Just in case someone misunderstands a comment I made, the whole business of the Canadian Federal Government not allowing the scientists employed by them to speak freely has to end.
Harper has been by far the most obvious about this, the most sweeping and the most arrogant even if he's not the only PM to silence individual scientists. And he's the only one who has enforced it as a more or less constant thing by directing everything through the Prime Minister's Office for vetting before it can go out.
He's also the most PR oriented in that almost no one can speak off message most of the time.
Recently some of his MPs have spoken out against the "Internet Spy Bill" brought forward which speaks volumes about how unpopular it is and the level of concern by his MPs about losing their job in the next election.
Perhaps this will increase the level of concern by his MPs to the extent that the PMO will listen to them. Not that I expect so.
Canadians DO have long memories and we DO have a record of "throwing the bastards out" and decimating governments and parties that have offended us. And this one is offending me, and many others, more and more.
Thing is not all Canadians hate Harper, a significant number of us seem to like him and what he's doing. (I'm not one of those who like what he's doing but I'm not going to waste my time hating him either as that colours what I can do to oppose the worst of what his government is up to.)
All that said, Harper isn't the first PM to gag scientists working for the government, particularly the Department of Fisheries and Oceans which seems a favourite. Chretien did it, too. They only want good news getting out about the collapsed cod fishery out east and the collapsing salmon fishery here in the west coast, at least some of which is caused or made worse by open net fish farms.
Sadly, people like you didn't get the message in the last federal election that the more "we hate Harper" just because he's Harper goes out the more chance the Tories have of winning because it energizes his base and the fence sitters read and hear this and just dismiss it now.
And yes, as a Canadian I DO blame Canada for this. The Americans didn't do it to us, the Americans didn't call up Harper and say "you gotta do this" and hold a gun to his head, Harper was through a series of minority governments where to combined opposition could have stopped this stupidity but didn't and the media hasn't made all that much of a deal of it till now.
So before blaming the Americans or even Bush, though he is convenient, take a good long look in the mirror. We let this happen ourselves.
Instead of posting hate filled messages why don't you go out and do the real HARD work of working on an election campaign for which ever other party you support and get the Conservatives ditched?
Assuming it's a song or part of one then it ought to be named in the takedown notice and the person reviewing it only needs to listen to the "infringing" upload and the "legitimate" one the company undoubtedly has.
If it's a deep mix, beat, or whatever then yes, you need a musician to identify it but so what? You're attempting to protect a copyright and, as the RIAA is tirelessly telling us, valuable source of income.
And I'm sure the RIAA has to have access to a few highly trained musicians with great ears and knowledge needed to do that work. :-)
You forgot that old standard of movies and television that has this annoying female Clippy voice loudly announcing "You have mail" at exactly the right time and moment.
But why bother with any of that when it's usually so easy. The password to my church's computer was "church", the email account was "church", the each users password was "church" and user names at various sites were "anglican" and password "church".
Then three of the users wondered how they had their identities stolen and why the computer got cracked into and the main hard drive thrashed a month after they got it!
Excuse? "Easy to remember" of course and being a church just who would want to crack it?
When I recovered the drive it had been acting as a seed for porn, and various forms of "piracy" which might explain the calls from the ISP about using way, way too much bandwidth.
Some of them hate me now because they're now restricted to passwords of 10 characters that have to use numbers, mixed case, special characters AND can survive a basic dictionary attack.
It's not that they're nitwits, it's just that their naieve and can't imagine why anyone would do THAT to a church computer.
Who'd a thunk that you could do serious cracking or even white hat hacking with VB. Wow! Learn something new every day!
And here I was wasting my time with C++, Perl, Python, Assembler, Ruby and all those other allegedly real computer languages. I feel soooooooooo depressed!
That's far too true of many industries. Far too many value that bit of paper and the alphabet soup of initials after a person's name as evidence of much more that the ability to regurgitate what some prof said in the lectures as actual knowledge.
Which isn't to say that's all either of us acquired there. Only that there are other,frequently better ways of learning. And teaching.
One good thing our societies are learning now that we boomers are fleeing the workforce as regular, full time employees is that the trades and technical people are really worth our weight in gold. Nothing much works without us. ;-)
Re: Oh I get it, all you have to do is ask people to "do better"
"There's no acknowledgement that the creators need to eat, pay the rent, and purchase health insurance"
If you read the whole post you'd find that he does acknowledge that, more than once. But he also acknowledges that the "gatekeepers" most often do everything in their power not to pay the actual creators.
So, not that you'll get this, the creators are the musicians and songwriters. Occasionally when you get a producer with the skill of a Bob Rock or a Sir George Martin then include them as creators. The machinery, technicians, microphones, sound deadeners, cords and the girl who brings in lunch are NOT creators. The labels most certainly are NOT creators. Movie studios haven't been creators since their founders, movie makers, died and the studios got turned over to lawyers and accountants.
