CosmicBills

Read my earlier post. None of this would have happened had Arest not gone into the stands. The fans were wrong and Artest was wrong. They both should be ashamed.

I had the pleasure of meeting her in person (long story but I didn't KNOW it was her till after ) and she is a very lovely lady. Much better looking in person than on film. But more importantly she is super nice.

Yeah, Artest did a great job defending himself from that big, bad, scary plastic cup And in doing so he managed to disgrace the league...bloody (literally) brilliant.

http://cbs.sportsline.com/collegebasketbal...41119_NC@SNCLRA Man, I'm glad 'Cuse is ranked 6th now and not 1:)

Yup. The fans are certainly guilty. But let's not forget that Artest and Jackson are equally culpible (sp? lol). I just hope the NBA feels that way when they hand out the suspensions. 10 games is the minimum in my mind.

Oh, and for you saying how the MPAA etc need to adapt again to the technology is not fair or realistic. It's not a matter of adapting to the technology now as much as it is preventing theft. When VCRs came out the technology was NEW and they created a new product to make money. This time it isn't new technology it's just new DUPLICATING technology (like Burners etc) and companies can't create a new product from technology that duplicates an existing one. Companies (like Apple) have tried to adapt by setting up networks that cost money (I-Share or whatever it's called) for the consumer to share files (and thus cover the licensing fees). Yet since the technology is so accessible and easliy cracked people continue to get around it. It's the same with DVD Burners now. DVDs allow the MPAA to make oodles of money, but the availabilty of the equipment nowadays makes it so everyone can run their own illegal manufacturing company in their basement if they wanted. The truth is that not everyone does this of course and the MPAA doesn't care about Joe-Schmoe burning 10 DVDs in his basement...what they do care about is the giant piracy outfits that burn 10,000 DVDs a day. That feat simply wasn't possible 10 years ago.

Fez, I hear what you're saying but I think you are missing a couple of key points. The biggest one being "commercial use". You can do whatever you want with your DVD's or CD's once you purchase them so long as you don't repackage, edit, alter, or copy it for COMMERCIAL USE. It's that language that is built into virtually every copyright law. They are not concerned with what I do in my home with my DVD (even if it does violate the license) so long as I am not putting it on display for profit. Look at it this way, as a writer my work is extremely vunerable to copyright infringment on many levels. But let's look at a finished product. I complete a script that sells to Studio A who then turns it around and makes it into a movie. All WGA contracts now have built in clauses for DVD and B.O. residuals for the credited writers (something the guild has fought tooth and nail for). You buy my DVD (giving me my .25 cents on the dollar fee...pretty sweet!) and take it home. I'm cool with it, hey I got my money. And you decide you want to copy it, use screen shots for your wallpaper...again, all cool. No big deal. Then you break out the burner and copy your DVD in case your copy breaks. Now problem. But then you decide to burn a couple DVDs for friends for 5 bucks each. Then we've got problems because you just took 2 people off the market for my product. If that is repeated all over the country we are talking about majoy dollars that are being stolen. The artists or IP owners don't care about you until you cross this line and start doing something for commercial use. However the law has to be written in such a way to best protect the marketplace which means making it all encompassing even though the reality is IP owners won't pursue over 99 percent of the "offenders". But there is even a worse offense (from a writer's standpoint at least). Say you buy your DVD and you break out the photoshop. You start changing scenes, changing the story and characters...again it's no problem since you are doing it for yourself. But then you start showing it to people, maybe even a large amount of people who convince you to sell it...now we have major problems. Since you just took something that was mine and altered it and are now reselling it. I think you are thinking about this in too much of a micro level when the bill is aimed at a macro approach.

I'm SO glad I'm not the only one who saw the incident like that. Certainly the fan who threw the plastic cup was disgraceful and should be blamed. But Artest was safe behind TWO rows of media seats and another THREE rows of empty fan seats. There was no "immediate" threat to his safety or to anyone else. He CREATED an immediate threat by charging over five rows of stands to confront the guy. And Jackson joined him, totally irresponsible. The NBA should certainly suspend both Jackson and Artest for AT LEAST 10 games. It drove me nuts to hear all the ESPN guys saying how "Artest HAD to defend himself". stevestojan! Artest could have just yelled at the guy from the safty of the court. The EPSN crew is trying to spin it like Artest was in danger...WRONG he created danger by charging into the stands where he was outnumbered! "Well they threw a cup at him! He HAD to react!" continue the NBA analysts. Come on. How many players in SanFransico have charged into the stands when the fans throw batteries at them? Or how many Dolphin players have charged into the stands when the 12th Man pelts them with snowballs? Answer? NONE! Why? Because they aren't dumb. I am not excusing any fan who throws anything onto the field of play or at anyone, just trying to show that it is (sadly) a common practice and Arest totally over reacted. And it drove me crazy to listen to the idiot announcers trying to spin it like Artest was a choir boy (do we really have to pull out his record?) Now that my rant is over I want to make it clear that I do not condone the fans. Not at all. Especially what happened AFTER Artest went into the stands. THe cheap shots, the chairs being thrown, fans coming onto the court was all horrible and terribly wrong on their parts. The fans are certainly to blame and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. However, NONE of this would have happened had Artest stayed on the court.

