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Gates Elaborates on IP Communists
justin_w_hall writes "In part four of his interview with Gizmodo, big Bill Gates discusses his recent 'communist' labeling of supporters of free culture - and gets into detail about his rationale concerning Microsoft's position on DRM. Other parts of the interview: part 1, part 2, part 3."
"No, no, no. I didn't say those people were 'communists.' I did say that they're... 'dirty Marxist pinko communist reds that should be herded into camps and executed en masse.' I hate being misquoted and hope this clears up any misunderstanding."
A totalitarian dictator of intelectual property?
Boy does that make an interesting job title.
?Tzar of Intelectual Property?
I for one Welcome our Communist Free Culture Overlords...
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
He's actually kind of right. IN a comunist/socialist systme, the people own the code. (Since the people own everything.)
This is a refreshing contrast to the fascist model, where the state owns the code. In this case, the writers own the code.
If he says Linus is Stallin/lennin/marx, then he's Hitler by the same set of parameters.
-=fshalor
The problem with all these DRM issues is that no one ever brings up what happen if the artist is deceased. The record company still owns the song and making a killing.
Rule of thumb, if the artist is deceased the songs should be automatically free. None of this 2pac-after-death-release bullshit. He's dead how does he make music?!
Gates and these millionaires never talk enough about these things. They mention artists should be paid. Blah, now back to DRM.
"I really meant to say Nazis. My bad."
It means you print the Communist Manifesto on paper you made yourself before reading it, instead of buying it in a book store like all the other commies.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Wouldn't it be a bit more reasonable to put a time limiting factor on the copyright of songs ... after 20 years the song goes to the public domain, so that everyone can enjoy that music.
"No, no, no. I didn't say those people were 'communists.' I did say that they're... The question is: what incentive systems should exist in the world?"
;)
Take, like, putting soundtracks onto movies using our movie editor thing. If you have unprotected music you can take slideshows, put music to it, encapsulate it in the file, mail it aroundit works perfectly.
Why he's a regular guy next door!
Is it just me or is there something a little fishy about this interview?
-ashot
Part of Gates' argument is that in China prior to market reform, musicians were not paid. That's simply stupid. Anyone who knows anything about "Communist" regimes knows that all the ones that have existed, including China, still had money, and people got paid for their work (usually by the government). Now, you can certainly argue that musicians may not have been paid as *much* as they would have been in a market economy, but that's a different issue.
In a regular corporation, much of the capital becomes wealth distributed to executives who put it into their yacht fund, which in essence is punishing shareholders who are better served by reinvestment in the firm.
The same can be said for many industries. I think Americans underestimate, for example, how much of their healthcare spending goes into executive compensation, which is worse in that industry than most others. It makes you wonder how efficient capitalism really is in the endgame when most competitors have been washed out and locked out of the market.
Gates is essentially calling Mozilla.org, a group with a 501c3 form... comunist. Wow. Doesn't get any more whacked out than that, I guess. Microsoft seems to be getting more desperate as the days go on, probably due to the declining browser share.
This also attacks Linux communities as well. Not to mention anything at SourceForge.net... They are launching another verbal/media assault on open-source software because open-source is dangerous to closed-source software.
With the wealth of open-source software out there, not even great, free democracies (like Microsoft) can stop the spread of communist open-source software Mwahahahaha!
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
And to Gizmodo? I'm surprised he even bothers to answer their phone calls at all!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If the artist feels that they should be paid, who are we to say no and download music without their permission? After all, they created it - they have the moral right to decide how people get it. If you don't like this, don't listen to their music. With Bittorrent, Kazaa, eDonkey,etc,etc, how many Slashdotters have gone out and bought CDs? If you feel most of the music is crap and it isn't worth listening to, then don't download that one particular single. If you against the artist's wishes, then it's stealing. Don't be so sure that the artists want to free up their music and only the RIAA's members are standing in their way. If that is the case, explain Metallica (and numerous others) filing suits. Benefiting from somebody's creation without their approval is theft. Pure and simple
And now, the long running attempt at a joke has FINALLY achieved humor value.
No use of it after today will ever be as fit, amusing or appropriate. Anyone else who uses the joke will remind readers of this instance of it, and they'll think "Yea, but it's still lame and stale compared to Kjuib's masterful use of the gag."
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
From the article:
"Obviously, we'll connect Xbox Love up to what we do with Messenger"
I am intrigued.
is what everybody thinks it is, as opposed to what it actually is. The ideas behind communism and democracy are very, very similar. Amish are communists in the purest sense of the word. It's just that COMMUNISM as we know is tied to Stalinist Russia, and modern China which have very little to do with the ideas of marxist communism.
You can legislate morally you can't legislate morality
Look up fascism on Wikipedia, and compare it with socialism.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Bill Gates is undoubtedly a smart guy, but in this interview he seems to have decided to follow the example of the current political administration - change the topic and pretend it is relevant. "The DRM we put into these systems is used to protect medical records, and it's used to protect things people want to protect." What a load of crap! I guess people are passing medical records around over bittorrent. That answer so far offtopic it's appalling, it's stupid, it's... bush-like. Oh, and he still calls open-source advocates communists.
Its unfortunate that this smart man (though University drop out) does nots see fundamental attraction of OpenSource... that is the ENABLEMENT TO WORK without worrying about hidden APIs, proprietary formats, or hidden costs. He equates it all to OpenSourceSoftware means some ubercorp doesn't get its coin 'cause profit of the few is baaad.
If he had a few more neurons, perhaps he would equate OpenSource to political Anarchy, because that's what it really is. Grass roots freedom of DEVELOPERS to code without blockers.
C'mon Bill. OpenSource is about making money off consulting anyway - in a world market where global economics can castrate anyone whose dollar isn't worth as much as their neighbour.
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Let the out of context quotes and subsequent bashing of M$ begin!!!! :)
he wasn't talking about the governemt being communist, netierh was I. I was refering specifically to his applicatin of the term "communist" to free source software. I'm applying the term "fascist" to code practices.
-=fshalor
Gates isn't smart, he's desperate. MSFT has barely nudged +/- $3 over the past four years while the rest of the tech market has taken off (particularly old rival AAPL). They're getting desperate in their smear campaign because its all about $$$...its become practically impossible to make MSFT rise with straight financials or new products, so they are trying mudslinging.
Ususally these post mortem releases are done by family members to cash in. Their unrealesed work is like any other thing the artist owns, when they die it goes to whoever gets their stuff, spouses, kids etc.
If you're asking what incentive does dead 1Pac have in making music, then I'm guessing you're circa 15 and wouldn't understand that old people sometimes consider the interests of their dependants.
Recording contracts take a variety of forms depending on the leverage help by the artists. Often the writer of the song "owns the song", and the publisher owns the recording.
That part 4 interview is a perfect specimen of a spin artist in full spin mode.
The thing that stood out to me in the article was how billie seems to think people have no other incentive in innovating than profit. True innovators innovate for the challenge and because that's just what they LIKE doing. Profiting from it is just a side effect.
The part 3 interview, which is about XBox and everything evolving around that, has a bit of unintended humor in the first answer where Bill Gates appears to be championing for user choice and competition between vendors. Wow!
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Or does the linked site crash everyone else's browser as well?
NM, I read parts one, two and three, not four.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
All we're doing is putting it in the platform. So I'm just saying, can you criticize us for having a platform that allows bits--bits, just bits; not music, not movies, not medical records, not tech things--to have any usage restriction for bits. Are we doing a disfavor to the world at large by saying some of our users, when they choose to--maybe for medical records--they can limit the accessibility of those bits?
Ah, but here is lies the classic folly. Currently, people have to decide if what they are doing is within the realms of fair use, such as copying a page from a book so they can cut out a favorite paragraph from the book and read it at presentation. DRM says that a machine has to decide if what I'm doing constitutes fair use. What happens when the computer doesn't understand my situation? Like with smart guns, if I'm wrestling with a criminal for their weapon and I manage to get it away from them, I won't be able to use it to defend myself! It's not just managing bits anymore Bill, it's managing our lives.
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
It means the new Five Year Plan will only take you 4.96 years. Or it would, if emerge'ing KDE 3.4 weren't tying up your CPU.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Why is the word communist a deragatory term now a days.
People have no clue what it means and use it as a slam. Guess 50 years of govt brainwashing worked.
Microsoft, as a group of individuals, own the code they write. Sure, the code is also owned by the people who paid for it to be written (shareholders), but MS owns the code they wrote. And since it was their effort that created that code, they should control who owns it (unless you advocate that someone should be forced to give something they create to the public - that's certainly a valid concept, with pros and cons, though I personally object to depriving creators of the right to control their work).
Gates originally said (amongst other things):
"... I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist."
In the part 4 above, he says:
"All I was saying is that the number of people who are at this extreme who believe there should be no incentive systems for creative work--there's actually less of those people."
By 'belief in incentive systems', he actually means (or perhaps even sincerely believes) that there exists no incentive for writing software for public/GPL/Copyleft (or whatever) usage. With his 'logic', you have to be paid (and, in some cases, well paid) to want to write software. Perhaps he's a closet Creationist too?
Did he inhale?
to actually RTFA? :) It's FRIDAY! :D
I want to have a nice friday, so I'll skip this.
Bill Gate's rationale for DRM:
/. to stop bitching about too much whitespace in this freakin' comment. Such as it is, of course.
\$$$$$$$$$$/
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MicroSoft
Can be summed with: Cha-Ching!
And now to blather on to satisfy the lameness filter, and get
Real communist societies would not be controlled by 'an elite few. The idea of communism is that everything is owned by 'the community' for the common good.
People really do get fooled by branding. Just because the Soviet Union was run by something called the Communist Party did not mean that they were actually following communism theory, any more than the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) promoted Democracy.
Have you or have not you ever contributed code to the communist operating system, Linux?
He says that money is the only insentive for individual excellence, or a step further, that DRM is the only way to reward creativity.
I believe many artists make art to add beauty to the world, and that they desire an audience, not money.
I believe that there are many artists willing to share their creative work for free, and they are compensated by the attention they get. I believe that the market is starting to demand this art. One of the great thing about this art, as with free software, is that it can be extended, collaborated with, and changed far beyond the scope of the original art. Perhaps this art isn't as good as commercial art, or as polished, but it has great advantages, the biggest one being that it is free.
Finally, having been a successful shareware author, I can say that people are very generous if you ask them for support. I could have never distributed my software through traditional channels, and would have never made any money even if I could have, but was quite successful freely distributing my work, and only asking for payment in the about box.
It is ironic that Bill Gates doesn't understand this. His operating system has started this revolution, that has removed the cost of distribution. What we are seeing now is a natural evolution of the personal computer.
Artists already get paid. Some of them are millionaires.
What it's about is squeezing a few extra bucks out of everyone by removing their ability to listen/read/watch ANYTHING without paying for it. Because the media companies just can't STAND it when someone "uses" their product without giving them money.
The whole plan boils down to this: No information will be free, ever. The libraries know this, as they've already been fighting for survival in the new world of "intellectual property" and "digital rights".
Let's see them put that into their ad campaign: "Microsoft: Setting up roadblocks since 2004."
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
I can't tell if its spin by Gates, or spin by Gizmodo, or just looks like spin because its transcribed. But it made me spit coke out on my laptop.
I think people are getting confused as to who the real bad guys are here. I would say Microsoft is more of a Volkswagon in this analogy.
They are providing a technology. Technology in itself is not bad. Its how it is being used, or exploited. We have to remember that it is the entertainment industry that is creating the actual rights of use, not Microsoft. I think this is what ol' Bill was getting at.
Piss on the entertainment industry. I'm right there with you, but dont piss on DRM. It has very legitimate uses, medical records being a great example.
Bill Gates is a corporate communist. Microsoft wants to own your computer, your data, and your lifestyle.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Best part of the article...
... But I think we just disagree.
Gizmodo:
Gates: No, I actually don't think we disagree.
How on earth does the GPL "not count" as IP protection. It is a license on IP which dictates exactly what you can and cannot do with the IP.
The GPL is fundamentally no different than any other license or EULA in that it makes demands on the user in exchange for giving access to the information. Perhaps you find those demands more agreeable than, say, closed-source commercial software licensing. That's valid, but it doesn't change the fact that the GPL relies on IP protection to enforce its terms.
If there were no IP protection laws, the GPL could not exist.
And believe me, if there were no IP protection the GPL would have just as much reason to exist as it does now. Anyone who was involved in software in the late '70s and early '80s has first hand knowledge of what the software world would be like without solid and well-understood IP law backing it. Before the law caught up with the software age, we lived in a world of dongles and sales contracts and heinous hardware protection schemes. They all sought to fill the vacuum left in the absence of strong IP protection.
No IP protection leads to secrecy and contracts, not to a world of sharing where programmers live off nuts and berries and give away the product of their labor.
OSS encourages individuals to trade directly with each other. VS Communism makes person to person trade a crime against the state, and labels it economic sabotage.
OSS actually works, and the technically best software gets the most users. VS Communism gives you products like the Trabant and makes you wait 12 years for delivery.
OSS is a choice, you are free to reject it without penalty. VS Communism is enforced by the barrel of a gun, dissidents get killed.
OSS has not caused the death of anyone. VS 100 million people have been killed by Communist regimes.
Some will argue that this is not "real, genuine" communism. Bullshit. Every case of communism in practice has been a poverty-laden murder-fest. Whining about how this is not "real" communism is astroturfing of the most foul sort.
Did communism get the first dog into space? Yes!
Did the dog ever make it back alive? You Capitalist pig dog traitor! How dare you even ask the question! (Actual answer is no. They didn't care about the life of the dog, they cared about the glory of Communism.)
