Thank you for the link to Gladwell's blog. I did peruse the comments; from what I could tell, they took issue with his characterization of the dependency ratio - not with his historical account of the creation of the pension plans. So your summary is accurate:
The employer, we can agree, offered the company pension as a counterplan to the union pension, and the union accepted this as a valid substitution.
But then you say:
My point was that they could have simply used their clout to demand higher wages, and then applied that money to their own retirement accounts, held completely separately from the employer.
Maybe they could have negotiated this - although,if the union were free to demand higher wages, I should think they would already have done so. Regardless, higher wages in the 1950s would not produce an unfunded liability for the car companies today. The car companies, not the unions, remain responsible for choosing to implement a pay-as-you-go system in the 1950s, then underfunding it. I don't see how the unions can be blamed for that.
This is not accurate. The pension plans were created voluntarily by the car companies, who feared that union-controlled plans was a threat to the autonomy of business owners. From Malcolm Gladwell's article in the New Yorker:
The labor movement believed that the safest and most efficient way to provide insurance against ill health or old age was to spread the costs and risks of benefits over the biggest and most diverse group possible. . . . Charlie Wilson [then president of GM] . . . felt the way the business leaders of Toledo did: that collectivization was a threat to the free market and to the autonomy of business owners. In his view, companies themselves ought to assume the risks of providing insurance.
Unions certainly have their faults, but in this case the car companies have only themselves to blame. What is really scary is the way the story that the unions forced the automakers into a bad deal has become accepted as fact.
Why should I care if a parasitic industry whose owners live like kings on the hard work, ingenuity, and art or a few talented individuals loses money? . . . That's what file sharing means to me. It's a non-violent way to say NO.
Though I appreciate your position, I see two problems.
First, as paladinwannabe2 points out, this kind of piracy is used as a justification for increasingly draconian laws. It makes you look greedy, not principled - and with reason. You are giving them an excuse to call you a thief - worse, to accuse others (mash-up artists for example) of the same thing.
Second, when you pirate music or movies, you are adding to their value. Perhaps you recommend them to others, or quote them, or hum a tune. Most of the value of creative works doesn't come from the creators - it comes from the audience. The audience interprets works in the context of their own lives; they advertise by word of mouth. It is because of the audience that the most successful works are exponentially more popular. Remember that Bill Gates would rather you pirate Windows than not use it at all? It's the same here. When you pirate music, you are rewarding the industry you despise.
If you really want to say NO, don't rent, don't borrow, don't pirate. Don't even listen. Don't even watch. Even if you can't manage abstinence (I can't), whatever attention you do withdraw is for the better. Your focus will turn elsewhere, and you will reward the artists who truly deserve it. As with free software, our best chance is not to bring down the record and movie companies - it is to support a positive alternative.
Another example -- WotC has a patent on collectible card games. That didn't stop everyone and his brother from making CCGs. Was innovation really stifled?
Let's turn that around. Was innovation really promoted? Or did burdensome patent regulation impose an overall cost on game developers while reducing consumer choice?
The way I see it, this patent could be circumvented by doing some of the following . ..
If the minor changes you suggest are sufficient to avoid infringing the patent, then we have a legal regime that forces inventors and developers to focus their efforts on altering details to avoid lawsuits rather than being free to improve existing products. It's very hard to measure how much innovation failed to happen because creators had to spend their limited time and money working out alternatives to patented methods rather than innovating elsewhere. Meanwhile, small players have difficulty competing in the market unless they can afford legal help, while even large companies like WotC spend money on lawyers which, according to your analysis, appears to be wasted.
The owners of livejournal have the right to do whatever they like with their website, provided that it is within the law.
So basically you're saying that the law is the law? That's rather unhelpful... Do you really mean to suggest that if something is legal, it is not wrong? Or that even if it is wrong, attempting to change it is a waste of time? (Never mind that the statement collapses the rather important distinction between rights and freedoms.)
I just want to clarify, becuase I often see this legalistic claim on Slashdot. I think it's incredibly harmful, but I'm not certain how many of those who make the argument fully understand what they're saying (I hope not many).
Sorry, I wasn't sure whether you were advocating the position I criticized or not. It's hard to tell sometimes:) I do agree with you however: it's unfortunate too many people don't get beyond the "just don't get caught" stage.
Perhaps I should have posted on shiney.happy.people.net instead of slashdot.
And my two posts were modded Troll. As you say, this is Slashdot...
In my experience, even the most guilt-ridden or paranoid of people will act in extremely selfish ways if lulled into complacency.
You think lack of fear - "complacency" - is the root of evil? You believe the "most guilt-ridden or paranoid of people" are the most altruistic - or at least behave the least selfishly? On the contrary, I suspect they are the ones whose sense of guilt is most imposed by others - and therefore most susceptible to being lifted when that enforcement is gone.
The instrumental argument that all human motivation can be reduced to selfishness is frequently used to rationalize away guilt and responsibility for atrocious behavior. But that requires convincing oneself and others that the argument is valid. This need is even stronger for those most sensitive to or apprehensive about the judgment of others. Are the defenders of this argument insecure because of others who (perhaps hypocritically) claim superiority? Or do they secretly believe that others behave better, and are simply afraid that other people will find out - or that they will have to admit it to themselves?
Regardless, the point doesn't hold water. All people are sometimes selfish. It does not follow that all people are always selfish. Attempts to prove that they are hinge on very fuzzy or peculiar definitions of "selfish" combined with absurdly reductionist models of human behavior, often relying on an assumed human rationality that simply doesn'h hold up (e.g. misuse of the "rational man" of economics). Science is incapable of proving the point one way or the other. In the end, moral and ethical judgments must be left, as always, to human beings.
You can't prove that people are essentially selfish - though you can try to pursuade others. The question is, why? For selfish reasons?
