Are the gov't discounts really that great? Last time I compared(summer of 2008) the gov't(state level) & education discounts available to me they were higher priced than what was currently available on Dell's website.
This situation arise because the prices & configurations are negotiated only every few years.
I'd suggest comparing the pricing of the same machine with & without the "gov't discounts". It would also be useful to know what kind of specs you are looking.
The Dell Vostro series for your basic office worker will you run about $500. As others have mentioned don't bother getting your windows license from Dell. At the volume you are dealing with it, you can a simple enterprise/site wide license from Microsoft.
I believe this scheme runs afoul of Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Constitution. Laws apply equally to all. One can't pay a fee and then be exempted from some.
But hey it's America.. anything for a buck, right?
"stuff to look forward to" isn't right. Then plenty of experiences across the ages spectrum. The speed with which time appears to pass is relative. To a ten year old, one year is 1/10 of their life... that can seem like forever. To a sixty year old, one year is 1/60 of their lifetime... a year can pass in the blink of an eye.
Trust me as you age there is no shortage of things to -do-, fresh & new or otherwise. But you are right that TV plots are pretty much the same... same for movies.
I think physical location is also a factor. Where I live we have four distinct seasons. This makes one acutely aware of where in the year(cycle) we are; amount of daylight & temps.
Unless there are gaming or itunes needs I would move your home machines to a free(as in speech & beer) OS. Fedora/Ubuntu have all matured enough for general home use. Go try a LiveCD.
You can re-skin them to look like Windows. See this comment for links.
Otherwise look at BizSpark for your Microsoft software needs.
Fee: A USD $100 Program Offering Fee is due when the Startup exits the Program. As part of Microsoft's commitment to Startup success, there are no initial costs for Startups to join BizSpark.
Technology offering: The BizSpark technology offering to Startups currently includes:
For design, development, testing and demonstration of your software application:
- Software included in a Visual Studio Team System Team Suite (VSTS) with MSDN
Premium subscription is included in this Program. Additionally, VSTS Team
Foundation Server (Standard Edition) is available for use by the entire development
team
But to produce honest-to-Gawd news? That's a quality product, produced by professionals who know how to separate fact from bias, and how to tell the difference between the two? That is worth money.
Could you share some links to honest-to-gawd news?
IANAL either. Blizzard originally wanted to stop the development & distribution of Glider. Currently Glider is a binary software package. In that form(non-human readable) free speech doesn't apply. Releasing the source code(in human readable form) is where free speech rights come into play.
Free speech out weighs a company's profits. Yes?
Maybe look at it this way... Glider is akin to a zero-day exploit. Should it be censored/repressed because it disrupts a company's profits? Should the latest DNS vulnerability have been forever forbidden from being published?
With the source code of Glider released, Blizzard will also have access to the code and be able to patch their servers to render Glider ineffective. With the code release future client-server games will have another example of perverting/abusing the client&server to guard against. i.e. make cheating more difficult/there is more to be gained by releasing the source of Glider.
Does that help explain how open sourcing a piece of software is free speech issue?
So, the court has found the program can only be used for something illegal, and the company should not be allowed to sell it - but you are fine with they should be able to give it away to others who can then do illegal things with it.
You're ok with censorship?
The problem is software is both a thing and an idea. i.e. free as in speech(idea) and free as in beer(thing).
To allow a company to censor someone's speech is a Bad Thing. Way worst than said speech being used as thing to violate a private contract between a company & a person.
But what they are really doing is trying to stop 2% of their customers from using 98% of the bandwidth, bandwidth they have to pay for. Remember, though they are selling "unlimited" internet access at some level *all* bandwidth is measured. Theirs is certainly measured by their upstream provider. There is really no "unlimited" bandwidth.
Pisshaw. Large regional and national ISPs don't have "upstream" providers. They have a presence in a NAP(s) and peering agreements with other networks. The only costs they have is for the infrastructure; physical cables, equipment, power and people. They don't pay for bandwidth on a "meter". Their bandwidth is limited by equipment; available technology and costs.
