I think most of us would agree that copyright is too long. But you can't compare it to software code, nothing else in the world moves as fast as computers do today, a book or movie would be a better analogy than software.
The time will come when computers slow down their annual improvement. When software gets used longer than a few years, then a 20 year copyright on software will be more reasonable.
That sounds like a nice idea, but the movie studios require big hits to subsidize their losses.
The Disney Company wrote off hundreds of millions of dollars from John Carter.
If you then go tell them that their next Pixar film can only make *x* dollars before they lose their rights to profit, that changes the deal and causes them to no longer want to take risks.
Unless you plan to subsidize their losses for them using taxpayer dollars. I'm sure you're not suggesting that!
The SOCIAL BARGAIN as you put it... is that a private company invests their time and money into a project like John Carter (or Cars 2), and if it is popular they get to make tons of money. If it flops, tough luck, they lose.
You can't change one half of the bargain without changing the other half. If you cap profits, then you have to cap losses or otherwise protect the company from them.
Snarky comment, but not all of us think those movies are crap.
I personally think The Avengers was a fun movie, we've watched it a few times. That movie simply isn't going to get made without the system of copyrights that we have.
Copyright is a good thing, but it shouldn't last for over a century. Things are too much in favor of copyright holders nowadays, and under current law, the public interest may as well be nonexistent.
I totally agree, and said so in my original post.
20 years for patents strikes me as reasonable. We could debate 10 years, we could debate 30 years, but I doubt any of us think 70 years makes sense.
Copyright? 20 years sounds reasonable to me, again we could debate 10 years, or 30... the current system is indeed too long. Cinderella has been out for 63 years, the people who created it aren't even alive anymore, the fact that it will remain under copyright for well into this century is just absurd.
Not everything in the world moves as fast as technology does, and rest assured that patents do matter very much to Intel.
Without patent protection, I could sell the same things as Intel and undercut them because I wouldn't have to spend billions on R&D, I'd just copy them.
So you work for free and refuse a paycheck? Impressive. How do you eat?
If you write software in your free time as a hobby, more power to you. You're able to do that because you do something that earns you money, and the computer that you write that software on only exists because of people who wanted to earn money.
The patents and copyrights on the hardware and software are what enabled computers to become what they are. Without that profit motive, Intel wouldn't be spending $5 billion dollars to build new manufacturing facilities.
It would seem so, until you think about it more...
That free, open source software, is written on computers that are anything but free, that were developed for the purpose of making their companies a profit.
The development work that FOSS is built on was all "for profit" software.
You wouldn't even have a computer on your desk in the first place if it wasn't for "profit".
Yes, there are people who are willing to work on FOSS, but they have an income from somewhere, you can't eat "love and happiness".
The irony is that just a few stories back on SlashDot, there was a story about how to get more young people involved with Linux, the core developer base is aging. The best reply in the whole thread was, "because people like to get paid". It helps with minor things like... keeping a roof over your head and eating on a semi-regular basis.
Making free software doesn't do any of that. (and free GMail accounts aren't "free", you're the product being sold)
The percentage of people who did that in Europe back then was small, the vast majority of people were serfs and served their rulers.
They also had almost no rights and it was no workers paradise.
As for the Native Americans, it isn't as simple as you describe, there was a lot of war between various tribes, a lot of what they did was simply for survival. There also were never very many of them, they traveled from place to place living off the land without actually developing or inventing much.
There are now too many people today for us all to just "live off the land", we'd run it dry then we'd all starve.
Without copyright, patents, etc. then you would have fewer inventions that benefit all of humanity.
My father owned several patents years ago, ran a business for years based on them. He is retired now (and of course those patents are long expired), but for a time those provided us a comfortable living.
He invested his parents life savings to make those inventions and get them patented. Do you really think he would have taken that risk without the chance of a reward?
If he had to invest his parents life savings, and in return the government says, "sorry, that is just knowledge, anyone can copy it now that you've invented it", do you believe he would be inclined to do so?
If you're honest, you'll agree that he would not, most people wouldn't.
Could you find an example of someone who would? Yes, of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, but the majority of people would not.
