So it's a game of cat and mouse, technological advancement in one area to control us will yield a demand for technological advancements in ways to circumvent those methodologies and hence circumventions will likely be created. Likewise, technological advancement itself yields more data and complexity and sophistication to analyze.
also, the systems to circumvent monitoring are often far less complicated and expensive to implement and distribute when compared to the expense and complexity of implementing the updated monitoring system.
the best example of such a method is the use of burners to evade law enforcement wire taps.
also, sid technology would soon fall into the hands of the people that big brother was trying to monitor. at that point, the advantage falls back to the "insurgents".
because i am smarter than everyone so clearly my time is more valuable than everyone else's and shouldn't be wasted by people's stupidity.
society already ruined the highway system by letting morons on it, something should really be done to protect the internet from the same rabble.
the internet is a place for college educated white males to argue about star trek and enacting jim crow like restrictions to keep everyone else out will make everything better.
this is the greatest idea ever. nothing could possibly go wrong.
That's why I brought up the other aspects of anonymity which you chose to ignore, the GPS monitoring and fill in whatever blanks with ideas from 1984 you want. If the Department of Tracing Through The No-Anonymity Big Brother Logs Of Everything After Someone Does Something Bad is able to do pose a credible threat to evildoers such as you, hypothetical T.P.er, then you will think twice before doing it.
there is a universe of difference between amassing data and being able to do something effective with it. in the intelligence community, this is called collection and analysis. collection is mostly automated, analysis is mostly manual. the manual analysis process is how we got pearl harbor and 9/11. the data was collected, but not analyzed.
in computer science, this is called logging and parsing. you can use filters and a bunch of other stuff, but the rule is still pretty much the same: logging is automated and parsing is human assisted at best, and completely manual at worst. this is why we still have malware and viruses.
anyone who works with databases will tell you about the problem of collecting too much data, but neal stevenson sums it up best in "snow crash" http://vxheavens.com/lib/mns00.html:
The CIC brass can't stand these guys because they upload staggering quantities of useless information to the database, on the off chance that some of it will eventually be useful. It's like writing down the license number of every car you see on your way to work each morning, just in case one of them will be involved in a hit-and-run accident. Even the CIC database can only hold so much garbage. So, usually, these habitual gargoyles get kicked out of CIC before too long.
this is a problem with crowd sourced surveillance and automated surveillance alike. large datasets take a long time to sort through, even with great tools and expert personnel, and even then it's far from an exact science.
huge companies built almost entirely around databases (google, amazon, etc.) have the greatest minds of our time working on the problem and still haven't worked out the bugs. those datasets are tiny compared to the system that you are proposing.
as if that wasn't enough, consider the effects of false positives. a 99% success rate implies a 1% failure rate, or 1 in 100 times the system doesn't work. even if the system were 99.9999% accurate and one 1 in 1 million transactions were bad, when you look at the scale of a city, a country, or god forbid, the internet, where billions of things happen every second, then one in a million happens a couple of million times every day.
plus, that's before the "privacy pirates" step in to introduce false data. what happens to your magic GPS system when cars drive in loops around the city? what happens when a hundred cars get their beacons stolen, or switched, or fedexed to different cities?
there is a reason that intelligence types and computer types refer to electronic communications and data as traffic, because it gets really messy really quick. freeway traffic has been around since the 50's and no one has implemented a way to move it efficiently, let alone monitor it.
It's perfectly understandable for a person halfway to retirement to fight to defend a broken model when that model is the best bet they have. It's unfortunate that people's well-being stands in the way of progress, but that's how it is.
you make it sound like they have some sort of choice or recourse. they don't. the market has changed and that's that.
i haven't bought a new DVD for myself in years. i have a couple i have received as gifts that are still in their plastic.
in time, the only customers left buying plastic disks will be the companies that rent them, this really isn't the time to be making enemies out of your primary buyers.