They are "managing bandwidth" to control last mile congestion. It is cheaper to mangle traffic than to upgrade the last mile. Plain and simple.
Instead, ID simply says that life is too complex to have evolved spontaneously on its own, therefore God must have done it.
Your troll-fu isn't all bad. You used the babel fish as bait, got some bites and even got modded up to +4 interesting. Well done.
The Babel fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy recieved not from its own carrier but from those around it, It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. the practical upshot of this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any language.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anthing so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes like this : "I refuse to prove that I exist", says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But", says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? it could not have evolved by chance. it proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear", says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
Aye, those examples would fill the upload side before saturating the download side. Filling the download side is easy, the only limitation is disk space. Drive space is plenty cheap; newegg has a 500GB external drive for $105 and an internal 750GB for $120. Either would be plenty of space to rotate media thru. The average US broadband connection would take a couple of months to fill those with near 24x7 downloading.
Queue up your downloads and away you go; use nntp if you don't want to bother with "trading upload bandwidth". Plenty of HD video/iso available on nntp... if your nntp provider isn't blocking access to alt.* groups.
But you are right that the most people aren't going to saturate their pipe. And that is the idea behind giving end nodes/users more bandwidth. With a bigger pipe their network traffic takes less time which translates into using less overall network resources. Gigabit connections would rock and could be "over-sold" way more than 10mbps connections can be. Saturating a gigabit link for any substantial amount of time(>3 hours) is difficult.
There just isn't any incentive for the cable companies to invest in increasing the last mile bandwidth. In many cases they're the only game in town. Because of the shared nature of broadband via cable the last mile congestion is what is killing the cable ISPs. Backbone bandwidth isn't the problem. I don't remember hearing the dsl based ISPs complaining about P2P traffic.
So with last mile congestion the cable company has two options, start metering(near zero cost to implement) or increase last mile bandwidth(costly). No brainer and no surprise that they have started metering.
One person suddenly says, "If you actually use your X mbit/s download, how much do you think it would cost the ISP?". That is of course ridicioulus, because who actually use their download 24/7?
Using a connection 24x7 is easy and filling both the upload&download stream is plenty easy.
Offer seeds of the popular linux distros and the latest helix iso. Put up a Tor router Or maybe a game server or irc relay
Just three examples off the top of my head that could fill a pipe 24x7.:)
Gimme the bandwidth, I'll use it... gimme the cycles I'll use them.
Get yourself a nice red convertible and put the top down. Find an IT job with less/no after hours requirements. It's just a job, apply the dedication you use to apply to the job to your family and happiness&well-being.
The innovation lies in the fact that you can watch a streaming movie on your TV in 30 minutes - this very notion was simply infeasible 3 years ago. Media is no longer required. That in itself is a HUGE shift for the video distribution industry, it's also a huge shift in the way we consume media.
What is "innovating" about more internet bandwidth being available to consumers? Hasn't cable tv & satellite providers been offering on-demand programming for several years now? Shift is just from private networks to the public internet.
There is absolutely nothing "innovative" about DRM. To say so shows a lack of understanding of the subject matter.
if you are referring to the fact that upstream bandwidth sucks - I think that is to be expected as homes are generally views as clients of the network and not servers.
No, I am referring to the whole pipe; both up&down streams speeds. I think your view as homes/consumers as just "clients" and not "servers" misses the real value/power of the internet. It pictures the internet as a one-way distribution medium. I can see this being a common mindset to a cable provider accustom to just delivering programing to consumers. The real power of the internet is as a two-way medium.
The answer is just in disclaiming that running certain types of services like bittorrent coupled with excessive transfer on a connection can lead to service degredation, not termination.