Now to the point you seem to find most offensive. When you enter retail there's really one rule "the customer is always right". When the customer decides your price is too high there's a perfect right to take their business elsewhere. When a customer feels you're doing something poorly she has a perfect right to point that out to you. When a customer feels ripped off he has a right to complain, notify the BBB, write letters to the editor and other forms of protest and communication and you, as the retailer, have little choice but to defend yourself or shape up.
In short, if you want to sell me something I have the right to tell you to do better.
You, also, obviously missed, that the Smith has made that as a result of downloading from file sharing sites or colleagues s/he is spending MORE on entertainment than before frequently buying the previously shared material. Smith also points out, as do Mike and others writing for this site that that kind of behaviour is NORMAL for file sharers.
Smith also points out what many (most) users of DRM'd material feel is that they've had enough of that. Most know or soon will should they ask how to crack 99.999% of DRM anyway so why bother when all it does is irritate the consumer, you know, the person you want to buy your movie/song/book etc to the extent that many feel they won't buy your output no matter what.
"It's all a focus on the consumer who is supposedly allowed to simply stamp his/her feet and if the hard working creators don't snap to it, the consumer will feel free to simply take it. Wow, that's a model of one spoiled brat."
And just who else should the focus be on? It's the consumer you want to buy your work, after all. It's the consumer who has the right to tell you, as a creator (which you more than obviously are not) to shape up, snap to it or they'll not buy from you. They MIGHT, as Smith says, download, but they won't buy. Ever.
Remember the customer is always right, even if that means the "creator" doesn't make a sale. So sad, too bad, that's how the free market works.
Smith's post focuses not on downloading but on just HOW to sell into the Web market and makes a number of valid points, none of which you address. Not that I expected you to, and not, I suspect, that you read the entire post. If any of it.
The mere fact that you, and others, trying to make the sale continue to say "you'll get it my way or not at all" shows just who the spoiled brat is. It also demonstrates just who is suffering from terminal entitlement syndrome and it certainly isn't Smith. A look in the mirror will tell you who it is.
And no, there is no analog to theft of a physical object like a grapefruit and downloading a file. If I take a grapefruit from my local Safeway there is a material good missing and one less for the store to sell. Sharing a file doesn't involve the removal of a physical object from anywhere. It copies what is already there, something computers do very well. They have to otherwise they wouldn't work. The original is still there. Waiting to be copied or sold to someone else.
At the end of the day a retailer, be it a member of the RIAA, MPAA or anyone else has the inalienable right to dictate terms of a sale or what the consumer can do for their personal use at a price or terms the consumer dislikes. The consumer will find the product elsewhere. Or a similar one. That is their right.
If the creator can't buy another bag of Frito's makes no difference at all. If some label exec can't afford his favourite hooker any more makes no difference at all.
Too bad a spoiled brat like you and the people you represent can't get that through your collective thick skulls.
You know, before I turned my life path from academic to trade/technical I would have agreed with you about the complexity of SOME university streams. Before I go on there is often the notion that university offers the option of in depth study that is lacking in trades/technical paths.
I can't speak for the past, except that part of it that I've actually lived but the trades and technical jobs require as much if not more, at times, adaptation and mental nimbleness as academia does.
Traditionally the trades have had the advantage of the apprenticeship system where newbies actually learn most of what they need to from journeymen. (OK, journeypeople, for the politically correct among us!) The same issues as cited here apply. Apprentices will drift off if the journeyman is dull, boring or frequently goes off topic themselves. Once the tools are in their hands and they have to learn by doing, troubleshoot by doing then their attention perks up as does their mental engagement as well as their skills.
BTW, given my learning style, I dropped out of university level before completing second year because I was bored beyond belief, I'm what's called a "conceptual learner" which basically means that once I have a grasp of the concept I can and do zoom from A-Z, just let me know where to find the details or just turn me loose with tools and the other things I need for my craft or course. Don't bore me to death with the details, I'll find them when I need them and do it very quickly.
To put it badly in an academic setting give me a paper to write that requires a bit of research and a tight deadline and I'll get to the details myself.
BTW, when I dropped out I had a 3.4 GPA, too, and the highlight of my days in trades and technical learning is when I get to help other people out because we both seem to learn faster that way.
So it's not just teaching styles that matter it's the individual student's learning style as well. We keep forgetting that not so minor detail. The more the student is aware of their learning style is the more they're able to take in without getting frustrated or bored. It helps if the teacher is aware of it too but with today's "industrial" schooling they rarely have time for that.
I'm thnking of all the ex politicos who were on the boards of banks that were too big to fail four years ago. Or the ex politicos who populate the boards of various other companies in the United States, Canada, the UK and other places. For the star power I bet! Certainly not for dubiously legal lobbying, inside contacts and invitations to parties inside the Beltway where, it seems, a lot of bills get written after everyone is well and truly lubircated. That's where it seems they've been written, doesn't it?
Oh why, oh why, do you keep forgetting the big guy out there at the time which was Compuserve (Compu$pend). Which is the one that had the most major newspaper content from North American and the UK which no one bothered with because it was so awkward to read and find cross links, something the Web made possible.
