Now I am sure this has been said before, because it seems pretty obvious to me... but the only data Scobel can even claim to own, in this strange metaphysical concept of owning we seem to be discussing, is the data he entered into the site - i.e. his own email, address, and the like. If anyone OWNS the data he was collecting, it would be those friends whose profiles he was harvesting from. Now, he could argue that he owns the 'data' that represents that he is friends with these people, but certainly not their address or telephone information. It seems if anything, Facebook is protecting the 'real' owners of the data - his friends - from having their data used in a way they might not have approved of. Now one could reasonably argue that Facebook owns all the data because it was entered into their website and stored on their servers, but it seems clear that Scobel could never make a reasonable claim that he is the one who owns it. If this were the case, and accepting a friendship request on Facebook somehow transfers ownership of my personal information to my new found friend, I would certainly be a lot more selective in accepting friends.
Ok. All that being said, I'm looking forward to using Rails some day when I start a brand new project from scratch, with Rails in mind from the beginning. That seems to me that he thinks RoR will be a good framework to use, when he doesn't have the limitations of switching a current project to it. That is more a criticism of trying to rewrite a web app in a new language for no good reason than rails itself.
Saying that Google loses 1 Billion dollars a year is a little misleading. They didn't lose the money; they never were supposed to have it in the first place. From the article, it seems that it is more like the fraudulent clicks add up to 1 Billion dollars worth a year, but no one 'loses' that money. They don't pay it to the websites that generate the false clicks, nor do they charge advertisers for it (at least the ones they detect, which seems to be where they are calculating the 1 billion dollars from). It is silly to say that the amount of money generated from those clicks is money to lose; it is money they never earned in the first place. If there were no fraudulent clicks, that billion dollars wouldn't suddenly be in Google's pockets. It is more accurate to say that if they charged advertisers for illegitimate clicks, they could make a billion dollars more.
My point wasn't to say that copying intellectual property never creates a loss. I was merely trying to point out the inherent difference between intellectual property and real, physical, property. Perhaps I should not have included the 'more power to ya' part, as I can understand how that could convey that my opinion is that only real, physical, property can be stolen.
For physical items such as a Ferrari, most of the value does not lie in intellectual property (the design).. much of the value is in the materials, manufacturing, and labor that go into producing the car. While there is certainly a diminishing cost with each subsequent Ferrari produced, there is still a very real and measurable cost-per-unit produced. For purely intellectual property, all of the cost is in the creation of the first work, and each copy after that is as near to zero in cost as is possible. This makes the concepts of theft, loss, and value a completely different animal for each type of 'property'. I had not meant to imply that all copying of intellectual property is fair and morally legitimate, only that the two types cannot be compared to each other so casually. They are simply not the same thing.
I don't understand why the music companies insist that music sold/distributed legitimately online must have DRM. All their music and videos are already available online, illegally, with no DRM. Selling legal DRM-free copies of their music won't increase the availability of illegal copies, it will only allow their legal distribution to compete with the illegal ones.
If I decide to pay to download a song or movie, it is because I don't want to break the law or steal content; otherwise I would download it illegally, given the trivial ease with which one can download an illegal copy of a song or movie. Since I have already demonstrated my desire to abide by the law, why burden me with DRM? Can they not see the irony in making the only people with DRM protected content the ones who have already shown they don't want to pirate?
Do they actually believe that DRM has in any way effected the availability of illegal content on the internet? It remains trivially easy to obtain any content illegally that you can obtain legally. Sure I can't copy that song my friend bought from iTunes to my computer, but I don't have to copy that one - I can download it with no problem from somewhere else. So instead of limiting me, the person who hasn't bought the song, they are limiting the ability of the person who has bought the song to listen to it where they want. Brilliant.
I live in California, and our local newspaper prints every local government employee's salary every year in a special edition of the paper. They print everyone's - from the city manager and the mayor, down to school principals and secretaries. They have done this for as long as I can remember, and it always sparks controversy about pay rates and such, but I never remember anyone complaining that it shouldn't be public.
The article says nothing about the ambiguity of sponsored link vs. non-sponsored link. The problem is that if when someone typed in the name of a car dealership, and sponsored link appeared that seemed to be the dealerships site but was actually someone else's.
"These hyperlinks appeared in a shaded area titled "Sponsored Links" at the top of the results page, but appeared to be the dealerships' official sites, or at least affiliated with the dealerships" So the problem has nothing to do with sponsored vs. non-sponsored sites, but with a sponsored link misleading people to think it was the dealership when it wasn't.