So I run BT on port 80 or port 123 or port 443. "No Mr. ISP that isn't P2P traffic, it's http or ntp traffic"
You can do that - ultimately, those are server ports - and you are consuming more bandwidth than you should so you'll get dinged.
So, either it is a game of whack the mole or the ISP meters raw usage(a cap?)
You fail to understand what i'm proposing. It is not a "cap" per se - you may or may not be subject to the limitation. At no point during this process does your account get terminated (as happens on occasion today), or are you charged more for your connection (which is effectively how the "capped" products work now). No, you still have your connection and you are rate limited - to sometime more reasonable.
Ok, if it's not a cap what is it?
Personally I see the providers just looking for a way to "innovate" - which really comes down to trying to extract more cash from their customers.
Oh, I agree it is financially driven. Comcast is offering an unlimited usage product but are complaining when customers are actually using the bandwidth they purchased. When they designed their network they didn't build enough bandwidth. They can either spend money to increase bandwidth or spend money on filtering technology to reduce network usage.
Honestly, bandwidth in the US is what is causing a great deal of innovation at the moment - look at iTunes and Netflix now offering entire movies as either downloads or streaming.
Wait... what?
Bandwidth in the US pretty much sucks. The lack of cheap&abundant bandwidth is motivator for things like P2P, not iTunes or Netflix. Using the internet to distribute media is just filling a market need/demand. The "innovation" of iTunes and Netflix is the DRM part, not the bandwidth part.
Caps will only stifle the adoption and innvoation of this type of technolgy.
Yes, traffic caps are a bad thing. Isn't Comcast's filtering&disruption of P2P traffic a de facto traffic cap?
The answer is just in disclaiming that running certain types of services like bittorrent coupled with excessive transfer on a connection can lead to service degredation, not termination.
So I run BT on port 80 or port 123 or port 443. "No Mr. ISP that isn't P2P traffic, it's http or ntp traffic" You get the idea and hopefully see the pitfalls.
They just need to put a process in place to handle this situation. Time warner claims that "5% of their customers use 50% of their bandwidth" - well - that seems pretty damn easy to fix doesn't it? Exceed a certain monthly transfer rate, send out a warning via e-mail - usage continues - put a cap that is far lower than their original amount.
Hmmm, Vaguely remember someone saying "Caps will only stifle the adoption and innvoation of this type of technolgy. Customers will think twice about the double cost of streaming a video - the cost to their cap, and the cost of the service." I think that was you in your previous paragraph.
No caps... caps? You want both? You're either confused or a troll. If the latter, good job... you got modded up to 3, insightful.
With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free.
The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:
Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"
Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"
Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"
Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."
Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"
Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"
Bullhorn: "But..."
Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
And so it continues to this day.....
Re:Morals aside - what's the end result?
on
Sony BMG Dropping DRM
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
In this case, if everyone ripped content illegally and no-one paid for it, there would be very little content available for anyone.
Maybe more content would be created... have you heard of the Grey Album
Or maybe
When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rime, In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see their antique pen would have express'd Even such a beauty as you master now. So all their praises are but prophecies Of this our time, all you prefiguring; And for they looked but with divining eyes, They had not skill enough your worth to sing: For we, which now behold these present days, Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
--William Shakespeare Or put another way...
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
--T. S. Eliot Strengthening the author's side of the copyright agreement is a folly. It is society's side that needs to be restored.
Re:Morals aside - what's the end result?
on
Sony BMG Dropping DRM
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Copyright is primarily an economic tool. It provides an incentive for people to create and share new works.
Copyright is not an incentive for people to create and share works. You should put the flavor-aid down.
Before copyrights and the concepts of IP, people were creating & sharing works. People naturally have a tendency to create, sharing is more of a cultural thing.
Copyright is there is enrichen the public domain(and thus human culture) by granting the author exclusive distribution rights for a limited time.
Copyright is basically a social contract between authors and society. Copyright has been perverted and no longer benefits society. It has become too one sided.