And I DO remember a time where these newspapers weren't on the Web and I hate to tell you this but there was plenty of content, enough that search engines were appearing, and it was good content.
Not as pretty with as many pictures and dancing bear animated gifs but content was there. Mind you there WAS plenty of porn just like there was on Yahoo, Compuserv, IRC, usenet and just about anywhere else you cared to look. Says something about human nature and the power of sexuality that does. And the human need for portrayals of it even though I've felt it's much better as a participatory "sport" than a spectator one.
The first attempts I remember to "monetize" the net came from those who tried to put up Web analogues of places like bricks and mortar malls. That failed, I can tell you.
The first attempts at ads were just terrible, bits of them loading down with your page that it slowed down the entire page load till you shrugged and went somewhere else. Didn't take webmasters long to see that the ads weren't bringing in people, quite the opposite and that no one was ever clicking the ads cause the damned things never finished loading. Additionally they were poorly made clones of television ads put up by the same agencies who, at that time, didn't understand either the web or the internet. If you want to know where Google's idea of text ads came from look no further than there. Web users at the time wanted noting to do with ads and would actually punish sites that had them. Using 48K and 56K modems meant you weren't hanging around a site long enough for ads about deodorants to load on sites about wildlife. Then, in those days, there was also the question of whether or not you trusted the site or the "payment" processor enough to give them detailed information on your credit cards or bank accounts. (Say hello, PayPal!)
HuffPo, if you cast your memory back long enough was the target of a lot of complaining about cut and paste then link "journalism" rather than "real" journalism when it got started. It was only after all the bitching and some threatened lawsuits from the likes of AP, the New York Times and others that HuffPo began to acquire it's own writers as well as the deliberate decision to endorse then hype Barak Obama in the 2010 election. If anything HuffPo started off as the biggest "news pirate" there's ever been.
The NYT, Boston Globe and even HuffPo earned money when advertisers figured out that Webizens hated ads but would tolerate ones that didn't make mess on page downloads. Soon after that came ad blocker add-ons to Firefox.
It's not as much copyright enforcement that brought the big players on line as that they thought they could sell ad space the same why the do in the "real world". That and the niggling thought they might be missing out on something. That and they weren't on AOHell or MSN anyway to any great extent.
So, anyway, there was plenty of content on the Web before your biggies appeared. And there will be plenty of content if they decide to leave for whatever reason or build castles and moats around their content so that only the "elect" can get in to see inside their "holy of holies". Won't happen with HuffPo because HuffPo is a web only business and they know better than that. As, incidentally, does Yahoo who started out as a search engine. So unlike the NYT there is no "real world" presence.
By the way, as long as you want to pretend that you have some knowledge or experience of the new biz there is no such think as cloning an article or a story. For a whole variety of reasons in the newspaper biz it's called "cut and paste". For radio from wire services it's called "rip and read" when you grab something off a news service and rush on air with it without just a little bit of rewrite and so on. So please get the terms right.
It's not so much a matter these days of the web being a safe place (safe for what????) but that for anyone wanting to be taken seriously in the news biz you MUST have a web presence safe (???) or not. That's where the eyeballs are. The same applies to other "content" makers as well though the RIAA and MPAA seem to think differently.
Let me assure you that there will be plenty of content if the NY Times decides to hide behind an even bigger paywall. Or if more of your precious "content" companies decide to ignore the irritating fact that the web exists.
And it's funny (peculiar) and funny (LOL) that two of the "content" companies are web only and one of them has been accused of varieties of wanton piracy in the past and sometimes still is.
The Web abhors a vacuum. Content will appear. It's that simple. Not being on it and having a presence is like someone saying "this isn't paying as well as I want it" and going back to quill pens and parchment 50 years after Gutenberg's press appeared. Not gonna happen.
As far as Chris Dodd, the RIAA and the MPAA are concerned why not just hand government to the companies he represents.
Just imagine, a war fought entirely with CG(, all those prefect auto-tuned songs out there and all the money that could be saved to buy, whoopps, lobby congress critters with even more efficiency that they do now.
If you wanted what is now called piracy in before the Web came along all you had to do was drop into Compuserve (aka Compu$pend) and you could get just about anything you wanted. Pictures were low density GIFS, for the most part, movies were cut into pieces which you had to assemble yourself and people would spend hours on the phone downloading cracked copies of Lotus 1-2-3 and other "contraband". Oh yeah, and you could get songs too!
The same sorts of things were going on at AOHell at the same time.
I first heard of Napster before there was any widespread penetration of broadband in North America so people were swapping songs with 56K modems rather than broadband and doing it quite happily.
Now, I know history isn't your strong point but REASON Napster and the like got started was the stark refusal of MPAA member companies to release singles. Remembering that this was in an era when, if you were incredibly lucky, most CDs had one or two decent tracks and 16 or so tracks of elevator music, at best. That, as much as anything, had people not buying music in the same quantities that they used to and the fact that we Boomers now had other priorities like sending kids to school, maintaining houses and all the day to day stuff that translate into money pits. Oh yeah, CD's that were 80% crud and that there were only so many Led Zep Greatest Hits CDs Remixed that anyone was capable or wanted to buy. There were and ARE limits to how much "classic" rock one can take.
