The ideas of copyright and patents have grown into this thing we call IP. I've mentioned this dozens of times now, but it is the simple truth.
IP laws have been about control of information and not profit for at least 25 years. Simple profit motives tell you that region encoding is not a bright idea. If someone wants to pay to import a disk, have it translated, etc. they will still be in the market for a nicely done local language version. You could potentially make two sales, or one sale if you never would bother localizing the product. Region encoding stops that. Why?
Control. If information can be commoditized it can have rights "attached" to it. That means transaction regarding information you posses must be approved. Approval means cash. It's far more lucrative in the long-term to own the ideas in your book, and not own the rights to copy that book. If you own the ideas, you have control not only over distribution, but over book reviews, derivative works, viewership (5 people in your home theater? Tickets please), crappy approximated renditions on your out-of-tune guitar, or anything else the owner wants. They can even restrict you from the information entirely if they want.
This has not been about control of copy, but of control of information.
Thanks for the heads-up, but I broke down already and installed automatix when I couldn't get 32-bit Firefox to work with the flash plugin. Thanks for the help, though.
In the 6-8 following years of Vista, wouldn't a entry level 64-bit cpu that's faster and more efficient than your old machine cost a rather small amount? Is this important?
My bigger worry is if Microsoft can create a 64-bit OS that functionally operates on my Core2. That's the day I'm waiting for. I'm tired of not having any functionality of my custom box when running XP64 or Vista64- no ATI or Nvidia drivers that work without kernel panics, no sound drivers that work with my Realtek on DVDs, randomly scorched Raid 0 with an Intel controller. I should say, that the 64-bit Linux kernel works fine, and I can do most everything but watch YouTube in Ubuntu running at 64-bit
Fixing that will be much harder than creating very affordable new cpus. Seriously, does anyone expect their computers to run the latest Microsoft junk in 6 years?
I have no problem with them. They are an economic tool, just like currency. Properly applied, they can move innovation and creativity faster than without them. Poorly applied, they will move innovation slower than without them.
Take for instance music. Before copyright, you still had a rich heritage of folk music and poetry. You didn't have many widely distributed books before a few hundred years ago, because we had no mechanical means of reproduction. And much of the reproduction we did do through scribes was to combat loss of material (scrolls disappear and disintegrate). Widespread literacy and mechanical reproduction were served by copyright (the history of which is fascinating). In England, the fight was really bitter, with the king settling on the idea of limited copyrights and the public domain. Length of copyright took into account times it took to widely distribute literature in a decidedly pre-modern world with slow reproduction, high costs, and difficult distribution. And still, copyright was less than 30 years (if I remember off the top of my head, certainly not the lifetime of the creator or longer). 30 years to distribute books wasn't really unreasonable in the early 1800s.
Today, shorter copyright would be better, but that's a long discussion, and you probably agree. Further, with or without copyright reform, the market for copyrighted works will tend towards efficiency, not inefficiency. To control a good, you need strict control, and you need limited points of control. A widely distributed, trivially copied, perpetual medium (digital) is neither limited or possible to strictly control. Then again, with such easy methods of distribution, you can have complete worldwide distribution in seconds, not years, and a first mover advantage is monumental.
Old shapers and bards were the music distribution medium of their day, and they freely shared and stole stories and songs. They were forced to change when civilization changed, and we no longer see them. Demand, market forces, and the new possibilites of technology may dictate that we give up the last 100 years of music distribution. We may have to deal with a completely different entertainment model. But I don't think we can use the courts to dictate rational actions and force us to ignore the new reality of technology.
I also wanted to say you made some very good points.
The current trend is to own the necessary information for group and identity formation. And you are most likely right, it's completely impossible to do so. People will just ignore the laws and restrictions.
To fight against the torrent of basic human behavior, you either need to have a darn good plan, or just be incredibly stupid. The more I see stuff like this, the proposed copyright expansion, and CSS/AACS, I realize no one has a good plan.
My knowledge of capitalism pays my bills. You can't win that fight. Also, I didn't bash capitalism, I explained that capitalism is a theory on a method of resource distribution. I have no problems with it. I also realize, like certain economic theories, capitalism is a normative theory, ie "this is how it ought to be." My degree is in positive economics and econometrics, or "what is." Both are important, but I don't teach, nor am I qualified to teach, normative economics. I don't care how to determine what "ought" to be. I have enough fun determining what is. In fact, I generally (and unfairly) disdain the idea that there "ought" to be anything. Simple fact is, competitive force will drive piracy and looting, in some form or another, in capitalist implementation. Your idea of "free association" is entirely "Objectivist" and has no bearing on reality or practice. It's the drivel of an egotistical armchair philosopher.
I'm going to fail you at comprehension, and give you 1/2 credit since your post isn't exactly wrong. I certainly didn't mean to push your Randian buttons. Next time, please post with a name, what you said requires no shame.
You will see companies battling for information controls for a good while. We are living in the IP landgrab. Current speculation is that information is property, and probably far more valuable than goods. An ear of corn is pittance to the knowledge of the process of raising, harvesting, and distributing corn. 1000 years ago, you couldn't restrict someone from telling their neighbor or son how to do any of those. Today, we have patents, copyrights, patent-copyrights (for software), process patents, plot patents, etc, etc.
We will see new instruments of IP control before this is over. The current consensus among MANY think tanks, blowhard economists, and business leaders is that if it has value, it should be owned and exploited. In that case, expect to see the future demotivator poster and lolcat memes protected. Memes have value, specifically cultural value. You may even see a day in which safety and consumer protection information owned and protected.
In the dark past, we had to band together to form libraries to preserve our knowledge and culture, and to share it. Today, we are the librarians, and we MUST do our jobs to protect our collective knowledge and culture, and to make sure it is freely sharable. All we are is flesh and knowledge. We cannot let either be subject to trade.