Our world would be a very different place (and not for the better) without such laws in place.
(Note: Patents are about right, 20 years... copyright has been extended too many times and lasts too long, I'd personally reduce that to 20 years to match Patents).
What computer will the FOSS project run on when no one is running a manufacturing facility producing computers?
It takes a lot of resources and a lot of money to build the fabs that Intel and AMD use, and not all of that work is glamorous. A lot of it is time consuming, dirty, and tedious.
Who is going to do that?
The ideas sound nice which is why people keep moving towards them, "if only" everyone would just do "their fair share", then everyone could live in peace and harmony.
Nice idea, but people just don't work like that. Maybe you do, but that is because you have ideas of working on FOSS all day, not driving trash trucks.
While that is a nice idea, and to some extent robots and machines will be able to produce all the iPads that we could ever want...
You still run into the problem of limited resources. For example, not everyone can eat Lobster because there just isn't enough of it in the ocean for that.
Not everyone can live on the beach, because there isn't enough beachfront property. That is why good beachfront property costs millions of dollars, the price controls the supply.
People will do *something*, but how many people will continue to drive trash trucks? Make sure the water and power systems are working? Keep the roads in good condition? Keep the factories producing "stuff"? Cook and produce the food?
Sure, people will paint, make movies, record music, there are people who will do that stuff for free if there is no money, but very few people will do the dirty, nasty jobs without being paid for it.
True, you do need people to build and maintain the machines, but never as many as you needed to do the work by hand.
And frankly, the people losing their jobs to this? They aren't going to be building or maintaining the machines that replace them, if they could, they wouldn't be working at McDonalds.
If the people at McDonalds had any other job options, they would already be doing that. They are generally working for minimum wage due to a lack of other choices, not because they want to be.
The food will rise in price, but the jobs might not be there.
Once, wheat was harvested by hand, now it is done by machine. What once took 2 days for 1 man to do, a modern combine can do in about 8 minutes.
McDonalds has been looking into automatic burger machines, they would complely replace the staff in the back from having to cook and assemble the burgers.
At $7.25/hr, it makes sense to use humans for that.
At $15/hr, it might well be worth installing machines to replace some of those jobs. If they replace just 4 jobs per McDonalds with new machines, that is tens of thousands of jobs lost across the country.
What if half of the fast food restaurants swapped out a few workers each for machines?
America is not pure capitalist, but it is a reasonable example of a regulated free-market.
China hasn't been communist for awhile now. They keep the label to keep the people happy, but they have dropped most of it in exchange for a pure dictatorship.
They can probably keep it, so long as they provide for their people and generally don't get carried away being foolish.
The primary reason that China has gotten away with playing around with their currency is that they export so much, but a lot of that is slave labor, so they are making stuff at almost no cost and selling it for US Dollars, so it supports their economy.
If we stopped buying stuff from China tomorrow... it would be... an interesting day... for all concerned...
If they do succeed in adding 20 million new insured in the US, the problem is they aren't adding any new doctors, and some who are doctors are looking at getting out.
It will become harder to find a doctor for two reasons:
1. More people with health insurance = more people wanting to see a doctor, but no more doctors to go around.
2. Some percentage of doctors will simply stop taking insurance and go to cash only, further reducing the number of doctors who can see all these new "insured" people.
Full disclosure: My wife has been a doctor for 10 years, she's disgusted by the whole thing and is considering either leaving or going cash only.
Side note: The number of doctors is not based on "free market" anything, it is tightly controlled by the AMA (American Medical Association). Only current doctors can licence new doctors and only existing medical schools can licence new medical schools, they like it the way it is because it keeps doctor pay high.
But what I can say is that if my hard work is now "free", then I won't work hard anymore.
If you don't compensate people for what they do, they'll stop doing it, unless you enslave them and use brute force. It works for awhile, until it doesn't.
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There is an old saying... "be careful what you wish for, you might just get it".
The time will come when computers slow down their annual improvement. When software gets used longer than a few years, then a 20 year copyright on software will be more reasonable.