Is it really any surprise for the party being ripped off in the social contract, to start to disregard the social contract?
That's just one big straw man. We're not talking about copyright extensions here, we're talking about DRM and the ethics of piracy. And right now, give or take the current imbalance between fair use doctrine and technological protections (which is recent and mainly confined to the US), the use of DRM doesn't inherently break any part of the deal and piracy clearly does.
DRM is an under the table extension of copyright terms by the author both in length of the copyright and removal of the end user rights.
DRM doesn't know when a work's copyright expires, so this effectively puts the work under an never expiring copyright.
DRM also limits what the end user can do with the work; e.g. time or media shifting.
DRM and piracy both break the social contract of copyright. Kettle meet Pot.
If you get a chance spend some time hanging out with groups of artists(little kids, music, writers, coders, actors, etc). They're naturally creating stuff all the time, some good, some bad.
Slashdot Mirror
Are the gov't discounts really that great? Last time I compared(summer of 2008) the gov't(state level) & education discounts available to me they were higher priced than what was currently available on Dell's website.
This situation arise because the prices & configurations are negotiated only every few years.
I'd suggest comparing the pricing of the same machine with & without the "gov't discounts". It would also be useful to know what kind of specs you are looking.
The Dell Vostro series for your basic office worker will you run about $500. As others have mentioned don't bother getting your windows license from Dell. At the volume you are dealing with it, you can a simple enterprise/site wide license from Microsoft.
I believe this scheme runs afoul of Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Constitution. Laws apply equally to all. One can't pay a fee and then be exempted from some.
But hey it's America.. anything for a buck, right?
"stuff to look forward to" isn't right. Then plenty of experiences across the ages spectrum. The speed with which time appears to pass is relative. To a ten year old, one year is 1/10 of their life... that can seem like forever. To a sixty year old, one year is 1/60 of their lifetime... a year can pass in the blink of an eye.
Trust me as you age there is no shortage of things to -do-, fresh & new or otherwise. But you are right that TV plots are pretty much the same... same for movies.
I think physical location is also a factor. Where I live we have four distinct seasons. This makes one acutely aware of where in the year(cycle) we are; amount of daylight & temps.
Unless there are gaming or itunes needs I would move your home machines to a free(as in speech & beer) OS. Fedora/Ubuntu have all matured enough for general home use. Go try a LiveCD.
You can re-skin them to look like Windows. See this comment for links.
Otherwise look at BizSpark for your Microsoft software needs.
Fee: A USD $100 Program Offering Fee is due when the Startup exits the Program. As part
of Microsoft's commitment to Startup success, there are no initial costs for Startups to join
BizSpark.
Technology offering: The BizSpark technology offering to Startups currently includes:
For design, development, testing and demonstration of your software application:
- Software included in a Visual Studio Team System Team Suite (VSTS) with MSDN
Premium subscription is included in this Program. Additionally, VSTS Team
Foundation Server (Standard Edition) is available for use by the entire development
team
But to produce honest-to-Gawd news? That's a quality product, produced by professionals who know how to separate fact from bias, and how to tell the difference between the two? That is worth money.
Could you share some links to honest-to-gawd news?
Try changing your threshold to zero or higher. Then you won't see the trolls.
ATI's linux drivers are still craptastic... not likely to change in the next few months. You're still better off with Nvidia for linux.
Could you elaborate on that? Give a couple of examples?
IANAL either. Blizzard originally wanted to stop the development & distribution of Glider. Currently Glider is a binary software package. In that form(non-human readable) free speech doesn't apply. Releasing the source code(in human readable form) is where free speech rights come into play.
Free speech out weighs a company's profits. Yes?
Maybe look at it this way... Glider is akin to a zero-day exploit. Should it be censored/repressed because it disrupts a company's profits? Should the latest DNS vulnerability have been forever forbidden from being published?
