If the program was coded well, it wouldn't be more than a few days work (they should just need to change a very small number of functions, the ones that act as an abstraction layer to the DB).
This is a bit of an over-simplification. The abstraction layer must fill in all the gaps of missing functionality in the less-powerful database backend(s). Most likely they are taking advantage of some of Oracle's advanced features, which would essentially need to be re-implemented. Not an easy task. If it's a cheesy web site, then sure, use ADOdb or something. That works because you're using minimal SQL that everybody supports.
But sponsoring some open source development, young band, or other similar project just doesn't seem to give me anything other than a warm fluffy feel.
That is, unless you indirectly profit from the sponsoring you do. If you pay $100,000 to sponsor OpenOffice as a business and 3 months later can drop your $200,000 in MS Office licensing, that's a quite good return.
But you need to offer a service that someone wants in order to make money.
That's right. A service. RedHat's struggles are related to treating free software as a product. But guess what? Debian / Gentoo / Slackware / other community projects already package the same free software better than RedHat does. RedHat should have offered support services for Debian from day 1. Poof. No more wasted resources on wheel-reinventing their own distro. This is what Open Source is about: collaboration. Doing your own thing and then branding it is simply a waste. So this move is a step in the right direction. The problem is, they're still doing their own thing with the Enterprise edition, which still adds a whole lot to their overhead.
I know everybody is going to bitch about the spirit of free software and all that crap, but the people at Red hat have families to feed too. Sometimes I wish linux was cheap not free.
The "spirit of free software" is about collaborating with others to produce free information and then selling a multitude of support and consulting services around it if you need the income. (ie. some people / IT departments write free software just to meet their own needs and aren't directly looking for income)
Finally we did not take over the natural resources of any of those countries once the war was over. Currently all the oil wells in Iraq are under the control of the US military. They will be divvied up amongst the "coalition of the willing" with the vast majority going to US companies.
I don't know where you get your information, but you need to start checking your sources, because that's 100% BS. The current administration has stated clearly on numerous occasions that Iraq's natural resources will remain in the hands of the Iraqi people and this promise has not yet been violated. The only reason we currently have military involvement with the oil wells is for protection and rebuilding. In case you haven't noticed, we're trying to re-establish peaceful self-government so we can pull our troops out and be done with the mess. The difference is that Saddam and his thugs were far more entrenched.
"Secondly they were humaniterian wars from the get go" (sic.)
humanitarian
adj 1: marked by humanistic values and devotion to human welfare;
In a case where all peaceful options have been exhausted and the only way to stop bloodshed is to violently remove those causing it, yes, that qualifies by definition as a humanitarian war. WW2 is the most classic example. Perhaps you have a baseless "all acts of war are evil" presumption clouding your judgment.
Corporate America (IT departments, etc.) have been under HUGE scutiny to justfiy software and show ROI. For some reason, MS Office still sticks around. It has been analyzed to death in companies I have worked at, and it is typically a slam dunk to stick with MS Office.
Corporate America is also not exactly known for its efficiency or quickness of feet. Fact is, OO.o and other free software solutions, while they certainly are not ready for some companies, are not that far off. It is my guess that most of these so-called expert analysts have never considered that they could hire people to make OO or other software work the way they need it to for cheaper than MS licensing. This would the "thinking outside the box" approach, which in their case is typically "must procure something that is ready-to-go." When you consider that many large companies spend in the tens of millions for MS licensing, that's a heck of a lot of development labor available. Even better would be if these various IT departments coordinated their efforts to spread the load with others in need. See the Apache project for a good case study..
The problem is that despite all of this analysis and data, you just stick to your simple view of the world and assume that all these people who's jobs rely on their analysis are all dead wrong.
Sometimes the analysts are dead wrong outside of their simple view of the world. I've seen plenty of brain-dead IT decisions made.
No, they claim there was no proof, when Bush told the world he had proof and then failed to produce it or the weapons.
It has not been proven either that the weapons did NOT exist, so there's no sense in claiming yet that Bush lied. Full scale investigation efforts, with the resumed help of the UN, only began recently. If, in a year or so, the evidence is that the weapons really did not exist, then start pointing blame.
They were actively claiming they had destroyed the weapons, and were cooperating with the UN inspectors, who themselves opposed the invasion, asking instead for more time to inspect.
They were claiming the weapons were destroyed, but refused to give evidence or documentation of their destruction. Additionally, there was evidence that labs, compounds, etc. were being evacuated just before the inspectors arrived. Those facts do not imply cooperation.
Dispite the fact that it is illegal (under our laws) for us to do so?
If it was so clearly illegal, why are the Dems not making a big fuss in this direction? Even the UN, which disagreed with our actions, never formally declared them 'illegal' because past resolutions gave us enough room to do what we did.
The administration claims we did. That claim now seems questionable.
It will be interesting what the CIA comes up with in the next month to defend their stance. If bad intelligence was used, then yes, people should be held accountable.
If those were the reasons for going to war then Bush should have made that clear. He should have said simply that we will invade, bomb, and occupy any nation that threatens israel and/or violates human rights, or practices genocide or political executions. I don't remember anybody arguing before the war that those were the reasons.
Actually, some of Bush's pre-war speeches did make a point in mentioning Saddam's other 'certain' evils. It certainly may have been a political blunder to make WMD's the primary focus if there was significant chance that those weapons would not be easily located after the war. Far fewer people questioned Clinton's actions in Somalia, Kosovo, Bosnia, etc. (or even his continual bombing of Iraq)
And your random facts were not proof, I'm sorry but some sort of satelite survelience in conjunction with a spies testomony would be proof, random conjuring of select quotes aren't going to prove anything.
I was not talking proof, but rather possibility. The anti-war folks claim there was no possibility of WMD when in fact there was a very significant possibility. This combined with the fact that Iraq itself claimed to possess said weapons, had not cooperated with UN inspections, AND had made public its support of terrorism against one of our allies (Israel) was, in my opinion, enough reason to overthrow Saddam. To say nothing of his continual human rights violations: genocide, political executions, etc..
Incidentally, we had satellite surveillence and spies testimony. Whether or not that intelligence was accurate is still up for debate. If it was not, the intelligence community is to blame, not Bush.
Sure, back in 1991, before the UN made them disarm.
As well as in 1998 when Iraq declared publically that they still had them. (And there was sufficient evidence that they were likely still producing them, hence the continued UN inspections) Sure, it could have been a bluff to make neighboring countries afraid of him, but why would Saddam go all the way to let himself be overthrown if he could have just said "We lied.. we really didn't have any. Come on in and freely look around to see for yourself" Secondly, it is naive to believe that the first Gulf War knocked some sense into the man and he just willingly gave up all his WMD capabilities. With his conventional military mostly destroyed, it was the only remaining base of power.
The anti-war folks would like people to believe that there was no possibility whatsoever that Iraq possessed WMD's before the war. This is decidedly untrue.
It's not the mere presence of money or the fact that you are paid for a service; it's the law of supply and demand.