We don't feel guilty when there's no risk of being punished
Speak for yourself. Some of us find our personal code of ethics important to follow whether someone is watching or not.
Thank you.
The most important observer is oneself. When you choose to behave a certain way, you are also choosing to be a certain kind of person. When you act selfishly or altruistically, you know about it. It changes who you are. This can probably be over-analyzed in terms of reinforcing neural pathways in the brain or somesuch. What matters is that we cannot escape our actions, regardless of who may or may not be watching, no matter the praise or punishment. It's the source of endless nobility and endless tragedy.
even if the moral compass is in-built, it only activates in the presence of others.
I would say it only activates in the presence of self. If not, something is missing from that self - so even then the actions define the person.
This is certainly one problem - and it's the one that causes real headaches for the recording industry and others trying to create artificial scarcity. But it isn't the only problem with the ownership of ideas. I'll mention two others.
First, in order to operate efficiently the market requires a free flow of information about quality, prices, etc. Thus assigning exclusive rights to ideas is in direct conflict with the needs of the market. For example, the practice in EULAs of forbidding the publication of software test results reduces market efficiency.
Second, and I believe more importantly, property rights over ideas require that those ideas be treated as discrete packages. Of course they're not: not only does all innovation and creativity build on and incorporate previous work and ideas, but the value and significance of ideas is further appropriated and added to by society. Thus the ownership of ideas transforms the ideas themselves, hinders the process by which further creation and innovation takes place (e.g. through the "tragedy of the anti-commons"), and depends on a fiction that ideas are independent. (See Owned Ideas are Different Ideas.)
Similar difficulties afflict environmental resources. When we turn land into property, we transform it by fencing it off and pretend that control over it is now independent of surrounding land. It is not: if I pollute my stretch of river, the effects will flow to others downstream. Furthermore, better management of the resource is hindered because even if I wish to improve the situation effectively I must coordinate with all other users of the water - each of whom has effective veto over participation, and in many cases an interest in not taking part. It is easy to describe a similar situation with patent ownership.
The market can be very effective for managing some kinds of resources (e.g. fungible commodities like wheat, pork bellies, and oil). But it has flaws and entails costs; in some cases it is tremendously inefficient compared to the alternatives.
for a long time, television producers targeted most prime time programming at men. This has changed somewhat as advertisers have realized that women spend much or most of household income. Yet it demonstrates that whole industries can remain wedded to mistaken stereotypes even when money is on the line.
I'm not so sure about that.
Fair enough. The claim is from a paper I encountered while studying Communication:
Eileen R. Meehan, "Gendering the Commodity Audience", Sex & Money Feminism and Political Economy in the Media, 2002.
Human-resources personnel need to recognize that women have diverse values and motivations
Unlike men, who apparently only have a single value and motivation for choosing their career.
I believe you have misread the passage. As my emphasis indicates, the problem is with the perceptions of human-resources personnel. Look, for a long time, television producers targeted most prime time programming at men. This has changed somewhat as advertisers have realized that women spend much or most of household income. Yet it demonstrates that whole industries can remain wedded to mistaken stereotypes even when money is on the line.
If there were few women in IT because they were being told they are too stupid to understand computer or something, I get how that would be a problem. If there's not many women in IT because the type of work and the rewards that IT jobs typically offer are not what many women want, though, then what's the big deal?
The problem is that the jobs are being misrepresented. The HR people are telling only half the story, so women who would enjoy the work are effectively being told it's not for them. Take two popular perceptions of computer networking: one as a technical field of math and silicon, the other as a social domain of chat rooms and sex predators. It's like the parable of the blind men and the elephant: telling people it's like a rope is truthful in its way, but it's completely misleading and unhelpful for those who want something to make their piano keys out of[1]. Incidentally, the most obvious reason for this is implicitly sexist sterotypes[2].
Oh, and by the way, we do also have good evidence that women are discouraged from entering technical fields. The recent Kathy Sierra incident, and the outpouring of women online reporting that such experiences are common for them, offers a clear example.
The big flaw I see in the article is that it doesn't provide comparable statistics for men. Many of the comments here reading the results as claiming that women in particular want this or that, when in fact some of these motivations might be even more prevalent among men. The result is that while the article talks about the problems of stereotypes, it ends up reinforcing them.
[1] Yes, killing elephants for ivory is wrong.
[2] I say implict because they are probably unconscious rather than a product of malice.
Many open source developers train themselves on the basics through open source projects and then become closed system developers . . . when they realize they prefer getting paid for their work.
What about proprietary deveolpers who become open source developers when they realize they prefer their work to be meaningful? That's what I'm in the process of doing - and yes, I'm being paid for it.
I'm sure many developers find satisfaction in proprietary development. That's a personal thing. I find FOSS development necessarily more meaningful simply because it's free and contributes (however little) to freedom. It makes me happy to see others use it; even happier when they change it. Before, I cared about my work - but not too much, because I always had to leave it behind. As often as not, it was canned for business reasons; I wouldn't be surprised if that code doesn't even exist anymore.
If these CCTV cameras were half as effective as people want to make out, then police would have been knocking on the perps' doors hours if not minutes after they escaped. The reality of the situation is different, and anybody who thinks otherwise is, frankly, an idiot.
For the cameras to exert social control, the perception of surveillance is what counts. This is good to the extent that it deters criminals from commiting crimes. The main criticism of these cameras, however, is that they change the behavior of everybody. People behave differently when they believe they believe they are being watched. They act in accordance with how they believe their behavior will be perceived. This perception therefore acts as a powerful form of control, one which is internalized by those under surveillance. See Foucault's characterization of the Panopticon.
