"I think less that £1 for a half hours entertainment is fairly reasonable and would cut down a whole slew of piracy."
Really? I think its totally unreasonable for 2 reasons:
1) I can get 15 channels of commercial TV totally free with an attic antenna (free in the subscription sense).
2) 1 pound sterling for 1/2 hour of TV? So that means if you watch 8 hours of TV a week, you're willing to pay 64 pounds (thats about $100 US) just to watch TV? For a month? Hell, my cable bill is $110 a month and it includes 300 channels of stuff, including HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc etc etc. At the rate you're talking about, cable TV would be about 1400 pounds ($2300?) a month.
Thanks, but no thanks. I think I'd rather watch 15 channels for free.
"Time spend developing an app is valuable. That time should be compensated."
That's a flawed argument.
If I sit in my basement and build the eiffel tower out of toothpicks over a period of years, does that deserve to be compensated?
Nobody deserves to be compensated, the value is what somebody is willing to pay for it. That's why the most efficient producers make the most money. The value of something is not related to the production cost.
Re:Only Trillian v0.7x affected?
on
AOL vs. Trillian
·
· Score: 1
"Those ads are what pay for the servers, the infrastructure, the maintenance and enhancement of the software, etc. If you are using the service without the ads, you're getting a free ride on all the people who do use the service as intended. "
By that bit of logic, I'm stealing TV if I fast forward past the commercials when I time-shift my favorite program.
Besides, the AIM client doesn't force you to look at the commercials either. Its only for people who can't figure out how to close the commercial window.
"there should be no such thing as ownership of ideas,"
There's no law in the world that allows ownership of ideas, but you knew that, right?
When you get a patent, its not on an idea, but on an application of that idea.
For example, you couldn't patent the idea of RADAR, but you can patent an expression of the idea.
That's why you can't patent a mathematical formula. But you can patent something (medicine, car, computer, boat, plane) that takes advantage of that formula.
"I for one will gladly pay twice as much for DVD content as I would for equivalent VHS content; the extensive capabilities of the DVD format make the medium that much more valuable"
Give me a break. Of all the DVDs I've watched (hundreds, I suppose), perhaps 10 of those had something useful besides the movie, and I think of those 10, I was only interested in 2.
Don't you think that most people just want to watch a movie? And the fact that the picture is clearer than a VHS movie doesn't justify a premium price. Technologies naturally evolve over time, presumably getting better, and usually cheaper.
In a vacuum, perhaps this is an admirable goal, but in this case, if you read the article, there is no "due process". All law-enforcement and agencies basically said "tough luck kid".
So in the absence of due process, for whatever reason, what is a reasonable course of action to take?
I would argue the opposite of you; that they did exactly the right thing, and if they've stepped beyond the boundary of law, then the "due process" you spoke of earlier will punish people guilty of vigilante actions that may be illegal.
Every society has defense mechanisms that are outside the law; the practice of "shunning" in some cultures, the idea of being an outcast. This is no different. A man chose to cheat people a (relatively) small amount. The criminal justice system felt $50-60K isn't worth their time, so social enforcement went to work on this guy (calling mom, telling her about her son's misdeeds).
You have a great point, but I think the value of content is overrated as well.
Content has a lot of value in its sum total, but when you break it down to component parts, it has almost no value.
Case in point: A James Bond movie. Take a good one, like "To Russia With Love". How much is it worth? Looking at it from the standpoint of a "Consumer", I've watched the movied probably 5 times. Before I die, I'll probabaly watch it 2-3 times more. I like the movie. But I wouldn't pay $3 to watch it. I'd just as soon watch something for free, because there's so much free (or the incremental cost is $0) content that I'd gladly watch something else.
So if the MPAA said to me "You can watch any james bond movie any time you'd like for $3. Great, impressive technology. I'm not interested. And I like that movie. But taken as a single piece of entertainment, its value to me is approximately zero. And frankly, I feel that way for any one movie. I don't mind paying the cable company $20 a month for hundreds of movies that I can tape and watch with a friend or family member. But if I had to pay to watch the movie, I simply wouldn't.
I think that unless every piece of content is scrambled. Unless every piece of hardware is locked, the studios will shoot themselves in the foot, because this "content" is not terribly compelling in the way studios think it is. And if they lock it up, they remove it from the common conversation that drives entertainment. It will become irrelevant to people's daily lives and therefore have even less value.
