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."

Comments

Here it is

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."

Re:Here it is

[proxy_avatar]

I have a boot if he wants something to put in his mouth.

I for one...

[Kjuib]

I for one Welcome our Communist Free Culture Overlords...

Gates' Elaboration

[one9nine]

"I really meant to say Nazis. My bad."

Wanting to get paid for work you did

[travisco_nabisco]

I like the example Bill gave of song writers who want to get paid for their work. I agree that they should get paid for their work, as long as they are alive. What I don't agree with is the record labels that are making money off of bands that haven't produced a song in 20+ years, and where all the members are dead.

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.

Re:Wanting to get paid for work you did

[TheRealFixer]

Actually, there already *were* limits, very much like you mentioned, in place. Unfortunatly, Congress under pressure from big media companies, have continued to extend the expiration time of copyrights, so essentially there are no more copyright limitations. Add in to that, that corporations don't die and are treated like people, and you've got infinate copyrights, in direct opposition to the original intent of copyright law.

Open Source in fact more capitalistic

[Ars-Fartsica]

In open source projects the tendency is for nearly 100% of the capital available (often a very small amoutn) is dedicated to creating value.

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.

The problem with Communism...

[Doverite]

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.

Gates The Spinner

[gorbachev]

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!

Just bits, huh?

[Ghoser777]

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.

ANSWER THE QUESTION MR. TORVALDS!!!

[Dr Reducto]

Have you or have not you ever contributed code to the communist operating system, Linux?

Re:So what is he?

[MightyMartian]

Communism, even in the unadulterated Stalinist form, fails to deal with a singular thing; human greed. Humans, as a social animal, view accumulation of wealth as an important means of achieving social status. Whether it's cows, dollars, beads, clam shells or ferrous oxide pigments on the forehead, it all amounts to one thing, we are a greedy species.

If you attempt to replace that, you only end up creating new kinds of wealth to accumulate, new social strata to which the ambitious will strive.

The industrialized world has worked out a basically mixed system with social safety nets to (theoretically) catch the most vulnerable members of society, without trying to make wealth accumulation some sort of wicked vice. It's far less than perfect, but then again, to expect perfection, to even theorize it, is just plain silly. Any economic theory that ignores our basic nature is doomed to either quick failure or to be taken over by people of less-than-pure motives.

Quite frankly I simply don't buy into the class struggle nonsense. I don't have any jealousy of Gates' billions, I just want a legal system that can clamp down on his gaining it via shady means. I don't want to pick the Rockefellers' pockets, but I think as a society we can do more to help those in economically vulnerable positions. But I don't think that means throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I see nothing in Communism that is so desirable that I should see it as a reasonable alternative to a mixture of free market capitalism and socialistic safety nets.