If anything represents the output of Communism in the real software world, it is Windows. Poor quality, trade in it between individuals is forbiden, product is forced on the user by the OEM.
IN a comunist/socialist systme, the people own the code. (Since the people own everything.)
Sigh. No. In a communist/socialist system the state owns everything and just claims to do it in the name of the people.
This is a refreshing contrast to the fascist model, where the state owns the code.
Fascism has to do with totalitarianism and suppression of rights, not with property. The canonical fascist country (Nazi Germany) was capitalist.
So no again -- under the fascist model the programmer owns the code, it's just that the state makes sure he doesn't do anything "unpatriotic" with it.
If he says Linus is Stallin/lennin/marx, then he's Hitler by the same set of parameters.
LOL. And that was modded insightful...?
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
http://news.com.com/Gates+taking+a+seat+in+your+de n/2008-1041_3-5514121-4.html?tag=st.next
In recent years, there's been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, "We've got to look at patents, we've got to look at copyrights." What's driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed? No, I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.
And this debate will always be there. I'd be the first to say that the patent system can always be tuned--including the U.S. patent system. There are some goals to cap some reform elements. But the idea that the United States has led in creating companies, creating jobs, because we've had the best intellectual-property system--there's no doubt about that in my mind, and when people say they want to be the most competitive economy, they've got to have the incentive system. Intellectual property is the incentive system for the products of the future.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Tax-deductible
http://freenet.sourceforge.net
He'll be hailing Friend Computer, and hunting Commy Muntant traitors... sheesh.
The communism quote was from a CNet article . Not this article. It was previously discussed on Slashdot. There was also a discussion on boing-boing
IN a comunist/socialist systme, the people own the code. (Since the people own everything.)
Perhaps in theory, but I think reality is quite different. According to Mr. Dictionary, communism is:
"A system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people."
In other words "Sure, you own it, but we have absolute control over it", in which case, you don't really own anything. Ownership is pretty pointless, when you can't make the decisions as to what to do with whatever it is you supposedly own. Ask anyone who came out of Soviet Russia as to how much property they thought they really owned. "Yes, it's your land, but we are going to build a munitions plant on it."
But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
Internally at Microsoft everybody runs Windows 2003 Advanced Server on every workstation, installs every possible product, hands around the source to everything possible to anybody who asks, and never asks for a dime. However there are restrictions on what you can do with it -- you can't give it away to people outside the company, for example.
Windows is built with a huge bunch of command line tools and perl scripts. There's not much difference between the philosphies and characters of Windows Developers and Free Software Developers -- except one: Windows people don't want *you* to have the rights *they* have.
If the artist keeps the rights, that is one set of circumstances.
If the artist sells the rights, those rights should expire (and the work become public domain) after 10 or 20 years (even if the artist dies right after he signs them over).I wouldn't have a problem with that, if the corporation he signed the work over to only had 10 years ownership. They can release all of his previously unreleased stuff, for 10 years. Then it's public domain.Yep. Because they want to shape the discussion to favour themselves.
I want to protect the rights of the artists and their works.
I want to allow the corporations the time to produce and profit from the works they buy.
I don't want to have corporations locking up works for an indefinate time.
Gates is awful in an interview. No, seriously, his words and analogies were leaping all over the field and clusterfucking one another.
Sigh. No. In a communist/socialist system the state owns everything and just claims to do it in the name of the people.
No. Poor boy, you've been indoctrinated by American propaganda. In a true Communist state, as defined by Marx, the people own the code. Period. The states of Russia and China, which fit the model you describe, were never Communist. They were only "Communist"... ie, totalitarianism wrapped up with a prettier name.
Fascism has to do with totalitarianism and suppression of rights, not with property. The canonical fascist country (Nazi Germany) was capitalist.
Not quite. As per the Wikipedia article on the topic, Fascism typically engages in Corporatism, where the state and corporations work together to minimize the power of the working class. Thus, by that definition, the corporation and the state own your code.
Other than being a "community" the Open Source / Free Software groups are not "Communist" because they exists in a free market. Someone can always come up with their own code and sell it.
Big companies have had no problem selling crappy code for big $$$. Now they're bent that people are discovering free alternatives that work as well or better. They decided to rule from the top-down and now they're paying for it. They'll just have to make their products actually good if they wish to be successful.
And that is the way it should be.
You are missing his point. Communist is a trigger word. Like terrorist. It doesn't matter what it actually means he is using the word because he know how your typical american will react to it.
You are a communist. To the average american this means you belong in jail. That's what he is after.
evil is as evil does
Executive compensation has almost completely moved from capital to wealth disbursements. Open source products tend to be more capitalistic, in the sense that almost all of the money they receive will be put into production.
Well, if the PR department came up with the medical record analogy, they were doing a much better job than usual.
I like the analogy: enabling the customer to download music which can only be heard by means of software which prevents the music to be copied in order to protect the copyright holder's rights is analogous to enabling the doctor to mail medical records which can only be read by software which prevents the record to be forwarded in order to protect the patient's rights. For it has exactly the same flaws:
In short, I wouldn't mind if software asks This song is copyrighted and as far as I can tell you're not the copyright holder. Giving copies away might be illegal. Are you sure you want to proceed the copying? [Yes] [No] [Cancel] when I try to copy a marked song, just as I wouldn't mind software that asks There's a medical record attached. Forwarding it to non-autorised peoply might hurt the patient's privacy. Are you sure you want to proceed the forwarding? [Yes] [No]. But the functionality should still be there for the circumstances in which the action is justified.
Those who want to illegaly "crack" the content, will find a way, anyhow.
In a socialist system, the writers no more own the code than in a fascist system. "The People" own the code, and since "The State" is the representative of society's will, the State owns the code under socialism. If you want the coder to own his code, you need a capitalist system.
Sigh. No. In a communist/socialist system the state owns everything and just claims to do it in the name of the people.
Sigh. In the Communist system according to Marx the people own everything. There is no State.
Fascism has to do with totalitarianism and suppression of rights, not with property. The canonical fascist country (Nazi Germany) was capitalist.
There was massive state ownership of industry, and although, it could be argued, this was just for the war effort it was also true under Italian Fascism even during the relatively peaceful 20s.
LOL. And that was modded insightful...?
More insightful (and accurate) than some.
Gizmodo: Do you think that it's critical to protect IP--software, music, whatever... Do you think it's critical to protect those things with DRM or do you think that, or do you feel like you have to provide the DRM so that the companies that are distributing that stuff will allow it on your systems?
/., RMS was quoted as saying people ought to quit their jobs if it requires them to use 'un-free' software.
Gates: Well, ignore DRM for a second. Should an artist that creates a great song be paid for that song? That's where you have to start. You don't start with DRM. DRM is just like a speed bump that reminds you whether you're staying within the scope of rights that you have or you don't. So you don't start with DRM. That's like saying, 'Do you believe in speed bumps?' You have to say, 'Should people drive at 80mph in parking lots?' If you think they should, then of course you don't like speed bumps.
Gizmodo: I think that's sort of disingenuous. Obviously people think that artists, or you know, whoever creates software should be paid...
Gates: No, no, no. That's not true! Many people don't believe that. [They] absolutely don't believe that.
Got to hand it to Bill, he had the interviewer backpedalling wit that one because he had a valid point -- there are too many extremists and extremist views in the Linux/OSS community. Take for instance RMS, who says not only should software be given away for $0, but if you charge money for software, you are committing an unethical act. Or, in his last interview publicized on
This extremism is what is being picked by the MSFT et al crowd. It's high time the OSS community seperates itself from such lunacy.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
Oh, please... *rolls eyes*
I have to say I gave up after the first few paragraphs - it's one of the most incoherent expositions of personal philosphy I've read.
wake up and smell capitalism you nit wit!! were your born yesterday...how can you compare Billy to Hitler #$%?*@
...in fact, I license all the code I write to my clients....wake up and smell capitalism you nit wits!!!!!!
For people who think that GPL forces its "communistic" ideals on other people, consider this...
Another person wrote that GPL code, and they own the copyright on it. By virtue of that, they can stipulate whether or not you have permission to copy that code (outside of any permission you may already implicitly have on account of fair or personal/private use). If you want to make a derivative of that work and you must copy some or all of their code to do so (to the extent that it would be copyright infringement if explicit permission were not given at all), then you are obligated to honor the terms and conditions that the copyright holder stipulates in order to be seen as having been given permission to copy that work. In the GPL's case, that means that your derivative work has to be GPL'd. Perhaps one might be inclined to argued that the author is being unfair and trying to enforce his ideals upon you, but in reality it's nothing more than the terms you have to agree to in order to acquire permission to copy without restriction in the first place. By virtue of what copyright is, at its heart, the copyright holder _MUST_ be allowed to stipulate whatever terms are amenable to him, even if that includes wanting others to support his own social and/or political values. People who are dissatisfied with the terms have no permission to copy GPL'd works at all (beyond what is acceptable for personal/private use and/or fair use). In reality, this is no different than for any other copyrighted work.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Following up upon Abcd1234's comment, I should add that if you're going to correct the popular form of the term "fascism" for a more rigourous use, you need to extend the same rigour to the term "communism". Communism means "ownership by the people"; the fact that it doesn't work is another matter entirely.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Here's a simple rule of thumb:
Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man.
Communism is the reverse.
While it may be true that: "Real communist societies would not be controlled by 'an elite few."
It is also true, at least in the knowable past and the realistically imaginable future, there aren't any communist societies like that.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Marx's views were an economic system, not a political system, and as such, says nothing about the existence of the state.
communism, like capitalism, can exist under any number of forms of political structure. the difference is the ownership of the means of production.
... hi bingo
I am not sure how this all fits in yet, but; "Have you seen any starving chefs?"
Cookbooks and recipes are exempt from all IP laws. You can not copywrite or patent a recipe.
Anyone can go to a restaurant and "reverse engineer" a favorite dish. Yet, chefs, cooks,
restaurant owners are not going broke.
Not to belittle my craft, but as a programmer and a one time professional cook, I do not
see a lot of difference between programming and cooking. In cooking you are constrained
by the ingredients and tools you have available. In programming you are constrained by
the tools and OS/processor you are programming. Patterns, templates and wizards are
not that much different from a recipe.
He's a fine one to talk about property rights, since his software empire had its foundation in ignoring Harvard's property rights.
What do you want to be when you grow up? How about a whiny little twit. The world really rewards them.
See what I've been reading.
have you ever actually read a single book by marx, or taken a philosophy course that coverred marx?
cuz i gotta tell you have some wildly innacurrate ideas about "Marxist systems".
... hi bingo
Ladies and gentlemen of the internets, the Gizmodo reporter would certainly want you to believe that screwing up your music collection is bad. And he makes a good case. Hell, I almost felt pity myself!
:-) )
But ladies and gentlemen of this supposed worldwide community, I have one final thing I want you to consider: Ladies and gentlemen, this is a medical record. Medical records tell people if you have AIDS. Now, think about that. That does not make sense! Why would people want to know if you have AIDS? That does not make sense!
But more important, you have to ask yourself, what does this have to do with this interview? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this interview! It does not make sense!
Look at me, I'm an executive defending a major software company, and I'm talkin' about medical records. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense!
And so you have to remember, when you're deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation... does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed worldwide community, it does not make sense.
If medical records tell people you have AIDS, you must buy my software! I actually don't think we disagree.
(With apologies to South Park. And I actually do understand why he went this direction regarding DRM - I'd want my medical records protected too. This is just the first thing that came to my mind when I read it.
In a communist/socialist system the state owns everything and just claims to do it in the name of the people.
Sigh. Ownership is control. Just how are "the people" to exercise their collective control except through the state?
Fascism has to do with totalitarianism and suppression of rights, not with property. The canonical fascist country (Nazi Germany) was capitalist.
The canonical fascist country is Italy. That's where fascism was invented. Nazism is a form of national socialism. Fascism and Nazism aren't the same thing.
I have to commend the Gizmodo interviewer for trying to argue politely with Bill, but he sure stinks at articulating his point. What he was trying to explain is that a patient pays for the confidentiality of his medical records whereas a content consumer pays for the content and thus should be able to use it as he sees fit.
Here's another, inexact, anology:
Because beer is useful and in demand, we allow people to sell it. However, because it has far more negative effects on children than it does on adults, we restrict people from selling beer to children.
In the same sense, protecting medical records is useful and in demand, so we should allow people to sell DRM technology to clinics. However, because DRM has far more negative evvents on content than it does on patient records, we should restrict people from selling harmful DRM technologies to content producers.
Programmers write free software to subvert a system that denies them the protection of their intellectual property rights by pricing legal defense of those rights out of their reach. That guys like Gates would be unsympathetic to this cruel dilemma facing the vast majority of programmers is not surprising. Indeed, given the fact that even giving all his wealth away, except some "modest" estate for his children, his childre will still be able to afford good legal counsel to establish protection for themselves.
If programmers were able to capture enough of the value of what they write to pay for the legal defense of their rights they'd probably write a lot less free software.
This gets to a fundamental problem with the incentives created by taxing things other than asset value (exempting house and tools of the trade which are subsistence assets protected by bankruptcy tradition):
Possession is rewarded over creation.
Think about it: Once you possess something, you basically have no tax burden. You enjoy the benefits of young men dutifully going out to die in wars, government subsidized infrastructure paid by wage earners, the entire legal edifice describing and protecting your rights and without you having to pay a cent. You can just soak the public for these benefits by paying only the lawyers fees to extract the benefits for yourself.
Taxing everything but possession (income, capital gains, sales, value added, etc) is just a way to tax the creative process.
Naturally, creators who are trying to get a leg up on the situation end up selling their creations cheap to those whose possession is subsidized by the tax payments of the creators.
