If you do not want someone to do as he pleases with an object (e.g., copy, play the stored video and/or sound), then do not sell it
It's funny that you should say that, because that is *EXACTLY* the reason that copyright was invented.... so that the creators would be able to retain their control over the work even though it was being published, and thus be encouraged to do so, instead resorting to self-censorship, or not publishing at all. In exchange for this, the public obtains some cultural enrichment from the publication of the work. when the public does not respect copyright, then confidence in the ability for copyright to adequately protect a content creator's interests is shaken, and the risk increases that creators will self-censor, or resort to other means in an attempt to protect their interests - means that will, in the end, only be wholly counter to the purpose of copyright, which is to create cultural enrichment through the encouragement of publication, by offering a legally recognized notion of exclusivity on the work that is an extension of the natural control they would have had if they had simply never published at all.
Of course, this exclusivity of control is supposed to be for a specific, and finite duration, and I won't argue that copyright terms are *FAR* too long right now. These long durations are opposing the primary purpose of copyright, because they do not do anything to encourage creators to constantly publish new works, and the general public does not get any further enrichment from arbitrarily long copyright periods. I would personally argue that absolutely *NO* copyright should have a term longer than, maybe, 15-20 years... with no opportunity for extension.
Copyright Infringement: You BUY that CD form WalMart and put it on the Pirate Bay. Nobody has lost anything
Correction... nobody has lost anything that anyone other than the copyright holder may perceive as valuable. Or, to be more specific, nobody has lost anything tangible.
The point of copyright is that it is supposed to be an *exclusive* right to control copies of the work. If somebody just goes any makes copies of such a work without getting that permission, then that exclusivity has been compromised, and is actually lost to the copyright holder.
Whether you want to argue that this exclusivity should be of no value is immaterial to the notion that it is not an inexhaustible resource (it runs out completely once the work has reached a saturation limit that is specific to both the nature and widespread appeal of the work), and so can arguably have some financial value associated with it.
It's less about being motivated only by money and more about being motivated to be able to keep on paying for things that I've kind of grown accustomed to.... like having a place to live.
Is it any more an invasion of privacy than other people being able to see and hear is? What difference should information being stored on a computer vs existing in somebody's brain make, insomuch as it is a privacy violation?
Having worked in the past year on an android port of a game that originally was only for iOS, I can positively affirm that making software work correctly on all intended supported platforms is one *HUGE* headache. This may have been largely mitigated by designing the software more portably in the first place, but when you're on a tight deadline, and your job is to get the product out the door on schedule and on budget, or else face the very real possibility of not having a job at all when the game studio can't meet its deadlines, you end up making some less-than-ideal compromises. It is, however, a painful fact that these compromises can and very often do end up biting us in the ass when the programming requirements change, and even though additional funding is allocated to such a project whenever this happens, it still results in an enormous headache for the peon programmers, whose job is just to make it work... and do it on time.
A port is very cheap compared to the cost of writing a game from scratch
That's true.... but there can still be a world of difference between comparatively cheap and actually cheap.
I write computer games for a living... and my own experience supporting multiple platforms has been nothing short of adding at least an additional 10% for each additional platform to be supported. Can anyone seriously suggest that by providing a port to Linux, a game studio would actually make 10% more sales, when Linux doesn't even have 5% of the total computer market, let alone desktop computers, which is where computer games tend to get played.
But is it seriously a wise move to target Linux for games? Considering the segment of the market that actually runs Linux, and in particular, the even smaller segment of the market that runs LInux on the desktop, is it worth any game studio's time to really support it?
For what it's worth... I run Linux on my main computer at home, and I really like using it, but I also do have a separate computer that runs Windows which I use for games, and I'd imagine that pretty much anyone who is a gamer is probably going to have a box that runs Windows anyways. I don't mean to sound like a cynic, but game studios exist to make money, and is it worth any software house's time to put the effort and money into supporting Linux, when the additional payback from Linux support isn't likely to even pay for a single programmer's salary for the additional time it took to ensure that the software worked correctly on that platform?
If somebody can some up with a coherent answer to that question without resorting to appeals to emotion, or implied insults regarding a person's preference of OS... If there's an actually rational reason for a game studio that's in the business of trying to make money to spend the time, money, and effort supporting Linux, when Linux's biggest market is on the server side, and not on the desktop anyways.... then respond to this post - I'd really like to hear it.
