It would be foolhardy for Red Hat to try to compete for all Microsoft users today, Troan said. "This isn't for the secretary," he said, only for people doing basic tasks such as entering data in a Web site.
Music (or any other form of "intellectual property") is an act of discovery founded upon previous discoveries, the most important of which are owned called the "public domain"
What is your source for this?
Or you make a counter-offer. It's called "bargaining", and it's a cornerstone of modern business.
So what has stopped you from making one? If they respond that they aren't interested in your counteroffer, it's over. You have no right to their material, and they have no right to your money.
A song that I make, on the other hand, is composed of notes and words that, when all is said and done, don't BELONG to me.
The words and the notes are not your physical property. You cannot pick up a word and move it from one location to another, as you can with a chair - but then in and of themselves, words and notes have little value. A resultant work based on a unique combination of words and notes, however along with the artful inclusion of other intangible qualities like instrumentation, tempo, rhythm, etc., is quite a different matter. The resultant work has value. What I really don't understand is where and how you acquire a right to this value by virtue of the fact that it exists. In other words, explain why you should be provided with something of obvious value, for FREE.
They should make the music they produce freely available to anyone, but charge per hour for their performance, like any other honest profession.
There's something you have failed to consider. Using your example, the chair that took 10 hours of your time to build, can provide the value the chair offers to only ONE person at any given time. If the chair resides at my place of residence, my neighbor cannot enjoy it. Further, unless I physically move it (which entails a cost in that it requires effort), the benefit I receive from the chair is limited to that one location.
Contrast this with your favorite song- both you and your neighbor (as well as countless others) can concurrently enjoy the value it offers. It is not limited to one physical location, and it can easily be ported from one location to another.
If you insist on turning music into a consumable medium (which it isn't), then in order to make it fair, you'd have to eliminate every musical recording, and limit your enjoyment solely to the availability of live performances by your favorite artists. I hardly think you'd consider this as an option.
The user interface is decent, but a little clunky. Its got a lot of tiny mystery meat icons, scattered in unintuitive locations. They need to pay their graphic designers more or something.
A small clarification...that's probably exactly what they did, and if it is, they got what they paid for.
That's such a feeble and passive response, it's sad. So you keep your money. You think that's going to make the music industry change it's mind?
Give me a break. It's the most active, most effective option there is. A company needs revenue to survive, doesn't it? If the revenue either isn't there, or is significantly affected by the fact that people are not only demonstrably pissed off, but willing to back up their complaints with action, it has only two options...it can either change, or it can die. The real joke here is that people actually think that the music industry is going to change by itself, and all consumers have to do is sit on their lazy arses and complain while helping themselves to illegally copied material. This is the most convoluted thinking I could possibly imagine.
we don't have an infinite amount of time in the world - "doing without music" until some theoretical market victory is a pretty extreme step that most people - definitely not enough people to make an effect - are going to do.
Let's see..."We don't have time, so let's do the one thing that's going take the longest, create the most dependency, and will probably yield the least effective results." Makes a lot of sense. And perish the thought that someone might have to do with without the latest tunes for a while. Oh, the inhumanity.
This is exactly why the entertainment industry has become the biggest crack habit in the contemporary US. Consumers have all the control they need already, they just need to exercise it.
Now, I can see this one technology failing to take hold, but a general boycott against the recording industry just isn't going to work. The pressure needs to be more direct, louder, more visible, and more political.
Right. And what do you bet that despite all of M's efforts to gain an ever-increasing amount of control over the people that are dumb enough to buy its products, people will STILL shell out their money for one because they're too lazy and too spineless to take a stand? I can appreciate the hesitation of a business deciding to drop support for Billdoze, because there are some real costs involved. But the gaming audience could have stopped the X-Box dead in its tracks. It still can, because there are plenty of easily accessible alternatives.
Re:if the protection is reasonable, where's the pr
on
DRM: How To Boil A Frog
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· Score: 3, Insightful
No, it's not. Many people had a hand in getting you where you are today.
You couldn't be more wrong. The whole of commerce is comprised of commercial entities and the resources they consume (including their own skilled employees, financing, outside expertise, existing technology, research & development, etc.). Bottom line - whatever arrangement exists between an artist and any peripheral resources has nothing to do with the artist's relationship to you, as a consumer. An artist offering a finished work for purchase is no different than any other business transaction. You either accept the terms under which the artist's product is being offered, or you look for something more agreeable.