I think they're smart enough to see this problem. But it appears to me they're trying to create value where none currently exists. That's clever short-term business, I suppose. But over the long term, I see consumer apathy working against this scheme.
If the view is that "Broadband will Save the World Economy", then its a reasonable question to ask: "How will this happen?".
A few articles down from this one on slashdot is a piece that details how the entertainment industry is claiming to be at risk from what is essentially broadband.
Sine both have powerful money interests behind them, there is clearly an agenda that the Internet will become the "commercial" Internet. Worse, I believe draconian copy protection and content protection will be mandated by law. Follow along:
1) Broadband will be subsidized by the US Government. This subsidy will naturally favor existing broadband providers, which at this point amounts to Comcast and TW/AOL.
2) Because of this subsidy, and the lure of high-speed access, smaller and regional ISP will have no alternative and will become ghetoized. I'll bet that most of them will fold within 2 years.
3) At the same time, content providers (TW/AOL, Disney, etc.) and their lobbiest (RIAA, MPAA) will begin a serious push to get hardware and software protection mandatory within the US.
4) Congress will agree, not because they think it is a good idea, but because they fear they'll push a broadband infrastructure and get no benefit.
5) Richard's Stallman's nightmare vision will very quickly become a reality as all types of content providers push congress to mandate the type of draconian laws (DMCA) that have been created to protect special and narrow interests.
6) Private web servers will quickly become a thing of the past, since all content providers do not allow you to run your own server.
7) My guess will be a call to "license" web servers on the same grounds that we "license" radio and TV stations....."Bandwidth belongs to the public, why should anyone be allowed to run a web site without proper government controls....it only makes sense so they don't interefere with 'legitimate' web sites".
8) And I don't even think I'm painting a worst-case scenario here. I think this is likely within a few years.
I think the market for a so-called "Video Napster" is overrated.
Music differs from video content in a significant way (other than the obvious): For a few favorite movies, I'll watch perhaps, at most, 5-8 times in my entire life. I don't think I'm alone in that view of view entertainment.
On the other hand, music you can listen to for a while.
I don't know why its true, but it seems to be something universal.
And for that reason, I can't imagine spending hours downloading some video that I can rent for $3. Just doesn't make any sense.
This is simply a fallacy. Stores use these all the time to justify raising prices, and economically, it doesn't wash.
Lets use a simple example, a can of soft drink. They sell for approximately 75 cents.
Now lets say that Bill's Market sells soft drink for 75 cents. And Bob's supermarket sells soft drink for 75 cents.
Unfortunately, poor Bill has a problem with shoplifters. He figures 10% of all his soft drinks are stolen.
So what does he do? Bill's a smart guy, and figures he can raise prices to offset the loss. He can't charge a fractional percent, so he rounds up, and he decides to charge 83 cent for a soft drink.
Right?
Maybe. But what will consumers do? They'll go to Bob's supermarket since he is charging 8 cents less.
So what is poor Bill to do? He can do 1 of 2 things:
1) Keep prices high and accept that he'll get less business
2) Put in stronger security measures, and hope that will be less than what he loses
3) Accept the loss and move on.
4) Stop carrying soft drinks.
Note that raising prices is not an option.
Why?
Because the cost of selling something is only marginally related to what it costs to produce (or buy) something.
That seems like nonsense, but its a truism. You can buy dollar bills all day for 2 dollars, but that doesn't mean you can charge 3 dollars for something only worth 1 dollar.
So, that's my long-winded way of saying it will have 0 (zero) effect on prices.
This isn't quite correct; but its close. Your employer has to have some assurance that after a reasonable period of time (6 months), the government will give you a clearance.
The top offenders a long time ago in not getting one were things like criminal record and a history of drug use.
However, it seemed the worst offense wasn't to have done something wrong, but to be untruthful to the investigators.
The danger I see is that what technical people want...the ability to run their own web server, access to NNTP services, ftp, telnet, and now considered services that are not desirable and un-welcome by broadband providers.
I think this has more to do with philosophy than actual network impact.
I think it was Lessig who pointed out that the model for broadband is "we are a producer of content, you are a consumer". Anything that varies from this model is usually against the terms of service.
I want to run a web server to access X10 devices inside my house. However, this is generally not allowed by providers since I am now setting up a server.
It appears to me that they really don't want a peer-to-peer model, but rather a Cable TV model where they supply services that you pay for.
