Market price is the best approximation you can have, since everything is valued differently by everybody That market price is somehow an approximation of real value seems to be a very common misconception. Market price depends on a combination of real value, production costs and supply & demand.
Actually, the only time real price actually plays a role in market value is when the supply is restricted compared to demand in which case the supplier(s) can price his(their) product closer to the real value, or when the production costs exceed the real value in which case the product won't be produced in the first place.
That is of course slightly simplified. As you said, different people value things differently. Also, competitors usually manufacture slightöy different products, meaning that they can use product uniqueness to decrease the competition factor.
So physical restriction is better than simply a a legal restriction? You're still restricting art from people - Yes, like many others, I think physical restriction is better. That the hurting party is actually directly involved in the transgression is a big bonus in proving the need for goverment protection.
Though, as I said in my earlier post, yours is a valid argument in this regard.
How will the obscure artist get a greater piece? If there is any piece to be had it will be quickly gobbled by the marketing powers with no compensation. How is this any different than marketing with copyright? Right, it isn't. The only difference is that in a society without copyright, it will be easier for people to sample new music, meaning that they will be slightly less affected by the marketing powers. And no, I am not saying that marketing wouldn't have an effect, just that it would have slightly less effect.
The guy sitting in a club playing will only get the compensation if he's marketable, otherwise his work will just be used by somebody else. First obscurness and marketable are two different things. If he isn't marketable he may very well be better of in another industry, or cooperating with someone who is marketable.
I would argue the price of performances are far more out of line than the price of a CD. $50 a ticket for an hour long performance vs. $15 for music I can experience over and over again. As for access, I think locking the art to distributed media is preferable than locking it behind a concert door. Market price however isn't the same as the real value. Supply & demand plays a very big role in determining the market price. My favorite example of this is air. Why don't you pay a large part of your salary to get air? It isn't like you don't value air. without it you would die. Fortunally for you (and society in general) air is availible in large quantities and cheaply produced.
The reason performances are expensive is because they can't be duplicated, meaning that the supply is limited. Sure, you can sneak into the back of a concert or movie theater, but people can physically stop you from doing that.
Information however can be copied without ever involving the original creator.
Actually there is a certain truth to your argument. What if the theater isn't full. Why shouldn't you be able to sneak in. It isn't like you are taking someone's spot. The defense for this is that we value private property laws. If we allowed people to sit in the back of a movie theater if there was a seat free, we would simultanously allow for somenoe to come into your house and sit in front of the TV as long as the sofa isn't occupied.
Problem comes when through massive marketing the former overshadows the latter True. Advertising counts as something that can create the illusion of uniqueness, and illusion vs reality doesn't matter in the psychology of the buyer. This is why I personally think advertising is one of the worst enemies of the free market which wants informed buyers to maximize efficency, but instead gets disinformed buyers.
The performance overshadows the true art - those who are flashy and marketable live the highlife on the back of those with talen Ignoring the marketing part for a second, I simply hate the "art is something special" attitude. My personally value of art is how enjoyable it is for me to consume. I don't care if it has been created using sophisticated methods. If I don't thoroughly enjoy it I call it crap.
Sure, you are completly within your right to value art in another way that includes the sophistication and intellectual debates that can be held about it (lots of people do). That is however your subjective valuation and has no bearing on how society as a whole values a specific piece of art.
This isn't to say that marketing and lack of marketing in the case of obscure artists doesn't have anything to do with it.
Pretty much same at it is now, except at least in the current system the obscure artist gets compensated. Actually, in a system without copyright the obscure artists gets a greater piece of the cake for the simple reason that people will try before bying, making them less affected by marketing. That the total cake will be smaller is of course also true.
Why? Because basing your money flow on reproducing and distributing an easily reproducable and distributable product is simply a bad idea.
It may have worked decently in the past because the reproduction and distribution wasn't as easy and protected by a goverment monopoly that most thought was a good idea.
