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To: eno_
Why are you guys such dicks? for your info I'm anti-WOD and give just about anybody on this board a run for their money on the meaning of the Constitution as referenced with the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers.

What I'm looking for here is an answer. On the one side we have the RIAA admittedly over reaching. But the only "alternative" anybody is willing to propose is some BS variation on the ever popular hacker contention that "information wants to be free" (reread the post I originally replied to, his answer to not having your IP copied was to not store it in a way computers can copy it... clearly a stupid answer).

What can we do to maintain the currently existing definition of fair use (which is a lot broader than most countries, which is good this is America we should be better than everybody else) and stop the massive MP3 bootlegging that's going on (and it's pretty serious, people at my new company don't understand why I buy CDs they just hunt down DL and share MP3s... note i just don't like MP3s as a format I like CDs, I did some ripping for personal use and never used them thus ended my MP3 life)? I don't like the RIAA's current asnwer, but I know you just can't tell a whole industry to suck it up. People are breaking the law, they are breaking good laws, how can they be stopped?
50 posted on 06/28/2002 12:53:10 PM PDT by discostu
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To: discostu
I know you are antiWoD and that is exactly why this should cheese you off. I bet the WoD could be won by installing a drug use detector in your house. When shall I have the installers arrive? Trust me, it will not be used to spy on you.

Oh, don't like it? Presumption of innocence? Security of person, documents, and effects? Are these things important? Then maybe you ken why nobody wants the damned 666 Fritz chip.

Now the really bad news: There may be NO ANSWER. It may be that recorded music as an industry will shrink massively, only because it is more important to more people that they retain their privacy and Ist and Vth rights than it is that the recording industry continue to thrive.

The Constitution was written to protect individual rights against everything short of national security. If IP protection cannot be enforced without trampling those rights, then the working presumption of the Founders would have been: Too freaking bad, it is not as important. Read the IP protection clause: it is not one of the primary rights. It is not considered to be derived from a natural right. It is the only thing I can think of in the Constitution based almost completely on a collective benefit. Lots of worthy-seeming laws could be enforced if the Constitution could be ignored - and it is a good thing they cannot be.

55 posted on 06/28/2002 1:05:32 PM PDT by eno_
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To: discostu
But the only "alternative" anybody is willing to propose is some BS variation on the ever popular hacker contention that "information wants to be free"

No, that isn't the alternative. We can honor our founding generation by balancing copyright holder needs with public needs. We need a rich public domain. The public domain is our country's cultural legacy. It says as much about us as the works of Aristotle, Plato and Socrates about the ancient Greek world. We need to limit copyright to a single 20 year term for non-functional copyright with a second 20 year term possible. Functional copyrights need to be limited to only 2-5 years. Source code written before I was born should not enter the public domain after I'm dead and gone. It gives the public absolutely nothing in return for the restraints on individual rights needed to maintain its artificial scarcity. No generation of software developers can look at the code and learn something from it. That said, you are being very intellectually dishonest. Of course we have an alternative, it's called prosecution of mass bootlegging. Caught selling bootlegs on the street? Lock the person up. Caught running a T3 into your house to host 30GB of 320kb mp3s, do the same if the computer is running Kazaa or Limewire with file sharing enabled. If the person has created a private IceCast host let them go, it's for their personal use and not for the public at large. The DMCA is a thought-crime statute. We had laws on the books before it that were balanced and provided the legal basis for taking down serious copyright infringers quite effectively.

95 posted on 06/28/2002 5:08:57 PM PDT by dheretic
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To: discostu
What I'm looking for here is an answer. On the one side we have the RIAA admittedly over reaching. But the only "alternative" anybody is willing to propose is some BS variation on the ever popular hacker contention that "information wants to be free" (reread the post I originally replied to, his answer to not having your IP copied was to not store it in a way computers can copy it... clearly a stupid answer).

Stupid? No. Practical. My point was that if you make your music, data, software, etc. available in a form that can be copied by a computer, it will be copied.

The answer to the problem isn't to give Microsoft and hordes of greedy lawyers control over what can and can't be done with my computer. You may be perfectly happy with these people controlling your computer, I'm not. I use other solutions because they work better for me, and I won't have Microsoft dictate to me what I can and can't do with the hardware I pay for, period.

By the way, maybe if you toned down your rhetoric people would be a little nicer?

100 posted on 06/28/2002 7:13:24 PM PDT by dwollmann
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