In that model, given today's infrastructure restrictions, broadband doesn't make sense. How fast do you really need to browse the web? Faster is better, but nobody is building content for people with 1Mb connectivity. And if I download gigabytes of data from Usenet or from ftp.redhat.com, then the ISP gets upset because I'm using my broadband for what it was intended: Large amounts of data quickly.
Broadband is, frankly, a paradox in terms of its justification.
Re:80% have service: How many are wired?
on
Broadband Obstacles
·
· Score: 1
You haven't touched on the half of it.
My understanding based on articles on byte.com lead me to believe that as a general web-browsing type of connectivity, 2-way satellite is a poor choice due to what have been described as latency issues.
Also, I've heard anecdotal evidence that the satellite provider are putting rather severe limitations on bandwidth and daily utilization.
Plus, its expensive in initial cost and for reoccuring costs.
Slashdot Mirror
"I think less that £1 for a half hours entertainment is fairly reasonable and would cut down a whole slew of piracy."
Really? I think its totally unreasonable for 2 reasons:
1) I can get 15 channels of commercial TV totally free with an attic antenna (free in the subscription sense).
2) 1 pound sterling for 1/2 hour of TV? So that means if you watch 8 hours of TV a week, you're willing to pay 64 pounds (thats about $100 US) just to watch TV? For a month? Hell, my cable bill is $110 a month and it includes 300 channels of stuff, including HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc etc etc. At the rate you're talking about, cable TV would be about 1400 pounds ($2300?) a month.
Thanks, but no thanks. I think I'd rather watch 15 channels for free.
Thank you for this excellent point.
"Shareware" today is really commercial software that uses an alternate distribution.
Mind you, I love this model because I really can try before I buy, but its not shareware in the classic sense.
I think the world has gotten too big and cynical for real shareware.
"Time spend developing an app is valuable. That time should be compensated."
That's a flawed argument.
If I sit in my basement and build the eiffel tower out of toothpicks over a period of years, does that deserve to be compensated?
Nobody deserves to be compensated, the value is what somebody is willing to pay for it. That's why the most efficient producers make the most money. The value of something is not related to the production cost.
"Those ads are what pay for the servers, the infrastructure, the maintenance and enhancement of the software, etc. If you are using the service without the ads, you're getting a free ride on all the people who do use the service as intended. "
By that bit of logic, I'm stealing TV if I fast forward past the commercials when I time-shift my favorite program.
Besides, the AIM client doesn't force you to look at the commercials either. Its only for people who can't figure out how to close the commercial window.
You shouldn't be surprised by this reaction.
Human nature is to avoid responsibility.
"You cheated"
"Did not"
"You must have. The computer caught you"
Then they devise an elaborate and fanstastic scheme to justify their own lack of initiative and apparent incompetence.
Years ago, people formed committees if they wanted to avoid personal responsibility. Now they use a computer. Same game, different decade.
"there should be no such thing as ownership of ideas,"
There's no law in the world that allows ownership of ideas, but you knew that, right?
When you get a patent, its not on an idea, but on an application of that idea.
For example, you couldn't patent the idea of RADAR, but you can patent an expression of the idea.
That's why you can't patent a mathematical formula. But you can patent something (medicine, car, computer, boat, plane) that takes advantage of that formula.
"I for one will gladly pay twice as much for DVD content as I would for equivalent VHS content; the extensive capabilities of the DVD format make the medium that much more valuable"
Give me a break. Of all the DVDs I've watched (hundreds, I suppose), perhaps 10 of those had something useful besides the movie, and I think of those 10, I was only interested in 2.
Don't you think that most people just want to watch a movie? And the fact that the picture is clearer than a VHS movie doesn't justify a premium price. Technologies naturally evolve over time, presumably getting better, and usually cheaper.
"Although due process doesn't always work"
In a vacuum, perhaps this is an admirable goal, but in this case, if you read the article, there is no "due process". All law-enforcement and agencies basically said "tough luck kid".
So in the absence of due process, for whatever reason, what is a reasonable course of action to take?
I would argue the opposite of you; that they did exactly the right thing, and if they've stepped beyond the boundary of law, then the "due process" you spoke of earlier will punish people guilty of vigilante actions that may be illegal.
