrestricted fashion over his network. But supposing he WASN'T, then in addition to getting access to his network, they would have to additionally gain access to his computer files. In this latter case, I think he should have had the expectation that nobody could see into his computer.
This would not be much different than a land owner providing an access road across their property. Certainly such a path can be publicly accessed, but having access to such a path does not allow the public to enter the person's yard and house. Just to keep adding to the "reasoning by analogy" pattern of various comments in this thread.
It isn't too tough to share your Internet connection without sharing your network or the computers in your network. But I don't think most people understand what is involved to do so.
IF the police in this case are trying to make us safer by monitoring Tweeter, why are they broadcasting that people should not make bomb statements on tweeter?
I can understand him talking to the fellow, but it shouldn't be against the law to make statements on tweeter. In fact, they should have kept the fact that they watch tweeter secret!
Of course, there isn't any evidence that any terrorist would tweet about an action prior to the attempt. If the set of terrorists tipping off police via tweeter is already known to be null, what is being accomplished here?
It is like yelling "WE ARE STAKING OUT TWEETER! Terrorists! Don't Tweet or we will catch you!!!"
In addition to linking to Techdirt without compensation, I wonder how often they link to *other organizations*? Wouldn't the total number of links without compensation be rather long?
But isn't this whole "you have to give me compensation" just another version of the "you can't link to me without permission" claim? Haven't we already debunked this logic?
Of course, they can block anyone they like, including people who have "clicked in" from sources they don't like (assuming they can tell and tell correctly).
I Wonder if Google isn't shooting themselves in the foot?
Try this one. Pick a religion, and type after it 'is'.
For example "Mormonism is'. Try Christianity, try Hinduism, try Astrology, try Numerology. Every single one of them gives you some sort of list. Some of the suggestions are rather rude.
Then try 'Islam is'. You get nothing. Now, you can't tell me nobody searches for Islam ....
"Hollywood is being destroyed by piracy. Some estimates bring the total amount of destruction to a trillion dollars..."
This has got to be sarcasm. Where in the world was this "trillion dollars" supposed to come from, sans piracy? And where did it go?
If Hollywood can post record profits and record numbers of movies produced while suffering destruction of this magnitude, I can only hope for such destruction in the sector of the economy that I work in.
Seriously, Lying-Mike has to be kidding us, setting up a stawman argument for the MPAA like this.
How is it a problem to push your license fees and royalties to the maximum extent possible, if that is what your company does for money?
As far has the chance that Google might lose if this went to trial, I couldn't say. It isn't my field. But given that copyright extends to the concepts and world construction (i.e. I can't write a story that simply uses the characters from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"), I think the PKD Estate may have a case. Google is building up a theme here that might be viewed as intentional, using the terms "Android" and "Nexus". It isn't a story, but it might be argued the naming is derivative of PKD's story.
And I may have overstated myself by saying the real problem is our currently muddled law on the matter. Still, if the boundaries of derivative works were clearly defined, and fair use was clearly defined, then at least the outcome of these situations would be more predictable.
On the post: Frost & Sullivan Analyst Apparently Has Never Heard Of Network TV: Says Video Can't Be Free To Consumers
Content providers are constantly saying that without strong protections, we will have no content.... But there isn't ANY evidence of this, and one cannot even imagine how this could even come about.
In fact, the opposite is quite literally and provably true. The more protections we have on content, the less choice we have for content... content "protections" restrict what content we can enjoy/know/leverage, and pulling content from the market that "infringes" existing content limits how content/knowledge can be embedded into new media/technology/products.
On the post: Brazil Moves Forward With Plan To Ignore US Patents And Copyrights After US Refuses To Abide By WTO Ruling
Re: Re: This is just one crack in the system, more to come...
For example, the article says that U.S. pharmaceutical patents would be ignored. If that means all U.S. pharmaceutical patents (the article isn't that specific) then certainly that is a big enough domain of IP to study. And if Brazil has strong IP laws of their own in pharmaceutical products, you should within the same country be able to compare activities (manufacture/sales/research) largely protected by Brazil's system with activities (manufacture/sales/research) now largely unprotected where the key IP happens to be held in the U.S.
Some of these activities would be in Brazil and some would be in the U.S.
The basic point remains, that anytime you poke at a system and make changes that can be measured in terms of dollars, you should be able to study the effects as such changes move through the system. Strong IP proponents go beyond just saying certain companies would be hurt. They claim that productivity and GDP would be hurt (i.e. they assume no other economic activity will step in and "file the gap" as it were).
With changes in copyright, I think you have the same question. Will the ability to use U.S. copyrighted works freely, and to reproduce them freely, actually reduce sales of such works? Or will it act like advertising, increasing demand for "official" products and similar products?
Again we will have a before and after picture, if they really go through with this. And again, poke at the system, and we get the opportunity to study what happens.
