|   Senator wants to destroy your computer! | Jar
Jun 18, 2003 11:05 AM | | I'm sorry, but what an a$$
<i>No one is interested in destroying anyone's computer," replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can't.
"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."
The senator, a composer who earned $18,000 last year in song writing royalties, acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."
"If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said.</i>
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,89719,00.html |
| Need some info from you please | Dave_G
Jun 19, 2003 7:05 AM | | email me on dgieseatearthlinkdotnet
I need your mailing address, I can't read your handwriting.
Dave |
| OK -en_t_bird | Jar
Jun 19, 2003 7:33 AM | | |
| re: Senator wants to destroy your computer! | jack70
Jun 19, 2003 7:56 AM | | I agree he's a bit of an a-hole here, but understand he's intentionally speaking in Hyperbole... to get media attention, without which he's talking to bare walls. (heh, this story is ALL OVER the web today, so he accomplished that goal, right?)
We all gotta agree that the "intellectual property" issue is a HUGE issue today. Counterfeit DVDs are lossing <b>BILLIONS</b> to Hollywood every year. Not just the people involved, but the studios, industry, sub-contractors and businesses, and loss of Taxes too. The new Harry Potter book is coming out soon, and there are thousands of illegal press's that'll have illegal copies on the streets around the globe the next day. Literally billions stolen. We've gotten to a point where technology makes acquiring artistic and intellectual property so easy that we think it's free, and that's not only wrong, it's a bad thing for our culture if it continues.
Solving the problem ain't that simple of course. And it's MUCH more complicated than our Washington Weasels can contend with. But we wouldn't tolerate people walking out of supermarkets without paying. I personally don't relish the government getting it's nose into much of anything, but THEY DO have a constitutional mandate to protect everyone from crime (theft in this case). I certainly don't have the answer, but I'm happier that the government is at least taking notice.... something it rarely does. There IS a problem... I hope industry (not Congress) can find a solution that's better than what we now have |
| what about this: | Jar
Jun 19, 2003 8:04 AM | | I posted this at the Motley Fool yesterday, instead of rewriting it, I'm copying what I wrote, because I think it's an interesting issue:
another issue that folks seldom discuss is the used cd market. How many cds have been bought, sold, resold, etc.. 5, 10 times over. Why spend $18 at Sam Goody when you can spend $6 on Half.com. Sure, the album was bought once but way more than one person actually ends up "owning" the music, even if it is for a short period of time. I'm surprised the used cd market has gotten a free pass while the downloading folks have taken all the heat. The irony is, if I download an album on Kazaa or whatever, I'm usually getting a crappy-sounding compressed version (those who say MP3's are "perfect copies" don't know what they are talking about).. but if I got to my local record exchange and buy the same album from the $5 bin, I get a PERFECT version of the cd, and the artist still gets no money. I think it's hypocritical to go after only downloaders. Used cd buyers are not paying (the artist) either, they're just obtaining the music in a different way. What am I missing here?
-jar |
| what about this: | J
Jun 19, 2003 9:40 AM | | I don't think the used CD market has anything to do with copyright violation; I think it's well within the law to sell a copy of a copyrighted piece of work, regardless of the format, that was purchased legally. That this does not apply to promo copies, which is often what you find primarily in used bins, is besides the point; the industry never cared much about the resale of promos, because it put a few hundred or thousand <i>affordable</i> copies into the hands of fans who probably wouldn't have spent full retail price otherwise, and the disposable income of those fans would end up potentially enriching the artist and/or label, anyway, through concerts, merchandising, back catalog, etc. What I'm not getting is why all the focus is placed on downloaders when there'd be nothing to download were it not for the true culprit--the uploaders. If they weren't making the files available, nobody would be able to download. If anybody's going to be prosecuted, it should be them, especially since the resources for going after the jillions of downloaders simply do not exist, especially for a crime that is neither violent nor a threat to national security or anything like that.
There's a good thread over at that other place about this, here:
http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/music/rock/messages/28264.html |
| That's hilarious | jack70
Jun 20, 2003 5:01 AM | | That's hillarious J! (JavaScript below) Nothing better than hypocrisy from our moral leaders eh? And that's a main philosophical problem I have when Congress gets involved with industry in general. They have little clues about most businesses, and NO CLUES about tech stuff. Look at the mess they've made of the tax code (for starters), and you see why I'm wary of pretty much ANY legislation they pass. It usually ends up doing little good, lots of unintended consequences, and costing a lot (time, money & effort).
But I still contend Hatch was simply "playing politics" (to grab headlines) trying to light a fire under the industry to get these issues "fixed", so they won't have to deal with Congress in the future. We'll see. Why can't all those tech geeks at MS come up with new protocols that will both preserve the free nature of the web, and prohibit certain file sharing? It's beyond my pay grade, but there's gotta be a new dynamic possible.
Jar... Jay's right, the used CD market is a slightly different issue. Actually, certain labels <b>have</b> given stores that sell used CD's "problems" in the past because they feel it hurts their bottom line. I think a few court cases have pretty much stopped that intimidation though. One of the main underlying issues here is economics, and the fact that CDs are overpriced by at least 100%. If they sold for $3-6 (actual cost in stores) 95% of these problems would dissapear. I've never used Napster or Kazza... for many reasons 1) it's borderline theft in most cases, 2) security issues 3) Crappy source files.
I agree that the used CD market <i>SEEMS</i> to "cheat" the artist of royalties (at least I'm pretty sure they don't get a % of the 2'ndary sale under current law). But the whole "used CD market" is just a sympton (effect) of the economic reality (problem) here in the first place. The "Used CD market", and "file sharing" are all pseudo "black-markets", which tells you something is wrong in the original pricing/supply.
I disagree with your dissing MP3's. Just because someone with a $20,000 Nikon camera takes a blury unfocused photo doesn't mean that camera system sucks. Bit rates over 250K, with good source material, and good codecs are virtually undistinguishable from the source. It's been proven in double-blind tests. MP3 compression is just a tool... a good one... but it's got to be used smartly. Most tools are abused. |
| And he's in violation himself! | J
Jun 19, 2003 8:40 PM | | Or at least he was until today...
http://wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59305,00.html |
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