Yes, however the law of supply and demand arises naturally from scarcity. In the case of information, only the skilled labor to produce it is scarse. Throughout human history, numerous means have been used to reconcile this fact. Modern copyright and patent systems work by artificially limiting the supply. However, this is only one means to an end.
The GPL is anti-capitalist partly because it discourages this type of thing. You've created a situation where both supply and demand exist, but there is no good way to match them.
Commercial OSS development relies upon the real limited supply of developer labor. Still supply and demand. Still capitalism. I don't agree with your assertion that there is no good way to match the supply and demand. It's really no different than any other labor / services market. If paint was free, people would still make a living painting. (ie. the majority of the value is in the finished product)
Which will mostly be done for free as well. Or we will revert to a socialist society where most of the innovation is done in universities.
This is purely conjecture. You assume that nobody doing paid OSS development is innovative. In fact, there are plenty of examples of the opposite.
You know, in our society there are skilled labourers and unskilled labourers, and the first category generally gets paid twice as much as the second. You don't get to be in the first category if you give up all your leverage. For some reason you don't care if programming turns into sweatshop labour. Most other trades have professional organizations that regulate what their members do.
How does developing GPL'ed software give up ones leverage? If somebody wants to pay to have enhancements made, there is a very limited supply of people with the skills to do the job right. (For smaller projects, this typically means the original developers, who are intimately familiar with the codebase) Fact: most programmers suck. The good will survive, the others won't. That's competition. As for quality, OSS tends to exist on a survival of the fittest basis. If you hire some crappy overseas shop to enhance some GPL'ed software for you, that code most likely won't be accepted back into the project. (so the effort to save money becomes a waste)
Incidentally, programming for a proprietary shop often already is sweatshop labor these days. Plenty of my peers are Dilbert clones. At least, being a consultant, I get to interact with real people, discuss needs, make plans, and execute them on my own time-schedule.
TLDP is a great thing, but there are definitely some weak areas -- specifically, HOWTO's that cover rapidly changing technologies. Topics like wireless, ACPI, X11 fonts, etc. become out of date quickly enough to make the HOWTO's nearly useless. Too often I end up having to Google newsgroups and random sites for hours or even dig through code to find the answers I need. There needs to be a reliable but very easy means of developer-contributed documentation in these cases.
For an example of perspective, consider that anywhere from 7784 to 9596 Iraqi civilians were killed by US troops since the War in Iraq started (source). Given this, how do you think that the Iraqi people should react? I leave you with these thoughts.
You have your facts wrong. Did you actually read the Iraq Body Count site beyond those two numbers. Check out their database. Those numbers do not represent "Iraqi civilians killed by US troops". They represent all violent civilian deaths, not just those caused by US troops. From that site, "This includes civilian deaths resulting from the breakdown in law and order, and deaths due to inadequate health care or sanitation." The count also includes civilian deaths caused by civilian terrorists blowing themselves up and doing other stupid things. If you go through and add everything up, the vast majority of Iraqi civilian deaths were not caused by US troops or even the war's side effects of broken infrastructure. The vast majority are the result of internal lawlessness and terrorism.
All in all, that site reeks of propaganda. It appears intended to make the outcome of the Iraq war look far worse than it is, perhaps to advance the authors' political agenda. Whether or not you believe that removing Saddam by force was the right choice, you must realize that propaganda is propaganda, whether pro-war or anti-war.
You talk about putting things into perspective, and this is a very good thing to do. We must also put into perspective the number of people that Saddam has slaughtered in acts of genocide and political oppression since the last war. (tens of thousands dead) And we must put into perspective the number of people who have died because Saddam's war-lord mentality combined with failed UN sanctions have kept Iraq's economy in the toilet, shorting food and medical needs. (hundreds of thousands dead). Those are plain facts. I'll let you decide how you want to deal with them.
BTW, if you wanted to argue that this is better than capitalism, that's a whole different argument. But that's not what you're saying. You are making the mistaken claim that it *is* capitalism.
By your own definitions, if somebody pays me to produce something for them, that is capitalism. It really matters not whether that thing is information which is GPL-free or public domain or under some restrictive license. No, altruism is not capitalism and I was never claiming this.
On the other hand, a bad economy affects everyone. Legislators are already making noise about the flood of jobs overseas. They're eventually going to realize that OSS only exacerbates the problem.
Aha.. so this was your whole point all along. "OSS is bad for our (mostly) capitalist economy." Well, I respectfully disagree with you. OSS is bad for Microsoft and Adobe and Oracle and all the other big-hitters in the software industry, but it's good for everyone else. So you can't really say what the net outcome for the whole economy will be. What is for certain is that OSS will make the software industry more efficient, just as chainsaws made the logging industry more efficient and jet engines make the airline industry more efficient. If OSS eventually shrinks the software industry, companies will have more money to spend on non-software expenditures. On the other hand, a more likely scenario is that less wheel-reinventing will result in more people actually innovating -- which will drive new software needs and thereby more need for development and consulting labor.
Note that the only people not getting paid in open source are the techies. The developers and to a lesser degree the more technical support staff are conned into doing charity work to pay for the Porsches of the non-geeks. All profits go to the non-technical people almost in directly inverse proportion to their tech skills. At least in the commercial world, somebody besides the PHBs gets a cut.
You may or may not have been trolling, but you certainly don't have a clue what you're talking about. Companies like RedHat are not the only ones profitting from Open Source development labor. In fact, they aren't even a significant percent. The real people making money on Open Source development are the consultant-developers who go out and meet real needs by adding to or customizing existing Free Software. I am one of said people making a living this way, so I can speak with some authority on this matter. Open Source is an opportunity for developers to take home a far larger piece of the software income pie than if they worked for a traditional proprietary software shop. I have no marketing, sales, management, accounting, and legal departments to add to my overhead. When I write software and use it in a solution for clients, I am the one getting all the profit. Can I write all the needed software myself? Of course not. But fortunately, there are other consultant-developers like myself who do their part. Together we are the development team, even though we do not work within the same walls. GPL is our social contract that we will all contribute back the work we do, for if we do not, none of us can survive (or at least not as easily). And, incidentally, I provide notably cheaper solutions for my customers as well. So everybody benefits.
The only way in which OSS development works more efficiently than capitalism is by leveraging the large pool of people who are willing to work for free. In other words, it is inherently reliant on altruistic behaviour.
There has traditionally been a group of people willing to work for free both because it was their hobby/need and/or because it was a way to jump-start the Open Source movement in a world unjustly dominated by monopolistic players. (essentially, a solution the chicken and egg scenario) Most of the "infrastructure" software is now mature and many are turning to full-time paid development now that the software meets peoples needs enough to invest further in perfecting it or building solutions upon it. OSS development is not "more efficient than capitalism", it is a purer and more efficient implementation of capitalism.
Capitalism is an economic model that is based on a game-theory model of the world in which the desire for money leads people to create useful things, and without copyright you are forced to resort to altruism to explain why people would create things (or external influences like celebrity).