The Disney Company wrote off hundreds of millions of dollars from John Carter.
If you then go tell them that their next Pixar film can only make *x* dollars before they lose their rights to profit, that changes the deal and causes them to no longer want to take risks.
Unless you plan to subsidize their losses for them using taxpayer dollars. I'm sure you're not suggesting that!
The SOCIAL BARGAIN as you put it... is that a private company invests their time and money into a project like John Carter (or Cars 2), and if it is popular they get to make tons of money. If it flops, tough luck, they lose.
You can't change one half of the bargain without changing the other half. If you cap profits, then you have to cap losses or otherwise protect the company from them.
I personally think The Avengers was a fun movie, we've watched it a few times. That movie simply isn't going to get made without the system of copyrights that we have.
Copyright is a good thing, but it shouldn't last for over a century. Things are too much in favor of copyright holders nowadays, and under current law, the public interest may as well be nonexistent.
I totally agree, and said so in my original post.
20 years for patents strikes me as reasonable. We could debate 10 years, we could debate 30 years, but I doubt any of us think 70 years makes sense.
Copyright? 20 years sounds reasonable to me, again we could debate 10 years, or 30... the current system is indeed too long. Cinderella has been out for 63 years, the people who created it aren't even alive anymore, the fact that it will remain under copyright for well into this century is just absurd.
Without patent protection, I could sell the same things as Intel and undercut them because I wouldn't have to spend billions on R&D, I'd just copy them.
If you write software in your free time as a hobby, more power to you. You're able to do that because you do something that earns you money, and the computer that you write that software on only exists because of people who wanted to earn money.
The patents and copyrights on the hardware and software are what enabled computers to become what they are. Without that profit motive, Intel wouldn't be spending $5 billion dollars to build new manufacturing facilities.
That free, open source software, is written on computers that are anything but free, that were developed for the purpose of making their companies a profit.
The development work that FOSS is built on was all "for profit" software.
You wouldn't even have a computer on your desk in the first place if it wasn't for "profit".
Yes, there are people who are willing to work on FOSS, but they have an income from somewhere, you can't eat "love and happiness".
The irony is that just a few stories back on SlashDot, there was a story about how to get more young people involved with Linux, the core developer base is aging. The best reply in the whole thread was, "because people like to get paid". It helps with minor things like... keeping a roof over your head and eating on a semi-regular basis.
Making free software doesn't do any of that. (and free GMail accounts aren't "free", you're the product being sold)
If movie theaters could just show movies without paying the studio anything, how would new movies get funded?
If authors didn't get paid anything for writing books, do you think we'd continue to have as many books?
If software wasn't protected by copyright, would as many programs get created?
Do you really want to live in that world?
If patents lasted as long as copyrights, I'd still be getting a royalty check to this day...
I'm not, because they expire. And I'm ok with that, we were paid for 20 years, that is long enough.
Copyright? Nuts, just nuts... move it back to 20 years...
Those patents are expired, maybe I should spend all my savings and invent something new, only to have you take it for free.
Yea, no thanks. What have YOU invented with all your life savings and then given away?
They also had almost no rights and it was no workers paradise.
As for the Native Americans, it isn't as simple as you describe, there was a lot of war between various tribes, a lot of what they did was simply for survival. There also were never very many of them, they traveled from place to place living off the land without actually developing or inventing much.
There are now too many people today for us all to just "live off the land", we'd run it dry then we'd all starve.
Without copyright, patents, etc. then you would have fewer inventions that benefit all of humanity.
My father owned several patents years ago, ran a business for years based on them. He is retired now (and of course those patents are long expired), but for a time those provided us a comfortable living.
He invested his parents life savings to make those inventions and get them patented. Do you really think he would have taken that risk without the chance of a reward?
If he had to invest his parents life savings, and in return the government says, "sorry, that is just knowledge, anyone can copy it now that you've invented it", do you believe he would be inclined to do so?
If you're honest, you'll agree that he would not, most people wouldn't.
Could you find an example of someone who would? Yes, of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, but the majority of people would not.
Our world would be a very different place (and not for the better) without such laws in place.
