Recall that RIAA didn't appear in 2 years, nor did it generate its power over that time. It took decades for that power and exploitation system to arise.
Here are [bearshare.com] some that are getting noticed, through p2p.
Generally, they do not have to pay a massive price (through lost profits, etc) for recognition and distribution of their music. It seems to be working QUITE well for them, as well!
Check them out here! [bearshare.com]
You don't need to be size of RIAA's collecive group of labels to demonstrate P2P's potential viability. You just need to demonstrate that you're a significant machine for promotion of artists.
That said, what does your example demonstrate? Ok, so you have some artists on your webpage, but that's not P2P promotion or even distribution. That's putting ads on a page that is frequented occassionally by a bunch of people--it can't scale. How much have these artists grossed? How many CDs have they sold? How many artists can make these claims? Have any of them ever sold out a large venue? Can they really point to P2P being the engine for their (limited) success? Why should RIAA be afraid? Perhaps I'm just skeptical about the motivations of Bearshare, but it looks to me like they're putting some lesser known artists up to give them the appearance of legitmacy--that they provide some unique benefit. The real test is in P2P to serve as a replacement for RIAA. Even if this sort of P2P does provide some significant benefit for said artists (which I doubt) it does not necessarily offer an alternative for major artists. For instance, it is quite possible that this form of P2P may boost CD sales for lesser known bands (due to its alleged ability to promote), but substantially damage better known artists (due to its ability to provide easy access to popular pirated material).
I respect you for calling copyright violation what it is, instead of calling it stealing.
I also think the music industry is doing many things wrong, but warning people who are violating copyright is not one of them. Now on the other hand, if they are sending warnings to everyone who is sharing files, even people who are only sharing files for which they hold the copyright, then I would say there is something wrong with that. To me that is like Ebay refusing to sell anything on CD-R because they presume it is illicit. But warning/threatening people who are actually breaking the law seems fair to me.
Well I do regard it as a form of theft, but it's a semantic argument that was not particularly relevant to that discussion. That sort of copyright violation is ultimately an immoral act, whether the wrong is derived from violation of so-called natural law (e.g., theft of physical property) or from secondary laws that are designed to secure the greater interests of society and to protect the livelyhood of the artist. Besides the rightness of intellectual property law itself, as a concept, there is an explicit and implicit contract between the artist and the consumer/society that the artist shall maintain copyright control over his work as a condition for creating it so that he might profit from it if serves a good purpose. That is to say that the existence of copyright law is not merely incidental; the copyright is a necessary condition or element in the original creation of great many goods today (whether you think they should continue to exist in the future is almost besides the point--that was the understanding). As such, I would compare this sort of "theft" to violation of a contract, itself a form of theft. If you agree to pay me 200 dollars to furnish you with, say, legal advice, then you are morally obligated to pay to me if you enjoy the benefits of my advice. Whether or not your copying of my idea constitutes a loss for me in and of itself is not a necessary condition to establish harm. The harm is demonstrated because you're enjoying my work in its entirity without giving consideration; a violence not just against society, but against me as the creator of that intellectual property.
It is wrong to freely share CDs digitally, knowing that numerous people can and will download them, because you're not merely transferring ownership, you're necessarily creating a copy, which does correlate strongly with injury of artists and record companies. Perhaps if the P2P servent would remove all copies of said music from the computer upon the client's successful download, then we might be talking about this a little differently. Likewise, I would regard selling a CD-R duplicate of a copyrighted CD or mix of multiple CDs as an act of theft, unless the source CD was destroyed.
RIAA: "It appears that you are offering copyrighted music to others from your computer....When you break the law, you risk legal penalties. There is a simple way to avoid that risk: DON'T STEAL MUSIC either by offering it to others to copy or downloading it on a 'file-sharing' system like this. When you offer music on these systems, you are not anonymous and you can easily be identified."
Me: "Man the desperate things you try... How does it feel to be obsolete? Artists don't need you anymore. Consumers don't need you anymore. I hear your industry fading. Better brush up on your customer service skills, your gonna need them in your new job at Mcdonalds. If they hire form scum sucking executive types. ah... I hear the clock... tick tick tick tick"
What exactly is the industry doing wrong here? They're providing violators of their copyright ample opportunity to correct the situation before they attempt to address the matter legally. While this may be the easy way out for the industry, it is also beneficial to the user that just might arguably be unaware that he had copyrighted material or that he can be held to account for it.
What part of P2P makes the industry obsolete exactly? Just because P2P makes possible blatant violation of copyright that was previously much harder does not make the industry any less necessary. What you are trying to imply is sort of like arguing that because I can steal from, say, Nordstrom's that clothing retailers are no longer necessary. Even if we completely ignore the (misleading) distinction between these two forms of theft, you're taking still does not answer the tough questions, namely, what is going to secure the continued production by the originators (read: artists or clothing makers) or what is going to replace the marketing and publicity function that both you and the artist ultimately depend on.
I have no problem if you wish to completely cut RIAA out of the loop. However, the fact of the matter is that you're not. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too--you want to enjoy the services without paying for them. You're taking music for which RIAA owns the copyright, which they own because they perform a multitude of functions and which is the reason why you're downloading the music in the first place. If you want to do P2P and claim that neither you nor the artist "need" RIAA, then do it without misappropriating copyrighted material.
You guys assert that P2P can somehow replace the current function of RIAA. Maybe, but probably not in the form that it exists today on Kazaa and numerous other networks, and you certainly have not demonstrated it. P2P has been around for a couple years now and yet you'd be hard pressed to point to a single major artist that can really credit their success to these services. Record sales may be slumping today, but up and coming artists are still signing with major record labels by and large, despite the existance of the P2P that you claim makes the industry irrelevant. The proof is in the pudding, or should I say...NOT?
My point was that this is not a free market, that we do not have informed consumers. It's harder to misinform with open source, but not impossible -- nor is it impossible to have informed customers and closed. But there is a definite attempt in the use of EULAs, as well as use of the DMCA and trademark laws, to keep consumers uninformed -- to keep people from communicating with each other about the flaws in a product. That's not a free market.
However, it is still questionable whether closed source -- as it is typically sold -- really leads to informed consumers, even without restrictions Software is not particularly transparent, and its flaws may not be readily apparent. Buyer Beware is not the free market.
The argument was over whether or not consumers should be allowed to decide whether or not they wish to use open source for themselves though (because the poster that I was replying to was giving open source a false staff with which to bash closed source).
That not withstanding, I think I should clear a few things up:
A) The situation with closed source software is really not that different than many other large sectors of the free market. The free market is not premised on 100% transparency or even close to it. It generally does not need it to effectively keep companies in check. Do you really know what your doctor is doing with his equipment before you go in and see him? Do you really know he learned in medical school or what he did in residency? Do you really know how your car was engineered or tolerances of every unit in the car? Do you really know how your building was engineered?... and so on. No, the fact is that in most cases you just don't know and nor can you. What keeps these product and service providers in check in the vast majority of cases is their reputation. In fact, reputation is the primary organizing force in the market, not direct transparency. When is the last time you heard of a consumer buying, say, a refrigerator because of its specific compressor? How many customers will even look this up? What customers look at is WHO makes it and just perhaps fundamental aspects of its engineering (e.g., motor-type, horse power, etc--but even then more as features than as a quality check). You can only burn customers so many times before you pay severely in the market. Yes, individual customers can and even will get burned in some cases by less reputable firms, but over time, it doesn't pay for the companies to do this. So yes, it generally is a free market.
