[Sussex] RE: Copywrite and the Old Woman ...

[John D.]

Frances Fleming wrote:
>On Sun Jul 10 20:52:56 BST 2005, Mark Harrison wrote:
>  
>>The date of the kink in the line coincided with the change in policy
>>away from "safety and skill" to "speed kills".
>>    
>
>If someone disagrees with something, they will tend to ignore it out of
>protest at best, or destroy it at worst.
>Whereas people tend to rise to expectations if they agree to what is
>expected.
>Come to think of it, if you expect speed to kill, then it can well do so.
Frances is correct, as is Mark H, Richie, Angelo, etc etc.

Speed/safety cameras are a good tool, if used correctly. The biggest 
problem is that they are not controlled by your local plod. They are 
usually run under contract by these so called "Utility Service 
providers" e.g. Serco etc for the local authority. Who (the local 
authorities) have become authorised evidence providers, which is a 
little unusual, as mainly it has to be the Police for criminal cases 
(and yes speeding _IS_ a criminal offence, though treated differently by 
society, as opposed to "proper" criminal offences).

You may or may not be aware, that if an emergency services vehicle 
"flashes" a camera, they are obliged to contact their control room to 
start the audit trail for confirmation that they were indeed on an 
"emergency shout". Otherwise they usually have to pay the fine.

The problem is, that because "Gatsos'" are controlled basically by the 
local authority, they have been put in locations as revenue earners, 
rather than their primary purpose of reducing vehicle speeds at accident 
black spots. The local authority is entitled to retain part of the money 
generated by such devices. Ok they can't just keep their share and spend 
it "willy nilly", but they just re-route the money via number juggling 
so that the Old Bill get it, and they just pay less to the coppers for 
their "up keep".

I believe I'm correct in thinking that the most profitable camera used 
to be on the A road that comes off the end of the M11 (apparently it 
generated hundreds of thousands of pounds per week), but now the one 
that holds the record is in the midlands somewhere.

Anyway, I like Niks original link as it explains an apparently rather 
neat solution to obtaining music online, and such a system would direct 
the majority of the royalty money where it belongs i.e. to the musician. 
Not so sure about whether the speeding motorist analogy is the best 
example, but hey I didn't post it!

I was trying to work out if the original link was referring to something 
like PayPal, or whether it would be a completely different system 
altogether? Does such a system currently exist in the sense that the 
link means? or just one of these e.g. Mobile phone payment schemes or 
something like that?

All this DRM rubbish that keeps coming out of the record companies etc 
and MS seem just another ploy to keep the middleman taking "his 
slice???" (does/should "he" have a slice???), so I'm happy to get the CD 
from the cheapest source possible and then rip it for my own use (Ha, 
you'd be suprising how sad my music collection is!).

But I'd happily use a subscription service if they didn't seem such a 
rip off (which always raises the questions like is what they charge 
value for money? Should they be allowed to stop you accessing the track 
if you stop paying their subscription, or should you be able to keep the 
file once paid for - Oh and not forgetting, do they provide the track in 
a format that _YOU_ want??? - Personally I've ripped all my stuff into 
"FLAC", I don't see why I should convert perfectly good CD music into 
what is effectively an inferior format i.e. mp3, wma, AAC, Ogg etc).

regards

John D.