So it IS rather convenient you've managed to ignore entirely the pre, shoot and post-production costs of the making and marketing of a professional motion picture. That cost gets recouped and then a profit must be returned on investment or the next flick doesn't get made, right?
in the past, overcharging for distribution and promotion in order to offset the costs of production was a good way to go. that was the past. this is the present.
promotion and distribution are now/can be essentially free, so you need to find a new source of subsidy or, more importantly, reduce your production costs so they no longer require subsidy.
remember, computers and the internet have brought us a lot more than the ability to get free shit. why not start using them to reduce costs?
the product on sale now, be it movies, music, television, or whatever, is not optimized for digital distribution. it costs too much to make and it doesn't lend itself to the things that people want to pay for. this mass appeal to mass market approach leads to mass downloading.
the distribution and promotion problems have been fixed, and now it's time to focus on fixing the product problem.
if there is is an imbalance of power because a corporation has limited liability, cannot be imprisoned, and has already pooled resources, then what's to stop citizens from joining together to form their own corporations to level the playing field?
imagine a series of shell corporations, holding companies, and charitable organizations to collect contributions and fund media campaigns just like corporations do? isn't that is PAC's and 527 organizations are for?
If corporations are to be considered the equivalent of a person, then they can serve time for their crimes - every last employee.
i think that would be funny. if you send a corporation to prison, that corporation then gets physically relocated to a prison. everyone continues to do their jobs, but they are in jail and are not free to leave. it would be extra funny if you could quit the company and then be free to leave.
The rather large gaping flaw I see with this plan is that I hate the companies you mention. The idea of my money going towards those organizations I find revolting. I want those organizations to die and go away.
you can just keep doing what you do and stay under the radar :-)
Did he donate footprints to Seattle or did Seattle buy them or commission the artwork?
i don't think the issue is the validity of the claim of copyright. the sculptor sent the letter and the photographer complied.
i think the issue here is the dickmove of suing even after the photographer complied.
i think some ambulance chaser convinced the sculptor that he could settle out of court for some fraction of the suit. after all, the photographer already caved once, why not squeeze him again for some money?
"Intellectual Property is the oil of the 21st century" - Mark Getty, chairman of Getty Images
getty is one of the most predatory content companies out there.
the company was founded by someone who gives copyright the same value as natural resources, so clearly that company will go to war over pretty much anything that it perceives as a threat.
They keep saying they missed the boat but they still putting every new business that can potentially sell more product for them out of business.
i think they are holding out of something that will pay them at a rate which was commensurate with the late 90's. when you frame it that way, then yes, that boat has sailed and it ain't comin back no more.
also, i think the recording industry's major problem is their product: catchy, but ultimately forgettable radio tunes, just don't transition to digital delivery. the industry wants to push a reletively small amount of product and promote it so that it is virtually guaranteed success. that process costs a lot of money and leads to lots of unauthorized downloads.
the industry's problem is that product with mass appeal gets massively downloaded without authorization.
The record industry could make a mint off of licensing file-sharing if they only would try it, but evidently they're too stupid to figure that out, or too selfish to let it happen
i think the problem is that the industry isn't fully convinced that they have lost the war yet.
they see itunes, hulu, pandora and the like, but they are still holding out for something with a better markup. pay per download distribution is great, but it's not selling a 10 cent disk for 20 dollars. i think the industry is still hoping for a "sit back and watch the money pile up" solution and itunes and hulu aren't it.
in time they will see that these outlets are the best bet for pay per download, and the only way to see big time markup is on blanket licenses on peer to peer sharing. blanket licenses are how the industries dealt with the VCR, cassette recorder, radio, and cable television, so it makes sense that the trend will continue.
i am holding out for a pass that lets me keep doing what i do now, but i pay a fee to be left alone. i call this the "piracy pass" where i get some sort of license number to present when my ISP gets a letter about my activities. it would be a voluntary tax, so people that don't download don't have to pay and the people who want to stay below the radar the way they do now can continue to do so.
there are already services in place like media sentry to watch peer to peer networks and send take down letters, but i use ip block lists, encrypted connections, tunnels, and private trackers to avoid them. this is fine, but it would be more convenient for me to just use a public tracker where torrents have tens of thousands of seeds and i could get better speeds if i ran everything in the clear.
if i could register my license with the industry and my ISP then the whole "DMCA notice and takedown" process can be automated to the point that the MAFIAA bot sends takedown notices, the ISP bot checks that my license is current and sends a denial. ASCAP and the other royalties organizations can distribute the funds from the license fees to artists the way they always have, only now there would be a lot more money to hand out.
also, if everyone torrents in the open, the spy companies like media sentry could also collect neilsen type market data about what's being downloaded to determine what's hot and so forth.
not too much has to change, the piracy infrastructure is already in place, the peer to peer spy networks are already in place, the royalties organizations are already in place, and the notice and take down process is already in place. all that is left is to build a mechanism to collect the blanket license fee, and a way to show the IP watch dogs that i am paid up.