Capitalism is based also on scarcity. Information has no scarcity unless you establish laws that artificially create it. And those laws are not free-market forces. Capitalism? Depends on your definition. Your argument that without copyright there is only altruism is still BS, and it is disproven every day by people who produce free information as part of their job.
The fact that you are currently making money writing OSS is largely irrelevant.
How is it irrelevant? Because it disproves your "only altruism" argument?
I'm not talking about the situation right now. I'm trying to predict the future here. My complaint is that I'm not making as much money as I was 3 years ago. But we experienced developers still have it relatively good. The newgrads are getting screwed.
Who cares. Industries change and evolve. The economy fluctuates. It's a fact of life. What does this have anything to do with the argument at hand?
Anyway, my prediction for the future is that the situation is going to get worse and worse until the GPL is legislated out of existence. SCO probably won't win their case now, but 5 years from now the next SCO will.
What situation is going to get worse and worse? You think that the Open Source movement is going to cut or diminish your job? Well, you could be right in certain circumstances. If so, I suggest you innovate or else find a different industry because the change is happening and you are not going to stop it with baseless arguments. Capitalism likes to pick the most efficient means of production and that is turning out to be commercialized Open Source.
And why would the GPL be legislated out of existance any sooner than Microsoft's EULA? Both support a certain business model. Squash the little guy? Not likely with corporate heavyweights getting on board.
However, I'm not sure that I'd go so far as to say anything mathematical shouldn't be patentable. In particular, this is an application of mathematics, not just pure math. I don't think you can come up with a new way to solve a pure math problem, or a new way of expressing an equation, and get a patent on it.... We could argue that ECC is a discovery rather than an invention just as easily as we can for any other technological advancement.
The difference is that patents on mathematical techniques or software algorithms are a distinct limitation of free speech, whereas patents relating to physical inventions are only a limitation of manufacturing rights. Ultimately, it could be argued that all invention has a mathematical basis, but software patents are unique in that they are unembodied. Because anyone can create software, software patents directly infringe on personal freedoms, in the same way that patents on literary style would.
Actually, I think a lot of OSS advocates have a deep seated belief in capitalism. They believe that capitalism is such an omnipotent force that you can take away patents, copyright, trade secrets, collusion, and any kind of leverage, and capitalism will still prevail. These are the people who become incensed if you suggest that the GPL is not capitalist. (I call those people naive.)
I am one of the said "OSS advocates" of which you speak and I make my living writing free software and doing relevant consulting. People pay me for the labor of making software do what they need it to do. The labor market I am a part of is purely capitalist and ultimately has no need for non-market forces of copyright, patent, trade secrets, etc. It is more accurate to say that these non-market forces, where allowed, can actually prevent capitalism from optimizing efficiency -- in the same way that a physical monopoly has this effect. While I believe these non-market forces have their proper place in our hybrid economic system, it is naive to believe that their current implementations are anywhere near efficient.
It is correct to say that GPL is not purely capitalist because it relies on copyright and copyright itself is not purely capitalist. The primary reason why people license their software under GPL, myself included, is to protect against those who would wield copyright in a non-market way -- by turning the software proprietary. In a world without copyright, GPL would not be needed for those using my business model.
The future of Open Source is not altruism, but rather capitalist labor markets. Un(der)-employed? Start a consulting firm and start making a difference.
The NSA bought the concept of ECC, and Certicom deserves to be paid fairly for it.
Until you wake up and realize that allowing the patenting of mathematics is total BS.. (which is why most countries don't allow it)
Mathematical truths, techniques, etc. are discoveries, not inventions. And, of course, as many posters mentioned, it is highly likely the NSA had at least some independent but classified prior art to begin with. Those guys aren't exactly slackers.
The idea of not wanting to buy from a store that does business with the RIAA is laughable.
People said the same thing about other "unstoppable" monopolies... IBM, Standard Oil, etc.
Your concept of paying the artists 75% of the costs is another nice one, too; tell me, how many items that sell for under a dollar have margins of less than 25%? I suppose that you would also require that the independent labels pay for all costs of producing the record and are limited in the return that they make.
The cost of producing albums, besides time to write the music itself, is negligible today. And I never said that 75% wouldn't be shared with people who help put the band together. Any smart musician today starts their own "label" (aka. personal business), so it's kinda the same thing anyhow. And equally, any smart musician realizes that the big money is in touring, not recording. That's how most RIAA artists even exist, since they typically don't even see any royalties unless they're in the top 10%. Ergo, if an album is now negligibly cheap to produce, why even bother trying to limit its popularity by charging money for it? That just limits the advertising for your performances! Sure, that doesn't work for everyone, but more no-name folks need to give it a shot.
And honestly, enough complaining about the "evil" record labels and the angelic recording artists. No one is forced to sign a record label contract with a gun to their head. THe artists that go the major label route have obviously done the calculation and decided that's what they want to do.
Just like people willingly choose Microsoft products because they're the best around, meet all their needs perfectly, never break, and are really cheap too! You don't need a gun to force people; you just need a monopoly. Before the Internet, the RIAA was the only game in town. All things change.
And a sizeable chunk of it goes to the record company, which invested tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars into the CD's production.... If the track cost $50,000.00 to produce (remember, studio time can be upwards of $500,000.00 for an entire album nowadays)
This argument is 100% BS. I personally know people in the music biz who have built fully-equipped, acoustically optimized home studios for less than $50,000 and the recordings they produce are every bit as good as those that come out of Nashville. In fact, I've heard recordings of cover songs that sound better than the originals simply because they were better musicians and had more time to relax and do things right.
By the way, I run my own online business. I call the shots, and I've put a lot of work into it. The business wouldn't be around were it not for the software I've written myself. I don't deal with hard goods and my expenses are low. Yet I don't make anything close to the 75% net margin that you say that musicians should get. Most people don't. Your expectation that musicians should get 75% net margin is unrealistic.
The net margin a musician makes depends on their own costs. They do the recording. They do the touring. (And touring is far more profitable than recording anyhow) All the online service does is provide a mechanism to easily distribute to a very wide audience. Their overhead is very minimal so they don't need to charge much for their services. That 75% actually gives a very large margin to the online service. Reportedly indie artists using Apple's store can get around 90%. Competition will make this a driving factor.
Originally, the copyright term in the US was 14 years. If your work was successful and you therefore felt it was worthwhile, you could extend that term by another 14 years if you applied for it. This was in the days before modern printing technology, advertisement, and mass transportation, let alone the Internet! So if you wrote a book or recorded a phonograph, it took awhile for enough copies to be manufactured and shipped across the country. Without modern communication and advertisement, it took even longer to achieve enough popularity to sell significant volume. And yet authors survived just fine.
Today, we live in a world where near-instant capitalization is possible. A popular writer can sell millions of copies in the first week of a book's release. An unknown writer of exceptional quality can become well known in a few months. Similar scenarios exist with all other forms of media. A typical hollywood blockbuster makes several hundred percent profit in a theatrical release cycle alone. As a result, most of the capitalization occurs within a few years of a work's publishing and then quickly tapers off to a relatively insignificant level.