However, with today's easy of distribution and reproduction even by private citizens the goverment monopoly is losing its morale stature. Every day more people begin understand how harmful the laws are and what they could have had without it. Instead of access to select pieces of art depending on your economic status, you instead get access to most of human culture with a few mouse clicks.
Sure, it becomes harder for those that create arts of work to make money. They have to work harder for the same amount of money, just like pretty much everyone else (known as increasing efficency). If there isn't enough money to be made in the industry, and they aren't skilled enough to be among those able to get that money, they may even have to go and work with something else instead.
Mankind may lose out on some works of art that don't get produced because of the lesser financial incentive. But the price we pay for those works of art is simply to big. We may have gotten some more unique pieces of art, but in return we as a whole had less actual access to art as a whole. All because of an artifical goverment restriction.
Businesses that rely on easily reproduced goods have two options (exluding quitting). Efficency or uniqueness. Efficency is obvious, but not what artists would be interested in, since as we know, they are undercut by filesharing. Uniqueness on the other hand is very good. It means they don't have to compete directly with others on even terms and instead can charge a premium.
Concerts and performances are one such uniqueness. Being the original creator of a work is another uniqueness. Which is why lots of people focus on those.
Finally, as a disclaimer. I wouldn't steal a car, but I would copy one if I could.
It could have something to do with the -260 billion/year trade balance that the US currently have with China.
If the US suddenly stopped trading with China, it would lose access to 320 billion/year of production, and ramping up to that production level would take a while possibly sending the whole of US into a new depression. China on the other hand would lose access to 60 billion/year of trade, most of which it could replace locally or get from other trading partners. Not being able to sell their products is much less of a problem that not being able to produce them. It isn't like China has a lack of people that could use them.
And this havn't even mentioned the big US dollar cash reserve that China could decide to play with if the US began to behave badly against them.
OK, I know that not that preferred trade status doesn't mean sanctions, but the above should still you a pretty good idea of why.
Which just goes to prove that the last people you would want sitting in goverment is rich old people. Unless you like having old lying hypocrites in power.
OK, that may be a little unfair to a few of them. But really, looking at it statistically, rich old people in power aren't really the best choice unless you want cynical people that could sell their own mother and afterwards convince everyone that it was for her own good.
Age may reflect wisdom, but it also reflects stagnation and cynicism. Riches may reflect good business sense and willingness to work, but it also reflects the ability to convince others to buy your bullshit lies. And wanting to be in power increases the chance that it is the bad traits that are strongest.
I am against patents in general. Not only software patents, but any patent as I think the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages. There are a few cases where they are useful, but they are simply too few to make the system worth keeping.
Many companies have come to rely on software patents raising the barrier to entry for competitors Artifically raising the barrier is usually not sound economics. While it can probably be said to be one of original motivations of patents, it simply causes the same problems that it tries to prevent. By raising the barriers of entry you decrease competition on the market, and by extension lessens the amount of inovations made. (I hope everyone can agree that competition drives inovation)
The first to market company (the inventor) still has the advantage of getting users used to their specific product, as well as establishing business relations.
My small company currently has software patents pending. Our valuation and chance of obtaining funding depends on these patents. In today's post dotcom industry, it has become very hard to obtain funding on just an idea alone. This is one of the better reasons for patents in general. Showcasing a product that has yet to reach the market so you can gain funding from venture capitalists becomes riskier if the venture capitalists can turn tail and give the idea to someone else.
However, if the idea is not obvious, it should usually be pretty difficult to reverse engineer it. You just have to make sure that the venture capitalists don't get a hold of the inner workings of the product. Of course that requires stricter security, but it is probably a price worth paying.
If you don't even have a working prototype to demonstrate, remember that the patent office once upon a time required a prototype for every application.
As for the idea of using the patent itself as a bargaining chip to increase the chance of venture capital. That isn't different from the first argument, where you allow one company to make a profit (increase value of that company) at the expense of decreasing inovation associated with that patent.