The MAC tablet will also end world hunger and pollution; it will unite shia's & Sunis, and Israelis & Palestinians. Yay!!!
you PC types just love to hate on apple and it makes me sick. i notice that you conveniently forgot to mention that it will make your dick bigger AND restore a woman's virginity. typical.
just face it, windows causes cancer. the sooner you redmond worshipers wake up to that fact the better off we will all be.
it's an undisputed fact that tomorrow morning steve jobs is going to unveil the new apple tablet and use it to behead osama bin laden and when that happens, the streets will run red with the blood of the microsoft whores who have torn out their own eyes rather than behold its beauty.
I like how they mainly focus on psychological needs of consumers, which is something that tends to be greatly overlooked in most economic discussions. In a market such as music, where the primary goods(the music) has lost its scarcity and has been reduced to just bits on a hard-drive, the next most profitable market may be in catering to the desire of consumers to feel some sort of connection with that artist. And if all else fails there will always be live events...
once you solve the physiological problem of content distribution (physical access to the bits) your desires immediately move up the pyramid to something else.
the human condition is defined by scarcity: our lives are shaped by what we don't have. the instant that you solve one scarcity others immediately open up.
if your content speaks to me, and i can effortlessly obtain access to your whole catalog, i immediately want something else which i consider to be more "real".
the content industries want to stop this progress and say "stop, this content IS real and it's what we are selling because we can make and distribute copies of it very cheaply."
the consumer response of course is: "yeah, but i can make copies too, so please sell me something real."
On the post: You Can't Get Rid Of Anonymity Online, Even If You Wanted To
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
also, the systems to circumvent monitoring are often far less complicated and expensive to implement and distribute when compared to the expense and complexity of implementing the updated monitoring system.
the best example of such a method is the use of burners to evade law enforcement wire taps.
also, sid technology would soon fall into the hands of the people that big brother was trying to monitor. at that point, the advantage falls back to the "insurgents".
On the post: Microsoft Exec Calls For 'Driver's License For The Internet'
it's a great idea because...
society already ruined the highway system by letting morons on it, something should really be done to protect the internet from the same rabble.
the internet is a place for college educated white males to argue about star trek and enacting jim crow like restrictions to keep everyone else out will make everything better.
this is the greatest idea ever. nothing could possibly go wrong.
On the post: NBC Universal Boss Jeff Zucker Lies To Congress About Boxee
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
i guess they leave that whole "truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" thing out of the swearing process when appearing before congress.
On the post: You Can't Get Rid Of Anonymity Online, Even If You Wanted To
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
there is a universe of difference between amassing data and being able to do something effective with it. in the intelligence community, this is called collection and analysis. collection is mostly automated, analysis is mostly manual. the manual analysis process is how we got pearl harbor and 9/11. the data was collected, but not analyzed.
in computer science, this is called logging and parsing. you can use filters and a bunch of other stuff, but the rule is still pretty much the same: logging is automated and parsing is human assisted at best, and completely manual at worst. this is why we still have malware and viruses.
anyone who works with databases will tell you about the problem of collecting too much data, but neal stevenson sums it up best in "snow crash" http://vxheavens.com/lib/mns00.html:
The CIC brass can't stand these guys because they upload staggering quantities of useless information to the database, on the off chance that some of it will eventually be useful. It's like writing down the license number of every car you see on your way to work each morning, just in case one of them will be involved in a hit-and-run accident. Even the CIC database can only hold so much garbage. So, usually, these habitual gargoyles get kicked out of CIC before too long.
this is a problem with crowd sourced surveillance and automated surveillance alike. large datasets take a long time to sort through, even with great tools and expert personnel, and even then it's far from an exact science.