So services like Napster showed up for those who just wanted the singles the labels no longer wanted to provide. So the Web and its users routed around that problem and assembled the singles the labels weren't interested in providing.
By the way, the bittorrent protocol came about because Linux and BSD distributions wanted more efficient ways to distribute new editions, updates and bug fixes that existed before it. I doubt anyone sat down trying to figure out if what they'd built do move Apache fixes back and forth could also move music, at least until someone wanted to share a song with a buddy.
(In that sense I'm SHOCKED that you and Chris Dodd don't cry about at the loss of innovation because of the existence of FOSS because the licenses there actually ask you to pirate! What else could it be if the licenses actually invite someone to download, change and release pirated copies back into the wild! All still accompanied by those pesky BSD, GPL, LGPL, CC and other licenses which do, Mr Dodd, express copyright of the works in question, how they may be used, improved, mashed up and re-released and other than that have at em.)
By your logic FOSS must encourage piracy though out of it has come the operating system that powers the internet, the applications used to keep the internet working, the Mars rovers running and who knows how much else.
What the root cause of piracy has been has been the refusal of RIAA and MPAA member companies to release digital works that people could download, listen to or watch on what, in those days, was more than likely the single computer in the house. The thinking was that shiny plastic disks would reap more profit that interacting with consumers whee the consumers were.
Fans of the music and movies got it other ways, often hoping the labels and studios would release "authorized" copies and then saying "Fuck 'em" when they didn't.
That's the classic origin of black and gray markets. And it did.
I am glad you said infringement rather than the other loaded words tossed about.
At the end of the day the industry only has to look in the mirror to see who is at fault for this. In a free market consumers will find the same or similar product at a lower price or greater convenience or both.
I hate to tell Mr Dodd this but until his 2yo cry of "it's mine, it's mine" becomes more adult and his industry actually practices what it preaches in regards to artists actually, really getting paid for their work, grab things from the public domain and slap a copyright over their interpretation and then claim any interpretation that follows of the same thing from the public domain somehow violates their copyright and.....well, some of us here would say the sense of entitlement never ends with this industry
In the meantime I'll buy from iTunes, Amazon and other legal and NEVER from any sites run my MPAA or RIAA member companies. I'm not giving my custom to someone who is convinced I'm a thief.
Insurance issues aside, when I lived in Vancouver in the places that are forests of residental high rise towers known as the West End and Coal Harbour there were organized "lending" services where people with cars, the minority, would lend out vehicles on a per booking basis. When they started the cars were booked by calls to a common email box and then they could pick them up at the time and place the owner kept it. All of that is done on the Web now, I think. These services were and I suspect are very successful at what they do which is providing people with a vehicle should they need one.
The reason for the lack of cars in those areas isn't as much lack of street or on property parking as it is that just about anything you can think of was available within walking distance or businesses would provide delivery, It certainly wasn't because people couldn't afford them!
If conditions are right, the price is right and the service is relatively convenient then I can see this or something like it succeeding. While it isn't exactly "green" it certainly doesn't add to the number of vehicles on the road and may reduce emissions some.
If you use Photoshop to touch up or alter a photo you're using a tool regardless of the high level of automation PS now has to do touch up and other work. Ultimately you, the human, are in control.
Auto-tune is another tool that the producer of a song in conjunction with technicians recording and "correcting" the piece are in control over decisions like when where and how to use auto-tune so ultimately the technology isn't making the decisions itself one or more human beings are.
To date, as far as I know, there isn't a computer program out there that can independently create without human input of some kind or another, even if it's just a little.
For now, at least, a living, breathing, organic, analogue human would hold the copyright in my view. That may change but we're a long way from an "I Robot" world as envisioned by Issac Asimov (NOT that crappy movie) but then things move so quickly these days you can never tell.
I was gonna ignore this rant but what the heck, why not.
"Innovation would be someone inventing a means to track all the piracy and send out remittance notices to violators of copyright. Innovation would be a method for securing digital works to devices owned by one individual."
In your world, that must mean innovation would be "securing" a book to ensure that only the first purchaser could read it in their own home (and never move) and never, ever lend it out to friend they might think is interested in it.
"Innovation isn't yet another video streaming service." I have to assume that you must mean that would include streaming services offered by networks too.
"The next few years will see the entertainment industry investing heavily in digital media delivered across the internet."
You mean an industry that has had better than a decade to do just that will actually, finally do it? And given their increasingly poor consumer relationships just who, exactly, do you expect will buy from them unless they're forced to?
And all at a price people will actually pay, unless forced to?
"How will services like Netflix, Amazon or even iTunes compete?"
That makes sense. An industry that preaches on about things like sanctity of contracts (regional releases and distribution) will break contracts with brands people trust in order to do business with brands they don't trust or like? Isn't that kinda like cutting off your nose to spite your face?