(Note: Patents are about right, 20 years... copyright has been extended too many times and lasts too long, I'd personally reduce that to 20 years to match Patents).
It takes a lot of resources and a lot of money to build the fabs that Intel and AMD use, and not all of that work is glamorous. A lot of it is time consuming, dirty, and tedious.
Who is going to do that?
The ideas sound nice which is why people keep moving towards them, "if only" everyone would just do "their fair share", then everyone could live in peace and harmony.
Nice idea, but people just don't work like that. Maybe you do, but that is because you have ideas of working on FOSS all day, not driving trash trucks.
You still run into the problem of limited resources. For example, not everyone can eat Lobster because there just isn't enough of it in the ocean for that.
Not everyone can live on the beach, because there isn't enough beachfront property. That is why good beachfront property costs millions of dollars, the price controls the supply.
Sure, people will paint, make movies, record music, there are people who will do that stuff for free if there is no money, but very few people will do the dirty, nasty jobs without being paid for it.
And frankly, the people losing their jobs to this? They aren't going to be building or maintaining the machines that replace them, if they could, they wouldn't be working at McDonalds.
If the people at McDonalds had any other job options, they would already be doing that. They are generally working for minimum wage due to a lack of other choices, not because they want to be.
The food will rise in price, but the jobs might not be there.
Once, wheat was harvested by hand, now it is done by machine. What once took 2 days for 1 man to do, a modern combine can do in about 8 minutes.
McDonalds has been looking into automatic burger machines, they would complely replace the staff in the back from having to cook and assemble the burgers.
At $7.25/hr, it makes sense to use humans for that.
At $15/hr, it might well be worth installing machines to replace some of those jobs. If they replace just 4 jobs per McDonalds with new machines, that is tens of thousands of jobs lost across the country.
What if half of the fast food restaurants swapped out a few workers each for machines?
http://www.gizmag.com/hamburger-machine/25159/
There are other ways to pick fruit and other ways to cook food, not all involve hiring people.
Those people protesting for higher pay would be wise to keep that in mind.
China hasn't been communist for awhile now. They keep the label to keep the people happy, but they have dropped most of it in exchange for a pure dictatorship.
They can probably keep it, so long as they provide for their people and generally don't get carried away being foolish.
The primary reason that China has gotten away with playing around with their currency is that they export so much, but a lot of that is slave labor, so they are making stuff at almost no cost and selling it for US Dollars, so it supports their economy.
If we stopped buying stuff from China tomorrow... it would be... an interesting day... for all concerned...
There is a fine line however...
A tipping point where you would throw up your hands and say, "never mind".
What if your tax rate was raised to 50%? Would you continue to go to work? What about 75%?
Each of us would have a different cutoff number, but clearly at some point most people would not bother anymore.
As for availability...
If they do succeed in adding 20 million new insured in the US, the problem is they aren't adding any new doctors, and some who are doctors are looking at getting out.
It will become harder to find a doctor for two reasons:
1. More people with health insurance = more people wanting to see a doctor, but no more doctors to go around.
2. Some percentage of doctors will simply stop taking insurance and go to cash only, further reducing the number of doctors who can see all these new "insured" people.
Full disclosure: My wife has been a doctor for 10 years, she's disgusted by the whole thing and is considering either leaving or going cash only.
Side note: The number of doctors is not based on "free market" anything, it is tightly controlled by the AMA (American Medical Association). Only current doctors can licence new doctors and only existing medical schools can licence new medical schools, they like it the way it is because it keeps doctor pay high.
You sir, deserve more mod points! :)
But 70 years is an awfully long time...
Depends on your point of view.
From your point of view, yes...
From the point of view of human civilization? Not really.
This has happened before, it will happen again, humans are... human...
It won't last, but yes, the people who have to live though it... it sucks...
Bolivars = Toilet Paper
Who's to say that everything shouldn't be free?
I guess no one...
But what I can say is that if my hard work is now "free", then I won't work hard anymore.
If you don't compensate people for what they do, they'll stop doing it, unless you enslave them and use brute force. It works for awhile, until it doesn't.