huge companies built almost entirely around databases (google, amazon, etc.) have the greatest minds of our time working on the problem and still haven't worked out the bugs. those datasets are tiny compared to the system that you are proposing.
as if that wasn't enough, consider the effects of false positives. a 99% success rate implies a 1% failure rate, or 1 in 100 times the system doesn't work. even if the system were 99.9999% accurate and one 1 in 1 million transactions were bad, when you look at the scale of a city, a country, or god forbid, the internet, where billions of things happen every second, then one in a million happens a couple of million times every day.
plus, that's before the "privacy pirates" step in to introduce false data. what happens to your magic GPS system when cars drive in loops around the city? what happens when a hundred cars get their beacons stolen, or switched, or fedexed to different cities?
there is a reason that intelligence types and computer types refer to electronic communications and data as traffic, because it gets really messy really quick. freeway traffic has been around since the 50's and no one has implemented a way to move it efficiently, let alone monitor it.
On the post: Book Publishing Industry Just Now Realizing That Change Is Turbulent?
Re: "those going through that transformation"
you make it sound like they have some sort of choice or recourse. they don't. the market has changed and that's that.
On the post: Company Decides To Run For Congress
ha ha i love the onion
On the post: Wal-Mart, Target Trying To Block Redbox From Purchasing DVDs?
uh, who still buys dvd's *BESIDES* redbox?
in time, the only customers left buying plastic disks will be the companies that rent them, this really isn't the time to be making enemies out of your primary buyers.
On the post: Writers Of 'Back Pockets On The Floor' Claim 'Pants On The Ground' Ripped Them Off...
Re: Re: Re: Re: oops
On the post: Decision In iiNet Case Explains Why ISPs Cannot Effectively Be Copyright Cops
Re: to Modplan
in the past, overcharging for distribution and promotion in order to offset the costs of production was a good way to go. that was the past. this is the present.
promotion and distribution are now/can be essentially free, so you need to find a new source of subsidy or, more importantly, reduce your production costs so they no longer require subsidy.
remember, computers and the internet have brought us a lot more than the ability to get free shit. why not start using them to reduce costs?
the product on sale now, be it movies, music, television, or whatever, is not optimized for digital distribution. it costs too much to make and it doesn't lend itself to the things that people want to pay for. this mass appeal to mass market approach leads to mass downloading.
the distribution and promotion problems have been fixed, and now it's time to focus on fixing the product problem.
On the post: Google For President? If Corporations Are People...
why not fight corporations with corporations?
imagine a series of shell corporations, holding companies, and charitable organizations to collect contributions and fund media campaigns just like corporations do? isn't that is PAC's and 527 organizations are for?
On the post: Google For President? If Corporations Are People...
Re:
how about this: if corporations merge, is that a form of reverse mitosis? i mean, that's biologically impossible!
On the post: Google For President? If Corporations Are People...
Re: The Big House
i think that would be funny. if you send a corporation to prison, that corporation then gets physically relocated to a prison. everyone continues to do their jobs, but they are in jail and are not free to leave. it would be extra funny if you could quit the company and then be free to leave.
On the post: Seriously: Where Is The Link Between Copyright Infringement And Terrorism/Organized Crime
Re: Re: Re: Re: IP dip dog egg
you can just keep doing what you do and stay under the radar :-)
On the post: Artist Sues Photographer For Transformative Photo Of Public Artwork, Even Though Photographer Took Down The Photo
Re: Questions
i don't think the issue is the validity of the claim of copyright. the sculptor sent the letter and the photographer complied.
i think the issue here is the dickmove of suing even after the photographer complied.
i think some ambulance chaser convinced the sculptor that he could settle out of court for some fraction of the suit. after all, the photographer already caved once, why not squeeze him again for some money?
On the post: Awkward Stock Photo Blog Hit With DMCA Claim
it's getty images, what did you expect?
getty is one of the most predatory content companies out there.
the company was founded by someone who gives copyright the same value as natural resources, so clearly that company will go to war over pretty much anything that it perceives as a threat.
On the post: Did The Recording Industry Really Miss The Opportunity To 'Monetize' Online Music?