Every society has defense mechanisms that are outside the law; the practice of "shunning" in some cultures, the idea of being an outcast. This is no different. A man chose to cheat people a (relatively) small amount. The criminal justice system felt $50-60K isn't worth their time, so social enforcement went to work on this guy (calling mom, telling her about her son's misdeeds).
"but does that mean he gave up his right to privacy?"
That's arguable. I would submit that because he sent the email out to every email address he could find, he willingly gave up his email.
What's worse, when he got negative responses, he should do one of two things (in order that it makes sense):
1) Ignore the email
2) Send an apology.
His in ability to not only do something stupid, but actually *REVEL* in his stupidity is what what got him a web site of his own.
Do you see the difference?
"Now we want to be compensated for our loss that resulted from your illegal actions.""
I don't understand this reasoning.
AOL bought Netscape after they were worthless, so they essentially bought NS for nothing.
If Netscape were a healthy, vibrant company, they would have had to pay a lot of money from them. Since they weren't, they got them for free.
So how was Netscape harmed. It doesnt' make sense.
You have a great point, but I think the value of content is overrated as well.
Content has a lot of value in its sum total, but when you break it down to component parts, it has almost no value.
Case in point: A James Bond movie. Take a good one, like "To Russia With Love". How much is it worth? Looking at it from the standpoint of a "Consumer", I've watched the movied probably 5 times. Before I die, I'll probabaly watch it 2-3 times more. I like the movie. But I wouldn't pay $3 to watch it. I'd just as soon watch something for free, because there's so much free (or the incremental cost is $0) content that I'd gladly watch something else.
So if the MPAA said to me "You can watch any james bond movie any time you'd like for $3. Great, impressive technology. I'm not interested. And I like that movie. But taken as a single piece of entertainment, its value to me is approximately zero. And frankly, I feel that way for any one movie. I don't mind paying the cable company $20 a month for hundreds of movies that I can tape and watch with a friend or family member. But if I had to pay to watch the movie, I simply wouldn't.
I think that unless every piece of content is scrambled. Unless every piece of hardware is locked, the studios will shoot themselves in the foot, because this "content" is not terribly compelling in the way studios think it is. And if they lock it up, they remove it from the common conversation that drives entertainment. It will become irrelevant to people's daily lives and therefore have even less value.
I think they're smart enough to see this problem. But it appears to me they're trying to create value where none currently exists. That's clever short-term business, I suppose. But over the long term, I see consumer apathy working against this scheme.
If the view is that "Broadband will Save the World Economy", then its a reasonable question to ask: "How will this happen?".
A few articles down from this one on slashdot is a piece that details how the entertainment industry is claiming to be at risk from what is essentially broadband.
Sine both have powerful money interests behind them, there is clearly an agenda that the Internet will become the "commercial" Internet. Worse, I believe draconian copy protection and content protection will be mandated by law. Follow along:
1) Broadband will be subsidized by the US Government. This subsidy will naturally favor existing broadband providers, which at this point amounts to Comcast and TW/AOL.
2) Because of this subsidy, and the lure of high-speed access, smaller and regional ISP will have no alternative and will become ghetoized. I'll bet that most of them will fold within 2 years.
3) At the same time, content providers (TW/AOL, Disney, etc.) and their lobbiest (RIAA, MPAA) will begin a serious push to get hardware and software protection mandatory within the US.
4) Congress will agree, not because they think it is a good idea, but because they fear they'll push a broadband infrastructure and get no benefit.
5) Richard's Stallman's nightmare vision will very quickly become a reality as all types of content providers push congress to mandate the type of draconian laws (DMCA) that have been created to protect special and narrow interests.
6) Private web servers will quickly become a thing of the past, since all content providers do not allow you to run your own server.
7) My guess will be a call to "license" web servers on the same grounds that we "license" radio and TV stations....."Bandwidth belongs to the public, why should anyone be allowed to run a web site without proper government controls....it only makes sense so they don't interefere with 'legitimate' web sites".
8) And I don't even think I'm painting a worst-case scenario here. I think this is likely within a few years.
"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!"
This is, of course, the greatest line ever uttered in a Bond movie.
I think the market for a so-called "Video Napster" is overrated.
Music differs from video content in a significant way (other than the obvious): For a few favorite movies, I'll watch perhaps, at most, 5-8 times in my entire life. I don't think I'm alone in that view of view entertainment.
On the other hand, music you can listen to for a while.
I don't know why its true, but it seems to be something universal.