On the post: Brazil Moves Forward With Plan To Ignore US Patents And Copyrights After US Refuses To Abide By WTO Ruling
This is just one crack in the system, more to come...
Clearly it will be easier to just use US IP rather than develop your own. Will content and engineering suffer in Brazil as a result? Income will be lost in the US. Will IBM and Microsoft and Google and Apple and Hollywood suffer measurable losses in their desires to innovate?
I can't wait to see how this will play out!
On the post: Obama: We Must Move Forward On ACTA
So it is official, Obama is a corporate puppet
We are sending Chinese and Indian Engineers home; we don't want them in the U.S. By 2020, most IP will be developed OUTSIDE the U.S.
So who understands this? International Corporations. They don't care if their IP is developed in China, India, European, etc. They don't even care if the money flows away from the U.S. They only care that money flows into their bank accounts, in whatever country provides the best tax haven.
We are not trying to take advantage of the rest of the world with ACTA. We are giving everything away to corporate interests.
On the post: Can You Still Say DRM Is Effective When It Creates Security Vulnerabilities, Performance Degradation, Incompatibilities, System Instability And 'Other Issues'? [Update]
Re: Re: Maybe it does work...
DRM doesn't bring *anything* to the customer. I do enterprise software. Someone tells me I need to set up and run a license server and register their products with said server to use their products (think Rational), I say forget it.
Why should I have to buy resources and pay staff to police the use of your product??? If a customer of mine HAS to have such products, I hold my nose and do it. BUT I gripe about it each and every day, every time we can't work because there is some issue with their license server.
What literally blows my mind is how often a customer accepts this and demands the suite of products DRM'ed to the point it costs each project thousands of lost dollars, lost man hours, and delayed project schedules.
On the post: Can You Still Say DRM Is Effective When It Creates Security Vulnerabilities, Performance Degradation, Incompatibilities, System Instability And 'Other Issues'? [Update]
Maybe it does work...
http://www.psychtreatment.com/zoloft_side_effects.htm
Zoloft side effects: Some of the more common side effects may include:
Abdominal pain, agitation, anxiety, constipation, decreased sex drive, diarrhea or loose stools, difficulty with ejaculation, dizziness, dry mouth, fatigue, gas, headache, and decreased appetite are some of the more common Zoloft side effects. And, they also may include increased sweating, indigestion, insomnia, nausea, nervousness, rash, pain, sleepiness, sore throat, tingling or pins and needles, tremor, vision problems and vomiting.
Those are just the common side effects. Yet people see the commercials and buy this stuff up.
On the post: RIAA Takes The Cake: Equates File Sharing To Children's Fairy Tale
This thread is likely dead, however....
Now they want to sell only the content for the same price.
Now many people think, well, that's okay. With MP3's there isn't any physical media to buy, nothing to transport into trucks.
But that isn't true. The customer pays for the internet connection they use to "transport" the content. And the customer provides the media (disk space or whatever) on which the content gets stored.
With DRM, the customer has to buy the hardware to run it to protect the content for the content company.
So IF the pie is the physical embodiment of the content in this story, then who is it nibbling at the pie without paying? I'd say that once upon a time, the content providers once supplied the pie. But in this new world, they expect the customer to do so. And even as the customer does so, they claim the customer is stealing if they don't pay as much as they ever did.
Which is odd.... Content is like a recipe... and the labels used to deliver a piping hot pie made with that recipe. But no more. Now I just get the content/recipe. Why should I pay just as much for just the content while supplying my own berries and flour and butter and lard and sugar (I prefer a butter/lard crust) as I did when I used to get the actual pie?
On the post: FTC Finally Forces FreeCreditReport.com To Be Honest In Its Advertising
Are we sure Credit numbers even mean anything?
I have done searches in the past for actual third party, independent studies done to prove that these "credit scores" (that are so central to what interest rates people pay, and who banks will loan money to) actually measure the risk of a loan.
A real study would (I believe) show that credit scores are in reality a terrible measure of risk. They are instead a way for banks, insurance companies, etc. to collude with each other on interest rates, insurance rates, etc.
Obviously if someone has walked away repeatedly from debts, their scores are going to tank and they are a poor risk. But the guy that is late a few times on a payment, (particularly a mortgage payment) or has refused to pay a fraudulent bill or charge isn't necessarily a bad risk.
But I don't think these credit score companies make any real effort to investigate issues like these. It isn't in their interests to do so, as they get paid for their reports regardless of what kind of crap on an individual they are serving up. Banks don't care, because inaccurate reports (they are most certainly never "inaccurate" in favor of the individual) just mean that they charge individuals for being "risky" when in fact they are not (can you say free money?).
The government obviously can't make them do their job. They can't even make them adhere to some basic ethical guidelines (per the story here).