B) You should distinguish between standard closed source software companies and companies that zealously attempt to suppress organized/official review of their software with the DCMA and other tools. I assert that very few software companies really behave like this; that is to say that if a PC magazine or website wishes to give poor reviews to their applications, then it can and will happen. What's more, even those few companies that do attempt to suppress review, ultimately fail to succeed in the market because they cannot effectively stop consumers from bad mouthing their product, regardless of the EULAs they may sign. That is to say that they ultimately pay. Yeah, I recognize that they might get away with a product that is 15% less quick than the prior version, but they're not going to get away with a product that consistently corrupts the customer's data, for instance--consumers will find out.
C) To the extent that companies do abuse the DCMA, EULAs, and similar legal tools, you can attack THOSE specifically and NOT closed source itself. It is a mistake to confuse these legal mechanisms and certain monopoly powers, not only because they're a seperate problem, but because open source truly does not assure that these cannot occur.
D) Buyer beware has always been the fundamental driving force behind the free market. Yes, there are markets where outside forces play a large role (e.g., the US financial markets), but these
If i were buying a used car, I would insist on being able to choose a mechanic to evaluate the car's condition. Having done that, I WOULD release the seller for any liability for the typical mechnical problems associated with buying a used car (e.g., bad brakes, emission controls tampered with, etc.). Works for cars, should work for software. Can't guarentee the car will work perfectly, but the inspection reduces the risk by enough that I feel comfortable completing the transaction. Similarly, a design/code inspection won't guarentee the software is perfect, just that it is good enough to serve its intended purpose.
That's a false analogy though. You may absolve the seller of liability after give the car a quick checkover, but the seller is NOT the manufacturer of the car and as such they cannot be held accountable for defects they could not have known about or prevented. What you're checking, of course, is that the car is free of damage from accidents, poor maintance and so on--basically that it's what that particular make of car should be at X miles. The checkover may make you confident that it's, say, a 1972 Ford Pinto in good condition without any major mechanical problems, but it's not going to tell you about the design flaw in the fuel tank and I'd bet dollars to donuts that you wouldn't let Ford off the hook if you suffered 3rd degree burns as a result.
In short, you're comparing apples and oranges. In your case you're looking for wear and tear or accident related damages--that's relatively easy for an experienced mechanic to find--it's diagnostics, not engineering. In the case of software there is no such quick test that approximates this, because you're looking at its very form. If your mechanic is capable enough to replace all that safety engineering and QA put in place by car manufacturers with a 10 minute lookover, then I'm sure you can find a car manufacturer somewhere who would be sell you a car on the cheap without all that hassle.
The free market only works when all parties are informed...Anyway, I guess my point is that this isn't a free market, and that the free market cannot be achieved with laissez faire policies.
Nonsense. All parties are informed as to whether or not the software is open source. Consumers are perfectly capable of deciding their path for themselves; the market does not need to be artifically structured against closed source companies (as the prior poster suggested). That is to say that they can and should be capable of choosing to be personally "ignorant" with closed source, if it pleases them, without the extortion that the poster suggests. If open source proves itself to be a superior option, then it will eventually prevail.
You stated that opening the source code was "unnecessary and even risky" to the notion of auditing it. There is no such relationship.
Says who? I think that opening the source code is unnecessary because it adds very little in the way of assurances and because a good 3rd party can almost always do a better job. Opening the source code CAN increase the risk because it ALWAYS increases the exposure of the software to hackers and does not always have a substantial amount of peer review to counter-act that increased threat (I would submit that this is the case with most open source software). You can reiterate your open source articles of faith till you turn blue in the face, but I simply disagree.
It is also immaterial what the source of a change is - you appear to be agreeing with me insofar as what matters is simply whether the code is that which was certified or not. Any change will invalidate this guarantee.
What is your point? No party can give you 100% security--whether you're talking about the million "eyes" of open source or the skilled eyes of a good 3rd party auditor--but that's not the same thing. Those parties may still extend _their_ gaurantees, but that doesn't mean you have security. The point that I'm making is that you're always going to have risk. Yes, there is some remote possiblity that the company may modify the software on the QT, but if the auditors validate version 1.1 (with known features A-Z), then there's little incentive to sneak changes (you can't market it, it can't be too significant,..and changes so small in scope are unlikely to be critical) in on the QT and many reasons not to (increased liability, the possiblity of getting caught by the auditors, reduced stability/market damage, etc). To make a long story short, you're still much better off with that than you are the "oh well open source will fix it" attitude.
Regarding whether source or binaries are signed, you are touching on the notion of a Trusted Computing Base, itself a set of certified components, which might encompass an OS and compiler. If only the OS is in the TCB, then the certifier would be obliged to ship binaries, whereas if the compiler is included he can ship source.
Again, what is your point? Baring some paranoid's wet dream, it's unlikely that the binaries can be modified in such a way that they could not be detected by an astute user. Why would a respectable company take such risks to make such modifications? Get real please.
I think you're conflating the idea of visibility and control. There's no reason that a 3rd party can't sign a distribution - this happens already. Of course, if a recipient changes the code then the certificate no longer applies.
What am I conflating? How? Firstly, this sort of "change" suggests malicious behavior, which is quite different than bugs as a result of poor design/coding/QA. If that 3rd party audits the software with feature A-Z (e.g., version 1.1), then why would the developer have reason to substantially change it (short of some malicious intent)? Secondly, the 3rd party could always sign the resulting binaries if the users are really that concerned.
IMO if a company is unwilling to supply you with the source code (under whatever license) to let you see and fix problems that exist they should have no possible exemption from litigation, no matter what POS EULA they persuade you to sign.
They are asking you to place your trust in them that their code is good enough to bet your business on. If their software is not all it's cracked up to be and you had no chance to check their claims (but instead had to take their word for it) then they clearly are responsible for breaking their word.
Unless they told you that it was a buggy product that you couldn't rely on in the first place... now that would make for amusing adverts.
(Can you imagine Windows boxes with cigarette-health-warning style labels on them saying "The Computer-General warns that this product may be bad for your business.")
What nonsense. This is a problem best left to free markets. If you truly believe open source is that important, that you or someone else might _effectively_ audit the source for you, then you can always vote with your feet by going to the open source competition or developing it yourself. If it's that important to consumers, then it WILL become a driving force in the market. The fact of the matter though is that it is NOT in the majority of cases. Please note that not ALL software is free from liability (for instance, medical device software, guidance systems, etc), but that the majority of non-critical off-the-shelf software that you buy is. One of the problems with a system such as yours is that it reduces the flexibility of the market. Yeah, it's possible that someone might want to write medical device software application on Windows 95--but why force MS to write to such a level when 99% of the users do not need or want this (the costs associated with it...the lack of features, etc) In other words, even that 1% is better off with a different product, one that is engineered from the ground up to be safe.
Furthermore, the idea that the opening of the source is sufficient for the consumer to audit the code or absolve the developers of liability is laughable. Properly auditing software is very time consuming, complicated, and expensive. It is beyond the means of any individual consumer to audit all their software whether their name is Joe Schmoe or Lockheed Martin. I would argue that the mere opening of sizable application's code is like just letting the consumer open the hood up to their car (the status quo, even if you throw in the service manuals). Would you release automakers of liability just because they give you what they're giving now (opening the hood, manual, etc)? No. The reason is that, like software, most consumers cannot be expected to see the millions of little details that can lead to failure. They can't be expected to know the specifications that a particular joint was engineered to, even if they can see it, measure it, and even evaluate the material. Auditing CAN be done better by trusted 3rd parties--which makes opening the source code unnecessary and even risky in some cases.