Well, there is one exception to this rule of no taxation of possession -- and that is the patent maintanence fee. Patents are the only assets that the government taxes. This is an incredibly regressive tax hitting hardest those who are earliest to support the realization of a new technology's value -- forcing them to sell their rights ("assign") cheap to someone who has been sitting around enjying the government's protection.
It all adds up to a very nasty way of sucking capital out of the hands of creators and giving over to the hands of possessors.
So the creators, unable to change the tax laws to tax assets rather than creative processes (becuse they can't buy the Ways and Means Committee) become socialists.
This is directly related to the issue of outsourcing since if programmers who had created the value of the information industry had been allowed to retain the value they created, they wouldn't need jobs. The corporations would be paying them royalties or be paying companies owned by the programmers for the rights to their software instead of just throwing creators out on the street after extracting their youth and creativity.
A system that would work would elimnate all existing taxes (although not necessarily tariffs) and just tax net assets at a rate equal to the interest rate on the national debt -- exempting from taxation the same assets that are exempted by personal bankruptcy protection: home and tools of the trade.
Does Gates think he can beat the competition if they aren't beaten down for him by the government? This sort of arrogance by people who are the wealthiest isn't offset by giving their money to charity. They are eating the children of the middle class and destroying the future of the country that made them rich.Seastead this.
But the idea that the United States has led in creating companies, creating jobs, because we've had the best intellectual-property system--there's no doubt about that in my mind
If by "the best intellectual property system" you mean we ignore intellectual property rights of those outside our country while we are developing, have a huge spurt of growth during which we ignore intellectual property within the U.S. and then big companies form around pools of capital, and stabilize the status quo by getting the government to enforce patents, well then you are a wacko. Because that is pretty much what the U.S. did, and it is pretty much what every other country did, or is doing.
I guess communism versus a community is easy for him to confuse.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
"To be realistic, Mr. President - I think we're going to have to accept Federation errr.. Federal control for the time being."
Poor Bill. He can't sleep at night thinking of impoverished Chinese musicians -- so he unleashes the Business Software Alliance to coerce entire nations to pony up more cash for Windows, all in the name of intellectual property. A regular advocate for the little guy, he is...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Second, in a project that has people paid to work on it and volunteers also working on it, the paid people do more work per person than most of the volunteers. So your argument falls apart about the poor exploited peasants who are doing all the work. They're not. The paid "bosses" are doing huge amounts of work.
The third thing wrong with what you're saying here is that you assume that the only way to get paid is in money. That's false. For example, let's suppose that I really want some new feature in an operating system. With open source, I can add the feature to the operating system. Sure I'm working for free, but I'm being paid by getting what I want. (On the bottom line, what other kind of payment is there?)
How much is that worth? Well, lets suppose that I wanted Microsoft to add a feature to Windows. How much money would I have to throw at them before they would even listen to me?
Mod parent interesting. This is how Free Software is related to politics.
The US discovered massive corruption occurs when unions get too powerful.
You could also say that's what happens when corporations get too powerful. Despite what libertarians would tell you, the right to private property is a positive right: it requires active intervention from the state to protect it.
Corporations are the ultimate expresion of private property, and they can also be so powerful to control government wich then no longer represents the citicens. The GPL actually prevents corporations to achieve this level of control by softening the capitalist concept of intellectual property and replacing it by a different cooperative process.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Doesn't this kind of remind you THHGTTG? Gates is out there struting around drawing attention by doing /saying stupid and outragious things and this is his whole job, to keep the public eye off of what is really going on... maybe not *shrug*
You don't actually understand what an analogy is do you? To claim Gates is, or is like, Hitler, is absurd. Hitler is dead and Gates is not a political leader.
To make the comparison of Gates/Hitler and Nazi Party/Microsoft (in terms of control and viciousness in their respective arenas) is both relevant and vaguely insightful as an extension of Gates' use of "communist" to describe Free Culture proponents.
Understand now?
the layman's guide to computer science
I'm glad someone else noticed this. I thought it was hilarious that Gates was disagreeing with the interviewer's assertion that they disagree. See also paradox.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Seriously. But only on topics that he obviously knows NOTHING about.
For instance, he was wrong about the impact of the internet. He has also been wrong in forcasting technology trends, 14 YEARS IN A ROW.
I admire the fact that Bill has been able to become rich and successful. To his credit, he drove his company to take risks and challenge his competitors. If it weren't for the principles of Microsoft fighting for their market share, the industry might look much less inviting than it is today. Competition is a good thing, and Microsoft is nothing if not competative.
But when Bill wanders off the reservation, he gets himself in trouble. His ideas about world health are noble, but I don't think US pharma companies look too kindly at his dumping millions of dollars into areas where they could be raking in profits.
Free medicine? Ask Big Pharma what they thing that political philosophy constitutes.
Bill should keep his discussion focused on Microsoft and his competition. That is what he is best at. Commenting on open source products, not the philosophy that creates them, is probably a whole lot safer and let prone to embarrass His Highness.
Bill Gates is as clueless about open source as Nicolas II was about his peasantry.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
By comparing DRM to a speed bump, Gates is admitting that DRM doesn't really stop copying, it only slows copying down a bit.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
-- to the tune of the Mickey Mouse theme ---
Who's the leader of the gang who's stolen our PC?
M-I-C-R-O-S - opps! OH NO! - F - T!
Mickey Mouse! Microsoft!
Mickey Mouse! Microsoft!
The richest man who ever lived is calling you a thief,
M-I-C-R-O-S - 'opps! OH NO!' - F - T!
Where's my file?
Microsoft!
All my work?
Microsoft!
Could there ever be an end to all this needless grief?
M-I-C-R-O-S - 'opps! OH NO!' - F - T!
I use this an anger-management mantra whenever I get DASPO'ed (being driven into a state mouth-foaming rage by the work of a Dumb-As-Shit-Programmer). It usually works.
I would be interested in learning of any other ways to control the anger that occasionally happens after getting zapped by truly stupid software. I guess Slashdot would be the place to ask. Everyone must have some special secret little tricks that they use to avoid going postal whenever bad software destroys hours of work.
Jezz-I hope so.
Exactly... IN practice, it may seem like the "state owns", but the state only "acts in trust" for the people. Of course, also in practice, the lines are blured. Just look at Eric Blair's Animal Farm. :)
-=fshalor
Mr. Dictionary? wtf?
According to the OED:
Communism
A theory which advocates a state of society in which there should be no private ownership, all property being vested in the community and labour organized for the common benefit of all members; the professed principle being that each should work according to his capacity, and receive according to his wants.
while what you say is not really false, i feel that people who say that are often trying say that Marx somehow had a better or purer philosophy than stalin or mao. or they want to say that Marx had some great insight into humanity and that communism could work if only things had been done a little different.
Marx said that first the state must take everything from the people. then later, somehow, magically everything would be everyone's and they would all be equal and they would all live in peace and harmony. Russia and China and North Korea followed Marx's prescription exactly.
in the end extreme forms of monarchy, fascism, communism, and totalitarianism are all the pretty much the same thing: a couple guys at the top get to decide how everything is going to work and who gets to live and who gets to die and everyone else is a slave.
I've decided that DRM makes a lot of sense, as of reading this article.
However, I realize that on the one hand, artists need to have some sort of say in how their work should be used. At the same time, DRM needs to be setup so that an artist can allow people to use their work, and that real fair use is allowed. There also needs to be a reasonable way for me as a consumer to license a work to use in a way that I want to. If I want to use a song in a slideshow, there ought to be a simple way I can do this that satisfies the artist.
Current DRM schemes don't seem to allow much more than a black-and-white do or don't allowance. While this doesn't quite cut it for today, that's not a good enough reason to dismiss the entire system.
That was the quote from Gates, not me. Read the link next time.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
More like: "Papers please."
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Neither are socialism/communism.
Neither and Republicans are classical LIBERALS. Contemporary LIBERALS are more socialist. Blahblahblah.
Nazism and Fascisim are near the same end of the linear poiltical spectum (with pure liberal(classical) capitalism in the center).
-=fshalor
That point is entirely irrelevant if Gates is using the term in any discussion targeted at an American audience. He KNOWS that he's being inflammatory and he KNOWS the frame of reference of the audience.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Poor boy, you've been indoctrinated by American propaganda.
LOL. Think so? I am fairly sure I know much more about Communism than you and it has nothing to do with *American* propaganda...
In a true Communist state, as defined by Marx, the people own the code. Period.
Techincally speaking you're wrong on at least two counts. First, under Communism as described by Marx there would be no state at all. So talking about a "Communist state" is nonsense by definition. Second, under Communism (again, as described by Marx) there would be no property rights. This means that there's no such concept as property -- and that's very different from "people own the code".
You might also have noticed that I was talking about "communist/socialist" system -- meaning the socioeconomic system that actually existed in places like Soviet Union, China, etc. Some people call it communist (and they call e.g. Sweden socialist). Other people call it socialist (and they call only theoretical Marx's constructs "true" communism". That's a standard terminology mess when talking about this topic.
Fascism typically engages in Corporatism, where the state and corporations work together to minimize the power of the working class. Thus, by that definition, the corporation and the state own your code.
Nice handwaving. Can you be more explicit about the logical jump from "working together to minimize the power of the working class" to a programmer not being legally able to own his code?
Besides, under Marxist analyst a programmer is basically a skilled craftsman and occupies a position between working class and bourgeoisie...
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
He's watched too much cnn.
-=fshalor
That would be exactly wrong. Under communism, the state assumes ownership over all property. You can fool yourself into believing that the state limits the individual's right to private property on behalf of "the people", but if you poke around a bit, you'll find that *every* government claims exactly that.
You took his stuff. You pound him.
Gates may want to get paid, but that doesn't necessarily mean he intends to pay for work others did:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall
Anyways, it seems far too many musicians sell/lose the rights to their music long before they are dead. How many american musicians are there who are contractually unable to play their own music without paying a royalty to someone else, or are forced to see their recordings endorse products they have nothing to do with?
More than limiting copyrights by time, they should be limited to the creator. They shouldn't necessarily be as commoditized as they currently are.
If you want the coder own his code don't let him show it to anyone; if he does show it (and someone cares) you need a police state to keep it under control.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
"No. Poor boy, you've been indoctrinated by American propaganda. In a true Communist state, as defined by Marx, the people own the code. Period. The states of Russia and China, which fit the model you describe, were never Communist. They were only "Communist"... ie, totalitarianism wrapped up with a prettier name."
Well close. Marx believed that there had to be period that I think he called the "Dictatorship of the Prolatariate". Russia and China "claimed" to be in that period. At some time in in the future that would give way to the true Communist state. So the state that Russia and China where in where along the lines that Marx set out.
As to Nazi Germany being capitalist... I seem to remember they where the National Socialist party. How Socialist they where I do not know.
What gets me is the way everybody links economic systems with political systems. You can have a Democratic Socialist state. Sweden jumps to mind.
You can a totalitarian capitalist nation. Italy in the 1930s or even China today.
How free you are in each is a matter of opinion. In Sweden you have a LOT more restrictions on things like. Model Rockets, owning guns, modifying your car, building on your property, and some other things.
In the US you have more things to worry about. Like medical care. I do not think I would like the Swedish system but then a lot of people in Sweden might not like the US system.
As for Marxism... never worked.. never will.. a proven bad idea.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
If he says Linus is Stallin/lennin/marx, then he's Hitler by the same set of parameters.
Ok, as an outspoken communist I NEED to slap you around a bit.
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER Put Stalin in the same grouping as Lenin and Marx. EVER. Any true Communist is very outspoken about how much Stalin was not a communist (under Lenin's, Marx's, Trotski's, or anyone else even remotely credible's definition)
A MUCH more appropriate comment would have literally been:
If he says Linus is Lenin/Marx/etc. then he's Stalin by the same set of parameters.
Any time a topic like this comes up, I feel the need to somehow explain to people that Open Source IS a very Communist idea, and that's exactly why it's so great.
"From each according to their ability, to each according to their need."
Seems to kind of summarize the Open Source ideology, right? The people that can code, should. The people that can make graphics, should. The people that can only use the system and bitch when it breaks, should. And if everyone does this, everyone should get what they need out of it.
The quote is from Marx.
Think twice about saying that OSS isn't a very communist ideal, because it is.
Sorry, this turned from a reply into a rant in about 2 minutes.
Not Free(as in beer). Free(as in "I'm free to beat you over the head for being a dumbass")
BUT when you look at the philosophies behind communism Marx is trying to prevent the coorperations from exploiting the working class. Doesn't open source/GPL give the extreme of this area, letting the coorperations do whatever they want with their code? You could say that Creative Commons is a communist license, disallowing commercial involvement, but definitely not the GPL!
This is a refreshing contrast to the fascist model, where the state owns the code.
I think you got this a little bit wrong. In a fascist system, it's the state that owns the code on behalf of a select few. In a communist system, it's the state that owns the code on behalf of all the people.
Communism is extreme left, socialism is left, and Fascism is extreme right. Democracy is in the middle, which is a reality that is being blurred right now by republican propaganda in an effort of labeling the democrats as socialists.
I could care less if my neighbors are communist, atheist, black, white, Buddhist, Catholic or homosexual. And I imagine, either through not caring, or forced lack of contact that most other people here agree with me.
Burn the house down? Wow.
Karnal
Gates is so full of crap his arguments are just nonsense:
... Call 'communism' a system where [in] the extreme case you believe that the idea of the individual getting lots of wealth in return for the things they do... that that's wrong. ... no redistribution of wealth and that's there's no expiration of rights and control...
Gates:
So the richest man in the world and leader of the biggest spurious-patenting company is stating that an individual getting lots of wealth is wrong, and no expiration of rights and control is bad...
