This is an interesting point. The stated purpose of copyright is to give incentives to an author to produce works that benefit the public. If an author is this wealthy, a financial loss due to copyright infringement would either have to be tremendous to disincentivize new works, or the author would have to be uncommonly greedy.
It's poor form to present one's opinion before even the facts of the post, like you can't trust the reader to make up his own mind. It's kind of the difference between, "Here's a picture of an ugly person:" and "Here's a picture:... Talk about ugly!" Same opinion, different framing. In any case, it's not even a fair criticism -- she's not being greedy (her supposedly and conveniently planned vaporware project's proceeds would go to charity) it's petty, controlling, and somewhat vindictive.
But every product or service where it sort of makes sense (the plural destroys it anyway) only encourages the shambling armies of those that don't. And it's not like they'd be sitting there stuck for another product name -- for people who supposedly live by their creativity, they picked a decidedly uncreative name.
It seems to me that one of the big problems is that news web sites consider their past articles and issues to be semi-sacred. They have a real phobia sometimes about changing old web sites (never mind the fact that it's frequently just not feasible) On the other hand, when new information comes out on a story, each new article links back to the old articles on the subject, which just as frequently do not link back.
The result is two-fold. With more links to the original "So-and-so accused of murder" page, that's going to come up earlier when searching on that person's name. First impressions, and all that, particularly for really heinous crimes. Second, those initial pages will often not contain information on the outcome or links to articles on the outcome. This means that you have to care enough to sift through the rest of the results to find out whether the guy was actually guilty. How many people would bother, and how many would just file the name away under "murderer" and go on with their other browsing?
In his defense, I think he meant "voluntary" as in, "You can make use of a work, and it's up to you whether you pay for it." In this is he is only partly wrong. Somebody has to pay, just not everybody.
Right now, what we have is a modified patronage system. Large corporate patrons (Warner, MGM, NBC) commission and pay for works of art that they then sell to the public. Corporate patronage only works so long as the corporation makes more money from the public than it gives to the artists. Royalties are only one model for this (and a useful one, allowing them to hedge their bets, to bait artists with the the promise of unlikely untold wealth, and to shame the public into making purchases), and are not an integral part. Without that profit, the corporate patronage system falls apart, but even a non-profit patron would need income to continue operations.
Without this system, alternate models emerge: direct purchase, or private patronage. In past years, these systems have had the dual effects of making a lot of culture inaccessible to many people, and of giving non-creative (but wealthy) people excessive control over the creative output of artists.
They seem to be careful to emphasize that they see this as voluntary -- a service you sign up for alongside your regular internet service. It's not so much a "tax" as another commenter responded (which applies equally and involuntarily to everyone regardless of interest or opposition), it's a "license" (which applies, in advance, to anyone who indicates they will or might want to participate in an activity like hunting or fishing, regardless of whether they actually do).
This suggests that they will make it very easy and attractive to sign up in the first place, but then make it tedious and difficult to make use of it, and very hard to get out of a contract once agreed to. Moreover, they will use the participation of some people as a weapon against others in their lawsuits -- they will claim not only infringement damages per-song, but also claim that they are undermining their pay service. Damages claimed will surely skyrocket.
With huge omnibus labels like Warner, you rely on their goodwill to bother to reward the artists you like for being responsible for your patronage. I have a hard time liking that idea.
However, smaller boutique labels with a carefully managed corps of similarly-minded artists -- that I would seriously consider. It would not only allow me to focus the money I'm spending, it would help me find music I'm likely to like.
Mike Perry did a great public service by making this tool and making it available.
WTF? No he didn't. Pointing out the vulnerability is a a public service, yes. Giving a talk where he outlines the problem? Also a public service. Distributing the means for anyone to make use of this vulnerability (ESPECIALLY when so many major vendors aren't prepared for it yet) is not a public service anymore. It's just arming script kiddies. Ralph Nader was able to do plenty of good without going around ramming into Chevy Corvairs to somehow "drive home" the need for a fix.
Maybe he'll come into some more "new" information that will have him change his stance again.