So why do we as citizens allow this farce to continue to soak the public? It isn't anything other than a thinly veiled tax on everyone getting a loan, paid to one, two, or three government sanctioned monopolies, whose product is a means for banks to collude together to jack a significant percentage of the population.
On the post: Free Is Not An Aberration; It's Basic Economics
Something IS Unsustainable with Free...
I know someone that works for Sun. Sun was giving all kinds of stuff away (Java, Solaris, even their chip designs) and having a hard time making money.
I run an open source project. The Sun person has the view that giving your stuff away killed Sun and made them into fodder for Oracle. They think my open source project can't make me any money for the same reasons, that free is unsustainable....
But it is sustainable! I mean, for me! And that is because I am not carrying the corporate overhead! It is me, my source, my project, and others that produce for the project! I don't have to figure out how to cover Jonathan "pony tail" Schwartz's multi-million dollar compensation... I just have to have enough consulting, work, and licensing fees to make the living I want to make!
What I produce is a Rules Engine. *I* don't care what it does to IBM's ILog market (a competing project!). I don't even care that my technology supports a billion dollar project for Texas that doesn't pay me a dime. I don't care how hard it makes it for IBM to try and edge my free product out of Texas in exchange for their "per cpu" license fees!
I expect that *free* makes it really tough for companies to play the same game as yesteryears past. What is unsustainable then is yesteryear's game plan. Gotta be leaner, gotta cut your overhead costs, gotta come up with more value than simply an installation disk for your way overpriced, buggy software.
The same goes for music, news, and all other things digital. If Corporate Content can't figure out how to make a dime in the face of cheap, instant, world wide digital product delivery, then Corporate Content can just die as far as I am concerned. Plenty of folks like me know how to produce in this world, and are happy to do so.
On the post: If Gary Locke Wants To Incentivize Commercializing Research He Should Look To Get Bayh-Dole Repealed
Re: Re: Re: Government is never the answer
Government isn't any different from corporations, organized religion, the boy/girl scouts, universities, political parties, interest groups, labor unions, etc. etc.
If people, power, and money are involved, things will get screwed up. The great idea embedded in the constitution is the idea that we can minimize screw ups by pitting three different branches against each other in a system of checks and balances.
The courts by themselves are worthless without enforcement, which is worthless without a system of laws. Government serves as a check against corporations in a perfect world, because without such checks and balances, corporations can get out of hand just like government.
I can appreciate the whole "government is bad" mentality on so many different levels, because of the many things government seems to be clueless about. But you can't check your brain in at the door and oppose any government action just because they are "government".
As a general rule, government should get involved when there are no market/social pressures or dynamics sufficient to insure that the "right thing" is done. Exammples? Civil rights, Or Freedom of Religion (don't be fooled by current culture... It didn't exist when the constitution was written!). Or the Interstate highways... How could that reasonably been done by private industry? Right of ways had to be secured, money provided, and toll free access granted. The trips to the moon. Nasa for the most part.
None of this is perfect, but it was done pretty well for the most part here in the U.S.
Just saying.
On the post: ACTA's Internet Chapter Leaks; And, Now We See How Sneaky The Negotiators Have Been
Re: Re:
What does that even mean? How do you prevent piracy, when piracy is indistinguishable from a legitimate exchange of data?
If I encrypt a data exchange with another person, am I passing along a pirated copy of Avatar? Or just passing along a home movie? Is it a home movie, or a discussion of the results of an Olympic event? Does the home movie include an entire Beatles song playing in the background?
Or perhaps it is the last will and testament in video I intend to send to my lawyer.
Nobody can tell without monitoring the contents of exactly what the data exchange holds.
Prevent piracy == no privacy. Of course, we know that if the content is media content produced in the U.S. than it IS copyrighted content. All content is copyrighted!!! So to prevent piracy, the following MUST be done:
1) Identify both parties of any data exchange.
2) Determine what rights are required for both sending and receiving the data (Either party may possibly validate or invalidate the exchange).
3) Consult some database to determine if either of the individuals involved have the rights necessary to validate the data exchange.
4) If they do, allow the data exchange.
With this 'simple' algorithm, we can do that "monitoring that doesn't necessarily record activity as much as it does prevent piracy" of which you speak. Note that none of the four steps above require us to record the data exchange. They simply reduce the effective through put of our biggest data pipes to about 300 Baud...
On the post: Warner Music Shoots Self In Head; Says No More Free Streaming
Re: Streaming and Warner...
You claim that "you pay for what you get"...
Now days *I* pay to access the Internet, and *I* pay to download a song onto a computer that *I* bought and store the song on a hard drive *I* paid for. In the past, Labels pressed a round chunk of vinyl, put it into a cover with cover art, shipped it across the country, where a guy was paid to show it off to me, and I bought it.
Now the Labels want *ME* to pay for all of that, and pay them the same money I did in the past!
