RIAA's Oppenheim Tries To Protect MediaSentry 216
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's 'Prince of Darkness,' Washington DC lawyer Matthew Jan Oppenheim of The Oppenheim Group, who controls and supervises all of the RIAA litigations against ordinary folks, has requested permission to intervene in the 'probable cause' hearing scheduled next week in Raleigh, North Carolina, against MediaSentry. The hearing was convened by North Carolina's Private Protective Services Board, after complaints were filed by a law firm representing a number of North Carolina State University students who had been targeted by the RIAA based on the unlicensed 'investigation' conducted by SafeNet (the new name for MediaSentry). I guess the RIAA is worried. They should be."
Re:why are used cd's allowed, though? (Score:5, Informative)
The first sale doctrine exhausts the copyright owner's ability to collect further revenue from that copy of the purchased CD. When the first owner sells that copy to another person, they are selling the purchased copy. However, if you make 5 copies of the CD and sell them, you are no longer selling the CD that you purchased (in which the copyright holder's right have been exhausted), you are selling illegal copies that you made (in which the copyright holder's right have not been exhausted).
Downloading bits on the internet is "illegal" because you are creating unlicensed copies. Libraries lending books is okay because a single copy of the media exists at all times. Prior to you taking the book out, the library is in possession of a single copy. When you take it out, the library is no longer in possession, you are. Return the book, the library is back in possession. The library would be in trouble if they gave you a photocopy of the book, and left the original on the shelf.
Under this same logical framework, we should be able to resell legally purchased MP3s, if you certify that you are not retaining a copy for yourself. I'm not holding my breath on it though.
Re:Fuck em (Score:3, Informative)
that's PI activity, without a license.
Re:why are used cd's allowed, though? (Score:5, Informative)
As you know, GameStop makes a tidy sum reselling used games, and the game developers don't see a penny of it. This has not a few people in the the games industry pissed off beyond the capacity for rational thought. No matter how much irrefutable logic or facts you throw at them, they're absolutely convinced they're "losing money" to this, and want to re-structure the market to prevent it, or at least get a cut of the action.
Schwab
Re:Goog Grief! (Score:3, Informative)
1. What do you mean about thumbnailing the pictures? Isn't there only one picture?
See where you have:
<img width="263" src="http://beckermanlegal.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/2_hands_towards_right_side.18052817_std.jpg" height="175" class="yssImg yssImgD" >
That means the browser on my computer is downloading the full size image (which is actually 450px Ã-- 301px in this case) and resizing it. What he's suggesting is that you replace that picture (and any others on the site) with one of the correct size so the browser doesn't have to resize it locally. Relying on the browser to do this correctly isn't a great idea.
Re:Goog Grief! (Score:3, Informative)
1. What do you mean about thumbnailing the pictures? Isn't there only one picture?
The image "080229lefthandup.jpg" is displayed on the page using scaling (your "img" tag has a "width=225 pixels" to make the picture smaller). This is considered unprofessional because you are forcing the user's browser to load a big picture when a small image would do (and would load faster). Some browsers also won't scale it nicely. So the "professional" solution is to resize the image (in Photoshop or GIMP or whatever) to the correct size and use that image, unscaled. You can always link to the full-size version if you want people to have access to it. That having been said, I don't think it's a big deal on your site: as you said it's only a single image, and you're only slightly rescaling it. (This becomes a much bigger issue when people use gigantic pictures scaled down to thumbnails, because the page load takes forever.)
2. What should I do instead of using font tags?
Modern practice is to define styles in a "cascading style sheet". You either redefine how the standard tags will display, or you create new styles with custom names. Then you always consistently use the appropriate style tags. Changes in font (and font size, etc.) can then be made just in the style file. That having been said, you run your blog off of blogspot; I'm not sure if it allows you to define custom CSS or not.
3. What is semantic markup?
This is the same complaint as #2. Basically if you're defining a site "properly" you define classes of text, like "emphasis" or "quoting" or "blogentry". Then you flag your text (using markup like "div class=blogentry" or whatever) and it gets formatted properly. This is better because you avoid hard-coding the changes for each and every time you want to change a look. For example, once all the quotes have been labeled with "quoting" you can easily change the look/feel of the entire site just by changing the definition of the style for "quoting". This also means that the various text regions have been flagged semantically (all the quotes are labeled as such). As much as possible you should use the established html tags (p for paragraph, ul for a list, etc.), since their meaning is, in principle, already defined.
4. I thought the old fashioned fonts were more reflective of my 19th century personality, but maybe I'll experiment with something else.
Your font is fine... but sans-serif [wikipedia.org] fonts are almost always easier to read on computer screens.
Again, I think the complaints are somewhat unfair, because you are using the blogspot engine, which is restrictive. Many of the ugly markup in the page source are the fault of blogspot.
I do confess that I find some parts of the page inelegant (the large number of links at the bottom of the page seem disorganized and not properly aligned; I would prefer clearer demarcation between comments on the post pages (bounding boxes, or horizontal lines, or color contrast or something)...). But overall your blog is such as great source of insightful commentary and information that any such complaint seems trite by comparison.
Remember that if you ever want suggestions or help the Slashdot community is here for you. (And plenty of us are willing to help without even the nominal fees that Hurricane78 mentioned.)
Re:Goog Grief! (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know how much money you make from all the amazon links, but I personally find them distracting, which takes away from your valuable content.
Thanks very, very much for all of the valuable advice.
I make almost nothing from the affiliate ads, but hope springs eternal. I spend so much uncompensated time doing the blog, I'm hoping people will buy stuff through the links and offset some of that.
