About the only huge blunder on Microsoft's part was not recognizing the impact of the Internet, and we all saw how quickly they turned that around
MS has made plenty of mistakes, but one in particular was when MS made its first big step.... Gates tried to sell IBM the rights to DOS to IBM more than a couple times. Fortunately, for Gates, IBM refused. If IBM hadn't, the odds are that MS would be nothing but a memory.
I never once said, nor meant to imply, that any of Google's decision(s) were wrong or right, since I don't know that much about the company. What I was responding to was the previous poster's trivialization of the founder's responsibility to the investor [not to mention employees, and other such figures].
#1: Investors agree to take on the risks of wherever they willingly place their money. They were not being egalitarian with their investment.
Sure, they agree to take risk. On the other hand, this does not excuse management [founders] from any and all responsibility to the investor. Trust is key to any computation of risk, on the upside or the downside. When management shirks this trust, they deserve to be fired. This is especially true in privately held companies, where there is typically a great deal more interpersonal trust than in your average publically held company. I've been involved with a number of successfull companies where the investments were based heavily on personal trust of the founder/president/CEO. [i.e., the investor says to himself/herself, I don't know this technology/industry all that well, but I trust you to give it to me like it is. If you say risk/reward looks like A, it is A. And I know this is not just a lark, etc...]
2: Investing in Google still remains a sound choice since a rational person may believe that the goals of the founders are in alignment with an investor's.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. You can't make this conclusion soley on the fact that the investor still has an equity position in the company. For instance, the investor could be ignorant that the founder is treating it as a lark, or putting personal goals before the investors'. I've seen it before.
#3: Intelligent investors stack the deck in their favor. Cash is not the only capital; management talent (and intelligent voices on the board) is what a real investor provides. That has the side effect of laying infrastructure so that it's difficult to run totally counter to the investors' interests.
I think that's a terribly broad statement. Not all investors in privately held companies have a seat on the board, or anything close to it. Whether or not you think they're intelligent or rational, doesn't absolve the founder of responsibility.
#4: Many investors are different, though they may seem like carbon copies. The short-term attitudes some take are detrimental to the long-term investors. If their talents lay in management (rather than having money on hand), they would probably not just be investors.
Believe me, I know not all investors are the same. Many times even the investors' have different objectives. And I agree that short term versus long term is an issue worthy of consideration. However, there are issues that transcend either...
...The gist of all of this is that the role of the founder(s) shouldn't be reduced down to self-gratification. There is so much more to the job than that. Since I've witnessed abuse on both sides [i.e., founder/management versus shareholders], I take some offense to that attitude.
I never said all companies have investors. However, most companies do. Especially ones like google. Given the market they're in, they can't grow organically, thus they rely on a large infusion of cash. Given that they're recent college grads, the odds are it is not their own capital. Furthermore, since no bank would ever take such a position, they in all probability have investors.
Investors can play a valuable role in a company, but it is a supporting role. Any time the investors are in charge, the founders have literally sold out.
But that doesn't mean the company doesn't have obligations to the shareholder. There is a world of difference between giving up control and betraying shareholder trust.
I'd like to remind you that companies are also made up of investors. Though I don't know google's exact details, I'm sure they didn't throw in all that capital which they depend on. Investors, be they VCs or what you have, expect high returns, else they will not stomach such risk in the future. In other words, merely making the founders "happy" is not sufficient for its existence; the founders must also continue to please investors, or they would not [in all likelyhood] be in the position where they are now.
Likewise, I disagree with you. I am a firm believer in intellectual property; in my view, napster doesn't make it any less valid. My care is not so much for the personas behind RIAA, as it is a realization that this is an assault on the record houses very function, that of promoting certain music. I find it quite ironic when napster's advocates claim piracy is about freedom, when it robs the artist of choice. By making it [potentially] impossible for RIAA to profit, you also rob the artist of the choice to sign with them [even if you are theoretically in favor of reimbursing the artist through other means]. Likewise, you also rob society of the opportunity to hear music in this fashion.
None of this is to say that I don't believe in open markets. If Napster [or any other entity] wants to distribute "free" [or alternatively distributed/promoted/recorded] music, and thereby destroy RIAA I have no problem with that. I just take issue when people claim that reducing avenues of choice is not a problem because they [wildy] presume the alternatives (i.e., napster, mp3.com, etc) are better. It is a fundamentally arrogant position to assume that you can out think the function of these markets [and yes, I know many people will hastily add comments about regulating monopolies. But that is a different creature in my opinion, as we're talking about a specific entity judged by law to be against the common good, not an idea, not a way, and not by individuals thinking of themselves alone], especially if they are not terribly familiar with the key issues of popular artists [i.e., promotion]. In other words, let the friggen markets decide.
In any case, I hope I've made myself clear. I'm not just targeting you. Though I did find that "addy" comment a little lame, I hardly found it earth shattering, or even personally offensive. Because such comments say more about the speaker than the reader, I hardly had any reason to jump all over you for that [particularly if you knew my background]. The reason I spoke up was because I objected to your: a) position [and to the many people who blindly agree--I think it needed a voice of reason] b) premises c) "facts" d) your general tone, to a much lesser degree. I believe a "news" page needs to hear honest to God intellectual discussion, not just a stream of invective, one sided stats/figures, and loose analogies.
I bear no grudges [well...rarely...I avoid them as much as possible]. Have a good weekend. Bye;)
No, what I mean to say is that your perspective is skewed because you have much more experience with the "early adopters"--who will go to such great lengths to get something for free that they will be very unlikely to pay for the legitimate product in addition--than you do with the "mainstream adopters"--who use MP3 for mainly fair uses and for whom Napster causes an increase rather than a decrease in legitimate music buying.
Or, more likely, because of my "blinding" knowledge, I clearly see what you do not, that the majority of people will demonstrate little moral compunction in regards to piracy [especially when it is against populary demonized entities]. Where oldering warez distribution methods were just within reasonable grasp of the geeky teenager, napster and related technologies bring music piracy into grasp for hundreds of thousands of users.
In the case of Napster, which offers the same societal benefits as libraries and even has the side effect of increasing record sales, the choice is even easier--and thus we should expect Napster to be lauded (and subsidized??) even more than public libraries.
This argument is becoming absurdly academic, so I will not spend anymore time on it. However, I'd like to remind you that you can't merely ignore scale on these issues--the math is terribly important. Due to the nominal scale and virtue of libraries, the potential for inflicting harm on the publishers is low, thus society can still benefit on the aggregate. The same cannot be said for napster. Napster knows no such physical tethers. Napster's potential to inflict harm on the industry, and consequently society, is great. In other words, if you believe that napster will destroy the industry, and you believe industry is necessary for bringing music to the people, you have little choice but to reject napster.
As I commented elsewhere in this thread, this in itself will have little effect on what is the primary limiter of MP3 sound quality for the vast majority of people: namely, that computers are simply not stereos. They are hideously electrically noisy environments, and even now with expensive computer speakers becoming more common, speaker quality is far inferior to that of real speakers, due to small size, poor listener placement (2 feet in front of the speakers), plastic housing, magnetic shielding, etc. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as Moore's Law for speakers, so speakers of any quality will continue to be big and wooden and expensive, and be designed to fill a large room with sound, not direct it at an individual 2 feet away. While it's concievable that some people will hook up real speakers to their computers to play MP3s--indeed, I've seen it done--the vast majority of people will use their computers as cheap sampling devices and leave their high-quality speakers connected to their real stereo. In any case, the reason I said downloading MP3s to burn to CD-R sounds worse than a tape is that there are two lossy conversions going on: wav->MP3->wav. (The last isn't technically "lossy" but involves a loss of actual quality just as any change of format does.)
It seems the only reason, that you believe in, for anyone to actually buy a CD is because mp3s can't be reproduced sufficiently well for listening. Yet you ignore the fact that most people today have mediocre speakers in both their primary listening places, be it their hi-fi, their car, or even their headphones. As any hi-fi nut will tell you, it is speakers that make all the difference, not your source. Through the average American stereo it frankly makes little difference whether they listen to CD, mp3, or tape. As long as the source is devoid of scratches and the like, the vast majority of people will remain oblivious (especially with pop music).
Not only do Americans place a low preference on sound quality, but mp3s can sound every bit as good CD. Providing there are high quality mp3s available, they can be played back in any number of ways:
Headphones (an affordable way to get quality today)
Mp3 devices (prices will come down), no reason why their playback needs to degrade the mp3's potential at all.
Multipurpose players. There are already a number of DVD/mp3/CD combos on the market which possess the ability to play back mp3s quite well.
Computer speakers. With the growth of computer gaming and multimedia, there is a growing demand for higher quality speakers. One needn't necessarily make a special purchase.
Sound Card->Stereo. One needn't switch their speakers about. For a measly 5 dollars you can run out to radio shack and plug your stereo out to an AUX-in on your amp/reciever. I do this at home and it works great. What's more, with digital output becoming more common, it's possible to reliably avoid these issues of interference.
Mp3->wav->CD: Works well with todays technologies and costs very little. I've done this a number of times, especially with automated software. Though you claim it's lossy, it's no more lossy than normal mp3 playback which has to convert anyways.
I'm sure I can think of more, but that is plenty. What's more, I personally find mp3s to have huge advantages in the sense that I can safely archive my music and get instant access to all of it without any physical searching. Nor do I have to contend with issues like scratching, losing, or loaning my CDs out to friends. This feature alone is sufficiently compelling for me to consider buying some of these disc based mp3 players (i.e., the empeg) [If people are going to have such devices, buying CDs are just an EXTRA and unnecessary step].
Neither of these defenses would likely be available for a company which offered the service of "perfect" MP3s (which cannot exist anyways, since even at the highest bitrates it's still a lossy codec). The first wouldn't hold water, because the party offering the file would be a company, and thus not noncommercial; the second wouldn't work either, because a court could then legitimately ask them not to offer just those songs which they don't have rights to, without impacting any noninfringing uses.
I disagree. If napster can use the defence, napster, or whomever provides that service, can offer the same argument for the "reliability" service. They can claim that they're just facilitating the transfer, while offering substantial legitimate uses [i.e., reliable downloads of legitimate music]. Just as RIAA can theoretically go after napster users, RIAA can theoretically go after the posting users. In addition, once the courts accept that napster cannot be held liable in that fashion, RIAA can hardly go back when things really begin to heat up. If, for instance, all of those quality issues (not that I agree with 95% of them) were solved tomorrow, the precedent would become no less valid. Legally and logistically speaking, RIAA had little choice but to act when they did. [And no, I disagree with RIAA on many issues, but this is not one of them.]
As for the whole jupiter thing, you implied a strong cause-and-effect relationship between napster usage and CD purchasing a number of times. You have frequently said things like "Napster actually helps the sale of records". That is simply undemonstrated by that survey. What's more, you have refuted other arguments which assert that it is possible that Napster actually reduces purchases using this same survey. You were simply wrong.
