Particularly when the person using them does not understand the underlying sport.
Case in point, Greg Sandoval, who in writing about a German court order banning an ISP from providing bandwidth, titles the article, ” Studios score another TKO against Pirate Bay,” in discussing the short-lived offline period.
Less than 12 hours later Pirate Bay was back on line.
I’m not sure if Mr. Sandoval wrote the headline, or if someone else did, but whoever it was, they have no f%$#ing clue as to the sport of boxing, nor what a TKO is.
TKO stands for “Technical Knock Out,” and when it occurs, it’s game over, and someone has lost:
A knockout (also referred to as a K.O.) is a winning criterion in several full-contact combat sports, such as boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, mixed martial arts, Karate and others sports involving striking. A knockout is usually awarded when one participant is unable to rise from the canvas within a specified period of time, typically because of fatigue, injury (serious or temporarily incapacitating, e.g. a bleeding cut above the eye can blind a fighter), loss of balance, or unconsciousness; that is, the person may literally be knocked out. A technical knockout (also referred to as a T.K.O.) is often declared when the referee or other judges (such as official ring physician, the fighter, or the fighter’s cornermen) decide that a fighter cannot continue the match, even though he did not fail the count, or, in many regions, a fighter has been knocked down three times in one round.[1] British records refer to TKOs as either “retired”, if the fighter refuses to continue, or “R.S.F.”, for Referee Stopped Fight. In amateur boxing, a knockout is scored as “RSC,” for Referee Stopped Contest. A technical knockout (“Outclassed”) can also be declared if a fighter is ahead by 15 points in a bout.
If you want to use a sports analogy, this is something like a yellow card. It’s inconvenient, and a warning, but the game is still on.
I was thinking about putting up the Youtube (link), but by the time most of my readers saw this, it would be taken down.
There should be penalties for misusing takedown notices, something statutory, on an escalating scale, since this is only 3:50 of a movie, and a parody, and as such it should be fair use.
I am not suggesting that Youtube be sued, but I am suggesting that Constantin Film AG is breaking the law, and should be subject to sanctions, by issuing clearly illegal take-down notices.
In an interesting irony, this may be the best Hitler Parody ever.
It is generally true that bad people push the law until it breaks, and the folks at Myriad Genetics are a truly nasty bit of work.
Basically, they discovered the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, which predispose one to breast cancer, and had received a patent on the genes, and offered a not particularly good and very expensive test for the genes, and using their government granted monopoly, they were prohibiting any and all competing tests or research on better tests for these genes.
The VC’s are wringing their hands, because patent protection helps with their pump and dump schemes, but development has been continuing apace on genes that are not covered by these patents:
Some biotechnology investors and executives say that lack of patent protection for DNA could diminish investment and remove incentives to develop tests. That could slow the move toward so-called personalized medicine, in which genetic tests are used to determine which drugs are best for which patients.
James P. Evans, a professor of genetics at the University of North Carolina, said that would not necessarily be the case. There is thriving competition in areas like testing for mutations that cause cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease, even though no company has exclusivity.
“It’s quite demonstrable that in the diagnostic area, one does not need gene patents in order to see robust development of these tests,” he said.
Note that this does not prohibit patenting the tests, it just prohibits patenting the genes.
This is a good ruling: the patenting of genes, or for that matter the patents of hedging techniques, as is the case in Bilski, which the Supreme Court will heard arguments for in November.
IP law is, at its core, public interest law (it’s in the constitution), and patents on business methods, species, and genes, do not serve the public interest
*This is what got us that Mercedes ad where they say that they have a patent on crumple zones, but “Never enforced the Patent”. They never enforced the patent, because it is not recognized anywhere else in the world.† †I believe Germany changed their patent laws at some point in the 1970s.‡ ‡I offer the caveat that these comments in the footnotes regarding the Mercedes patent are recollections of a conversation over a decade ago vague 20+ year old memories though, so YMMV, though a Google search does have people who recall the ad.
The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), a private group which is the demon spawn of the RIAA, the MPAA, and other evil organizations referred to by their acronyms, has submitted recommendations to the State Department for countries to be placed on a watch list for ineffective protection of IP, a so called “Special 301” list, and one of their criteria is now encouraging the use of open source software:
I am neither surprised nor upset by the addition of Costa Rica to the list, to be fair our enforcement is atrocious. Similarly, I am not surprised by most of the other recommendations, which seems like a rehash of past offenders. What I found rather surprising is that the IIPA seems to be using their Special 301 submission to attack open source software. According to Digital Copyright Canada, several countries are being included in the Special 301 watchlist because they have open source-friendly policies, or in their words, the IIPA would rather people “pirate” than switch to legal competitors.