And at the same time, story after story comes out about labels NOT paying artists what they are owed.
So get off your high horse. Labels aren't any more interested in paying artists than I am interested in paying Labels. I happily pay artists *directly* for their work. And if a label is involved, I do without.
On the post: Warner Music Shoots Self In Head; Says No More Free Streaming
What a stupid way to put it. More accurately, there isn't much of a barrier between what a consumer demands and what a consumer can have. Far and away, most people will pay a reasonable fee for the option to simply have access to content, be it music, movies, books, news, whatever.
Increasingly, we as consumers know we can easily access all of these content sources on a host of platforms. Like mobile phones, game consoles, laptops, touch pads (assuming that the iPad actually sells, and gets some competition), etc. We hardly have to do anything to get the features we want. We can rip DVDs to get content into our iPods; we can record streamed music to put it into our MP3 players; We can print online books into PDF files. We can OCR scanned books to make them searchable.
If I can't get content in the form or mode that I want, I can legally buy the content, legally buy the computer, legally download the software, and (it seems) "steal" it from its legal form into the illegal form I want.
Time Warner is betting that they can put up a thread between the legal sources of their content, and nobody is going to walk walk through that thread to get that same content in the from they wanted in the first place.
We are not far from having Terabytes of storage in our mobile phones. Streaming is really only a solution that will attract customers as content providers are willing to make it better and easier than forcing customers into putting music themselves onto their mobile device. But train the market in that direction, and they will get good at it.
I am 98% converted to podcasts. Content is available and easy and legal without labels. Others I know are in gray areas, moving legal content perhaps against contracts of service to devices where they want it. And I am sure there are plenty of people that simply download content as they see fit.
This is the world as it is.
On the post: Leaving Your WiFi Open Decreases Your Fourth Amendment Rights To Privacy?
Re: Unsecured = Public
This would not be much different than a land owner providing an access road across their property. Certainly such a path can be publicly accessed, but having access to such a path does not allow the public to enter the person's yard and house. Just to keep adding to the "reasoning by analogy" pattern of various comments in this thread.
It isn't too tough to share your Internet connection without sharing your network or the computers in your network. But I don't think most people understand what is involved to do so.
On the post: UK Man Arrested And Banned From Airport For Twitter Joke About Blowing Up An Airport
But are we safer?
I can understand him talking to the fellow, but it shouldn't be against the law to make statements on tweeter. In fact, they should have kept the fact that they watch tweeter secret!
Of course, there isn't any evidence that any terrorist would tweet about an action prior to the attempt. If the set of terrorists tipping off police via tweeter is already known to be null, what is being accomplished here?
It is like yelling "WE ARE STAKING OUT TWEETER! Terrorists! Don't Tweet or we will catch you!!!"
How does that make us safer?
On the post: Will Rupert Murdoch Pay Me For Making Money Off Links To Techdirt?
Permission to Link...
But isn't this whole "you have to give me compensation" just another version of the "you can't link to me without permission" claim? Haven't we already debunked this logic?
Of course, they can block anyone they like, including people who have "clicked in" from sources they don't like (assuming they can tell and tell correctly).
On the post: French Court Forcing Google To Remove Word 'Scam' From Google Suggest
I Wonder if Google isn't shooting themselves in the foot?
For example "Mormonism is'. Try Christianity, try Hinduism, try Astrology, try Numerology. Every single one of them gives you some sort of list. Some of the suggestions are rather rude.
Then try 'Islam is'. You get nothing. Now, you can't tell me nobody searches for Islam ....
On the post: Responding To SoundExchange... By Their Numbers
Shouldn't someone go to jail over this?
... by design ...
Isn't that fraud? Or Malpractice? Something?
On the post: Could Wolverine's Leaking Have Helped It At The Box Office?
Re:
This has got to be sarcasm. Where in the world was this "trillion dollars" supposed to come from, sans piracy? And where did it go?
If Hollywood can post record profits and record numbers of movies produced while suffering destruction of this magnitude, I can only hope for such destruction in the sector of the economy that I work in.
Seriously, Lying-Mike has to be kidding us, setting up a stawman argument for the MPAA like this.
On the post: Does Google Need Permission From Philip K. Dick's Estate For The Nexus One?
Re: Re: To be fair....
As far has the chance that Google might lose if this went to trial, I couldn't say. It isn't my field. But given that copyright extends to the concepts and world construction (i.e. I can't write a story that simply uses the characters from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"), I think the PKD Estate may have a case. Google is building up a theme here that might be viewed as intentional, using the terms "Android" and "Nexus". It isn't a story, but it might be argued the naming is derivative of PKD's story.
And I may have overstated myself by saying the real problem is our currently muddled law on the matter. Still, if the boundaries of derivative works were clearly defined, and fair use was clearly defined, then at least the outcome of these situations would be more predictable.
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