With the source code of Glider released, Blizzard will also have access to the code and be able to patch their servers to render Glider ineffective. With the code release future client-server games will have another example of perverting/abusing the client&server to guard against. i.e. make cheating more difficult/there is more to be gained by releasing the source of Glider.
Does that help explain how open sourcing a piece of software is free speech issue?
You're ok with censorship?
The problem is software is both a thing and an idea. i.e. free as in speech(idea) and free as in beer(thing).
To allow a company to censor someone's speech is a Bad Thing. Way worst than said speech being used as thing to violate a private contract between a company & a person.
But what they are really doing is trying to stop 2% of their customers from using 98% of the bandwidth, bandwidth they have to pay for. Remember, though they are selling "unlimited" internet access at some level *all* bandwidth is measured. Theirs is certainly measured by their upstream provider. There is really no "unlimited" bandwidth.
Pisshaw. Large regional and national ISPs don't have "upstream" providers. They have a presence in a NAP(s) and peering agreements with other networks. The only costs they have is for the infrastructure; physical cables, equipment, power and people. They don't pay for bandwidth on a "meter". Their bandwidth is limited by equipment; available technology and costs.
They are "managing bandwidth" to control last mile congestion. It is cheaper to mangle traffic than to upgrade the last mile. Plain and simple.
Your troll-fu isn't all bad. You used the babel fish as bait, got some bites and even got modded up to +4 interesting. Well done.
The Babel fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy recieved not from its own carrier but from those around it, It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. the practical upshot of this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any language.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anthing so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes like this : "I refuse to prove that I exist", says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But", says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? it could not have evolved by chance. it proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear", says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
Aye, those examples would fill the upload side before saturating the download side. Filling the download side is easy, the only limitation is disk space. Drive space is plenty cheap; newegg has a 500GB external drive for $105 and an internal 750GB for $120. Either would be plenty of space to rotate media thru. The average US broadband connection would take a couple of months to fill those with near 24x7 downloading.
Queue up your downloads and away you go; use nntp if you don't want to bother with "trading upload bandwidth". Plenty of HD video/iso available on nntp... if your nntp provider isn't blocking access to alt.* groups.
But you are right that the most people aren't going to saturate their pipe. And that is the idea behind giving end nodes/users more bandwidth. With a bigger pipe their network traffic takes less time which translates into using less overall network resources. Gigabit connections would rock and could be "over-sold" way more than 10mbps connections can be. Saturating a gigabit link for any substantial amount of time(>3 hours) is difficult.
There just isn't any incentive for the cable companies to invest in increasing the last mile bandwidth. In many cases they're the only game in town. Because of the shared nature of broadband via cable the last mile congestion is what is killing the cable ISPs. Backbone bandwidth isn't the problem. I don't remember hearing the dsl based ISPs complaining about P2P traffic.
So with last mile congestion the cable company has two options, start metering(near zero cost to implement) or increase last mile bandwidth(costly). No brainer and no surprise that they have started metering.
One person suddenly says, "If you actually use your X mbit/s download, how much do you think it would cost the ISP?". That is of course ridicioulus, because who actually use their download 24/7?
:)
Using a connection 24x7 is easy and filling both the upload&download stream is plenty easy.
Offer seeds of the popular linux distros and the latest helix iso.
Put up a Tor router
Or maybe a game server or irc relay
Just three examples off the top of my head that could fill a pipe 24x7.
Gimme the bandwidth, I'll use it... gimme the cycles I'll use them.
Fair enough, I'll do the work of using whois.arin.net. :)
I'm paying $90/month for a dedicated server, 24/7 amazing tech support and 1.2TB bandwidth per month
If you don't mind me asking... who are using?
thanks.
Maybe someone should clue him in on the rules of the internet?
#8 There are no real rules about posting
Get yourself a nice red convertible and put the top down. Find an IT job with less/no after hours requirements. It's just a job, apply the dedication you use to apply to the job to your family and happiness&well-being.
