Harsh? They're all brats. They deserve far worse than what I can hand out.

Shits or not, and most of them are, there have been real cases, in my town and elsewhere, where college kids have been found guilty, in courts of law, of doing this. I'm not making this up because I'm mean and hate kids (although both points might be true).

eh! i missed this post earlier...

THIS ONE! of course ha ha


ohhhhhh.... i understand now

when are you moving?


proof that you're smart-- unlike... cough cough... others.


as i was saying-- and congrats!-- your focus issues now resolved i'm guessing? opportunities for más dinero?

Awesome brother. He's a keeper.

----

I'm not technologically adept, so I really don't get the itunes hate.

I've never signed up for an account, and yet they've given me about 1000 hours of podcast goodness for free. Improved my life drastically. I don't use the player much, but when I do I'm impressed with the "sound enhancer" feature, and the EQ is fun to tweak.

I used spotify once, but I couldn't find what I wanted. When I did eventually find something, I was depressed by the lousy sound quality. Never went back.

I'm sure someone can explain why I'm wrong, but I probably wouldn't understand.

---

Now I'm slightly freaking out about getting my finances stolen. On the other hand, I'm a little offended no one has yet bothered. What, my money's not good enough to steal?

i know i'll sound like the 20h century dinosaur i am but for me winamp 2.8 or 2.9 was the apex of digital music playing (it really kicked the llama's ass-- ha ha ha). winamp just played what you fed it and left your files alone.

itunes is good at selling shit, but for my distaste, it shifts shit around, moves your files to wherever the hell it wants and hides them from you, adds up a very larded file structure and basically claims them for itself. i have never liked it. here is an example of people bitching about this particular feature:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5450218?tstart=0

i store my shit in a synology diskstation, not a mac, so itunes has a problem with that. the ds puts out an itunes stream thingy, which opens in a computer, but the iphone doesnt read it-- so i use the ds audio app for playback, which is total crap, but at least it's the crap you'd expect from as an afterthought from a chinese manufacturer of network storage.

as for spotifried, it has audio quality settings-- the defaults are indeed quite shitty, just change them to a higher bitrate and blam.

best of luck Plips, and remember, it is a process and takes time and patience.

i hate itunes, and any service that tries to profit from file sharing

winamp was the shit but sadly its gone now.

it disgusts me that people will pay for streaming and file sharing services.

we need free p2p and file sharing networks - theres a political urgency to this because capitalism will try and hoard and profit off data that should be free.

i don't understand this notion that ALL data should be free. theoretically, everything is data-- say, your kidneys, they're an information system, that doeans't mean anyone can harvest them.

but as for reproducible information being free-- removing the possibility of profit from intellectual property removes the incentive to create that information the first place.

if my job is to make up things that can be digitized but nobody wants to pay for them, must i be homeless and hungry?

i suppose in a more enlightened society such people would be taken care of by a disinterested populace, but such conditions do not exist.

otherwise wed be able to get the best shit from the creative commons. wikipedia is great, but it's more of an exception.

we all know what happens to any kind of commons-- people take take take but give very little. human nature is sad that way.

so i don't mind paying for streaming services that give me what i want. IP is an abstraction, but it's one that has served us well by creating incentives to production. i don't pay for file sharing secrecy--paying to steal is a bit too hypocritical.

the incentive of profit didnt create linux or winamp or any of the myriad programmes which are better than their for profit counterparts in a million and one ways

the incentive of profit leads to destroying programmes and hoarding their best features

this is all because capitalism

but file sharing is a mechanism that works without profit and thus keeping profit out of it is our best shot at distributing information - medical and technical, to aid the majority of the world, which is poor, and spread tech and data that can liberate people from the profit motive in at least some aspects of their lives

as a compute repair guy, i know that if i freely share the info i have im literally taking money away from other guys trying to survive off their skills.

but at the same time, its definitely the best thing to do because it frees up a larger amount of people from having to spend what little they have on stuff they can do themselves for free

and eventually the capitalist aspect of the profession becomes obsolesced which is good overall.

whereas your argument can be used to support a scenario in which one doctor has the cure for a disease and noone else does, but instead of sharing it he patents it and profits of the few who can afford to pay for his cure

which is why your argument is popular

I buy a book I read it, I let someone borrow it, they read it.

I buy an album of music, I listen to it. I let someone else borrow it, they listen to it.