As for the rest of this argument, it's gotten too long, too academic, and i'm bored. Perhaps later....
Well congrats. You're friends with a lot of warez d00dz. Unfortunately, this has obviously colored your view of humanity, or at least your view of Internet users. See the thing is, these days the two are getting more and more synonymous. Napster has over 20 million users these days, and chances are only a very very few of them are like your illustrious friends, willing to spend hours of their time working on entirely suboptimal solutions for avoiding paying for a CD. (i.e. downloading MP3s, converting them to.wav and recording on a CD-R. Gak! Talk about a humongous waste of time for a finished product barely more listenable than a tape!)
What you mean to say, of course, is that I am necessarily more ignorant because I'm less ignorant than you in these matters. Although I would never call these people my "friends", I have had enough experience with the internet and mp3s to know the score. While you, and others like you, were nay saying mp3s because you couldn't effectively obtain them, I realized long before that there was no reason it had to be this way. It was obvious to me long ago that the barrier to effective sharing could be lowered much much more. I even started developing systems much like napster out of pure intellectual curiosity [but lacked the time and the energy to commit to them] I was, and still am, willing to look at the issues, and break them down into their fundamental components. You failed to see it then.
Similarly, you fail to clearly see the threat of an unchecked napster today. You figure gee, well, my mp3s sound sort of scratchy, so it must be scratchy of necessity--lower quality than what I can buy. Your internet isn't fast enough...You don't have the devices...and so on.
I see the facts. Things like:
A) There is no reason why mp3s have to be lower quality than tape. In fact, it's been proven that with a little more attention to detail and a higher bitrate, even the experts have a very difficult time distinguishing mp3s from their CD source.
B) The strong correlation between high bandwidth and the attractiveness of mp3s. Despite the much-accepted multimillion user figure of napster, only a fraction of this country is in the position to take advantage of the service. Only some 1.5 million people in the US had broadband last year. Some connections are vastly better than others. Certainly not all are young/big media spenders.... So how can a reasonable person be expected to take news that a nationwide increase in record sales as proof that napster can't hurt sales? How can you ignore similarly high growth in other similar sectors of the economy? How can you ignore the fact that napster is very new to most users?
C) The growth of cheaper media and devices. Current mp3 players are expensive, but this won't always be the case. Prices are falling. When a user can fit 100 hours of high quality mp3s into something the size of a discman (i.e., the nomad something or other), why would they pine for CDs? Why even buy CDs if you're just going to convert them to mp3? Why not just visit napster instead?
D) If napster were given carte blanche to ride over IP, other similar services and modifications could be made. You complain of corrupted files? Well there is no reason why a parallel database of checksums of "perfect" mp3s couldn't be stored. You would never have to waste your time with bad mp3s. If the courts would clear the way for napster, they would clear the way for corporate interests to make these things a reality.
E) The hundreds of holes and incoherencies in the denials...
All these concerns feed off each other too. When broadband has sufficiently penetrated the US, higher quality mp3s will become more prevelent. When more users sign up, more mp3s will become available. When computers become more and more common, users will be less intimidated by these interfaces. If napster becomes common, the market for mp3s goes up. As the mp3 market grows, the prices of devices will come down. And so on and so on.
However, I don't believe the recording industry will allow that to happen. They will stop napster in court, in one way or another. Mark my words. Napster-like clones that are willing to defy the law, will lack the cash to pay for the servers. Foreign and pirate servers won't stand up to US courts either. Certainly a few renegades will stick around no matter what, but not with enough stability for the average user to assemble around--but easy enough for those willing to go to ends like mp3 users of yesteryear. Likewise, GNUTella and similar P2P arrangements are based on flawed concepts. They are too instable to withstand the stresses of a large network, which is necessary for widespread usage.
A few not so minor specific flaws in your statements:
You made the comparison to the warez scene and to the early MP3 scene, both of which you are apparently more familiar with than with Napster. First, let's go through the typical process by which a new game gets warezed....
You were refuting the ability of this model of distribution. The fact that it IS a problem and is highly inefficient only strengthens my argument. People can distribute large blocks of illicit data across the internet, through many generations, without the need to supplement them with additional copies.
Napster simply lubricates the entire process by a factor of 50. The situation might not be exactly analogous, but the key ingredients are the same. We have motive, because you say quality is so bad that you're effectively forced to buy a CD. Yet this can be solved by scofflaws, where, with a system like napster in place, they just need to provide an assuredly clean rip. That's ~17 dollars they're saving you with one fifth the effort of the warez kiddies. Would you not seek out high quality rips if it were available to you every time? You're telling me you don't see anyone around who'd be willing to do this? To hurt RIAA? Perhaps the K-Rad hax0rs may not be drawn to this, but there are always the self-righteous (maybe even yourself?)fools who'd think they're doing the world a favor. A democratic system/database of sorts could even do much of the work, providing a database of known high quality files that works passively without user interaction.
They are the type who will actually buy huge hard drives and work out the technicalities of hooking up real speakers to a computer (or converting MP3's to.wav and recording on a CD-R! God that's funny!) just so they can "save money" and be all b4d4ss
Sure, they were. But software has improved. Things have changed. Most common CD burning software provides automatic decoding into their software (gee you think that might be a response to broad demand??). And no, it's not all about a couple loosers saving money, ego, principle, or what have you. It's gotten to the point that those in the right situation don't have to be any of those things. Witness the likes of the eating club at princeton that I mentioned. It had a wideswath of people using it. Most are busy. Most have money. Many are women. Few are nerds. Few technically literate users. In short, none of them were jaurez pups. They used it because it's gotten that easy and convenient. I see no reason to believe that the rest of the CD buying population would be any different when, and if, the means reach them.
In any case, there is no good argument that fictional books are more socially redeeming than music...
First and foremost, the issue is what society thinks. You can argue intrinsic worth till you turn blue in the face, but you're not going to prove it to society unless you can back it up with tangibles. When you send kids to the library, they learn to read. When they learn to read and write, their brains develop. The better they can read, the better they can compete in school. Reading improves writing, which improves the ability to handle complex logic. All of these things have definite economic benefits for society.
In fact, one might even argue that, even if libraries were to have some nominally negative impact on the percentage of book sales, a more classically educated public is more economically fit and better able to compete globally. A strong economy would lead to a larger market in all likelihood.
Unfortunately, your reading comprehension is apparently not so good. How, pray tell, do you conclude that Jupiter "obviously did not do a before and after" study when one of the factors they controlled for was "existing spending level"??? When the press release specifically said on numerous occasions that Napster users had "increased" spending levels rather than "greater" or "larger" or "higher" spending levels?? (For the English-challenged "increase" is a verb meaning to become greater or larger; it explicitly implies a period of time and a before-and-after comparison.) And for crying out loud, why on earth would a firm as respected as Jupiter release a study which made the horrifically obvious error of only measuring whether Napster users (i.e. music fans) buy more music than non-Napster users (non-music fans)? And by the way, in case you have never taken a statistics course, it is dreadfully easy to find a random selection of people and to measure their before/after music buying. One simple method for doing so:
1) Call random people on the phone (all telephone-based poll studies are seeded with randomly generated telephone numbers, checked only to make sure they are valid numbers).
2) Ask the person answering if they have ever used Napster. If no, thank them for their time and call someone else.
3) If yes, ask them a variety of questions on their demographic information/Napster using habits/music buying habits. For example, "how many CD's a month did you buy before you started using Napster?" and, "how many CD's a month have you bought since you started using Napster?"
4) Compile and realize that Napster use causes a 45% increase in CD buying over before the same person used Napster.
Not even the press release claimed Napster causes an increase in purchases, that is entirely your imagination. If that is what they meant, they would have said so. Instead, they said "Napster Users Are 45 Percent More Likely to Increase Music Spending". That is not cause and effect, that is correlation. What little description they excludes your assertion, and points strongly to a mere correlation. It was, however, a little deceptive. Much like saying that there is a strong relationship between icecream consumption and drowning, while failing to mention that both are done almost exclusively during the summer.
As I mentioned earlier, Jupiter's options were limited. Although it is true, that they can make some random phone calls, I ask you to consider some of the difficulties. First, unlike with most of these surveys, the market penetration is low--even lower if you only count regular usage. Second, the majority of the users are quite young, and less available than others. (i.e., parents probably dont know what their kids do exactly online, let alone when they want to purchase the next N'Sync CD) Let's imagine they want a sample of, say 2k, napster users. If you assume that less than 1% of the people who answer their phones are napster users, this means they've got to call roughly 20k people. Then you've got to find willing participants. Pad that again. That costs more money than you would imagine. How many are going to remember when they started using napster? How many remember their purchases before and after? Pad it again...you could be looking at tens of thousands of calls.
Furthermore, whoever said the user is likely to be candid over the phone? Many people will lie about such issues. Many would also LIKE to believe they'd buy more--it is, after all, the partyline. Not so terribly different from what you'd get on IRC.
Jupiter did not lie (based on the available facts, though they do depend on the internet's success....mmmm...motive). They made a weak statement sound a little stronger than it actually is, perhaps taking a few less intellectually prepared people in unintentionally. The press release is trying to imply that, with their data, napster users are still more willing than the rest of the population to buy RIAA's music [though they do conclude napster does not spell the end for RIAA, that is not supported]. Though I can argue with even that conclusion, it is not necessary because it is really quite meaningless. The only thing fact that might be contested on its face is that income, wealth, age, etc. were not they deciding factor in the increases in the their survey. That sounds pretty reasonable to me, but I've yet to hear of a litmus test for music lovers, other than their historic purchases. You can take two people of the exact same economic class, age, race, etc., and the odds are that one of them is going to like music significantly more than the other. Nor would it be terribly suprising if that one person also tended to use napster....
My point is that GNUtella has about as chance of succeeding as a massive recursive kegger. GNUtella, if you were not aware, handles all queries and query replies recursively.
I guess the obvious conclusion is that people will not give away, only take from free sources. But then how do you explain napster?
GNUtella has failings that are far more critical then lack of sharing users. However, there are a few key differences with sharing. First, napster has enjoyed a wealth of college students and other high bandwidth users who otherwise do not use the internet. Because they hardly use the internet, they do not notice their bandwidth decaying as much as GNUtella users--who are mostly frequent internet users. Second, GNUtella, unlike napster, closes when the user thinks he closes it. These two factor combined have created an environment on GNUtella where THOSE few users who do opt to share, get hit with more traffic than they would on napster. Thus they are further discouraged from sharing.
The main flaw with GNUtella, as I see it, is its recursive design. Though few people seem willing to bring this point up, it simply CANNOT scale reasonably. It simply could never support napster's load, or even a fraction thereof.
