Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on August 02, 2003 01:00 AM
Lobbying? Sure. But the first step for geeks is to educate yourselves about what is or is not currently permissible. Exactly what are you lobbying for?
One thing you will want to lobby for is to maintain your existing rights. You have every right to make a copy into another format. You have every right to share on a limited scale. You have every right to do just about anything you want with the content which you BOUGHT, so long as you don't significantly commercially harm the content providers.
So the first step is to stop being scared little weasels afraid you will be prosecuted for transforming a<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.wav file into an mp3 file. Grow up already, okay?
Now, if you want to argue that you should also be able to share files on a massive scale over the Internet, even if it does hurt commercial interests, and that it's too bad for those commercial interests that technology has come along which made file sharing easy and reduced the value of their content dramatically<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... that sharing files is generally a GOOD THING and provides a social and economic benefit, well, fine, go ahead, I and 60 million other people agree with you, but recognize in that circumstance you are lobbying for a new right which currently doesn't exist under (US) law.
But please, please, please, don't get so caught up in the RIAA/MPAA propaganda that you're out there being afraid that you don't currently have rights which you already have. Yes, the RIAAs and MPAAs are trying to take those existing rights of yours away, so by all means fight against that. But one of the ways of fighting it is not to succumb to the propaganda and assume you don't now have those rights - you do! So keep exercising those rights and don't retreat. If you want to listen to a CD in a car, OF COURSE YOU LEGALLY CAN! Geez...
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60 Million Kazaa fans can't be wrong
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on August 02, 2003 01:00 AMOne thing you will want to lobby for is to maintain your existing rights. You have every right to make a copy into another format. You have every right to share on a limited scale. You have every right to do just about anything you want with the content which you BOUGHT, so long as you don't significantly commercially harm the content providers.
So the first step is to stop being scared little weasels afraid you will be prosecuted for transforming a<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.wav file into an mp3 file. Grow up already, okay?
Now, if you want to argue that you should also be able to share files on a massive scale over the Internet, even if it does hurt commercial interests, and that it's too bad for those commercial interests that technology has come along which made file sharing easy and reduced the value of their content dramatically<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... that sharing files is generally a GOOD THING and provides a social and economic benefit, well, fine, go ahead, I and 60 million other people agree with you, but recognize in that circumstance you are lobbying for a new right which currently doesn't exist under (US) law.
But please, please, please, don't get so caught up in the RIAA/MPAA propaganda that you're out there being afraid that you don't currently have rights which you already have. Yes, the RIAAs and MPAAs are trying to take those existing rights of yours away, so by all means fight against that. But one of the ways of fighting it is not to succumb to the propaganda and assume you don't now have those rights - you do! So keep exercising those rights and don't retreat. If you want to listen to a CD in a car, OF COURSE YOU LEGALLY CAN! Geez...
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