I dont know that I could imagine a worse metaphor. Anyone that has ever studied the tendencies of human beings to be insanely ethnocentric and myopic should appreciate what I mean. To make an analogy that the simplistic beauty of DNA is anything like "spaghetti code" is hilarious. You're comparing a bad algorithm method with an incredibly complex (yet very beautiful in its simplisitic design) and far more brilliant system. Most programmers cant write code to do one simple task without having some sort of bug or malady arise, whereas DNA is able to manipulate individual molecules and chemical reactions in order to create a system magnitudes above anything the most brilliant human could think to design. Its like comparing apples to books if you ask me.
All of this may be true, but I think you're missing the point. The comment is not to slight its design, but to point out that its interface is such that it lacks the abstraction that would allow us humans to manipulate it directly, without experimenting a lot and seeing if we like the results. I highly doubt that we'll ever be able to know how to tweak bit X to get result Y and nothing else--it just doesn't work that way.
WTF did GCC change? Umm, ok, so it's a free compiler and some code isn't compatible, but it adds _nothing_ technically and is in many ways an inferior compiler. Whatever significance GCC has, has nothing to do with the code and everything to do with the license it was filed under. If you're going to take the non-technical argument, then I can sort of see where you're coming from, but at the same time you must have tunnel vision, because you're missing the much more significant and popular applications on the world as a whole. How about the word processor? Whomever you wish to credit with it, regardless of its respective technical innovations, it has had a much more profound impact on people across the world than GCC has had on the very small group of people that even know what it is.
You're welcome, but what was part of my comment ad hominem exactly? That I said that you were being willfully ignorant? It was a critical element in our discussion, not a guise to prop up my argument. Whatever your motives, you didn't take the trouble to research what should be readily apparent to you. You shouldn't need a statistic to tell you when numbers are so wildly at odds with each other; you should just have a feel for it, especially if you're going to take the trouble to comment on it. What's more, I believe that you should have at least taken the time to do the basic level of research. It took me roughly 5 minutes to find that with google. I *knew* it to be roughly true, of course, but I had to since *you* demanded that *I* deliver *you* undeniable evidence of a fact that you could have *easily* verified for yourself. That is practically the definition of willful ignorance. What else do you call this?
Perhaps I may have spared you my comment, but this is slashdot afterall;)
the VAST MAJORITY of guns "uses" are illegal and lethal. The police only actually use their guns rarely. Most guns are used (at least in the US for example's sake) illegaly in the commission of crimes
It's flat wrong and you don't have to be an expert to come to that conclusion. Whether you count guns use by: sale of guns, sale of ammo, number of owners, active hunters, club membership, or what have you--the count still far exceeds gun fatalities. The situation is totally unlike that with said P2P file sharing apps so it was a fallacious argument. If you do so much as leave your extended urban area, then you'll see plenty enough to make this readily apparent. Witness the millions of dollars of hunting equipment, witness hunting on TV channels, witness the millions spent on hunting rifles, witness hunting clubs... You're being wilfully ignorant. You want some quick references, here's one: http://federalaid.fws.gov/surveys/surveys.html
More than 6% of the country age 16 and older hunted last year. They spent an average of 18 days hunting. Quick math: 13,000,000 (people) * 18 days * 1 (shots...low) = That's a bare minimum of about 234 million shots. Last year, you can be pretty sure that less than 20k people were murdered with guns. (look it up, it's actually less, but i'm being generous). Let's assume that it took an average of 10 (probably very high) shots to kill, that's roughly 200k bullets used to murder. Hmm 200k > 245m? Not even close.
I don't believe this requires proof as it is common knowledge that there are millions of gun owners in the US and that there are "only" so many thousands of gun related deaths in the US. You do the math. If you doubt it, then please do the basic level of research and try to deny me.
What do you deny?? Do you deny that there are millions gun owners in the US? Do you deny that there are millions of active hunters? Do you deny that the number of gun related homicides in the US per year is less than 20k? If you can't or won't deny either, then I have nothing to prove. Whether or not the honest enjoyment that a couple million US citizens derive from their guns is worth the roughly 10k gun fatalities (and associated costs) a year is a VERY different argument (and one that I come out against--against guns)
As for your statistic, it is meaningless in the context of our argument, because it does not show causation, it merely points to a correlation. For instance, it is very likely that those that are likely to own guns are ALREADY at higher risk because they more likely to live in the ghetto, be white trash, and so on. Even you believe that it shows causation, that does nothing to demonstrate that most guns are used for killing people. It would be sort of like arguing that families that own cars are, 10x more likely to die in car accidents, therefore most cars kill people.
No actually, we will all start using the argument about guns.
s/knife/gun/g in your argument above and you will see that the VAST MAJORITY of guns "uses" are illegal and lethal. The police only actually use their guns rarely. Most guns are used (at least in the US for example's sake) illegaly in the commission of crimes. And they don't just result in intellectual property or even tangible property damages. They result in death. Yet they are not only legal, they are constitutionally protected. This is because the non-infringing use (state militias, bearing arms etc. see 2nd Amendment) is presumable important enough. There are several thousand gun deaths in the US (homicide and suicide) every year. The "lawful" use of guns represents a tiny fraction. So to go back to your argument: The point is not what the relative percentage of lawful use is. The point is: "Is there any substantial non-infringing use". Doesn't have to be the primary use. Doesn't have to be the majority of use. It just has to have a substantial use that is non-infringing.
Some examples of important (non-infringing) p2p uses that are being developed (perhaps not receiving as much media coverage) - Hive Cache (distributed backup) - Distributed IM services - Freenet (Censorship free data replication)
Just wait until wireless takes off. P2P is the perfect way to route packets over an ad-hoc wireless network. I foresee a very significant paradigm shift for networking from static to p2p.
Sure, right now it's all about piracy. But there is a lot more to p2p than just that. Several important academic conferences and research institutions are focusing on it.
Umm, no. Firstly, most guns are NOT used for the commission of crimes. There are millions of people in the United States that hunt regularly and use them for target practice. There is a very sizable legitimate use--even majority use--I don't see how you can deny that. That is not to say that I necessarily support legal gun ownership though, but that I recognize that there is a legitimate aspect to them. Secondly, the very fact that guns are arguably protected by the Constitution sets this very far apart from P2P (which is not obviously). Guns would have almost certainly have been banned years ago if it were not for that argument. Despite the fact that a lot of people use them legitimately, I believe that most people recognize that the costs on society far exceed their benefits. Thirdly, all of these specific instances of P2P that have been sued by RIAA and the MPAA are NOT part of your list. Fourthly, virtually every legitimate use that they provide can be provided better by alternative protocols/configurations/applications.
The fact is that RIAA/MPAA has not just come out against all forms of P2P. Instead they've attacked targets where well over 99% of the content that is being transfered is THEIR intellectual property. What's more, the owners of both of these networks clearly set out to accomplish this too. At the end of the day, I don't see how anyone can look at me with a straight face and tell me that uncontrolled P2P in the style of Napster, Kazaa, and GNUTella, with its very minimal limited legitimate uses and even fewer uses that cannot be better replaced by other tools, is worth much much much larger unique creation of piracy and the damage that inflicts today on the industry (and it can only get worse). Unlike even the VCR case, there simply isn't a compelling argument FOR them.
Less than 20% of the US has broadband. Broadband is only going to get more common and faster--this means many more people downloading and many more people to download from (they play off each other) Devices that can exploit these pirated files (e.g., portable mp3 players) will get cheaper and better. Methods of distributing these files across these networks can easily improve. In short, it can grow into a much larger problem unless these sorts of networks are dealt with directly.
What if the music industry had purchased napster and released their full catalogs for free but ripped at a low bit rate say 96kb and then offer a pay version for the same data but ripped at a 320kb rate. No one could have competed because they would of had the depth of inventory. Lost opportunities. They went the other way and crushed Napster and they totally lost it by not having something to pick up the slack. Where did they think that the Napster users were going to turn when an option (Kazaa, Bearshare, et al) arrived. Lost opportunities.