Maybe! The world is not static -- it changes, and there is always new information. A lot of people who had previously been rather blase about the space program are realizing that the US can't necessarily rely on Russia anymore, and so they're re-evaluating. We've seen with the last guy how much trouble can be caused if you stick to your original plans/opinions in the face of changing (or just plain different) reality; a willingness to adapt seems like a good thing right now. It's entirely possible that the economy will take a turn further south, or the ISS will develop serious trouble, and he'll re-evaluate again, possibly coming up with a decision I don't like. But as long as he's using sound logic and consulting experts, I'm hoping that he'll at least be coming up with whatever plan he does for good reasons.
Except, that I think that if Paul had not produced a plan, he would have been a much less viable candidate. As it happened, I disagreed with his plan -- but I wouldn't even have looked at him if he hadn't had one. His plan helped him be taken seriously, it just wasn't enough.
I disagree that it damaged Paul -- I think that a lot of people who would otherwise have considered him a vanity candidate (if not just a nutjob) were impressed by the plan he put forward. Mind you, I'm not one of them, but I respect the man for putting forward concrete ideas for me to evaluate.
Despite what they're saying about Florida, though, I don't think this is really an issue for most people. For as many of us Slashdotters who approve, I know plenty of people who disapprove and consider NASA a waste of money.
For better or for worse, campaigns are the time when a lot of position changes get made. Some are for cynical reasons, and they change right back. But it's also a time when a candidate's positions come under far greater scrutiny than ever before, and it can become glaringly obvious that something that seemed like a good idea is a real stinker -- because all of a sudden, a whole lot of people are saying so.
Besides, I've been hoping for a change like this for a while, and a lot of people have been writing to him to ask him to reconsider. It seems a little disingenuous to howl at a candidate for having the wrong position, and then jeer at him when he changes his mind and comes around to the right one.
He changed his mind! It's clearly pandering of the worst sort!
I really wish we could get rid of this ridiculous focus on changing views. Emerson summed it up nicely, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." In this case, it would have been foolish of Obama to be consistent -- he was wrong. He was persuaded otherwise. Is this somehow a bad thing, a moral failure? Yeah, it was advantageous of him to come to this conclusion, but it's almost always advantageous to change from a wrong conclusion to a correct one.
No, they don't *expect* me to run their software -- they offer it for me to run if I choose. As for privileges, that's inherent to Windows that anything you may (or in some cases may not) install can run rampant.
To your broader point, yes, the trust and respect thing goes both ways. That's why I don't buy games from certain companies, and I tread carefully buying from indies (sorry guys, but my support only goes so far; I'm not opening up my drive to someone I've never heard of before unless you're selling through a respected site) But it seems to me that in most cases they have a lot more to lose by being untrustworthy than I do. (Unless they're Sony. But I don't buy Sony products anymore)
That sounds great, but come on -- they don't know you from Adam. It's not lack of respect, it's lack of trust, and they can only trust you to the extent they trust everybody. But they can't trust everybody. Do you get similarly upset with clothing stores that have security cameras all over the place, and put those anti-theft devices on their products? Ditto the little RFID tags that bookstores put in their books. Even if they know and trust and respect you, they still need to put those things in, because there exist customers not deserving of trust or respect, and there is no way for them to tell the difference. They can't turn the security cameras and theft detectors off just because you, a nice respectable guy, deign to walk into their store. We don't (usually) blame the store for these inconveniences, we blame the jerks who shoplift.
As for the copy protection: sure, I can download a cracked copy... but that probably means going to some skeezy site full of porn ads and popups and the latest in browser exploits. Even the torrent trackers aren't exactly trustworthy. But that's beside the point: it doesn't matter if I can get my grandmother to burn me a copy of any cracked game I want and send it to me overnight priority mail along with a bag of freshly-baked cookies, all for free. It's about raising the bar and preventing the kind of casual piracy that history has shown would otherwise be rampant: Burglars may be able to break my windows, but that doesn't justify me throwing up my hands and leaving my doors open. (It'd be damned convenient if I could, too -- no more fumbling for keys in the rain, or accidentally locking myself out! But I don't blame my landlord for insisting I keep the door locked, I blame the jerks who would take advantage of that to steal stuff.)
