Month: April 2009

Problem is that if I were to download, say, a digital version of something I already own on vinyl I’d be breaking the law. You have to buy it again and again, which is great for the Beatles. A lot of indie groups just want to be heard and are’t that bothered by this. It’s the big money people that are hurting. In essence they pay the artists the equivalent of minimum wage and keep the rest of the £15 or whatever you pay for themselves. The existing copyright law has been bent (as in it used to only extend for a few years and is now something insane like 100) to keep these jokers rich over many years. If you even hum a tune you’re breaking the law (seriously).

Also, some people put up things that are extremely rare and hard to find and the record companies just sit on them because they can’t make any money so they do the “dog in the manger” thing and prevent anyone from listening to them.

Plus, there are a lot of books from the 50’s and 60’s that are out of print and are decaying because of acid in the paper – they will never be read by anyone and whatever history they may represent (e.g. early SF) will be lost.

It’s not as simple as you think. The laws were constantly redrafted over the last 30 years every time these monopolists looked like losing their grip on control. I’m not a freetard, but don’t like monopolists keeping my history away from me, either – no-one loves them and they are stupid and greedy.

Have a google for Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture – long read but very interesting.

comment here

When I worked for (a well known database company) one of the consultants told me the following story about a bank in the US:

They did some data mining and customer profiling to identify who was “expensive”, as in they complained a lot and had basic accounts that did’t make a lot of money, i.e. the cost more to serve than you were ever going to make from them.

As per the terms of service these customers were put into “special” accounts that reflected the real cost of serving them.

When they complained (surprise) they were given application forms for the bank’s main competitor!

The other bank did’t understand what was going in until most of these customers had left and they had to increase the size of their call centre to deal with the load.

Call me cynical, but maybe if you can’t make any money let people leave and make it your competitors’ problem?

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I could get arrested if I leave my power hungry iPhone charging and forget to pick it up?

Plus integrating credit cards and ID cards is being thought of at the moment too.

In Franco’s Spain you had to show ID when you bought anything. I once heard an ex-policeperson say that we should emulate a fascist state and do the same here. It’s already arrived in all but name. Maybe buy a SIM from a car boot sale?

Have a read of Doctorow’s Little Brother, particularly the bit about data mining false positives. You need a data mining technique that is as reliable as the thing you are trying to find, or you will waste a huge amount of time and resources chasing the innocent. No, wait …

Don’t they do that already?

I left this comment in response to some naive comments here (but they deleted it for some reason):

 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/06/dna_deletion/comments/

“My utterly unique fingerprint will be on a database that police can use to exclude me from suspicio”

… and all the members of your family?

… and get you a £60 fine for that fag end you dropped?

… deport you when a Nazi group gets in power and decides it does’t like your racial background?

… and, of course, the old false positive. One in a hundred thousand means there are (60m/100k) 600 people that might have the same match (not counting shared genes with the family). The more non-“perps” in the DB, the greater the likelihood.

and don’t forget they quite often have to “multiply” the DNA to get a usable sample, very easy to “multiply” contamination too.

Plus, personally, I’m just sick to death of the useless gits wasting tons of my money on crap like this and ID cards. SORT OUT THE FUCKING ECONOMY and OBEY INTERNATIONAL LAW – IT’S WRITTEN THAT WAY FOR A REASON, or do we have to another genocide like world war II before they finally understand that no-one cares if they can be trusted, it’s more that can unknown the people in the future can be trusted? Not that we trust them anyway.

Not hard, eh?