WMG's latest crime against humanity
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Ian Shlasko wrote:
Just a plain old PDF
The PDF of ISO 8601:2004 I bought from the ISO has a watermark -- I could send it around or post it online, but they'd know where it came from. And possibly send the Swiss Army after me. :~
Ha! So the folks over there still haven't learned yet. Last time I was dealing with them, we paid for some standards which were set to 'expire' (become unreadable) after a certain date. The only problem was that in their infinite wisdom the mechanism chosen to render the document unreadable involved using javascript to check the current date, and if it was after a predetermined one, draw a box over the content, effectively hiding it. OOOOPS! What about pdf readers that don't support javascript? :doh: Why the hell wouldn't you use the JavaScript to _remove_ the box if the date was valid. Amateurs!!!:laugh: All you have to do to remove the watermark is play with the items included in the PageContents objects. If the watermark doesn't reside there, it may be a part of the document, that all the pages inherit from. In any case, 20 minutes with your text editor of choice should be well in excess of that which is required to remove said watermark. As an example:
4 0 obj
<< /Type /Page
/Parent 3 0 R
/MediaBox [ 0 0 792 612]
/Contents [ 5 0 R 9 0 R 10 0 R 11 0 R 12 0 R 13 0 R]
/Resources << /Procset 6 0 R /Font << /F1 7 0 R >> >>endobj
This particular page contains 6 objects, being nos 5, 9, 10, 11, 12 & 13. To prevent the display of an item an item on the page, one would simply delete '5 0 R ' or '9 0 R' etc, etc. After isolating the watermark object, you can simply delete it. This will mess with the xref table a bit, so you remove a line from it, change the non-zero number in the line above to one-less than it's current value, and decrement the number following /Size in the trailer.
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That's just stupid. The fact is that the analogy is flawed because you CAN steal a book or a CD without taking the original, but the person stealing it, gets it full benefit without paying for it. That's why some people are retarded enough to not see that they are stealing.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
Christian Graus wrote:
That's why some people are retarded enough to not see that they are stealing.
There's a story i remember from childhood, the gist of which is: a restaurant owner catches a young man hanging around his establishment and asks him what he's up to. The man admits that he can't afford the fancy food, but enjoys the scent. He's dragged before a judge, and charged with theft; the restaurateur argues that he is owed the full cost of the meal, with the man protesting that this would leave him destitute. The punchline comes when the owner is awarded the sound of the coins as payment for the smell of the food... I blame a lot of my problems on the stupid sh*t i read as a kid. :-\
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
"information wants to be free" - whether you like it or not that's the bitter truth.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
The truth is that anything which is in digital format is going to be pirated and will eventually become free because the cost to reproduce it is zero
That much is true, if you approximate storage/bandwidth costs to zero... The problem is that there IS a cost to CREATING these things, both in time and money, and the "free" model doesn't work universally. People need income to survive, and though there are amateurs like me, who write in their spare time and have a day job, there are a lot of others who focus full-time on creation. If all of the profit was stripped out of these things, those people would not be able to survive, financially. In my case (I'm a self-published sci-fi/fantasy author), I've actually considered doing just as you mentioned, releasing the electronic version for free... But as I said, I have a day job, so I'm not depending on my writing for income. In actuality, I'll probably never recoup the money I laid out to print it. Maybe we'll just go back to ye olden days of patronage, where writers, musicians, and artists would just be hired by rich people with too much money to throw around...
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
Ian Shlasko wrote:
The problem is that there IS a cost to CREATING these things, both in time and money
The question is: how much should be paid for that time and money. My day job has fluctuated between writer and dev for the last 30-odd years (except for a sojourn as a carpenter), and I've been very well paid for every stroke of work I've done. The thing is that I don't insist on being paid again and again for the same work, once my initial investment of time and effort has been paid for fairly. Others who do the same kind of creative work as me (although, in the case of the US movie and TV industries, they rarely do it nearly as well) don't feel the same way, and have completely unrealistic desires to keep getting paid, over and over again, for the same eight-hours-a-day. The thing that sparked this discussion (the muppets doing a song that was written by someone else and is in the public domain, so they didn't even write the tune, making it effectively plagiarism) is a classic example of this. How much was that work worth? They stuck their arms in some puppets, messed around for an hour, and then they got paid, and paid well. That's enough. The clip is, in fact, worthless, because no-one will ever be willing to pay for it. The demand for it is for a quick giggle amongst pals, not as a permanent keepsake that will be treasured and watched over and over again, so that is how it should be supplied. On the other hand, people who see it on the net may well be inspired to pay for a muppets compilation DVD, just on the strength of nostalgia from having seen it again, but greedy idiots can't see that; they would rather alienate their customers by treating them as criminals. This only happens in the "arts". Very clever people designed and built your car and your computer, and they got paid for doing so. They don't expect to get paid again, every time you drive your car or boot up -- if they want more money, they create something new; they don't clamp your car or treat you like a criminal for driving it, lending it out, selling it, or giving it away. The ease of replication of digital information adds a new element to the mix, because a duplicate can be no different whatsoever from the original, so different marketing paradigms have to be used to encourage people to buy the original -- e.g. higher quality levels are needed, to make people watch a show when its aired (and therefore see the advertisements), rather than wait a
