Soap Box
Karl Wagenfuehr points out the laughably disproportionate penalties for downloading movies versus actually stealing them:
For stealing the DVD you could face no more than up to 1 year
imprisonment and up to a $100,000 fine; for downloading the same
material you could face statutory damages of up to $3,300,000, costs
and attorney's fees (ie: the other guy's attorneys), as well as up to 1
year imprisonment, and up to a $100,000 fine...Am I alone in thinking there is something really, really wrong here?
No, no you're not.
This year's SuperBowl HalfTime show was easily the least memorable in
history. When you remove the absolute possibility of anything exciting
happening you get dry, boring, entertainment free television. Nothing,
absolutely nothing unexpected happened, no Ringo, no special guest
stars. Hell I wouldn't have minded Britney Spears butchering some Wings, at least it would have been interesting. It's like they didn't even try.
Nothing against Paul McCartney mind you, he's a great musician and seems like a great guy,
but a 12 minute excerpt of a P.M. concert with 20 years old songs is
not SuperBowl worthy TV, it's not even PrimeTime TV. It's something I would...
Well don't I feel special, I've officially been blogging long enough to get comment spam! Yaaaay! I mean Boooo! Hopefully the next version of .Text will address this issue (here's hoping), I already have plenty of viagra and penis enlargement pills.
Cory Doctorow from the EFF has put up a transcription from a talk on DRM he recently presented at Microsoft. It is a very eloquent explanation of exactly why DRM (Digital Rights Management) is bad for artists, publishers, software makers, society as a whole, and why it plain won't work.