Secondly, a musical work is not an idea, it's an expression of an idea, and is therefore tangible in that it can be recorded onto a physical medium. It is this expression that is protected by copyright.
Finally, show me ONE THING having a method of implementation hasn't somehow been influenced by something before it. The evolution of anything, be it technology, art, or whatever, is really little more than the iterative refinement of methods and ideas that already exist.
I do agree that "do X with a computer", where X has been around forever does not seem very innovative. On the other hand, if it was not innovative, why was it not done earlier?
Is it that it wasn't done earlier, or is it that the people who have done it had better things to do with their time than turn their sense of self-importance into an abuse of the patent system?
Simple...it's solution looking for a problem. As more and more information is revealed about just how MUCH the CIA (and perhaps even the president) dropped the ball with respect to 9/11, none of these so-called security measures will really matter. What will matter is that you have a competent government that can get the job done without turning the entire country into a police state. It wasn't the absence of a presumption of guilt that allowed 9/11 to happen - it was the failure of a security agency to carry out its duty in a competent manner. Much better results can be achieved by fixing the real problem, rather than covering it up with the charade we see before us.
What's Microsoft going to do if both Intel and AMD tell Billy-boy to take his Palladium and shove it up his.NET? Seriously- what other chip manufacturers are there to fill in the gap? Here's a clue: None. So, either you have two absolutely spineless companies whose ONLY concern is avoiding Billy's wrath, or two companies with a bit of virtue that can not only recognize true nastiness when they see it, but work in a common direction to put it to rest. The fact that neither of them are willing to step up to the plate is bad news.
Now the battle is in the court of consumer acceptance. As [insert favorite deity here] is my witness, I will NOT buy ANYTHING that has anything to do with Palladium. Let's see how many others have the same resolve. Seeing what a crack habit the entertainment industry has become, though, I think I already know.
I'll admit that HOAs and NAs can seem like a pain in the ass, but I've seen both sides - that is, what a good (probably not well-liked) association can do, and one that is totally incompetent. It has been two years, we're still recovering from the neglect by the incompetent board, and we still have a ways to go. We have two courtyards, at least one of them (thanks to one homeowner who proclaims a special gift at xeriscaping) looks much more like a junkyard. We have two enclosures for our dumpsters, both of which recently had their gates rebuilt so that they cover the entire opening (they used to go up only halfway), except that they look as though they were put together by jr. high school shop class. We had a maintenance project that was pitched to us at one price, and three months later (after it's done, mind you), we're told that it will cost us three times the initial bid. The list goes on...and I will tell you that NONE of this would have been allowed to happen under the HOA board that we had three years ago. It was strict, but it knew what it was doing.
I personally feel that the laws governing planned development associations need an overhaul, but at least in my case, it was one of those things where you don't realize the overall benefit until it no longer exists.
This in NO WAY implies that I think the government ought to be assuming the role of 'neighborhood association' with respect to the internet.
I know why a company might want to prevent an employee from seeking alternative gainful employment in their chosen field, but we're talking about a job here, not indentured servitude. The company benefits from the employee's skill and expertise, and while said employee may easily gain experience as they carry out their employment, the employer benefits from this, so in the end, it's a wash.
As for employment contracts, there's such a thing as an unconscionable contract- that is, a contract so one-sided that it grants the other party a significantly unfair advantage. Signed or not, I believe that these can be thrown out if such a condition is deemed to exist. (I'm not an attorney, though, so there may be some detail(s) I've overlooked.)
It's good that this precedent now exists. In a free market, an employee should have every right to pursue whatever (legal) opportunity will help advance his/her career.
Bon Jovi doesn't appreciate the fact that people would steal his music, so he's pandering to those who would consider it. This is why I think that even if the business model changed, pirated music would be every bit as much a problem as it is today. The RIAA is used as a scapegoat to justify theft, even if it's against the wishes of an artist that so many 'fans' claim to support.
But if you are a new band, with (what until lately has been) the ultimate carrot of commerical success dangled in front of you, it's difficult to not rationalize "I can make this work, after all, I just wanna get my soul, my music to my fans."
I would argue that 'commercial success' and getting 'music to my fans' are hardly co-dependent. In many cases, there's a lot more to it than this angelic desire to avoid depriving the unwashed masses of their music. The 'commercial success' is probably the only way they can afford and/or gain access to the indulgence that goes along with the lifestyle.