Hahahahahaha thats funny...
So Gates says they are enabling people by having the ability to have any bits, plus the ability to restrict the use of the bits.
Gizmodo says that because there is no distinction between what is being disabled (medical records/music are treated the same), the technology is inheritently bad. (Evil begin too strong a word).
At the end of the artical Gizmodo suggests that they simply disagree, Gates disagrees with that statement.... (My mind hurts now).
The problem with public ownership, as Mr. Gates so aptly put it, is that it removes the incentive for individuals to improve that which is pubically owned. The individual in the communist society is going to say, "Why should I go to school and learn to program when I will receive nothing more than what the garbage man gets in compensation?" At the end of the day the only things that get us out of bed in the morning to do economically productive work are incentives and the most powerful incentive of all is money. Sure, there might be the occaisonal altruistic soul who creates purely for the joy of creation itself, but unfortunately for most of us, the mortage really is due at the end of the month, our children really do need to be fed, and people really do want to make life better for their families. One cannot do any of these things effectively in a society without incentives...it just doesn't work, just ask anyone who lived in the Russia during the Soviet era.
Weird. Well, the resource I quoted was just www.dictionary.com which builds its information from the following resources:
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2001 Denis Howe
Jargon File 4.2.0
CIA World Factbook (1995)
Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary
U.S. Gazetteer, U.S. Census Bureau
I'm at a loss as to the disparity between these two sources, but suffice to say that, in practice, communism results in the inability of individuals to excercise ownership over anything.
But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
Well, ignore DRM for a second.
...but the ones in the expensive cars are the only ones who can reach 80mph before running out of parking lot...
wayyyy ahead of ya
You don't start with DRM. DRM is just like a speed bump that reminds you whether you're staying within the scope of rights that you have or you don't.
word. wait, what should i not start with again?
So you don't start with DRM. That's like saying, 'Do you believe in speed bumps?' You have to say, 'Should people drive at 80mph in parking lots?' If you think they should, then of course you don't like speed bumps.
i guess i'm drivin' on the grass motherfucka!
on a slightly more serious note, let me extend the speed-bump analogy: people driving in expensive cars slow down. people in beaters don't bother.
according to his *wants*?
it's "according to his needs" - good lord, cant people quote common phrases correctly, even when they work for a damn dictionary company?
... hi bingo
in the end extreme forms of monarchy, fascism, communism, and totalitarianism are all the pretty much the same thing: a couple guys at the top get to decide how everything is going to work and who gets to live and who gets to die and everyone else is a slave.
And in the American republic, things are different how???
As for brainwashing, the people of the Eastern block had about 50 years of government brainwashing conditioning them to believe that communism >> God.
Today, the most intense, strident, articulate, dedicated anticommunists you're likely to meet in the U.S. are the people who grew up in Eastern Europe under communism, and were taught that communism was everything good, and capitalism was the embodiment of evil.
Must be that good old government brainwashing, eh?
See what I've been reading.
let me modify your statement:
It is true, that in the knowable past, and the realistically imaginable future, that there are no communist societies, regardless of claims to the otherwise.
the preconditions to communism arent met, and wont be, for some time.
... hi bingo
He's actually kind of right. IN a comunist/socialist systme, the people own the code. (Since the people own everything.)
This is a refreshing contrast to the fascist model, where the state owns the code. In this case, the writers own the code.
If he says Linus is Stallin/lennin/marx, then he's Hitler by the same set of parameters.
Under Milo Mindbender, everyone owns a part of M&M Enterprises.
Actually under both a communist and fascist model the state owns the code. Under a capitalist model the writer owns the code.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
The problem is the maintenance of such a system, which is the fatal flaw of the communist model on a large scale. The newly emancipated proletariat must find a way to administer the new social order, and thus a few assume those roles as necessary. As time goes on, the country begins to look more and more like a totalitarian regime and the class difference resembles more and more the old social order.
China and USSR were, indeed Communist nations to begin with. But as the necessary beaurocratic apparati to maintain the nations became established, they both more resembled totalitarian regimes. In effect, they became the end product of communism.
This is what Orwell depicted in Animal Farm.
And to the parent of the parent of this post, Communism != socialism. Socialism is an attempt to more evenly distribute wealth among the people, but it doesn't advocate the abolition of property ownership.
Humorless sig goes here.
That's why we have these wonderful things called non-disclosure agreements. If he allows someone access to his code with no contractual stipulations, then that person is not bound to maintain secrecy regarding what they were shown. If I tell someone about my wonderful new algorithm, and I didn't have them sign a non-disclosure agreement, they can blab it all over town with no liability. If, however, they obtain access to my code by theft, or violate a non-disclosure agreement they had signed, or by violating terms of a licence agreement they had accepted, then they are liable for damages, which would include revenue lost to competing products that were created with their illicitly gained information. You don't need a police state to enforce that; you don't even need a patent system, just common law and the courts. I would prefer to see such a system, as it would make owners of IP responsible for maintaining their IP themselves, rather than, as you pointed out, forming a police state to do the same thing. It also prevents problems of two people independently developing the same process or idea. If it cannot be reasonably demonstrated that one party developed their product or service by illicitly obtaining IP from the other party, then no harm done. If, however, it can be shown that said IP was obtained through fraud, theft, or contract violation, then said party is liable for damages. If someone is stupid enough to blab their new invention to anyone who will listen, then they can have no expectation that it will remain IP. Problem solved, all through logic, contract law, and common law, without involving legislatures.
You're describing the way power was consolidated in the Soviet Union and China, under the legitimizing banner of Marxism. Marx himself would have doubted that anything resembling "communism" could have arisen in either of those agrarian societies; he was thinking of industrial countries like England and Germany where there was a substantial working class, and (critically) that this working class would be politically aware and vigilant enough to react to and prevent such a corruption of power. But alas, political awareness is a lot to ask even of highly educated people, and you can never guarantee that any grant of absolute power will be revokable. Therein lies the rub.
- There are lots and lots of people who think that the people who write software / music shouldn't be paid.
- If you were in China in 1950, it would be WRITTEN DOWN that you wouldn't get paid.
- If you have medical records without DRM, they'll quit being secret.
- He's not actually providing MEDIA DRM, just 'bits' DRM. Really. Nothing to do with songs, or music. THINK OF THE CHILDREN^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMEDICAL RECORDS!
This is...hmm. Someone more recently versed in debate confirm or deny, but I think it's called a Straw Man argument.This flies in the face of science.
I find it interesting that you refer to Blair by his real name and not hit pen name. Do you do this with all authors with pen names?
How can there be a "right to control your work"? If I invent something and patent it, and then I tell Alice the details of my invention, there is no way, short of claiming that I own Alice's thoughts, that I can prevent her from sharing my invention with Bob. If Bob posts in on a webpage for the whole world to read, can I know claim to control the thoughts of the rest of the world, on the chance that they might have been exposed to my invention?
live(free) || die;
More specifically, I think, communism is typically enforced by police and/or an army accountable to a long term centralised authority that cannot easily be replaced by the people it governs, and is therefore open to be rife with corruption over time.
Open source has no central leaders or police force, and relies on the legal system and enforcement agencies of the regions in which it is used. Usually, at least so far, this means some form of democracy.
Specifically, it represents the "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" aspect of communism.
Microsoft, on the other hand, represents the "Central planning enforced via coercion from an unaccountable monopoly" aspect of communism.
If Gates & co. are going to try and keep the communism analogy alive, this more precise view ought to be brought up to reporters at every opportunity. I can't speak for everyone, but I know all my negative associations with Communism come from its relation to totalitarianism, not its relation to sharing.
Bill doesn't believe it because he can't understand that someone would care about something other than money. THat he doesn't understand that has led him to greatly underestimate the open source movement by branding it as a bunch of hippies/commies/untalented dipshits. Let's let him keep believing it, hey?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
That said, I agree that the government should draw a line, past which they are unwilling to enforce the monopoly of IP. I think of it as a balance between enforcement and property protection. The government protects the dollar bill you have in your wallet, but that doesn't take much work because few people are in your wallet other than yourself (insert spouse joke). The government doesn't really protect a hundred dollar bill that you leave on the sidewalk outside of your house. It is still your property, but protecting it would require a policeman to stand over it with his baton, and that's not a pratical solution. Similarly, the government protects your IP to the extent that you are trying to protect it yourself. If on the other hand you broadcast a TV show to peoples' homes and expect them not to tape/PVR it and skip the commercials, and then require the government to enforce this for you, you're unlikely to be protected, even though you still have property rights at stake. This is my understanding and I'm willing to discuss it.
Actually, with most (if not all) open source projects, the vast, overwhelming majority of the work is done by the people at the top of the project. "Outside" contributions usually account for single-digit percentages of the total code.
:)
Furthermore, you're assuming that value can only be measured in dollars. Software has implicit value, and most "outside" contributers contribute in order to get software that better fits their needs. In other words, they get paid in software!
Anyway, let me leave you with a syllogism to ponder:
1. Open Source developers are communist.
2. IBM is an Open Source developer.
3. Therefore, IBM is communist.
If that doesn't lead you to conclude that there's a flaw in your logic somewhere, then I think you might want to check out a local community college that offers Logic 1A.
There are still limits, they are just extended. Currently produced work will go into the public domain 75 years after the author dies. If the work was for a company (work for hire) then copyright is 95 years. So there are no infinite copyrights (which would be directly unconstitional) just frustratingly long ones.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
"Free culture" software licenses lke GPL are not free.
Public domain is free.
I read this as Mr. Bill confusing a market economy with a non-market one. His argument is a straw man... that one can not approach "greatness" without being rewarded with money.
Funny, my Dad is an Episcopal priest and one of the things he taught during his sermons was the value of good works. These are (for those who skipped Church) the kind of things where you expect no reward, payment, etc.
Most people consider "good works" to be doling out food to the poor. But I would argue that writing something that a) seems useful to others and b) gives one some joy is also a good work.
After all, how many people went "thank god" when their system DIDN'T crash because some 13 year old decided to create the Windows worm du jour?
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
Ah it wasn't actually a troll but an observation on how Slashdotters usually react to a Microsoft employee interview. I didn't really expect anyone to respond since I didn't exactly say anything "interesting".
It apparently "trolled" you in though didn't it?
hehe
You misunderstand, I didn't post anything relating to what what Marx wrote. I stated what happened to countries that tried to apply it. And yes , I took several courses in political science and philosophy. Name one pure Marxist country one that is purely Marxist? Why do you think most of them are a called Marxist Regimes?
You are right of course, contracts are a possible way too. I was thinking too much in the terms of how Microsoft does things.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Was going to reply:
... George Orwell did"
"OMG! Dumbass! Eric Blair didn't write
Luckily I googled for it and it turned out that Orwell was just a pseudonym.
So, thank you sir! You just gave me some knowledge..
"The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck is the day they make a vacuum cleaner."
Heres what I hate about communist comparisons to open source. In real world communism government control and management of resources is a given.
In Open Source, the resources are compeltely open. Owned by the community of course with the stipulations of the GPL keeping the code (resouces) owned by the community. Now no one really owns the code (yes, Linus is the Benevolent dictator of Linux), anyone can use it and anyone could fork it if desired.
The communist model breaks down (or really doesn't apply), because the resource (code) is completely free.
Its not "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", its more like "From each according to his desires and ability, to each according to their wants." I think the latter phrase there really shows that open source has drives coming from communism and from capitalism.
Open Source isn't like some other revloution or idea from another time. Its a great new idea and revolution for this time!
No argument, I was trying to describe the applied Marxism. as applied in Soviet Union, China, and All the little wannabe "Marxist Regimes". Not the theoretical system as proposed by Karl Marx. Maybe I should have explained this up front.
I noticed that, too. Makes quite a difference, doesn't it?
Actually, musicians and other artists tend to be paid better (compared to their non-artist peers) in more socialist countries than they do under capitalism.
britney spears and the beatles get paid a lot more than any soviet or chinese musician ever did.
demand for your art is the only measure of quality that matters. many people clearly think britney spears is a good entertainer. you have the opinion that the music you listen to (non britney spears) is better. thats fine, but music is completely subjective (whats the difference between sound waves you get from an orchestra and the sound waves from a hammer) and most people don't agree with you.
whats really lame and pathetic is that you get up on your high horse think that everyone should help pay for your choice of entertainment. pay for it yourself if its so great.
socialism produces bad art (which i define as art that nobody/barely anyone wants to see or hear).
the free market is a friend to the arts that people are actually interested in.
No... I was just phishing. :)
More or less, was seing if anyone of the above posters would flame with a "it's Orwell, you lout" type of comment.
The Mr. Dictionary def wasw most amusing, using the popularized americanized adoption of "communist" rather than the actual definition.
This whole thread was sort of amusing. I'm glad I got it started, after missing such an opertunity when Gate's first comment aired.
And now I'm trying to get the analagy of linux to farm animals out of my mind.
"It's not dead, it's just sleeping."
-=fshalor
I wish the people that bandy around terms like communist would stop and consider what these terms mean.
I am a worker (In my case an intellectual worker, but that doesn't matter) under both capitalism & communism I would be creating a product.
Under capitalism I create something, and I can sell it or give it away as I wish. It doesn't matter if that something is a wooden table or a computer program. It's my choice what I do with it.
The person I sell/gift it to can do with it as he or she wishes.
In other words, my product is covered by a BSD licence.
Under communism everything (including the fruits of my labours) belongs to "the people", in other words "the state". I make something, the state pays me a wage and it determies how and by whom the product is used.
Under capitalism (as described by Marx) competitive pressure forces the price of commodity goods down towards the cost of production. The producers can only make a profit by reducing their cost of production, including wages, to a minimum.