Even should the entertainment industry enter the Web market in a big way I don't see an end to piracy and if they enter in the self-entitled and self-serving way their constant statements and whining shows then I'd actually expect it to increase if they become the only choice out there.
They burned their bridges with the consumer market long, long ago and they haven't even poured a secure foundation for anything new.
On the post: Canadians To Prime Minister: Don't Censor Our Scientists
Harper has been by far the most obvious about this, the most sweeping and the most arrogant even if he's not the only PM to silence individual scientists. And he's the only one who has enforced it as a more or less constant thing by directing everything through the Prime Minister's Office for vetting before it can go out.
He's also the most PR oriented in that almost no one can speak off message most of the time.
Recently some of his MPs have spoken out against the "Internet Spy Bill" brought forward which speaks volumes about how unpopular it is and the level of concern by his MPs about losing their job in the next election.
Perhaps this will increase the level of concern by his MPs to the extent that the PMO will listen to them. Not that I expect so.
Canadians DO have long memories and we DO have a record of "throwing the bastards out" and decimating governments and parties that have offended us. And this one is offending me, and many others, more and more.
On the post: Canadians To Prime Minister: Don't Censor Our Scientists
Re: Harper is Canada's Bush
All that said, Harper isn't the first PM to gag scientists working for the government, particularly the Department of Fisheries and Oceans which seems a favourite. Chretien did it, too. They only want good news getting out about the collapsed cod fishery out east and the collapsing salmon fishery here in the west coast, at least some of which is caused or made worse by open net fish farms.
Sadly, people like you didn't get the message in the last federal election that the more "we hate Harper" just because he's Harper goes out the more chance the Tories have of winning because it energizes his base and the fence sitters read and hear this and just dismiss it now.
And yes, as a Canadian I DO blame Canada for this. The Americans didn't do it to us, the Americans didn't call up Harper and say "you gotta do this" and hold a gun to his head, Harper was through a series of minority governments where to combined opposition could have stopped this stupidity but didn't and the media hasn't made all that much of a deal of it till now.
So before blaming the Americans or even Bush, though he is convenient, take a good long look in the mirror. We let this happen ourselves.
Instead of posting hate filled messages why don't you go out and do the real HARD work of working on an election campaign for which ever other party you support and get the Conservatives ditched?
On the post: EFF Argues That Automated Bogus DMCA Takedowns Violate The Law And Are Subject To Sanctions
Re: Re: Re:
If it's a deep mix, beat, or whatever then yes, you need a musician to identify it but so what? You're attempting to protect a copyright and, as the RIAA is tirelessly telling us, valuable source of income.
And I'm sure the RIAA has to have access to a few highly trained musicians with great ears and knowledge needed to do that work. :-)
On the post: Hollywood Hackers Vs. Reality
Re:
On the post: Hollywood Hackers Vs. Reality
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Then three of the users wondered how they had their identities stolen and why the computer got cracked into and the main hard drive thrashed a month after they got it!
Excuse? "Easy to remember" of course and being a church just who would want to crack it?
When I recovered the drive it had been acting as a seed for porn, and various forms of "piracy" which might explain the calls from the ISP about using way, way too much bandwidth.
Some of them hate me now because they're now restricted to passwords of 10 characters that have to use numbers, mixed case, special characters AND can survive a basic dictionary attack.
It's not that they're nitwits, it's just that their naieve and can't imagine why anyone would do THAT to a church computer.
On the post: Hollywood Hackers Vs. Reality
Re: Re: Tim, you forgot something...
And here I was wasting my time with C++, Perl, Python, Assembler, Ruby and all those other allegedly real computer languages. I feel soooooooooo depressed!
On the post: Teaching Style, Not Computers, Appears To Be Biggest Factor In Classroom Distraction
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Which isn't to say that's all either of us acquired there. Only that there are other,frequently better ways of learning. And teaching.
One good thing our societies are learning now that we boomers are fleeing the workforce as regular, full time employees is that the trades and technical people are really worth our weight in gold. Nothing much works without us. ;-)
On the post: An Open Letter To Content Creators: One 'Pirate' Explains Why He Infringes & How To Get His Money
Re: Oh I get it, all you have to do is ask people to "do better"
If you read the whole post you'd find that he does acknowledge that, more than once. But he also acknowledges that the "gatekeepers" most often do everything in their power not to pay the actual creators.
So, not that you'll get this, the creators are the musicians and songwriters. Occasionally when you get a producer with the skill of a Bob Rock or a Sir George Martin then include them as creators. The machinery, technicians, microphones, sound deadeners, cords and the girl who brings in lunch are NOT creators. The labels most certainly are NOT creators. Movie studios haven't been creators since their founders, movie makers, died and the studios got turned over to lawyers and accountants.
Now to the point you seem to find most offensive. When you enter retail there's really one rule "the customer is always right". When the customer decides your price is too high there's a perfect right to take their business elsewhere. When a customer feels you're doing something poorly she has a perfect right to point that out to you. When a customer feels ripped off he has a right to complain, notify the BBB, write letters to the editor and other forms of protest and communication and you, as the retailer, have little choice but to defend yourself or shape up.