I've been hinting at something like every time this topic has come up. The artists who rely on the RIAA are every bit as much a part of the problem as those who continue to buy the media produced by the RIAA. It is a systemic problem, and unless the RIAA is forced to change (not by law, but by necessity), it won't happen. And if it does, there will be a few bumps in the road along the way.
BTW...when I say "by necessity" I mean this: The artists will not sign with them, and the consumers will not buy its products, UNTIL it changes its business practices. I do NOT mean that it's OK for self-proclaimed freedom fighters to continue stealing copyrighted material.
I looked at my settings, and was amused to find that I had disabled javascript's ability to create/mess with cookies. I'm happy the Mozilla team partioned the javascript functionality like this, because (it appears anyway) that until a bug fix is available, you only have to disable this one aspect of javascript.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I was very much hoping that someone in the know would set me straight if my perception was skewed. I guess I wouldn't call this much of a documentary then, but more a 'recollection' or 'selective account' of what happened in the life of one company. Boy...I feel like I was misled.:_(
I mentioned my aging PowerComputing machine, and the eventual need to replace it. One consideration is whether or not I will buying one of these BRAND NEW systems.
I wonder if the advertising industry has thought through this whole targeted advertising thing. Kids and their influence make up a HUGE market, but what if, say, a parent set up their preferences such that it did not include any kid-centric advertising - especially during the times when kids are most likely to be watching?
What if someone who is interested more in ensuring their privacy, sets up a profile that includes most of what he/she is never likely to buy? Sure, they'll have to suffer through the commercials, but that happens now anyway. The upshot is that they'll be protecting their privacy while maintaining the status quo, but still gaining the benefit offered by a set top box.
Hmmmm...a saying comes to mind..."Be careful what you ask for...you just may get it."
Slashdot Mirror
It would be foolhardy for Red Hat to try to compete for all Microsoft users today, Troan said. "This isn't for the secretary," he said, only for people doing basic tasks such as entering data in a Web site.
No shortage of arrogance here...
I'd rather invest my money in a company with fiscal assets than one with moral and ethical ones.
I doubt you'd get any of the former Enron employees to agree with you - or any of the investors, for that matter.
Music (or any other form of "intellectual property") is an act of discovery founded upon previous discoveries, the most important of which are owned called the "public domain"
What is your source for this?
Or you make a counter-offer. It's called "bargaining", and it's a cornerstone of modern business.
So what has stopped you from making one? If they respond that they aren't interested in your counteroffer, it's over. You have no right to their material, and they have no right to your money.
"Linux is not like Novell, it isn't going to run out of money--it started off bankrupt, in a way.""
Did he mean fiscally bankrupt? As opposed to, um, someone else who is ethically and morally bankrupt?
A song that I make, on the other hand, is composed of notes and words that, when all is said and done, don't BELONG to me.
The words and the notes are not your physical property. You cannot pick up a word and move it from one location to another, as you can with a chair - but then in and of themselves, words and notes have little value. A resultant work based on a unique combination of words and notes, however along with the artful inclusion of other intangible qualities like instrumentation, tempo, rhythm, etc., is quite a different matter. The resultant work has value. What I really don't understand is where and how you acquire a right to this value by virtue of the fact that it exists. In other words, explain why you should be provided with something of obvious value, for FREE.
They should make the music they produce freely available to anyone, but charge per hour for their performance, like any other honest profession.
There's something you have failed to consider. Using your example, the chair that took 10 hours of your time to build, can provide the value the chair offers to only ONE person at any given time. If the chair resides at my place of residence, my neighbor cannot enjoy it. Further, unless I physically move it (which entails a cost in that it requires effort), the benefit I receive from the chair is limited to that one location.
Contrast this with your favorite song- both you and your neighbor (as well as countless others) can concurrently enjoy the value it offers. It is not limited to one physical location, and it can easily be ported from one location to another.
If you insist on turning music into a consumable medium (which it isn't), then in order to make it fair, you'd have to eliminate every musical recording, and limit your enjoyment solely to the availability of live performances by your favorite artists. I hardly think you'd consider this as an option.
The user interface is decent, but a little clunky. Its got a lot of tiny mystery meat icons, scattered in unintuitive locations. They need to pay their graphic designers more or something.
A small clarification...that's probably exactly what they did, and if it is, they got what they paid for.
If Linux was really 10 steps ahead of Microsoft, markets would recognize that fact much more than they have.