As an aside, when did capitalism become about giving trade rights to those who can charge the most? Shouldn't that argument fall on its face? Capitalism is a method to efficiently manage resources, in which those who must charge the most are the least efficient, and those that are more efficient are rewarded with the most or all profits. The most expensive price is the red-headed stepchild of capitalism, not it's pinnacle. The capitalist hero is not the whiny John Gault, it IS the busy looter or pirate. The pirates are the ones that realized a far more efficient method of production or distribution.
What strikes me as strange is that although he has low name recognition, he seems to poll very well when referenced by his positions and voting record.
But that's the first rule of politics, "It's all who you know." If he had bigger friends and bigger financers, the public would know much more about him. Of course, then he'd feel obligated to listen to them more, and we'd be back at square one. And to bring it back to the original point, that's why we should never have let media companies peddle access to communication. We're starting to break away from the old model, and for the better. We can't afford to let them treat the free sharing of information as worse than murder.
Oh, not only was my vision a bit extreme, there are already major cracks in the system. How much internet traffic, exactly, is going into actively and passively violating copyright? 100%. 100%, you ask? Yes. The entire nature of the internet is to create an widely accesable library of information. The internet's existence is anathema to the commoditization and monetization of information as property. It is the free exchange of information. And despite how many new laws there are, or if content producers strike like good little Objectivists, we will produce the needed information, and we will share it freely (see legal and illegal filesharing). There is no "creator class" and there is no "owner class" for information.
So, you are entirely right, this will never happen. The best thing that could happen from this law would be to make most of us criminals, as it wouldn't stop anything. And in the highly unlikely event that the law does pass this time, the law's supporters would certainly have mass criminalization and intrusion in mind, not copyright protection.
This is going to sound like a screed, but now you figured it out. The implications of the last 6 years of legislative and executive action are damn obvious to academic economists (like me). The "ownership society" the Decider spoke so much about in 1999 and 2000 leads directly to this. Not long ago, Republicans would be very angry and resentful that the government would try and allow monopolies on our collective culture. Now, all politicians are content that well over half this country will be at the mercy of the "Owners." Being an "Owner" won't be easy though, because many, many employers are making employees sign away all rights to inventions, patents, and copyrights devised while at the company (we don't know how enforcable this is now, but will be within 50 years at the current pace). Any worker will never be able to own their own work, and will never be able to enter the "Ownership" class easily.
We will enter feudalism all over again, but this time over access to information. Instead of paying a 60% title to your lord, or paying 35% in tax, you'll be paying 1000s of micropayments to let you do things like sing "Happy Birthday" at your child's birthday, or to load that CD into your computer. Your right to know if there is melamine in your flour will just be more commoditized information, and well beyond your ability to afford. You'll have to buy all your human and property rights back from the barons that own them, if you have the cash.
Democrats stopped being "liberal" about 70 years ago. About 30 years ago, Republicans stopped being "conservative." We are left with two right-wing Authoritarian parties. As disclosure here, I voted for Bush in 2000, thinking he'd be less authoritarian than Al "My wife invented the Tipper Sticker" Gore and Joe "We need to censor video games" Lieberman. I may have been wrong.
My new computer has a nice Lian Li case, Samsung 225BW monitor, blah, blah. It's a hotrod, and kinda designed for visual appeal. My case has precicely 1 LED, the power light. It's blue, and blinks when my computer is asleep. I have just 1 blue LED on my monitor. It's on the power button, and blinks when it's asleep, and turns off when it has no signal. These lights communicate to me, and let me know my computer's state when I sit down, and before I start poking buttons randomly or molesting my mouse like a moron.
My keyboard is an old logitech POS. I'm a tightwad, and haven't bought a matching keyboard or mouse. In fact, I use keyboards until they just completely die. I think I've owned 3 in the last 15 years. But my damn keyboard has -0- LEDs on it. I NEVER know if the stupid number pad or caps lock is on or off. Typing 120 WPM means I don't notice I'm yelling in WoW, or that those numbers I just typed in reality gave my cursor a spaz. And if you think you can remember if the NumLock is on, you'll be wrong 100% of the time. I know, from a year of experience. Thinking about it now, I may go tonight and drop that 50 bucks on a nice keyboard. Living without proper feedback is very, very annoying.
(I suppose being flooded by LEDs can be a problem too, but I've never noticed an overabundance of LEDs, so I'm calling BS about too many lights)
One wonders, though, what the universities are supposed to do when international disrespect for imaginary property rights is so widespread
Nice. We have the worlds LARGEST market pirating entire theme parks, and we are worried about a little economic loss from cash-poor college students? Don't we bleed them enough with Fannie Mae loans?
Once upon a time, we were the world leaders in the free exchange of ideas. Many of our universities surpassed even institutions like Oxford, because we cherished the idea of free ideas. Today though, St George has become the dragon he slew. Today, all ideas are to be owned and monetized, and information is valuable enough to wage war over. Once, we killed each other over ports, trade, gold, and mines. Today, we have nothing left to fight over, so we must imagine property to kill and enslave each other for. Movies, music, literature hold no value without a reader or listener, their value is purely virtual. Do we really need to threaten our youngest with a future police state over things that do not exist, and never will?
We might as well still hope for flying cars though. Sure, multi-linking normal objects is cool, but there are probably much easier and simpler solutions we haven't though of yet. Futurism is fun, I remember the old Futureland at Disney world. It was a ghost town, and the animatronics were creepy, but it was fun as a giant walk-in time capsule.
But, all I could think about the whole time is about those darn car keys. I kept hearing in my head my parents calling me: "Son, I need you to come look at the computer. Google keeps telling me my car keys are in the house, but I've looked all over for them. I think Google is broken again."