It seems to me that game companies are making the best of a bad situation: they want to make games and they want people to enjoy them, but they need to feed their families too. Many of them dearly love their honest customers, and truly regret the need to put this kind of crap in there (in addition to your objections, many of them feel that it sullies their vision of the game they wanted to make), but they've got to lock those doors, and no amount of sniffy self-righteousness is going to change that -- only a change of the culture to discourage the crackers and pirates, and encourage people to not consider a "free" copy a viable/preferable option, will change that.
These are all good points -- practically a checklist for why I don't pirate games.
I think the solution is to personalize. Get a fast machine, and when someone orders the game, have me (the customer) wait ten minutes for a personalized link to the game, the binary of which now has my name, email, address, and credit card number compiled into the game (easily visible under an "About" window), which is free of DRM, and requires a password I select to play. After that, it is up to me to keep it safe the way I keep anything with that information safe. If I decide to make copies of the game for my girlfriend or my brothers, fine. But I'd have to think long and hard before making a copy for someone I didn't trust quite so absolutely. I might even insist on there being some kind of DRM...
It's not a perfect solution -- there are issues of stolen credit cards, for example -- but it does seem to allow honest customers the most leeway.
It's a little like the discovery of an additional taste, umami (present in seaweed, tomatoes, parmesan cheese, etc) -- it helps you understand a few things you didn't before, and provides a few more options you didn't know you had, but that doesn't mean that you want to overload on it. (Unless you're one of these crappy bistro chains that asks if you was parmesan on freaking everything) So no, I doubt anyone is thinking we don't have enough deserts, but I suspect more than a few people are suddenly glad they're there.
Easy: he thought they were Indians, he said they were Indians, and nobody else had a direct look at them until much later. As the modern disputants of anthropocentric climate change have shown, all it takes it a little doubt or misinformation (intentional or not) to muddy the waters for a long time. And while the scientists are scratching their heads and giving him the benefit of the doubt, ordinary people become convinced of the easier-to-grasp "fact": rather than there being a giant landmass nobody had any clue about, it seemed more likely that some eggheads had simply miscalculated the circumference of the earth. Heh, stupid eggheads.
I was thinking, actually, a correlation between "yes" and "college-age". (Obviously not 100%) I don't usually give the MPAA the benefit of the doubt, but this strikes me as them actually trying -- it seems to me that they noticed that the most popular sites were not the individual "pirates" but the indexing sites like PirateBay or that TV site out of the UK (the name escapes me). It seems more likely that they'll be looking for kickbacks from the sites they send people to, than looking for "proof internet users are all criminals."
I was thinking this myself. When I want to watch a movie online, I check NetFlix, then Hulu, then sometimes iTunes -- having one-stop shopping, so to speak, will actually be quite useful for me.
Judging from the other comments, I would be very curious to see the results of a poll with two questions: "1. Do you think this is a good idea?" "2. How old are you?" (Alternately: "Are you a college student?)
I'm not saying that he was bullying (at least not in the points I saw). He's complaining that the tool doesn't do something it wasn't designed to do or (as near as I can tell) advertised to do. His frustration is his own fault, like the Far Side cartoon with the kid pushing the pull door. He could be as civil, polite, helpful, and well-intentioned as all get out, but he's still pushing the pull door.
As it happened, he was neither polite nor civil. His very first post was downright insulting on a number of points, making snide remarks left and right. He may have wanted to be helpful, but he didn't actually accomplish it. Even if he was right to post his viewpoint (Though I'm far more familiar with electric motors than ICEs, I'm not quite ready to concede the point of technical merit) once he did so ONCE he was done. The posts after that amount to not much more than hectoring.
Judging from his first few comments, he's not really right -- he's taking a tool designed for planes using electric motors, trying to make it work for planes using internal combustion engines, then complaining that it won't work, and thus sucks. He also admits that he didn't read the tutorials, expecting them to be worthless. It's like answering an ad for a used car, driving it into the water, then complaining that it was a really crappy boat.
Slashdot Mirror
This is an interesting point. The stated purpose of copyright is to give incentives to an author to produce works that benefit the public. If an author is this wealthy, a financial loss due to copyright infringement would either have to be tremendous to disincentivize new works, or the author would have to be uncommonly greedy.