Surely you have known people who "put on a face" in public. Perhaps they conceal their intelligence or hide their beliefs or suppress their individuality. If our response to surveillance is to suppress the unique or unusual dimensions of our character, it also gives us permission to exhibit other behaviors. This happens all the time with bullies - witness the recent British phenomenon of happy slapping; it seems perhaps relevant that this is happening in a heavily-surveilled society. Similarly, crimes like those of the Nazis or of Rwanda could probably not have happened without surveillance.
Surveillance can eliminate difference and diversity, while also suppressing morality. All that matters is the perception - there need not be anyone recording or watching the cameras. That is the great danger, and those who make the argument are hardly "idiots".
to a certain degree, this makes sense. witness the 2003 illegal translation of harry potter and the order of the phoenix. it was so bad that the quality of the content was dramatically reduced... the idea of having 'approved' translators can be necessary to preserve the integrity of the content.
It is, of course, necessary to prohibit all unauthorized translations for at least half a century, as the quality of the film would be adversely affected were it to be shown with poor translation. Whereas, if the film were not shown at all then its quality would be unaffected.
I'm not really quibbling with you - you make a good point. I suspect that you may agree with me that, as it stands, copyright law is hardly the tool to achieve what you describe. It has come to be above all an instrument of control, often at the expense of quality, availability, even profit.
There are good reasons for this. Among them are the divergent interests of the parties involved (artists and publishers; corporations and employees) and the (dis)economies of scope achieved by large media companies when they are able to impose high costs on their smaller competition while maintaining internal regimes free from copyright restrictions.
I have been write free/open source software for profit. I'm not talking big projects with many developers here - just a small project with me as the sole developer. This is satisfying because I Believe in free software (that's a capital B). But idealism doesn't make this project my priority. The willingness of organizations to pay for deveolpment does.
I already knew that open source projects effetively governed the participation of many people. I have learned that even with one developer, open source is a powerful way of organizating and coordinationg people and organizations.
For a start, I am not alienated from my work. When I do proprietary develpoment I must walk away at the end of the project. My client or employer doesn't want me taking the work with me, and I can't afford to get attached to it. With open source, I can afford to care - and I do, in part because...
The code is the best advertising I can have. Even when a contract is complete, even if bits of the copyright belong to others, the code is still mine - my name is on it, and I have responsibility for it (for if I don't take responsibility, no-one will). I am the worldwide expert on this thing; if anyone wants something done, it makes sense to come to me. That makes me a single point of failure in a sense, but FOSS is not unique this way - proprietary developers are not interchangeable either, though employers may sometimes foolishly treat them that way.
From a larger perspective, there is an underlying logic of cooperation. The first client for this project sponsored its creation, and they were wise and generous enough to allow me to retain copyright and insist on a GPL license (but then that's part of what attracted me in the first place). Now it is in my interest to improve the code, benefiting all users. It is also in the interest of past clients that I get future clients - because then they benefit from any improvements. The code serves as a means to coordinate multiple participants. It's a bit like a market, only coordinated by sharing rather than competition. (This is where the competitive assumptions built into copyright law and existing institutional policies can create real headaches.)
If I make something, why shouldn't I have the right to choose whether to make it freely available or not? Seems perfectly logical to me
Let me paraphrase that:
If recombine other people's ideas, and distribute my particular combination, shouldn't I have a right to demand that the government forcibly prevent others from copying or recombining those ideas further?
That is the most emphatic form of the argument against you. Remember, all ideas are based on previous ones, from Shakespeare's plots to sort algorithms to Apple's look-and-feel. ("There are only seven plots.") And the right you describe here is not something to be defended, but something that must be positively enacted and enforced by the state. As phrased, however, you do have the right to decide whether to make something freely available: don't distribute it in the first place.
I am not necessarily taking the stance that copyright should be abolished. It's a very complicated question. The world would be a very different place without copyright, and I'm not smart enough to say whether that world would be better (I have my doubts). I do feel safe in predicting that the transition would be painful and quite likely violent - and it's simply not going to happen. So the question is entirely hypothetical. But I don't think what you describe is "perfectly logical" in the least.
I just want to add who I think our audience is or should be: the public. Not Hollywood: unless we can align their interests with ours, convincing them of the futility of DRM will only alter their strategy.
The processing key protest has taken on symbolic importance. If we can frame the event in terms of free speech, we will have won. I don't think we're succeeding. Hollywood and the AACS folks are explaining it in terms of property and theft. News media are reporting about mobs and an online riot. The wider public may end up believing that a mob of hackers and teenage vandals attacked Digg, disregarding the property rights of others and in order to enable theft - and that users must be prevented from controlling the Web. If that's what they believe, they may start passing laws to back it up (witness the attacks on MySpace and other social networking sites).
I believe this is wrong on every count. Most in this "mob" have a better understanding of the issues involved than do their opponents. The distinction between theft and copyright violation (never mind trafficing a circumvention device) has been covered numerous times on Slashdot. And criticism of user participation displays a tragic ignorance both of who creates the value of web sites like Digg, and of the original purpose of the World Wide Web which was supposed to allow the browsing and creation of content by all of its users.
The sheer absurdity and irrelevance of the number itself makes it the perfect issue. The courts may see otherwise, but for the vast majority of the public and of the protesters, it is a symbol, not a "circumvention device". Protesters are not going home and using that number to pirate videos, so their protest must be seen as an act of disobedience, not of self-interested theft.
We have a good story. We need to get it out to the people that matter. The AACS LA may be the opponent, but winning on their terms gets us nowhere. Winning the minds of the public, however, is the first step to getting these disastrous and immoral laws fixed.
What he fails to appreciate is that he will be on the losing end of every single one of those rounds. Even as he tries to downplay the key by saying it has been revoked, AACS has already lost the second round (as hackers have created a hack that CAN'T be revoked).