I like Bruce, but what the hell is he on about? Personal computers are designed to execute arbitrary code. If they weren't, we'd hack them so they would be (TP?). If you can execute code, you can find a way to wreck a system. Sure, it can be hard, but there will ALWAYS be a need for security specialists, and security software. Sure, virus scanners may one day disappear, but rootkit scanners, phishing lists, etc will take their place. Just because your computer engineering is perfect doesn't mean your social engineering isn't flawed.
Sgt. Friday was an ass. You have full rights to break the law, but you will suffer due process of law if you are caught. If I feel the DMCA is completely unjust, I am fully justified to break that law, but I need to be cognizant of the repercussions.
I know that's what you meant, I just wanted to point out that fetishization of the law is a giant leap towards totalitarianism. Certainly, these students should be expelled for using proxies against the acceptable use policies. But that said, I would never attend, lecture, chair, or be affiliated in any way with an institution that would censor with WebSense.
He's Steve Ballmer ferchristsakes! Couldn't he just GIVE his uncle a Zune, shouldn't he have the money? Steve, are you telling me that your own uncle dislikes your product so bad you can't even GIVE him one?
Granted, I'm in the same boat, and the first thing I'd do with one would be to either regift it, or see if someone's hacked it to be useful, then get it painted a better color.
Here are a few, and these are very much screwups on the part of the RIAA:
UMG vs Lindor: So bad, all of the VERY circumstantial evidence against Ms. Lindor is being thrown out. The examination of her HDD provided no evidence against her. Media Sentry flagged her, and the expert from the RIAA was shown to be a total fraud. By far this is the most interesting case. http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/#UMG _v_Lindor
Capitol vs Foster: Again, really bad, so bad it seems the RIAA pissed off the judge with "questionable motives." You don't want the judge to use those words, they tend to be rather forgiving people. http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/#Cap itol_v_Foster
SONY v. Merchant: My favorite of the bunch. Not only did they name a dead man as defendant, his lawyer wrote possibly the most hysterical letter I've read in a long while. The lawyer agreed to everything, securing the HDD, getting two experts, etc, but threatened the hell out of the RIAA, including pointing out they have no standing to practice law in California. Read it, it's great. http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007 /03/model-letter-for-lawyers-representing.html
I can think of two more times off the top of my head where the RIAA had their cases dismissed with prejudice (means they couldn't provide near decent evidence, and are not allowed to bring suit again). That's at least 5 cases that have made the cable news networks. Ray Beckerman's blog is a good place to look. He defends people against the RIAA for a living, and is a pretty decent guy. A biased view to be sure, but a good place to start.
If you...break the law...you can expect a lawsuit, and this is bad?
You are kidding right? Do you know how many cases in court right now name people who never fileshared, or couldn't have? Our very own NewYourCountryLawyer is involved in a big one, check out his blog. Then there is the mindshare that media companies get when they tell you filesharing is wrong. How many people are turned off by OSS because it relies on "file sharing?" How many times do you hear from your students who think they know law that Linux distributions are illegal because they are copyright? I know I have to correct that misconception a few times a year.
Secret service / police chat: this is supposed to be chilling?
Yes, it is. You have read the reports on the NYPD infiltrating peace groups, right? If we start hassling people for lawful activity, no the activity doesn't become unlawful. However, how many people might just give up because, franky, they don't want to deal with that crap. If the police show up at your house, or God forbid, the Secret Service, do you really want to explain to your neighborhood, friends, and employer why? (seriously, two Farkers got raided by the Secret Service, and it wasn't for threats against the president or for counterfeiting, it was pretty much just off-color remarks and an unspecific threat) That's a chilling effect. It would make a tenured professor at least think twice before saying or writing something.
Now, I'm in the same opinion boat as you, and frankly not even imprisonment will make me censor myself in important (and most non-important) matters. I suspect you are of the same mind. However, censorship isn't just removing our words, it's containing our message. We don't have problems with it like Iran, far from it, but we do have problems with it. And while armed guards and razor wire don't stop your speech, it sends a message to citizens here that the government has the right to control what was once lawful speech, and it sends a message to citizens in Iran that not even the US is free from the heavy hand of government speech restrictions.
The difference between media controls in a country like Iran or China is an order of magnitude away from just about any Western country.
Really? I remember a time nobody would tolerate the military-guarded, razor-wire-fenced places called "free speech zones." Well, I'd like to believe there was such a time. Maybe it's just that nobody had the cojones to pen up protesters before now.
But while we don't filter the message, we are starting to filter the meduim. What about the threat of the NSA reading your internet communication, the threat of RIAA lawsuit or campus police if you fire up Bittorrent to download Ubuntu 7.04, the threat of being brutalized by police for civil protests?
By some subjective measures, there may be more to lament in losing the ability to say what you once were able to here than to lose the ability to say things you were never able to in Iran. Those text messages would probably get you arrested in Iran, and would have for quite a while now. Fark, 4chan, and Something Awful have a few stories about posters that had the Secret Service or FBI showing up for a little chat or three. Iran's censorship is lamentable but understandable, but the chilling effects in this country are becomming alarming.
Not saying we should have an alarmist attitude, but "an order of magnitude" we might not have.
What you are describing isn't just DRM; it's copyright itself.
Not really. Copyright didn't actually STOP people from stealing from the bush. Government enforcement meant that the guards would occasionally smack someone on the head if they took too many berries, or tried to resell the berries right in front of them. Technically you are right, copyright enforcement was supposed to stop copying like DRM is, however it did not function that way in reality. I'd love to do research on models as we'd like them to happen, not as how they really do happen.
However you do show a good understanding of why we have copyright (to promote arts). However, the pressures to loot the bush are very, very high, and the crowd is very, very large. If looting the bush required a massive investment such as a printing press circa 1880, then copyright enforcement works fine, and there is not much incentive to loot the bush. However, as the costs to looting come down, there is more incentive to do so.
