Upload Outrage - Vista rats you out

Download Uproar: RIAA goes after personal use: "The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from a legally bought CD are 'unauthorized copies' of copyrighted recordings."

According to the ruling in the recent "Jammie Thomas" internet-downloading case, copies of copyrighted music on a hard drive and in a folder that is shared with people other than the "copy owner", is a violation of the law - even if no copying from the folder has occurred.

I think that it is a defensible ruling if the intent of the "copy owner" is to make the material available for downloading or copying by other people, or it is reasonable to assume that the person would be aware that this would occur. But it is less defensible where the "copy owner" reasonably did not expect that others would download or copy the copyrighted material from the shared folder.


But it's so much bigger than this...


The entire world has made up its mind - people want their music on a portable MP3 player.

If it is illegal to copy a CD to an iPod or Zune, then who needs to buy a CD? It is cheaper to buy music directly from the internet.

There goes your CD business you massively stupid RIAA old-time fucks.


And it's bigger and worse even than that...


We like to think our PC tries to protect us and our stuff. Uh uh, think again. That's the old days.

Somebody's figured out that the public is a pain in the ass and won't pay much for security - but business will pay serious money to be protected from the public. So screw the public.

It's so much more lucrative to create Windows Vista, an operating system with a "New Electronic Deal", where your computer finks on you - literally rats you out, whenever you do something that causes some business to lose a buck - or miss the opportunity to get more of your bucks. And that list of "crimes" gets bigger by the minute.

But we all continue to click "I agree with these terms" all the time - like it doesn't affect us; like we really plan to pull out at the last minute. Yeah right.