CW we will continue this later, I am off to go see National Treasure... Damn, I almost forgot to bring my camcorder (hey, I finally found a good place to use the icon!) lol

That is exactly what copyright is supposed to be for. It is designed to make sure the author of the piece gets all the profits he is due. Imagine you were selling apples on the street and someone comes up to your stand and swipes 100 of your apples and begins to sell them for half the price. First, the theif should be prosecuted for theft and secondly the profits he made off of your product rightfully belongs to you. You're absolutely right. But again, this is where I think you are misinterpreting the bill. It is not going to require the government to go after every single violator of copyright laws. What it does is allow the organizations to go to the JD for assistance and help in massive class action suites. Using your analogy, the JD won't get involved if it's one landlord stealing your deposit or even 100 landlords. But if it's 1,000 landlords stealing 100 people's deposits then the sheer cost of such litigation would prevent any action from being taken. This part of the law offers relief in such instances.

Good points, but you aren't reading the bill correctly in my opion. 1) The bill will not prevent you from fast forwarding through commercials, not at all. What it does prevent is the sale of machines that edit out the commercials as they are recorded (like certain models of the TiVo machine that does so to save space on the hard drive). So that is nothing to worry about. If it were, I would be with you on this point. 2) It's not the act of putting a file into a "shared" folder that would be criminal according to the law (and my belief), it is the act of illegally copying a file from a server that is at issue. It is an attempt to expand the liability umbrella from just the manufacturer to the person "buying" (for lack of a better term) the stolen goods. I am NOT a fan of this portion of the law by the way and it is something I have debated with collegues on the matter. Finally, this most CERTAINLY is the entertainment lobby trying to pass laws in their own interest. Name one law that gets passed that isn't pushed through by a lobby. But that is besides the point. The protection of IP is essentail for the Entertainment Industry to survive. The Entertainment Industry is a multi-BILLION dollar industry (just Hollywood alone is roughly 7 Billion a year) that provides thousands of jobs and makes up a sizeable portion of our economy. The MPAA did try to outlaw VCRs, before they realized how big of a profit can be made off of home movies. They adapted to the technology and managed to do so without rewriting the laws. But now the technology has outgrown the law to such an extent that organizations such as the MPAA, WGA, SAG etc cannot possible be expected to keep up. Without new laws the piracy will only get worse. People think that violations of IP only affects those that are already loaded (people like Brad Pitt or Tom Hanks, the top billing guys) but they forget that piracy affects literally THOUSANDS of people. From the guy holding the boom on the movie set, to the guy behind the engineering board during the recording of a new CD, to the guy working as an assistant at a Publishing house, to the guy who takes tickets at the local movie theater...all these people are affected. If Piracy is allowed to go on unchecked, it affects every one of these people. Why shouldn't government enact laws that protect such a large part of our national economy? Why shouldn't they prevent theft?

So drafting laws to protect someone's hard work from being stolen before it reaches the marketplace is akin to creating a Police State? In years past items such as written works, music, movies, etc were protected from copywrite infringment because the technology to duplicate (and distribute) the merchandise was so expensive that it made it virtually impossible for the "average joe" to pirate. In those years, the copywrite laws were enough to prevent large scale piracy because the cost of such an enterprise made it easier to track and prosecute. Now the technology has developed so that anyone with a DVD burner and a camcorder can go into a sneak preview and have a bootleg copy of a movie out on the street for sale before the movie even hits the marketplace. The same can be said of music, books, newspaper articles, etc. That is flat out stealing. The laws have to be adjusted to protect the people who make their living off of intelectual property from this new technology.

That is not what the legislation is trying to say. What it is trying to prevent on the market are the DVR and TIVO machines that automatically edit out the commercials while you are recording them. If these machines were allowed it would put a serious camp in commercial networks since advertisers would have no reason to buy add time. Don't worry, you will still be able to tape the shows but you will have to fast forward through the commercials manually rather than having a machine edit it out for you. As for the rest, as a guy who makes his living off of intellectual property this is not a bad bill. It is designed to protect copyrights and prevent piracy. Allowing the Justice Department to sue violators is to protect agencies such as the WGA, MPAA and others from incurring the cost of massive litigation in a class action type suit. This isn't a step towards a police state by any means. It is an attempt (albeit short sided in my view) to ensure that copywrites and intellectual property are not stolen or violated.

You sound about as excited as I was with the prospect of a Mussina/Brown/Vasquez rotation at this time last year Good God was I wrong about that

Very true, but the difference here is that George is not Theo (for better or worse). I'm not willing to jump the gun saying the Yanks and Pedro are a done deal, but when George takes time to privately discuss things with a player it's a bit more than your typical FA stop. You know?

Good luck brother. I've been there, make sure you have good reading material! Keep us posted.

He's patting the ball too!

Okay, if you are playing your second string now, why Burns and not Travis?

Why Burns and not Travis?

HERE COMES JP!

Simple, like everyone on this board you are a fan. And fans cheer for their team, they believe in their team even when reality and everyone else says you're crazy. Don't be ashamed, don't be embarrassed. It's part of being a fan.

Im mad that I got all psyched only to be let down. Kinda like the build up for this game.

DAmn you Paul Peck for getting our hopes up! AVP said they would have put him in had the Pats scored

Radio says JP is warming and coming in!!!!??!??!?!