fitaly – one fingered keyboard. cool. actually, most to all of today’s slashdot articles are good.
going through some design sites again, and found some cool stuff. designgraphik has some pretty neat flash. i especially like gmunk vs epyt (js popup).
while on the design note: when design doesn’t communicate…
the text is illegible, but the layout is really nice (caveat: it is iced, looks like 800×600+ only). pixel : industries
note to self, next time make sure ext. process listeners are working before runing intermedia scripts. good lord that was a pain in the ass.
to read: WWW Collaboration Projects
well put: I’m certainly not the first to point out that in a “post copyright” world, it will be the act of creation, and not the product of it, that will bring one rewards. It’s an old tradition, going back through the Grateful Dead and their bootleggers and even, say, Shakespeare and his plays — he didn’t make his fortune off the scripts, but the performances. Everything old is new again…
stanford poynter project has some studies for how people read online. they only had 67 subjects that they studied, but i find this interesting, “They still don’t like customized news much, for the same reason as before: they might miss “something important.”
someone has to make a stand against the dangerous encroachment of unfair, corporate friendly, copyright restrictions (earlier), and it might as well be napster. the point by point rebuttal offered to me, seems excellent. it points out both the hipocracy of the industry’s claims that mp3 is damaging it’s interests (it’s not, but the record industry wants to control digital distribution as it has w/ dead media)
For example, Sony Corporation of America, which owns Plaintiff Sony Music Entertainment, markets a portable listening device called the VAIO Music Clip that plays MP3 files, regardless of whether the files were made with the authorization of the copyright holders. While Sony Music now claims that Napster is harming its bottom line, Sony Electronics is seeking to profit from the vast number of MP3s currently available on the Internet. Indeed, Sony’s advertising encourages its customers to “Log-on and download ATRAC3, MP3 or WAV files from your favorite music web sites.”(6) Further, as the brief shows, the Plaintiffs simply did not believe that MP3s hurt their CD sales.
As discussed above, Plaintiffs have encouraged Internet users to download MP3 files from their affiliated websites; to encode Plaintiffs’ works to MP3 format using encoding software; and to obtain MP3s from the Internet for use in digital players.(7) Plaintiffs have expressed to the public that individuals will not be sued for obtaining MP3 copies of Plaintiffs’ works from online sites.(8) Napster’s brief argues that, as a matter of law, “by encouraging the creation and copying of MP3 files and by making such public statements, Plaintiffs have impliedly licensed such conduct, and have waived the right to sue for it.(9)
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Finally, no injunction can issue because to do so would irrevocably alter the status quo, result in permanent injury to Napster, and ultimately not benefit Plaintiffs. The law is clear that if Napster can show that Plaintiffs have either suffered no injury or that the injury is de minimis, no injunction can issue.
Five independent studies have all confirmed Napster’s substantial positive effect on music purchases and a sixth finds no significant reduction in CD purchases. That broad body of consensus is powerful market proof that Napster’s only present effect on Plaintiffs has been strongly beneficial as users sample music and buy more. Far from blocking Plaintiffs’ entry into the digital download market, Napster’s presence is paving the way.(14) Napster is building consumer awareness and acceptance of downloading music, building demand, and providing an inventory of music that is playable by the new SDMI-compliant players like the Rio and Sony Vaio, which play both MP3 and other files in secured formats.(15) This inventory is necessary to generate consumer desire to purchase these players, and consumers must, in turn, own such players to play (and buy) digital downloads.(16) The real data show that freely available music is seeding the market. Moreover, since, pending trial, the market for CDs ($14 billion in the United States) dwarfs the market for digital downloads,(17) even a minimal uptick in CD buying due to sampling would offset any loss of download revenues.
tons more info, including the aforementioned studies for those so inclined at the napster press room.
i didn’t realize that there was a w3c micropayments working group. interesting. posts like this remind me why i need to write my own cms.
what’s interesting about the princess mononoke dvd hubbub is a point that bill hunt touches on, but doesn’t really hit upon. he says that there’s an uproar on how the dvd won’t have the original soundtrack, which no one would expect w/ a vhs tape, but would rather simply buy the import for, but fails to mention that because of dvd’s region encoding, it’s way harder to purchase and play an import dvd than a vhs. so, really, fans should be demanding more from buena vista because they, the movie studios decided that region encoding would be such a great idea in the first place.