Posted by
chrisd
on from the taking-your-toys-apart-to-see-how-they-work dept.
shaikeiro writes "A fine
article in the Economist about Ed Felten and what he is up to now. Also a good summary of what "freedom to tinker" means. From the article: "Thus, the freedom to tinker ends up being about the freedom of culture."" Are you a member of the EFF yet?
I think that the majority already agrees on the benefits on the "freedom to tinker". What companies currently cannot solve, is the free-riding problem. It does not matter how much you preach about tinkering, as long as it damages existing business, it is freedom stinker for many companies. Dr Felten is clearly a clever man, maybe he could put his energy in solving that instead.
If your business model revolves around restricting others' freedom, and it's easier to change laws than to actually provide the public with a product worth buying, isn't that a sign that something is seriously fucked up? Obviously not... let's just work on improving the bars and chains, then.
The free-riding problem *cannot be solved* with digital information.
Companies only have their distribution mechanisms for digital information to compete with. If a CD distributor doesn't perform as well in the bandwith*convenience/price arena as your local ISP/telco, then it's a matter of *tough luck*, at least in a free market.
Oh, you want to publish something to some but keep it secret to others who haven't paid? You want to tell someone a secret but you want to guarantee, beforehand, that he cannot possibly tell another? *Tough luck*, unless you tell the secret and then rip out the other person's tongue and chop off his hands prevent him from further communicating with anybody else. The only way to make that happen digitally is to make every PC a read-only device. Oh, that's what you want then? But we already have that, you dumbf'ck, it's called TV. We don't want TV. We're sick of TV, and we won't allow our computers to be replaced by TVs just because some industry paid f'ck said so. Get over it.
RIAA, MPAA: the game is *over*. Cope. Please take your whining elsewhere, and please stop abusing society by buying f'cking laws.
When no good music gets recorded, no good books get written, no good movies get produced and no good paintings are being made anymore because the artists are starving, I'm sure society can come up with a *better* solution than simply handcuffing all its inhabitants, don't you think?
I'd say if you want to publish something digitally, you'll just have to live with the initial payment. If that's not enough, convince more people to pay before publishing it. If not enough people want to do so, then *tough luck*. If they do, all the better. It's still a free market after all, only one where the public is a *single* customer. If that customer wants to buy something valuable, he may have to make some savings up front. The concept is not even new, it already works fine for public highways. Society wants them, because society as a whole benefits from them, so society decides to pay for them as a whole. What's so f'cking hard about that?
-- All generalizations are false, including this one. (Mark Twain)
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I think that the majority already agrees on the benefits on the "freedom to tinker". What companies currently cannot solve, is the free-riding problem. It does not matter how much you preach about tinkering, as long as it damages existing business, it is freedom stinker for many companies. Dr Felten is clearly a clever man, maybe he could put his energy in solving that instead.
If your business model revolves around restricting others' freedom, and it's easier to change laws than to actually provide the public with a product worth buying, isn't that a sign that something is seriously fucked up? Obviously not... let's just work on improving the bars and chains, then.
deus does not exist but if he does
The free-riding problem *cannot be solved* with digital information.
Companies only have their distribution mechanisms for digital information to compete with. If a CD distributor doesn't perform as well in the bandwith*convenience/price arena as your local ISP/telco, then it's a matter of *tough luck*, at least in a free market.
Oh, you want to publish something to some but keep it secret to others who haven't paid? You want to tell someone a secret but you want to guarantee, beforehand, that he cannot possibly tell another? *Tough luck*, unless you tell the secret and then rip out the other person's tongue and chop off his hands prevent him from further communicating with anybody else. The only way to make that happen digitally is to make every PC a read-only device. Oh, that's what you want then? But we already have that, you dumbf'ck, it's called TV. We don't want TV. We're sick of TV, and we won't allow our computers to be replaced by TVs just because some industry paid f'ck said so. Get over it.
RIAA, MPAA: the game is *over*. Cope. Please take your whining elsewhere, and please stop abusing society by buying f'cking laws.
When no good music gets recorded, no good books get written, no good movies get produced and no good paintings are being made anymore because the artists are starving, I'm sure society can come up with a *better* solution than simply handcuffing all its inhabitants, don't you think?
I'd say if you want to publish something digitally, you'll just have to live with the initial payment. If that's not enough, convince more people to pay before publishing it. If not enough people want to do so, then *tough luck*. If they do, all the better. It's still a free market after all, only one where the public is a *single* customer. If that customer wants to buy something valuable, he may have to make some savings up front. The concept is not even new, it already works fine for public highways. Society wants them, because society as a whole benefits from them, so society decides to pay for them as a whole. What's so f'cking hard about that?
All generalizations are false, including this one. (Mark Twain)