There is no law against sharing anything for free, unless it is "digital". That is the double standard lie that Gimple is pointing at which allows ridiculous monopolies like Itunes and shit like that.

the argument is popular within capitalism because that's how capitalism works.

i didn't invent capitalism, i just live in it. would i like a different system? sure. what is it? i don't see it-- i ony see the historical nightmares from broken utopias.

there are a few people who devote their lives to the service of others but those are few and far between. most people are pigs, and work mostly for self-interest. very sad, but true. i'm not championing selfishness by the way, i just observe it everywhere. read brecht's the good soul of szechuan.

and so the information born of self-interest is often better developed because it has the economic resources for that development.

take linux-- it's great, but if it was so great everyone would use it. as it is, only geeks do. i tried it, but holy shit what a pain in the ass it was. even the simplest upgrade was a headache.

so now i use osx-- which derives from unix but it's easy even for a moron to use. and so it's worth money.

the open source movement is still a good thing though, except that it's not disinterested-- it's a prestige market. you get paid in fame points and then cash them in for jobs/contracts/investors. every open source monk will burn their robes at the first sign of big money.

i don't think file sharing will overthrow capitalism-- if anything, it exacerbates capitalism by making people more selfish and entitled-- "i want it all and i want it yesterday".


that assumes that the universe is perfectly logical and should always make sense logically from top to bottom. contradictions and paradoxes exist. limits always stretch the mind.

there's a difference between lending your friend a book-- and making infinite copies of the book at no cost to you and letting anyone have them-- or worse, charging people for you to give it to them in secret. why are we even arguing this.

versus

"I buy an album, upload a torrent, thousands download it for free."

or worse:

"I downloaded a torrent. It got taken down. I re-upped it from my downloaded files."


Funny, I was just watching a clip of Noel Gallagher bewildered that someone would pay a few bucks for a cup of coffee that'll last a few minutes but will bitch about paying for a record that could change a life. A bit romantic, but a fair point.

A generation from now, hopefully we'll figure out how scientists can freely exchange info to cure cancer, while artists can make a living. What's with this either/or shit?

No one cries foul about every single music organization and school and program in the country buying one copy of a musical score and making endless photocopies for all the musicians.

putting a digital file on a torrent site is no different than leaving books in a public place and hoping someone grabs it and reads it. No one makes $$ off it, unless they repackage the file and sell it to those without computers. THAT is illegal as fuck

linux might be a pain but ubuntu isnt, its easier than windows and its free. the reason people dont use it is because they arent used to it because they have to know windows to survive economically

peoples self interest is not some magic supernatural fulcrum that orders reality around it. its actually produced by the necessity the system they live in produces in them.

your idea about what capitalism is and what an alternative is is not accurate.

people being selfish and greedy has nothing to do with why we have capitalism - that is in fact a capitalist myth

file sharing wont overthrow capitalism, i never said it would/

it will obsolesce parts of it and help me survive and thrive tho

right. musicals scores drive the economy.


1. when you leave a book in a public place you give up your book so another can have it

2. file sharers don't get money, but they get other files for which they would otherwise have to pay. so there is "money" made.

--

it's always people on a salary who think this way-- that IP is nothing. their paycheck arrives every friday from the big boss or government or donor in the clouds and they don't have to worry about a thing. if they don't get paid accurately and on time they make a racket, bang on the table, go on strike, demand their worker's rights.

but shit, the poor fucker who stays up all night creating a product of mental activity gets ripped off from all sides and those consumers who get salaries ask "but why does he complain?"

right-- that was the post-facto claim that brecht made for his play. that the system made altruism impossible. hence i recommended it-- i didn't say "go read ayn rand". but that's where we are. so we can't go around forcing altruism out of people who haven't chosen it for themselves. "i'm taking your wallet-- altruism, dude"

but it's not capitalism proper that creates that-- it's our desires that generate scarcity. we always want more than there is available. hence, "not enough to go around." ever. under any system. scarcity is the basic fact of economics.

capitalism is just a modern system to manage that scarcity. wanting more for less however is fucking ancient. it has always been.

I am both. I EARN a salary by working my ass off 40-50 hours a week, and I EARN extra $$ by creating artworks and trying to sell them to people.

No one gave a flying fuck about "artists" when it was the giant conglomerates who controlled the means of production, the means of marketing, and the means of distribution. The only people who gave a shit about Napster were these same giant media conglomerates, whose fully artificial and wasteful and self-gratifying business system went out the fuckiing window.

but you realize that the fully artificial wasteful self-gratifying model is actually possible because they are the only ones who can enforce the right of artists with some measure of success, yes?

because the artist alone is naked in the world. and so they must pay "protection" to a media racket by selling their rights to them.

because as little as they get, a little is more than the nothing they would get from the oh-so-generous (yeah right) public.

in other words, if we were a less cunning and thieving predatory exploitative species we'd all pay the artists directly and need no lawyers. we'd all be writing checks to cat power-- "thanks for those great moments! here's $1,000!". but as it is, artists need lawyers if they want to eat, and we can blame the lawyers all we want but that's just not being honest with ourselves.

actually dude, file sharing is not the same as wallet snatching... unless i had a star trek replicator that could replicate your wallet then give the original back to you, which is what file sharing is.

and then you're back to some want/need dichotomy which is a dead end if ever there was one.

well no, sorry. you're rationalizing thievery, see. which is fine if that's what you want. i am a thief, yes, but i know i am one and don't delude myself with sophistries.

it is very simple. products exist in a market. there is supply and there is demand. the equilibrium of both determines the price. the higher the demand or lower the supply, the higher the price. the lower the demand or higher the supply, the lower the price. simple.

