New site, this one will not be updated

I just wanted to let everyone know that I will no longer be updating this blog. My new blogs can be found here at wordpress or at my .mac website. These two sites will be updated instead of this one. Also my Apple Talk site will no longer be updated as well. That blog can now be found on my .mac site under Software Blog.

blogZOT! 2.0

It is time for another blogzot over at macZOT. These are the guys that gave away AppZapper for free a few weeks ago, now they are having BLOGZOT 2.0 on MacZOT.com. This time they are giving awaySubEthaEdit from CodingMonkeys, this piece of software looks really cool. If enough bloggers blog about this then MacZOT and TheCodingMonkeys will award $105,000 in Mac software. So hurry up and blog about this great site and this amazing software. macZOT is truely an amazing site and we need to support them. After you blog about it go to this site and submit the link to your site.

You broke the law.

It will soon be illegal to rip your CD's on to your hard drive to put onto your iPod. Well, it will be that way if the RIAA has their way. I have ranted and bitched about them before, and I am not about to stop. If you know me, you have most likely heard me bitching about this new issue that has arisen. As we all know, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding copyrighted music ever since Napster first appeared and brought P2P widespread. Since then the RIAA has gained a lot of power and started enforcing laws against piracy. One thing that has always protected the user is what is called Fair Use. Fair use is the way that you can use copyrighted material legally. Included in this is creating backups for your CDs onto a hard drive or onto a CD-R/RW. The RIAA has now decided that this should no longer be considered fair use and that consumers that have legally purchased CDs should not be allowed to create backups onto their hard drives or on blank CDs. This also means that you would not be able to put music onto and iPod or other Mp3 player because that would no longer be considered fair use. Now you may be asking yourself how the record company can justify this. I mean, if I purchase a CD I will want to have a back up incase my dog suddenly decides that CDs taste as good as his dog bones, or even if any other terrible thing may happen to my disc. The RIAA believes that CDs are so inexpensive that if you disc gets damaged you can go out and purchase the CD again and that there is no need to back up your music. I don't know about you, but $15 isn't exactly what I call inexpensive. Especially compared to the outstanding cost of $0 that it costs to backup your music. I will agree with the RIAA that piracy is bad and that copyrighted material should be protected but they should not try to rip off the consumers that support purchasing of legal music. I guarantee that if they pass this law we will see a significant rise in illegal downloads. This is just asking for people to steal music. The RIAA is basically saying that we should come support them and buy the CDs that they sell, but the second you need help because you scratched your CD then you are on your own. They do not wanna hear anything from you unless you are coughing up cash for a new copy of that CD. This is ridiculous and should not be allowed. It is because of moves like this that the public tends to despise the RIAA. This just shows what can happen when someone gets obsessed with the little power they are given.

Illegal Downloads

Here is my view on downloading copyrighted material. I do not care if you agree or not, these are my thoughts and they probably won't change because of people bitching about the artists rights or that it is illegal and that I am a bad person.

Unless the content is easily available for purchase on the internet via download (amazon etc do not count) I am justified in downloading it. By not distributing their content on the internet they show that they do not care about making a profit on these offerings. I give a little leeway to older TV shows etc. If the show was on more than a year ago then they do not have to offer it on the internet but they bust release the season (or whatever it is) on DVD for purchase. It would be ridiculous for me to expect them to put shows on the internet that were on 10+ years ago. If the TV show is currently on then I expect it to be on iTunes. I get very strict on how they offer their content. Currently iTunes offers the best deals on TV show distribution and has the most content. I don't want any of the bullshit like CBS pulls by offering their content on their site for $1.99 and you can only watch it out of the web browser for 24 hours, then it is gone. These are my ideas on content download. All current TV shows must be on iTunes and all older TV shows must be released on DVD or else I am justified in downloading them by other means.

Now lets move onto the RIAA and MPAA. These assholes are getting very cocky with the power they have gotten recently. Many of you may disagree that what they have is not power but I would like to argue this. It is power and they are abusing it. They believe that since they own the copyrights to various pieces of work that they can first off charge an arm and a leg for the content and secondly sue everyone when they feel like they are having a bad day. What ever happened to making the consumer happy. There are very few people that like the RIAA and MPAA at the moment. They want to introduce a new pricing plan in iTunes for the music downloads. They believe that popular music should be more expensive then less popular. Sounds like they are greedy bastards to me. This does help the industry in a way because less popular music might get more listeners because the music overall is cheaper. This still does not make it right. If people wanted to find these bands they would, charing the consumer more only leads them to obtain the music in other illegal ways. I can honestly say that I have not illegally downloaded music since the iTunes music store has been released. I believe that the music is reasonably priced and convenient to obtain. If the RIAA raised the prices then I will be deterred from it and go to other places to get my music. Overall I believe that the RIAA and MPAA have become power happy and want to abuse it while they have it. Someone needs to stand up to them and get the music industry back to a level playing ground.

One more brief issue. The RIAA is suing lyrics websites for posting lyrics to songs they do not have the copyright to. That is just plain wrong. I guarantee you the next thing will be lawyers standing on the street handing out lawsuits to people humming the tune of their favorite song. They must stop pushing the loyal fans of music away and find reasons for them to take the legal route in obtaining music.

This is the end of my extremely long post. I hope you enjoyed it and feel free to comment. This post is also on my new site created with iWeb and can be found here.

Great Videos

Here are the two top vidos off of the Google Video blog. I must say that the Russian acrobat is crazy. Just to warn everyone, the one of girls fighting gets pretty intense at times.

Google Video of the Day

This blog is great. They have some amazing videos on here. One great one is the video of girls fighting, I couldnt even finish it.

Google Video of the Day

There is not enough of me on the web!

Look at me, I'm such a stud.