So the question becomes: Why are copyright terms getting longer and not shorter? The vast majority of the incentive to produce occurs in the first couple years of release. After that period, one must reasonably weigh the pros and cons of allowing that term to continue. Because copyright law is a social compromise, it must be judged by its value to society as a whole. Does allowing a term to continue into years of greatly diminished sales give enough extra incentive to authors to outweigh the costs to society of the work not entering the public domain?
There are many possible factors to consider. On one hand, very prolific authors can retire earlier on the combined trickle income from the remnant sales of numerous old works. This could be seen as an added incentive to become an author. However, at the same time, it is an incentive to stop producing earlier! On one hand, a longer term allows for certain works to go through several revisions by the original authors. But at the same time, there is no longer an incentive for others to produce derivative works of what would have been public domain material! Disney is, of course, the most classic case.. They make big money on reworking the public domain but then don't want their derivatives to ever go public domain again!
Perhaps one of the largest factors is simply the shortage of modern public domain material. Besides removing the incentive to innovate on old material, this shortage creates a gap of cultural heritage. Consider music: when people go looking for music, they generally support the artists that are currently in style and/or innovative. Most are unwilling to pay for old music, not just because it is less popular, but because they can't afford both. (and after all, why would you "support" someone who's already dead?) And yet there has been a recent resurgence in the popularity of "oldies" music in youth. It is now common to hear parents saying things like, "Hey, I didn't know you kids actually listened to that stuff! That's older than I am!" Casual investigation reveals that unauthorized P2P swapping has largely replaced the functionality that public domain was intended to serve!
By and large, there is great need for copyright length reform. What was once intended to create vibrant culture of quality, public information has become a system that often chokes innovation and rewards greed and slothfulness. Copyright is a good social institution, but its implementation has been greatly corrupted. It is high time for citizens to petition their lawmakers bring reason, fairness, and the public good back into the picture.
This post is public domain. Do with it as you please.
With your book example, you could say that, but I doubt anyone would buy it. Any argument against DRM or current media is more or less nullified by the counter-argument that a non-DRM version is almost always available (in CD form).
Suppose it was a really good book. Many people would probably buy it and just ignore the stupid restrictions because there is absolutely no moral reason why they should be followed.
Any argument *for* DRM is more or less nullified by the existance of non-DRM versions. Unless you ONLY release DRM material, the non-DRM version will be shared without authorization. And any DRM will always be cracked, so there's no difference anyways. Again, it's a pipe dream.
DRM does sort of exist in book form; you're not allowed to photocopy it. Of course, people "break" the DRM by doing it anyway. (This is DRM in a very loose sense; it's not forced by technology.)
Actually, there are many cases (Fair Use doctrine) where the law says you can photocopy parts of a book regardless of the author's stated wishes (again, proof that it is not truly property). But in the case of DRM, that fair use is trumped by technological restrictions. Unconstitutional laws like the DMCA make it illegal to remove those restrictions even for otherwise Fair Use cases. And, once again, people ignore the bad laws. There are dozens of commercial programs that defeat copy protection schemes so that customers can do things like backup their DVD's, print pages of their eBooks, etc.
That's the thing, though. If Apple's store and others succeed, it means that the patrons have chosen and accepted the store's format.
One of the most common failures in economics is the assumption that the market is educated and rational. But fortunately, this can often be solved through consumer activism. Look what happened to Circuit City's DRM-laden Divx format.
It's not even worth arguing which one is better, because all of these new music services are unacceptable for several reasons:
1. They all largely support RIAA music 2. Each has its own stupid DRM scheme, even if a weak one, that is a hastle for consumers 3. They are all platform limited and not Open Source (after all, you can't have DRM otherwise) 4. Most importantly: they still do not give all musicians a fair deal! ie.) at most 10-15% of sales for the typical signed artist, according to most reports.
The characteristics of a good online music service would be:
1.) Only non-RIAA affiliated labels or independent artists 2.) No DRM whatsoever, besides charging your account for the initial download 3.) Option to download in a lossless compressed format (such as FLAC) 4.) Contract with all artists that the music published via this service shall enter a non-restrictive Creative Commons license in at most 5-10 years (or after a sales target is reached) or else go public domain. This would re-introduce the concept of actually "supporting the arts and the public good" 5.) A free-downloads section for artists who realize it makes more sense to use recordings as a marketing tool for their live performances. Other artists services may be available in complement. 6.) All clients are open source and based on standard, open protocols. 7.) Artists directly receive at least 75% of the sales and are allowed to set their own per-track or per-album prices to remain competitive.
That would be a service I would love to use. Let us not accept anything less!
"I made this. You can have this, but don't give it to anyone else." "You're unethical. If you give this to me, I can do whatever I want with it." Who's right?
Since there's no natural moral law governing information, the second is generally more right with the exception of a workable social compromise agreed on by both parties. (In that case, it is dishonesty, not theft, to break the agreement) In the absence or termination of a workable compromise, the creator has no right to claim what can or cannot be done with their ideas because there is no true ownership in the first place. What do you think happens when a copyright or patent expires? The inventor/creator can complain until they're blue in the face that they don't want people to copy their work. But they have moral no leg to stand on because their work was never really owned in the sense of "this is my yard and you can't walk on it."
DRM is not inherently unethical. Especially using your argument, that it's "man-made" and therefore somehow outside the realm of ethics.
I never said that what is man-made is outside the realm of ethics. I said that man-made laws are relative and not necessarily defining what is truly ethical or not in every situation. (ie. there are always exceptions, laws that make the ethical illegal and the unethical legal..) DRM is inherently unethical because it cannot work for its intended purpose and it only serves to hastle legitimate consumers. It can also be easily abused to force unnatural conditions on how information is used and trump basic human rights that must ultimately supercede any laws or social contracts. This is sometimes known as downstream licensing -- control of how the information is used past the first sale. Suppose I were to sell you a book and tell you that you could only read it between 2am and 4am, could not tell anybody else what the book was about, could not quote anything from the book, and you have to forget everything you've read once you're finished with it. Would that be reasonable? Would you be ethically in the wrong to not cede to my wishes? Certainly not. DRM follows is the same principle. It is both unreasonable and unenforcable.
Oftentimes, obscurity is a very good method of security.
You again miss the point in regards to DRM. DRM gives you the key, hides it in plain view, and says "it's illegal if you find it or tell others where it is." That is NOT security; it's a farse.
But is there even one online music site that supports Linux?
Plenty: all the ones that don't require goofy proprietary clients. MP3.com and emusic.com come to mind, though I am more likely to buy the CD of an independent artist that I want to patronize.
No one's forcing you to use AAC if you don't want to.
If something like Apple's store succeeded on a grand scale, people *would* be forced into certain formats. That's why it is important that these services fail miserably -- so that nobody can monopolize their own proprietary media standard.
If I've lost this argument on every point, what happened to the other five?
They were only tangentally related to the core argument and I didn't feel like wasting the time.