It's poor form to present one's opinion before even the facts of the post, like you can't trust the reader to make up his own mind. It's kind of the difference between, "Here's a picture of an ugly person:" and "Here's a picture: ... Talk about ugly!" Same opinion, different framing.
In any case, it's not even a fair criticism -- she's not being greedy (her supposedly and conveniently planned vaporware project's proceeds would go to charity) it's petty, controlling, and somewhat vindictive.
But every product or service where it sort of makes sense (the plural destroys it anyway) only encourages the shambling armies of those that don't. And it's not like they'd be sitting there stuck for another product name -- for people who supposedly live by their creativity, they picked a decidedly uncreative name.
Can we stop putting "i" in front of things?
It seems to me that one of the big problems is that news web sites consider their past articles and issues to be semi-sacred. They have a real phobia sometimes about changing old web sites (never mind the fact that it's frequently just not feasible) On the other hand, when new information comes out on a story, each new article links back to the old articles on the subject, which just as frequently do not link back.
The result is two-fold. With more links to the original "So-and-so accused of murder" page, that's going to come up earlier when searching on that person's name. First impressions, and all that, particularly for really heinous crimes. Second, those initial pages will often not contain information on the outcome or links to articles on the outcome. This means that you have to care enough to sift through the rest of the results to find out whether the guy was actually guilty. How many people would bother, and how many would just file the name away under "murderer" and go on with their other browsing?
In his defense, I think he meant "voluntary" as in, "You can make use of a work, and it's up to you whether you pay for it." In this is he is only partly wrong. Somebody has to pay, just not everybody.
Right now, what we have is a modified patronage system. Large corporate patrons (Warner, MGM, NBC) commission and pay for works of art that they then sell to the public. Corporate patronage only works so long as the corporation makes more money from the public than it gives to the artists. Royalties are only one model for this (and a useful one, allowing them to hedge their bets, to bait artists with the the promise of unlikely untold wealth, and to shame the public into making purchases), and are not an integral part. Without that profit, the corporate patronage system falls apart, but even a non-profit patron would need income to continue operations.
Without this system, alternate models emerge: direct purchase, or private patronage. In past years, these systems have had the dual effects of making a lot of culture inaccessible to many people, and of giving non-creative (but wealthy) people excessive control over the creative output of artists.
I'm pretty sure it's the Complete Barry White Discography. You'll license it because it's Useful.
They seem to be careful to emphasize that they see this as voluntary -- a service you sign up for alongside your regular internet service. It's not so much a "tax" as another commenter responded (which applies equally and involuntarily to everyone regardless of interest or opposition), it's a "license" (which applies, in advance, to anyone who indicates they will or might want to participate in an activity like hunting or fishing, regardless of whether they actually do).
This suggests that they will make it very easy and attractive to sign up in the first place, but then make it tedious and difficult to make use of it, and very hard to get out of a contract once agreed to. Moreover, they will use the participation of some people as a weapon against others in their lawsuits -- they will claim not only infringement damages per-song, but also claim that they are undermining their pay service. Damages claimed will surely skyrocket.
With huge omnibus labels like Warner, you rely on their goodwill to bother to reward the artists you like for being responsible for your patronage. I have a hard time liking that idea.
However, smaller boutique labels with a carefully managed corps of similarly-minded artists -- that I would seriously consider. It would not only allow me to focus the money I'm spending, it would help me find music I'm likely to like.
Mike Perry did a great public service by making this tool and making it available.
WTF? No he didn't. Pointing out the vulnerability is a a public service, yes. Giving a talk where he outlines the problem? Also a public service. Distributing the means for anyone to make use of this vulnerability (ESPECIALLY when so many major vendors aren't prepared for it yet) is not a public service anymore. It's just arming script kiddies. Ralph Nader was able to do plenty of good without going around ramming into Chevy Corvairs to somehow "drive home" the need for a fix.
Maybe he'll come into some more "new" information that will have him change his stance again.
