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Earn Money by Referring People to Amazon MP3s  (View post)

chipseo [PersonRank 1]

Wednesday, October 17, 2007
16 years ago5,849 views

If you test this I would love to know your results. I have reviewed this briefly but have not used it yet. I would agree, my results with their affiliate are less than great, and I don't think it matters what the products, books or anything else I have tried with them? I would love to know if the music selection is better with your traffic results, thanks. Scott

Gabriel [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

Actually there´s a simple way to circumvent the U.S. Only limitation.
Amazon accepts foreign credit cards, but you must have an U.S. address.
As there´s no phisical delivery, you can download anywere on the globe just knowing one particular address in U.S.

There´s no IP filtering.

I reviewed the Amazon MP3 service in my blog: http://www.donttalkaboutlife.com (sorry, in portuguese)

Regards,
gabriel

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

> As there´s no phisical delivery, you can download
> anywere on the globe just knowing one particular
> address in U.S.

You mean as a non-US resident, you create a second Amazon.com account and provide a false address (by someone else) to Amazon?

Ryan [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

Copyright-restriction-free? Perhaps DRM-free, but the music is most definitely still covered by copyright and the associated legal restrictions.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Ryan, yes that's what I meant. I should have said "technically copyright restriction free" or something, as I meant the technology not laws. I am trying to explore alternative ways to name that thing other than DRM as I think that's a wrong label ("DRM" doesn't manage your rights, e.g. your fair use rights).

elyk [PersonRank 6]

16 years ago #

You could also use the equally-dubious term DCE – Digital Consumer Enablement (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/10/1832216)

Eugene Villar [PersonRank 5]

16 years ago #

I think the 'rights' in DRM refer to the IP owner's copy*rights*. But yes, there's no mention there of the consumer's rights as well.

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

It can't be correct to say "technically copyright restriction free" because copyright is a provision of law, not a technical measure.

I think it's accurate and fair to describe the files as "non copy-protected".

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

> because copyright is a provision of law, not a
> technical measure.

Unfortunately these DRM systems try to transfer the law into the technology. The DRM system becomes a clone of copyright laws, or rather, a more restricted clone of existing laws (as fair use is often disregarded). I think it is not so wrong to say "copyright-restriction-free" for "DRM-free", as DRM imposes technical restrictions on a user's rights to copy. But of course we agree that that doesn't change the actualy copyright laws and theoretical user rights, which still exists independent of the technical implementation.

Reto Meier [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I have to disagree, semantically "copyright-restriction-free" means "free of the restriction of copyright", which is absolutely false.

Roger is right, it really has to be "copy-protection free". Even "copyright protection free" is wrong as in English 'protection' is the legal term for the rights you have (you're protected from people copying your works).

DRM is poor (in wording and action), but again – it doesn't 'impose technical restrictions on a user's rights to copy', it imposes technical restrictions on a user's *ability* to copy. Their rights don't change, only their technical ability to make a copy does.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I think DRM imposes technical restrictions on my legal rights to copy. And often enough, DRM'ed software comes with an abundance of footnotes you need to agree to that do indeed aim to restrict your right in legal terms, not just technical terms. It's all part of that nasty DRM package. It's imposing an artifical boundary onto your theoretical rights to copy, I think we agree on that...

Reto Meier [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Absolutely, DRM is a nasty piece of work that serves little purpose but to limit people's fair use rights – no argument there.

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

> I think DRM imposes technical restrictions on my legal rights to copy.

No, you really can't say that. It's plain wrong.

The law (of any western country) does not give people the "right" to copy anything. The law simply says that certain kinds of copying, if they do take place, are not infringing.

In the USA, "Fair Use" is a defense against a claim of copyright infringement and nothing more. Here's the actual wording of the law:

"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."

I believe that DRM is a bad thing. I even believe that copyright is a bad thing. But wishful thinking does not change the fact that even the doctrine of fair use is not the same as a "right to make fair use copies".

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Roger, I don't really understand. I mean, I think you lost me somewhere in this discussion :)
But for what it's worth I think it's good that these distinctions are being made in the comments, it helps drill down into the topic.

