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---
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>.
|