What's the true commodity cost of software? The cost of downloading and perhaps the cost of burning it to a CD.
Under communism, the state restricts competition, and interferes in the market, thus keeping the price of commodities high enough to ensure a decent wage for the workers.
The exact mechanism for how it restricts competition isn't that relevant. It could be "5 year plans" stating exactly how many will be produced, it could be limiting the number of people permitted to make the product, or it could be changing the patent rules to permit patenting the product rather than the old "patenting the process" model.
Under communism you have the state creating or enforcing monopolies on the production of commodity items. It doesn't matter if those items are cornflakes or software, the prices are kept artificially high to permit "the workers" to keep more of the wealth.
Looking to the USSR experiment, "the workers" that retained the wealth weren't so much the ones on the factory floor as the managers & the communist functionaries that replaced the former owners, but no-one can argue that the upper echelons of the society of the USSR were wealthy.
There's a lot of confusion here and in the US when speaking about "communism". The problem is that the term "communism" has multiple meanings, and Bill Gates is using one meaning to illicit imagery from another meaning. From wikipedia:
Communism is a term that can refer to one of several things: a certain social system, an ideology which supports that system, or a political movement that wishes to implement that system.
As a social system, communism would be a type of egalitarian society with no state, no private property and no social classes. In communism, all property is owned by the community as a whole, and all people enjoy equal social and economic status. Perhaps the best known principle of a communist society is "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".
Above is the version of communism that OSS can be compared against.
As a political movement, communism is a branch of the broader socialist movement. The communist movement differentiates itself from other branches of the socialist movement through various things - such as, for example, the communists' desire to establish a communist system after the socialist one, and their commitment to revolutionary strategies for overthrowing capitalism.
This is the form of "communism" practiced in th e old Soviet Union, and is actually socialism, which is NOT true communism. And there is doubt as to whether the Soviet leaders actually ever wished to eventually implement a true communist state.
OSS is NOT like soviet "communism" which involves people disappearing in the night and nukes and invasion and other propagandist negative images we may have left over from the cold war. But Bill is clever in trying to illicit this imagery to turn people against OSS.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Americans vote for the morons that lead them?
Hopefully you're being sarcastic. But if you can't see the difference between Stalin, Hitler, and Bush, then you've got issues.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
And in the American republic, things are different how???
oh good point. you got me there. things are exactly the same in america as they were under stalin, mao, and hitler.
how about:
private property
freedom
voting
high standard of living
but then those are just little things.
They were pretty darn socialist in many respects.
The local Gauleiter organized local political unions (for lack of the actual term), or branch of the party. In the early days of the brownshirts, when Adolf's buddy, Roehm, was still running them they were not much more than an organized mob. Once the purging started and the Nazi party had exlusive control of all German political thought and discourse, these organizations missions were expanded to cover virtually all aspects of German life and society. They organized trade and union groups, leisure activities, education... everything. I'm paraphrasing a lot here, but it's more or less an outline of the chain of event from Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich by William L. Shirer.
The corporate/capitalist distinction shouldn't be dismissed either. The factory owners were allowed to keep their interests (and were given additional interests seized from dissenters by the state) as long as they played by the party rules. To think they had any real control over their assets would be a mistake, though. Sure, they were allowed to make money and accumulate wealth, as long they didn't run afoul of Nazi doctrine.
Think about why Schindler had to keep his list a secret. He would have lost everything: life, family, factories. The factories, and keeping what control he could over their production, was the best, and perhaps only, tool he had to save the people he saved.
The Nazis had a very organized planned economy. Highly corporatized at the top and rigidly socialist at the bottom.
One of the biggest differences between Nazi Germany and its communist contemporaries was their emphasis on Aryan purity. The communist brainwashers tended to hype equality among different races, as long as you were a good communist, of course. However, that said, it is certainly arguable whether or not they were any better than the Nazis in practice. Read/watch Europa, Europa sometime. Much is made of this when the main character is captured by the Soviets and sent to the orphanage for reeducation.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
Unfortunately, most political discourse is on this level. We all have little clusters of neurons in our brains that encode concepts like "communism", "terrorism", "family", "God", "liberal", etc., and much of politics is the process of getting people to connect them to other little clusters like "Good" and "Evil". There is no requirement that this process be rational. Once those trigger words are properly linked, one can then use them to attack other ideas that may or may not even be related.
Back when the Soviet Union collapsed, and as China was becoming a major trading partner and thereby transitioning from "evil" to "OK", I wondered what bogeyman we would come up with to replace "communism". Up through Reagan, it was always an election issue who was going to be "tough on communism". It's not hard to see what the new replacement is!
I also don't have much of an issue with artists being compensated somehow for their work. There are already laws to govern that, although some of the laws are bad, people often break those laws, and the legal system hasn't yet caught up with how best to deal with it.
The problem here is that Microsoft has taken things upon itself to become the judge, jury and executioner of intellectual property disputes. Even worse, Microsoft's algorithm for determining correctness is a direct interpretation of whatever the distributer of given content happens to say. Microsoft accomodates those who claim ownership by stripping the rights of everyone else to dispute that claim.... at least without paying unaffordable mountains of legal bills.
I think it's mostly a question of whether Microsoft should be allowed to act as some kind of international legal system to enforce disputes between parties. Effectively it's enforcing things through a vigilante system with no intelligent arbitration about what's correct.
For instance, in New Zealand (where I am), some copyrighted materials enter public domain earlier than the USA. It becomes legal to reproduce them regardless of what the original content owner says. (Content owners aren't always authors, by the way.) But if I were to try and take advantage of that, Microsoft would jump in and tell me that I can't, unless the entity that claims ownership says it's okay.
Bill's trying to distance himself from accusations of this type of thing in the interview for obvious reasons, but it's exactly what Microsoft is doing. I don't particularly want a Microsoft-determined legal system.
"I would have got away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling OS coders!"
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm not so sure you can say that Gates is not a political leader. He might not be running for office, but he seems to have a lot of influence over those who do. Microsoft's relationship with Ireland and with many bureaucrats in the EU seems to be having a very large effect on their political process. Individuals who are supposed to represent the views of their individual countries seem to be voting the way that Microsoft and Bill Gates want them to rather than their own citizens. This certainly demonstrates a great deal of political power.
We suspect that the right of FOSS to exist is under attack. Gates is leading the charge. Fundementally it's a political battle. Gates knows that if he can blacken the name of all the FOSS supporters, by equating them with communitsts, than he can use that to sway members of congress to vote for legislation that is beneficial to MS and harmful to FOSS.
The really scary thing is that what has happened in the EU demonstrates just how weak-willed political representatives can be. I don't see any reason to believe that our own representatives are cut from any finer cloth than those of the EU.
Gates and others who want to see FOSS fail know that a free market would clobber them. FOSS will dominate many areas of software, including Linux, withing a few years if special protections and lawsuits don't prevent it.
Gates could lose a substantial portion of his empire. He'll use whatever tactics he thinks will work in order to keep that from happening.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
>>Under communism everything (including the fruits of my labours) belongs to "the people", in other words "the state". I make something, the state pays me a wage and it determies how and by whom the product is used.
Not exactly. According to Marx, there would be no 'states' or governments. Communism would arrive when people had had enough of being exploited. They would spontaneously and without any leaders, overthrow their capitalist oppressors.
Of course, that is not how it worked under the Soviet Union. But Lenin justified it by saying having a state, like the USSR, was a temporary measure until they could establish a perfect communist world.
What you previously described is actually closer to Fascism. That's another word commonly misused by the general public to describe rascists and such.
Fascism was/is actually an economic theory whose chief proponent was Mussolini. Though it's come to be associated primarily with Hitler's National Socialists, it is actually primarily an economic theory.
-dj
- dj
And now I'm trying to get the analagy of linux to farm animals out of my mind.
well... we could start with RMS... he seems to be the most likely to be an actual farm animal.
... hi bingo
"Gizmodo: What seems to me--what hurts my feelings--I feel like I, as a customer, want Microsoft to be totally on my side. In that, as far as the people that are producing things, that might want more DRM and might make it inconvenient, I don't understand what it necessarily benefits you to help them."
So your basic argument is that your feelings are hurt because Microsoft isn't helping you steal IP?
Geez. No wonder the RIAA has their claws out.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I thought we were an autonomous collective.
> He's actually kind of right. IN a comunist/socialist systme, the people own the code. (Since the people own everything.)
/. right?
I thought, in Communist Russia, the code owned the people!?
This is still
-David
Conversely, if you can't see the similarities between Stalin, Hitler and Bush, then you've also got issues.
No, Bush is nowhere near as bad as they were. I'm not trying to say that, but The Bush Regime's words and actions often remind me of those two aforementioned fascists and their policies.
I tried to dial REALITY once and I was informed that it had been disconnected.
I'm fully aware that there is a practical limit to the size of such a commune, however.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
they would have never developed 98.86% of the software they developed, because it uses IP of another company and calls it innovation.
Case in point, Windows using Apple IP by copying the Macintosh look and feel. It was a poor copy, but good enough to mass sell it to the unwashed masses that never heard of Apple or the Macintosh, or understand that what they bought was based on Apple's design of look and feel put into the Macintosh.
So DRM is supported, to an extent, as long as Microsoft can take whatever IP they want from other companies, and make products based on them.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
There is very little Marxist theory in the Manifesto. To understand the economic ideas behind Marxism you should read Das Kapital, and to understand the philosophical (and Hegelian) ideas behind Marxism you should read things like Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology. and Marx's Theses of Feuerbach.
The Manifesto is designed, by and large, to be a sort of "primer" to the rest of Marx.
What are you doing to ensure testimony (and our culture) is not criminally rewritten or supressed by these DRM systems?
What are you doing to allow consumers to correctly identify the DRM encumberances and jepardies of the crap they may be fooled to consume?
Would you retroactively extend copyright again and perpetually if you could? What are you doing to stop your DRM systems from doing it?
If you could stop all GPL software with patents, would you?
He'd be a lot easier to believe if he hadn't stolen the code for MSDOS to begin with. Who was fairly compensated for programming that work? Then there's the whole giving away IE for market share. He's communistic when it suits his capitalistic interests.
He talks about DRM as just a tool and tries to paint the interviewer as an extremist by asking if he doesn't think DRM on medical records is evil. DRM, just like a gun, can be used for good or for evil purposes. The question should not be whether a particular purpose is good or evil, but whether the genie of DRM should be let out of its bottle. It is way too late to ask that question in relation to guns. There are plenty of people who would like to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle. But yes, DRM can absolutely be used in evil ways. To counter his medical records example, what if that DRM prevented a patient from seeing his or her own medical records? What if DRM prevented me from citing Bill's words for the purpose of comment in this article?
When you create a tool, you should ask not what good it CAN do, but what evil it WILL be used to do, because it is the nature of man that he will find uses for your tool you didn't even imagine.
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
It's not what he ment, but comparing DRM to speed bumps is quite apt:
Gates: Well, ignore DRM for a second. Should an artist that creates a great song be paid for that song? That's where you have to start. You don't start with DRM. DRM is just like a speed bump that reminds you whether you're staying within the scope of rights that you have or you don't. So you don't start with DRM. That's like saying, 'Do you believe in speed bumps?' You have to say, 'Should people drive at 80mph in parking lots?' If you think they should, then of course you don't like speed bumps.
Speed bumps are a near perfect comparison with DRM. You see, speed bumps don't actually work. What they do, is cause people to slow down for the bumps and then race to the next one. People drive fast on the street because it feels right. If you actually want people to slow down, you narrow the road and obstruct driver's views so it feels like they need to take things slow. This is the reason the city of Seattle doesn't use speed bumps in nearly all cases. With DRM, the protection gets in the way for a short time, then it pisses people off and they work around it.
-- Any statement of the form "X is the one, true Y" is FALSE.
Communism is the man by man exploitation of Capitalism?
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
Of course he knows. He is not an idiot. He is laying down the groundwork to get open source developers thrown in jail or worse. When the time comes nobody will complain about communists being thrown in jail just like today when nobody complains about the terrorists being thrown in jail without juries, trials, charges, or lawyers.
Wake up, you are next.
evil is as evil does
Gizmodo: ... But I think we just disagree.
Gates: No, I actually don't think we disagree.
Clearly, Gates simply doesn't hear opinions that don't correspond to his own.
Thanks for finally responding to all the defenders of Communism whose understanding of it comes from bumper stickers and protest signs. I always snicker when I hear people talking about "a true Communist state." It quickly becomes clear that they not only haven't read the source documents, but they weren't even listening in their introductory Comparative Politics class. ;-)
Soviet Russia is gone.
It's been end of lifed.
Another government has been installed over the existing hardware (land).
In Communist China... The Communist Overlords welcome YOU.
In Theocratic America... (You know it's coming. The Shrub will be still be in power well after 2008, due to the "state of Emergency" that will be declared)
In Theocratic America... The RIAA Open's YOUR source!
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I don't see why it's a surprise that Gates takes no real position on the philosophy of IP. His aim is to make money, and one product that his company offers is a method for DRM. This interviewer is sitting there trying to make Gates squirm, and it's rather silly.
To sum up what Gates says: 1) There is a need for DRM that comes from the idea that artists should get paid for what they do. 2) M$ get money to wrap content up in that DRM. 3) See you later, I'm going to buy a few more houses.
Especially nice choice in listing "liberal." Classical liberals barely exist in the US anymore. Modern American liberalism is hawking what is essentially the noblese oblige that classical liberals abhorred. They're not even remotely similar.
Much of classical liberal thinking is at the core of the modern American political conscience. But don't try to call a fiscally conservative Republican a liberal. You run a high risk of them slapping or puking on you.
