 qotd: heinlein
An oldie but a goodie. This one never goes out of style.
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest.
This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit. That is all.
-- Robert A. Heinlein ("Life-Line")
Essay: The Bystander's Tale Now, This: The Bystander's Tale, my account of RLJA's birth and my second long essay posted this week. I think I've filled up my writing quota for a few months now.
...you should understand that while Laura and John had taken childbirth classes, and while Lyn had read plenty of books on the subject of labor & delivery, I had not...
Are 70% of 12-18 year olds copyright violators? Does this statistic sound even remotely plausible to you?
RIAA: Stickering Program Weakened By Downloading [Billboard]
...RIAA chairman/CEO Hilary Rosen told lawmakers yesterday (Oct. 1) that the industry's parental-advisory labeling program is being undermined by massive downloading of unauthorized music files from peer-to-peer networks...
Rosen quoted recent studies showing that 70% of 12- to 18-year-olds use P2P services, and that age group is 3.5 times more likely to go to a P2P site than to a record store.
Maybe, maybe 70% of U.S. 12- to 18-year-olds with computers connecting to the Internet use P2P (though even that sounds ridiculously high to me), but surely they don't mean all 12-18s, even if you assume they only mean the U.S.? (How many households have Net access now, anyway?) Or am I just out of touch with today's youth?
I'd like a more specific cite of a study before I even begin to credit Ms. Rosen (who clearly has incentive to exaggerate). Sloppy reporting by Billboard if they left out specifics that she provided.
...
By the way, check out the buttons on their page for something called "RightsLink", a way to automatedly order reprint permissions. On a whim I asked it how much it would cost to republish the entire four-paragraph article on the internet for an audience of, say, 200. Five hundred dollars, ladies and gentlemen! Uh huh. (Interestingly, a reprint in a newspaper with a circulation of 200 costs half as much.)
Wonder what they think they're owed for me excerpting two sentences with attribution and a link to their site so they can get their ad impressions. I call that fair use.
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Thursday, 3 October 2002