This is quite a claim, so I have been going through the reports to verify it myself. The country reports for Brazil, India, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand certainly contain some comments about open source software. Particularly, the IIPA seems to be concerned that these countries have enacted or are in the process of enacting legislation that will make it obligatory for public entities to choose open source software over its proprietary counterparts. I have to admit that I somewhat share the IIPA’s concerns in this regard. I have never believed in open source procurement legislation, I think that forcing institutions to use a specific technical solution is wrong. Open source is an organic, bottom-up movement, and making it state policy seems not only counter-productive, but contrary to the very same principles of openness. Open source should not be imposed, it should win on its own merits.
Here is what the IIPA says:
“While IIPA has no issue with one of the stated goals of the circular, namely, “reducing software copyright violation,” the Indonesian government’s policy as indicated in the circular letter instead simply weakens the software industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness by creating an artificial preference for companies offering open source software and related services, even as it denies many legitimate companies access to the government market. Rather than fostering a system that will allow users to benefit from the best solution available in the market, irrespective of the development model, it encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations. As such, it fails to build respect for intellectual property rights and also limits the ability of government or public-sector customers (e.g., State-owned enterprise) to choose the best solutions to meet the needs of their organizations and the Indonesian people. It also amounts to a significant market access barrier for the software industry.”
Let’s see, the countries are saying that as a matter of policy, free and open is cheaper, and reduces the risks of violation of IP rules, which could result in US sanctions, so as a matter of policy, wherever possible, go with software that carries a “public license.”
According to the IIPA, that’s the same as piracy.
There is no right for private firms to demand that anyone buy their products, particularly not sovereign governments.
Startup company American Dynamics Flight Systems has been developing a UAV to address the needs of the various services for high speed cargo UAVS most notably the Marine Corps VTOL Group IV Program and Medium Programs, the USAF Unmanned Cargo VTOL UAV Program, and the US Coast Guard’s VTOL UAV Program.
All of these programs are requiring fairly high speeds, a cruise at least 250 kts, which pretty much rules out a conventional helicopters which tend to cruise at less than 175 kts.
The solution that was adopted on the V-22 is a tilt rotor, where the propellers are pivoted from horizontal to vertical in the transition from horizontal flight to vertical takeoffs and landings.
The issue with a tilt rotor system is that, even more than in a conventional helicopter, managing the transition from horizontal to vertical flight can become difficult and complex.
In the V-22, this is handled with a cyclic type control system that mirrors the swash plate type setups that exist on helicopters.
While this is obviously a known quantity in vertical lift mode, issues in transition to wing-borne flight had to be resolved before the tilt-rotor could become viable, there is a cost in complexity, cost, and reliability in using a complex prop assembly for such a system.
ADF Concept
Moves in pitch and yaw
The solution for the AD-1 is different. A ducted fan which is controllable in pitch and yaw, but where the pitch of the fan is fixed is used, the High Torque Aerial Lift (HTAL).
Pitch is obviously a given in any tilt rotor, which theoretically makes the addition of yaw actuators for the propulsors less complex, and hence lighter, cheaper, and more reliable than going with a full up cyclic control system.
Fixed Aluminum Prop
This sort of control system has been used in the past, at the dawn of the development of helicopters, where the use of tilting rotor hub, rather than a swash plate style cyclic was, for example, used by Raúl Pateras Pescara used this on his early helicopters in the 1920s, where he pitched the hub forward to allow for forward flight without the need for a separate propeller to provide lateral thrust.
The application to a tilt-rotor aircraft, and the use of rotor hub in yaw, appear to be unique, and a patent is pending.
Propulsor shroud panel
Additionally, the use of a shrouded propulsor provides for greater thrust/lift for a given disk area, by acting as a nozzle to accelerate flow.
The shrouds themselves have composite skins. The panel shown is well under 10 pounds.
The use of a shrouded prop should also simplify deck handling, since it mitigates against the possibility of someone walking into a moving prop, and there are added efficiencies because the down wash in vertical lift mode does not impinge on the wing.