Say hello to Gentoo or even Linux From Scratch
What is "innovating" about more internet bandwidth being available to consumers? Hasn't cable tv & satellite providers been offering on-demand programming for several years now? Shift is just from private networks to the public internet.
I was being sarcastic about DRM being innovating. Here is a more honest comment on my feelings about DRM
Bandwidth wise you are lucky. But my original statement about the state of bandwidth in US still stands. Here are some reference links for ya
America's Broadband Dream Is Alive-- In KoreaMay 05 2003, @04:33PM
Worldwide State of Broadband - S Korea, Japan LeadSeptember 16 2003, @06:59PM
100Mbps Home Internet Service Next Year in Finland July 20 2005, @07:08PM
US Falls to 24th Place For Broadband Penetration June 14 2007, @03:33PM
No, I am referring to the whole pipe; both up&down streams speeds. I think your view as homes/consumers as just "clients" and not "servers" misses the real value/power of the internet. It pictures the internet as a one-way distribution medium. I can see this being a common mindset to a cable provider accustom to just delivering programing to consumers. The real power of the internet is as a two-way medium.
So I run BT on port 80 or port 123 or port 443. "No Mr. ISP that isn't P2P traffic, it's http or ntp traffic"
So, either it is a game of whack the mole or the ISP meters raw usage(a cap?)
Ok, if it's not a cap what is it?
Oh, I agree it is financially driven. Comcast is offering an unlimited usage product but are complaining when customers are actually using the bandwidth they purchased. When they designed their network they didn't build enough bandwidth. They can either spend money to increase bandwidth or spend money on filtering technology to reduce network usage.
Comcast isn't really that interested i
Bandwidth in the US pretty much sucks. The lack of cheap&abundant bandwidth is motivator for things like P2P, not iTunes or Netflix. Using the internet to distribute media is just filling a market need/demand. The "innovation" of iTunes and Netflix is the DRM part, not the bandwidth part. Yes, traffic caps are a bad thing. Isn't Comcast's filtering&disruption of P2P traffic a de facto traffic cap? So I run BT on port 80 or port 123 or port 443. "No Mr. ISP that isn't P2P traffic, it's http or ntp traffic" You get the idea and hopefully see the pitfalls.
Hmmm, Vaguely remember someone saying "Caps will only stifle the adoption and innvoation of this type of technolgy. Customers will think twice about the double cost of streaming a video - the cost to their cap, and the cost of the service." I think that was you in your previous paragraph.
No caps... caps? You want both? You're either confused or a troll. If the latter, good job... you got modded up to 3, insightful.
Thanks, appericate that.
And so it continues to this day.....
Maybe more content would be created... have you heard of the Grey Album
Or maybe When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rime,
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have express'd
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And for they looked but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
--William Shakespeare Or put another way... Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
--T. S. Eliot Strengthening the author's side of the copyright agreement is a folly. It is society's side that needs to be restored.
Copyright is not an incentive for people to create and share works. You should put the flavor-aid down.
Before copyrights and the concepts of IP, people were creating & sharing works. People naturally have a tendency to create, sharing is more of a cultural thing.
Copyright is there is enrichen the public domain(and thus human culture) by granting the author exclusive distribution rights for a limited time.
Copyright is basically a social contract between authors and society. Copyright has been perverted and no longer benefits society. It has become too one sided.
Is it really any surprise for the party being ripped off in the social contract, to start to disregard the social contract?
DRM is an under the table extension of copyright terms by the author both in length of the copyright and removal of the end user rights.
DRM doesn't know when a work's copyright expires, so this effectively puts the work under an never expiring copyright.
DRM also limits what the end user can do with the work; e.g. time or media shifting.
DRM and piracy both break the social contract of copyright. Kettle meet Pot.
If you get a chance spend some time hanging out with groups of artists(little kids, music, writers, coders, actors, etc). They're naturally creating stuff all the time, some good, some bad.