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If the program was coded well, it wouldn't be more than a few days work (they should just need to change a very small number of functions, the ones that act as an abstraction layer to the DB).
This is a bit of an over-simplification. The abstraction layer must fill in all the gaps of missing functionality in the less-powerful database backend(s). Most likely they are taking advantage of some of Oracle's advanced features, which would essentially need to be re-implemented. Not an easy task. If it's a cheesy web site, then sure, use ADOdb or something. That works because you're using minimal SQL that everybody supports.
But sponsoring some open source development, young band, or other similar project just doesn't seem to give me anything other than a warm fluffy feel.
That is, unless you indirectly profit from the sponsoring you do. If you pay $100,000 to sponsor OpenOffice as a business and 3 months later can drop your $200,000 in MS Office licensing, that's a quite good return.
But you need to offer a service that someone wants in order to make money.
That's right. A service. RedHat's struggles are related to treating free software as a product. But guess what? Debian / Gentoo / Slackware / other community projects already package the same free software better than RedHat does. RedHat should have offered support services for Debian from day 1. Poof. No more wasted resources on wheel-reinventing their own distro. This is what Open Source is about: collaboration. Doing your own thing and then branding it is simply a waste. So this move is a step in the right direction. The problem is, they're still doing their own thing with the Enterprise edition, which still adds a whole lot to their overhead.
I know everybody is going to bitch about the spirit of free software and all that crap, but the people at Red hat have families to feed too. Sometimes I wish linux was cheap not free.
The "spirit of free software" is about collaborating with others to produce free information and then selling a multitude of support and consulting services around it if you need the income. (ie. some people / IT departments write free software just to meet their own needs and aren't directly looking for income)
Finally we did not take over the natural resources of any of those countries once the war was over. Currently all the oil wells in Iraq are under the control of the US military. They will be divvied up amongst the "coalition of the willing" with the vast majority going to US companies.
I don't know where you get your information, but you need to start checking your sources, because that's 100% BS. The current administration has stated clearly on numerous occasions that Iraq's natural resources will remain in the hands of the Iraqi people and this promise has not yet been violated. The only reason we currently have military involvement with the oil wells is for protection and rebuilding. In case you haven't noticed, we're trying to re-establish peaceful self-government so we can pull our troops out and be done with the mess. The difference is that Saddam and his thugs were far more entrenched.
"Secondly they were humaniterian wars from the get go" (sic.)
humanitarian
adj 1: marked by humanistic values and devotion to human welfare;
In a case where all peaceful options have been exhausted and the only way to stop bloodshed is to violently remove those causing it, yes, that qualifies by definition as a humanitarian war. WW2 is the most classic example. Perhaps you have a baseless "all acts of war are evil" presumption clouding your judgment.
Corporate America (IT departments, etc.) have been under HUGE scutiny to justfiy software and show ROI. For some reason, MS Office still sticks around. It has been analyzed to death in companies I have worked at, and it is typically a slam dunk to stick with MS Office.
Corporate America is also not exactly known for its efficiency or quickness of feet. Fact is, OO.o and other free software solutions, while they certainly are not ready for some companies, are not that far off. It is my guess that most of these so-called expert analysts have never considered that they could hire people to make OO or other software work the way they need it to for cheaper than MS licensing. This would the "thinking outside the box" approach, which in their case is typically "must procure something that is ready-to-go." When you consider that many large companies spend in the tens of millions for MS licensing, that's a heck of a lot of development labor available. Even better would be if these various IT departments coordinated their efforts to spread the load with others in need. See the Apache project for a good case study..
The problem is that despite all of this analysis and data, you just stick to your simple view of the world and assume that all these people who's jobs rely on their analysis are all dead wrong.
Sometimes the analysts are dead wrong outside of their simple view of the world. I've seen plenty of brain-dead IT decisions made.
You're writing history that hasn't happened yet.
No, they claim there was no proof, when Bush told the world he had proof and then failed to produce it or the weapons.
It has not been proven either that the weapons did NOT exist, so there's no sense in claiming yet that Bush lied. Full scale investigation efforts, with the resumed help of the UN, only began recently. If, in a year or so, the evidence is that the weapons really did not exist, then start pointing blame.
They were actively claiming they had destroyed the weapons, and were cooperating with the UN inspectors, who themselves opposed the invasion, asking instead for more time to inspect.
They were claiming the weapons were destroyed, but refused to give evidence or documentation of their destruction. Additionally, there was evidence that labs, compounds, etc. were being evacuated just before the inspectors arrived. Those facts do not imply cooperation.
Dispite the fact that it is illegal (under our laws) for us to do so?
If it was so clearly illegal, why are the Dems not making a big fuss in this direction? Even the UN, which disagreed with our actions, never formally declared them 'illegal' because past resolutions gave us enough room to do what we did.
The administration claims we did. That claim now seems questionable.
It will be interesting what the CIA comes up with in the next month to defend their stance. If bad intelligence was used, then yes, people should be held accountable.
If those were the reasons for going to war then Bush should have made that clear. He should have said simply that we will invade, bomb, and occupy any nation that threatens israel and/or violates human rights, or practices genocide or political executions. I don't remember anybody arguing before the war that those were the reasons.
Actually, some of Bush's pre-war speeches did make a point in mentioning Saddam's other 'certain' evils. It certainly may have been a political blunder to make WMD's the primary focus if there was significant chance that those weapons would not be easily located after the war. Far fewer people questioned Clinton's actions in Somalia, Kosovo, Bosnia, etc. (or even his continual bombing of Iraq)
And your random facts were not proof, I'm sorry but some sort of satelite survelience in conjunction with a spies testomony would be proof, random conjuring of select quotes aren't going to prove anything.
I was not talking proof, but rather possibility. The anti-war folks claim there was no possibility of WMD when in fact there was a very significant possibility. This combined with the fact that Iraq itself claimed to possess said weapons, had not cooperated with UN inspections, AND had made public its support of terrorism against one of our allies (Israel) was, in my opinion, enough reason to overthrow Saddam. To say nothing of his continual human rights violations: genocide, political executions, etc..
Incidentally, we had satellite surveillence and spies testimony. Whether or not that intelligence was accurate is still up for debate. If it was not, the intelligence community is to blame, not Bush.
Sure, back in 1991, before the UN made them disarm.
As well as in 1998 when Iraq declared publically that they still had them. (And there was sufficient evidence that they were likely still producing them, hence the continued UN inspections) Sure, it could have been a bluff to make neighboring countries afraid of him, but why would Saddam go all the way to let himself be overthrown if he could have just said "We lied.. we really didn't have any. Come on in and freely look around to see for yourself" Secondly, it is naive to believe that the first Gulf War knocked some sense into the man and he just willingly gave up all his WMD capabilities. With his conventional military mostly destroyed, it was the only remaining base of power.
The anti-war folks would like people to believe that there was no possibility whatsoever that Iraq possessed WMD's before the war. This is decidedly untrue.
It's not the mere presence of money or the fact that you are paid for a service; it's the law of supply and demand.