All moving ruddervators
It should be noted that the aircraft has been designed from the outset to be low cost, and so notwithstanding its appearance, it is not designed to be a low-observable (“stealth”) airframe.
The top mounted inlet is intended to minimize the possibility of FOD damage to the engine, the all moving ruddervators were developed after it was determined that a rear moving flap on a conventional rudder fin would not provide sufficient control authority, and the wing configuration is designed to minimize pitch changes during transition from vertical to horizontal flight.
Wind tunnel model
AD1 Development
ADF is relying heavily on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to determine the characteristics of the, and according to Paul Vasilescu, VP of Engineering, their experiences at the Paul Vasilescu Glen L. Martin wind tunnel at the University of Maryland have been closer to the calculated predictions than any prior systems tested at the facility.
The simulations are run on 64 bit Linux rack mount systems, with some of the more complex simulations, which are being modeled in 6 degrees of freedom.
Instrumented Test Rig
The propulsors have been modeled, both in full size, and at the reduced size in which they will be tested in the wind tunnel, which should serve to further validate the mathematical modeling.
It is anticipated that the propulsors will be tested in full scale on an “iron bird” instrumented test rig at Aberdeen Proving Ground, where ADFS hopes to, “Confirm CFD performance data for hover in ground effect (HIGE) and hover out of ground effect (HOGE),” later this year, using a T53 turboshaft, used on the original UH-1 models, but flight models will use the T700, which is currently in use on the AH-64 and UH-60.
The mechanical design is done in SolidWorks®, which I’ve used extensively, and should be more than capable of generated the required geometries, though it’s associated FEA package, Cosmos®, is intended for less intensive analysis.
AD-1 Manufacturing Capabilities
Applied Dynamics Flight Systems has a 14,700 square foot manufacturing facility at the Jessup headquarters with 3 & 4 axis CNC mills, and anticipates being able to assemble 12 units a year upon receipt of a contract.
Manufacturing workshare
Paths not taken
At this point, the company does not believe that there is a reasonable market for civilian applications for UAVS, the FAA has not yet come up with a coherent regulatory environment, and the technology to allow UAVs to operate in civilian airspace, so called “sense and avoid” technology, is immature.
They believe the situation to be rather similar in terms of ambulance applications on the battle field, an area where the Israeli firm Urban Aeronautics’ similarly sized Air Mule is attempting to carve out a niche, there are serious issues with landing aircraft into unprepared areas, as many of the cues that a pilot has in a cockpit are lost on a remote display, and so additional technology needs to be developed in terms of automated imaging and auto-landing systems before one can expect a UAV
I originally wrote about this in May, and my position then is what it is now, that you patent inventions, not discoveries, and that the counter argument, “discovering is hard work,” is a load of crap.
The case law is clear that, “a product of nature is unpatentable unless it is sufficiently different to become a patentable ‘composition of matter.'”
Federal court hearings continued Tuesday on a lawsuit that could transform biotechnology in the United States by eliminating gene patents.
The case hinges around the claims of Utah-based Myriad Genetics on BRCA1 and BRCA2, a pair of genes closely linked to breast and ovarian cancer. Myriad “owns” the genes, and says its patents make it possible to profit on diagnostic tests. The company argues that if you remove the patents, the tests — indeed, commercial biotechnology as we know it — will vanish.
Myriad is, from the perspective of an engineer, not a patent attorney, dammit,* full of crap.
Their tests for the gene are still protected, it’s just that alternative, and better test methods for the gene that they discovered will be able to compete.
Fundamentally, IP law is about the public good, as it says in the Constitution, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries,” [where “discoveries” means “invention”, hence the reference to “inventors”, it gets complex],
My guess is that if Myriad had been a bit less hard assed about their patents, they have absolutely refused to license to anyone for any purpose, this case would probably have never come up.
As it stands now, they are literally killing people, and this makes them a thoroughly unsympathetic defendant.
I can’t imagine this not ending up at the Supreme Court though.
This applies to both stories at the Associated Press, as well as stories at other venues that carry an AP byline.
It’s not absolute: If I cannot find another source anywhere, and the story is IMNSHO important, I will link, with a preference for not linking directly to the AP servers.
I have spiked comment based on the the fact that I could not find another source on a number of occasions, but generally, Google News has managed to bail me out.