And extra credit for realizing "We the People" set the policies that benefit us most. As my favorite professor said years ago, "We are a country, not an economy." If the economic policies we have do not benefit us, then it is our imperative to make those that do. But, I was taught that back before everyone in business school was a Randian Objectivist.
I hope your degree has allowed you to be gainfully employed.
Good points, but I want to address Firefly. That was certainly a failure of the market, but not due to piracy. Everyone I know, including my geriatric parents, my wife, and my kid, adore the show. Most everyone bought a copy of the boxed set. However, they only found out after the show was canceled (and a few years at that). That was a failure to capture a market. However, the market wasn't turning to piracy at the time, it was because nobody knew about the show.
Marketing at Fox is abysmal. The Tick live action show was about the funniest thing I've ever seen. I own it. However, the show was slated to be canceled before the first episode aired, and didn't have any advertising. Piracy didn't kill Family Guy, as it did over 3 times better in the ratings on Adult Swim. That is was a failure at Fox to understand their demographics and viewing habits. After renewing the show a couple of years later, they took a clue from Cartoon Network and managed to capture their market. It's now one of their most popular shows.
No. The problem is a loss of demand. Theft occurs when the finite berries are taken. Loss of demand happens when the infinite berries are taken. It's analogous to entering a saturated market- don't expect windfall profits.
People who advocate the 'free distribution'... should try running a movie company,... [t]here is NOTHING that prevents anyone... giving [content] away free...
Isn't that exactly the problem as described? If there is no way to model the scarcity, there really is no optimum method of distribution. No one will bother to grow the bush (make labor-intensive content) if they can't figure out a compensation model. And people will notice the bush has infinite berries, and will take a dim view that the creator is guarding what is an infinite resource. Imagine if you had to pay an air tax to breathe under penalty of law. There would be riots and revolution.
I'd argue the capitalist system is superior to the "everyone should give away theuir (sic) content for free" idea...
I argued that capitalism doesn't model an infinite resource perfectly, and that it is not incompatible with unlimited distribution. A good example would be to have copyright over movies for say, 2 years. Nearly all movies make most of their profit in the first two years (and offers good incentive to produce content). After which, the movie enters the public domain (enriches the public through unlimited distribution). The next trick would be to find a good point for other mediums.
...the abolition of scarcity as some sudden argument that means everything should be free...
You didn't read what I wrote. At all. My entire point was that the abolition of scarcity can mean that progress will stop. But you aren't taking advanced economics like externalities, so I won't jump your case. It's not like I can fail you.
The root of the problem is with positive and negative free riders. And every content creator will argue every free rider is negative, as you are. This is not the case. Society will want positive free riders. Creators will want control over all free riders. The former is a much more efficient solution than the latter. Take for instance the Star Wars prequels. Someone OTHER than Lucas could have done a much better job than he did. He got to capture the free rider benefits of his first movies (characters, themes, story, etc). But, by many estimations, he did a poor job. If we had let him compete with others, and had many different versions of the prequels, we would have more total economic benefit, and more people willing to create content. Nothing is stopping someone from seeing more than one version of the prequels. But the current situation does not allow that. Law and DRM prevent novel uses and derivative works, to the detriment of capitalism.
Scarcity works on more than one dimension, and I think you understand that. That's why if a widget can be infinitely duplicated, it's different than if Van Gogh's Sunflowers can be infinitely duplicated. But then again, Van Gogh died near penniless and unappreciated. It didn't stop him from making many masterpieces whose prints garner my walls. If you want to know more, email me and I can give you a good reading list and some ideas to start.
The problem with DRM is the introduction of scarcity into a scenario where there is no natural scarcity. Current economic models such as communism, socialism, and capitalism exist only to handle the efficient or fair distribution of scarce (limited) resources. They have no mechanism for handling goods where there will never be a scarcity. The degree on my wall that says Economics tells me I should know more about this than most people, but I think most everyone understands the problem, even if they can't put it into words.
I usually explain the current problem with reconciling creative incentive with no natural scarcities as a fable. Imagine a berry bush that has very, very tasty berries, but is excruciatingly difficult to grow. The farmer has to spend hundreds of man hours raising the bush, and cannot hold another job while doing so. The owner of the bush decides to hire 5 armed men to guard the bush, and sell baskets of berries for 5 dollars a piece, until they are gone. We call this capitalism. The owner pays for the cost of raising the bush and the guards, and profit goes towards his livelihood. If there were no guards, and looting of the bush happened, the owner is out of a bush, economic opportunity, and probably a livelihood. Looting causes an inefficient distribution of resources. Communism would look similarly, but the farmer would have doled out the berries equally to who wanted them, for the cost of a generally collected (taxed) stipend, from everyone who did and did not want them.
Now, imagine if that bush never ran out of berries. Sure, people might get tired of the berries, or they might not like berries. But you get two interesting problems. First, if the farmer keeps selling berries, he makes unlimited money. That drops his costs to nearly zero. Second, if he's looted, he is not out of berries to sell. He is only out of the opportunity to sell the berries. Capitalism doesn't protect your demand, only the physical property you have to sell. Sure, eating gobs and gobs of berries means that those people are now full on berries and have no interest in buying, but maybe everyone didn't anyway. Law does not regulate demand.
The farmer who owns the unlimited berry bush does not need guards to prevent the stealing of property, he needs them to protect his demand. If he left the bush unattended overnight, he does not lose property, he only loses demand. If modern capitalism is to be remodeled to include protection of demand, you quickly find that you can't write a negative review of a product, or change your tastes, as well as similar problems, since you have damaged demand for a creators product.
And this is the problem with DRM. DRM are the armed guards at the unlimited berry bush. This is NOT the most efficient method of distribution. The most efficient method would collect enough money for farmers to have incentive to grow a bush, but would not prevent the widest distribution of berries possible (everyone who wants one). Plain and simple, no current economic model satisfies perfectly.