Another perfectly good word, misappropriated and ruined.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
if only i had mod points. if only.
http://use.perl.org
His argument is the same as it always is: If you don't give me your money, you won't be able to do what you want. It's hard to pull that out of that rambling BS piece, but the argument is there. In a nutshell it is, you must accept my DRM or "authors" (I think he really means big media publishers) won't let you have their content. In this case he further's his argument by telling you that you never had the rights you thought you did if the "author" decides you don't have it. Once again, he pretends he wishes to reward others for their work. As usual, he tries to shore it all up with insults, "communist" this time but he's always called his customers "theives". You can see the same arguments from him all the way back in 1976
The key quotes are:
What we want is to have as much content as possible available. ... an envelope ... in order to get authors to be willing to put an ever broader range of content on our platform ... there's content that can only be there if it's rights protected ...
DRM is just like a speed bump that reminds you whether you're staying within the scope of rights that you have or you don't.
This is an astoundingly dishonest position at every level. The fact of the mater is that authors ARE putting their work up on the Creative Commons for everyone to use without restrictions. They don't want Mr. Gate's "protection". They want to compete on their merits and publish in a normal, and easy to use way. Surely, authors have enough sense to know that the control they pass onto big publishers through DRM will be lost to them forever. Right now the RIAA can threaten to keep your work off air and out of stores. Can you imagine the power music publisher would have if they could throw a few bits in their database and prevent your music from working anywhere? Not even the big publisher's believe that they will remain in control of their rights if they lend Microsoft their trust.
Mr. Gates and his DRM scheme are not "enablers" of any sort. His and big media's expansion of copyright and other forms of government granted exclusive franchises are the reason we have more consolidated and stagnant media than ever. When you give your money to this man, you hurt your rights in every way. If you use his software, he owns your system. Now he wants to own your media too. No thanks, I do just fine without him or his software.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Make your time.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
He's twisting words here, he wrongly quoting Lessig saying DRM will only be a ``speed bump". He doesn't even seem to grasp it the technology (the computer protecting its bits) doesn't see the difference between illegal use and fair use. After DRM there will be NO fair use.
What kind of speed bump is the one that stops the car like a concrete wall?
- Voice of Ambience -
is now the way I will end every argument I ever have. What's the word that means you're impressed by the reasonableness and intelligence of something you've been taught to mock?
Did you happen to read this Economist article mourning the same loss?
That's easy. Don't tell Alice, if she can't (or won't) keep her mouth shut. Which is, of course, exactly what's done in the real world using NDAs. If you won't promise not to tell anyone how my invention works, then I'm not telling you - it's your choice. And if someone breaks their promise, they are solely responsible for taking away your right to control your work.
Best part of the article:
Heh heh heh. Cheeky Brits.
Communist is a trigger word.
The term you are looking for is "linguistic negativity index." In addition to meaning, many words are categorized by linguists as having a particular negativity index for a given culture. For example 'shit' and 'feces' have the same meaning, but 'shit' provokes a greater negative reaction in the U.S. Communist has a much higher negativity index than socialist which has a higher negativity index than sharer. The negativity index is strongly linked to the history of its use. Most people heard a lot of negative propaganda about communists, and negative tones used when speaking the word so in our culture it has taken on a very high negativity index rating.
No, I missed it. I treat myself to an Economist when I fly somewhere, so I only see it sporadically. The Economist isn't very economical (kinda like Liberals aren't very liberal). Though, I'd say you certainly get what you pay for in this case. That's interesting. I'll have to check it out. Was that the last issue?
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
"Je ne suis pas un Marxiste."
He's been dead for 120 years and he's still taken out of context.
Maybe I just did it too. Oh well.
And may they ever remain the wonderful, cheeky people that they are.
Cheerio.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
It was from before the American election, and it's pretty much what you'd expect. Still makes a fascinating read, however.
----
Political vocabulary
There's a word for that
Nov 4th 2004
From The Economist print edition
And we want it back
ALL through this election campaign, George Bush has flung the vilest term of abuse he knows at John Kerry. You name the policy--Mr Kerry's support for punitive taxes and reckless public spending, as Mr Bush put it; his preference for stifling government and overweening bureaucracy; his failure to stand up for, oh, expensive new weapons systems, microscopic embryos and the sanctity of marriage--and the president's verdict in each case was the same. "There's a word for that," he said, again and again. "It's called liberalism."
What more need one say? And Mr Kerry was not just any sort of liberal: he had actually been the most liberal member of the Senate. When told this, appalled Republicans jeered more loudly than if Mr Bush had accused his challenger of eating babies. (That man dared to run for president! Did he think he would not be found out?) Understandably, Mr Kerry was sometimes wrong-footed by this egregious defamation. Occasionally, smiling nervously, he said he was not ashamed to be liberal. (Audacious, but perhaps unwise.) At other times he tried to deny it. (You see, he protests too much.) In America, that kind of accusation cannot easily be shrugged off.
"Liberal" is a term of contempt in much of Europe as well--even though, strangely enough, it usually denotes the opposite tendency. Rather than being keen on taxes and public spending, European liberals are often derided (notably in France) for seeking minimal government--in fact, for denying that government has any useful role at all, aside from pruning vital regulation and subverting the norms of decency that impede the poor from being ground down. Thus, in continental Europe, as in the United States, liberalism is also regarded as a perversion, a pathology: there is consistency in that respect, even though the sickness takes such different forms. And again, in its most extreme expression, it tests the boundaries of tolerance. Worse than ordinary liberals are Europe's neoliberals: market-worshipping, nihilistic sociopaths to a man. Many are said to believe that "there is no such thing as society."
Yet there ought to be a word--not to mention, here and there, a political party--to stand for what liberalism used to mean. The idea, with its roots in English and Scottish political philosophy of the 18th century, speaks up for individual rights and freedoms, and challenges over-mighty government and other forms of power. In that sense, traditional English liberalism favoured small government--but, crucially, it viewed a government's efforts to legislate religion and personal morality as sceptically as it regarded the attempt to regulate trade (the favoured economic intervention of the age). This, in our view, remains a very appealing, as well as internally consistent, kind of scepticism.
Parted in error
Sadly, modern politics has divorced the two strands, with the left emphasising individual rights in social and civil matters but not in economic life, and the right saying the converse. That separation explains how it can be that the same term is now used in different places to say opposite things. What is harder to explain is why "liberal" has become such a term of abuse. When you understand that the tradition it springs from has changed the world so much for the better in the past two and a half centuries, you might have expected all sides to be claiming the label for their own exclusive use.
However, we are certainly not encouraging that. We do not want Republicans and Democrats, socialists and conservatives all demanding to be recognised as liberals (even though they should want to be). That would be too confusing. Better to hand "liberal" back to its original owner. For the use of the right
donare is the greek root for gift. Anthropologists and sociologists have described gift economies for years. The native americans of the Seattle are were some of the most well-known societies in which it was common for the wealthy to give their wealth away. In fact, the more you gave away, the more wealthy you were considered to be. But "Gift Economy" carries a stigma of primetiveness with it. It seems "cute" and also seems to be treated as such by most economists. Capitalism is THE system and the final say on the way things should be distributed according to most. (I don't even remember studying gift economies in my early economics classes in college.) But that's the key problem with capitalism: it is concerned with distributing things. Ideas are simply not like things. Jefferson most famously noted this when he compared the notion of an idea to a candle -- namely that you could light someone else's candle without reducing the amount of light/flame that you possess. I can give you an idea and not reduce what I possess.
The fact is, ideas are more valuable the more widely they are held. What's the most valuable art in the world? -- the most widely recognized art. Software becomes more valuable the closer to a standard that it becomes. An entire industry is based on Apache, an application that is not only free but almost ubiquitous. Therein lies a great deal of its value and that value was developed by it being given away. Donarism then would be the economic system that describes how FREE distribution of ideas is what actually creates value -- not the idea itself.
> Nazism is a form of national socialism.
No, the party defining Nazism merely had National Socialist in their name.
Socialists strive for an egalitarian society, National Socialists for an elitarian one.
Socialists are for workers rights, the National Socialists were, to say the least, not.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
You have the freedom to do anything except deny freedom to others. How is that not free?
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
I've a question. He gibbers on about something to do with not having licensed DivX, and thus having to transcode DivX to WMV before being able to watch them on Windows Media Center Edition. How does one transcode a DivX movie to WMV without having a DivX license? Are MS infringing on DivX IP here, or am I missing something?
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
In FOSS software, the developers get paid in many cases, I work on a FOSS project full time and get paid for it. The difference between FOSS software and commercial is that money does not get wasted and layers of management, adverstising, and general coroprate greed. Also FOSS projects are more efficient because a small number of very skilled and motivated developers do all the work rather than using a large number of low skilled offshore workers, which tends to be a wasteful and inefficient method. I like FOSS because it allows me the developer to do interesting work and still get paid. In most commercial projects I've worked on the developers got screwed due to the incompetence and greed of the management. At least in FOSS the developers get most of the available money, and we have streamlined the procress that consist of the developers and users only, money and time are not wasted on management, offshoring, advertising, and corporate larceny. Paying people to manage software projects when they neither understand the developers or users is a huge waste of money, yet this how most commercial projects are done. FOSS is still a business model, and a superior one, its just a different that the traditional software business model which is apparantly based largely on greed and ignorance. If business people want to call us communist, that's fine, in words of Comrad Kruschev 'We will bury them'. Viva Open Souce!
Indeed. Which is why I said "would not be" as opposed to "are/were".
There have been a fair amount of egalitarian systems in 'primative' societies, many of which have been reasonably successful until destroyed by more militaristic countries, but very little in the way of examples in the modern world.
The closest in recent history was probably Barcelona before the Fascist takeover.
This does not, however, change my view that communist ideals are positive and worth fighting for, and not a term of insult.
Where is Godwin's law when you need it?
Or does this prove that Slashdot is not Usenet?
You're both wrong and have been indoctrinated by American propaganda.
According to Marx in the Communist Manifesto, the people own capital, the means of production: factories, heavy machines, that kind of stuff. That's collectively owned. I still own my shirt, my pants, my dog, my paintings, etc. exclusively.
Extrapolating based on this, only code that functions as capital (eg some sort of production program like a compiler) would be owned by the people. Things that do not do this (games are the best example I can think of at this point) would still be owned by their creators, at least in theory.
I don't remember Marx touching on the subject of owning something that is intangiable, though, so perhaps he says something somewhere that supercedes this and adds ideas to his concept of captial...
And regarding Fascism: every economics course I've taken thus far (and I'm a senior economics major...) says fascism is a political paradigm, not an economic one. Just because it's typical for facism to engage in corporatism doesn't mean that fascism = corporatism. It's similar to the way totalitarianism != communism (though most communists are totalitarian) and democracy != free market capitalism (though again, most democracies engage in capitalism and vice versa).
And just to reiterate, since I didn't come out and say it in the above paragraph, communism is an ECONOMIC system, not a political one. It is entirely plausible that one could be communist and democratic (I would dare say a lot of European countries are headed in this direction...).
is human greed. Why wouldn't we be allowed to be greedy in groups?
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
because communist states, in practice, yield totalitarianism.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
I think Americans underestimate, for example, how much of their healthcare spending goes into executive compensation, which is worse in that industry than most others.
I wager you have no idea how much this actually is.
"All I was saying is that the number of people who are at this extreme .. "
Such as yourself, right Mr Gates?
Heard any good sigs lately?
That's more than nazism, albeit on a considerably larger timeframe.
Here's the book
Calling people "communists" because they fight for consumer rights is very insulting and just dumb. I find it very disturbing that people can get away with such nasty insults without having to apologize.
The Raven
> Marx believed that there had to be period that I think he called the "Dictatorship of the Prolatariate".
Have a look at what the meaning of Dictatorship of the proletariat is.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Look hard enough and you'll find some similarities between Ghandi and Hitler. That's not my point really though. The question is to whether it's a *reasonable* comparison.
And as much as you may dislike Bush, he's no Hitler. Not even *close* by a longshot. No "night of the long knives." No declaring himself dictator. No conquest of Europe (or North America would be more appropriate from the US). No Genocide. No Fascism. Etc.
What? He favors policies that support companies? Wow. That compares with putting people in trains to be brought to gas chambers...
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Athens was a democracy. Some american townships in places with populations in the 100s are democracies. The United States of America is a Republic, not a democracy. And I daily praise my luck that this is so.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Who would have thought.
That must be why programmers can't be creative, then.
The issue is that for many of us (I would actuall include both RMS and ESR on this side) this is a debate not only about basic liberty but also about engineering the best possible economic environment for software development. I think Gates tries to look at things this way too, but Microsoft is in a difficult position.
You have to understand how the proprietary software market works, and why it is fundamentally impossible for a small player to compete with MS, IBM, Oracle, etc. in this environment to understand why Microsoft is so heavily against open source--- the inherent economy of scale of software development inhibits competition.
Free/Open Source Software is partly about liberty, but it is also about a more flexible software development pricing and payment model than one can have with proprietary software. In FOSS, payment for software development is made on demand, while in proprietary software, it is made in arrears to all users whether they want the feature or not. So in both cases, there is economic incentive to create great work. While there are those who believe that intellectual property law is inherently bad, I think that we need to see patent and copyright law for what it is: a temporary lease of public property in return for contribution of the property to the public. Gates seems to understand this in the interview and seems to advocate long terms and large protections as if the value of these contributions demanded it.
However, his viewpoint is nothing compared to the entertainment industry who is unwilling to let any copyrights lapse. They (the content providers, which Microsoft is getting into bed with) are even categorized by Mr. Gates as extremists! This does not give me much hope for Microsoft.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I think Prince Harry has the Naszi thing taken care of.