Yes, however the law of supply and demand arises naturally from scarcity. In the case of information, only the skilled labor to produce it is scarse. Throughout human history, numerous means have been used to reconcile this fact. Modern copyright and patent systems work by artificially limiting the supply. However, this is only one means to an end.
The GPL is anti-capitalist partly because it discourages this type of thing. You've created a situation where both supply and demand exist, but there is no good way to match them.
Commercial OSS development relies upon the real limited supply of developer labor. Still supply and demand. Still capitalism. I don't agree with your assertion that there is no good way to match the supply and demand. It's really no different than any other labor / services market. If paint was free, people would still make a living painting. (ie. the majority of the value is in the finished product)
Which will mostly be done for free as well. Or we will revert to a socialist society where most of the innovation is done in universities.
This is purely conjecture. You assume that nobody doing paid OSS development is innovative. In fact, there are plenty of examples of the opposite.
You know, in our society there are skilled labourers and unskilled labourers, and the first category generally gets paid twice as much as the second. You don't get to be in the first category if you give up all your leverage. For some reason you don't care if programming turns into sweatshop labour. Most other trades have professional organizations that regulate what their members do.
How does developing GPL'ed software give up ones leverage? If somebody wants to pay to have enhancements made, there is a very limited supply of people with the skills to do the job right. (For smaller projects, this typically means the original developers, who are intimately familiar with the codebase) Fact: most programmers suck. The good will survive, the others won't. That's competition. As for quality, OSS tends to exist on a survival of the fittest basis. If you hire some crappy overseas shop to enhance some GPL'ed software for you, that code most likely won't be accepted back into the project. (so the effort to save money becomes a waste)
Incidentally, programming for a proprietary shop often already is sweatshop labor these days. Plenty of my peers are Dilbert clones. At least, being a consultant, I get to interact with real people, discuss needs, make plans, and execute them on my own time-schedule.
TLDP is a great thing, but there are definitely some weak areas -- specifically, HOWTO's that cover rapidly changing technologies. Topics like wireless, ACPI, X11 fonts, etc. become out of date quickly enough to make the HOWTO's nearly useless. Too often I end up having to Google newsgroups and random sites for hours or even dig through code to find the answers I need. There needs to be a reliable but very easy means of developer-contributed documentation in these cases.
For an example of perspective, consider that anywhere from 7784 to 9596 Iraqi civilians were killed by US troops since the War in Iraq started (source). Given this, how do you think that the Iraqi people should react? I leave you with these thoughts.
You have your facts wrong. Did you actually read the Iraq Body Count site beyond those two numbers. Check out their database. Those numbers do not represent "Iraqi civilians killed by US troops". They represent all violent civilian deaths, not just those caused by US troops. From that site, "This includes civilian deaths resulting from the breakdown in law and order, and deaths due to inadequate health care or sanitation." The count also includes civilian deaths caused by civilian terrorists blowing themselves up and doing other stupid things. If you go through and add everything up, the vast majority of Iraqi civilian deaths were not caused by US troops or even the war's side effects of broken infrastructure. The vast majority are the result of internal lawlessness and terrorism.
All in all, that site reeks of propaganda. It appears intended to make the outcome of the Iraq war look far worse than it is, perhaps to advance the authors' political agenda. Whether or not you believe that removing Saddam by force was the right choice, you must realize that propaganda is propaganda, whether pro-war or anti-war.
You talk about putting things into perspective, and this is a very good thing to do. We must also put into perspective the number of people that Saddam has slaughtered in acts of genocide and political oppression since the last war. (tens of thousands dead) And we must put into perspective the number of people who have died because Saddam's war-lord mentality combined with failed UN sanctions have kept Iraq's economy in the toilet, shorting food and medical needs. (hundreds of thousands dead). Those are plain facts. I'll let you decide how you want to deal with them.
BTW, if you wanted to argue that this is better than capitalism, that's a whole different argument. But that's not what you're saying. You are making the mistaken claim that it *is* capitalism.
By your own definitions, if somebody pays me to produce something for them, that is capitalism. It really matters not whether that thing is information which is GPL-free or public domain or under some restrictive license. No, altruism is not capitalism and I was never claiming this.
On the other hand, a bad economy affects everyone. Legislators are already making noise about the flood of jobs overseas. They're eventually going to realize that OSS only exacerbates the problem.
Aha.. so this was your whole point all along. "OSS is bad for our (mostly) capitalist economy." Well, I respectfully disagree with you. OSS is bad for Microsoft and Adobe and Oracle and all the other big-hitters in the software industry, but it's good for everyone else. So you can't really say what the net outcome for the whole economy will be. What is for certain is that OSS will make the software industry more efficient, just as chainsaws made the logging industry more efficient and jet engines make the airline industry more efficient. If OSS eventually shrinks the software industry, companies will have more money to spend on non-software expenditures. On the other hand, a more likely scenario is that less wheel-reinventing will result in more people actually innovating -- which will drive new software needs and thereby more need for development and consulting labor.
Note that the only people not getting paid in open source are the techies. The developers and to a lesser degree the more technical support staff are conned into doing charity work to pay for the Porsches of the non-geeks. All profits go to the non-technical people almost in directly inverse proportion to their tech skills. At least in the commercial world, somebody besides the PHBs gets a cut.
You may or may not have been trolling, but you certainly don't have a clue what you're talking about. Companies like RedHat are not the only ones profitting from Open Source development labor. In fact, they aren't even a significant percent. The real people making money on Open Source development are the consultant-developers who go out and meet real needs by adding to or customizing existing Free Software. I am one of said people making a living this way, so I can speak with some authority on this matter. Open Source is an opportunity for developers to take home a far larger piece of the software income pie than if they worked for a traditional proprietary software shop. I have no marketing, sales, management, accounting, and legal departments to add to my overhead. When I write software and use it in a solution for clients, I am the one getting all the profit. Can I write all the needed software myself? Of course not. But fortunately, there are other consultant-developers like myself who do their part. Together we are the development team, even though we do not work within the same walls. GPL is our social contract that we will all contribute back the work we do, for if we do not, none of us can survive (or at least not as easily). And, incidentally, I provide notably cheaper solutions for my customers as well. So everybody benefits.
Proprietary software is dying business model.
The only way in which OSS development works more efficiently than capitalism is by leveraging the large pool of people who are willing to work for free. In other words, it is inherently reliant on altruistic behaviour.
There has traditionally been a group of people willing to work for free both because it was their hobby/need and/or because it was a way to jump-start the Open Source movement in a world unjustly dominated by monopolistic players. (essentially, a solution the chicken and egg scenario) Most of the "infrastructure" software is now mature and many are turning to full-time paid development now that the software meets peoples needs enough to invest further in perfecting it or building solutions upon it. OSS development is not "more efficient than capitalism", it is a purer and more efficient implementation of capitalism.
Capitalism is an economic model that is based on a game-theory model of the world in which the desire for money leads people to create useful things, and without copyright you are forced to resort to altruism to explain why people would create things (or external influences like celebrity).