You can make arguments that theater seats are a scarcity now, and good movie experiences can be used to generate profit and motivation. But when the day comes of very, very cheap home theaters, you have to shift the model again. Concerts are better, and could save the music model, but apart from plays, this is really a difficult problem for big-budget movies. Not allowing unlimited distribution is very inefficient, as is not compensating the creator. Truly, it's a curse of riches.
There, you get a class lecture for free, without DRM.
And that says it all really. Granted, I have a major issue with the fact your advice is true. And as a parent who will be having a child in school shortly, I will not tolerate that crap at any school my daughter attends. I won't care that she's not involved. I went through school in self-contained gifted classes and TONS of AP classes in High School, so crap like this wasn't an issue. But I did see crap like that happen, and I was basically powerless to do anything then. The school board takes a dim view of students attending school board meetings. Natually, I want to make sure other children get the same opportunities I did.
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The ideas of copyright and patents have grown into this thing we call IP. I've mentioned this dozens of times now, but it is the simple truth.
IP laws have been about control of information and not profit for at least 25 years. Simple profit motives tell you that region encoding is not a bright idea. If someone wants to pay to import a disk, have it translated, etc. they will still be in the market for a nicely done local language version. You could potentially make two sales, or one sale if you never would bother localizing the product. Region encoding stops that. Why?
Control. If information can be commoditized it can have rights "attached" to it. That means transaction regarding information you posses must be approved. Approval means cash. It's far more lucrative in the long-term to own the ideas in your book, and not own the rights to copy that book. If you own the ideas, you have control not only over distribution, but over book reviews, derivative works, viewership (5 people in your home theater? Tickets please), crappy approximated renditions on your out-of-tune guitar, or anything else the owner wants. They can even restrict you from the information entirely if they want.
This has not been about control of copy, but of control of information.
Thanks for the heads-up, but I broke down already and installed automatix when I couldn't get 32-bit Firefox to work with the flash plugin. Thanks for the help, though.
In the 6-8 following years of Vista, wouldn't a entry level 64-bit cpu that's faster and more efficient than your old machine cost a rather small amount? Is this important?
My bigger worry is if Microsoft can create a 64-bit OS that functionally operates on my Core2. That's the day I'm waiting for. I'm tired of not having any functionality of my custom box when running XP64 or Vista64- no ATI or Nvidia drivers that work without kernel panics, no sound drivers that work with my Realtek on DVDs, randomly scorched Raid 0 with an Intel controller. I should say, that the 64-bit Linux kernel works fine, and I can do most everything but watch YouTube in Ubuntu running at 64-bit
Fixing that will be much harder than creating very affordable new cpus. Seriously, does anyone expect their computers to run the latest Microsoft junk in 6 years?
I have no problem with them. They are an economic tool, just like currency. Properly applied, they can move innovation and creativity faster than without them. Poorly applied, they will move innovation slower than without them.
Take for instance music. Before copyright, you still had a rich heritage of folk music and poetry. You didn't have many widely distributed books before a few hundred years ago, because we had no mechanical means of reproduction. And much of the reproduction we did do through scribes was to combat loss of material (scrolls disappear and disintegrate). Widespread literacy and mechanical reproduction were served by copyright (the history of which is fascinating). In England, the fight was really bitter, with the king settling on the idea of limited copyrights and the public domain. Length of copyright took into account times it took to widely distribute literature in a decidedly pre-modern world with slow reproduction, high costs, and difficult distribution. And still, copyright was less than 30 years (if I remember off the top of my head, certainly not the lifetime of the creator or longer). 30 years to distribute books wasn't really unreasonable in the early 1800s.
Today, shorter copyright would be better, but that's a long discussion, and you probably agree. Further, with or without copyright reform, the market for copyrighted works will tend towards efficiency, not inefficiency. To control a good, you need strict control, and you need limited points of control. A widely distributed, trivially copied, perpetual medium (digital) is neither limited or possible to strictly control. Then again, with such easy methods of distribution, you can have complete worldwide distribution in seconds, not years, and a first mover advantage is monumental.
Old shapers and bards were the music distribution medium of their day, and they freely shared and stole stories and songs. They were forced to change when civilization changed, and we no longer see them. Demand, market forces, and the new possibilites of technology may dictate that we give up the last 100 years of music distribution. We may have to deal with a completely different entertainment model. But I don't think we can use the courts to dictate rational actions and force us to ignore the new reality of technology.
I also wanted to say you made some very good points.
The current trend is to own the necessary information for group and identity formation. And you are most likely right, it's completely impossible to do so. People will just ignore the laws and restrictions.
To fight against the torrent of basic human behavior, you either need to have a darn good plan, or just be incredibly stupid. The more I see stuff like this, the proposed copyright expansion, and CSS/AACS, I realize no one has a good plan.
OK, I'll bite.
My knowledge of capitalism pays my bills. You can't win that fight. Also, I didn't bash capitalism, I explained that capitalism is a theory on a method of resource distribution. I have no problems with it. I also realize, like certain economic theories, capitalism is a normative theory, ie "this is how it ought to be." My degree is in positive economics and econometrics, or "what is." Both are important, but I don't teach, nor am I qualified to teach, normative economics. I don't care how to determine what "ought" to be. I have enough fun determining what is. In fact, I generally (and unfairly) disdain the idea that there "ought" to be anything. Simple fact is, competitive force will drive piracy and looting, in some form or another, in capitalist implementation. Your idea of "free association" is entirely "Objectivist" and has no bearing on reality or practice. It's the drivel of an egotistical armchair philosopher.
I'm going to fail you at comprehension, and give you 1/2 credit since your post isn't exactly wrong. I certainly didn't mean to push your Randian buttons. Next time, please post with a name, what you said requires no shame.