Through much of last year, the Associated Press threw public barbs and veiled threats at Google, while in private it was renegotiating its licensing agreement with Google News. That agreement is believed to be up for renewal at the end of this month, yet no new AP stories have appeared directly on Google News since December 23, 2009. (AP stories licensed by other news sites such as ABC News or the New York Times do continue to appear, however). So what’s going on here? Is that the end of AP stories on Google News?
I’ve been doing some sniffing around, and it is not the AP that is withholding its content. This conclusion is also supported by the fact that older AP content from before Christmas continues to be available on Google News. If the AP were no longer licensing its articles to Google, those older articles likely would also no longer be available. (The AP has talked about withholding news from certain licensees for a set period of time, but those were measured in minutes and hours, not weeks, and it would operate on a rolling basis. The AP stories on Google News just stop on December 23).
The pucker factor at the Associated Press offices right now must be extreme.
I tend to see it as a public interest law (i.e to promote the progress of science and useful arts) at its core, and not property law, there are still people who should be busted for violating the exclusive licensing agreements associated with this.
Newspaper editors and reporters across the state are noticing a new trend: their local coverage is being copied daily by the Hartford Courant.
In most cases The Courant has been attributing the reporting to the newspapers being copied, which include the Journal Inquirer, The Bristol Press, The Herald of New Britain, the Register-Citizen of Torrington, and the Waterbury Republican-American.
In some cases The Courant appears to have lifted information from the other papers in its entirety without any attribution. But either way, editors say, the Courant is using for free and making money from a product other papers pay to produce, and they want it to stop.
It appears that someone at the Courant has taken it to a high enough level that the Journal Inquirer has sued them for plagiarism, which means that the Courant is not taking stories and writing them up, but taking stories and pasting them up.
If they had been accused of just taking the stories, it would be under a separate bit of case law, it involved Hearst and wire service stories during WWI, but I could not Google it, so this is unbelievably lame.
This is big. Basically, the Supreme Court is reviewing a patent on a business method, specifically a way to hedge against inclement weather (I sh$# you not, someone patented betting on a cloudy day), and it could effect the future of much genetic and software algorithm patents, which, after all, are more discoveries than inventions.
I am with the anti-patent side, whose basic argument is here:
Eben Moglen, director of the Software Freedom Law Centre is emphatic that business process patents should never have been allowed in the first place. Patent law, he says, cannot award ownership of facts of nature, or mere mental activities, or algorithms because the Supreme Court has been unambiguous on that point for more than 150 years. However, for the last 20 years, the USPTO and its supervising appellate court have been liberal with patents for inventions consisting of software or business methods enabled by software.
But I would actually go further: While I understand the need to update patent law to apply to new technologies, I believe that the standard should be a clear showing that a lack of significant innovation is resulting from the lack of protection.
After all, the basic reason for IP, Patent and Copyright specifically is to encourage innovation by limiting the rights of other people to use that expression or invention*, as it says in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States:
The Congress shall have power to …..
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
(emphasis mine)
It’s about public benefit, not property rights: a temporary exclusive license is granted to an individual in order to help society as a whole.
While some solutions have been offered to deal with this problem, most notably crowd sourcing patent review, the real solution is to go back to where we were in 1985, when neither genes, species, nor software algorithms were patentable. We got innovations in those areas without those protections.
It should be noted that the Supreme Court only takes the cases that it wants to, and lately when it takes up patent cases, it does so to slap down the USPTO and/or the Federal Patent Court, both of whom tend to be like a man with only a hammer, and see everything like a nail.
Huge legal expenses and 13 years later, the two men behind the case, Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw, had their day in the U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 9. Most legal experts though, agreed that the duo had no chance of victory. “I don’t think anyone other than Bilski thinks that Bilski deserves a patent,” says Mark Lemley, a professor of law at Stanford University. (See the 50 best inventions of 2009.)
The bench seemed to reflect this view, and several Justices suggested somewhat humorously that if the Bilski argument were to proceed, a number of other ludicrous patents could be issued. Justice Antonin Scalia asked if under Bilski’s argument, methods of horse-training could be patented, while the court’s newest member, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, asked if a “method of speed-dating” was patentable.
The interesting thing here is that most of the business community, excluding patent trolls and their close relatives, realize that the current system is completely out of control, which is obvious when the Wall Street Journal has an OP/ED that describes the case as, “The Supreme Court v. Patent Absurdity“.
*Trademark protection is really about protecting the consumer by ensuring that what they buy is what they thought that they were buying.
