Two Things That Make Me Question Law
If anyone was sick of my football ranting recently, welcome to IT ranting instead. Just read two separate stories and they've both infuriated and confused me.
First up, from Slashdot, Jennifer Pariser, the Head of Litigation at Sony BMG says (in the current Thomas v RIAA trial) that copying music from a CD you have bought to use on another device - like an iPod - is illegal and should be considered theft.
Yes, you read that right, if you rip a CD that you own to your hard-drive or wherever, you have committed a crime in her eyes. Thanks Jennifer, you've made millions of people criminals and brought down the barriers a lot of people had from downloading music illegally - they wanted to stay within the law, but you've decided they're law breakers anyway. Good work. You fucking moron.
Secondly, from The Register, a story about a guy who was importing Genuine Microsoft software from the US and re-selling it in Europe for less than Microsoft was. So Microsoft took him to court and he's been fined for parallel importing and selling at a lower cost than Microsoft were.
Now, I'm guessing he was still making a profit from doing this - otherwise what's the point of doing it? And if he was able to make a profit at the lower price, then just how fixed is the Microsoft official price? Here's a clue. On amazon.com the price of Vista is $320, on amazon.co.uk it's £320. Yet the current exchange rate is $2.04 : £1.
What the fuck is going on here? Who exactly are the criminals in these cases?
posted by silas @ 15:28
2 Comments:
Criminals are the criminals here... and the man of course...
I've got probably 200 cds or maybe more, I lost count a long time ago, all original non-pirated bought from the high street or online equivalents. So what is the point of getting an ipod or mp3 player if in order to listen to MY music, I have to pay for it all over again. Also, supposing you do have to download it, presumably you then still have to copy it from the computer to the mp3 player, since none I know of have internet capability directly in the player.
While I hate to say that casual criminality is on the rise, as a don't give a stuff attitude is becoming endemic, I still maintain that if people feel as though the big companies are robbing them, then they're gonna have no restraint in robbing them back. Especially since you so often see $ prices the same as £prices. Granted most $ prices you see don't include sales tax, whereas in the uk, pretty much every advertised price is the price you actually pay. But still at a 2:1 exchange rate, that is a massive price hike, and unfortuantely there are too many people stupid enough not realise it, but worse there are people who realise it, but pay it anyway.
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