Reto Meier [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

There's an inherent difference between 'I have a right to make a copy' and 'making a copy does not infringe the authors rights'. Fair use is the latter. Copyright law says you cannot copy another persons work without their permission. Fair use limits that restriction in certain circumstances.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

What about free speech, is that a right? I mean when I'm freely talking I may be quoting from this or that article, as part of my free speech rights. So I'm making copies at the same time when quoting, during my speech.

Reto Meier [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Free speech is different from country to country. Australia, for example, does not have a constitutional right to free speech.

In any case, free speech doesn't give you the right to say whatever you want, it's (generally) a protection from government suppression of your opinions.

Free speech does not grant immunity from slander laws, hate-speech laws, or incitement to violence laws.

In any case, there are also copyright rules as far as 'public performance' of copyrighted material. If you sing someone else's song for example, you need to pay royalties to the songwriter (or have their permission). Obviously the specifics change from country-to-country (and I'm not a lawyer!).

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

On a side-note, regarding slander vs free speech laws: In Germany you are free to state your opinion, but you are not free to make statements of apparent fact that are untrue. So you can't be (successfully) sued for saying "this restaurant was really bad, they were completely unfriendly and the waiter smelled like a rhino", but you can be sued for saying "the steak at that place cost me an expensive €5" (and if it's indeed a different price, then you can be successfully sued too). However, if you represent the statements of others, then you can rightfully do that until you learn about the unfactualness of these statements from a third-party. Then you must remove them, or if you don't, you make yourself responsible for the statements, meaning you must be ready to go to court for it. That is a bit of a tough situation for running a "bad service" blog based on user submissions, where I was "C&D"'d some weeks ago for publishing negative user reviews.

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

The equivalent in the UK is that you are allowed to factually report:

"When I visited the restaurant I saw five cockroaches"

But if you say this:

"The restaurant is infested with cockroaches"

then the restaurant can (and probably will) sue you, because you slandered them. After all, the cockroaches might have just fallen out of the pocket of the diner next to you.

Whether that counts as "free speech" is up to each person to decide.

Reto Meier [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I'm under the impression that Germany also has some limitations on free speech when it comes to Nazis / Hitler etc. is that right?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Absolutely. Holocaust denial is illegal, so you cannot say "I don't believe there were concentration camps and gas chambers, because the technology of that day didn't allow these..." Actually, due to German laws some of this holocaust denial content is missing *globally* in Google Groups/ Google's usenet archive, not just in Germany. In the end, this gives Nazis more fabric to construct conspiracy theories, so some of them may welcome these censorship laws.

You are also not allowed to show swastika symbols or other Nazi symbols, unless it's in certain media in certain contexts (like film documentaries – computer games for instance were not granted this right to be the "right context", which is why some US games where you'd *fight* the Nazis were ruled illegal here). A package I once received from a US comic book publisher was opened – I had to go there as witness during the opening, complete with a print out of my order – to check for swastikas (among other stuff). Which is incredibly silly, because if I'd be the kind to look for such content I can simply download it from Google images.

The anti-swastika law went so far as to disallow a German anti-Nazi t-shirt manufacturer, who was printing shirts showing a swastika being crossd out or trashed, to continue their shop. They were raided by police and had to cease selling this material to left-wing types of people, like to people of the punk movement. The guy of the shop sued and after quite some time, won his court case – since that day, I think it was this year, it's officially allowed to wear a shirt with a striked-through swastika, phew!

There are also similar discussions going on about allowing or not allowing uncommented, freely available books of Mein Kampf to be published. Some sites are censored in Google.de reprinting Mein Kampf. IMO it's really bad to try to hide historical documents, as evil or wrong as they may be, because we need them freely available for analysis and deconstruction. Mein Kamp, for instance, *was* a book available in almost every household during the 1930s/early 40s, so if you want to analyze that period you need to analyze the book too.

You are also not allowed to raise your arm for the "Hitler greeting" pose in public. Neo-Nazis slightly adjusted the symbol (they don't use the full hand flat, but only some fingers when raising their right arm) for public display of the same intent.

Furthermore, "Volksverhetzung" (a kind of encitement to injustice, or what it's called) is illegal here and applied to certain right-wing parties when they say things like "destroy this or that group".

I'm no lawyer, but this is about the wrap-up as I learned it. There are some more subtle differences as to when it's illegal for everyone vs when you are just not allowed to advertise it to minors, but the borders are often blurred, and you don't get complete answers from the state on these matters.

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