The real target of this action is likely a different audience, namely Hollywood. The AACS doesn't have to make their DRM undefeatable. They do need to convince their customers - and remember, that's not us - of the value of their work. And when their DRM is broken and seen to be broken, they need to convince those who want to believe that they at least have not lost faith in the cause.
So we may talk about winning and losing, and people like use may be the targets of lawsuits. But I think we may be giving ourselves airs when we assume that for the other side it's about us. If, on the other hand, we figure out who our real audience is then we have a better chance.
I think most people pirate at least some software and home, and so some may say it's hypocritical to say the things I've said here knowing that, but there's a distinction to be made between what you do at home and being professional at work. No one has to know what you get upto at home, and so the risk is more controlled
I want to add to this that I find the moral implications to be of a different order altogether. It's one thing to violate copyright privately, quite another to do so in order to make a profit.
Moreover, companies are granted special protections and rights by the government. To balance this, they are expected to compete in the market. They must follow consistent rules in order for that competition to be (remotely) fair. Even if the law is broken and wrong (as I believe copyright is), that is not a sufficient justification for a business to take it upon itself to play fast and loose with the law. (Other justifications - such as important political or cultural speech, lifesaving treatment, artistic merit, or the ridiculously untenable position Digg just found itself in - may have merit. Profit does not.)
I know many small developers and web designers pirate their tools. I don't feel comfortable judging them; neither do I think it's my job to police big companies who can afford to pay but cheat anyway. But for myself, as a professional software developer (and no fan of Microsoft) I have spent thousands of dollars on Microsoft tools. I knew that I would not be comfortable with my actions, or feel my criticism of copyright to be wholly legitimate, if I did otherwise.
Now I develop free software, because that's what I believe in. The high cost of proprietary software only reinforces the advantages of the open model. When companies play by the rules, free and open source software wins.
I see too many arguments reduced to what I'm about to say, but... Google is a business, and they're in this to make money. So are Microsoft and Yahoo. These services are not charity; they may not cost money, but they are hardly "free" - any more than the advertising-supported Google search is "free".
Regardless, not charging money does not grant anyone immunity from criticism or complaint.
Neither do I understand this penchant (not yours in particular) of boasting to the world that you lack sympathy for others. That says a lot about you and nothing about them. Personally, I can spare a little for both Google and their users.
I thought school was supposed to be about the education of students, for their benefit, that of their parents, of other citizens, and of society and democracy at large.
And here I thought they were about training workers for industry.
In practice yes, that is what they are - not what they're supposed to be, but what they are: an industrial system of education producing workers for an industrial economy. I believe they should do far more than teach students to be future workers; indeed that they should only do that to the extent that it is necessary for those students to become citizens in society. But of course you're right that if wish to train them for a post-industrial or knowledge economy (slippery concepts though those are), they are failing even at that level.
My position on citizenship may seem inconsistent, given that I believe schools do such a poor job of going beyond basic skills that they do actual harm, a problem that they may be institutionally incapable of solving. Let me say instead that the education of a human being must be founded on the learning and practice of citizenship. And in our society, we have assigned tho lion's share of education to schools. We must either find a way for schools to do the job, or realize that the most essential dimension of eduaction must take place elsewhere. I suspect we need the latter: we need communities that educate, not bureaucracies. We have asked our bureaucracies to play the role of communities, and they are predictably failing. But just as communities create citizens, they are also made of and by citizens. Where are our citizens to come from? The problem appears to be a catch-22.
"students, parents, other citizens, and democracy at large" is essentially equal to "taxpayers" in the sense he used it.
No, they're not the same. Partly for technical reasons (students don't pay taxes, for example, immigrants do but aren't citizens, and so forth), but more importantly because these are different roles people fill, and because language matters. Casting the debate in terms of "taxpayers" introduces an immediate bias, just as casting it in terms of "education" introduces a different (and in my opinion appropriate) bias. Words matter, as anyone from folks involved in the same-sex marriage debate to George Orwell can tell you. See my response to another post on the topic.
choosing to cast his comments in that light is mindless polemicism. Wasting Taxpayer Money is something every governmental organization should Try Not To Do. . . . blocking websites with no educational value is keeping in line both with not wasting taxpayer money, and with education for its own sake . . . Neither interest is served by letting school kids waste time on myspace.
The language we use when talking about these things very much matters. If we frame schooling in terms of taxpayers, then education is sidelined. The first question we will always ask is whether tax dollars are being "wasted", not whether students are being educated. I place "wasted" in quotes because it is the taxpayers' understanding of waste that matters, which may be very different from the opinions of citizens, parents, and students (even when we're talking about the same people, someone's opinion in the role of taxpayer is formed differently from that same person's opinion in the role of citizen).
Furthermore, as I suggested in my final paragraph, it is quite difficult to judge waste. I'm certain it is quite possible to use MySpace educationally, or to educate kids about MySpace. Both would be valuable, though they may or may not be the best uses of public education, which must be judged in the context of other possible topics of education (and that probably varies by student and my school). By calling this activity "waste", you shut down thoughtful discussion of these matters before it even starts.
Questions of "educational value" are often also political and social, as "creation science", sex education, and diversity education have clearly demonstrated. Is it more worthwhile to teach longhand than effective online discourse and socialization, or is handwriting prized for being "high" culture to MySpace's "low"? Take a look at some of danah boyd's discussion of the role of MySpace as a place for kids to be free of adult surveillance, for example. Maybe today this is an essential aspect of how kids grow up to being adults. Should school turn its back on that? Again, I don't know. But I wouldn't simply dismiss it as a waste of time. And I would start my questions by asking about education and students, not taxpayers and waste.
that would be nice, but this is america
By the way, I'm Canadian - not that that means we have the answers. As for America, don't take for granted that it cannot change - for better and for worse (my country sure has).