On the other hand, if Linux had 5,000 paid "consultants" flanked by a huge sales force, there's every chance that the market would recognize it.
That's such a feeble and passive response, it's sad. So you keep your money. You think that's going to make the music industry change it's mind?
Give me a break. It's the most active, most effective option there is. A company needs revenue to survive, doesn't it? If the revenue either isn't there, or is significantly affected by the fact that people are not only demonstrably pissed off, but willing to back up their complaints with action, it has only two options...it can either change, or it can die. The real joke here is that people actually think that the music industry is going to change by itself, and all consumers have to do is sit on their lazy arses and complain while helping themselves to illegally copied material. This is the most convoluted thinking I could possibly imagine.
we don't have an infinite amount of time in the world - "doing without music" until some theoretical market victory is a pretty extreme step that most people - definitely not enough people to make an effect - are going to do.
Let's see..."We don't have time, so let's do the one thing that's going take the longest, create the most dependency, and will probably yield the least effective results." Makes a lot of sense. And perish the thought that someone might have to do with without the latest tunes for a while. Oh, the inhumanity.
This is exactly why the entertainment industry has become the biggest crack habit in the contemporary US. Consumers have all the control they need already, they just need to exercise it.
Now, I can see this one technology failing to take hold, but a general boycott against the recording industry just isn't going to work. The pressure needs to be more direct, louder, more visible, and more political.
Right. Put the control in someone ELSE'S hands.
Right. And what do you bet that despite all of M's efforts to gain an ever-increasing amount of control over the people that are dumb enough to buy its products, people will STILL shell out their money for one because they're too lazy and too spineless to take a stand? I can appreciate the hesitation of a business deciding to drop support for Billdoze, because there are some real costs involved. But the gaming audience could have stopped the X-Box dead in its tracks. It still can, because there are plenty of easily accessible alternatives.
No, it's not. Many people had a hand in getting you where you are today.
You couldn't be more wrong. The whole of commerce is comprised of commercial entities and the resources they consume (including their own skilled employees, financing, outside expertise, existing technology, research & development, etc.). Bottom line - whatever arrangement exists between an artist and any peripheral resources has nothing to do with the artist's relationship to you, as a consumer. An artist offering a finished work for purchase is no different than any other business transaction. You either accept the terms under which the artist's product is being offered, or you look for something more agreeable.
Secondly, a musical work is not an idea, it's an expression of an idea, and is therefore tangible in that it can be recorded onto a physical medium. It is this expression that is protected by copyright.
Finally, show me ONE THING having a method of implementation hasn't somehow been influenced by something before it. The evolution of anything, be it technology, art, or whatever, is really little more than the iterative refinement of methods and ideas that already exist.
Instead of reading how fucked were going to be, it would be nice if we concentrated on what current efforts are being made to fight for our rights.
There's no fight...just keep your money- that alone is more powerful than any law, and best of all, there aren't any loopholes.
I do agree that "do X with a computer", where X has been around forever does not seem very innovative. On the other hand, if it was not innovative, why was it not done earlier?
Is it that it wasn't done earlier, or is it that the people who have done it had better things to do with their time than turn their sense of self-importance into an abuse of the patent system?
Simple...it's solution looking for a problem. As more and more information is revealed about just how MUCH the CIA (and perhaps even the president) dropped the ball with respect to 9/11, none of these so-called security measures will really matter. What will matter is that you have a competent government that can get the job done without turning the entire country into a police state. It wasn't the absence of a presumption of guilt that allowed 9/11 to happen - it was the failure of a security agency to carry out its duty in a competent manner. Much better results can be achieved by fixing the real problem, rather than covering it up with the charade we see before us.
What's Microsoft going to do if both Intel and AMD tell Billy-boy to take his Palladium and shove it up his .NET? Seriously- what other chip manufacturers are there to fill in the gap? Here's a clue: None. So, either you have two absolutely spineless companies whose ONLY concern is avoiding Billy's wrath, or two companies with a bit of virtue that can not only recognize true nastiness when they see it, but work in a common direction to put it to rest. The fact that neither of them are willing to step up to the plate is bad news.
Now the battle is in the court of consumer acceptance. As [insert favorite deity here] is my witness, I will NOT buy ANYTHING that has anything to do with Palladium. Let's see how many others have the same resolve. Seeing what a crack habit the entertainment industry has become, though, I think I already know.