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Ian Shlasko wrote:
The problem is that there IS a cost to CREATING these things, both in time and money
The question is: how much should be paid for that time and money. My day job has fluctuated between writer and dev for the last 30-odd years (except for a sojourn as a carpenter), and I've been very well paid for every stroke of work I've done. The thing is that I don't insist on being paid again and again for the same work, once my initial investment of time and effort has been paid for fairly. Others who do the same kind of creative work as me (although, in the case of the US movie and TV industries, they rarely do it nearly as well) don't feel the same way, and have completely unrealistic desires to keep getting paid, over and over again, for the same eight-hours-a-day. The thing that sparked this discussion (the muppets doing a song that was written by someone else and is in the public domain, so they didn't even write the tune, making it effectively plagiarism) is a classic example of this. How much was that work worth? They stuck their arms in some puppets, messed around for an hour, and then they got paid, and paid well. That's enough. The clip is, in fact, worthless, because no-one will ever be willing to pay for it. The demand for it is for a quick giggle amongst pals, not as a permanent keepsake that will be treasured and watched over and over again, so that is how it should be supplied. On the other hand, people who see it on the net may well be inspired to pay for a muppets compilation DVD, just on the strength of nostalgia from having seen it again, but greedy idiots can't see that; they would rather alienate their customers by treating them as criminals. This only happens in the "arts". Very clever people designed and built your car and your computer, and they got paid for doing so. They don't expect to get paid again, every time you drive your car or boot up -- if they want more money, they create something new; they don't clamp your car or treat you like a criminal for driving it, lending it out, selling it, or giving it away. The ease of replication of digital information adds a new element to the mix, because a duplicate can be no different whatsoever from the original, so different marketing paradigms have to be used to encourage people to buy the original -- e.g. higher quality levels are needed, to make people watch a show when its aired (and therefore see the advertisements), rather than wait a
Ya know, everyone is trying to refute my points by pointing out how corrupt and obsolete the publishing industries are... But see, I'm not disputing that. I agree completely. The problem is that people are using that as an excuse to steal, and that's not the way to change things. All it does is give them someone to blame for their failing business model. Instead of admitting that their model no longer works, they can just keep saying "Oh, we're losing billions every year to evil pirates YARR!"
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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ragnaroknrol wrote:
Or maybe the fact that I made the car and I have the best possible knowledge of how it works and so when it breaks down, I can charge more than other folks to fix it?
You haven't thought this through! :-D Who is going to pay you to fix something if they can copy a new one for free. If everybody steals everything they want, there is nothing to steal because nobody can afford to make anything!!
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
Henry Minute wrote:
Who is going to pay you to fix something if they can copy a new one for free.
Good point! Of course, I am assuming copying takes at least a little time and prep. You can't copy a broken item and get a fixed one either. People are always in a rush. So fixing a car is still a viable method. :P
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Ya know, everyone is trying to refute my points by pointing out how corrupt and obsolete the publishing industries are... But see, I'm not disputing that. I agree completely. The problem is that people are using that as an excuse to steal, and that's not the way to change things. All it does is give them someone to blame for their failing business model. Instead of admitting that their model no longer works, they can just keep saying "Oh, we're losing billions every year to evil pirates YARR!"
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
Theft is theft, and there's no excuse for it (none of my machines have any such downloaded material on them for more than a "trial period" hour or so -- then I delete and either buy or don't), but if this is what finally kills the monstrosity that the entertainments industry has become, then I see it rather as a revolution against cretins who have far too much power, and have been lording it over so much of our lives. It's true that governments should never control the entertainments sector, but the greedy b*stards it's being governed by are worse (and less accountable) than any government.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Christian Graus wrote:
That's why some people are retarded enough to not see that they are stealing.
There's a story i remember from childhood, the gist of which is: a restaurant owner catches a young man hanging around his establishment and asks him what he's up to. The man admits that he can't afford the fancy food, but enjoys the scent. He's dragged before a judge, and charged with theft; the restaurateur argues that he is owed the full cost of the meal, with the man protesting that this would leave him destitute. The punchline comes when the owner is awarded the sound of the coins as payment for the smell of the food... I blame a lot of my problems on the stupid sh*t i read as a kid. :-\
Good thing the kid didn't say he was watching the cooks closely and writing down instructions for cooking the food.
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Ian Shlasko wrote:
the "free" model isn't workable yet on a large scale
That's not true at all. It is working right now. It has worked for CodeProject people are giving away code for free and both CodeProject and authors have benefited from it, it has worked for Google, and it has worked for many internet companies. There is a good book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Free-Future-Radical-Chris-Anderson/dp/1401322905[^] (BTW you can find the digital format of this book free).