In short, GNUtella is reasonably acceptable for little splinters of "networks". I could see loose knit warez groups/associatons of, say, 50-200 users forming around it. However, this kind of instability and decentralization does not lend itself to use by the vast majority of people who are technically inept.
Even though I routinly hear that the quality of music is garbage ("it's all brittany spears and crap like that") I've found a wider range of music there than any other place I've ever been. From The Why Store to Bach and plenty of it.
Compared to other sites on the internet, this may be true, but I've found tons of stuff impossible to find on napster--even stuff that I could buy at any major CD chain.
Where has this been proven? Can you show me some evidence??
It's been empirically proven. The industry is healthy, despite the existence numerous of libraries.
The fact is that libraries would continue to enjoy wide public support even if they were shown to hurt book sales, because they provide an undeniable public benefit, just as Napster does.
This is not a popularity contest. The issue is public interest, not just the immediate whims of the public. Our nation was founded on the principles of Federalism for a reason [not to mention law]...
You are being awefully presumptious to assert that you know the public's desires. The mere fact that you feel music and books are on intellectual par does not make it so. Nor do you know how the public would respond to evidence of destruction of the music industry.
In fact much more can be said: Napster actually helps the sale of records.
Excuse me, but I'm an indepedent thinker. It may be perfectly acceptable for you to swallow what you are fed whole, but I have serious doubts. I can't take this press release at face value. Statistics are very easy to manipulate and are easily skewed. What's more, the conclusion can be made sound very good, while actually remaining irrelevant or without any base in the results.
I don't see how they could gather a reliable sample. Napster is essentially anonymous, it would be virtually impossible to get a truely random sample here. They obviously did not do a before and after, and most likely it was not random in the least. The biggest hint we get is:
"But when we conducted our consumer survey, controlled for key music purchasing factors-such as existing spending level, age, income, gender, and online tenure-we still found that Napster usage is one of the strongest determinants of increased music buying." If you ever studied statistics, you would know this does not mean anything like: Those who start using napster, start buying more music. Quite the contrary, it means: Those who use napster, are more likely to buy music. In other words, Jupiter looked at a certain population based on the above controls, and determined that those who used napster were 45% more likely to buy CDs than those who appeared the same based on those criteria and did not use the service. The problem with this statistic is that it does not tell you whether or not those same music lovers in the selected populations would be more inclined to use napster and would be self-selecting in the survey. It does not deny the possibility that those users DECREASED their CD purchases since they started using napster
Until I see proof to the contrary, I will continue to assert that it is far more likely that these regular napster users have actually decreased their purchasing habits, and thus hurt industry. I'm far from ignorant here. Being one of the original #mp3 ops on undernet [not to mention efnet, etc.], I've been using mp3s for at least 5 years now. I actually bumped into napster a few times myself, and saw the service, and many before it grow. I know many regular users who have, in fact, essentially stopped purchasing CDs. These users are something of a bellwether; having used the internet for longer, having broadband before others, owning CDRs, etc. While they're not fully representive of the population, they are enjoying today [and have been for quite awhile] a fraction of the goodies that much of the population does not yet enjoy, but will soon.
And in any case, despite what you may believe, the average Napster user is *not* a college student.
Not that it is terribly relevent, but do you have any evidence to back that claim up? Or is that first hand experience? In any case, napster is _very_ commonly used at most universities, at least those with decent internet connections. In fact, it is used as a replacement at some. For instance, at atleast one eating club at Princeton [which I will not name] with which i'm familiar, the members actually purchased a CD-R with the sole intention of burning mp3s into audio CDs. Many students used this regularly, and most told me they wouldn't buy a CD so long as they could burn what they needed.
Oh come on. For one thing, there are something like 100 different (unconnected) Napster servers, and most users are only logged on a small fraction of the time, so in any real world situation hundreds of source copies are necessary to cause any particular song to be available on Napster even remotely reliably. But this is all besides the point. Are you honestly telling me that only 1 (or very few) of Napster's 20 million users went out and bought, eg. the new N'Sync CD which sold 2.4 million copies in its first week? Obviously not. This is totally, patently absurd and has nothing to do with whatever real effect Napster has on CD sales.
Obviously you lack experience with the internet and the vast quantities of warez (pirated software) available to those who know how to get it. If you had, you'd know that the warez groups are able to distribute warez out to thousands, and millions, of people with just one copy, in a compressed format, such that if even one byte is corrupt, the entire package is bad. Similar systems could easily be setup within napster, and in fact, there were atleast such groups when I used mp3s more regularly. They took responsibility for ensuring a clean rip and a decent encoding, not to mention distribution [which is largely moot now] With decreased file size sensitivity, these groups could essentially gaurantee very high quality mp3s.
In case you are not aware, these servers are not that seperate. Let me give you a hypothetical situation. I go to the store, and buy the latest N'Sync CD the second it hits shelves. [actually, which reminds, these groups would actually obtain the software/songs before they hit the shelves]. It takes me about 30 minutes to rip and encode them, and then I make them available to napster. At that very instant, 100 teenie boppers are querying for the latest and greatest songs, they get a hit. I can support quite a few downloads, with a software max of 10 concurrent users. So within, say, 20 minutes, each of those 10 users now has the entire album. Another 10 copy from each of those 10 and so on. Someone signs on, and signs back on, grabs a new server, and suddenly a new server has the mp3s. It doesn't take a degree in mathematics to figure out that napster could easily be overrun the mp3s which I ripped, before stores on the west coast are even open!
Theoretically and empirically, all the ingredients are there for it. Combine this with the above mentioned "mp3 group", and it could happen with reliability [i.e., check summing schemes] What's more, these groups can get and distribute the songs before others can even buy them, they don't even half to wait....but people do anyways. I encourage you to look at the warez groups, it may give you a little insight here.
Well now you've really made an idiot of yourself. Suffice it to say that no one with any appreciation of art or culture--least of all writers of important literature--would ever claim inherent superiority for any one particular medium of art over all others. In fact, most knowledgable people would argue that particular pieces of music can be every bit as expressive, enriching, artistic and important as the greatest works of literature, much less the trashy romance novel drivel which makes up the plurality of check outs at the typical public library. Nevermind Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms (although you can certainly find not only their works but those of almost every classical composer of note on Napster); nevermind even the great impact of jazz, argued by many to be the most important artistic movement of the 20th Century. There are plenty of challenging, important, "mind enriching" works of art to be found even amongst today's pop music. Any attempt to compare the artistic worth of the typical piece of fiction on the New York Times Bestseller List to, just to take a very successful and rather mainstream pop album, Radiohead's masterful Ok Computer, is laughable. For crying out loud, look at that list! It's all romance novels and police thrillers, with some battle-the-Antichrist born-again lit thrown for variety (#11). You have to go all the way to #16 (off the official list) to even find an important author. And this is without taking into account the NYT's recently spun-off Harry Potter Bestseller List.
Books build on each other and on the mind in a way that music does not [part of the reason why libraries are key]. One can go to a library, and providing they have enough diligence, teach themselves hundreds of usefull things--even more than you think you know. The reader can improve themselves in ways that society can grasp and appreciate.
Music may be marvelous, but it is simply not interchangable with the many forms of books. Society has long placed a preference on reading, and has regarded music as a form of entertainment. Consider, for a moment, what portion of your curiculuum has been dedicated to books versus music. Most likely, your answer is something around 1/40th. If you were told that your kids weren't going to read anymore, but would listen to music in class instead, how would you react? You know damn well how you would react...It's a question of priorities, just one more reason why you can't quite make that analogy.
Just to clarify, When I defend IP, I am not defending the industry at all. Far from it. The industry may well be thorougly flawed and corrupt, but those flaws are not an integral feature of intellectual property. Rather, while it is true that the nature of the industry can only exist in an IP-rich environment, these big record houses exist of a certain necessity [not that it justifies or necessitates all of their behavior]. This is an important point that elludes many people. The fact that artists still sign with these major labels today only bolsters my argument. Recording, promoting, marketing, getting spots on the radio, etc. are expensive [even though physical distribution is less and less of a concern today]. Artists sign because they want need and want these things, they can't do it themselves or through other alternatives.
Napster simply does nothing to address these problems. Napster pokes holes in IP, but does not offer a credible alternative in its place. I say, let us not flush the baby out with the bathwater. The big six may be cruel to the artist, but they're still an option. No one is making them sign. By breaking IP, not only do you reduce the "big six" option, but you break other more palatable alternatives that rely on IP.
In essense, I believe we should take reasonable measures to protect IP (i.e., make sure napster is kept in check)--and let the rest of the chips fall where they may. If IP is kept intact, I think it is far more likely a capitalistic evolution of sorts will happen with the dinosuars aka the "big six." Their pricing structures, which have long revolved too much around physical distribution, will fall--prices will come down a couple dollars--maybe even as much as half. Accompanying the fall of physical distribution, will be an increased number of competitors, which will mean more competition in the music industry (a la mp3.com) and better deals for the artist. However, I think these marketing issues will long remain. You may see a few grassroots style bands pop up, but by and large, those artists which wish to go Platinum will sign with someone who can effectively market. Those who already have tons of money, might be able to pay for themselves. But for the vast majority of up and coming artists, that means someone will essentially make an investment in them--someone will take the lions' share of the risk. Someone will still be very rich, there will still be some grumbling....but the situation will have improved.
PS: I don't regard monopolies to be a flaw in capitalism, anymore than I regard, say, assholes a flaw of freedom. Sh*t happens, but that doesn't mean people, or the government, should never intervene.
Library's have been proven not to be a great threat to the sale of books. The same cannot be said, that napster will not hurt the sale of records. Though I believe you know full well the dangers napster offers, I'll enumerate a few key differences.
When a library makes a book available, they are generating at least one sale and that single book can only be used by one person concurrently. Given the purchasing and acquisition patterns of most library, this means that books in high demand (i.e., brand new best sellers) are scarce, and most times even unavailable. The library either purchases more books, or the patrons run out to the book store and buy a couple copies. Furthermore, except for classic and other highly reguarded books, most publishers make their sales off of these same new books--libraries are hardly able to squelsh this. In fact, most publishers will stop printing most books after a short while. Unless the demand is high, it simply doens't make economic sense for the publisher keep printing it--nor does it make sense for them to print large quantities and store them. In essence, libraries only become a deciding factor at the end, where most publishers aren't selling anyways. Libraries serve a clear and well known public function (not just one of pure entertainment) by acting as a repository for these books, so they don't simply fall out of print and away from people's eyes.
The gist of it is:
Cost for publishers: Low.
Benefit for society: High.