You will see companies battling for information controls for a good while. We are living in the IP landgrab. Current speculation is that information is property, and probably far more valuable than goods. An ear of corn is pittance to the knowledge of the process of raising, harvesting, and distributing corn. 1000 years ago, you couldn't restrict someone from telling their neighbor or son how to do any of those. Today, we have patents, copyrights, patent-copyrights (for software), process patents, plot patents, etc, etc.
We will see new instruments of IP control before this is over. The current consensus among MANY think tanks, blowhard economists, and business leaders is that if it has value, it should be owned and exploited. In that case, expect to see the future demotivator poster and lolcat memes protected. Memes have value, specifically cultural value. You may even see a day in which safety and consumer protection information owned and protected.
In the dark past, we had to band together to form libraries to preserve our knowledge and culture, and to share it. Today, we are the librarians, and we MUST do our jobs to protect our collective knowledge and culture, and to make sure it is freely sharable. All we are is flesh and knowledge. We cannot let either be subject to trade.
As an aside, when did capitalism become about giving trade rights to those who can charge the most? Shouldn't that argument fall on its face? Capitalism is a method to efficiently manage resources, in which those who must charge the most are the least efficient, and those that are more efficient are rewarded with the most or all profits. The most expensive price is the red-headed stepchild of capitalism, not it's pinnacle. The capitalist hero is not the whiny John Gault, it IS the busy looter or pirate. The pirates are the ones that realized a far more efficient method of production or distribution.
What strikes me as strange is that although he has low name recognition, he seems to poll very well when referenced by his positions and voting record.
But that's the first rule of politics, "It's all who you know." If he had bigger friends and bigger financers, the public would know much more about him. Of course, then he'd feel obligated to listen to them more, and we'd be back at square one. And to bring it back to the original point, that's why we should never have let media companies peddle access to communication. We're starting to break away from the old model, and for the better. We can't afford to let them treat the free sharing of information as worse than murder.
Oh, not only was my vision a bit extreme, there are already major cracks in the system. How much internet traffic, exactly, is going into actively and passively violating copyright? 100%. 100%, you ask? Yes. The entire nature of the internet is to create an widely accesable library of information. The internet's existence is anathema to the commoditization and monetization of information as property. It is the free exchange of information. And despite how many new laws there are, or if content producers strike like good little Objectivists, we will produce the needed information, and we will share it freely (see legal and illegal filesharing). There is no "creator class" and there is no "owner class" for information.
So, you are entirely right, this will never happen. The best thing that could happen from this law would be to make most of us criminals, as it wouldn't stop anything. And in the highly unlikely event that the law does pass this time, the law's supporters would certainly have mass criminalization and intrusion in mind, not copyright protection.
This is going to sound like a screed, but now you figured it out. The implications of the last 6 years of legislative and executive action are damn obvious to academic economists (like me). The "ownership society" the Decider spoke so much about in 1999 and 2000 leads directly to this. Not long ago, Republicans would be very angry and resentful that the government would try and allow monopolies on our collective culture. Now, all politicians are content that well over half this country will be at the mercy of the "Owners." Being an "Owner" won't be easy though, because many, many employers are making employees sign away all rights to inventions, patents, and copyrights devised while at the company (we don't know how enforcable this is now, but will be within 50 years at the current pace). Any worker will never be able to own their own work, and will never be able to enter the "Ownership" class easily.
We will enter feudalism all over again, but this time over access to information. Instead of paying a 60% title to your lord, or paying 35% in tax, you'll be paying 1000s of micropayments to let you do things like sing "Happy Birthday" at your child's birthday, or to load that CD into your computer. Your right to know if there is melamine in your flour will just be more commoditized information, and well beyond your ability to afford. You'll have to buy all your human and property rights back from the barons that own them, if you have the cash.
Democrats stopped being "liberal" about 70 years ago. About 30 years ago, Republicans stopped being "conservative." We are left with two right-wing Authoritarian parties. As disclosure here, I voted for Bush in 2000, thinking he'd be less authoritarian than Al "My wife invented the Tipper Sticker" Gore and Joe "We need to censor video games" Lieberman. I may have been wrong.
My new computer has a nice Lian Li case, Samsung 225BW monitor, blah, blah. It's a hotrod, and kinda designed for visual appeal. My case has precicely 1 LED, the power light. It's blue, and blinks when my computer is asleep. I have just 1 blue LED on my monitor. It's on the power button, and blinks when it's asleep, and turns off when it has no signal. These lights communicate to me, and let me know my computer's state when I sit down, and before I start poking buttons randomly or molesting my mouse like a moron.
My keyboard is an old logitech POS. I'm a tightwad, and haven't bought a matching keyboard or mouse. In fact, I use keyboards until they just completely die. I think I've owned 3 in the last 15 years. But my damn keyboard has -0- LEDs on it. I NEVER know if the stupid number pad or caps lock is on or off. Typing 120 WPM means I don't notice I'm yelling in WoW, or that those numbers I just typed in reality gave my cursor a spaz. And if you think you can remember if the NumLock is on, you'll be wrong 100% of the time. I know, from a year of experience. Thinking about it now, I may go tonight and drop that 50 bucks on a nice keyboard. Living without proper feedback is very, very annoying.
(I suppose being flooded by LEDs can be a problem too, but I've never noticed an overabundance of LEDs, so I'm calling BS about too many lights)
Weblo looks interesting to poke around. Thanks.
Nice. We have the worlds LARGEST market pirating entire theme parks, and we are worried about a little economic loss from cash-poor college students? Don't we bleed them enough with Fannie Mae loans?
Once upon a time, we were the world leaders in the free exchange of ideas. Many of our universities surpassed even institutions like Oxford, because we cherished the idea of free ideas. Today though, St George has become the dragon he slew. Today, all ideas are to be owned and monetized, and information is valuable enough to wage war over. Once, we killed each other over ports, trade, gold, and mines. Today, we have nothing left to fight over, so we must imagine property to kill and enslave each other for. Movies, music, literature hold no value without a reader or listener, their value is purely virtual. Do we really need to threaten our youngest with a future police state over things that do not exist, and never will?