It was still a horrible investment. Even if you believe your scenario is possible, you have to admit it's unlikely. Firstly, Napster had no intellectual property that couldn't be easily duplicated and duplicated cheaply. Secondly, Napster's approach from the get-go could not have failed to piss the music industry off, so even if all RIAA wanted was essentially an exact copy of Napster's service, then almost certainly have gone around them out of spite, if nothing else. Thirdly, Napster was never designed to protect the considerations of the IP owners. Even if RIAA wanted to approximate Napster, they'd still need to start from scratch for technical reasons. For instance, the industry would want logging, something to prevent the client from being hacked (an impossibility, but anyways...they'd demand it), statistics, and so on. Lastly, the whole argument for this sort of P2P is weak one from the industry's perspective. What would the legitimate consumer gain over a centralized alternative, i.e., place all mp3s on a central server or two or three? (One where better controls could be put in place, faster and more reliable downloads, and so on)? How about the industry? Sure, the industry would save a some bandwidth, but it's not that expensive these days and it'd be well worth the money (better than losing control of their IP or potentially so at least). Even if you believe that P2P is a compelling argument (that it saves so much bandwidth for the industry), there's still far superior options out there than Napster (as far as they are concerned and arguably the consumer too). For instance, using a more centralized indexing method, RIAA could put out superior mp3s (at any given bitrate) and sign them cryptographically...allowing only enumerated songs to be shared (and only correlated with a certain label/name)...and shared in a certain way (i.e., don't share this artist yet)... This is all besides the point though. The only reason P2P filesharing reached any level of popularity was because it allowed people to pirate more stuff more effectively than ever before with any other method (in this country at least)--it has relatively little to do with sampling new music.
As a business, Napster was a lousy lousy idea. If anyone was taken, it was Napster's uncle, but I'd say he took himself with his short sighted greed. He believed that he could, in effect, twist the industry's arm. He was wrong. He lost.
Well, IP is just a field of law. Copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. And some associated fields are important in regards to it.
But something like a trade secret isn't property. It's a limit on how businesses can compete with one another, i.e. a limit on the use of unfair business practices.
Lawyers use the term IP but it's a real misnomer. The law doesn't actually treat things in that manner.
What is your point? I never said that all IP is the handled the same way, nonetheless it is a useful and meaningful phrase.
As for compulsory licensing, no I don't mean CDR levies. I mean compulsory licensing as described in 17 USC 115 among other places. Basically it permits people to pay a fee fixed by law to cover songs.
For example, if I wanted to record "Cpt Kangarooski Rap-O-Rama" and include my rendition of "Baby Got Back" I would simply pay whatever the compulsory license fee was. I don't have to negotiate with Sir Mix-A-Lot, and he can't use his copyright to prevent me from recording the album, which is available on CD or casette.,
Neither form of compulsory licensing gives you the right to copy their CD and sell it at a fixed rate (which is well below the prices they charge). However questionable those two forms of licensing may be, you cannot deny that they are a HUGE step away, in reality, from fixing prices on CDs and stripping the copyright owners of the right to control their IP. The first form, 17 USC 115, has more to do with enabling competitive methods of distribution, it's not about price control per se. The second form has more to do with artistic license. Both exist for very specific reasons AND do little to substantially strip artists or even record companies of their revenues. It's not an accident either. In actuality every abridgement of copyright has been framed around just how much it will cost artists and labels versus its relative benefits for society.
This is more or less the same thing that the EFF author proposes, except rather than be limited to the musical composition and lyrics of a song, it would also include actual pre-existing sound recordings. I.e. then I could just make an anthology album that actually had Sir Mix-A-Lot's version on it, rather than recording my own cover of it. (though the cover license wouldn't disappear under this proposal)
The copyright holder still gets paid whatever the fee is, they just can't negotiate or prevent it. The license fees are set periodically, however, so it's not as though they're forever fixed.
Under the proposal we're all discussing here, the only real issue of contention is who pays. It's comparatively easy to have only the covering artist pay the cover license. When sound recordings or even live music is played however, fees are usually determined based on the income generated by it (e.g. when a cable company retransmits channels from broadcast stations, or a store plays the radio, or a bar has a live band).
This proposal would put a flat fee on ISP charges; pay it, and you could copy all the music you like. If so much music is copied that it tends to outweigh how much was actually paid, the fee would presumably increase to accomodate that the next year or two down the road, until a stable point was reached.
It's not even a tiny step beyond the current system, so you probably shouldn't look all shocked. I mean, how did you think musicians covered each others' songs?
I disagree. It is a HUGE step. There is a world of difference between listening to a complilation, a compulsorarily licensed broadcast, sampling, and its ilk and what is being suggested here. None of the existing regime has substantially diminished the ability of artists to sell CDs. They are very different. Axel Rose is not a replacement for, say, Eric Clapton. Listening to music on DSS is not a substitute to my buying CDs. And so on. They are not a credible t
What do you mean there is no IP regime? There is BY definition. That is the status quo.
And compulsory licensing of a different sort (basically fixing the fee that can be charged by artists) already exists.
Of what sort? Explain. You mean CD-R taxes? They're of limited scope; they're not designed with the understanding that they can potentially be a replacement for the existing sales model. The IP owners can charge whatever they please for their IP, i.e., CDs. The artists may happen to sell their rights, but that's another debate entirely.
Besides -- copyright exists to serve a social purpose, not a private one. I think that there are problems with this, but hardly to the extent that you're spouting off.
You can say that till you're blue in the face, but at the end of the day, there is a very strong relationship between private interests and the public's ultimate interest, thus it makes the most sense to vigorously pursue private interests and make tale so-called public social interests (an abstract and hard to measure concept) into account later. If you screw private interests, i.e., artists and their intermediaries, then it's just a matter of time till the public at large is damaged. As I indicated in one of my examples, if the author of the parody is disproportionally rewarded, then you're incentivizing behavior that is contrary to that of society. In other words, you encourage more parody to be produced, at the expense of real music, even though it's only going to be played ONCE and even though most users would not opt to pay for it themselves.
Umm. I'm going to have to disagree with you there. Two of my siblings, not to mention a good number of friends and peers, went to Princeton so I'm pretty familiar with it. While both of my siblings are smart, I would not say the same of most of the students. I won't deny that if you are clearly lacking the means, Princeton and the other Ivies can and do offer the best financial aid packages. The reality though is that if your parents are more in the middle class, it can be VERY hard to afford Princeton and the other Ivies. The combination of the high tuition and fees combined with the tough line of many of the financial aid guidelines can leave an impossible choice for less wealthy parents and students. For instance, your parents may be forced, in essense, to sell their house, their businesses, and so on to make tuition because financial aid does not offer enough otherwise.
Princeton, more than most colleges, even the other Ivies, has a very high proportion of affluent and wealthy students. I don't have the exact statistics on hand, but I can tell you, for example, that easily 50% of its students graduated from good private high schools and most of those that didn't attended affluent suburban public schools. Princeton is still very much of an affluent WASPy holdout (though more diverse these days--it more reflects the changing face of professional america--not america at large), but I would not say the same for most of the other Ivies (at least not nearly to the same extent from what I've seen).
Note: I have it on good authority that Princeton actually charges more for tuition than they need to; they've continued to raise their tuition so as not to APPEAR less worthy.
