response 24 of 206:

Sep 7 21:57 UTC 2000

nice try, but he won anyway.

(ok, i stole that line from the west wing, but it's a great line)

response 26 of 206:

Sep 7 23:20 UTC 2000

you would

response 28 of 206:

Sep 8 01:00 UTC 2000

  I'm not sure that anyone *did* believe his campaign promises the second
  time around.  The problem is, many people *did* believe Bob Dole would
  do what he said, and they apparently didn't like it..

response 30 of 206:

Sep 8 03:41 UTC 2000

Does anyone want to talk about Napster?

response 32 of 206:

Sep 8 05:22 UTC 2000

Not sure. I don't think it matters :)

response 34 of 206:

Sep 8 16:03 UTC 2000

I read somewhere--I think in the AA News--that someone did a study of how well
recent presidents did keeping their campaign promises. Surprise!  Clinton
topped the list at something like 69%. Reagan was near the bottom; I forget his
score, though.

response 36 of 206:

Sep 8 17:51 UTC 2000

  re #33:  So your argument is that it's not stealing because you were
  never going to buy it anyway?

  Out of curiosity, how much of that $1.25 do you think went to the studio?

response 38 of 206:

Sep 8 18:58 UTC 2000

Thats an argument for why it might be in the best interests of record
companies to tolerate the stealing that goes on on Napster. I am sure they
have considered it but have decided that the costs outweigh the benefits. 

response 40 of 206:

Sep 8 19:05 UTC 2000

Definitely read the Atlantic Monthly article on this. It's online at the
Atlantic website, and it has some fascinating data and historical precedent
that I'd never heard before. Pirating of music is nothing new, just in a new
format. 

response 42 of 206:

Sep 8 19:18 UTC 2000

"You can listen to any CD in a record store before buying - to 
preview it."   Where????   The last CD shop in Michigan which I know
allowed unlimited previewing was CD Emporium in East Lansing, and 
they closed a decade ago.

response 44 of 206:

Sep 8 19:24 UTC 2000

(Ken slipped in)

response 46 of 206:

Sep 8 21:21 UTC 2000

I'm going to put my little copyright essay here.  No slight intended to 
willard's other excellent Napster item, it just seems to fit better 
here now.
 
-------
 
Consider:  Copyrights have no moral force in our culture.
The right to tangible property goes back to the roots of Western culture:
"Thou Shalt Not Steal" is in the Ten Commandments.  And even a child 
sees that if I take something from you, you don't have it any more, and
this is a wrong.

But copying is different.  If I copy something from you, you still have
it.  The Lord did not say, "Thou shalt not copy thy neighbors' scrolls."

Copyright has never been an "absolute" right, in the sense that
most property rights are absolute.  (Let's wave off land-use regulations, OK?)
In the US, copyright law has balanced ownership incentives to
creators with access and "fair use" by the public, and the
scope of copyrights has been subject to adjustment through the years.
The Constitutional language which gives Congress control over copyright
law says that the purpose of copyright is public benefit -- *not* the
maximum profit to copyright holders.

Copyright is an economic regulation which only goes back a couple of 
hundred years, and it was designed to regulate the behavior of businesses.
It's only worked this long because until now copying machines, in the 
most general sense, were big expensive things which only businesses 
could own, and business are (1) relatively limited in number, and (2)
cost-sensitive to things like civil lawsuits.  So the civil court 
system was sufficient to keep the businesses in line.

In the 20th century, the ownership of copying machines has spilled
down into the general population.  And I had a flash of blinding
insight last night: so far, "Society" has refused to use the big
guns of copyright law against the public at large.  As the public's
copying activity has expanded, copyrights have been rolled back.

Legally, the first step was with the VCR.  In the Betamax case, the appeals 
court held Sony liable for infringement; we came very close, as a society,
to banning the VCR.  However, the Supreme Court made some new law 
out of whole cloth:  they arbitrarily decided to declare that   
"timeshifting" a TV show was not an infringement; and then they ruled
that because the VCR had newly-declared non-infringing uses, it   
could not be sued out of existence.  Copyright rolled back  
in the face of public copying activity.  

Though audio copying came first -- the music industry got really 
panicky in the heyday of cassette recorders, 
with a campaign about how "Home Taping Is Killing
Music."  -- the legal situation didn't resolve until later.
Widespread home cassette copying was tolerated for years -- I am unaware
of anyone ever being prosecuted for it.. 
Eventually in 1992, the Audio Home Recording Act 
defined a clear legal zone for private users to 
make copies without fear of being sued.  Again, copyright was rolled back.

I honestly don't know how the current struggle will turn out.
Congress gave the copyright industry and the courts a Great Big Gun
to use against the public in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
$1000 worth of illicit copies is now a felony
charge; by the standards of the law before 1995, this is draconian.

It's so draconian that the law has hardly been used yet.  Of the 
guesstimated 20 million Napster users, most must have $1000 worth 
of illicit songs, and so they would be slam-dunk prosecutions
under the law.  But the number of prosecutions under this
section of the DCMA is one: one poor student at the U. Oregon who 
had MP3 files on his web site.  And that prosecution was two years ago.