In short, if you want to sell me something I have the right to tell you to do better.
You, also, obviously missed, that the Smith has made that as a result of downloading from file sharing sites or colleagues s/he is spending MORE on entertainment than before frequently buying the previously shared material. Smith also points out, as do Mike and others writing for this site that that kind of behaviour is NORMAL for file sharers.
Smith also points out what many (most) users of DRM'd material feel is that they've had enough of that. Most know or soon will should they ask how to crack 99.999% of DRM anyway so why bother when all it does is irritate the consumer, you know, the person you want to buy your movie/song/book etc to the extent that many feel they won't buy your output no matter what.
"It's all a focus on the consumer who is supposedly allowed to simply stamp his/her feet and if the hard working creators don't snap to it, the consumer will feel free to simply take it. Wow, that's a model of one spoiled brat."
And just who else should the focus be on? It's the consumer you want to buy your work, after all. It's the consumer who has the right to tell you, as a creator (which you more than obviously are not) to shape up, snap to it or they'll not buy from you. They MIGHT, as Smith says, download, but they won't buy. Ever.
Remember the customer is always right, even if that means the "creator" doesn't make a sale. So sad, too bad, that's how the free market works.
Smith's post focuses not on downloading but on just HOW to sell into the Web market and makes a number of valid points, none of which you address. Not that I expected you to, and not, I suspect, that you read the entire post. If any of it.
The mere fact that you, and others, trying to make the sale continue to say "you'll get it my way or not at all" shows just who the spoiled brat is. It also demonstrates just who is suffering from terminal entitlement syndrome and it certainly isn't Smith. A look in the mirror will tell you who it is.
And no, there is no analog to theft of a physical object like a grapefruit and downloading a file. If I take a grapefruit from my local Safeway there is a material good missing and one less for the store to sell. Sharing a file doesn't involve the removal of a physical object from anywhere. It copies what is already there, something computers do very well. They have to otherwise they wouldn't work. The original is still there. Waiting to be copied or sold to someone else.
At the end of the day a retailer, be it a member of the RIAA, MPAA or anyone else has the inalienable right to dictate terms of a sale or what the consumer can do for their personal use at a price or terms the consumer dislikes. The consumer will find the product elsewhere. Or a similar one. That is their right.
If the creator can't buy another bag of Frito's makes no difference at all. If some label exec can't afford his favourite hooker any more makes no difference at all.
Too bad a spoiled brat like you and the people you represent can't get that through your collective thick skulls.
On the post: Teaching Style, Not Computers, Appears To Be Biggest Factor In Classroom Distraction
Re: Re:
I can't speak for the past, except that part of it that I've actually lived but the trades and technical jobs require as much if not more, at times, adaptation and mental nimbleness as academia does.
Traditionally the trades have had the advantage of the apprenticeship system where newbies actually learn most of what they need to from journeymen. (OK, journeypeople, for the politically correct among us!) The same issues as cited here apply. Apprentices will drift off if the journeyman is dull, boring or frequently goes off topic themselves. Once the tools are in their hands and they have to learn by doing, troubleshoot by doing then their attention perks up as does their mental engagement as well as their skills.
BTW, given my learning style, I dropped out of university level before completing second year because I was bored beyond belief, I'm what's called a "conceptual learner" which basically means that once I have a grasp of the concept I can and do zoom from A-Z, just let me know where to find the details or just turn me loose with tools and the other things I need for my craft or course. Don't bore me to death with the details, I'll find them when I need them and do it very quickly.
To put it badly in an academic setting give me a paper to write that requires a bit of research and a tight deadline and I'll get to the details myself.
BTW, when I dropped out I had a 3.4 GPA, too, and the highlight of my days in trades and technical learning is when I get to help other people out because we both seem to learn faster that way.
So it's not just teaching styles that matter it's the individual student's learning style as well. We keep forgetting that not so minor detail. The more the student is aware of their learning style is the more they're able to take in without getting frustrated or bored. It helps if the teacher is aware of it too but with today's "industrial" schooling they rarely have time for that.
On the post: Teaching Style, Not Computers, Appears To Be Biggest Factor In Classroom Distraction
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On the post: A Cracked Look At The Impact Of Spam
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On the post: Chris Dodd: The Internet Developed Because Of Strict Copyright Enforcement
Re: Hard to Believe
Oh, I better go take my anti-cynicism pill.
On the post: Chris Dodd: The Internet Developed Because Of Strict Copyright Enforcement
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On the post: Chris Dodd: The Internet Developed Because Of Strict Copyright Enforcement
Re: He's right.
And I DO remember a time where these newspapers weren't on the Web and I hate to tell you this but there was plenty of content, enough that search engines were appearing, and it was good content.