RMS is against unconditional copyright abolition, but he said before that he wouldn't mind abolishing copyright if copyleft was written into law instead (i.e. everyone must provide source code to all products they sell or otherwise distribute).
How could that be technically enforced exactly? I can see it maybe being possible to enforce on companies, but how do you enforce it on people who might develop closed source software that they intend to give away?
Except that the single most common element on Earth is *NOT* a metal... it is Oxygen. and I know already what they say happened.... what I'm not finding is any explanation for why a planet with sufficient gravity keep all but the very lightest gasses from escaping could not have had lighter compounds forming there as well.
Why is it that water had to come from elsewhere, exactly?
I mean, if it could form on comets or asteroids, why could it not have formed right here on Earth the same way it forms elsewhere? Why is there such a predisposition to the notion that water must have come from somewhere else?
Certainly some would choose to keep their source code private, but since it would be comparatively few, the reverse engineering effort would be surmountable.
I don't know if I agree with your conclusion here... while sure they would be a lot less propritary software than there is now, I don't think it automatically follows that it would all be tractable to reverse-engineer. Further, I don't think that the abolition of copyright would result in the ratio of open source to closed source programs improving that much, or possibly even having a negative effect, because I can see the absence of copyright hurting open source a lot more than it hurts proprietary works (which may belong to companies with multiple revenue streams). Without the control that copyright offers to ensure that a person who makes free software will even necessarily be credited for the work that they did in a derivative work, I expect that open source software contributions would diminish to very low levels as well.
Afaik, other than in jurisdictions that impose regional law-mandated return policies, a return policy is at the discretion of the seller, barring certain specific issues such as the item not being fit for sale. If a seller offers a return for refund policy and you buy something from them, then you have entered an implied contract with them that terminates only when the seller determines that you can no longer return the purchase for a refund, for whatever reason (typically explicitly outlined in the return policy).
do you want to argue that we should be willing to make a considered trade of some freedom in exchange for more content (aka "a legal social contract")?
Yes, completely.
why respond to me?
I may have mistook the meaning behind your comment... which seemed to support the wildly popular belief that the only real purpose of copyright was as a "rent-seeker", as you put it.
Copyright is, first, last, and *ALWAYS*, about control, not monetization. Where the creator of a work is simply wanting to retain some measure of exclusivity on who may copy the work.
Before the printing press was invented, copying was error prone and hard enough that the difficulty magnitude of doing this tended to create its own checks and balances, preventing unauthorized copying from spreading out of control. After copying became much cheaper and easier to do, however, some incentive that authors could still enjoy a limited amount of the exclusivity of control they had over their works was offered in the form of a legal social contract: copyright, wherein the general public would basically agree to not copy the work, and so the author would have incentive to publish the work in the first place, without any self-censoring, and thereby provide the public with cultural enrichment.
Owing to the effects of the legally recognized exclusivity of control on who may copy a given work creates a type of monopoly, which affects the supply-demand curve, and in a capitalistic society, this effect happens to be monetizable, but that is not the actual underlying purpose of copyright - it is to encourage authors to publish so that society and the general public can benefit. If the public does not respect the copyright, then the artist's confidence in that system to protect their interests is shaken, and they can or will resort to other means to protect them, such as reducing the amount that they publish, or restricting the types of content that they publish so that only certain people can easily acquire it. DRM, which is being used by an ever increasing number of publishers, is exactly one such response to their shaking confidence in copyright to protect their interests, and is just one form of the self censorship that copyright itself was originally created to discourage.
What you say you're taking away from this is pretty much what I'm seeing here as well... and to be quite frank, it confuses the hell out of me. I see no way to interpret what RMS has said here other than to presume that he advocates the abolition of copyright. But under copyright abolition, there would be absolutely nothing to force people to release source code of derivative works just because the author wanted it... which kind of goes against where I formerly understood RMS's primary stance to be in.
I would very much like to know the same. If the source code isn't going to be perceived of as important in absence of copyright, why is it important while we have it?
Why would that be a no-no, exactly? What makes making derivative work to a GPL work and distributing it without the source (even for free) any less, or more, of an infringement on copyright than sharing copies that you made of somebody else's copyrighted work without permission? As far as I can see they are *IDENTICAL*.