Capitalism is based also on scarcity. Information has no scarcity unless you establish laws that artificially create it. And those laws are not free-market forces. Capitalism? Depends on your definition. Your argument that without copyright there is only altruism is still BS, and it is disproven every day by people who produce free information as part of their job.
The fact that you are currently making money writing OSS is largely irrelevant.
How is it irrelevant? Because it disproves your "only altruism" argument?
I'm not talking about the situation right now. I'm trying to predict the future here. My complaint is that I'm not making as much money as I was 3 years ago. But we experienced developers still have it relatively good. The newgrads are getting screwed.
Who cares. Industries change and evolve. The economy fluctuates. It's a fact of life. What does this have anything to do with the argument at hand?
Anyway, my prediction for the future is that the situation is going to get worse and worse until the GPL is legislated out of existence. SCO probably won't win their case now, but 5 years from now the next SCO will.
What situation is going to get worse and worse? You think that the Open Source movement is going to cut or diminish your job? Well, you could be right in certain circumstances. If so, I suggest you innovate or else find a different industry because the change is happening and you are not going to stop it with baseless arguments. Capitalism likes to pick the most efficient means of production and that is turning out to be commercialized Open Source.
And why would the GPL be legislated out of existance any sooner than Microsoft's EULA? Both support a certain business model. Squash the little guy? Not likely with corporate heavyweights getting on board.
However, I'm not sure that I'd go so far as to say anything mathematical shouldn't be patentable. In particular, this is an application of mathematics, not just pure math. I don't think you can come up with a new way to solve a pure math problem, or a new way of expressing an equation, and get a patent on it. ... We could argue that ECC is a discovery rather than an invention just as easily as we can for any other technological advancement.
The difference is that patents on mathematical techniques or software algorithms are a distinct limitation of free speech, whereas patents relating to physical inventions are only a limitation of manufacturing rights. Ultimately, it could be argued that all invention has a mathematical basis, but software patents are unique in that they are unembodied. Because anyone can create software, software patents directly infringe on personal freedoms, in the same way that patents on literary style would.
Actually, I think a lot of OSS advocates have a deep seated belief in capitalism. They believe that capitalism is such an omnipotent force that you can take away patents, copyright, trade secrets, collusion, and any kind of leverage, and capitalism will still prevail. These are the people who become incensed if you suggest that the GPL is not capitalist. (I call those people naive.)
I am one of the said "OSS advocates" of which you speak and I make my living writing free software and doing relevant consulting. People pay me for the labor of making software do what they need it to do. The labor market I am a part of is purely capitalist and ultimately has no need for non-market forces of copyright, patent, trade secrets, etc. It is more accurate to say that these non-market forces, where allowed, can actually prevent capitalism from optimizing efficiency -- in the same way that a physical monopoly has this effect. While I believe these non-market forces have their proper place in our hybrid economic system, it is naive to believe that their current implementations are anywhere near efficient.
It is correct to say that GPL is not purely capitalist because it relies on copyright and copyright itself is not purely capitalist. The primary reason why people license their software under GPL, myself included, is to protect against those who would wield copyright in a non-market way -- by turning the software proprietary. In a world without copyright, GPL would not be needed for those using my business model.
The future of Open Source is not altruism, but rather capitalist labor markets. Un(der)-employed? Start a consulting firm and start making a difference.
The NSA bought the concept of ECC, and Certicom deserves to be paid fairly for it.
Until you wake up and realize that allowing the patenting of mathematics is total BS.. (which is why most countries don't allow it)
Mathematical truths, techniques, etc. are discoveries, not inventions. And, of course, as many posters mentioned, it is highly likely the NSA had at least some independent but classified prior art to begin with. Those guys aren't exactly slackers.
End software patents NOW!
The idea of not wanting to buy from a store that does business with the RIAA is laughable.
People said the same thing about other "unstoppable" monopolies... IBM, Standard Oil, etc.
Your concept of paying the artists 75% of the costs is another nice one, too; tell me, how many items that sell for under a dollar have margins of less than 25%? I suppose that you would also require that the independent labels pay for all costs of producing the record and are limited in the return that they make.
The cost of producing albums, besides time to write the music itself, is negligible today. And I never said that 75% wouldn't be shared with people who help put the band together. Any smart musician today starts their own "label" (aka. personal business), so it's kinda the same thing anyhow. And equally, any smart musician realizes that the big money is in touring, not recording. That's how most RIAA artists even exist, since they typically don't even see any royalties unless they're in the top 10%. Ergo, if an album is now negligibly cheap to produce, why even bother trying to limit its popularity by charging money for it? That just limits the advertising for your performances! Sure, that doesn't work for everyone, but more no-name folks need to give it a shot.
And honestly, enough complaining about the "evil" record labels and the angelic recording artists. No one is forced to sign a record label contract with a gun to their head. THe artists that go the major label route have obviously done the calculation and decided that's what they want to do.
Just like people willingly choose Microsoft products because they're the best around, meet all their needs perfectly, never break, and are really cheap too! You don't need a gun to force people; you just need a monopoly. Before the Internet, the RIAA was the only game in town. All things change.
And a sizeable chunk of it goes to the record company, which invested tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars into the CD's production. ...
If the track cost $50,000.00 to produce (remember, studio time can be upwards of $500,000.00 for an entire album nowadays)
This argument is 100% BS. I personally know people in the music biz who have built fully-equipped, acoustically optimized home studios for less than $50,000 and the recordings they produce are every bit as good as those that come out of Nashville. In fact, I've heard recordings of cover songs that sound better than the originals simply because they were better musicians and had more time to relax and do things right.
By the way, I run my own online business. I call the shots, and I've put a lot of work into it. The business wouldn't be around were it not for the software I've written myself. I don't deal with hard goods and my expenses are low. Yet I don't make anything close to the 75% net margin that you say that musicians should get. Most people don't. Your expectation that musicians should get 75% net margin is unrealistic.
The net margin a musician makes depends on their own costs. They do the recording. They do the touring. (And touring is far more profitable than recording anyhow) All the online service does is provide a mechanism to easily distribute to a very wide audience. Their overhead is very minimal so they don't need to charge much for their services. That 75% actually gives a very large margin to the online service. Reportedly indie artists using Apple's store can get around 90%. Competition will make this a driving factor.
Originally, the copyright term in the US was 14 years. If your work was successful and you therefore felt it was worthwhile, you could extend that term by another 14 years if you applied for it. This was in the days before modern printing technology, advertisement, and mass transportation, let alone the Internet! So if you wrote a book or recorded a phonograph, it took awhile for enough copies to be manufactured and shipped across the country. Without modern communication and advertisement, it took even longer to achieve enough popularity to sell significant volume. And yet authors survived just fine.
Today, we live in a world where near-instant capitalization is possible. A popular writer can sell millions of copies in the first week of a book's release. An unknown writer of exceptional quality can become well known in a few months. Similar scenarios exist with all other forms of media. A typical hollywood blockbuster makes several hundred percent profit in a theatrical release cycle alone. As a result, most of the capitalization occurs within a few years of a work's publishing and then quickly tapers off to a relatively insignificant level.