Re:Goog Grief! (Score:4, Informative)
You might consider a blog post asking for page redesign suggestions. This is common when a blogger doesn't have the time or the skills, but has a large technical audience. This sounds like you :)
You might also consider pulling the amazon noise and being more straight-forward about your desire to be compensated for your time and effort. Maybe a simple Paypal "donate" link. Or maybe you could put a call out to illustrators and creatives to create cafepress shirts/mugs/etc which you could sell from your blog. The subject matter at hand is a bottomless mine of material.
There are obviously a lot of folks who want to support your efforts and see them continue. The hard part is figuring out how to mobilize them.
Re:Goog Grief! (Score:3, Informative)
(I've realised about 400 other people answered this while I was typing up a reply, but one more won't hurt)
I think he means that one picture near the bottom of the page using width="225", maybe there's other ones. The main reason you'd want to use proper thumbnails for things like that is it saves bandwidth. Also most browsers have crap resizing algorithms optimised for speed. Properly done thumbnails look nicer.
Depends how you're using them. You can replace <font size=> with <small> and <big> (but read the next point) and font face tags with <span>/<div>/<p> using class="" and a bit of CSS.
Basically just saying what you mean in the HTML, instead of saying what it should look like. For example you've got a <font size="-2"> for your keywords thing, which could be done as <p class="keywords"> (or "tags", as web2.0 is calling them these days) and putting p.keywords {font-size:x-small} in the CSS. As a side note, I've seen google's search results are displaying more details than they used to do - as far as I can tell they do pay attention to class names in some places.
If you want an example of semantic markup, have a look at the completely-overdone html in this post.
The looks are a matter of opinion more than anything. I don't mind serif fonts but I think your layout could use more separation; try adding background colours on things like the replies (div.blogComment) to break it up a bit.
Re:why are used cd's allowed, though? (Score:5, Informative)
Under this same logical framework, we should be able to resell legally purchased MP3s, if you certify that you are not retaining a copy for yourself. I'm not holding my breath on it though.
Your remark is oddly (perhaps not coincidentally) timely. There is now -- for the time being -- an online second-hand MP3 [bopaboo.com] shop, hosted in the US. News item [guardian.co.uk] here. As far as I'm aware it's very new. It's still online at the time of writing.
Re:Goog Grief! (Score:3, Informative)
And for all you nitpickers that don't feel Ray's site is quite up to your aesthetic standards, well. If I wanted pretty pictures and no content I'd head over to FOXNEWS.COM. Ray's site is exactly what the World Wide Web was intended to be by its inventors: fast, efficient and most of all informative. The Web has largely been conscripted as a marketing tool, with all the hype and overhead that goes along with that. Keep it simple, Ray, and those of us who really care about your content will keep coming back. I'd say that's especially important: so many modern Web sites leave dial-up and foreign users out in the cold with all the baggage they have to download.
Re:Dear Slashdot Mods, (Score:3, Informative)
To pretend otherwise is utterly childish.
Sarah Jane: Oh, Doctor. You're just being childish."
Doctor Who: "What's wrong with being childish? I like being childish."
Look, this is Slashdot, not a courtroom. Just relax, contribute to the conversation, and don't worry about mods (unfair or otherwise) to other posters. Besides, this is a new thread and odds are his post will be taken down a notch or two anyway. Personally, I'd have given it a Funny mod.
Re:Question (Score:3, Informative)
While I completely agree that their methods are abhorrent, I'm left wondering what legal means the RIAA had of pursuing their case. The fact is that wanton copyright infringement is occurring. As copyright holders, the RIAA does in fact have the right to go after the infringers. Their methods under the guise of Media Sentry are obviously less than ideal (both morally and legally), so what *should* they have done?
I'm just wondering if there's any course of action they could taken whereby their IP was protected and they weren't demonized by all of us.
Well, no. I think the upshot of much of the copyright discussion in the geek world for the past several years has been, there is NO way to enforce copyrights to the RIAA's satisfaction in the 21st century.
But part of the problem is, there's also no *reason* to. What the RIAA has failed to realize is that their problem is DEMAND. People *want* their product, in a given form. If it was easier to get for pay than for free, heck yeah people would do it, and DO do it.
If it was easier to put $20 on an account with RIAA's website, and then download songs from their catalog as the mood strikes you, in an unfettered format, they'd rake it in. Soooo many people would be far more willing to do that than to install a program, search for the song, hope it's REALLY the song and not some malware... yadda yadda.
Many of the songs that people are trading aren't even for sale, anywhere. What's ridiculous is that there *is* a demand for them, and it would be dead easy to supply it.
Once upon a time, recording equipment was awesomely expensive, media was delicate, and reproduction was a professional job. That made the business model easy. That has all changed, and this scares the crap out of the RIAA, but it shouldn't... it's made their job easier. However, it's also made it easier for someone else to do it. And that's exactly what's happening... as iTunes etc. take over the music market.
Re:Question (Score:5, Informative)
Most artists who create a song (under the current terms) will be dead before their works enter the public domain.
That's a given. It's life of the author + 75 years, IIRC. The irony is that Disney, one of the prime backers of each new extension, wouldn't have been able to make a lot of their classic movies if current copyright terms had been in effect at the time, like Jungle Book. And the neat factoid that every content industry, with the exception of software, was itself founded on piracy [wired.com]. For example, Hollywood didn't just settle in California for the nice weather - studios set up shop on the west coast to avoid having to make patent payments on cameras to Thomas Edison.
Content industries don't have a problem with violations of the law - they have a problem when the violations of the law don't make them money.