Your example of google is not necessarily true. Google is not free as you give up your privacy for them to search and then provide ads from companies based on those searches. So in reality they get paid twice once by your information and secondly by the companies wanting to advertise to you. The code project does allow free access to code, but they do that to drive up user base so that it is more attractive to advertise on. Which is then paid by other companies, unless of course they have a free advertising agreement. In this regard the advertising costs get wrapped back into the product costs which eventually a user may buy from an ad on this site or via the newsletter. So in essence there is no free, often times what appears to be free is just a matter of passing the cost to the ultimate purchaser. Just a thought...
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Your example of google is not necessarily true. Google is not free as you give up your privacy for them to search and then provide ads from companies based on those searches. So in reality they get paid twice once by your information and secondly by the companies wanting to advertise to you. The code project does allow free access to code, but they do that to drive up user base so that it is more attractive to advertise on. Which is then paid by other companies, unless of course they have a free advertising agreement. In this regard the advertising costs get wrapped back into the product costs which eventually a user may buy from an ad on this site or via the newsletter. So in essence there is no free, often times what appears to be free is just a matter of passing the cost to the ultimate purchaser. Just a thought...
All you did was to reiterate what I said: Giving services for Free does not mean no revenue. You may give your song for free but advertisers may pay for it.
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All you did was to reiterate what I said: Giving services for Free does not mean no revenue. You may give your song for free but advertisers may pay for it.
I was not trying to reiterate what you said, my apologies that in came off that way. After re-reading the code project section of my post I can see that was a reiteration however the Google angle is not. In today's society it seems people are more and more willing to give out information about themselves knowingly or unknowingly depending on if people actually read terms and conditions. Everyone may place a different value on their private information and/or private discussions with others. For me I shy away from free services that rely to heavily upon my private information as a way to make their revenue.
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Theft is theft, and there's no excuse for it (none of my machines have any such downloaded material on them for more than a "trial period" hour or so -- then I delete and either buy or don't), but if this is what finally kills the monstrosity that the entertainments industry has become, then I see it rather as a revolution against cretins who have far too much power, and have been lording it over so much of our lives. It's true that governments should never control the entertainments sector, but the greedy b*stards it's being governed by are worse (and less accountable) than any government.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
Hmm, true... In the context of a revolution, it seems to fit. Getting people to pirate seems to be easier than getting them to boycott the products entirely. Me, I think I'll wait on the sidelines and root for the publishers to lose, however it happens.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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As an ex-professional musician, I can assure you that I find RIAA and their clumsy, heavy handed tactics to be an embarrassment to the brotherhood. That said, and unpopular though I know this perspective to be, I simply can't fathom how people think they have any rights at all to the property of others just because someone's connected a few computers together. If I decided to come over to your house, hotwire your car and drive it off for a joy ride because, well, you know, "transportation wants to be free," I suspect I'd be leaving amidst a hail of gunfire. It's your car. I have no rights to it whatsoever, unless you explicitly grant them to me. Here's a true story that just recently happened. I'm at someone's house, and he introduces me to a friend who's also a geek. The friend says to me, "Hey, great to meet you. You know, I downloaded a copy of The Career Programmer from [pirate site name deleted] a few weeks ago and I just wanted to tell you how much I'm enjoying it..." I could see our mutual friend bite his tongue in amazement, but I simply smiled and thanked this guy for the kind words. This was no bottom feeder, scum of the earth type. He's a nice person, very active in his church and from what I can tell a stand up kinda guy in general. And yet, he saw no moral dilemma whatsoever with looking the author of a book right in the eye and telling him he'd stolen a copy via a pirate site. He even added, "I guess I probably owe you some money, huh?" as a joke, meaning he knew very well that it wasn't his to take for free. Mind you, I can't get all worked up about the miniscule amount of money that didn't make it into my pocket from this transaction, and I've actually kept in touch with this guy & consider him a friend. I just mention this to point out how dramatically many people's ethics have degraded because they buy into the propaganda that "information wants to be free" and the implicit credo that if it's available on the Internet, it's free - whether the owner likes it or not. And of course it doesn't end there. Not only is the property belonging to those of us who create (a group which includes software developers, folks) assumed to belong by birthright to the entire world, for no compensation. We also get the treat of listening to the righteous indignation of those who steal from us. This is often accompanied by an impressive amount of twisted pretzel logic, of course, but is otherwise just a tirade about how unfair it is that anyone should so much as lift a finger to protect that which is
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Hmm, true... In the context of a revolution, it seems to fit. Getting people to pirate seems to be easier than getting them to boycott the products entirely. Me, I think I'll wait on the sidelines and root for the publishers to lose, however it happens.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
Cheerleaders. What we need is cheerleaders.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