Maybe! The world is not static -- it changes, and there is always new information. A lot of people who had previously been rather blase about the space program are realizing that the US can't necessarily rely on Russia anymore, and so they're re-evaluating. We've seen with the last guy how much trouble can be caused if you stick to your original plans/opinions in the face of changing (or just plain different) reality; a willingness to adapt seems like a good thing right now. It's entirely possible that the economy will take a turn further south, or the ISS will develop serious trouble, and he'll re-evaluate again, possibly coming up with a decision I don't like. But as long as he's using sound logic and consulting experts, I'm hoping that he'll at least be coming up with whatever plan he does for good reasons.
Except, that I think that if Paul had not produced a plan, he would have been a much less viable candidate. As it happened, I disagreed with his plan -- but I wouldn't even have looked at him if he hadn't had one. His plan helped him be taken seriously, it just wasn't enough.
I disagree that it damaged Paul -- I think that a lot of people who would otherwise have considered him a vanity candidate (if not just a nutjob) were impressed by the plan he put forward. Mind you, I'm not one of them, but I respect the man for putting forward concrete ideas for me to evaluate.
Despite what they're saying about Florida, though, I don't think this is really an issue for most people. For as many of us Slashdotters who approve, I know plenty of people who disapprove and consider NASA a waste of money.
For better or for worse, campaigns are the time when a lot of position changes get made. Some are for cynical reasons, and they change right back. But it's also a time when a candidate's positions come under far greater scrutiny than ever before, and it can become glaringly obvious that something that seemed like a good idea is a real stinker -- because all of a sudden, a whole lot of people are saying so.
Besides, I've been hoping for a change like this for a while, and a lot of people have been writing to him to ask him to reconsider. It seems a little disingenuous to howl at a candidate for having the wrong position, and then jeer at him when he changes his mind and comes around to the right one.
He changed his mind! It's clearly pandering of the worst sort!
I really wish we could get rid of this ridiculous focus on changing views. Emerson summed it up nicely, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." In this case, it would have been foolish of Obama to be consistent -- he was wrong. He was persuaded otherwise. Is this somehow a bad thing, a moral failure? Yeah, it was advantageous of him to come to this conclusion, but it's almost always advantageous to change from a wrong conclusion to a correct one.
No, they don't *expect* me to run their software -- they offer it for me to run if I choose. As for privileges, that's inherent to Windows that anything you may (or in some cases may not) install can run rampant.
To your broader point, yes, the trust and respect thing goes both ways. That's why I don't buy games from certain companies, and I tread carefully buying from indies (sorry guys, but my support only goes so far; I'm not opening up my drive to someone I've never heard of before unless you're selling through a respected site) But it seems to me that in most cases they have a lot more to lose by being untrustworthy than I do. (Unless they're Sony. But I don't buy Sony products anymore)
That sounds great, but come on -- they don't know you from Adam. It's not lack of respect, it's lack of trust, and they can only trust you to the extent they trust everybody. But they can't trust everybody. Do you get similarly upset with clothing stores that have security cameras all over the place, and put those anti-theft devices on their products? Ditto the little RFID tags that bookstores put in their books. Even if they know and trust and respect you, they still need to put those things in, because there exist customers not deserving of trust or respect, and there is no way for them to tell the difference. They can't turn the security cameras and theft detectors off just because you, a nice respectable guy, deign to walk into their store. We don't (usually) blame the store for these inconveniences, we blame the jerks who shoplift.
As for the copy protection: sure, I can download a cracked copy... but that probably means going to some skeezy site full of porn ads and popups and the latest in browser exploits. Even the torrent trackers aren't exactly trustworthy. But that's beside the point: it doesn't matter if I can get my grandmother to burn me a copy of any cracked game I want and send it to me overnight priority mail along with a bag of freshly-baked cookies, all for free. It's about raising the bar and preventing the kind of casual piracy that history has shown would otherwise be rampant: Burglars may be able to break my windows, but that doesn't justify me throwing up my hands and leaving my doors open. (It'd be damned convenient if I could, too -- no more fumbling for keys in the rain, or accidentally locking myself out! But I don't blame my landlord for insisting I keep the door locked, I blame the jerks who would take advantage of that to steal stuff.)