Not as pretty with as many pictures and dancing bear animated gifs but content was there. Mind you there WAS plenty of porn just like there was on Yahoo, Compuserv, IRC, usenet and just about anywhere else you cared to look. Says something about human nature and the power of sexuality that does. And the human need for portrayals of it even though I've felt it's much better as a participatory "sport" than a spectator one.
The first attempts I remember to "monetize" the net came from those who tried to put up Web analogues of places like bricks and mortar malls. That failed, I can tell you.
The first attempts at ads were just terrible, bits of them loading down with your page that it slowed down the entire page load till you shrugged and went somewhere else. Didn't take webmasters long to see that the ads weren't bringing in people, quite the opposite and that no one was ever clicking the ads cause the damned things never finished loading. Additionally they were poorly made clones of television ads put up by the same agencies who, at that time, didn't understand either the web or the internet. If you want to know where Google's idea of text ads came from look no further than there. Web users at the time wanted noting to do with ads and would actually punish sites that had them. Using 48K and 56K modems meant you weren't hanging around a site long enough for ads about deodorants to load on sites about wildlife. Then, in those days, there was also the question of whether or not you trusted the site or the "payment" processor enough to give them detailed information on your credit cards or bank accounts. (Say hello, PayPal!)
HuffPo, if you cast your memory back long enough was the target of a lot of complaining about cut and paste then link "journalism" rather than "real" journalism when it got started. It was only after all the bitching and some threatened lawsuits from the likes of AP, the New York Times and others that HuffPo began to acquire it's own writers as well as the deliberate decision to endorse then hype Barak Obama in the 2010 election. If anything HuffPo started off as the biggest "news pirate" there's ever been.
The NYT, Boston Globe and even HuffPo earned money when advertisers figured out that Webizens hated ads but would tolerate ones that didn't make mess on page downloads. Soon after that came ad blocker add-ons to Firefox.
It's not as much copyright enforcement that brought the big players on line as that they thought they could sell ad space the same why the do in the "real world". That and the niggling thought they might be missing out on something. That and they weren't on AOHell or MSN anyway to any great extent.
So, anyway, there was plenty of content on the Web before your biggies appeared. And there will be plenty of content if they decide to leave for whatever reason or build castles and moats around their content so that only the "elect" can get in to see inside their "holy of holies". Won't happen with HuffPo because HuffPo is a web only business and they know better than that. As, incidentally, does Yahoo who started out as a search engine. So unlike the NYT there is no "real world" presence.
By the way, as long as you want to pretend that you have some knowledge or experience of the new biz there is no such think as cloning an article or a story. For a whole variety of reasons in the newspaper biz it's called "cut and paste". For radio from wire services it's called "rip and read" when you grab something off a news service and rush on air with it without just a little bit of rewrite and so on. So please get the terms right.
It's not so much a matter these days of the web being a safe place (safe for what????) but that for anyone wanting to be taken seriously in the news biz you MUST have a web presence safe (???) or not. That's where the eyeballs are. The same applies to other "content" makers as well though the RIAA and MPAA seem to think differently.
Let me assure you that there will be plenty of content if the NY Times decides to hide behind an even bigger paywall. Or if more of your precious "content" companies decide to ignore the irritating fact that the web exists.
And it's funny (peculiar) and funny (LOL) that two of the "content" companies are web only and one of them has been accused of varieties of wanton piracy in the past and sometimes still is.
The Web abhors a vacuum. Content will appear. It's that simple. Not being on it and having a presence is like someone saying "this isn't paying as well as I want it" and going back to quill pens and parchment 50 years after Gutenberg's press appeared. Not gonna happen.
On the post: Chris Dodd: The Internet Developed Because Of Strict Copyright Enforcement
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On the post: Chris Dodd: The Internet Developed Because Of Strict Copyright Enforcement
Re: Censorship
Just imagine, a war fought entirely with CG(, all those prefect auto-tuned songs out there and all the money that could be saved to buy, whoopps, lobby congress critters with even more efficiency that they do now.
On the post: Chris Dodd: The Internet Developed Because Of Strict Copyright Enforcement
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If you wanted what is now called piracy in before the Web came along all you had to do was drop into Compuserve (aka Compu$pend) and you could get just about anything you wanted. Pictures were low density GIFS, for the most part, movies were cut into pieces which you had to assemble yourself and people would spend hours on the phone downloading cracked copies of Lotus 1-2-3 and other "contraband". Oh yeah, and you could get songs too!
The same sorts of things were going on at AOHell at the same time.
I first heard of Napster before there was any widespread penetration of broadband in North America so people were swapping songs with 56K modems rather than broadband and doing it quite happily.
Now, I know history isn't your strong point but REASON Napster and the like got started was the stark refusal of MPAA member companies to release singles. Remembering that this was in an era when, if you were incredibly lucky, most CDs had one or two decent tracks and 16 or so tracks of elevator music, at best. That, as much as anything, had people not buying music in the same quantities that they used to and the fact that we Boomers now had other priorities like sending kids to school, maintaining houses and all the day to day stuff that translate into money pits. Oh yeah, CD's that were 80% crud and that there were only so many Led Zep Greatest Hits CDs Remixed that anyone was capable or wanted to buy. There were and ARE limits to how much "classic" rock one can take.