But, all I could think about the whole time is about those darn car keys. I kept hearing in my head my parents calling me: "Son, I need you to come look at the computer. Google keeps telling me my car keys are in the house, but I've looked all over for them. I think Google is broken again."
I like Bruce, but what the hell is he on about? Personal computers are designed to execute arbitrary code. If they weren't, we'd hack them so they would be (TP?). If you can execute code, you can find a way to wreck a system. Sure, it can be hard, but there will ALWAYS be a need for security specialists, and security software. Sure, virus scanners may one day disappear, but rootkit scanners, phishing lists, etc will take their place. Just because your computer engineering is perfect doesn't mean your social engineering isn't flawed.
Sgt. Friday was an ass. You have full rights to break the law, but you will suffer due process of law if you are caught. If I feel the DMCA is completely unjust, I am fully justified to break that law, but I need to be cognizant of the repercussions.
I know that's what you meant, I just wanted to point out that fetishization of the law is a giant leap towards totalitarianism. Certainly, these students should be expelled for using proxies against the acceptable use policies. But that said, I would never attend, lecture, chair, or be affiliated in any way with an institution that would censor with WebSense.
Granted, I'm in the same boat, and the first thing I'd do with one would be to either regift it, or see if someone's hacked it to be useful, then get it painted a better color.
UMG vs Lindor: So bad, all of the VERY circumstantial evidence against Ms. Lindor is being thrown out. The examination of her HDD provided no evidence against her. Media Sentry flagged her, and the expert from the RIAA was shown to be a total fraud. By far this is the most interesting case. http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/#UM
Capitol vs Foster: Again, really bad, so bad it seems the RIAA pissed off the judge with "questionable motives." You don't want the judge to use those words, they tend to be rather forgiving people. http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/#Cap itol_v_Foster
SONY v. Merchant: My favorite of the bunch. Not only did they name a dead man as defendant, his lawyer wrote possibly the most hysterical letter I've read in a long while. The lawyer agreed to everything, securing the HDD, getting two experts, etc, but threatened the hell out of the RIAA, including pointing out they have no standing to practice law in California. Read it, it's great. http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007 /03/model-letter-for-lawyers-representing.html
I can think of two more times off the top of my head where the RIAA had their cases dismissed with prejudice (means they couldn't provide near decent evidence, and are not allowed to bring suit again). That's at least 5 cases that have made the cable news networks. Ray Beckerman's blog is a good place to look. He defends people against the RIAA for a living, and is a pretty decent guy. A biased view to be sure, but a good place to start.
You are kidding right? Do you know how many cases in court right now name people who never fileshared, or couldn't have? Our very own NewYourCountryLawyer is involved in a big one, check out his blog. Then there is the mindshare that media companies get when they tell you filesharing is wrong. How many people are turned off by OSS because it relies on "file sharing?" How many times do you hear from your students who think they know law that Linux distributions are illegal because they are copyright? I know I have to correct that misconception a few times a year.
Yes, it is. You have read the reports on the NYPD infiltrating peace groups, right? If we start hassling people for lawful activity, no the activity doesn't become unlawful. However, how many people might just give up because, franky, they don't want to deal with that crap. If the police show up at your house, or God forbid, the Secret Service, do you really want to explain to your neighborhood, friends, and employer why? (seriously, two Farkers got raided by the Secret Service, and it wasn't for threats against the president or for counterfeiting, it was pretty much just off-color remarks and an unspecific threat) That's a chilling effect. It would make a tenured professor at least think twice before saying or writing something.
Now, I'm in the same opinion boat as you, and frankly not even imprisonment will make me censor myself in important (and most non-important) matters. I suspect you are of the same mind. However, censorship isn't just removing our words, it's containing our message. We don't have problems with it like Iran, far from it, but we do have problems with it. And while armed guards and razor wire don't stop your speech, it sends a message to citizens here that the government has the right to control what was once lawful speech, and it sends a message to citizens in Iran that not even the US is free from the heavy hand of government speech restrictions.
Really? I remember a time nobody would tolerate the military-guarded, razor-wire-fenced places called "free speech zones." Well, I'd like to believe there was such a time. Maybe it's just that nobody had the cojones to pen up protesters before now.
But while we don't filter the message, we are starting to filter the meduim. What about the threat of the NSA reading your internet communication, the threat of RIAA lawsuit or campus police if you fire up Bittorrent to download Ubuntu 7.04, the threat of being brutalized by police for civil protests?
By some subjective measures, there may be more to lament in losing the ability to say what you once were able to here than to lose the ability to say things you were never able to in Iran. Those text messages would probably get you arrested in Iran, and would have for quite a while now. Fark, 4chan, and Something Awful have a few stories about posters that had the Secret Service or FBI showing up for a little chat or three. Iran's censorship is lamentable but understandable, but the chilling effects in this country are becomming alarming.
Not saying we should have an alarmist attitude, but "an order of magnitude" we might not have.
Not really. Copyright didn't actually STOP people from stealing from the bush. Government enforcement meant that the guards would occasionally smack someone on the head if they took too many berries, or tried to resell the berries right in front of them. Technically you are right, copyright enforcement was supposed to stop copying like DRM is, however it did not function that way in reality. I'd love to do research on models as we'd like them to happen, not as how they really do happen.
However you do show a good understanding of why we have copyright (to promote arts). However, the pressures to loot the bush are very, very high, and the crowd is very, very large. If looting the bush required a massive investment such as a printing press circa 1880, then copyright enforcement works fine, and there is not much incentive to loot the bush. However, as the costs to looting come down, there is more incentive to do so.
And extra credit for realizing "We the People" set the policies that benefit us most. As my favorite professor said years ago, "We are a country, not an economy." If the economic policies we have do not benefit us, then it is our imperative to make those that do. But, I was taught that back before everyone in business school was a Randian Objectivist.
