I'm inclined to think that your closed minded attitude is the reason that you've been in IT for 20 years, and are just now getting to a position to make hiring decisions. I'm 26 and I already get to make some of those decisions. You know why? Because I know that sometimes a motivated 23 year old is more valuable than a 55 year old just waiting for retirement. I also know that most of the software in use today wasn't around (at least in it's current form) 20 years ago, so who cares if you were a sys admin for OS2 Warp.
This is why I find much of the academic community to have a ridiculous sense of entitlement. Does the professor have some intellectual property claim to the knowledge? Maybe. Does he have a right to make some money by sharing that knowledge? Certainly. Isn't that what the university salary is for? I think so.
Interesting to note that microsoft.com was not one of those first 100. Not unexpected, but it does somewhat show how they weren't an innovator in the networked computing and explains why they didn't even treat it as a priority until Windows 2000.
And rampant disregard by a government entity isn't a violation of WTO membership terms? Countries are being passive aggressive by choosing not to enforce copyright law when it suits them. If other countries are not meeting their obligations at WTO members, what good does it do us to be a member?
As much economic damage as I'm sure this is causing by stopping American teenagers from downloading usually mediocre quality copies of movies (although Spidey 3 seemed to be doing just fine), personally I would think the country would benefit more by creating more aggressive policies for dealing with countries that blatantly disregard U.S. patent and copyright law, as our trade deficit with countries like China is caused in part by the fact that many of the U.S.'s most exportable goods (i.e. software, movies, music) are much easier to steal than the boatloads of cheap clothes and electronics that come from China. We should be at minimum putting a blanket tariff on all goods coming from such countries to adjust for their massive theft. For some more creative ideas, see my post on a previous topic. Honestly, how the Chinese government's Disney World knock-off isn't a bigger concern for our country, I don't know. When a foreign government is thumbing their nose at our copyrights, that's got to be more important than some teenagers downloading movies in their basement.
You make a good point that the U.S.'s intellectual property is not respected internationally, and I'm not surprised to hear that from a European. Personally, I think the U.S. needs to take the gloves off and call a spade a spade. If the government of China is going to blatantly rip off Disney as it was previously discussed that they did here then I think next time china comes to collect on any of the trade debt we run up with them, we refuse to pay until royalties are paid. Same thing should apply for all countries with significant piracy issues, European countries included. About the time the U.S. decided not to pay for a few shiploads of cars, other countries might realize we're really serious about the issue. I would even support some more "evil" methods of enforcement. If M$ wrote a virus to encrypt the hard drives of people with pirated copies of windows, and only decrypt it when they paid up, I'd say good for them. As a programmer who depends on copyrights for his living, it concerns me that people in many countries seem to be under the impression that since software is so easily copied, they isn't anything wrong with stealing it, completely ignoring the fact that huge amounts of money have to be invested into the development of the software with the assumption that enough copies can be sold to pay off the investment. I'm not going to say that when I was a teenager and the information age was just beginning that I didn't have a view of piracy something like many of these countries. But the more advanced software gets (although it's also true of movies and other copyrighted works), the more expensive it gets to develop, and it's time we start taking a real stand on piracy.
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I'm inclined to think that your closed minded attitude is the reason that you've been in IT for 20 years, and are just now getting to a position to make hiring decisions. I'm 26 and I already get to make some of those decisions. You know why? Because I know that sometimes a motivated 23 year old is more valuable than a 55 year old just waiting for retirement. I also know that most of the software in use today wasn't around (at least in it's current form) 20 years ago, so who cares if you were a sys admin for OS2 Warp.
This is why I find much of the academic community to have a ridiculous sense of entitlement. Does the professor have some intellectual property claim to the knowledge? Maybe. Does he have a right to make some money by sharing that knowledge? Certainly. Isn't that what the university salary is for? I think so.
So can I get my Scarecrow mask and a bottle of the stuff in time for Halloween next year?
Interesting to note that microsoft.com was not one of those first 100. Not unexpected, but it does somewhat show how they weren't an innovator in the networked computing and explains why they didn't even treat it as a priority until Windows 2000.
And rampant disregard by a government entity isn't a violation of WTO membership terms? Countries are being passive aggressive by choosing not to enforce copyright law when it suits them. If other countries are not meeting their obligations at WTO members, what good does it do us to be a member?
As much economic damage as I'm sure this is causing by stopping American teenagers from downloading usually mediocre quality copies of movies (although Spidey 3 seemed to be doing just fine), personally I would think the country would benefit more by creating more aggressive policies for dealing with countries that blatantly disregard U.S. patent and copyright law, as our trade deficit with countries like China is caused in part by the fact that many of the U.S.'s most exportable goods (i.e. software, movies, music) are much easier to steal than the boatloads of cheap clothes and electronics that come from China. We should be at minimum putting a blanket tariff on all goods coming from such countries to adjust for their massive theft. For some more creative ideas, see my post on a previous topic. Honestly, how the Chinese government's Disney World knock-off isn't a bigger concern for our country, I don't know. When a foreign government is thumbing their nose at our copyrights, that's got to be more important than some teenagers downloading movies in their basement.
You make a good point that the U.S.'s intellectual property is not respected internationally, and I'm not surprised to hear that from a European. Personally, I think the U.S. needs to take the gloves off and call a spade a spade. If the government of China is going to blatantly rip off Disney as it was previously discussed that they did here then I think next time china comes to collect on any of the trade debt we run up with them, we refuse to pay until royalties are paid. Same thing should apply for all countries with significant piracy issues, European countries included. About the time the U.S. decided not to pay for a few shiploads of cars, other countries might realize we're really serious about the issue. I would even support some more "evil" methods of enforcement. If M$ wrote a virus to encrypt the hard drives of people with pirated copies of windows, and only decrypt it when they paid up, I'd say good for them. As a programmer who depends on copyrights for his living, it concerns me that people in many countries seem to be under the impression that since software is so easily copied, they isn't anything wrong with stealing it, completely ignoring the fact that huge amounts of money have to be invested into the development of the software with the assumption that enough copies can be sold to pay off the investment. I'm not going to say that when I was a teenager and the information age was just beginning that I didn't have a view of piracy something like many of these countries. But the more advanced software gets (although it's also true of movies and other copyrighted works), the more expensive it gets to develop, and it's time we start taking a real stand on piracy.