So services like Napster showed up for those who just wanted the singles the labels no longer wanted to provide. So the Web and its users routed around that problem and assembled the singles the labels weren't interested in providing.
By the way, the bittorrent protocol came about because Linux and BSD distributions wanted more efficient ways to distribute new editions, updates and bug fixes that existed before it. I doubt anyone sat down trying to figure out if what they'd built do move Apache fixes back and forth could also move music, at least until someone wanted to share a song with a buddy.
(In that sense I'm SHOCKED that you and Chris Dodd don't cry about at the loss of innovation because of the existence of FOSS because the licenses there actually ask you to pirate! What else could it be if the licenses actually invite someone to download, change and release pirated copies back into the wild! All still accompanied by those pesky BSD, GPL, LGPL, CC and other licenses which do, Mr Dodd, express copyright of the works in question, how they may be used, improved, mashed up and re-released and other than that have at em.)
By your logic FOSS must encourage piracy though out of it has come the operating system that powers the internet, the applications used to keep the internet working, the Mars rovers running and who knows how much else.
What the root cause of piracy has been has been the refusal of RIAA and MPAA member companies to release digital works that people could download, listen to or watch on what, in those days, was more than likely the single computer in the house. The thinking was that shiny plastic disks would reap more profit that interacting with consumers whee the consumers were.
Fans of the music and movies got it other ways, often hoping the labels and studios would release "authorized" copies and then saying "Fuck 'em" when they didn't.
That's the classic origin of black and gray markets. And it did.
I am glad you said infringement rather than the other loaded words tossed about.
At the end of the day the industry only has to look in the mirror to see who is at fault for this. In a free market consumers will find the same or similar product at a lower price or greater convenience or both.
I hate to tell Mr Dodd this but until his 2yo cry of "it's mine, it's mine" becomes more adult and his industry actually practices what it preaches in regards to artists actually, really getting paid for their work, grab things from the public domain and slap a copyright over their interpretation and then claim any interpretation that follows of the same thing from the public domain somehow violates their copyright and.....well, some of us here would say the sense of entitlement never ends with this industry
In the meantime I'll buy from iTunes, Amazon and other legal and NEVER from any sites run my MPAA or RIAA member companies. I'm not giving my custom to someone who is convinced I'm a thief.
On the post: Disrupting the Disruptors: Peer-to-Peer Car Sharing Service Launches Nationally
Re: Actual Scarcities (To Richard, #20).
The reason for the lack of cars in those areas isn't as much lack of street or on property parking as it is that just about anything you can think of was available within walking distance or businesses would provide delivery, It certainly wasn't because people couldn't afford them!
If conditions are right, the price is right and the service is relatively convenient then I can see this or something like it succeeding. While it isn't exactly "green" it certainly doesn't add to the number of vehicles on the road and may reduce emissions some.
On the post: Can A Company Be An 'Author' For The Purpose Of Copyright?
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Auto-tune is another tool that the producer of a song in conjunction with technicians recording and "correcting" the piece are in control over decisions like when where and how to use auto-tune so ultimately the technology isn't making the decisions itself one or more human beings are.
To date, as far as I know, there isn't a computer program out there that can independently create without human input of some kind or another, even if it's just a little.
For now, at least, a living, breathing, organic, analogue human would hold the copyright in my view. That may change but we're a long way from an "I Robot" world as envisioned by Issac Asimov (NOT that crappy movie) but then things move so quickly these days you can never tell.
On the post: UK ISPs Lose Their Challenge To The Digital Economy Act; Entertainment Industry Responds Condescendingly
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"Innovation would be someone inventing a means to track all the piracy and send out remittance notices to violators of copyright. Innovation would be a method for securing digital works to devices owned by one individual."
In your world, that must mean innovation would be "securing" a book to ensure that only the first purchaser could read it in their own home (and never move) and never, ever lend it out to friend they might think is interested in it.
"Innovation isn't yet another video streaming service." I have to assume that you must mean that would include streaming services offered by networks too.
"The next few years will see the entertainment industry investing heavily in digital media delivered across the internet."
You mean an industry that has had better than a decade to do just that will actually, finally do it? And given their increasingly poor consumer relationships just who, exactly, do you expect will buy from them unless they're forced to?
And all at a price people will actually pay, unless forced to?
"How will services like Netflix, Amazon or even iTunes compete?"
That makes sense. An industry that preaches on about things like sanctity of contracts (regional releases and distribution) will break contracts with brands people trust in order to do business with brands they don't trust or like? Isn't that kinda like cutting off your nose to spite your face?
Even should the entertainment industry enter the Web market in a big way I don't see an end to piracy and if they enter in the self-entitled and self-serving way their constant statements and whining shows then I'd actually expect it to increase if they become the only choice out there.
They burned their bridges with the consumer market long, long ago and they haven't even poured a secure foundation for anything new.
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