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I guess Bill finally sat down and read this thing. Best anti-DRM manifesto I've ever read:

http://www.changethis.com/4.DRM (pdf)

http://www.craphound.com/msftdrm.txt (plain text)

--b

An interesting read at: http://www.changethis.com/4.drm :

"DRM punishes honest people!" ... "Without DRM, people will steal and artists won't get paid!" ... Usage of Digital Rights Management (DRM) has been hotly debated since a college student threatened to put an entire industry out of business with a little application he built in his spare time, Napster. In this transcript of a speech he gave at Microsoft's campus, Cory explains why DRM doesn't work, why DRM is bad for society, bad for business, bad for artists, and a bad move for Microsoft.

Using Sony and Apple as examples of companies that are using DRM to *punish* consumers, he suggests Microsoft use the opportunity to once again champion users' rights. To follow our current path, Cory argues, is to stifle innovation and contradict the purpose of American copyright law: to promote the useful arts and sciences."

I always find it very remarkable that the content industry treats the people who pay for their products -- in other industries also known as customers -- as criminals. People don't buy cd's because they want to screw the people who made them and make a zillion copies. Those people buy the damn things because they do *not* want to wast their time on copying!

And I also don't think the way customers are treated is in the interest of the artists, in whose name this whole mess is being created. Take a look at an excellent article by Janis Ian, a respectable musician:

http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.h tml

"They told me downloads were "destroying sales", "ruining the music industry", and "costing you money".

Costing me money? I don't pretend to be an expert on intellectual property law, but I do know one thing. If a music industry executive claims I should agree with their agenda because it will make me more money, I put my hand on my wallet...and check it after they leave, just to make sure nothing's missing."

For what it's worth: this is a women who made more then 25 albums and wrote some very well known songs for other artists. One of her most known songs is "At seventeen", which can be downloaded for free, just like some other songs of her:

http://www.individualidade.com.br/janisian/mp3/jan isian_atseventeen.zip
http://www.janisian.com/mp3_downloads.html

Before you are serious to start a company, make sure you've the right mantra and willing to endure a lot of hardship. I'm not going to lecture you too much as you've to experience it anyway...

Location:Paul Graham's advice on this.

If you're looking for a regular office, try to find a place that you can pay by month-to-month. Yes this kind of stuff does exist. Signing a one year contract is not so nice. If you can afford, please find a work-live space or a loft.

Phone: If you need a landline, don't do it. We pay SBC $135 USD just to get a line into the building, and then another $135 USD for "inside wiring", which is just connecting the line from the building phone box to the room. @#$#@ing rip off. Even if you choose the most basic plan for just a dial tone for $7 USD, they'll still end up giving you $15 USD a month bill. Ah yes, if for some reason you use the phone to dial a long distance call, prepared to get shafted heavily.... They charged me $69 USD for 6 minutes call to Asia (because somebody used the wrong phone !!) Instead, go get Vonage. $25 USD unlimited is so nice. You will thank me for telling you this.

Furniture: if you're in Bay Area, IKEA's tables are good enough especially you can dismantle the legs quickly and MOVE. If you happen to catch good price, you can get one for around $21 USD. Don't go to OfficeMax or Office Depot to buy those rip off tables.

Also, we got A LOT OF IKEA stuff free on Craigslist: one Ikea table worth $30 USD, a cloth hanger, halogen lamps plus a sofa. (It's good to be near a big university with many rich kids too. So watch out Craigslist on around 15th and 30th each month. Move out time!)

Computers and software: I don't see the point on using a specific platform. As long as it does the job well you need to learn it. We have Powerbooks and Mac mini running MacOS X, a lot of PCs running Debian, OpenBSD, Solaris and a SGI O2 plus Indy (picked up free from Craigslist too) running Irix.

And most important of all, focus. There are so many possibilities but you only have that much time. Good luck.

What does Amazon have to bring to the table, other than not crushing them like a bug?

A huge selection of videos far better than any NetFlix could possibly offe, called the long tail. This data is from last year

He gives an example of the documenteries available:
typical blockbuster store: 75 (.2%)
Netflix: 1180 (3%)
Amazon.com: 17061 (40%)
Total ever released to US audiences: ~40000

Law #7: Don't hide a link inside an unnecessary HTML GET form. (AcroPDF speedup breaks this document, reenable some of the plugins )

Has anyone seen this page: "Our PDFs Don't Suck"?

What a load of bollocks - give me plain text or HTML any day...

http://www.changethis.com/content/AboutOurPDFs

Link to article

Be careful, it locks up Firefox until it loads.

Lawrence Lessig's recent book Free Culture deals with these issues very well. To crib two points from his book:

The physical part, as you say, is key: If I steal a book from Barnes & Noble's shelves, they have one less book to sell. But if I make a digital copy of your CD after it has fallen into the public domain (yeah, right!) you still have yours and no harm is done. This is the crucial distinction between material and non-material "property".

And, of course, there is the legal side. If an "intellectual property" holder seeks to infringe on my freedom to do as I please (e.g. make a digital copy of a CD), he must rely on the rest of society (e.g. taxpayers, police, courts, jails, etc.) to control and/or punish me. Why should society bother? What does society get out of it? The Constitution, which is the source of Congress' authority to grant and enforce copyrights, says that this is only for the purpose of promoting science and the useful arts, as a benefit to society, and for a limited time. Society benefits from novel works immediately (paying for them, of course, under the limited-term monopoly granted to the creator) and society eventually gets the work free and clear to adapt and to subject to competitive pressures. So, at least from the de facto legal perspective, there is a big difference between physical and non-physical "property"!

As for the grandparent's question as to why physical and non-physical property should be treated differently, well... You don't own property after you're dead, and trying to enforce your will in a world you are no longer a part of seems ludicrous to me, so I'll ignore that part of the question. As to passing ownership on, this article on the topic of unlimited inheritence interesting. I think it can be argued persuasively that unlimited inheritence corrupts both individuals and societies, and will undermine the meritocracy system in America.

But the real point is, society grants copyrights because there is an implicit promise that society (the public domain) gets something back later. So, even if the grandparent "would like to be able to copyright my work and not let anyone ever reproduce and/or distribute it without a specific permission either from me, or from my will", I'd like to see him enforce that without cooperation from me and my fellow citizens, both as taxpayers and public servants. So, you want us to help you? What's in it for us?