Re:
i think they are holding out of something that will pay them at a rate which was commensurate with the late 90's. when you frame it that way, then yes, that boat has sailed and it ain't comin back no more.
also, i think the recording industry's major problem is their product: catchy, but ultimately forgettable radio tunes, just don't transition to digital delivery. the industry wants to push a reletively small amount of product and promote it so that it is virtually guaranteed success. that process costs a lot of money and leads to lots of unauthorized downloads.
the industry's problem is that product with mass appeal gets massively downloaded without authorization.
On the post: Seriously: Where Is The Link Between Copyright Infringement And Terrorism/Organized Crime
Re: Re: IP dip dog egg
i think the problem is that the industry isn't fully convinced that they have lost the war yet.
they see itunes, hulu, pandora and the like, but they are still holding out for something with a better markup. pay per download distribution is great, but it's not selling a 10 cent disk for 20 dollars. i think the industry is still hoping for a "sit back and watch the money pile up" solution and itunes and hulu aren't it.
in time they will see that these outlets are the best bet for pay per download, and the only way to see big time markup is on blanket licenses on peer to peer sharing. blanket licenses are how the industries dealt with the VCR, cassette recorder, radio, and cable television, so it makes sense that the trend will continue.
i am holding out for a pass that lets me keep doing what i do now, but i pay a fee to be left alone. i call this the "piracy pass" where i get some sort of license number to present when my ISP gets a letter about my activities. it would be a voluntary tax, so people that don't download don't have to pay and the people who want to stay below the radar the way they do now can continue to do so.
there are already services in place like media sentry to watch peer to peer networks and send take down letters, but i use ip block lists, encrypted connections, tunnels, and private trackers to avoid them. this is fine, but it would be more convenient for me to just use a public tracker where torrents have tens of thousands of seeds and i could get better speeds if i ran everything in the clear.
if i could register my license with the industry and my ISP then the whole "DMCA notice and takedown" process can be automated to the point that the MAFIAA bot sends takedown notices, the ISP bot checks that my license is current and sends a denial. ASCAP and the other royalties organizations can distribute the funds from the license fees to artists the way they always have, only now there would be a lot more money to hand out.
also, if everyone torrents in the open, the spy companies like media sentry could also collect neilsen type market data about what's being downloaded to determine what's hot and so forth.
not too much has to change, the piracy infrastructure is already in place, the peer to peer spy networks are already in place, the royalties organizations are already in place, and the notice and take down process is already in place. all that is left is to build a mechanism to collect the blanket license fee, and a way to show the IP watch dogs that i am paid up.
On the post: No, The Apple Tablet Won't Save Publishing Nor Will It End 'Free'
Re: Macworld, Kirk McElhearn
The MAC tablet will also end world hunger and pollution; it will unite shia's & Sunis, and Israelis & Palestinians. Yay!!!
you PC types just love to hate on apple and it makes me sick. i notice that you conveniently forgot to mention that it will make your dick bigger AND restore a woman's virginity. typical.
just face it, windows causes cancer. the sooner you redmond worshipers wake up to that fact the better off we will all be.
it's an undisputed fact that tomorrow morning steve jobs is going to unveil the new apple tablet and use it to behead osama bin laden and when that happens, the streets will run red with the blood of the microsoft whores who have torn out their own eyes rather than behold its beauty.
On the post: No, The Apple Tablet Won't Save Publishing Nor Will It End 'Free'
Re: Re: Re:
yeah, and those 35 people are paying $20,000,000 each for news and the paper is thriving.
take that you pirates!
On the post: Ten Good Reasons To Buy
Re: real scarcity
i think this ties into maslow's hierarchy of needs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
once you solve the physiological problem of content distribution (physical access to the bits) your desires immediately move up the pyramid to something else.
the human condition is defined by scarcity: our lives are shaped by what we don't have. the instant that you solve one scarcity others immediately open up.
if your content speaks to me, and i can effortlessly obtain access to your whole catalog, i immediately want something else which i consider to be more "real".
the content industries want to stop this progress and say "stop, this content IS real and it's what we are selling because we can make and distribute copies of it very cheaply."
the consumer response of course is: "yeah, but i can make copies too, so please sell me something real."
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