The right answer is obvious: We need to collect a pool of money from Internet users, and agree on a fair way to divide it among the artists and copyright owners. Copyright lawyers call this a "compulsory license." It might work something like this: Internet service providers (including universities) might add a flat monthly surcharge to the fees they charge for Internet access. Part of these fees would be remitted to the record labels, while some would be paid directly to the artists (who today frequently are victims of unfair contracts and crooked royalty accounting). The fees would be divided up fairly, based on popularity on the file-sharing networks, measured with sampling methods like the Neilsen ratings that respect our privacy while tabulating the P2P "charts." Having paid the fee, fans could engage in private, noncommercial file-sharing without worrying about being hunted down like criminals.
Umm what a stupid socialist-like idea. Firstly, who gets to decide how big the total pie, i.e., total dollars, that we split up should be? If P2P distribution is to replace CD sales (a not entirely improbable assertion giving that pricing model), then we could all expect to at least, say, 30 bucks a month if the industry is to maintain its revenues. I doubt the guy would really suggest this much, but then he's short changing the industry on the aggregate. Secondly, who says that all music should be priced the same (his sampling method would certainly suggest this) or even close to it? There are many problems with this. For instance, if someone were to produce a good parody of, say, the Saddam Hussein (something timely), its popularity on P2P might easily exceed the most popular music (e.g., Britney Spheres) and thus be compensated proportionally higher than everything else, even though in all probability no one would actually pay actual cash for it if they were given the option. In other words, people would be spending "virtual money" in ways wildly different than they would real money precisely because it doesn't have much of a consequence for them personally. The real price would be borne at the end of the year and by the population at large, but not on the individuals that are incurring the cost. Thirdly, it would create a free rider syndrome on the aggregate sense too. In other words, music fans may dramatically expand and alter their purchasing habits since they have no cost. Rather than prioritizing their "purchases", like they do in the real world on their favorite music, they just download everything they might like. So rather then seeing the best artists awarded (even as far as the individual is concerned), you reward relative mediocrity. Fourthly, why should those with the most free time and the relatively little earnings (e.g., college students) get the biggest vote while those that are really contributing (e.g., working) get relatively little?
This suggested system is rife with problems. The intellectual property regime is the only one that makes sense economically. Yes, it may not be perfect. Yes, it is facing some unique problems with the rise of P2P and modern technology, but the arguments for it are every bit as strong today as they were 50 or 100 years ago. It is just harder to enforce, but far from impossible. How can anyone that would suggest that this suggested sampling method is tractable and justifiable say, with a straight face, that we cannot enforce standard IP with similar methods? If you can uniquely identify copyrighted material in a dependable way, then you can certainly control the content with similar methods and hold people accountable (to an extent sufficient to serve as a deterrent to wholesale violation).
If people like your parents would fly Concorde more often, they wouldn't be shutting it down. Simple supply and demand. The market for Concorde tickets is pretty much restricted to people whose time is worth about a thousand dollars an hour (that's what it takes to justify the price differential between Concorde and standard business class).
If there were lots of people whose time was worth $1000 per hour, and who needed to travel overseas regularly, there would be a market for supersonic airliners. Since there is no market for supersonic airliners, we conclude that there are not so many business travelers in the $1000/hour class.
Anyone smart enough to be worth that kind of money is probably smart enough to understand that you can't get any useful information about the statistical risk of flying Concorde from one crash, so I don't think risk is a big issue unless Concorde serves a lot of stupid rich vacationers.
The bottom line, then, is that there just aren't a lot of people whose time is worth enough to justify Concorde's speed.
You're oversimplying too. My point was that, contrary to the assertions of the previous poster, there is a significantly larger market than just celebrity types and wealthy tourists (something like 2/3 of the passengers are business travelers) and that the price of the tickets is in fact worth it for many businesses. In other words, the Concorde is worth it at its marginal cost, i.e., the cost of the fuel, piloting, etc, for a significant number of people. This does not mean that the initial investment to actually build and buy them made sense. Clearly the economics of flying the Concorde even at a marginal cost put it above the price that most people are willing to pay and thus calls into question the investment, i.e., I wouldn't say Boeing was insane for not following the same path. However, you should note that this does not necessarily mean that the Concorde is necessarily a money loser. In fact, both of the airlines were making a couple million on them 3-5 years ago. The Concorde's success depended greatly on the volume of the more affluent business travelers (which HAS slumped because of the market--fewer mergers, IPOs, deals, etc--not to mention the stoppage of service as as a result of the crash), the cost of jet fuel, the regular maintance costs, and irregular maintance costs. These are all variable factors that can make continued operation of the Concorde go from not very desirable even at its limited scale (amongst other rivolrous investments) to absolutely undesirable (e.g., money loosing).
So no, it's not just a matter of some static supply and demand. You also misconstrued my use of "risk." The prospect of facing an additional 30m or whatever it was in scheduled maintance can make it RISKY. That is to say that they'd be sinking cash into investment (long term continued operation) with an uncertain outcome. If the market were to rebound (e.g., more business travelers) and the price of jet fuel were to drop, then they could probably make a pretty penny on it. The trouble is that they're facing certain costs, uncertain returns, and they've got to weigh those investments against alternative investments (e.g., why plow 30m into the Concorde when you can probably make 2x the return on a standard jet?).
Lastly, I'd point out to you that a business person's time can be worth more or less at certain times and that that time is more apt to be worth more when they're traveling like that. For instance, if you're selling your company during a limited window of opportunity, then you're going to be doing a lot of traveling and you want to do it fast, because failure to do it can cost your shareholders millions. Keep in mind that there can only be so many CEOs in a company and that that person can only be in one place at one time. The worth of the business person's time to the company is often much more than their compensation (if it werent, then the company shouldn't be paying).
Well firstly, you're looking at fares at a time when the airlines are really fighting for business. Secondly, the airlines take advantage of business travelers by exploiting their relative lack of flexibility in scheduling and often need the ability to reschedule without being penalized and want to arrive and depart at a specific time of day. The tourist is more apt to be able to jump in at the last minute or schedule way in advance at whatever time is cheapest, leave or arrive at odd hours, and accept lack of flexibility, and so on. Business travelers will generally pay much more because the tickets that are available to them, when and how they need them, cost more. It's no accident either, the airlines generally don't make money on tourist tickets, they're used to disperse the costs of seats that are left vacant by business travelers.
If you want a fair comparison in terms of pure comfort, then you should really compare it to first class in a jumbo jet, because most people would prefer to sit 3 hours on the Concorde in a slighty less comfortable seat than 7+ hours in first class on a jumbo jet. What's more, the comfort extends well beyond the comfort of the flight itself. If you fly on a standard jumbo jet, then you really need to loose a day staying overnight or sleeping on the plane--neither which most business travelers find appealing. Time is also saved in the arrival and departure process because both airlines have very much expedited the process for Concorde passengers (which they haven't done with most other flights, esp. those that you're apt be to looking at).
It's also worth noting that many business travelers or their companies pay less than 10k in practice, because they are given special discounts to entice them to fly more (either on the Concorde or their other jets). It's not THAT much more costly by the time you figure in the price of a decent hotel, food, taxi service, and so on and that's not even mentioning the opportunity cost of the business traveler's time, i.e., they could be spending that extra day conducting more business.
Re:Like luxury liners, their time has run out
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Concorde to be Grounded
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· Score: 4, Interesting
That's a bit of an oversimplification. My parents and number of people people I know take the Concorde a couple times a year between JFK and LHR for business trips. The price is around 10k-15k, but it's not so bad when you compare it to the prices that business travelers pay for the same trip (or even domestic trips) on standard jets [most people just aren't very aware of how much more business travelers typically have to pay]. There is a world of difference between flying on the Concorde (~3.5 hours and excellent service) and flying on a normal jet for easily 4 hours more with generally poor service. It makes a huge difference in the day of the traveler; it lets the traveler get a lot business done on the same day (a claim that can not be made for the alternative). The time savings are hard to place a value on, but I can tell you that for many very busy people is it very much worth it.