I'll admit that HOAs and NAs can seem like a pain in the ass, but I've seen both sides - that is, what a good (probably not well-liked) association can do, and one that is totally incompetent. It has been two years, we're still recovering from the neglect by the incompetent board, and we still have a ways to go. We have two courtyards, at least one of them (thanks to one homeowner who proclaims a special gift at xeriscaping) looks much more like a junkyard. We have two enclosures for our dumpsters, both of which recently had their gates rebuilt so that they cover the entire opening (they used to go up only halfway), except that they look as though they were put together by jr. high school shop class. We had a maintenance project that was pitched to us at one price, and three months later (after it's done, mind you), we're told that it will cost us three times the initial bid. The list goes on...and I will tell you that NONE of this would have been allowed to happen under the HOA board that we had three years ago. It was strict, but it knew what it was doing.
I personally feel that the laws governing planned development associations need an overhaul, but at least in my case, it was one of those things where you don't realize the overall benefit until it no longer exists.
This in NO WAY implies that I think the government ought to be assuming the role of 'neighborhood association' with respect to the internet.
I know why a company might want to prevent an employee from seeking alternative gainful employment in their chosen field, but we're talking about a job here, not indentured servitude. The company benefits from the employee's skill and expertise, and while said employee may easily gain experience as they carry out their employment, the employer benefits from this, so in the end, it's a wash.
As for employment contracts, there's such a thing as an unconscionable contract- that is, a contract so one-sided that it grants the other party a significantly unfair advantage. Signed or not, I believe that these can be thrown out if such a condition is deemed to exist. (I'm not an attorney, though, so there may be some detail(s) I've overlooked.)
It's good that this precedent now exists. In a free market, an employee should have every right to pursue whatever (legal) opportunity will help advance his/her career.
Bon Jovi doesn't appreciate the fact that people would steal his music, so he's pandering to those who would consider it. This is why I think that even if the business model changed, pirated music would be every bit as much a problem as it is today. The RIAA is used as a scapegoat to justify theft, even if it's against the wishes of an artist that so many 'fans' claim to support.
But if you are a new band, with (what until lately has been) the ultimate carrot of commerical success dangled in front of you, it's difficult to not rationalize "I can make this work, after all, I just wanna get my soul, my music to my fans."
I would argue that 'commercial success' and getting 'music to my fans' are hardly co-dependent. In many cases, there's a lot more to it than this angelic desire to avoid depriving the unwashed masses of their music. The 'commercial success' is probably the only way they can afford and/or gain access to the indulgence that goes along with the lifestyle.
I've been hinting at something like every time this topic has come up. The artists who rely on the RIAA are every bit as much a part of the problem as those who continue to buy the media produced by the RIAA. It is a systemic problem, and unless the RIAA is forced to change (not by law, but by necessity), it won't happen. And if it does, there will be a few bumps in the road along the way.
BTW...when I say "by necessity" I mean this: The artists will not sign with them, and the consumers will not buy its products, UNTIL it changes its business practices. I do NOT mean that it's OK for self-proclaimed freedom fighters to continue stealing copyrighted material.
I looked at my settings, and was amused to find that I had disabled javascript's ability to create/mess with cookies. I'm happy the Mozilla team partioned the javascript functionality like this, because (it appears anyway) that until a bug fix is available, you only have to disable this one aspect of javascript.
Good.
that would force you to buy the crap that they churn out, you have nothing to worry about.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I was very much hoping that someone in the know would set me straight if my perception was skewed. I guess I wouldn't call this much of a documentary then, but more a 'recollection' or 'selective account' of what happened in the life of one company. Boy...I feel like I was misled.
I mentioned my aging PowerComputing machine, and the eventual need to replace it. One consideration is whether or not I will buying one of these BRAND NEW systems.
I wonder if the advertising industry has thought through this whole targeted advertising thing. Kids and their influence make up a HUGE market, but what if, say, a parent set up their preferences such that it did not include any kid-centric advertising - especially during the times when kids are most likely to be watching?
What if someone who is interested more in ensuring their privacy, sets up a profile that includes most of what he/she is never likely to buy? Sure, they'll have to suffer through the commercials, but that happens now anyway. The upshot is that they'll be protecting their privacy while maintaining the status quo, but still gaining the benefit offered by a set top box.
Hmmmm...a saying comes to mind..."Be careful what you ask for...you just may get it."