--- date: "2000-05-15T13:09:00Z" title: Witchhunts, Lawyers, and the RIAA... Oh My! --- Well, I've been working on a bunch of small stuff. I wrote a quick bookmark wrapper for feh called cam, you can probably find more info over on <a href="http://www.linuxbrit.co.uk/">Tom Gilbert's</a> (aka gilbertt on #e) page. Oh yeah, I've also been reading <a href="http://www.kuro5hin.org">Kuro5hin</a> a lot lately; they're kinda like Slashdot, only smaller and easier to digest (ie less stupid people). Oh yeah, I wrote a neat little auto-refresh JavaScript so raster's web cams would updated without a page refresh. Check it out on <a href="http://www.rasterman.com">raster's page</a>. <br /><br /> I found an <a href="http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory&sid=2000/5/13/222627/304"> interesting article</a> that seems to ahve been lost in the all the RIAA vs. Napster noise. Hey, if you're one of the <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,36290,00.html">300,000 people who were banned from Napster</a>, don't let it get you down. You can always <a href="http://www.paylars.com">pay Lars</a>, <a href="http://www.newgrounds.com/assassin/metallica/index.html"> assasinate Metallica</a>, or just <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,36290,00.html">keep using Napster anyway</a>. I prefer the latter; the <a href="http://www.riaa.org">RIAA</a> really overprices CDs (<a href="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/05/10/1246256&cid=304">here </a> is an excellent Slashdot post justifying my position). Either way, this whole thing is silly; the RIAA and their lawyers will eventually put Napster down. Unfortunately, they're fighting a losing battle: <a href="http://www.bigredh.com/">Hotline</a> (and the unofficial <a href="http://apps.freshmeat.net/homepage/947382039/">Linux client</a>), FTP, and <a href="http://www.icq.com">ICQ</a> are here to stay, and peer-to-peer search solutions are on the way (check out <a href="http://gnutella.wego.com/go/wego.group.group?groupId=116705">Gnutella</a>, <a href="http://freenet.sourceforge.net/">Freenet</a>, and <a href="http://opennap.sourceforge.net/">OpenNAP</a> if you're interested). And before I get a bunch of junk mail, this is __not__ about <b>piracy</b>: <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=piracy">piracy is theft, rape, and murder on the high seas</a>, not exchanging computer data (I'll reserve the discussion about the effect of mass marketing memes effecting the connotation and eventually the denotation -- as witnessed by the second definition under the first result returned by that link -- for another day). I plan on writing a paper about this soon (I need to do somehting to the <a href="/bits/">Bits</a> page or remove it from my navigation bar), but the gist of the situation is this: people have been exchanging music via cassette tapes for almost 20 years with little or no intervention from the RIAA (ie they have _not_ sued the makers of high-speed CD-to-cassette dubbing equipment), yet they prop up <a href="http://www.encycmet.com/">a cookie-cutter band with a lot of mind-share due to a musical fad from over 15 years ago</a> and use them to attack <a href="http://www.napster.com">a method of sharing music</a> which is statistically insignificant when compared against to the method which the RIAA is implicitly condoning. Why? Because greed is a powerful motivator, the public doesn't really understand what's going on, and big corporations don't like technological innovations fucking with their distribution channels. Whew, this news post is getting a bit hefty, so I'll stop there. <br /><br /> <a href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/06/1512219&mode=nested"> This Slashdot article</a> is a pretty funny discussion about Computer Support people: I like <a href="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/05/06/1512219&cid=14"> this comment</a>, but <a href="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/05/06/1512219&cid=44"> this one</a> takes the cake. In case anyone is interested, I added a <a href="/screenshots/">Screenshots</a> page, and I plan on adding a new shot every week or so. Speaking of keeping things up to date, the <a href="/projects/">Projects</a> page is due up for an overhaul. I have a ton of new goodies to add, and none of my active projects are currently up. Basically, I've been spending all my time <a href="http://mindprod.com/unmain.html">writing code</a>, and playing <a href="http://www.quake3arena.com">Quake 3 Arena</a>.