Corporate and private jets do have some advantages over commercial jets for the same trips, but they generally cost much more per flight when you average it out and cash layouts are HUGE. You're mistaken to assume that anyone that can afford to pay for the Concorde can or would fly private/corporate jet. I'll confess that my parents are "wealthy" and are CEOs (though not the sort you're probably envisioning), but they would probably _never_ buy a jet (even in one of these newer arrangements) and their companies could never justify that sort of expenditure. Much the same goes for the other people I know. Gulfstreams are also no where near as fast for that sort of trip. It's really an apples and oranges comparison.
Nonetheless, I won't deny that the Concorde can simply never sell to the mass market. It simply costs too much to operate and most people don't value their time THAT much that often. That still leaves a significant market though, even if it is not you and me. The reason why it's falling apart today is more the result of high overhead/risk and the downturn in the world market--that's not to say though that it can't work--just that it's not lucrative enough today to justify its continued service.
Our diversity is our strength, not our weakness. Free Software's strategic marketing paradigm is a massively parallel drunkard's walk filtered by a Darwinistic process. We make gains because we can bypass the failures of a more narrow strategic marketing directon, which would have us work on only one solution to any problem. The problem with one solution is that marketing has no crystal ball, strategic marketers are no more accurate in general than stock-pickers. Their chosen direction is rarely the best. It's better to let coders control their own multiple directions. One of them will get it right.
I disagree. You've described precisely the reason why free software fails in so many areas. Although it is true that proprietary software is necessarily more tightly bound to a single vision than that of open software as it is popularly concieved and that that vision can go astray sometimes, you neglect to mention that the project leaders must ultimately answer to the market--both the consumers and, more often than not, shareholders. Thus we see that the problems in the proprietary market DO in fact generally get fixed. Contrast this with the open software developers that generally do lack any real degree of coherance (the projects that can claim this are the EXCEPTION, not the rule). Yes, any single vision may be suboptimal, but having a unified vision, however fallible it may be, is almost always better than having 1 million different perspectives, if you will, but lacking the muscle to do a damn thing about any single one of them.
What's more, you neglect to mention the overall orientation of that vision. You can't deny that the vast majority of developers, be they open or closed, have perspectives and needs that are vastly different than that of the vast majority of consumers (e.g., a consumer wants a simple and easy to use interface, the developer wants a powerful and highly customizable interface far more often). One of the powers of propietary software is that it is able to harness those developers towards a vision that few, if any, are apt to choose on their own, especially if their efforts are purely for personal gratification.
That's not to say that open source's cacophony of visions and efforts never has its advantages. I believe that efforts like PERL and its many modules and enhancements are an excellent example of this (millions of small needs/answers wrapped into some semblance of order). However, I also believe that you'll never see a finished product of the size of scale of MS Windows, MS Office, SQL Server, Solidworks...you name it, from from the open source world--it just requires too much concentration of effort under a single umbrella.
Slashdot Mirror
That said, what does your example demonstrate? Ok, so you have some artists on your webpage, but that's not P2P promotion or even distribution. That's putting ads on a page that is frequented occassionally by a bunch of people--it can't scale. How much have these artists grossed? How many CDs have they sold? How many artists can make these claims? Have any of them ever sold out a large venue? Can they really point to P2P being the engine for their (limited) success? Why should RIAA be afraid? Perhaps I'm just skeptical about the motivations of Bearshare, but it looks to me like they're putting some lesser known artists up to give them the appearance of legitmacy--that they provide some unique benefit. The real test is in P2P to serve as a replacement for RIAA. Even if this sort of P2P does provide some significant benefit for said artists (which I doubt) it does not necessarily offer an alternative for major artists. For instance, it is quite possible that this form of P2P may boost CD sales for lesser known bands (due to its alleged ability to promote), but substantially damage better known artists (due to its ability to provide easy access to popular pirated material).
It is wrong to freely share CDs digitally, knowing that numerous people can and will download them, because you're not merely transferring ownership, you're necessarily creating a copy, which does correlate strongly with injury of artists and record companies. Perhaps if the P2P servent would remove all copies of said music from the computer upon the client's successful download, then we might be talking about this a little differently. Likewise, I would regard selling a CD-R duplicate of a copyrighted CD or mix of multiple CDs as an act of theft, unless the source CD was destroyed.
What part of P2P makes the industry obsolete exactly? Just because P2P makes possible blatant violation of copyright that was previously much harder does not make the industry any less necessary. What you are trying to imply is sort of like arguing that because I can steal from, say, Nordstrom's that clothing retailers are no longer necessary. Even if we completely ignore the (misleading) distinction between these two forms of theft, you're taking still does not answer the tough questions, namely, what is going to secure the continued production by the originators (read: artists or clothing makers) or what is going to replace the marketing and publicity function that both you and the artist ultimately depend on.
I have no problem if you wish to completely cut RIAA out of the loop. However, the fact of the matter is that you're not. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too--you want to enjoy the services without paying for them. You're taking music for which RIAA owns the copyright, which they own because they perform a multitude of functions and which is the reason why you're downloading the music in the first place. If you want to do P2P and claim that neither you nor the artist "need" RIAA, then do it without misappropriating copyrighted material.
You guys assert that P2P can somehow replace the current function of RIAA. Maybe, but probably not in the form that it exists today on Kazaa and numerous other networks, and you certainly have not demonstrated it. P2P has been around for a couple years now and yet you'd be hard pressed to point to a single major artist that can really credit their success to these services. Record sales may be slumping today, but up and coming artists are still signing with major record labels by and large, despite the existance of the P2P that you claim makes the industry irrelevant. The proof is in the pudding, or should I say...NOT?
The argument was over whether or not consumers should be allowed to decide whether or not they wish to use open source for themselves though (because the poster that I was replying to was giving open source a false staff with which to bash closed source).
... and so on. No, the fact is that in most cases you just don't know and nor can you. What keeps these product and service providers in check in the vast majority of cases is their reputation. In fact, reputation is the primary organizing force in the market, not direct transparency. When is the last time you heard of a consumer buying, say, a refrigerator because of its specific compressor? How many customers will even look this up? What customers look at is WHO makes it and just perhaps fundamental aspects of its engineering (e.g., motor-type, horse power, etc--but even then more as features than as a quality check). You can only burn customers so many times before you pay severely in the market. Yes, individual customers can and even will get burned in some cases by less reputable firms, but over time, it doesn't pay for the companies to do this. So yes, it generally is a free market.
That not withstanding, I think I should clear a few things up:
A) The situation with closed source software is really not that different than many other large sectors of the free market. The free market is not premised on 100% transparency or even close to it. It generally does not need it to effectively keep companies in check. Do you really know what your doctor is doing with his equipment before you go in and see him? Do you really know he learned in medical school or what he did in residency? Do you really know how your car was engineered or tolerances of every unit in the car? Do you really know how your building was engineered?
B) You should distinguish between standard closed source software companies and companies that zealously attempt to suppress organized/official review of their software with the DCMA and other tools. I assert that very few software companies really behave like this; that is to say that if a PC magazine or website wishes to give poor reviews to their applications, then it can and will happen. What's more, even those few companies that do attempt to suppress review, ultimately fail to succeed in the market because they cannot effectively stop consumers from bad mouthing their product, regardless of the EULAs they may sign. That is to say that they ultimately pay. Yeah, I recognize that they might get away with a product that is 15% less quick than the prior version, but they're not going to get away with a product that consistently corrupts the customer's data, for instance--consumers will find out.