An even more striking thing, perhaps, emerges in this second graph, namely that revenues accrued by artists themselves have in fact risen over the past 5 years, despite the fall in record sales. (All the blue bars in the chart above represent revenues that go directly to artists. As you can see, the ‘blue total’ has risen noticeably.) This is mostly because of live revenues, but also because of the growing amount collected by the PRS on behalf of artists, which accounts for a much bigger chunk of industry revenues than most people realise.
The question about IP is whether it promotes, “the progress of science and the useful arts,” and it appears here that the Jihad by the record industry against file sharers does not.
Without the competition of easy file sharing, they would just take more from the artists, which would, in classic economics anyway, decrease the incentives for artists to produce music.
The file sharing campaigns are about keeping record executives’ worthless half brothers on the payroll.
He was an overpriced rookie flameout with the brain of a turnip* then, and he’s an overpriced rookie flameout with the brain of a turnip* now.
So, big pharma is trying to get a bill through Congress for draconian exclusivity periods for so called “biologics” drugs. It’s 12 years, but with minor changes, snipping a hydroxyl, or adding a time released variant, they could drug companies could extend their government granted monopolies virtually infinitely. (also here, both from Jane Hamshire)
Well, in response to Jane’s push against these provisions, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) turned on their lobbyists, and wrote statements that 42 Congressmen read into the record, almost verbatim.
The kicker is that there were two versions of their talking points, a Republican version and a Democratic version, so depending on party, they were using different cheat sheets….Except, of course for Heath Shuler (DINO-Loser Land), who somehow or other managed to use the Republican version of the talking points.
As a Washington Redskin’s fan, this wanker has been bedeviling me since 1994…..Please, make it stop!!!
Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch after the break.
Publishers put their content on the Web because they want it to be found. Very few choose not to include their material in Google News and Web search. But if they tell us not to include it, we don’t.
In leaving this a he said/she said argument, Mr. Sandoval is being dishonest.
Unlike Murdoch, whose statements (earlier post) might be an artifact of his being an ignorant old fart who might not understand the following:
All they have to do is go to the Web site’s robots.txt file and type this:
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /
Mr. Sandoval works for a news organization dedicated to covering the tech beat.
At a minimum, he has an obligation to report that Murdoch does not know what he is talking about, though it should be noted that these comments are coming from all levels at Newscorp, and so a real journalist would show that it is clear that Murdoch is looking for is a legislative framework to both force Google (and search engines generally) to both carry his content, and pay to fulfill this requirement.
In relegating this to the final two paragraphs under “Google responds”, he somehow implies that there is a real issue here, as opposed to the truth, that Murdoch and Newscorp are basically Astroturfing for must carry/must pay legislation.
Honestly, I think that Crocs have a better claim to the name, given that the Caymans (the reptile is a caiman) are an island where one walks on the beach, but that’s irrelevant.
The real question is whether there is any possibility of confusion between a 2,954 lb sports car, and a 5 oz shoe.
The purpose of a trademark is not to give a company exclusive use of a name, but to avoid consumer confusion, and as best as I can tell the shoes predate the car anyway (see comments here), which would strongly imply that Crocs has the advantage such as it is.
In any case, Porsche got an injunction against the shoes in Germany, but Germany has weird IP law.*
*This is what got us that Mercedes ad where they say that they have a patent on crumple zones, but “Never enforced the Patent”. They never enforced the patent, because it is not recognized anywhere else in the world.†
†I believe Germany changed their patent laws at some point in the 1970s.‡
‡I offer the caveat that these comments in the footnotes regarding the Mercedes patent are recollections of a conversation over a decade ago vague 20+ year old memories though, so YMMV, though a Google search does have people who recall the ad.
Well, this was likely to happen when Barack Obama and His Stupid Minions™ said that “national security” required that the negotiations be conducted in the deepest secrecy.
Here are the bullet points:
ISPs would be required to aggressively and intrusively troll their user’s data for evidence of copyright violations.
ISPs would have to cut users off without any sort of judicial proceeding.
Breaking anti-circumvention technology for a legal purpose becomes illegal.
Unfortunately, since Hollywood gives to Republican, you can be sure that the Dems in Congress will be cool with letting the folks who gave us Gigli determining whether or not one has a right to be on the Internet.
You’ve seen it, the various mash-ups that have been done with the German movie Downfall (Der Untergang), where people take a rant by Hitler, as played by Bruno Ganz, and subtitle it, so it appears that he is ranting about XBox games, losing a parking space, becoming a meme, or Super Bowl Results.