Are you honestly going to tell me the same applies to napster? Are you going to ignore the fact that napster is really much the opposite [despite the denials of some individuals]? Napster traffics the most popular songs in almost instantly, and theoretically, only one purchase needs to be made for this to happen! Yet when you search for truely rare songs, it has been my experience that they're NOT there. Something like 90% of the mp3s listed on there are redundant--only the most recent and currently popular songs. And while you may try to refute that sales will actually be hurt, that is unproven, and highly doubtfull. As that article in the Atlantic Monthly pointed out, CD sales around college campuses were down [though not in huge numbers], while national sales were up. This fact alone is cause for concern, or at least question. Combine this with the growth of the internet, increased publicity for napster, spreading of broadband, and other such factors, and you have a stark picture for the industry. And for all these possible [though I think they're highly likely, if napster, et. al, goes unchallenged] costs, what are the benefits? That people get to listen to music free? You're going to have a hard time arguing that music enriches the mind to the same extent that a good book does, especially when it's pop music!
The gist here:
Record industry cost: High
Benefit for society: Low
And under the current system, the artists actually wind up paying for it! If you read about the current system, the record company will advance the musicians money against their royalties to produce, promote, and market the album. This means that for the most part the musicians don't actually receive any royalties unless the album sells at least a million copies. If it doesn't, the musicians wind up in debt to the record company. It's basically like share cropping, where the system is stacked so that it's almost impossible to break away from one company.
I never claimed the record industry is fair, or even ethical. What people are claiming would be essentially like my pointing out that PennDOT (PA's Dept. of Transportation) is corrupt and takes too much money, and therefore we no longer need a department of transportation. Or rather, not only is PennDOT corrupt, but there is also a new machine out which means a certain type of worker is no longer needed...So what i'm saying is, yeah, I believe that many artists have it quite rough and that there is corruption in the industry, but a) I'm not so convinced there is a vastly better alternative b) Almost everyone is ignoring some basic functions they perform.
In any case, it's dubious that promotions and marketing are really an essential part of the process, or that they can't be solved by going outside the traditional music industry approach. If you don't think that Napster is changing the promotions and marketing aspect of things, you really need to pay more attention.
You know, maybe it is somewhat dubious. But there has been little honest discussion of all the other issues, just that physical production has gone from 2 to 0 dollars, and that there are a bunch of rotten eggs. And if you can't discuss the problem honestly and in detail, you're never going to realize an effective solution.
Napster is in my opinion, one of the many flawed "solutions" [even though that's not what Napster ever intended it to be, they even said so themselves] There is simply no way for an artist to promote themselves on napster! None. The only way an artist finds his way onto a new users harddrive, is if the artists' song happens to end up on the users query results, and if that user chooses to download it and then listen to it. And even then, even if the user enjoys the music, there is no clear path back to the artist. How is this artist supposed to make money? Where is the supposed "tip jar" even? Who promotes them? Who _makes_ people listen to them? Who filters out all the crap garage bands and what not?...These questions, and many others, go unanswered by napster and their advocates.
Whether or not you admit it, the fact is that most Artists still choose to go the major label route. Not just 10 years ago, not just last year, but today, despite the presense of all these theoretically marvelous alternative systems. (i.e.., napster (a joke), mp3.com (some potential), etc.). I, for one, don't believe the artists are totally stupid. They know the situation going in (that they'll get "shafted"), but they also obviously know that they _need_ the labels to be successfull. If anything is obvious, it is that the label perform a function beyond mere production of the physical media.
This function that the labels perform is one of marketing and distribution (not just in the sense that it's economical, but in the sense that it puts it in front of the right eyes). To ignore that, and act as if a change in physical production means they've necessarily outlived their usefullness is laughable. Before these online methods, the production costs were in the range of 2 dollars, yet they sell to the end user for, say, 15 dollars. That still leaves 13 dollars of value added going to various parties. There is nothing necessarily obvious in that the mere elimination of 2 of 15 dollars, means value added should hit 0.
Now you can make up all the warm and fuzzy ideas you want, but until you come up with a better alternative that up-and-coming artists actually sign on (and enjoy success with), it's hardly realistic to say napster and company are an acceptable alternative. Only through this proof, will you make it demonstrably clear that the major labels have outlived their usefullness. Even then, that doesn't mean the merit of IP is injured in the least, rather that the industry was too attached to the physical model of distribution--not necessarily to IP. More than likely, if anything succeeds, it will be something like mp3.com, not napster, which revolves substantially around IP.
Tune in, buddy. You're taking my arguement all wrong. I'm not saying that creators should not be rewarded for their work. What I'm saying is this: when technology makes it such that the cost of (re)production drops to zero AND production facilities are decentralized (both are important), the current model no longer makes sense. I am saying that this has happened to the music industry, will shortly happen to other "culture industries", and will eventually happen to all industries if we don't bury ourselves in grey goo in the process of getting there.
Your initial comment was none too clear. However, despite this my response still seems largely pertinent to your belief, as you have reiterated it here. Since you seem to be basing your argument around the supposed irrelevance of capitalism in the music industry, it is not at all unreasonable for me to poke holes in it. The fact that the digital revolution (not napster, et. al) has brought the per unit production cost of an album from about ~2 dollars to 0 dollars is largely irrelevant when the total cost of the CD is 5-10 times more. Why should anyone believe that now because the costs are theoretically 0 (a 2 dollar reduction), capitalism should no longer exist in that industry? This is essentially what you are demanding, but the most one might reasonably expect is a 2 dollar reduction in the end cost. Irregardless of where you personally attribute the remaining ~12 dollars, it does not necessarily follow that the rest of the system costs are irrelevant.
When the means of (re)production are such that the moderating element is no longer controllable (i.e. you don't need a CD to listen to music, or, with nanotech, you don't need a fab to make a chip), then the system falls apart. You can try to impose artificial (i.e. legal) controls to replace the former natural ones, but this is not a good idea. You will have to pass so many laws, and make them so restrictive, that personal freedom and liberty will be sacrificed in an attempt to preserve the old model. The artist/creator/etc still needs to be compensated, but the model for that compensation is going to have to change. I don't know what the new model should be, but I do know that the old one won't work anymore.
This is really a seperate argument and it has little to do with production costs. IP has from the beginning been held by force of government. It is not as if napster or digital media has suddenly changed this.The only new question here is the extent of the means and the means which government should take to enforce it. This question is not obvious though and really comes down to a bunch of judgement calls.
Taking my arguement into the future, to the nanotech world: now it costs nothing to produce anything, and the current model makes NO sense at all. A creator has to make a living, you say. In ghod's name, WHY ??!? If all the necessities of life are free for the making, what use is money? Yes, the creator will be paid, but it won't be in cash or in real goods. It will be in the respect and admiration of his/her peers. Just like free software. Just think: no one would have to hold down a job that they hate, and every little bit of original work that was done would be a labor of love. Sounds like a pretty cool world to me.
Perhaps I'm not quite the optimist you are, but I do not see the realization of nanotechnology (to any extent) as resulting in the complete liberation of man. Sure, you lay it out as a hypothetical situation, but I question the very premise which you base it off of. Your production costs may be nil (and more likely only nil on certain tasks), but you still need brains. That means humans pushing paper. Engineers. Businessmen, etc. So long as there is a need for man, there will be a need for money, which really means a need for capitalism. It is just that simple.
2) Personal motivation. A great many projects (software and otherwise) are undertaken just because they are fun, because some people enjoy stretching their minds and their abilities. However, I'm guessing that most people in our culture (including you, FallLine), given the option, would plant in front of the TV and never move again. That's a problem, because all the technology in the world is not going to save us from death by societal enuii. This is a tough one, and anyone who has any thoughts about it, please speak up!
Did it ever occur to you that this unwillingness to work may be present in everyone? In some more than others, sure... Having been a part of a number of startup companies, and seeing innovation first hand, I can tell you that there is a hell of a lot more to it than the mere desire to "stretch" your brain. Sometimes it is necessary to really work yourself and others hard,...I find it hard to believe that there will be a significant population that will organize around the mere desire to "stretch." Sure, you may see some academic-type efforts, so long as it doesn't involve too much blood, sweat, and tears....
The internet is not some revolutionary force that makes innovation and creation irrelevant. It hasn't made the costs of innovation and creation any cheaper. Sure, there are some areas where there have been some cost reductions in production and distribution due to digital distribution [though those savings have NOTHING to do with the underground heros like napster, 2600, etc.] These costs, however, have been ALWAYS been a relatively small portion of the price. Depending on the product at hand, you may be expecting a ~10% price reduction. None of that, however, cuts away at the burden of the inventor/creator/artist/innovator. Their resources are still every bit as scarce. Artists only have so many hours in their day. Authors still need to be paid. Businessmen still only have so much cash at their disposal, and are only willing to tolerate so much risk. End users only have so much patience for listening to garbage, before the signal to noise ratio becomes unacceptable.
The basic guiding principle behind IP is every bit as valid today as it was yesterday. The relationship between risk and reward did not just evaporate. Just as Henry Ford's many innovations could have been stolen so many years ago with relative ease, software and music can be pirated today. Whether the margins are 2% of 90% is irrelevant, there is still a need to protect them. What you are effectively paying for is for future works and innovation, NOT for that particular product. So when you get on GNUtella and pirate software, it may seem as if you can download infinite copies and not "hurt" the artist , but you are doing nothing to encourage that next round of production.
It is still in society's interest to give legal protection to IP, even more so in many ways. The type of R&D we see today tends to be far far more capital intensive, and most of these products have very low production costs, provided they're produced on sufficient scale. It is ironic that you point to nanotechnology especially. Do you think people just develop these things because they want to? Is that it? What about the millions that have been spent on it already to create just one simple machine? What about new ones? You think they engineer themselves too? Get real.
The only shift napster represents is the possibility of piracy en masse. It is not as if Napster solved some nagging problem of distribution or manufacturing. The fact is that the cost structure of other digital/online methods was just as good, and maybe even better, than napster long before napster came out. Furthermore, it is hard to even make the argument for the advent of digital/online distribution itself. The very notion of intellectual property is itself testament to the fact that physical rarity is NOT the issue. Nor is it as if even the record industry has been focused around these physical costs, because they've never been that much of a component. We're talking about 1 to 2 dollars of a 15+ dollar sale.
The real costs are in promotions, marketing, and productions. Napster does absolutely nothing to address these concerns. They remain an issue for the artist. The fact is, fair or unfair, the vast majority of artists still choose to sign with these labels because they still need the functions of promotion, not because someone is holding a gun to their head. Napster has done absolutely zilche in the long run, other than feed a certain part of society's immediate desires, which ultimately may have a secondary effect on the long term outlook of the industry.
That is a non sequitur. Innovating and meeting already "met" needs are not mutually exclusive. i.e., The operating system need is "met", yet there is much room for improvement. Linux has done very little innovative. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but rather I am pointing out that Open Source simply can't trumpet innovation as one of its strengths with a straight face. Nor can it hide behind your excuse. It does not necessarily follow that just because innovation has been lagging, that once X happens, innovation will occur. There is no obvious basis for that, and you certainly do not present an argument for it.