C) To the extent that companies do abuse the DCMA, EULAs, and similar legal tools, you can attack THOSE specifically and NOT closed source itself. It is a mistake to confuse these legal mechanisms and certain monopoly powers, not only because they're a seperate problem, but because open source truly does not assure that these cannot occur.
D) Buyer beware has always been the fundamental driving force behind the free market. Yes, there are markets where outside forces play a large role (e.g., the US financial markets), but these
In short, you're comparing apples and oranges. In your case you're looking for wear and tear or accident related damages--that's relatively easy for an experienced mechanic to find--it's diagnostics, not engineering. In the case of software there is no such quick test that approximates this, because you're looking at its very form. If your mechanic is capable enough to replace all that safety engineering and QA put in place by car manufacturers with a 10 minute lookover, then I'm sure you can find a car manufacturer somewhere who would be sell you a car on the cheap without all that hassle.
What is your point? No party can give you 100% security--whether you're talking about the million "eyes" of open source or the skilled eyes of a good 3rd party auditor--but that's not the same thing. Those parties may still extend _their_ gaurantees, but that doesn't mean you have security. The point that I'm making is that you're always going to have risk. Yes, there is some remote possiblity that the company may modify the software on the QT, but if the auditors validate version 1.1 (with known features A-Z), then there's little incentive to sneak changes (you can't market it, it can't be too significant,
Again, what is your point? Baring some paranoid's wet dream, it's unlikely that the binaries can be modified in such a way that they could not be detected by an astute user. Why would a respectable company take such risks to make such modifications? Get real please.
Furthermore, the idea that the opening of the source is sufficient for the consumer to audit the code or absolve the developers of liability is laughable. Properly auditing software is very time consuming, complicated, and expensive. It is beyond the means of any individual consumer to audit all their software whether their name is Joe Schmoe or Lockheed Martin. I would argue that the mere opening of sizable application's code is like just letting the consumer open the hood up to their car (the status quo, even if you throw in the service manuals). Would you release automakers of liability just because they give you what they're giving now (opening the hood, manual, etc)? No. The reason is that, like software, most consumers cannot be expected to see the millions of little details that can lead to failure. They can't be expected to know the specifications that a particular joint was engineered to, even if they can see it, measure it, and even evaluate the material. Auditing CAN be done better by trusted 3rd parties--which makes opening the source code unnecessary and even risky in some cases.
WTF did GCC change? Umm, ok, so it's a free compiler and some code isn't compatible, but it adds _nothing_ technically and is in many ways an inferior compiler. Whatever significance GCC has, has nothing to do with the code and everything to do with the license it was filed under. If you're going to take the non-technical argument, then I can sort of see where you're coming from, but at the same time you must have tunnel vision, because you're missing the much more significant and popular applications on the world as a whole. How about the word processor? Whomever you wish to credit with it, regardless of its respective technical innovations, it has had a much more profound impact on people across the world than GCC has had on the very small group of people that even know what it is.
You're welcome, but what was part of my comment ad hominem exactly? That I said that you were being willfully ignorant? It was a critical element in our discussion, not a guise to prop up my argument. Whatever your motives, you didn't take the trouble to research what should be readily apparent to you. You shouldn't need a statistic to tell you when numbers are so wildly at odds with each other; you should just have a feel for it, especially if you're going to take the trouble to comment on it. What's more, I believe that you should have at least taken the time to do the basic level of research. It took me roughly 5 minutes to find that with google. I *knew* it to be roughly true, of course, but I had to since *you* demanded that *I* deliver *you* undeniable evidence of a fact that you could have *easily* verified for yourself. That is practically the definition of willful ignorance. What else do you call this?
;)
Perhaps I may have spared you my comment, but this is slashdot afterall
More than 6% of the country age 16 and older hunted last year. They spent an average of 18 days hunting. Quick math: 13,000,000 (people) * 18 days * 1 (shots...low) = That's a bare minimum of about 234 million shots. Last year, you can be pretty sure that less than 20k people were murdered with guns. (look it up, it's actually less, but i'm being generous). Let's assume that it took an average of 10 (probably very high) shots to kill, that's roughly 200k bullets used to murder. Hmm 200k > 245m? Not even close.
I don't believe this requires proof as it is common knowledge that there are millions of gun owners in the US and that there are "only" so many thousands of gun related deaths in the US. You do the math. If you doubt it, then please do the basic level of research and try to deny me.
What do you deny?? Do you deny that there are millions gun owners in the US? Do you deny that there are millions of active hunters? Do you deny that the number of gun related homicides in the US per year is less than 20k? If you can't or won't deny either, then I have nothing to prove. Whether or not the honest enjoyment that a couple million US citizens derive from their guns is worth the roughly 10k gun fatalities (and associated costs) a year is a VERY different argument (and one that I come out against--against guns)
As for your statistic, it is meaningless in the context of our argument, because it does not show causation, it merely points to a correlation. For instance, it is very likely that those that are likely to own guns are ALREADY at higher risk because they more likely to live in the ghetto, be white trash, and so on. Even you believe that it shows causation, that does nothing to demonstrate that most guns are used for killing people. It would be sort of like arguing that families that own cars are, 10x more likely to die in car accidents, therefore most cars kill people.
The fact is that RIAA/MPAA has not just come out against all forms of P2P. Instead they've attacked targets where well over 99% of the content that is being transfered is THEIR intellectual property. What's more, the owners of both of these networks clearly set out to accomplish this too. At the end of the day, I don't see how anyone can look at me with a straight face and tell me that uncontrolled P2P in the style of Napster, Kazaa, and GNUTella, with its very minimal limited legitimate uses and even fewer uses that cannot be better replaced by other tools, is worth much much much larger unique creation of piracy and the damage that inflicts today on the industry (and it can only get worse). Unlike even the VCR case, there simply isn't a compelling argument FOR them.
Less than 20% of the US has broadband. Broadband is only going to get more common and faster--this means many more people downloading and many more people to download from (they play off each other) Devices that can exploit these pirated files (e.g., portable mp3 players) will get cheaper and better. Methods of distributing these files across these networks can easily improve. In short, it can grow into a much larger problem unless these sorts of networks are dealt with directly.
Mod this up. You may not agree, but it IS an intelligent question to ask here.
As a business, Napster was a lousy lousy idea. If anyone was taken, it was Napster's uncle, but I'd say he took himself with his short sighted greed. He believed that he could, in effect, twist the industry's arm. He was wrong. He lost.
What is your point? I never said that all IP is the handled the same way, nonetheless it is a useful and meaningful phrase.
Neither form of compulsory licensing gives you the right to copy their CD and sell it at a fixed rate (which is well below the prices they charge). However questionable those two forms of licensing may be, you cannot deny that they are a HUGE step away, in reality, from fixing prices on CDs and stripping the copyright owners of the right to control their IP. The first form, 17 USC 115, has more to do with enabling competitive methods of distribution, it's not about price control per se. The second form has more to do with artistic license. Both exist for very specific reasons AND do little to substantially strip artists or even record companies of their revenues. It's not an accident either. In actuality every abridgement of copyright has been framed around just how much it will cost artists and labels versus its relative benefits for society.
I disagree. It is a HUGE step. There is a world of difference between listening to a complilation, a compulsorarily licensed broadcast, sampling, and its ilk and what is being suggested here. None of the existing regime has substantially diminished the ability of artists to sell CDs. They are very different. Axel Rose is not a replacement for, say, Eric Clapton. Listening to music on DSS is not a substitute to my buying CDs. And so on. They are not a credible t
Of what sort? Explain. You mean CD-R taxes? They're of limited scope; they're not designed with the understanding that they can potentially be a replacement for the existing sales model. The IP owners can charge whatever they please for their IP, i.e., CDs. The artists may happen to sell their rights, but that's another debate entirely.