If when you read the article, your thought is "OMG people can access all my files if I use P2P" then you probably are also the type of person who can't figure out how not to share your entire hard drive. It is a valid article in that sense... P2P is a security danger to people who conclude P2P is a security danger after reading the article and probably should stop using it.
Slashdot Mirror
Now I am sure this has been said before, because it seems pretty obvious to me... but the only data Scobel can even claim to own, in this strange metaphysical concept of owning we seem to be discussing, is the data he entered into the site - i.e. his own email, address, and the like. If anyone OWNS the data he was collecting, it would be those friends whose profiles he was harvesting from. Now, he could argue that he owns the 'data' that represents that he is friends with these people, but certainly not their address or telephone information. It seems if anything, Facebook is protecting the 'real' owners of the data - his friends - from having their data used in a way they might not have approved of. Now one could reasonably argue that Facebook owns all the data because it was entered into their website and stored on their servers, but it seems clear that Scobel could never make a reasonable claim that he is the one who owns it. If this were the case, and accepting a friendship request on Facebook somehow transfers ownership of my personal information to my new found friend, I would certainly be a lot more selective in accepting friends.
Saying that Google loses 1 Billion dollars a year is a little misleading. They didn't lose the money; they never were supposed to have it in the first place. From the article, it seems that it is more like the fraudulent clicks add up to 1 Billion dollars worth a year, but no one 'loses' that money. They don't pay it to the websites that generate the false clicks, nor do they charge advertisers for it (at least the ones they detect, which seems to be where they are calculating the 1 billion dollars from). It is silly to say that the amount of money generated from those clicks is money to lose; it is money they never earned in the first place. If there were no fraudulent clicks, that billion dollars wouldn't suddenly be in Google's pockets. It is more accurate to say that if they charged advertisers for illegitimate clicks, they could make a billion dollars more.
It wasn't stealing. The laptop is under the GPL, so you have to share it with everyone anyway.
My point wasn't to say that copying intellectual property never creates a loss. I was merely trying to point out the inherent difference between intellectual property and real, physical, property. Perhaps I should not have included the 'more power to ya' part, as I can understand how that could convey that my opinion is that only real, physical, property can be stolen.
For physical items such as a Ferrari, most of the value does not lie in intellectual property (the design).. much of the value is in the materials, manufacturing, and labor that go into producing the car. While there is certainly a diminishing cost with each subsequent Ferrari produced, there is still a very real and measurable cost-per-unit produced. For purely intellectual property, all of the cost is in the creation of the first work, and each copy after that is as near to zero in cost as is possible. This makes the concepts of theft, loss, and value a completely different animal for each type of 'property'. I had not meant to imply that all copying of intellectual property is fair and morally legitimate, only that the two types cannot be compared to each other so casually. They are simply not the same thing.
If you can steal a Ferrari in such a way that the original owner still has his Ferrari and suffers no loss from your theft, then more power to ya.
I don't understand why the music companies insist that music sold/distributed legitimately online must have DRM. All their music and videos are already available online, illegally, with no DRM. Selling legal DRM-free copies of their music won't increase the availability of illegal copies, it will only allow their legal distribution to compete with the illegal ones. If I decide to pay to download a song or movie, it is because I don't want to break the law or steal content; otherwise I would download it illegally, given the trivial ease with which one can download an illegal copy of a song or movie. Since I have already demonstrated my desire to abide by the law, why burden me with DRM? Can they not see the irony in making the only people with DRM protected content the ones who have already shown they don't want to pirate?
Do they actually believe that DRM has in any way effected the availability of illegal content on the internet? It remains trivially easy to obtain any content illegally that you can obtain legally. Sure I can't copy that song my friend bought from iTunes to my computer, but I don't have to copy that one - I can download it with no problem from somewhere else. So instead of limiting me, the person who hasn't bought the song, they are limiting the ability of the person who has bought the song to listen to it where they want. Brilliant.
I live in California, and our local newspaper prints every local government employee's salary every year in a special edition of the paper. They print everyone's - from the city manager and the mayor, down to school principals and secretaries. They have done this for as long as I can remember, and it always sparks controversy about pay rates and such, but I never remember anyone complaining that it shouldn't be public.
No more Oregon Trail!??! Nooooooooooooo!
Yeah! They are so wrong... I am a 24 year old male, thank you very much.
If when you read the article, your thought is "OMG people can access all my files if I use P2P" then you probably are also the type of person who can't figure out how not to share your entire hard drive. It is a valid article in that sense... P2P is a security danger to people who conclude P2P is a security danger after reading the article and probably should stop using it.
I don't understand what makes the blogosphere a sphere..... why not the blogosquare?