But seriously, in the current market model, an exchange of property results in a zero net effect. Only on-line, in the realm of data, can an even exchange result in a two fold net effect.
The internet should be a liberating mechanisim for artists and philosophers (I would group OSS developers somewhere between artist and philosopher). The internet should be a tase of true freedom, and these poloticians are going to turn it into a locked down controlled enviroment. control and freedom are inpersly proportional
If you controll me, im not free.
The Matrix has you.....
If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into your own beliefs?
The key word here is "exploiting". Having the source code available to all exploits no one and benefits everyone. Letting a corporation have equal acess to a resource is not the same as letting them exploit the creators of said resource.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
ahh binaries, takes the bitching out of it.
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
Why through open source software, of course!
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
Socialists are for workers rights, the National Socialists were, to say the least, not.
:
Though Jews in Germany made up just 2% of the population, they owned about 60% of the companies and so were viewed as representing the capitalist class and in control of the economy.
Here is an interesting chart that appeared in a 1930's German paper. The caption
A picture of German economic life in 1930: Each column shows a branch of the German economy, The figure to the left shows the total number of companies. The number of Jewish firms is shown by the black bar, the non-Jewish by the white bar. When one remembers that according to the 1925 census there were "only" about 555,000 religious Jews in Germany -- which means by a generous estimate no more than a million Jews by blood in 1930, there are 60 to 100 Germans for each Jew. This makes clear what it means when, for example, up to 60% of the German economy is led by Jews. (p. 36)
Nazis viewed themselves as representing average German workers versus Jewish capitalists.
Or consider this story from the book Der Giftpilz, an anti-Semitic children's book published by Julius Streicher:
Money is the God of the Jews
Liselotte looks out at the cottage window towards evening and talks to her mother about the hard way in which father has to work. She says:
"Do you know, mother, what I sometimes wish? I should like to be rich. Very rich! And with my money I would make people happy. I should love to help the poor!"
They go on talking. Liselotte asks:
"Tell me, mother, how does it happen that the Jews are so rich? Our teacher has told us at school that here are thousands of Jews in the world who are millionaires. And yet the Jews do not work. It is the non-Jews who must work. The Jew only trades. But one cannot become a millionaire by trading with paper, bones, old clothing and furniture!"
Mother explains how it is done.
"The Jew is quite indifferent when the cheated non-Jew goes hungry. Jews have no pity. They strive for one thing: -- money. They do not care two hoots how they get it."
Liselotte asks how they can behave in this mean way.
Mother answers:
"Child, one thing you must realise. The Jew is not a person like us. The Jew is a Devil. And a Devil has no sense of honour. A Devil deals only in meanness and crime. You have read your Bible, Liselotte. There it says the Jewish God once said to the Jews: 'You must eat up the people of the earth!' Do you know what that means? It means the Jew should destroy all other peoples. They should bleed and exploit them till they die. That is what it means."
Liselotte tries to understand these things.
Mother continues:
"Yes, my child, that's the Jew! The God of the Jews is gold. There is no crime he would not commit to get it. He has no rest till he can sit on the top of a gold-sack. He has no rest till he has become King Money. And with this money he would make us all into slaves and destroy us. With this money he seeks to dominate the whole world. All that is contained in the following saying:
'The Jew has only one idea in this world;
It is: Money, Money, Money!
By every kind of trick and device
To make himself immeasurably rich.
What cares he for scorn and contempt!
Money was and is his God!
Through money he hopes to lord it over us,
And achieve the mastery of the world.' "
You can't deny it. Nazism is a form of class warfare, with Jews representing the monied class. Hostile opposition to the monied class is a hallmark of many philosophies claiming to represent the workers and most of those classify themselves as socialist.
I suggest you read the last line of the entry.
"Marxists disagree among themselves on whether any of the "Marxist" regimes that came to power in the 20th century actually implemented in practice what Marx considered to be such a dictatorship."
I did say that it was probably not "exactly" how Marx thought it should be.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You are dead wrong, and so is Bill Gates. OSS is the exact opposite of communism. It is the best example of true free market capitalism this world has ever seen. Before you dismiss me, hear me out.
The concept of capitalism is supposed to be this spectre of free markets. That commerce is driven by supply and demand - people can create whatever they want, but those that prosper will be the ones that people demand, the ones they are willing to pay for. If there is demand for something, someone will produce it. The products that ultimately survive and are purchased are the best ones for the people. There is free entry and exit into the market, none of this brand monopoly crap, etc.
In a true form of capitalism, there would be none of this bullshit of owning ideas. You only own what is tangible. There would be no such thing as intellectual property. Granted, this means that someone could take your idea and recreate your product for cheaper. However, if someone can do this, it means that you could have also. Capitalism forces producers to do things in the most efficient way possible. No one is going to sell a product for less than it costs them to make it in the long run. It's simply not possible. In a similar manner, people could make a lower quality clone of your product and sell it for much less. One of two things will happen in this case: people will spend the extra money for the better quality or you will learn that people don't want a higher quality product and change your product accordingly.
Now how does all of this apply to Open Source Software?? Let me tell you.
To satisfy some basic definitions of capitalism, open source software satisfies the most basic requirement: free entry into and exit from the market. I can write a program and put it out there and sell support services with very little money or capital. I can just as easily stop supporting my program without any financial repercussions.
Open source, lacking the constraints of IP, copyrights, patents or other crap like that, allows people to truly create the best product for the best price. Anyone can create an open source project of any type, branch another project to create their own, etc. which truly provides the best product available for the lowest price. Choice is not just the characteristic of open source, it is the basis of capitalism. I choose what I want to purchase and by doing so I vote my preference and my thoughts on that product. I mean, there're like 80 browsers competing for the market of web browsers. Which ones come out on top? The best ones. Which ones are able to garner funds, which ones are people willing to pay for? The best ones. Granted, this may mean some products are completely free - that simply indicates that's the equilibrium price. People don't really want them. One might argue the problem then becomes what happens if I create something and am charging money for it, but someone else takes the source code and recreates my product and simply gives it away? I don't deny this might happen, but if you wrote the program, then you're going to be able to support it better, you're going to be able to give consumers a better product for their money (I hope..). If that's what people want, what they need, they WILL pay for it. If that's not what they want, then you'll move on and create another project. In addition, this problem gives companies incentives to continually innovate - if they always have the newest, best features, they will be compensated for them - not everyone is willing to wait for a cheaper version to come along, many will want it immediately.
Furthermore, open source greatly shows the entrepreneurial spirit of capitalism. Unlike in communism, where someone dictates how many people will produce how many of what, capitalism and open source respond to what people want. OSS is hardly from each according to their ability, to each according to their need; I'm not even sure how you could define who would "need" what in this context - OSS is pure supply
i think the average american musician makes a lot more than the average soviet musician ever did.
van gogh sold his art for pennies. that means van gogh's art was crap back when it sold for pennies. it had no value. by definition. now it has value to people and it sells for millions. thats what value means. why does the value of art have to be constant and why do you get to decide what is art when?
how much is dutch national pride worth? you seem to think its worth a lot. to you it has a high value. to me its worth nothing. i wouldn't pay for it and its of no use to me. if you think its important, then go ahead and spend your money on that. let others spend their money on what they think is important. why do you get to be the dictator? what about freedom and choice?
You can have all the Britney you want. But don't try to tell me that it's good art, just because a lot of people want to hear it.
this is the central point i am making. you and the NEA are the ones telling me and everyone else what art we must pay for. i say let the people be free to decide for themselves via the free market what is or is not important to them. when you have a socialist organization like the NEA, you tax everyone and force people to pay for things that may have no value to them. its despotic.
there is no need for "experts" like you to tell people what is best for them. they don't need your advice on whether national pride or art is important. if they think something is important for their future, they will invest time and effort and money in that thing by their own free will.
... science would be in the dark ages once again. Human genome, computers, and ever other modern tech device would not exsist. Invent something and not share it's mechanics creates two things. A monopoly and an information vac
Comment removed based on user account deletion
you are taking the example too literally and have obviously missed the point. The point is that people generally want to do the minimum amount of work required to achieve their desired result. This provides a powerful disincentive for people to take up challenging professions in a society where the rewards are no greater for those who succeed at the challenging profession. Ask anyone who has actually lived under a communist system and they will tell you that working without incentive and without hope for improving your life or the life your family (no matter how hard you work or how well you perform) is no way to live.
And everytime they do so, they point to exactly the assets that I state should be exempt from taxation, houses and tools of the trade, not to mention that these property taxes are localand the big taxes, and therefore the big distortions in the capital market, are federal, where their comments, even if not totally off base to begin with, aren't relevant.
Seastead this.
Secrecry and patenting are mutually exclusive. That's rather the point with patents.
One of the problems with patents is that a patent holder must effectively be given limited power to control what thoughts other people can legally have and make use of.
sigs are hazardous to your health
Pretty much the same agenda for any business that's becoming irrelevant. I'm sure stagecoach drivers put up similar arguments when cars came onto the scene.
Honestly, why do people continue to take these clowns seriously?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Is the sharing of ideas that bad? Should science go to a completly private sector and never share it's findings with the world? What happens if we find a cure for cancer? Should we really only let one company do all the research? I'm sorry im just very confused by the idea that only one person should have knowledge.
After all we do have libraries that allow us to walk in, take a book, and read it. With no restriction other than bringing it back when you are done.
Please get back to me as soon as you can.
A confused computer enthusiast,
Killerface
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Do you REALLY think salary is the only consideration?
I'd say it is for the garbageman, otherwise he'd stay home.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Unfortunately Gates has jumped into the political arena and is drawing us into the ring. By calling us communists he is trying to distract attention from ourselves, anti communistic attitudes in the states are still strong amongst Joe Public, if Bill manages to tap this resource of sentiment and use it against open source or free software supporters it may set the whole open source back or at least slow it's growth and adoption by Joe Public down. It is a great political strategy that has worked for many politicians in winning a campaign. It's time for Slashdot and linux leaders to form a foundation focused on advertising and image shaping of linux and to combat Bill Gates in that arena. We cannot ignore this anti linux advertising for much longer, We need to fight tooth and nail against false images that the political gates is trying to place on us. otherwise Joe Public adoption of linux in North America will be set back or slow down in North America. Fortunate it willbe money that will drive it and it will not be stopped, but for Joe Public it is in our best interest to work to keep the current pace and to speed up it's adoption. Anyhow, I'm interested to see and read others thoughts on this perspective....
It depends on what aspects you use to compare them. You take the most extreme points and show them as not comparable -which is true- but you neglected all that middle ground and overshot the argument while minimizing any possible similarities in the typical slashdottian "nothing to see here" manner. What president has ever favored policies that didn't support companies? That's not really what I was talking about and I thought I made that pretty clear. I was referring more to similarities between how those dictators rose to power, the changes they made in the state and the way it worked that ultimately then led the way to them becoming complete monsters. I will reiterate that, no, Bush is not THAT bad, but again there are some striking similarities to the way he does things and the way they did things. Similarities in speech and themes peppered throughout addresses to the citizens, the lockdown on freedoms for "the good of the people" such as the increasing security measures being rammed through everywhere, keeping people afraid by using key words such as "terror" and "evil" ALL THE TIME...essentially he's ruling through fear and misinformation and so, yes, I do see similarities here but, no, I don't expect him to start interring people in death camps any time soon.
I tried to dial REALITY once and I was informed that it had been disconnected.
in order:
growing marijuana gets you jail time
China: they kill you for selling drugs
police come into the house if you are suspected of being a terrorist
USSR: kgb come into the house if you are suspected of being a terrorist and kill you.
zoning
North Korea: you don't get permission to build, the government tells you to build. or they kill you.
seizure
North Korea: government owns everything and seizes your property regardless of whether you are a drug dealer or not. it was illegal own own property or engage in any kind of commerce for about 20 years. you die of starvation or torture or execution.
1000 disenfrachised voters who wouldn't have made a difference anyway
200,000,000 disenfranchised soviets get to vote for stalin.
some people don't have health insurance
40,000,000 starve to death in China under Mao's great leap forward.
a few people are homeless
some people were homeless in Nazi germany too
5% unemployment
20-40% unemployment in Saddam Hussein's Iraq
a few people standing in food lines
20 million people are deliberateley starved to death by stalin.
high price of medicine (and the best health care the world has ever seen)
soviet union -- little or no medicine, lines, few doctors, bad doctors, poor equipment, no one can afford it anyway.
gosh you are right, the extreme forms of communism, totalitarianism, dictatorship, and monarchy are all exactly the same as our democracy here in the US.
What you're talking about is economic rent.
Economic rent is, to cut to the chase, the difference between monopoly price vs competitive price for a commodity.
There is an theory of taxation, attributable largely to John Stuart Mill and Henry George, where economic rent forms the tax base. The predominant asset that would be taxed under that system would be land.
I have some philosophical problems with this, mainly that there doesn't seem to be a good way to equate fees for defense costs of asset rights to fees for economic rent based on theose rights -- plus the fact that historically there has been a _lot_ of abuse of conscription and other forms of civic spirit that needs to be compensated before the fact. That prior compensation is part of the justification for the subsistence exemption of house and tools of the trade from net assets that would be taxed.
However, in the current circumstances it is certainly closer to what I'm proposing than other forms of taxation.