Innovation is much much more than mere thought, and the desire, to create something new. It generally involves a certain amount of blood, sweat, and tears. No open source project has demonstrated this ability in my opinion. The fact that most of these "succesfull" Open Source projects are either relatively trivial, simple, or following someone elses lead does not make for a good counterexample for Open Source's ability. What's more, beyond the mere the lack of empirical examples of this capacity for exertion, I see fundamental problems with Open Source development as it is popularly envisioned and fleshed out. i.e., the notion that 100 people contributing part time is better than, say, 10 working full time, or the notion that 1 million people who can "fork" and work in many different...even larger teams.. can necessarily achieve the same product or better product as a single team around one leader and one vision....
Yes, I think there will be times when Open Source can offer unique value to this world that propietary software cannot. But that is different from the bulk of proprietary software today. I think the _real_ growth of Open Source will be more a process of addition, of creating new areas for software, than a replacement of much propreitary software. I view Open source software like Perl as being something special...Not in that it can go head to head with the major propietary languages/compilers, but rather in its ends and means. It can do a lot of really cool stuff with its modules and what not, in a way that the current propreitary model does not and cannot....
I agree 100%. What seem people can't handle is that this form of "speech" does erode the rights of copyright holder. In essence, the copyright allows the holder to (mostly) assert the terms and conditions of usage, so that they may profit as they see fit. DeCSS's sole purpose is to poke a hole in those terms and conditions. Whether or not the DeCSS advocates agree with the particular terms is a totally different issue and is largely irrelevant. The court just determined that these means are not legal, and the using the "speech" argument as a cover for going around the backway is not sufficient. That's the law, and they obviously have very little understanding of it.
Well I knew it was a mistake to break my rule about the futility of political discussions on/. (well, anything more political than RDRAM vs. DDR), but I'll bite
Yes, I think political discussions are generally futile too. However, I think there is some merit to offering an opposing view on slashdot since so little of it is voiced. If "they" still want to assert Clinton's responsibility for the economy, they must atleast make some attempt to justify it. I will not them go unchallenged (atleast when I have the time and the will).
It may not be positive credit given to Clinton for creating the new economy, but I think if you listen carefully to all the Democrats' speeches, most of them aren't claiming positive credit anyways. (If they are, well, of course they're wrong; on the other hand, it's a political convention for crying out loud, of course they're going to exaggerate.)
Clinton and Gore have taken credit directly and indirectly for the success in a number of speaches. Many slashdot readers fall into this trap, mostly those with no exposure to economics.
The problem here is that the Congress will definitely be Republican for the next 2 and almost certainly 4 years. That means that if Gore is elected, we'll get a sensible compromise budget which will probably be what's needed to continue our current prosperity, and that if Bush is elected he'll be free of any meaningful checks-and-balances to push through whatever old economic plan he sees fit. Just to refresh your memory, he is currently promising to push through a plan which some very well respected economists (Krugman) think will derail the economy.
Though I lean more into the Republican camp, I do not believe Bush's proposed budget and tax policies are the best by any means. I think they are largely unnecessary and a tad bit risky. However, contrary to what Al Gore and company claim, Bush is no radical. Neither his proposals, nor his advisors, are going to rock the boat. Especially after they've been run through Congress. When compared with Gore's romance of the various unions, I think he's actually safer in the long run. Gore, while moderate in his campaign, is far more of a committed left winger than Clinton ever was.
I would wager that I know a good deal more about the academic establishment than you. (Note email address.) While parts of it are indeed prone to being absurdly liberal (e.g. your aforementioned Women's Studies), Economics is not one of those parts. Despite the popular notion that all of academia is overrun by Marxists and Feminists, it turns out that most fields and departments are remarkably well insulated from each other. While there are plenty of wacko Marxist and Feminist professors around on leading university campuses, I assure you none of them are in the Economics department, and that, besides, they almost all know quite a lot about what they're talking about.
I wouldn't be so sure of yourself. I've been through business school, and i know the top schools and below quite well. Also having worked in industry, that is not all I know...I have some perspective here. But enough penis comparisons.
You are right, in that business school tends to be more conservative than some other areas, but to say they're isolated from it is foolish. Sure, you may not see quite so many radical leftists, but most are still solidly democratic. Harvard is certainly no different, in fact, it's "worse" than many.
As for your opinion that they know what they're talking about: Says who? Having been through the system and knowing hundreds of others who have too, I'm singularly unimpressed. I've come the conclusion that the ability to impress other academics is not necessarily indicative of anything other than the ability to impress other academics. I've been through one of the best business school programs in the country, and I don't pretend for a minute that I know even one half as much as some of the people I work with on a daily basis....and since you brought it up: If I had to choose a policy based on its proponents (especially where that policy doesn't singularly benefit the proponents), I would choose business owners. Unlike academics, they are measured far more on results and through a process of attrition, rather than on the ability to impress others, because that's really the only measure in the more theoretical areas of academia.
You bring up the fact that successful business owners tend to be more conservative than respected economists. This, of course, is exactly the point: a "liberal" philosophy turns out to be quite well-suited for an economist, whose job is to ensure the fiscal well being of an entire society. Meanwhile, a conservative philosophy is quite appropriate for a business-owner, whose your job is to ensure the continued fiscal well-being of himself.
You confuse ends and means. There is nothing in the practical or the theoretical definition of conservative or liberal that defines one as being anymore geared towards the greater interests of society than the other. Thus it is totally ridiculous to claim liberalism is consequently necessarily better suited.
Guess which philosophy is better suited for the government?
On definition alone, neither left nor right is better. It is the particular policies by which one should make that determination.
I disagree. The Gimp, though quite neat for something free, is not nearly as complete as photoshop...and photoshop isn't quite of the same complexity of a full featured RDBMS. Apache is neat, but look at what it needs to do. Sure it's fast and effecient, but it doesn't have that critical mass of complexity. Linux? Not terribly impressive. Easily modularized. Not exactly innovative--it's been following everyone else's lead....in fact, All of these projects have been pretty much.
What about Mozilla? Virtually stagnant.
Whether or not you agree, I recognize a significant difference between these types of projects and truely innovative and complex ones. While I don't refute the unique value of Open Source in some instances, I know it falls short in many others. For that argument though, I'll let time tell. Don't say I didn't warning you...2..3..years from now, Open source will largely be in the same place it is now, commercial/propietary software will be alive and well.
Did the Clinton-Gore administration create this miracle? Of course not.
In his own words. The most he gives Clinton credit for is not TAKING any wild actions, and that's just a maybe. What's more, he's judging a restrained Clinton's actions (by the republican congress) against the theoretical outcomes of proposed actions. What's more, he is a liberal, and there is a thing called wishfull thinking. While I don't think he's going to "lie", his editorial conjecture isn't so tightly bound. Furthermore, for every one of him, there are a couple more who say nay....I'd hardly say this goes in Clinton's favor.
(Side note: ever wonder why most respected economists are liberal?? Not because they know what they're talking about! Obviously not that!!)
Ever wonder why Women's studies majors are liberals? Not because they know what they're talking about!...You do know that virtually the entire academic establishment is liberal, right? This wasn't true 50+ years ago, in fact, it was pretty much the opposite....Because they knew what they were talking about? And, for that matter, did you ever wonder why virtually everyone who has ever run a successful business (especially entreprenuers) is quite conservative? It's not just about money either, look at Hollywood, lottery winners, trial lawyers, etc. I'd actually argue here that's because they do know what they're talking about, a bit more atleast. Academia does very little weeding, while business is a far more a process of attrition....
Uh, no, learn how to count. Tell me, if the only people who vote for republicans have 6+ figures, why is it that the recent republican platform is targeting everything but? They have the money and the votes (according to you?), why dillute that? You're misguided.
Slashdot Mirror
MS has made plenty of mistakes, but one in particular was when MS made its first big step.... Gates tried to sell IBM the rights to DOS to IBM more than a couple times. Fortunately, for Gates, IBM refused. If IBM hadn't, the odds are that MS would be nothing but a memory.
Sure, they agree to take risk. On the other hand, this does not excuse management [founders] from any and all responsibility to the investor. Trust is key to any computation of risk, on the upside or the downside. When management shirks this trust, they deserve to be fired. This is especially true in privately held companies, where there is typically a great deal more interpersonal trust than in your average publically held company. I've been involved with a number of successfull companies where the investments were based heavily on personal trust of the founder/president/CEO. [i.e., the investor says to himself/herself, I don't know this technology/industry all that well, but I trust you to give it to me like it is. If you say risk/reward looks like A, it is A. And I know this is not just a lark, etc...]
Perhaps. Perhaps not. You can't make this conclusion soley on the fact that the investor still has an equity position in the company. For instance, the investor could be ignorant that the founder is treating it as a lark, or putting personal goals before the investors'. I've seen it before.
I think that's a terribly broad statement. Not all investors in privately held companies have a seat on the board, or anything close to it. Whether or not you think they're intelligent or rational, doesn't absolve the founder of responsibility.
Believe me, I know not all investors are the same. Many times even the investors' have different objectives. And I agree that short term versus long term is an issue worthy of consideration. However, there are issues that transcend either...
...The gist of all of this is that the role of the founder(s) shouldn't be reduced down to self-gratification. There is so much more to the job than that. Since I've witnessed abuse on both sides [i.e., founder/management versus shareholders], I take some offense to that attitude.
Heh, yes. I made a typo, and didn't terminate bold after 'all'. ;)
But that doesn't mean the company doesn't have obligations to the shareholder. There is a world of difference between giving up control and betraying shareholder trust.
I'd like to remind you that companies are also made up of investors. Though I don't know google's exact details, I'm sure they didn't throw in all that capital which they depend on. Investors, be they VCs or what you have, expect high returns, else they will not stomach such risk in the future. In other words, merely making the founders "happy" is not sufficient for its existence; the founders must also continue to please investors, or they would not [in all likelyhood] be in the position where they are now.
Likewise, I disagree with you. I am a firm believer in intellectual property; in my view, napster doesn't make it any less valid. My care is not so much for the personas behind RIAA, as it is a realization that this is an assault on the record houses very function, that of promoting certain music. I find it quite ironic when napster's advocates claim piracy is about freedom, when it robs the artist of choice. By making it [potentially] impossible for RIAA to profit, you also rob the artist of the choice to sign with them [even if you are theoretically in favor of reimbursing the artist through other means]. Likewise, you also rob society of the opportunity to hear music in this fashion.