I wasn't making an argument, I was giving a rationale. . . . the reason has nothing to do with engineering of students, and everything to do with the path of least resistance and least cost . . . no one here has any focus on what our purpose is supposed to be: education
I'm glad to hear that, and your rationale does make unfortunate sense. I'm sorry you say you hate working for a public agency; I'm sure it's for good reason. For despite my extreme skepticism about public education, I think of teaching as one of a handful of "noble professions". The great shame is how seldom it lives up to that potential. Good luck to you.
People don't pay tax dollars so that we can let students post whiney blogs about how few people are friending them on myspace. . . . this is about making effective efficient classrooms that don't waste taxpayer time and money
Wow. You take my breath away. How does one respond to such an incredible warping of the purpose of school? What the hell do TAXPAYERS have to do with it?
I thought school was supposed to be about the education of students, for their benefit, that of their parents, of other citizens, and of society and democracy at large.
Not that I think schools actually do this; I would say on balance they achieve the opposite. But to actually state that the goal of public education is the efficient satisfaction of taxpayers (not citizens, parents, or God-forbid students; learning, citizenship, and the improvement of students are nowhere to be found) is so ass-backwards it's virtually guaranteed to never achieve actual education or fulfill the interests of students.
Of course, to the extent that you're a politico or functionary dependen on an industrial system of public education for your power and income, your characterization of education may be in your personal interest. What you wrote thoroughly confuses the private benefit of public servants with the broader public interest. I sincerely hope this is an accident of your writing and a product of having to cope with an imperfect system, not what you actually believe or practice.
None of which is to argue that schools are better with or without MySpace. Addressing that question requires a much more thorough analysis than the caricature you've presented here: of what we as a society want our schools to achieve, of the degree to which school should be isolated from real life and of the practical questions of how school can teach students to function in their actual lives, of whether it's better to try to change the student than to train the teacher, of the potential and actual nature of social sites (socialization is, after all, one of the main things we want out of schools), and of the practical dimensions of any relevant policy. In other words, I don't have an answer but I don't think you've made an argument.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for the link to Gladwell's blog. I did peruse the comments; from what I could tell, they took issue with his characterization of the dependency ratio - not with his historical account of the creation of the pension plans. So your summary is accurate:
But then you say:
Maybe they could have negotiated this - although,if the union were free to demand higher wages, I should think they would already have done so. Regardless, higher wages in the 1950s would not produce an unfunded liability for the car companies today. The car companies, not the unions, remain responsible for choosing to implement a pay-as-you-go system in the 1950s, then underfunding it. I don't see how the unions can be blamed for that.
This is not accurate. The pension plans were created voluntarily by the car companies, who feared that union-controlled plans was a threat to the autonomy of business owners. From Malcolm Gladwell's article in the New Yorker:
Unions certainly have their faults, but in this case the car companies have only themselves to blame. What is really scary is the way the story that the unions forced the automakers into a bad deal has become accepted as fact.
Though I appreciate your position, I see two problems.
First, as paladinwannabe2 points out, this kind of piracy is used as a justification for increasingly draconian laws. It makes you look greedy, not principled - and with reason. You are giving them an excuse to call you a thief - worse, to accuse others (mash-up artists for example) of the same thing.
Second, when you pirate music or movies, you are adding to their value. Perhaps you recommend them to others, or quote them, or hum a tune. Most of the value of creative works doesn't come from the creators - it comes from the audience. The audience interprets works in the context of their own lives; they advertise by word of mouth. It is because of the audience that the most successful works are exponentially more popular. Remember that Bill Gates would rather you pirate Windows than not use it at all? It's the same here. When you pirate music, you are rewarding the industry you despise.
If you really want to say NO, don't rent, don't borrow, don't pirate. Don't even listen. Don't even watch. Even if you can't manage abstinence (I can't), whatever attention you do withdraw is for the better. Your focus will turn elsewhere, and you will reward the artists who truly deserve it. As with free software, our best chance is not to bring down the record and movie companies - it is to support a positive alternative.
Another example -- WotC has a patent on collectible card games. That didn't stop everyone and his brother from making CCGs. Was innovation really stifled?
Let's turn that around. Was innovation really promoted? Or did burdensome patent regulation impose an overall cost on game developers while reducing consumer choice?
If the minor changes you suggest are sufficient to avoid infringing the patent, then we have a legal regime that forces inventors and developers to focus their efforts on altering details to avoid lawsuits rather than being free to improve existing products. It's very hard to measure how much innovation failed to happen because creators had to spend their limited time and money working out alternatives to patented methods rather than innovating elsewhere. Meanwhile, small players have difficulty competing in the market unless they can afford legal help, while even large companies like WotC spend money on lawyers which, according to your analysis, appears to be wasted.
So basically you're saying that the law is the law? That's rather unhelpful... Do you really mean to suggest that if something is legal, it is not wrong? Or that even if it is wrong, attempting to change it is a waste of time? (Never mind that the statement collapses the rather important distinction between rights and freedoms.)
I just want to clarify, becuase I often see this legalistic claim on Slashdot. I think it's incredibly harmful, but I'm not certain how many of those who make the argument fully understand what they're saying (I hope not many).
Sorry, I wasn't sure whether you were advocating the position I criticized or not. It's hard to tell sometimes :) I do agree with you however: it's unfortunate too many people don't get beyond the "just don't get caught" stage.
And my two posts were modded Troll. As you say, this is Slashdot...
You think lack of fear - "complacency" - is the root of evil? You believe the "most guilt-ridden or paranoid of people" are the most altruistic - or at least behave the least selfishly? On the contrary, I suspect they are the ones whose sense of guilt is most imposed by others - and therefore most susceptible to being lifted when that enforcement is gone.