And for that reason, I can't imagine spending hours downloading some video that I can rent for $3. Just doesn't make any sense.
I have no doubt that TV execs are going to shove this down our throats.
I also have no doubt that in the end, they'll simply push people to other forms of entertainment.
Frankly, TV isn't that good as a whole. You might like certain programs, but you could easily live without it.
If you couldn't copy it, maybe you'll decide that it just isn't worth watching.
I suppose new technology and laws will force us to watch TV for a minimum number of hours per week...
"we end up paying for it"
This is simply a fallacy. Stores use these all the time to justify raising prices, and economically, it doesn't wash.
Lets use a simple example, a can of soft drink. They sell for approximately 75 cents.
Now lets say that Bill's Market sells soft drink for 75 cents. And Bob's supermarket sells soft drink for 75 cents.
Unfortunately, poor Bill has a problem with shoplifters. He figures 10% of all his soft drinks are stolen.
So what does he do? Bill's a smart guy, and figures he can raise prices to offset the loss. He can't charge a fractional percent, so he rounds up, and he decides to charge 83 cent for a soft drink.
Right?
Maybe. But what will consumers do? They'll go to Bob's supermarket since he is charging 8 cents less.
So what is poor Bill to do? He can do 1 of 2 things:
1) Keep prices high and accept that he'll get less business
2) Put in stronger security measures, and hope that will be less than what he loses
3) Accept the loss and move on.
4) Stop carrying soft drinks.
Note that raising prices is not an option.
Why?
Because the cost of selling something is only marginally related to what it costs to produce (or buy) something.
That seems like nonsense, but its a truism. You can buy dollar bills all day for 2 dollars, but that doesn't mean you can charge 3 dollars for something only worth 1 dollar.
So, that's my long-winded way of saying it will have 0 (zero) effect on prices.
This isn't quite correct; but its close. Your employer has to have some assurance that after a reasonable period of time (6 months), the government will give you a clearance.
The top offenders a long time ago in not getting one were things like criminal record and a history of drug use.
However, it seemed the worst offense wasn't to have done something wrong, but to be untruthful to the investigators.
The danger I see is that what technical people want...the ability to run their own web server, access to NNTP services, ftp, telnet, and now considered services that are not desirable and un-welcome by broadband providers.
I think this has more to do with philosophy than actual network impact.
I think it was Lessig who pointed out that the model for broadband is "we are a producer of content, you are a consumer". Anything that varies from this model is usually against the terms of service.
I want to run a web server to access X10 devices inside my house. However, this is generally not allowed by providers since I am now setting up a server.
It appears to me that they really don't want a peer-to-peer model, but rather a Cable TV model where they supply services that you pay for.
In that model, given today's infrastructure restrictions, broadband doesn't make sense. How fast do you really need to browse the web? Faster is better, but nobody is building content for people with 1Mb connectivity. And if I download gigabytes of data from Usenet or from ftp.redhat.com, then the ISP gets upset because I'm using my broadband for what it was intended: Large amounts of data quickly.
Broadband is, frankly, a paradox in terms of its justification.
You haven't touched on the half of it.
My understanding based on articles on byte.com lead me to believe that as a general web-browsing type of connectivity, 2-way satellite is a poor choice due to what have been described as latency issues.
Also, I've heard anecdotal evidence that the satellite provider are putting rather severe limitations on bandwidth and daily utilization.
Plus, its expensive in initial cost and for reoccuring costs.
Dude,
No offense, but you're thinking wayt too much about it.
The director hadn't a clue, therefore to put the christian, protestant, gnostic, crap on top of it is to give it way too much credit.
The movie was a HUGE disappointment when it came out, and time hasn't helped matters.
This is true. Copyrights are a statutory right, not a common law right.
On the other hand, I think the RIAA and MPAA should be allowed to copy-protect their works.
I just don't understand why the FBI is now the enforcement arm for what is a civil and not a criminal violation of law.
It doesn't pass the smell test from a reasonable person.
"...a solution in search of a problem..."
"In both cases, it was likely the fault of the person eating the fries, for either eating too quickly or eating too much fatty food."
Blame the victim first. How typically corporate.
That's why you need something like Virtual PC to try this kind of stuff out before you hose up your "production" system.
...but is there a picture of this woman on the net?
I find that women with the ability and inclination to be involved in software, development and open source are inherently very sexy.