;)
None of this is to say that I don't believe in open markets. If Napster [or any other entity] wants to distribute "free" [or alternatively distributed/promoted/recorded] music, and thereby destroy RIAA I have no problem with that. I just take issue when people claim that reducing avenues of choice is not a problem because they [wildy] presume the alternatives (i.e., napster, mp3.com, etc) are better. It is a fundamentally arrogant position to assume that you can out think the function of these markets [and yes, I know many people will hastily add comments about regulating monopolies. But that is a different creature in my opinion, as we're talking about a specific entity judged by law to be against the common good, not an idea, not a way, and not by individuals thinking of themselves alone], especially if they are not terribly familiar with the key issues of popular artists [i.e., promotion]. In other words, let the friggen markets decide.
In any case, I hope I've made myself clear. I'm not just targeting you. Though I did find that "addy" comment a little lame, I hardly found it earth shattering, or even personally offensive. Because such comments say more about the speaker than the reader, I hardly had any reason to jump all over you for that [particularly if you knew my background]. The reason I spoke up was because I objected to your: a) position [and to the many people who blindly agree--I think it needed a voice of reason] b) premises c) "facts" d) your general tone, to a much lesser degree. I believe a "news" page needs to hear honest to God intellectual discussion, not just a stream of invective, one sided stats/figures, and loose analogies.
I bear no grudges [well...rarely...I avoid them as much as possible]. Have a good weekend. Bye
This argument is becoming absurdly academic, so I will not spend anymore time on it. However, I'd like to remind you that you can't merely ignore scale on these issues--the math is terribly important. Due to the nominal scale and virtue of libraries, the potential for inflicting harm on the publishers is low, thus society can still benefit on the aggregate. The same cannot be said for napster. Napster knows no such physical tethers. Napster's potential to inflict harm on the industry, and consequently society, is great. In other words, if you believe that napster will destroy the industry, and you believe industry is necessary for bringing music to the people, you have little choice but to reject napster.
It seems the only reason, that you believe in, for anyone to actually buy a CD is because mp3s can't be reproduced sufficiently well for listening. Yet you ignore the fact that most people today have mediocre speakers in both their primary listening places, be it their hi-fi, their car, or even their headphones. As any hi-fi nut will tell you, it is speakers that make all the difference, not your source. Through the average American stereo it frankly makes little difference whether they listen to CD, mp3, or tape. As long as the source is devoid of scratches and the like, the vast majority of people will remain oblivious (especially with pop music).
Not only do Americans place a low preference on sound quality, but mp3s can sound every bit as good CD. Providing there are high quality mp3s available, they can be played back in any number of ways:
Headphones (an affordable way to get quality today)
Mp3 devices (prices will come down), no reason why their playback needs to degrade the mp3's potential at all.
Multipurpose players. There are already a number of DVD/mp3/CD combos on the market which possess the ability to play back mp3s quite well.
Computer speakers. With the growth of computer gaming and multimedia, there is a growing demand for higher quality speakers. One needn't necessarily make a special purchase.
Sound Card->Stereo. One needn't switch their speakers about. For a measly 5 dollars you can run out to radio shack and plug your stereo out to an AUX-in on your amp/reciever. I do this at home and it works great. What's more, with digital output becoming more common, it's possible to reliably avoid these issues of interference.
Mp3->wav->CD: Works well with todays technologies and costs very little. I've done this a number of times, especially with automated software. Though you claim it's lossy, it's no more lossy than normal mp3 playback which has to convert anyways.
I'm sure I can think of more, but that is plenty. What's more, I personally find mp3s to have huge advantages in the sense that I can safely archive my music and get instant access to all of it without any physical searching. Nor do I have to contend with issues like scratching, losing, or loaning my CDs out to friends. This feature alone is sufficiently compelling for me to consider buying some of these disc based mp3 players (i.e., the empeg) [If people are going to have such devices, buying CDs are just an EXTRA and unnecessary step].
I disagree. If napster can use the defence, napster, or whomever provides that service, can offer the same argument for the "reliability" service. They can claim that they're just facilitating the transfer, while offering substantial legitimate uses [i.e., reliable downloads of legitimate music]. Just as RIAA can theoretically go after napster users, RIAA can theoretically go after the posting users. In addition, once the courts accept that napster cannot be held liable in that fashion, RIAA can hardly go back when things really begin to heat up. If, for instance, all of those quality issues (not that I agree with 95% of them) were solved tomorrow, the precedent would become no less valid. Legally and logistically speaking, RIAA had little choice but to act when they did. [And no, I disagree with RIAA on many issues, but this is not one of them.]
As for the whole jupiter thing, you implied a strong cause-and-effect relationship between napster usage and CD purchasing a number of times. You have frequently said things like "Napster actually helps the sale of records". That is simply undemonstrated by that survey. What's more, you have refuted other arguments which assert that it is possible that Napster actually reduces purchases using this same survey. You were simply wrong.
As for the rest of this argument, it's gotten too long, too academic, and i'm bored. Perhaps later....
Similarly, you fail to clearly see the threat of an unchecked napster today. You figure gee, well, my mp3s sound sort of scratchy, so it must be scratchy of necessity--lower quality than what I can buy. Your internet isn't fast enough...You don't have the devices...and so on.
I see the facts. Things like:
A) There is no reason why mp3s have to be lower quality than tape. In fact, it's been proven that with a little more attention to detail and a higher bitrate, even the experts have a very difficult time distinguishing mp3s from their CD source.
B) The strong correlation between high bandwidth and the attractiveness of mp3s. Despite the much-accepted multimillion user figure of napster, only a fraction of this country is in the position to take advantage of the service. Only some 1.5 million people in the US had broadband last year. Some connections are vastly better than others. Certainly not all are young/big media spenders.... So how can a reasonable person be expected to take news that a nationwide increase in record sales as proof that napster can't hurt sales? How can you ignore similarly high growth in other similar sectors of the economy? How can you ignore the fact that napster is very new to most users?
C) The growth of cheaper media and devices. Current mp3 players are expensive, but this won't always be the case. Prices are falling. When a user can fit 100 hours of high quality mp3s into something the size of a discman (i.e., the nomad something or other), why would they pine for CDs? Why even buy CDs if you're just going to convert them to mp3? Why not just visit napster instead?
D) If napster were given carte blanche to ride over IP, other similar services and modifications could be made. You complain of corrupted files? Well there is no reason why a parallel database of checksums of "perfect" mp3s couldn't be stored. You would never have to waste your time with bad mp3s. If the courts would clear the way for napster, they would clear the way for corporate interests to make these things a reality.
E) The hundreds of holes and incoherencies in the denials...
All these concerns feed off each other too. When broadband has sufficiently penetrated the US, higher quality mp3s will become more prevelent. When more users sign up, more mp3s will become available. When computers become more and more common, users will be less intimidated by these interfaces. If napster becomes common, the market for mp3s goes up. As the mp3 market grows, the prices of devices will come down. And so on and so on.
However, I don't believe the recording industry will allow that to happen. They will stop napster in court, in one way or another. Mark my words. Napster-like clones that are willing to defy the law, will lack the cash to pay for the servers. Foreign and pirate servers won't stand up to US courts either. Certainly a few renegades will stick around no matter what, but not with enough stability for the average user to assemble around--but easy enough for those willing to go to ends like mp3 users of yesteryear. Likewise, GNUTella and similar P2P arrangements are based on flawed concepts. They are too instable to withstand the stresses of a large network, which is necessary for widespread usage.
A few not so minor specific flaws in your statements:
You were refuting the ability of this model of distribution. The fact that it IS a problem and is highly inefficient only strengthens my argument. People can distribute large blocks of illicit data across the internet, through many generations, without the need to supplement them with additional copies.
Napster simply lubricates the entire process by a factor of 50. The situation might not be exactly analogous, but the key ingredients are the same. We have motive, because you say quality is so bad that you're effectively forced to buy a CD. Yet this can be solved by scofflaws, where, with a system like napster in place, they just need to provide an assuredly clean rip. That's ~17 dollars they're saving you with one fifth the effort of the warez kiddies. Would you not seek out high quality rips if it were available to you every time? You're telling me you don't see anyone around who'd be willing to do this? To hurt RIAA? Perhaps the K-Rad hax0rs may not be drawn to this, but there are always the self-righteous (maybe even yourself?)fools who'd think they're doing the world a favor. A democratic system/database of sorts could even do much of the work, providing a database of known high quality files that works passively without user interaction.
Sure, they were. But software has improved. Things have changed. Most common CD burning software provides automatic decoding into their software (gee you think that might be a response to broad demand??). And no, it's not all about a couple loosers saving money, ego, principle, or what have you. It's gotten to the point that those in the right situation don't have to be any of those things. Witness the likes of the eating club at princeton that I mentioned. It had a wideswath of people using it. Most are busy. Most have money. Many are women. Few are nerds. Few technically literate users. In short, none of them were jaurez pups. They used it because it's gotten that easy and convenient. I see no reason to believe that the rest of the CD buying population would be any different when, and if, the means reach them.
First and foremost, the issue is what society thinks. You can argue intrinsic worth till you turn blue in the face, but you're not going to prove it to society unless you can back it up with tangibles. When you send kids to the library, they learn to read. When they learn to read and write, their brains develop. The better they can read, the better they can compete in school. Reading improves writing, which improves the ability to handle complex logic. All of these things have definite economic benefits for society.
In fact, one might even argue that, even if libraries were to have some nominally negative impact on the percentage of book sales, a more classically educated public is more economically fit and better able to compete globally. A strong economy would lead to a larger market in all likelihood.
Not even the press release claimed Napster causes an increase in purchases, that is entirely your imagination. If that is what they meant, they would have said so. Instead, they said "Napster Users Are 45 Percent More Likely to Increase Music Spending". That is not cause and effect, that is correlation. What little description they excludes your assertion, and points strongly to a mere correlation. It was, however, a little deceptive. Much like saying that there is a strong relationship between icecream consumption and drowning, while failing to mention that both are done almost exclusively during the summer.
As I mentioned earlier, Jupiter's options were limited. Although it is true, that they can make some random phone calls, I ask you to consider some of the difficulties. First, unlike with most of these surveys, the market penetration is low--even lower if you only count regular usage. Second, the majority of the users are quite young, and less available than others. (i.e., parents probably dont know what their kids do exactly online, let alone when they want to purchase the next N'Sync CD) Let's imagine they want a sample of, say 2k, napster users. If you assume that less than 1% of the people who answer their phones are napster users, this means they've got to call roughly 20k people. Then you've got to find willing participants. Pad that again. That costs more money than you would imagine. How many are going to remember when they started using napster? How many remember their purchases before and after? Pad it again...you could be looking at tens of thousands of calls.
Furthermore, whoever said the user is likely to be candid over the phone? Many people will lie about such issues. Many would also LIKE to believe they'd buy more--it is, after all, the partyline. Not so terribly different from what you'd get on IRC.