The instrumental argument that all human motivation can be reduced to selfishness is frequently used to rationalize away guilt and responsibility for atrocious behavior. But that requires convincing oneself and others that the argument is valid. This need is even stronger for those most sensitive to or apprehensive about the judgment of others. Are the defenders of this argument insecure because of others who (perhaps hypocritically) claim superiority? Or do they secretly believe that others behave better, and are simply afraid that other people will find out - or that they will have to admit it to themselves?
Regardless, the point doesn't hold water. All people are sometimes selfish. It does not follow that all people are always selfish. Attempts to prove that they are hinge on very fuzzy or peculiar definitions of "selfish" combined with absurdly reductionist models of human behavior, often relying on an assumed human rationality that simply doesn'h hold up (e.g. misuse of the "rational man" of economics). Science is incapable of proving the point one way or the other. In the end, moral and ethical judgments must be left, as always, to human beings.
You can't prove that people are essentially selfish - though you can try to pursuade others. The question is, why? For selfish reasons?
Thank you.
The most important observer is oneself. When you choose to behave a certain way, you are also choosing to be a certain kind of person. When you act selfishly or altruistically, you know about it. It changes who you are. This can probably be over-analyzed in terms of reinforcing neural pathways in the brain or somesuch. What matters is that we cannot escape our actions, regardless of who may or may not be watching, no matter the praise or punishment. It's the source of endless nobility and endless tragedy.
I would say it only activates in the presence of self. If not, something is missing from that self - so even then the actions define the person.
This is certainly one problem - and it's the one that causes real headaches for the recording industry and others trying to create artificial scarcity. But it isn't the only problem with the ownership of ideas. I'll mention two others.
First, in order to operate efficiently the market requires a free flow of information about quality, prices, etc. Thus assigning exclusive rights to ideas is in direct conflict with the needs of the market. For example, the practice in EULAs of forbidding the publication of software test results reduces market efficiency.
Second, and I believe more importantly, property rights over ideas require that those ideas be treated as discrete packages. Of course they're not: not only does all innovation and creativity build on and incorporate previous work and ideas, but the value and significance of ideas is further appropriated and added to by society. Thus the ownership of ideas transforms the ideas themselves, hinders the process by which further creation and innovation takes place (e.g. through the "tragedy of the anti-commons"), and depends on a fiction that ideas are independent. (See Owned Ideas are Different Ideas.)
Similar difficulties afflict environmental resources. When we turn land into property, we transform it by fencing it off and pretend that control over it is now independent of surrounding land. It is not: if I pollute my stretch of river, the effects will flow to others downstream. Furthermore, better management of the resource is hindered because even if I wish to improve the situation effectively I must coordinate with all other users of the water - each of whom has effective veto over participation, and in many cases an interest in not taking part. It is easy to describe a similar situation with patent ownership.
The market can be very effective for managing some kinds of resources (e.g. fungible commodities like wheat, pork bellies, and oil). But it has flaws and entails costs; in some cases it is tremendously inefficient compared to the alternatives.
Fair enough. The claim is from a paper I encountered while studying Communication:
Eileen R. Meehan, "Gendering the Commodity Audience", Sex & Money Feminism and Political Economy in the Media, 2002.
I believe you have misread the passage. As my emphasis indicates, the problem is with the perceptions of human-resources personnel. Look, for a long time, television producers targeted most prime time programming at men. This has changed somewhat as advertisers have realized that women spend much or most of household income. Yet it demonstrates that whole industries can remain wedded to mistaken stereotypes even when money is on the line.
The problem is that the jobs are being misrepresented. The HR people are telling only half the story, so women who would enjoy the work are effectively being told it's not for them. Take two popular perceptions of computer networking: one as a technical field of math and silicon, the other as a social domain of chat rooms and sex predators. It's like the parable of the blind men and the elephant: telling people it's like a rope is truthful in its way, but it's completely misleading and unhelpful for those who want something to make their piano keys out of[1]. Incidentally, the most obvious reason for this is implicitly sexist sterotypes[2].
Oh, and by the way, we do also have good evidence that women are discouraged from entering technical fields. The recent Kathy Sierra incident, and the outpouring of women online reporting that such experiences are common for them, offers a clear example.
The big flaw I see in the article is that it doesn't provide comparable statistics for men. Many of the comments here reading the results as claiming that women in particular want this or that, when in fact some of these motivations might be even more prevalent among men. The result is that while the article talks about the problems of stereotypes, it ends up reinforcing them.
[1] Yes, killing elephants for ivory is wrong.
[2] I say implict because they are probably unconscious rather than a product of malice.
What about proprietary deveolpers who become open source developers when they realize they prefer their work to be meaningful? That's what I'm in the process of doing - and yes, I'm being paid for it.
I'm sure many developers find satisfaction in proprietary development. That's a personal thing. I find FOSS development necessarily more meaningful simply because it's free and contributes (however little) to freedom. It makes me happy to see others use it; even happier when they change it. Before, I cared about my work - but not too much, because I always had to leave it behind. As often as not, it was canned for business reasons; I wouldn't be surprised if that code doesn't even exist anymore.
For the cameras to exert social control, the perception of surveillance is what counts. This is good to the extent that it deters criminals from commiting crimes. The main criticism of these cameras, however, is that they change the behavior of everybody. People behave differently when they believe they believe they are being watched. They act in accordance with how they believe their behavior will be perceived. This perception therefore acts as a powerful form of control, one which is internalized by those under surveillance. See Foucault's characterization of the Panopticon.
Surely you have known people who "put on a face" in public. Perhaps they conceal their intelligence or hide their beliefs or suppress their individuality. If our response to surveillance is to suppress the unique or unusual dimensions of our character, it also gives us permission to exhibit other behaviors. This happens all the time with bullies - witness the recent British phenomenon of happy slapping; it seems perhaps relevant that this is happening in a heavily-surveilled society. Similarly, crimes like those of the Nazis or of Rwanda could probably not have happened without surveillance.