Seastead this.
marx said the first step to communism was to have the government take everything from everyone and give it to the state. then, later on things would magically be equal and everyone would live in peace and harmony.
stalinist russia did follow marx's prescription. they might not have reached paradise, but they the first steps he prescribed in his manifesto.
north korea, however, was a marxist paradise for about 20 years. all private property was illegal and all commerce was illegal. and everyone was equal. and several million people starved to death when china and the soviet union stopped sending aid in 1990's.
north korea, however, was a marxist paradise for about 20 years. all private property was illegal and all commerce was illegal. and everyone was equal. and several million people starved to death when the soviet union stopped sending aid in 1990's because korea couldn't support itself.
also the amish engage in trade and are not communists.
i didn't have the energy to read your hole post, but i agree with your subject line anyway.
Well, yes, the point of a patent is that you agree to let everyone see your work, and in exchange, the government protects it instead of making you protect it yourself (trade secret). However, it's still perfectly acceptable to go it alone, in which case secrecy still applies (since if Alice goes spreading around your trade secrets, as previously mentioned, you have no recourse unless you have a previous agreement with her not to disclose your intellectual property).
I don't think you're necessarily disagreeing with me here, but you are right about patents. They do (by design) control what ideas a person can make use of, though one must consider the gain to society from increasing the profit motive for inventors. There needs to be a careful balance between rewarding someone who invents the mousetrap, and stifling someone who would otherwise build a better mousetrap. This was (IMO) easier in the days of mechanical inventions; I think the idea of software as a device complicates things significantly (it seems to me that ideas that would be obvious to any fairly skilled programmer are being patented). However, I am not a patent lawyer, and I'm not qualified to maintain the aforementioned balance.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.
> This is a common, but incorrect, belief, especially among progressive/socialists.
Maybe, because socialists know a bit about socialism?
> The full name of the Nazi party was the National Socialist Party
After some historical reflection, you should be aware about the special meaning of the names the Nazi party gave things.
> The Nazi's were actually big fans of a lot of the New Deal reforms.
Yes, they employed Keynesian control of the economy, favoured by many socialists. How does that make them socialist?
> But it was hardly capitalism.
No? The control was excerted by lending money from banks, and paying it to the companies for the projects they wanted to have accomplished. How uncapitalistic. I can't think of a single non-socialist leader of a nation, which would do such a thing.
Yes, being a totalitarian regime, there was political pressure on the executives. But, believe me, the relationship between the Nazi government and the company directors is known to have been quite amicable.
Hence, after WWII, the Allied Forces disowned several large company owners and broke companies up in the process of denazification.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
the manifesto says:
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.
> Though Jews in Germany made up just 2% of the population, they owned about 60% of the companies[...]
And what kind of companies? Retail and Handcraft with 2-3 employees? Or Krupp, Volkswagen, IG Farben, Horch? I'm somewhat sceptical towards the message of a chart, in an article, which has been published sometime after 1930 (The statistic is quoted as being published in 1930, by "the Jewish economist Alfred Marcus")
> You can't deny it. Nazism is a form of class warfare, with Jews representing the monied class.
Of course, I can deny it. Because it isn't class warfare, but Racism (and that not because I think Jews are a race, but because the Nazis considered them one).
That Jews were considered wealthy and the general populace was starving poor was used to foster the latent anti-semitism. Paradoxical, when they were starving in the Gettos the reverse situation was used as propaganda against the Jewish populace.
On the other hand, "Arian" owners of large cooperations were never touched. They were even courted and heralded as examples of the superiority of the "Germanic race". Yes, I am well aware how paradox it is, see doublethink.
So simply, it didn't matter whether you were rich or poor, whether you believed or not. The point was, whether you or your parent, or your grand-parent was Jew, Sinti, Roma, or whatever ethnical or religious group they deemed "parasitic".
> Hostile opposition to the monied class
Another difference: The hostile opposition is usually to the existance of a monied class, as an abstract construct, not the very existance of said persons. (Which doesn't mean that there aren't socialists which may have a personal grudge against well-doing capitalists)
On the contrary National Socialism is for the existance/creation of classes (Arians, Lesser Races, Parasitarian Races) and elitarian (Fuhrer, SS,...)
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Unlike MS which is forcing Windows onto PCs and refuses to fix the code. Corporations may say their captialist but they're really communist. Consider that prices are effected by markets, software is never effected by markets. The value is given and rarely changes, independent of market value. Communist prices are also never effected by markets.
Consider airlines. If they are doing good, the don't want gov interfention but if things are going bad, they want money (communism) to stay in business. Corporations want communism for themselves (gov-given resources) but captialism for the rest of us (but a market influenied by the gov in favor of certain corporations).
I thought that MS had given up on this commie shit two years ago. Wasn't Martin Taylor hired to put out intelligent sounding FUD?
Artists do not "own" their works, and neither do copyright holders. All they "own" is a privilage given by the government for a limited time to control their work as an incentive to create more of it. That's why copyrights expire -- the government isn't taking away your "ownership" of your art; they're ensuring that it fulfills it's purpose! And in case you think that the government's stealing from you, realize this: it belonged to society, not you, in the first place!
Copyright exists solely at the whim of society. It's not a fundamental human right, it's not a biblical Commandment, and it's not an instinct (you don't see animals paying royalties to each other, do you?). Heck, it's not even an old idea! Copyright in its present form is only 200 years old, and the concept of payment for each copy of your idea only dates back to Gutenberg's printing press (14th century). And what society giveth, society can taketh away if they don't think the artists deserve the privilage. Just compare the copyright infringement of Britney Spears' songs to the massive donations that Mozilla has received.
Information is the difference between slavery and freedom. In the antebellum South, slaves learned about the Underground Railroad through song. Some martial arts have been disguised as dance to fool opressors. Dictators from Adolph Hitler to Mao Zedong have routinely banned books because freedom of information threatened their power.
Speaking of banning books, don't you realize that that's the express purpose of DRM? If Microsoft doesn't want you to read your DRM'd ebook of 1984, then POOF! -- it's gone, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. They can instantly disallow your protest songs and subversive videos too, just as easily.
Is your art controversial? Would it possibly offend the Bible-thumping fundamentalists currently in power? Well, if it's DRM'd you can kiss it goodbye once the government asks Microsoft to shut it down!
Ubiquitous DRM is a tax on culture. Ubiquitous DRM is the death of Free Speech. Ubiquitous DRM is the end of the "Great Conversation of Ideas" that English teachers like to talk about. Ubiquitous DRM means that Microsoft becomes the Thought Police.
--
By the way, regarding your carpenter analogy:
First of all, your carpenter friend is giving you an implementation of cabinets, not the idea of them. Other carpenters are perfectly free to build exact duplicates of his work.
Second, carpentry is "work for hire." Carpenters get paid for their time, not their creativity. The same concept exists for art, too; it's called "patronage." Besides, do royalties for life for a week/month/year of work make sense even for artists?
Third, asking if a tradesman's work should be free is the wrong question. if cabinets were reproducable for zero cost then there wouldn't be any tradesmen any more; there would only be artisans (i.e., master carpenters) who get compensated for their skill rather than their mere effort.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
First, under Communism as described by Marx there would be no state at all.
It's equally amusing to ponder Oz as described by Baum, of course.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
(or quote):
...But I think we just disagree.
Gizmodo:
Gates: No, I actually don't think we disagree.
HUH?
We disagree! Do not! Do so! Do not! Do so!
I agree that we don't particularly disagree.
I believe there is some legislation regarding trade secrets and what happens to people that misappropriate them. In your case, Alice can clearly be to blame for spreading them but this may be adequately handled trough contractual legislation. I am not sure to what extent any recipients can be held accountable for receiving them though.
sigs are hazardous to your health
The way that the health care system is bleed is insidious. There are shell companies that hire other shell companies, issue bonds, default on the bonds.
The elderly are put on every drug a doctor can think of and the government picks up the check.
Meanwhile millions of us have no healthcare at all.
One could make the arguement that any profit in health care above a certain amount means that the entity making the profit is not working for the public good. And so a lot of so-called not for profit hospitals are being sued by public interest groups who argue that these so-call not for profit hospitals no longer meet the requirements for being tax exempt charities.
So, the system is trying to work. But very powerful people have planned to live for free off of these so-called charity hospitals. And for that reason they have bought off the politicans and regulators. It is similar to what has happened with copyright and patent law. The powerful game the system.
Depends how you say "exploit" - perhaps that is a bad choise of words for me. Marx's meaning of the word pretty much meant gain money/power/advantage without giving equal money/power/advantage back. The GPL definitely allows that, and you just have to look at IBM to see how much money can be gained out of Open Source. Though it's not at the expense of the developers, it's not directly to their gain either.
Communism was invented after the Amish were well established. Their roots go back to the killing fields of Switzerland and the Anabaptists.
The Anabaptists believed in a radical almost hippy-like form of Christianity. They were a very large threat to the power-mongers of the day. And so the Lutherins, the Catholics and the Calvinists, (who were at war with each other) all agreed to slaughter the Anababtists.
The Anababtists then dispersed throughout Eastern Europe. After a time a lot of them ended up in America. They are not and never were Communists. They do not currently work to destroy the system of Capitalism. They are hard-working members of society for the most part and are not envious of the wealthy and powerful.
This is how I see it. Anyone who is actually a Menonite or Amish want to comment?
There is a level of charity required by the wealthy in that if they do not provide it then the poor who are down on their luck might show up with clubs and beat their skulls in.
This isn't something that I want to happen, but the history of the world seems to show that this is the case.
And so society sets up systems of affirmative action and welfare. The Classical Liberal point of view called this Social Responsibility. The Civil Right Movement called this Affirmative Action.
For example if there were a volcano on an island where there were rich and poor living, society will not allow the rich to charge the poor to ride on the rich man's boat. During crises there is always accomdation for the poor. The Bible recommends that people give 10% of their income as a Tithe. And so you are incorrect in saying that hter is never justification for making the rich pay for the poor.
During WWII the taxes on the rich were very high. Why? Because if the Nazi's had won the war then they would have exterminated most of the rich. So the rich had to pay for the poor to get the GI bill after the war. It was justified because the poor saved the rich from the Nazis and from the Communists.
I do not buy into the Marxist politics of envy. Nor do I buy into the super-wealthy point of view that some of the rich have where the great unwashed are trying to take away all of their well-deserved (and mostly inherited) wealth.
As far a Affirmative Action goes I will end with one question: Does any wealthy person whos rich parents send to college ever complain that they got to go to college for free? So why do so many wealthy complain when a poor and deserving kid gets grant money and gets to go to college for free? The fact is that many wealthy understand the awesome responsibility of inherited wealth. These are the very people who set up scholarships for the poor.
And when people are miserly the taxes are set up to redistribute some of the awesome wealth that the trust-fund class has to those of us who don't even know what a trust fund is.
The individual in the communist society is going to say, "Why should I go to school and learn to program when I will receive nothing more than what the garbage man gets in compensation?
What if the garbageman got $150k/yr? The point of OSS is that every time you improve the product, everybody else got the same benefit. To use your analogy, the garbageman empties one can and everything is done. The whole point of digital stuff is that you can copy it - if you want his Lexus, make a copy and drive off.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Actually I don't "know damn well" this would happen at all for the following reason:
It won't change the fact that when people don't have to answer to anybody - they won't.
That's where you're confused about the consequence of net asset taxation, particularly when exemptig subsistence assets such as house and tools of the trade:
Net asset taxation forces the cronies to sell their assets if they can't get a good return on them. They become much more answerable to the market than they are now with their insularity born of government subsidy of their property rights. What this will do is reallocate assets, not to the population at large, but to those aspects of the middle class that are actually most capable of turning those assets to productive use. (This will of course expand the ranks of the middle class as people in the lower classes rise to fill the niches left vacant, as most certainly they will since no investments in human capital, such as education, healthcare, housing, etc. are taxed at all.)
Seastead this.
Not a problem, I assure you... vanishing posts confuse me too sometimes. All I can say is, he wasn't -1, Troll when I replied! :) I'm glad you had the maturity to apologise as well. Thanks.
the layman's guide to computer science
Your example of IBM confuses me, however. You say IBM shows "how much money can be gained out of Open Source." Note first that IBM has made lots of really good programs and has released these as open source. But also see that unless you count OSS consulting or internal use of OSS, they're not making money off the author's work. So one of the commercial distros or an embedded Linux company seems like it would make more sense.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
Leave Marx out of this. He is just the author of a brilliant analysis of capitalism, and of an absurd solution to it: communism.
I agree.
Marx was to non-fiction what Charles Dickens was to popular fiction -- a man appalled by the conditions of his time who poured his heart into the written word.
-kgj
-kgj
Okay, I'll spell it out for you:
Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man (i.e. Man A by man B).
Communism is the expolitation of man by man (i.e. Man B by Man A, hence the reverse).
It's a cynical way of saying that people are exploited by either system.
This must be why Donald Trump is such an outspoken proponent of conservative fiscal policies. It's all about the "hard work" he did to inherit his millions. Steve Forbes, ditto. It's a matter of high principle to these thoughtful gentlemen that we benefit only from our own hard work. Similarly, George W., who could never have been accepted at Yale without his family history behind him, rails against the wrongheadedness of "social promotions" in our schools.
Face it, there's a stark irony to the reactions many people have against affirmative action. For example: ever noticed how conscientiously the Republicans have practiced what they preach against -- within their own freaking party -- over at least the last three national election cycles? Gee, it seems to me like they've been promoting minorities into positions of influence over the heads of equally qualified non-minority candidates. How can that be happening? They themselves explain it, in Trent Lott's estimation, as an aggressive attempt to expand their base. By using non-race-neutral selection criteria! Golly. It's a topsy-turvy world, ain't it?
In particular what I was reacting to in my parenthetical throwaway there was the almost communistic tone and language that suddenly gets used in cases like the Michigan thing last year. From the party that turned against John McCain's use of "Marxist-Leninist" terms in his economic plan, it's plenty, plenty bizarre to read some of the arguments that get made.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.