Slashdot Mirror
It's funny that you should say that, because that is *EXACTLY* the reason that copyright was invented.... so that the creators would be able to retain their control over the work even though it was being published, and thus be encouraged to do so, instead resorting to self-censorship, or not publishing at all. In exchange for this, the public obtains some cultural enrichment from the publication of the work. when the public does not respect copyright, then confidence in the ability for copyright to adequately protect a content creator's interests is shaken, and the risk increases that creators will self-censor, or resort to other means in an attempt to protect their interests - means that will, in the end, only be wholly counter to the purpose of copyright, which is to create cultural enrichment through the encouragement of publication, by offering a legally recognized notion of exclusivity on the work that is an extension of the natural control they would have had if they had simply never published at all.
Of course, this exclusivity of control is supposed to be for a specific, and finite duration, and I won't argue that copyright terms are *FAR* too long right now. These long durations are opposing the primary purpose of copyright, because they do not do anything to encourage creators to constantly publish new works, and the general public does not get any further enrichment from arbitrarily long copyright periods. I would personally argue that absolutely *NO* copyright should have a term longer than, maybe, 15-20 years... with no opportunity for extension.
Correction... nobody has lost anything that anyone other than the copyright holder may perceive as valuable. Or, to be more specific, nobody has lost anything tangible.
The point of copyright is that it is supposed to be an *exclusive* right to control copies of the work. If somebody just goes any makes copies of such a work without getting that permission, then that exclusivity has been compromised, and is actually lost to the copyright holder.
Whether you want to argue that this exclusivity should be of no value is immaterial to the notion that it is not an inexhaustible resource (it runs out completely once the work has reached a saturation limit that is specific to both the nature and widespread appeal of the work), and so can arguably have some financial value associated with it.
.... Yet.
It's less about being motivated only by money and more about being motivated to be able to keep on paying for things that I've kind of grown accustomed to.... like having a place to live.
Is it any more an invasion of privacy than other people being able to see and hear is? What difference should information being stored on a computer vs existing in somebody's brain make, insomuch as it is a privacy violation?
Having worked in the past year on an android port of a game that originally was only for iOS, I can positively affirm that making software work correctly on all intended supported platforms is one *HUGE* headache. This may have been largely mitigated by designing the software more portably in the first place, but when you're on a tight deadline, and your job is to get the product out the door on schedule and on budget, or else face the very real possibility of not having a job at all when the game studio can't meet its deadlines, you end up making some less-than-ideal compromises. It is, however, a painful fact that these compromises can and very often do end up biting us in the ass when the programming requirements change, and even though additional funding is allocated to such a project whenever this happens, it still results in an enormous headache for the peon programmers, whose job is just to make it work... and do it on time.
That's true.... but there can still be a world of difference between comparatively cheap and actually cheap.
I write computer games for a living... and my own experience supporting multiple platforms has been nothing short of adding at least an additional 10% for each additional platform to be supported. Can anyone seriously suggest that by providing a port to Linux, a game studio would actually make 10% more sales, when Linux doesn't even have 5% of the total computer market, let alone desktop computers, which is where computer games tend to get played.
But is it seriously a wise move to target Linux for games? Considering the segment of the market that actually runs Linux, and in particular, the even smaller segment of the market that runs LInux on the desktop, is it worth any game studio's time to really support it?
For what it's worth... I run Linux on my main computer at home, and I really like using it, but I also do have a separate computer that runs Windows which I use for games, and I'd imagine that pretty much anyone who is a gamer is probably going to have a box that runs Windows anyways. I don't mean to sound like a cynic, but game studios exist to make money, and is it worth any software house's time to put the effort and money into supporting Linux, when the additional payback from Linux support isn't likely to even pay for a single programmer's salary for the additional time it took to ensure that the software worked correctly on that platform?
If somebody can some up with a coherent answer to that question without resorting to appeals to emotion, or implied insults regarding a person's preference of OS... If there's an actually rational reason for a game studio that's in the business of trying to make money to spend the time, money, and effort supporting Linux, when Linux's biggest market is on the server side, and not on the desktop anyways.... then respond to this post - I'd really like to hear it.
People who do this kind of stuff make me wonder whether or not evolution has even started happening yet.