Surveillance can eliminate difference and diversity, while also suppressing morality. All that matters is the perception - there need not be anyone recording or watching the cameras. That is the great danger, and those who make the argument are hardly "idiots".
It is, of course, necessary to prohibit all unauthorized translations for at least half a century, as the quality of the film would be adversely affected were it to be shown with poor translation. Whereas, if the film were not shown at all then its quality would be unaffected.
I'm not really quibbling with you - you make a good point. I suspect that you may agree with me that, as it stands, copyright law is hardly the tool to achieve what you describe. It has come to be above all an instrument of control, often at the expense of quality, availability, even profit.
There are good reasons for this. Among them are the divergent interests of the parties involved (artists and publishers; corporations and employees) and the (dis)economies of scope achieved by large media companies when they are able to impose high costs on their smaller competition while maintaining internal regimes free from copyright restrictions.
I have been write free/open source software for profit. I'm not talking big projects with many developers here - just a small project with me as the sole developer. This is satisfying because I Believe in free software (that's a capital B). But idealism doesn't make this project my priority. The willingness of organizations to pay for deveolpment does.
I already knew that open source projects effetively governed the participation of many people. I have learned that even with one developer, open source is a powerful way of organizating and coordinationg people and organizations.
For a start, I am not alienated from my work. When I do proprietary develpoment I must walk away at the end of the project. My client or employer doesn't want me taking the work with me, and I can't afford to get attached to it. With open source, I can afford to care - and I do, in part because...
The code is the best advertising I can have. Even when a contract is complete, even if bits of the copyright belong to others, the code is still mine - my name is on it, and I have responsibility for it (for if I don't take responsibility, no-one will). I am the worldwide expert on this thing; if anyone wants something done, it makes sense to come to me. That makes me a single point of failure in a sense, but FOSS is not unique this way - proprietary developers are not interchangeable either, though employers may sometimes foolishly treat them that way.
From a larger perspective, there is an underlying logic of cooperation. The first client for this project sponsored its creation, and they were wise and generous enough to allow me to retain copyright and insist on a GPL license (but then that's part of what attracted me in the first place). Now it is in my interest to improve the code, benefiting all users. It is also in the interest of past clients that I get future clients - because then they benefit from any improvements. The code serves as a means to coordinate multiple participants. It's a bit like a market, only coordinated by sharing rather than competition. (This is where the competitive assumptions built into copyright law and existing institutional policies can create real headaches.)
Let me paraphrase that:
That is the most emphatic form of the argument against you. Remember, all ideas are based on previous ones, from Shakespeare's plots to sort algorithms to Apple's look-and-feel. ("There are only seven plots.") And the right you describe here is not something to be defended, but something that must be positively enacted and enforced by the state. As phrased, however, you do have the right to decide whether to make something freely available: don't distribute it in the first place.
I am not necessarily taking the stance that copyright should be abolished. It's a very complicated question. The world would be a very different place without copyright, and I'm not smart enough to say whether that world would be better (I have my doubts). I do feel safe in predicting that the transition would be painful and quite likely violent - and it's simply not going to happen. So the question is entirely hypothetical. But I don't think what you describe is "perfectly logical" in the least.
I just want to add who I think our audience is or should be: the public. Not Hollywood: unless we can align their interests with ours, convincing them of the futility of DRM will only alter their strategy.
The processing key protest has taken on symbolic importance. If we can frame the event in terms of free speech, we will have won. I don't think we're succeeding. Hollywood and the AACS folks are explaining it in terms of property and theft. News media are reporting about mobs and an online riot. The wider public may end up believing that a mob of hackers and teenage vandals attacked Digg, disregarding the property rights of others and in order to enable theft - and that users must be prevented from controlling the Web. If that's what they believe, they may start passing laws to back it up (witness the attacks on MySpace and other social networking sites).
I believe this is wrong on every count. Most in this "mob" have a better understanding of the issues involved than do their opponents. The distinction between theft and copyright violation (never mind trafficing a circumvention device) has been covered numerous times on Slashdot. And criticism of user participation displays a tragic ignorance both of who creates the value of web sites like Digg, and of the original purpose of the World Wide Web which was supposed to allow the browsing and creation of content by all of its users.
The sheer absurdity and irrelevance of the number itself makes it the perfect issue. The courts may see otherwise, but for the vast majority of the public and of the protesters, it is a symbol, not a "circumvention device". Protesters are not going home and using that number to pirate videos, so their protest must be seen as an act of disobedience, not of self-interested theft.
We have a good story. We need to get it out to the people that matter. The AACS LA may be the opponent, but winning on their terms gets us nowhere. Winning the minds of the public, however, is the first step to getting these disastrous and immoral laws fixed.
The real target of this action is likely a different audience, namely Hollywood. The AACS doesn't have to make their DRM undefeatable. They do need to convince their customers - and remember, that's not us - of the value of their work. And when their DRM is broken and seen to be broken, they need to convince those who want to believe that they at least have not lost faith in the cause.
So we may talk about winning and losing, and people like use may be the targets of lawsuits. But I think we may be giving ourselves airs when we assume that for the other side it's about us. If, on the other hand, we figure out who our real audience is then we have a better chance.
I want to add to this that I find the moral implications to be of a different order altogether. It's one thing to violate copyright privately, quite another to do so in order to make a profit.
Moreover, companies are granted special protections and rights by the government. To balance this, they are expected to compete in the market. They must follow consistent rules in order for that competition to be (remotely) fair. Even if the law is broken and wrong (as I believe copyright is), that is not a sufficient justification for a business to take it upon itself to play fast and loose with the law. (Other justifications - such as important political or cultural speech, lifesaving treatment, artistic merit, or the ridiculously untenable position Digg just found itself in - may have merit. Profit does not.)