You can say that till you're blue in the face, but at the end of the day, there is a very strong relationship between private interests and the public's ultimate interest, thus it makes the most sense to vigorously pursue private interests and make tale so-called public social interests (an abstract and hard to measure concept) into account later. If you screw private interests, i.e., artists and their intermediaries, then it's just a matter of time till the public at large is damaged. As I indicated in one of my examples, if the author of the parody is disproportionally rewarded, then you're incentivizing behavior that is contrary to that of society. In other words, you encourage more parody to be produced, at the expense of real music, even though it's only going to be played ONCE and even though most users would not opt to pay for it themselves.
Umm. I'm going to have to disagree with you there. Two of my siblings, not to mention a good number of friends and peers, went to Princeton so I'm pretty familiar with it. While both of my siblings are smart, I would not say the same of most of the students. I won't deny that if you are clearly lacking the means, Princeton and the other Ivies can and do offer the best financial aid packages. The reality though is that if your parents are more in the middle class, it can be VERY hard to afford Princeton and the other Ivies. The combination of the high tuition and fees combined with the tough line of many of the financial aid guidelines can leave an impossible choice for less wealthy parents and students. For instance, your parents may be forced, in essense, to sell their house, their businesses, and so on to make tuition because financial aid does not offer enough otherwise.
Princeton, more than most colleges, even the other Ivies, has a very high proportion of affluent and wealthy students. I don't have the exact statistics on hand, but I can tell you, for example, that easily 50% of its students graduated from good private high schools and most of those that didn't attended affluent suburban public schools. Princeton is still very much of an affluent WASPy holdout (though more diverse these days--it more reflects the changing face of professional america--not america at large), but I would not say the same for most of the other Ivies (at least not nearly to the same extent from what I've seen).
Note: I have it on good authority that Princeton actually charges more for tuition than they need to; they've continued to raise their tuition so as not to APPEAR less worthy.
This suggested system is rife with problems. The intellectual property regime is the only one that makes sense economically. Yes, it may not be perfect. Yes, it is facing some unique problems with the rise of P2P and modern technology, but the arguments for it are every bit as strong today as they were 50 or 100 years ago. It is just harder to enforce, but far from impossible. How can anyone that would suggest that this suggested sampling method is tractable and justifiable say, with a straight face, that we cannot enforce standard IP with similar methods? If you can uniquely identify copyrighted material in a dependable way, then you can certainly control the content with similar methods and hold people accountable (to an extent sufficient to serve as a deterrent to wholesale violation).
So no, it's not just a matter of some static supply and demand. You also misconstrued my use of "risk." The prospect of facing an additional 30m or whatever it was in scheduled maintance can make it RISKY. That is to say that they'd be sinking cash into investment (long term continued operation) with an uncertain outcome. If the market were to rebound (e.g., more business travelers) and the price of jet fuel were to drop, then they could probably make a pretty penny on it. The trouble is that they're facing certain costs, uncertain returns, and they've got to weigh those investments against alternative investments (e.g., why plow 30m into the Concorde when you can probably make 2x the return on a standard jet?).
Lastly, I'd point out to you that a business person's time can be worth more or less at certain times and that that time is more apt to be worth more when they're traveling like that. For instance, if you're selling your company during a limited window of opportunity, then you're going to be doing a lot of traveling and you want to do it fast, because failure to do it can cost your shareholders millions. Keep in mind that there can only be so many CEOs in a company and that that person can only be in one place at one time. The worth of the business person's time to the company is often much more than their compensation (if it werent, then the company shouldn't be paying).
Well firstly, you're looking at fares at a time when the airlines are really fighting for business. Secondly, the airlines take advantage of business travelers by exploiting their relative lack of flexibility in scheduling and often need the ability to reschedule without being penalized and want to arrive and depart at a specific time of day. The tourist is more apt to be able to jump in at the last minute or schedule way in advance at whatever time is cheapest, leave or arrive at odd hours, and accept lack of flexibility, and so on. Business travelers will generally pay much more because the tickets that are available to them, when and how they need them, cost more. It's no accident either, the airlines generally don't make money on tourist tickets, they're used to disperse the costs of seats that are left vacant by business travelers.
If you want a fair comparison in terms of pure comfort, then you should really compare it to first class in a jumbo jet, because most people would prefer to sit 3 hours on the Concorde in a slighty less comfortable seat than 7+ hours in first class on a jumbo jet. What's more, the comfort extends well beyond the comfort of the flight itself. If you fly on a standard jumbo jet, then you really need to loose a day staying overnight or sleeping on the plane--neither which most business travelers find appealing. Time is also saved in the arrival and departure process because both airlines have very much expedited the process for Concorde passengers (which they haven't done with most other flights, esp. those that you're apt be to looking at).
It's also worth noting that many business travelers or their companies pay less than 10k in practice, because they are given special discounts to entice them to fly more (either on the Concorde or their other jets). It's not THAT much more costly by the time you figure in the price of a decent hotel, food, taxi service, and so on and that's not even mentioning the opportunity cost of the business traveler's time, i.e., they could be spending that extra day conducting more business.
That's a bit of an oversimplification. My parents and number of people people I know take the Concorde a couple times a year between JFK and LHR for business trips. The price is around 10k-15k, but it's not so bad when you compare it to the prices that business travelers pay for the same trip (or even domestic trips) on standard jets [most people just aren't very aware of how much more business travelers typically have to pay]. There is a world of difference between flying on the Concorde (~3.5 hours and excellent service) and flying on a normal jet for easily 4 hours more with generally poor service. It makes a huge difference in the day of the traveler; it lets the traveler get a lot business done on the same day (a claim that can not be made for the alternative). The time savings are hard to place a value on, but I can tell you that for many very busy people is it very much worth it.
Corporate and private jets do have some advantages over commercial jets for the same trips, but they generally cost much more per flight when you average it out and cash layouts are HUGE. You're mistaken to assume that anyone that can afford to pay for the Concorde can or would fly private/corporate jet. I'll confess that my parents are "wealthy" and are CEOs (though not the sort you're probably envisioning), but they would probably _never_ buy a jet (even in one of these newer arrangements) and their companies could never justify that sort of expenditure. Much the same goes for the other people I know. Gulfstreams are also no where near as fast for that sort of trip. It's really an apples and oranges comparison.
Nonetheless, I won't deny that the Concorde can simply never sell to the mass market. It simply costs too much to operate and most people don't value their time THAT much that often. That still leaves a significant market though, even if it is not you and me. The reason why it's falling apart today is more the result of high overhead/risk and the downturn in the world market--that's not to say though that it can't work--just that it's not lucrative enough today to justify its continued service.
What's more, you neglect to mention the overall orientation of that vision. You can't deny that the vast majority of developers, be they open or closed, have perspectives and needs that are vastly different than that of the vast majority of consumers (e.g., a consumer wants a simple and easy to use interface, the developer wants a powerful and highly customizable interface far more often). One of the powers of propietary software is that it is able to harness those developers towards a vision that few, if any, are apt to choose on their own, especially if their efforts are purely for personal gratification.
That's not to say that open source's cacophony of visions and efforts never has its advantages. I believe that efforts like PERL and its many modules and enhancements are an excellent example of this (millions of small needs/answers wrapped into some semblance of order). However, I also believe that you'll never see a finished product of the size of scale of MS Windows, MS Office, SQL Server, Solidworks...you name it, from from the open source world--it just requires too much concentration of effort under a single umbrella.
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