How could that be technically enforced exactly? I can see it maybe being possible to enforce on companies, but how do you enforce it on people who might develop closed source software that they intend to give away?
One question remains, however... why did water arrive, but not any Neon?
Except that the single most common element on Earth is *NOT* a metal... it is Oxygen. and I know already what they say happened.... what I'm not finding is any explanation for why a planet with sufficient gravity keep all but the very lightest gasses from escaping could not have had lighter compounds forming there as well.
Where would it boil away to, exactly? AFAIK, Earth's gravity is strong enough to hold onto water vapor without it getting into space.
Why is it that water had to come from elsewhere, exactly?
I mean, if it could form on comets or asteroids, why could it not have formed right here on Earth the same way it forms elsewhere? Why is there such a predisposition to the notion that water must have come from somewhere else?
I don't know if I agree with your conclusion here... while sure they would be a lot less propritary software than there is now, I don't think it automatically follows that it would all be tractable to reverse-engineer. Further, I don't think that the abolition of copyright would result in the ratio of open source to closed source programs improving that much, or possibly even having a negative effect, because I can see the absence of copyright hurting open source a lot more than it hurts proprietary works (which may belong to companies with multiple revenue streams). Without the control that copyright offers to ensure that a person who makes free software will even necessarily be credited for the work that they did in a derivative work, I expect that open source software contributions would diminish to very low levels as well.
What if you aren't selling the software? How do you force people to give away their source code for software that they aren't charging somebody for?
What rights are you talking about, exactly? The parent poster was asking how it would be done in *ABSENCE* of copyright.
Afaik, other than in jurisdictions that impose regional law-mandated return policies, a return policy is at the discretion of the seller, barring certain specific issues such as the item not being fit for sale. If a seller offers a return for refund policy and you buy something from them, then you have entered an implied contract with them that terminates only when the seller determines that you can no longer return the purchase for a refund, for whatever reason (typically explicitly outlined in the return policy).
How, exactly, would you enforce any sort of "legally mandated GPL" on closed source software that was not actually being charged for?
Yes, completely.
I may have mistook the meaning behind your comment... which seemed to support the wildly popular belief that the only real purpose of copyright was as a "rent-seeker", as you put it.
Copyright is, first, last, and *ALWAYS*, about control, not monetization. Where the creator of a work is simply wanting to retain some measure of exclusivity on who may copy the work.
Before the printing press was invented, copying was error prone and hard enough that the difficulty magnitude of doing this tended to create its own checks and balances, preventing unauthorized copying from spreading out of control. After copying became much cheaper and easier to do, however, some incentive that authors could still enjoy a limited amount of the exclusivity of control they had over their works was offered in the form of a legal social contract: copyright, wherein the general public would basically agree to not copy the work, and so the author would have incentive to publish the work in the first place, without any self-censoring, and thereby provide the public with cultural enrichment.
Owing to the effects of the legally recognized exclusivity of control on who may copy a given work creates a type of monopoly, which affects the supply-demand curve, and in a capitalistic society, this effect happens to be monetizable, but that is not the actual underlying purpose of copyright - it is to encourage authors to publish so that society and the general public can benefit. If the public does not respect the copyright, then the artist's confidence in that system to protect their interests is shaken, and they can or will resort to other means to protect them, such as reducing the amount that they publish, or restricting the types of content that they publish so that only certain people can easily acquire it. DRM, which is being used by an ever increasing number of publishers, is exactly one such response to their shaking confidence in copyright to protect their interests, and is just one form of the self censorship that copyright itself was originally created to discourage.
What you say you're taking away from this is pretty much what I'm seeing here as well... and to be quite frank, it confuses the hell out of me. I see no way to interpret what RMS has said here other than to presume that he advocates the abolition of copyright. But under copyright abolition, there would be absolutely nothing to force people to release source code of derivative works just because the author wanted it... which kind of goes against where I formerly understood RMS's primary stance to be in.
I would very much like to know the same. If the source code isn't going to be perceived of as important in absence of copyright, why is it important while we have it?
Does RMS advocate copyright abolishment, then?
Why would that be a no-no, exactly? What makes making derivative work to a GPL work and distributing it without the source (even for free) any less, or more, of an infringement on copyright than sharing copies that you made of somebody else's copyrighted work without permission? As far as I can see they are *IDENTICAL*.