I know many small developers and web designers pirate their tools. I don't feel comfortable judging them; neither do I think it's my job to police big companies who can afford to pay but cheat anyway. But for myself, as a professional software developer (and no fan of Microsoft) I have spent thousands of dollars on Microsoft tools. I knew that I would not be comfortable with my actions, or feel my criticism of copyright to be wholly legitimate, if I did otherwise.
Now I develop free software, because that's what I believe in. The high cost of proprietary software only reinforces the advantages of the open model. When companies play by the rules, free and open source software wins.
I see too many arguments reduced to what I'm about to say, but... Google is a business, and they're in this to make money. So are Microsoft and Yahoo. These services are not charity; they may not cost money, but they are hardly "free" - any more than the advertising-supported Google search is "free".
Regardless, not charging money does not grant anyone immunity from criticism or complaint.
Neither do I understand this penchant (not yours in particular) of boasting to the world that you lack sympathy for others. That says a lot about you and nothing about them. Personally, I can spare a little for both Google and their users.
In practice yes, that is what they are - not what they're supposed to be, but what they are: an industrial system of education producing workers for an industrial economy. I believe they should do far more than teach students to be future workers; indeed that they should only do that to the extent that it is necessary for those students to become citizens in society. But of course you're right that if wish to train them for a post-industrial or knowledge economy (slippery concepts though those are), they are failing even at that level.
My position on citizenship may seem inconsistent, given that I believe schools do such a poor job of going beyond basic skills that they do actual harm, a problem that they may be institutionally incapable of solving. Let me say instead that the education of a human being must be founded on the learning and practice of citizenship. And in our society, we have assigned tho lion's share of education to schools. We must either find a way for schools to do the job, or realize that the most essential dimension of eduaction must take place elsewhere. I suspect we need the latter: we need communities that educate, not bureaucracies. We have asked our bureaucracies to play the role of communities, and they are predictably failing. But just as communities create citizens, they are also made of and by citizens. Where are our citizens to come from? The problem appears to be a catch-22.
No, they're not the same. Partly for technical reasons (students don't pay taxes, for example, immigrants do but aren't citizens, and so forth), but more importantly because these are different roles people fill, and because language matters. Casting the debate in terms of "taxpayers" introduces an immediate bias, just as casting it in terms of "education" introduces a different (and in my opinion appropriate) bias. Words matter, as anyone from folks involved in the same-sex marriage debate to George Orwell can tell you. See my response to another post on the topic.
The language we use when talking about these things very much matters. If we frame schooling in terms of taxpayers, then education is sidelined. The first question we will always ask is whether tax dollars are being "wasted", not whether students are being educated. I place "wasted" in quotes because it is the taxpayers' understanding of waste that matters, which may be very different from the opinions of citizens, parents, and students (even when we're talking about the same people, someone's opinion in the role of taxpayer is formed differently from that same person's opinion in the role of citizen).
Furthermore, as I suggested in my final paragraph, it is quite difficult to judge waste. I'm certain it is quite possible to use MySpace educationally, or to educate kids about MySpace. Both would be valuable, though they may or may not be the best uses of public education, which must be judged in the context of other possible topics of education (and that probably varies by student and my school). By calling this activity "waste", you shut down thoughtful discussion of these matters before it even starts.
Questions of "educational value" are often also political and social, as "creation science", sex education, and diversity education have clearly demonstrated. Is it more worthwhile to teach longhand than effective online discourse and socialization, or is handwriting prized for being "high" culture to MySpace's "low"? Take a look at some of danah boyd's discussion of the role of MySpace as a place for kids to be free of adult surveillance, for example. Maybe today this is an essential aspect of how kids grow up to being adults. Should school turn its back on that? Again, I don't know. But I wouldn't simply dismiss it as a waste of time. And I would start my questions by asking about education and students, not taxpayers and waste.
By the way, I'm Canadian - not that that means we have the answers. As for America, don't take for granted that it cannot change - for better and for worse (my country sure has).
Thank you for the reply.
I'm glad to hear that, and your rationale does make unfortunate sense. I'm sorry you say you hate working for a public agency; I'm sure it's for good reason. For despite my extreme skepticism about public education, I think of teaching as one of a handful of "noble professions". The great shame is how seldom it lives up to that potential. Good luck to you.
Wow. You take my breath away. How does one respond to such an incredible warping of the purpose of school? What the hell do TAXPAYERS have to do with it?
I thought school was supposed to be about the education of students, for their benefit, that of their parents, of other citizens, and of society and democracy at large.
Not that I think schools actually do this; I would say on balance they achieve the opposite. But to actually state that the goal of public education is the efficient satisfaction of taxpayers (not citizens, parents, or God-forbid students; learning, citizenship, and the improvement of students are nowhere to be found) is so ass-backwards it's virtually guaranteed to never achieve actual education or fulfill the interests of students.
Of course, to the extent that you're a politico or functionary dependen on an industrial system of public education for your power and income, your characterization of education may be in your personal interest. What you wrote thoroughly confuses the private benefit of public servants with the broader public interest. I sincerely hope this is an accident of your writing and a product of having to cope with an imperfect system, not what you actually believe or practice.
None of which is to argue that schools are better with or without MySpace. Addressing that question requires a much more thorough analysis than the caricature you've presented here: of what we as a society want our schools to achieve, of the degree to which school should be isolated from real life and of the practical questions of how school can teach students to function in their actual lives, of whether it's better to try to change the student than to train the teacher, of the potential and actual nature of social sites (socialization is, after all, one of the main things we want out of schools), and of the practical dimensions of any relevant policy. In other words, I don't have an answer but I don't think you've made an argument.