It seems to me that game companies are making the best of a bad situation: they want to make games and they want people to enjoy them, but they need to feed their families too. Many of them dearly love their honest customers, and truly regret the need to put this kind of crap in there (in addition to your objections, many of them feel that it sullies their vision of the game they wanted to make), but they've got to lock those doors, and no amount of sniffy self-righteousness is going to change that -- only a change of the culture to discourage the crackers and pirates, and encourage people to not consider a "free" copy a viable/preferable option, will change that.
These are all good points -- practically a checklist for why I don't pirate games.
I think the solution is to personalize. Get a fast machine, and when someone orders the game, have me (the customer) wait ten minutes for a personalized link to the game, the binary of which now has my name, email, address, and credit card number compiled into the game (easily visible under an "About" window), which is free of DRM, and requires a password I select to play. After that, it is up to me to keep it safe the way I keep anything with that information safe. If I decide to make copies of the game for my girlfriend or my brothers, fine. But I'd have to think long and hard before making a copy for someone I didn't trust quite so absolutely. I might even insist on there being some kind of DRM...
It's not a perfect solution -- there are issues of stolen credit cards, for example -- but it does seem to allow honest customers the most leeway.
It's not good or bad, just part of the equation.
It's a little like the discovery of an additional taste, umami (present in seaweed, tomatoes, parmesan cheese, etc) -- it helps you understand a few things you didn't before, and provides a few more options you didn't know you had, but that doesn't mean that you want to overload on it. (Unless you're one of these crappy bistro chains that asks if you was parmesan on freaking everything) So no, I doubt anyone is thinking we don't have enough deserts, but I suspect more than a few people are suddenly glad they're there.
Easy: he thought they were Indians, he said they were Indians, and nobody else had a direct look at them until much later. As the modern disputants of anthropocentric climate change have shown, all it takes it a little doubt or misinformation (intentional or not) to muddy the waters for a long time. And while the scientists are scratching their heads and giving him the benefit of the doubt, ordinary people become convinced of the easier-to-grasp "fact": rather than there being a giant landmass nobody had any clue about, it seemed more likely that some eggheads had simply miscalculated the circumference of the earth. Heh, stupid eggheads.
And yet Sam & Max is coming out for the Wii.
I was thinking, actually, a correlation between "yes" and "college-age". (Obviously not 100%) I don't usually give the MPAA the benefit of the doubt, but this strikes me as them actually trying -- it seems to me that they noticed that the most popular sites were not the individual "pirates" but the indexing sites like PirateBay or that TV site out of the UK (the name escapes me). It seems more likely that they'll be looking for kickbacks from the sites they send people to, than looking for "proof internet users are all criminals."
I was thinking this myself. When I want to watch a movie online, I check NetFlix, then Hulu, then sometimes iTunes -- having one-stop shopping, so to speak, will actually be quite useful for me.
Judging from the other comments, I would be very curious to see the results of a poll with two questions:
"1. Do you think this is a good idea?"
"2. How old are you?" (Alternately: "Are you a college student?)
I suspect there will be some correlation there.
I'm not saying that he was bullying (at least not in the points I saw). He's complaining that the tool doesn't do something it wasn't designed to do or (as near as I can tell) advertised to do. His frustration is his own fault, like the Far Side cartoon with the kid pushing the pull door. He could be as civil, polite, helpful, and well-intentioned as all get out, but he's still pushing the pull door.
As it happened, he was neither polite nor civil. His very first post was downright insulting on a number of points, making snide remarks left and right. He may have wanted to be helpful, but he didn't actually accomplish it. Even if he was right to post his viewpoint (Though I'm far more familiar with electric motors than ICEs, I'm not quite ready to concede the point of technical merit) once he did so ONCE he was done. The posts after that amount to not much more than hectoring.
Judging from his first few comments, he's not really right -- he's taking a tool designed for planes using electric motors, trying to make it work for planes using internal combustion engines, then complaining that it won't work, and thus sucks. He also admits that he didn't read the tutorials, expecting them to be worthless. It's like answering an ad for a used car, driving it into the water, then complaining that it was a really crappy boat.