Jupiter did not lie (based on the available facts, though they do depend on the internet's success....mmmm...motive). They made a weak statement sound a little stronger than it actually is, perhaps taking a few less intellectually prepared people in unintentionally. The press release is trying to imply that, with their data, napster users are still more willing than the rest of the population to buy RIAA's music [though they do conclude napster does not spell the end for RIAA, that is not supported]. Though I can argue with even that conclusion, it is not necessary because it is really quite meaningless. The only thing fact that might be contested on its face is that income, wealth, age, etc. were not they deciding factor in the increases in the their survey. That sounds pretty reasonable to me, but I've yet to hear of a litmus test for music lovers, other than their historic purchases. You can take two people of the exact same economic class, age, race, etc., and the odds are that one of them is going to like music significantly more than the other. Nor would it be terribly suprising if that one person also tended to use napster....
...gotta run
My point is that GNUtella has about as chance of succeeding as a massive recursive kegger. GNUtella, if you were not aware, handles all queries and query replies recursively.
The main flaw with GNUtella, as I see it, is its recursive design. Though few people seem willing to bring this point up, it simply CANNOT scale reasonably. It simply could never support napster's load, or even a fraction thereof.
In short, GNUtella is reasonably acceptable for little splinters of "networks". I could see loose knit warez groups/associatons of, say, 50-200 users forming around it. However, this kind of instability and decentralization does not lend itself to use by the vast majority of people who are technically inept.
Compared to other sites on the internet, this may be true, but I've found tons of stuff impossible to find on napster--even stuff that I could buy at any major CD chain.
Of course, you never passed the beer around recursively either. If you had, you might be just a wee bit more skeptical.
This is not a popularity contest. The issue is public interest, not just the immediate whims of the public. Our nation was founded on the principles of Federalism for a reason [not to mention law]...
You are being awefully presumptious to assert that you know the public's desires. The mere fact that you feel music and books are on intellectual par does not make it so. Nor do you know how the public would respond to evidence of destruction of the music industry.
Excuse me, but I'm an indepedent thinker. It may be perfectly acceptable for you to swallow what you are fed whole, but I have serious doubts. I can't take this press release at face value. Statistics are very easy to manipulate and are easily skewed. What's more, the conclusion can be made sound very good, while actually remaining irrelevant or without any base in the results.
I don't see how they could gather a reliable sample. Napster is essentially anonymous, it would be virtually impossible to get a truely random sample here. They obviously did not do a before and after, and most likely it was not random in the least. The biggest hint we get is:
"But when we conducted our consumer survey, controlled for key music purchasing factors-such as existing spending level, age, income, gender, and online tenure-we still found that Napster usage is one of the strongest determinants of increased music buying." If you ever studied statistics, you would know this does not mean anything like: Those who start using napster, start buying more music. Quite the contrary, it means: Those who use napster, are more likely to buy music. In other words, Jupiter looked at a certain population based on the above controls, and determined that those who used napster were 45% more likely to buy CDs than those who appeared the same based on those criteria and did not use the service. The problem with this statistic is that it does not tell you whether or not those same music lovers in the selected populations would be more inclined to use napster and would be self-selecting in the survey. It does not deny the possibility that those users DECREASED their CD purchases since they started using napster
Until I see proof to the contrary, I will continue to assert that it is far more likely that these regular napster users have actually decreased their purchasing habits, and thus hurt industry. I'm far from ignorant here. Being one of the original #mp3 ops on undernet [not to mention efnet, etc.], I've been using mp3s for at least 5 years now. I actually bumped into napster a few times myself, and saw the service, and many before it grow. I know many regular users who have, in fact, essentially stopped purchasing CDs. These users are something of a bellwether; having used the internet for longer, having broadband before others, owning CDRs, etc. While they're not fully representive of the population, they are enjoying today [and have been for quite awhile] a fraction of the goodies that much of the population does not yet enjoy, but will soon.
Not that it is terribly relevent, but do you have any evidence to back that claim up? Or is that first hand experience? In any case, napster is _very_ commonly used at most universities, at least those with decent internet connections. In fact, it is used as a replacement at some. For instance, at atleast one eating club at Princeton [which I will not name] with which i'm familiar, the members actually purchased a CD-R with the sole intention of burning mp3s into audio CDs. Many students used this regularly, and most told me they wouldn't buy a CD so long as they could burn what they needed.
Obviously you lack experience with the internet and the vast quantities of warez (pirated software) available to those who know how to get it. If you had, you'd know that the warez groups are able to distribute warez out to thousands, and millions, of people with just one copy, in a compressed format, such that if even one byte is corrupt, the entire package is bad. Similar systems could easily be setup within napster, and in fact, there were atleast such groups when I used mp3s more regularly. They took responsibility for ensuring a clean rip and a decent encoding, not to mention distribution [which is largely moot now] With decreased file size sensitivity, these groups could essentially gaurantee very high quality mp3s.
In case you are not aware, these servers are not that seperate. Let me give you a hypothetical situation. I go to the store, and buy the latest N'Sync CD the second it hits shelves. [actually, which reminds, these groups would actually obtain the software/songs before they hit the shelves]. It takes me about 30 minutes to rip and encode them, and then I make them available to napster. At that very instant, 100 teenie boppers are querying for the latest and greatest songs, they get a hit. I can support quite a few downloads, with a software max of 10 concurrent users. So within, say, 20 minutes, each of those 10 users now has the entire album. Another 10 copy from each of those 10 and so on. Someone signs on, and signs back on, grabs a new server, and suddenly a new server has the mp3s. It doesn't take a degree in mathematics to figure out that napster could easily be overrun the mp3s which I ripped, before stores on the west coast are even open!
Theoretically and empirically, all the ingredients are there for it. Combine this with the above mentioned "mp3 group", and it could happen with reliability [i.e., check summing schemes] What's more, these groups can get and distribute the songs before others can even buy them, they don't even half to wait....but people do anyways. I encourage you to look at the warez groups, it may give you a little insight here.
Books build on each other and on the mind in a way that music does not [part of the reason why libraries are key]. One can go to a library, and providing they have enough diligence, teach themselves hundreds of usefull things--even more than you think you know. The reader can improve themselves in ways that society can grasp and appreciate.
Music may be marvelous, but it is simply not interchangable with the many forms of books. Society has long placed a preference on reading, and has regarded music as a form of entertainment. Consider, for a moment, what portion of your curiculuum has been dedicated to books versus music. Most likely, your answer is something around 1/40th. If you were told that your kids weren't going to read anymore, but would listen to music in class instead, how would you react? You know damn well how you would react...It's a question of priorities, just one more reason why you can't quite make that analogy.
Ah, finally a reasonable person!
Just to clarify, When I defend IP, I am not defending the industry at all. Far from it. The industry may well be thorougly flawed and corrupt, but those flaws are not an integral feature of intellectual property. Rather, while it is true that the nature of the industry can only exist in an IP-rich environment, these big record houses exist of a certain necessity [not that it justifies or necessitates all of their behavior]. This is an important point that elludes many people. The fact that artists still sign with these major labels today only bolsters my argument. Recording, promoting, marketing, getting spots on the radio, etc. are expensive [even though physical distribution is less and less of a concern today]. Artists sign because they want need and want these things, they can't do it themselves or through other alternatives.
Napster simply does nothing to address these problems. Napster pokes holes in IP, but does not offer a credible alternative in its place. I say, let us not flush the baby out with the bathwater. The big six may be cruel to the artist, but they're still an option. No one is making them sign. By breaking IP, not only do you reduce the "big six" option, but you break other more palatable alternatives that rely on IP.
In essense, I believe we should take reasonable measures to protect IP (i.e., make sure napster is kept in check)--and let the rest of the chips fall where they may. If IP is kept intact, I think it is far more likely a capitalistic evolution of sorts will happen with the dinosuars aka the "big six." Their pricing structures, which have long revolved too much around physical distribution, will fall--prices will come down a couple dollars--maybe even as much as half. Accompanying the fall of physical distribution, will be an increased number of competitors, which will mean more competition in the music industry (a la mp3.com) and better deals for the artist. However, I think these marketing issues will long remain. You may see a few grassroots style bands pop up, but by and large, those artists which wish to go Platinum will sign with someone who can effectively market. Those who already have tons of money, might be able to pay for themselves. But for the vast majority of up and coming artists, that means someone will essentially make an investment in them--someone will take the lions' share of the risk. Someone will still be very rich, there will still be some grumbling....but the situation will have improved.
PS: I don't regard monopolies to be a flaw in capitalism, anymore than I regard, say, assholes a flaw of freedom. Sh*t happens, but that doesn't mean people, or the government, should never intervene.
Library's have been proven not to be a great threat to the sale of books. The same cannot be said, that napster will not hurt the sale of records. Though I believe you know full well the dangers napster offers, I'll enumerate a few key differences.
When a library makes a book available, they are generating at least one sale and that single book can only be used by one person concurrently. Given the purchasing and acquisition patterns of most library, this means that books in high demand (i.e., brand new best sellers) are scarce, and most times even unavailable. The library either purchases more books, or the patrons run out to the book store and buy a couple copies. Furthermore, except for classic and other highly reguarded books, most publishers make their sales off of these same new books--libraries are hardly able to squelsh this. In fact, most publishers will stop printing most books after a short while. Unless the demand is high, it simply doens't make economic sense for the publisher keep printing it--nor does it make sense for them to print large quantities and store them. In essence, libraries only become a deciding factor at the end, where most publishers aren't selling anyways. Libraries serve a clear and well known public function (not just one of pure entertainment) by acting as a repository for these books, so they don't simply fall out of print and away from people's eyes.
The gist of it is:
Cost for publishers: Low.
Benefit for society: High.
Are you honestly going to tell me the same applies to napster? Are you going to ignore the fact that napster is really much the opposite [despite the denials of some individuals]? Napster traffics the most popular songs in almost instantly, and theoretically, only one purchase needs to be made for this to happen! Yet when you search for truely rare songs, it has been my experience that they're NOT there. Something like 90% of the mp3s listed on there are redundant--only the most recent and currently popular songs. And while you may try to refute that sales will actually be hurt, that is unproven, and highly doubtfull. As that article in the Atlantic Monthly pointed out, CD sales around college campuses were down [though not in huge numbers], while national sales were up. This fact alone is cause for concern, or at least question. Combine this with the growth of the internet, increased publicity for napster, spreading of broadband, and other such factors, and you have a stark picture for the industry. And for all these possible [though I think they're highly likely, if napster, et. al, goes unchallenged] costs, what are the benefits? That people get to listen to music free? You're going to have a hard time arguing that music enriches the mind to the same extent that a good book does, especially when it's pop music!
The gist here:
Record industry cost: High
Benefit for society: Low
...good bye.