Well, it now appears that Constantin Film Produktion GmbH is hitting Youtube with a flurry of DMCA takedown demands. As Brad Templeton of the EFF Notes, this is absurd. The copies do no damage to the producers of the movie, and people are watching this short bit (about 4 minutes) for the subtitles, not the film.
He makes some very good points about just how absurd the hoops that he had to jump through in order to make the film in full accordance of the DMCA, despite the fact that this is clearly fair use.
Go read,
He also gets jiggy with the Hitler rant, only this time, Hitler is assuming the role of a studio executive, not much of a stretch, and trying to lock down the content.
It’s very funny, and contains the classic line, “Have you seen how good that Führerbunker scene is? Bruno Ganz does a great Hitler!”
While I thought, and still think that the AP’s pursuit of Shepard Fairey is bogus (original post is here), it’s become increasingly clear that he’s not telling the truth about his sources to anyone, including his lawyers, who just quit claiming that he had lied to them:
On Friday night, Fairey’s attorneys — led by Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University — said they intend to withdraw from the case and said the artist had misled them by fabricating information and destroying other material.
Fairey admitted that he didn’t use The Associated Press’ photo of Obama seated next to actor George Clooney he originally said his work was based on — which he claimed would have been covered under ”fair use,” the legal claim that copyrighted work can be used without having to pay for it.
Instead he used a picture the news organization has claimed was his source — a solo picture of the future president seemingly closer to the iconic red, white and blue image of Obama, underlined with the caption ”HOPE.” Fairey said that he tried to cover up his error by submitting false images and deleting others.
I’m still a firm believer in an expansive definition of fair use, and I am still inclined to believe that the poster did not cross the line, but I’m also inclined to believe that Fairey is a dishonest self-aggrandizing hack, and that the court will likely spank him for that, and other people will use that decision to attempt to roll back fair use rights.
So, Newscorp Chairman Rupert Murdoch and Tom Curley of USA Today, are whining yet again about how Google News is stealing their “content” by posting links when a search comes up.
Google doesn’t force Web sites to be included in its search listings. The people who run any site can remove it from Google’s results with a few keystrokes. All they have to do is go to the Web site’s robots.txt file and type this:
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /
Poof, the site becomes invisible to Google. Their stories will no longer show up in Google searches. It will be as if they don’t exist.
Of course, that’s not what they really want.
What they really want is a law that:
Forces Google to publish links to their stories.
Forces Google to pay to publish links to their stories.
Because if they don’t get both, then they won’t get traffic and money.
“The Autodesk License is a hodgepodge of terms that, standing alone, support both a transfer of ownership and a mere license,” said the ruling. “Autodesk expressly retains title to the ‘Software and accompanying materials,’ but it has no right to regain possession of the software or the ‘accompanying materials’. Licensees pay a single up-front price for the software. Autodesk can require the destruction of the software, but only as consideration in the later purchase of an upgrade.”
“The court concludes that Wise leads to the conclusion that the transfer of AutoCAD copies via the License is a transfer of ownership,” it said.
People don’t buy albums because they don’t want to buy albums.
In most cases, they never wanted to buy albums, they bought “b-sides” on old 45’s because you had to put something on the other side of the vinyl, and they bought albums because they were offered no other choice, particularly with CD’s where CD “singles” were about 25¢ cheaper than the complete album.
As Greg Sandoval (2nd link) notes:
Perhaps Apple and the labels can come up with content combos that people will find valuable. But the danger here is in trying to force the packages on consumers and possibly alienating them even more, which could send them sailing into new piracy waters.
I will make two points about album sales:
The record companies put out crap, and frequently put forward no-talent photogenic “artists” who can’t even manage one good song per album.
Most of the so-called drop in album sales over the past few years that has the record companies asking for the death penalty for Bit Torrent users is actually more efficient sales…Fewer albums are shipped, because they better model sales, and get fewer returns.
The record companies put out crap, and frequently put forward no-talent photogenic “artists” who can’t even manage one good song per album. (Yes I know, but item 1 bears repeating)
There are a lot of people who have lost a lot of money betting against Steve Jobs, but I don’t see how this is a win….iTunes downloads are about 99¢, so a full album comes to about $12.00, and the record distributors want to bundle up those 12 songs with some liner notes, and go back to charging $19.99 for it.
While I thought, and still think that the