when supply approaches infinite, demand is satisfied with little effort and the price approaches zero.

so, when you make infinite replications of a product, you take the seller's wallet. you render her product basically worthless. she loses her ability to make an income. seller has no more incentive to sell, or seller has to hire a bunch of cops to prevent you from doing that, or they have to change their model to make your replication moot--

e.g., i'd rather pay spotify $10 a month than deal with the headache of torrents and organization and labeling and all that shit. so for me streaming makes file sharing moot.

of course, someone is going to get fucked in the process, and get less money, etc-- that someone is always the artist.

and of course the market is always going to exist. it will not cease. and it will adapt to disruptions. let's just be honest with ourselves and call those disruptions what they are-- looting. and so the market adapts to our looting.

my name is !@#$%! and i'm a natural-born looter.

there. it wasn't that hard.

so i guess when i get a lift from a friend to go into town for free, rather than pay a taxi, im stealing from the taxi driver yeah?

when i invent writing in ancient greece, im stealing from the orators?

when i obsolesce a market system with something free and more efficient, im somehow still a "looter" rather than a "liberator".

also btw your latest post has just brought you exactly back to where we started and given your tendency to do this and spiral off into "i cant be wrong because heres my argument repeated until you give up" loops im gonna check out if you repeat it again

don't worry about it. let's fire up our torrents and go gangrape some copyrights.

they're asking for it!

I wish I knew more about newer jazz releases.

i torrented your genome and people are cloning you and doing all kinds of unspeakable shit

our society devalues art, treating it solely as a sell-able commodity. There has to be a good middle ground somewhere

eh! i'm doing all kinds of unspeakable shit to it already as i write this.

--

on a different subject-- and a more interesting one-- has a genome been legally defined as someone's property yet? if so-- who, if any, has the copyright?

copyright has never ever ever had anything to do with the creators or art/music/literature, and everything to do with the business interests of those that make $$ off exploiting artists/musicians/writers.

No artists anywhere pay millions to lobbyists to "persuade" politicians to extend copyright law. It is the companies that own the rights that do so. the song Happy Birthday is still copyrighted, even though it is ancient as all fuck, and near universal, and no one can use it in a film or tv show without paying a faceless conglomerate (probably EMI who own nearly 80% of all music rights) over $100,000! whoever wrote the ditty (Irving Berlin?) has been dead for decades and is not benefiting from it.

genomes have been copyrighted already. Dolly the sheep was copyrighted.

Don't have time to read. Please summarize:

http://www.genome.gov/19016590

Indeed, one of the early principles agreed upon by leaders of the Human Genome Project was that the DNA sequence generated should be freely available to the public. This principle was codified in the 1997 Bermuda Principles, which set forth the expectation that all DNA sequence information should be released into publicly available databases within 24 hours of being generated. This policy of open access to the genome has been a core ethos of genomics ever since.

Over the years that this debate has occurred, there have been concerns that large numbers of patents associated with the human genome would limit the integration of genomic medicine into health care because of either restrictive patents or prohibitive costs. Diagnostic tests on patented genes cannot be invented around, as is possible with other patents. This is because the actual DNA sequence to be tested is claimed in the patent, not the method of analyzing the gene to determine its sequence, and so only the patent holder, or their licensees, have the rights to sequence that DNA during the patent's life.

some of the genomic copyrights have beennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn overturned by courts

keyboard lol

used to be artists had to gain the patronage of rich and powerful people in order to do their work. leonardo moved from italy to france for that reason.

art is treated as a commodity because our economy works that way. artists need to eat just like everyone who works. and because we are in a market economy, artists need the market.

the thing is--- the existence of the market is predicated on rules. without those rules, there is no market.



i was gonna say "sure", but now that i think about it, ASCAP is actually member-owned by artists and publishers and fights for copyright protection ina a big asshole way.

so i looked it up

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americ...d_Publish ers

so, see, it's more complicated

also ever think that art is mostly useless luxurious crap and its not as important as actual useful shit and so people who make it then whine about not being able to profit bigtime are douchecandles?

and art is also a commodity valorized because it allows the wealthy to store wealth in sellable assets.

it doesnt bring meaning or value to life or any of that other shit

copyright is very complicated, and they make it so on purpose. any artwork, at the instant of creation, is copyrighted in the USA. I have done research on this when I was drawing a daily comic strip.

Nope. people work hard and earn money for much much more than just attaining the basic needs of living (food, shelter, clothing etc). In nearly every respect, people work hard so they can earn money to enjoy the arts! That can be TV shows, dramas on stage, handmade pottery for your home, music at home, concerts, dance, books, leisure time to read. etc. Art, in all it's facets, is the only reason for living.

if you value a drawing made for you by a child or a friend, you are not valuing "mostly useless luxurious crap"

Only idiots who buy art because of what others say is valuable do that, and they deserve all the scorn you can heap on them.

art is one of the only things that brings value to a life.