You know, maybe it is somewhat dubious. But there has been little honest discussion of all the other issues, just that physical production has gone from 2 to 0 dollars, and that there are a bunch of rotten eggs. And if you can't discuss the problem honestly and in detail, you're never going to realize an effective solution.
Napster is in my opinion, one of the many flawed "solutions" [even though that's not what Napster ever intended it to be, they even said so themselves] There is simply no way for an artist to promote themselves on napster! None. The only way an artist finds his way onto a new users harddrive, is if the artists' song happens to end up on the users query results, and if that user chooses to download it and then listen to it. And even then, even if the user enjoys the music, there is no clear path back to the artist. How is this artist supposed to make money? Where is the supposed "tip jar" even? Who promotes them? Who _makes_ people listen to them? Who filters out all the crap garage bands and what not?
Whether or not you admit it, the fact is that most Artists still choose to go the major label route. Not just 10 years ago, not just last year, but today, despite the presense of all these theoretically marvelous alternative systems. (i.e.., napster (a joke), mp3.com (some potential), etc.). I, for one, don't believe the artists are totally stupid. They know the situation going in (that they'll get "shafted"), but they also obviously know that they _need_ the labels to be successfull. If anything is obvious, it is that the label perform a function beyond mere production of the physical media.
This function that the labels perform is one of marketing and distribution (not just in the sense that it's economical, but in the sense that it puts it in front of the right eyes). To ignore that, and act as if a change in physical production means they've necessarily outlived their usefullness is laughable. Before these online methods, the production costs were in the range of 2 dollars, yet they sell to the end user for, say, 15 dollars. That still leaves 13 dollars of value added going to various parties. There is nothing necessarily obvious in that the mere elimination of 2 of 15 dollars, means value added should hit 0.
Now you can make up all the warm and fuzzy ideas you want, but until you come up with a better alternative that up-and-coming artists actually sign on (and enjoy success with), it's hardly realistic to say napster and company are an acceptable alternative. Only through this proof, will you make it demonstrably clear that the major labels have outlived their usefullness. Even then, that doesn't mean the merit of IP is injured in the least, rather that the industry was too attached to the physical model of distribution--not necessarily to IP. More than likely, if anything succeeds, it will be something like mp3.com, not napster, which revolves substantially around IP.
This is really a seperate argument and it has little to do with production costs. IP has from the beginning been held by force of government. It is not as if napster or digital media has suddenly changed this.The only new question here is the extent of the means and the means which government should take to enforce it. This question is not obvious though and really comes down to a bunch of judgement calls.
Perhaps I'm not quite the optimist you are, but I do not see the realization of nanotechnology (to any extent) as resulting in the complete liberation of man. Sure, you lay it out as a hypothetical situation, but I question the very premise which you base it off of. Your production costs may be nil (and more likely only nil on certain tasks), but you still need brains. That means humans pushing paper. Engineers. Businessmen, etc. So long as there is a need for man, there will be a need for money, which really means a need for capitalism. It is just that simple.
Did it ever occur to you that this unwillingness to work may be present in everyone? In some more than others, sure... Having been a part of a number of startup companies, and seeing innovation first hand, I can tell you that there is a hell of a lot more to it than the mere desire to "stretch" your brain. Sometimes it is necessary to really work yourself and others hard,...I find it hard to believe that there will be a significant population that will organize around the mere desire to "stretch." Sure, you may see some academic-type efforts, so long as it doesn't involve too much blood, sweat, and tears....
...sleep.
The internet is not some revolutionary force that makes innovation and creation irrelevant. It hasn't made the costs of innovation and creation any cheaper. Sure, there are some areas where there have been some cost reductions in production and distribution due to digital distribution [though those savings have NOTHING to do with the underground heros like napster, 2600, etc.] These costs, however, have been ALWAYS been a relatively small portion of the price. Depending on the product at hand, you may be expecting a ~10% price reduction. None of that, however, cuts away at the burden of the inventor/creator/artist/innovator. Their resources are still every bit as scarce. Artists only have so many hours in their day. Authors still need to be paid. Businessmen still only have so much cash at their disposal, and are only willing to tolerate so much risk. End users only have so much patience for listening to garbage, before the signal to noise ratio becomes unacceptable.
The basic guiding principle behind IP is every bit as valid today as it was yesterday. The relationship between risk and reward did not just evaporate. Just as Henry Ford's many innovations could have been stolen so many years ago with relative ease, software and music can be pirated today. Whether the margins are 2% of 90% is irrelevant, there is still a need to protect them. What you are effectively paying for is for future works and innovation, NOT for that particular product. So when you get on GNUtella and pirate software, it may seem as if you can download infinite copies and not "hurt" the artist , but you are doing nothing to encourage that next round of production.
It is still in society's interest to give legal protection to IP, even more so in many ways. The type of R&D we see today tends to be far far more capital intensive, and most of these products have very low production costs, provided they're produced on sufficient scale. It is ironic that you point to nanotechnology especially. Do you think people just develop these things because they want to? Is that it? What about the millions that have been spent on it already to create just one simple machine? What about new ones? You think they engineer themselves too? Get real.
The only shift napster represents is the possibility of piracy en masse. It is not as if Napster solved some nagging problem of distribution or manufacturing. The fact is that the cost structure of other digital/online methods was just as good, and maybe even better, than napster long before napster came out. Furthermore, it is hard to even make the argument for the advent of digital/online distribution itself. The very notion of intellectual property is itself testament to the fact that physical rarity is NOT the issue. Nor is it as if even the record industry has been focused around these physical costs, because they've never been that much of a component. We're talking about 1 to 2 dollars of a 15+ dollar sale.
The real costs are in promotions, marketing, and productions. Napster does absolutely nothing to address these concerns. They remain an issue for the artist. The fact is, fair or unfair, the vast majority of artists still choose to sign with these labels because they still need the functions of promotion, not because someone is holding a gun to their head. Napster has done absolutely zilche in the long run, other than feed a certain part of society's immediate desires, which ultimately may have a secondary effect on the long term outlook of the industry.
That is a non sequitur. Innovating and meeting already "met" needs are not mutually exclusive. i.e., The operating system need is "met", yet there is much room for improvement. Linux has done very little innovative. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but rather I am pointing out that Open Source simply can't trumpet innovation as one of its strengths with a straight face. Nor can it hide behind your excuse. It does not necessarily follow that just because innovation has been lagging, that once X happens, innovation will occur. There is no obvious basis for that, and you certainly do not present an argument for it.
Innovation is much much more than mere thought, and the desire, to create something new. It generally involves a certain amount of blood, sweat, and tears. No open source project has demonstrated this ability in my opinion. The fact that most of these "succesfull" Open Source projects are either relatively trivial, simple, or following someone elses lead does not make for a good counterexample for Open Source's ability. What's more, beyond the mere the lack of empirical examples of this capacity for exertion, I see fundamental problems with Open Source development as it is popularly envisioned and fleshed out. i.e., the notion that 100 people contributing part time is better than, say, 10 working full time, or the notion that 1 million people who can "fork" and work in many different...even larger teams.. can necessarily achieve the same product or better product as a single team around one leader and one vision....
Yes, I think there will be times when Open Source can offer unique value to this world that propietary software cannot. But that is different from the bulk of proprietary software today. I think the _real_ growth of Open Source will be more a process of addition, of creating new areas for software, than a replacement of much propreitary software. I view Open source software like Perl as being something special...Not in that it can go head to head with the major propietary languages/compilers, but rather in its ends and means. It can do a lot of really cool stuff with its modules and what not, in a way that the current propreitary model does not and cannot....
...gotta run
I agree 100%. What seem people can't handle is that this form of "speech" does erode the rights of copyright holder. In essence, the copyright allows the holder to (mostly) assert the terms and conditions of usage, so that they may profit as they see fit. DeCSS's sole purpose is to poke a hole in those terms and conditions. Whether or not the DeCSS advocates agree with the particular terms is a totally different issue and is largely irrelevant. The court just determined that these means are not legal, and the using the "speech" argument as a cover for going around the backway is not sufficient. That's the law, and they obviously have very little understanding of it.
Clinton and Gore have taken credit directly and indirectly for the success in a number of speaches. Many slashdot readers fall into this trap, mostly those with no exposure to economics.
Though I lean more into the Republican camp, I do not believe Bush's proposed budget and tax policies are the best by any means. I think they are largely unnecessary and a tad bit risky. However, contrary to what Al Gore and company claim, Bush is no radical. Neither his proposals, nor his advisors, are going to rock the boat. Especially after they've been run through Congress. When compared with Gore's romance of the various unions, I think he's actually safer in the long run. Gore, while moderate in his campaign, is far more of a committed left winger than Clinton ever was.
I wouldn't be so sure of yourself. I've been through business school, and i know the top schools and below quite well. Also having worked in industry, that is not all I know...I have some perspective here. But enough penis comparisons.
You are right, in that business school tends to be more conservative than some other areas, but to say they're isolated from it is foolish. Sure, you may not see quite so many radical leftists, but most are still solidly democratic. Harvard is certainly no different, in fact, it's "worse" than many.
As for your opinion that they know what they're talking about: Says who? Having been through the system and knowing hundreds of others who have too, I'm singularly unimpressed. I've come the conclusion that the ability to impress other academics is not necessarily indicative of anything other than the ability to impress other academics. I've been through one of the best business school programs in the country, and I don't pretend for a minute that I know even one half as much as some of the people I work with on a daily basis.
You confuse ends and means. There is nothing in the practical or the theoretical definition of conservative or liberal that defines one as being anymore geared towards the greater interests of society than the other. Thus it is totally ridiculous to claim liberalism is consequently necessarily better suited.
On definition alone, neither left nor right is better. It is the particular policies by which one should make that determination.
I disagree. The Gimp, though quite neat for something free, is not nearly as complete as photoshop...and photoshop isn't quite of the same complexity of a full featured RDBMS. Apache is neat, but look at what it needs to do. Sure it's fast and effecient, but it doesn't have that critical mass of complexity. Linux? Not terribly impressive. Easily modularized. Not exactly innovative--it's been following everyone else's lead....in fact, All of these projects have been pretty much.
What about Mozilla? Virtually stagnant.
Whether or not you agree, I recognize a significant difference between these types of projects and truely innovative and complex ones. While I don't refute the unique value of Open Source in some instances, I know it falls short in many others. For that argument though, I'll let time tell. Don't say I didn't warning you...2..3..years from now, Open source will largely be in the same place it is now, commercial/propietary software will be alive and well.
Ever wonder why Women's studies majors are liberals? Not because they know what they're talking about!
Uh, no, learn how to count. Tell me, if the only people who vote for republicans have 6+ figures, why is it that the recent republican platform is targeting everything but? They have the money and the votes (according to you?), why dillute that? You're misguided.