So the question becomes: Why are copyright terms getting longer and not shorter? The vast majority of the incentive to produce occurs in the first couple years of release. After that period, one must reasonably weigh the pros and cons of allowing that term to continue. Because copyright law is a social compromise, it must be judged by its value to society as a whole. Does allowing a term to continue into years of greatly diminished sales give enough extra incentive to authors to outweigh the costs to society of the work not entering the public domain?
There are many possible factors to consider. On one hand, very prolific authors can retire earlier on the combined trickle income from the remnant sales of numerous old works. This could be seen as an added incentive to become an author. However, at the same time, it is an incentive to stop producing earlier! On one hand, a longer term allows for certain works to go through several revisions by the original authors. But at the same time, there is no longer an incentive for others to produce derivative works of what would have been public domain material! Disney is, of course, the most classic case.. They make big money on reworking the public domain but then don't want their derivatives to ever go public domain again!
Perhaps one of the largest factors is simply the shortage of modern public domain material. Besides removing the incentive to innovate on old material, this shortage creates a gap of cultural heritage. Consider music: when people go looking for music, they generally support the artists that are currently in style and/or innovative. Most are unwilling to pay for old music, not just because it is less popular, but because they can't afford both. (and after all, why would you "support" someone who's already dead?) And yet there has been a recent resurgence in the popularity of "oldies" music in youth. It is now common to hear parents saying things like, "Hey, I didn't know you kids actually listened to that stuff! That's older than I am!" Casual investigation reveals that unauthorized P2P swapping has largely replaced the functionality that public domain was intended to serve!
By and large, there is great need for copyright length reform. What was once intended to create vibrant culture of quality, public information has become a system that often chokes innovation and rewards greed and slothfulness. Copyright is a good social institution, but its implementation has been greatly corrupted. It is high time for citizens to petition their lawmakers bring reason, fairness, and the public good back into the picture.
This post is public domain. Do with it as you please.
With your book example, you could say that, but I doubt anyone would buy it. Any argument against DRM or current media is more or less nullified by the counter-argument that a non-DRM version is almost always available (in CD form).
Suppose it was a really good book. Many people would probably buy it and just ignore the stupid restrictions because there is absolutely no moral reason why they should be followed.
Any argument *for* DRM is more or less nullified by the existance of non-DRM versions. Unless you ONLY release DRM material, the non-DRM version will be shared without authorization. And any DRM will always be cracked, so there's no difference anyways. Again, it's a pipe dream.
DRM does sort of exist in book form; you're not allowed to photocopy it. Of course, people "break" the DRM by doing it anyway. (This is DRM in a very loose sense; it's not forced by technology.)
Actually, there are many cases (Fair Use doctrine) where the law says you can photocopy parts of a book regardless of the author's stated wishes (again, proof that it is not truly property). But in the case of DRM, that fair use is trumped by technological restrictions. Unconstitutional laws like the DMCA make it illegal to remove those restrictions even for otherwise Fair Use cases. And, once again, people ignore the bad laws. There are dozens of commercial programs that defeat copy protection schemes so that customers can do things like backup their DVD's, print pages of their eBooks, etc.
That's the thing, though. If Apple's store and others succeed, it means that the patrons have chosen and accepted the store's format.
One of the most common failures in economics is the assumption that the market is educated and rational. But fortunately, this can often be solved through consumer activism. Look what happened to Circuit City's DRM-laden Divx format.
It's not even worth arguing which one is better, because all of these new music services are unacceptable for several reasons:
1. They all largely support RIAA music
2. Each has its own stupid DRM scheme, even if a weak one, that is a hastle for consumers
3. They are all platform limited and not Open Source (after all, you can't have DRM otherwise)
4. Most importantly: they still do not give all musicians a fair deal! ie.) at most 10-15% of sales for the typical signed artist, according to most reports.
The characteristics of a good online music service would be:
1.) Only non-RIAA affiliated labels or independent artists
2.) No DRM whatsoever, besides charging your account for the initial download
3.) Option to download in a lossless compressed format (such as FLAC)
4.) Contract with all artists that the music published via this service shall enter a non-restrictive Creative Commons license in at most 5-10 years (or after a sales target is reached) or else go public domain. This would re-introduce the concept of actually "supporting the arts and the public good"
5.) A free-downloads section for artists who realize it makes more sense to use recordings as a marketing tool for their live performances. Other artists services may be available in complement.
6.) All clients are open source and based on standard, open protocols.
7.) Artists directly receive at least 75% of the sales and are allowed to set their own per-track or per-album prices to remain competitive.
That would be a service I would love to use. Let us not accept anything less!
"I made this. You can have this, but don't give it to anyone else."
"You're unethical. If you give this to me, I can do whatever I want with it."
Who's right?
Since there's no natural moral law governing information, the second is generally more right with the exception of a workable social compromise agreed on by both parties. (In that case, it is dishonesty, not theft, to break the agreement) In the absence or termination of a workable compromise, the creator has no right to claim what can or cannot be done with their ideas because there is no true ownership in the first place. What do you think happens when a copyright or patent expires? The inventor/creator can complain until they're blue in the face that they don't want people to copy their work. But they have moral no leg to stand on because their work was never really owned in the sense of "this is my yard and you can't walk on it."
DRM is not inherently unethical. Especially using your argument, that it's "man-made" and therefore somehow outside the realm of ethics.
I never said that what is man-made is outside the realm of ethics. I said that man-made laws are relative and not necessarily defining what is truly ethical or not in every situation. (ie. there are always exceptions, laws that make the ethical illegal and the unethical legal..) DRM is inherently unethical because it cannot work for its intended purpose and it only serves to hastle legitimate consumers. It can also be easily abused to force unnatural conditions on how information is used and trump basic human rights that must ultimately supercede any laws or social contracts. This is sometimes known as downstream licensing -- control of how the information is used past the first sale. Suppose I were to sell you a book and tell you that you could only read it between 2am and 4am, could not tell anybody else what the book was about, could not quote anything from the book, and you have to forget everything you've read once you're finished with it. Would that be reasonable? Would you be ethically in the wrong to not cede to my wishes? Certainly not. DRM follows is the same principle. It is both unreasonable and unenforcable.
Oftentimes, obscurity is a very good method of security.
You again miss the point in regards to DRM. DRM gives you the key, hides it in plain view, and says "it's illegal if you find it or tell others where it is." That is NOT security; it's a farse.
But is there even one online music site that supports Linux?
Plenty: all the ones that don't require goofy proprietary clients. MP3.com and emusic.com come to mind, though I am more likely to buy the CD of an independent artist that I want to patronize.
No one's forcing you to use AAC if you don't want to.
If something like Apple's store succeeded on a grand scale, people *would* be forced into certain formats. That's why it is important that these services fail miserably -- so that nobody can monopolize their own proprietary media standard.
If I've lost this argument on every point, what happened to the other five?
They were only tangentally related to the core argument and I didn't feel like wasting the time.