Good points, but I want to address Firefly. That was certainly a failure of the market, but not due to piracy. Everyone I know, including my geriatric parents, my wife, and my kid, adore the show. Most everyone bought a copy of the boxed set. However, they only found out after the show was canceled (and a few years at that). That was a failure to capture a market. However, the market wasn't turning to piracy at the time, it was because nobody knew about the show.
Marketing at Fox is abysmal. The Tick live action show was about the funniest thing I've ever seen. I own it. However, the show was slated to be canceled before the first episode aired, and didn't have any advertising. Piracy didn't kill Family Guy, as it did over 3 times better in the ratings on Adult Swim. That is was a failure at Fox to understand their demographics and viewing habits. After renewing the show a couple of years later, they took a clue from Cartoon Network and managed to capture their market. It's now one of their most popular shows.
No. The problem is a loss of demand. Theft occurs when the finite berries are taken. Loss of demand happens when the infinite berries are taken. It's analogous to entering a saturated market- don't expect windfall profits.
Isn't that exactly the problem as described? If there is no way to model the scarcity, there really is no optimum method of distribution. No one will bother to grow the bush (make labor-intensive content) if they can't figure out a compensation model. And people will notice the bush has infinite berries, and will take a dim view that the creator is guarding what is an infinite resource. Imagine if you had to pay an air tax to breathe under penalty of law. There would be riots and revolution.
I argued that capitalism doesn't model an infinite resource perfectly, and that it is not incompatible with unlimited distribution. A good example would be to have copyright over movies for say, 2 years. Nearly all movies make most of their profit in the first two years (and offers good incentive to produce content). After which, the movie enters the public domain (enriches the public through unlimited distribution). The next trick would be to find a good point for other mediums.
You didn't read what I wrote. At all. My entire point was that the abolition of scarcity can mean that progress will stop. But you aren't taking advanced economics like externalities, so I won't jump your case. It's not like I can fail you.
The root of the problem is with positive and negative free riders. And every content creator will argue every free rider is negative, as you are. This is not the case. Society will want positive free riders. Creators will want control over all free riders. The former is a much more efficient solution than the latter. Take for instance the Star Wars prequels. Someone OTHER than Lucas could have done a much better job than he did. He got to capture the free rider benefits of his first movies (characters, themes, story, etc). But, by many estimations, he did a poor job. If we had let him compete with others, and had many different versions of the prequels, we would have more total economic benefit, and more people willing to create content. Nothing is stopping someone from seeing more than one version of the prequels. But the current situation does not allow that. Law and DRM prevent novel uses and derivative works, to the detriment of capitalism.
Scarcity works on more than one dimension, and I think you understand that. That's why if a widget can be infinitely duplicated, it's different than if Van Gogh's Sunflowers can be infinitely duplicated. But then again, Van Gogh died near penniless and unappreciated. It didn't stop him from making many masterpieces whose prints garner my walls. If you want to know more, email me and I can give you a good reading list and some ideas to start.
I usually explain the current problem with reconciling creative incentive with no natural scarcities as a fable. Imagine a berry bush that has very, very tasty berries, but is excruciatingly difficult to grow. The farmer has to spend hundreds of man hours raising the bush, and cannot hold another job while doing so. The owner of the bush decides to hire 5 armed men to guard the bush, and sell baskets of berries for 5 dollars a piece, until they are gone. We call this capitalism. The owner pays for the cost of raising the bush and the guards, and profit goes towards his livelihood. If there were no guards, and looting of the bush happened, the owner is out of a bush, economic opportunity, and probably a livelihood. Looting causes an inefficient distribution of resources. Communism would look similarly, but the farmer would have doled out the berries equally to who wanted them, for the cost of a generally collected (taxed) stipend, from everyone who did and did not want them.
Now, imagine if that bush never ran out of berries. Sure, people might get tired of the berries, or they might not like berries. But you get two interesting problems. First, if the farmer keeps selling berries, he makes unlimited money. That drops his costs to nearly zero. Second, if he's looted, he is not out of berries to sell. He is only out of the opportunity to sell the berries. Capitalism doesn't protect your demand, only the physical property you have to sell. Sure, eating gobs and gobs of berries means that those people are now full on berries and have no interest in buying, but maybe everyone didn't anyway. Law does not regulate demand.
The farmer who owns the unlimited berry bush does not need guards to prevent the stealing of property, he needs them to protect his demand. If he left the bush unattended overnight, he does not lose property, he only loses demand. If modern capitalism is to be remodeled to include protection of demand, you quickly find that you can't write a negative review of a product, or change your tastes, as well as similar problems, since you have damaged demand for a creators product.
And this is the problem with DRM. DRM are the armed guards at the unlimited berry bush. This is NOT the most efficient method of distribution. The most efficient method would collect enough money for farmers to have incentive to grow a bush, but would not prevent the widest distribution of berries possible (everyone who wants one). Plain and simple, no current economic model satisfies perfectly.
You can make arguments that theater seats are a scarcity now, and good movie experiences can be used to generate profit and motivation. But when the day comes of very, very cheap home theaters, you have to shift the model again. Concerts are better, and could save the music model, but apart from plays, this is really a difficult problem for big-budget movies. Not allowing unlimited distribution is very inefficient, as is not compensating the creator. Truly, it's a curse of riches.
There, you get a class lecture for free, without DRM.
And that says it all really. Granted, I have a major issue with the fact your advice is true. And as a parent who will be having a child in school shortly, I will not tolerate that crap at any school my daughter attends. I won't care that she's not involved. I went through school in self-contained gifted classes and TONS of AP classes in High School, so crap like this wasn't an issue. But I did see crap like that happen, and I was basically powerless to do anything then. The school board takes a dim view of students attending school board meetings. Natually, I want to make sure other children get the same opportunities I did.