If an abolishment somehow comes to fruition, what are the mechanics going to be? Like I mentioned, we have patents pending and have invested a substantial amount of money on lawyer and other patent fees. Are we going to get our money back? From whom? What if you already have a software patent? Will there be a refund? As with any change in laws (just look at tax laws that change yearly) there is of course reprecussions. And with a system as complex as patents, there is a lot to details that have to be looked at.
While abolishing patents completly may extreme to some people, I would atleast like to see a real decrease in time of effect, just like with copyright. 5 years is a long period of time to get a head start in todays society. When the original copyright and patent lengths were set, development and distribution was much slower. Todays society is moving at a much more rapid pace, and we simply can't afford giving out generation (or in the case of copyright life) long monopolies.
The only reason the real world works like it does is because of that exact attitude your are displaying.
"Don't question authority. Just shut up an work. If you have any time to question authority, work some more."
Keeping the general population apathetic, tired, scared and separated on unimportant issues is vital to maintaining the most control so you can reap the most benefits.
A population that care enough and have energy to activly questions new legislation, that can't be fooled by scare tactics and that don't fight among each other is the worst nightmare for anyone looking to gain more power.
Saying something like
economically feasible fusion power by 2035 is the equivalent of saying. We have no idea when and if fusion is going to be readily availible, so we are going to estimate a date so far into the future that noone will remember this article if the prediction fails, but not far enough for it to be seen as impossible.
Incorrect. Note that I specifically mentioned that you need competition.
In markets with little competitition, such as your picasso where the value is in owning the original picasso you have a scarcity that the seller can use to set a price far above the production cost of the item.
Note that competition is a relative term. Unless two items are percieved to be exactly the same, they aren't competiting fully. They can still be competing to a certain degree though. Many successful business make a living by making their product and/or image differ in some way from the competition.
Anyway, the better the competition the closer the market price gets to the production price. It is the half the point of the free market. (The other half being that of allowing the consumer to choose which things he value the most)
A final cavecat. If two products are the same (competing) but have different production costs, the producer that makes the "cheaper" product has two options. He can either outcompete the more expensive product and take all the market, or he can price his product closer to the more expensive product and take a bigger profit.
The amount of effort you put into something is really irrelevant to what other people are willing to pay for it, because the amount of effort you put in no way affects what other people need. True and false.
There are basically three modifiers on how much people are willing to pay for something.
1. How much people need/want a thing. It sets the upper limit on what someone would be willing to pay for something. It can even be less than 0 if it is something that the person doesn't want.
2. How much it costs to manufacture a thing. It sets the lower limit on the price.
3. How much competition there is with "equal" products. This one is important. The better the competition, the closer the price get to the lower limit, and the worse the competition the closer the price gets to the upper limit.
In perfect markets (some raw products are a good example) where a product is actually wanted by the consumer and produced by many producers, the price will be near the amount of effort put into the product.
In a market with scarcity (internet in some places), artifical scarcity (intellectual property) or imaginary scarcity (branding) the price will be higher than the amount of effort put into it.
In a non market (Horse-drawn carriages) the price of production is so high that the consumer simply isn't willing to pay for it, and no product can be made.
This is of course a simplification. As every person value things differently they are willing to pay different amounts for it. This mostly affects markets with scarcity.
If there was such a positive feedback, how come we are here today? The CO2 changing is such a commonly occuring phenomena that it simply can't have a positive feedback or earth as we know it with its current relativly stable climate wouldn't be able to exist.
Of course you can have a limit on the positive feedback such as diminishing returns on CO2 or an independant trigger that counteracts the CO2 effect.
It can't be that the oceans CO2 runs out since CO2 continues to increase for a few hundred years after the temperature starts to drop. An unknown trigger may be possible, but I have yet to hear anyone come up with a good one.
The diminishing returns on CO2 may very well be true. It would not be a popular idea among the more political elements of climate research though as it would mean that the effects of CO2 according to the current models are heavily overexaggerated.
Personally, I am more concerned about such things as the way way we are destroying the life in the ocean (a true tragedy of the commons phenomena) or the way the human population continues to increase. There are many ways we humans affect nature. CO2 is probably one of the less serious ones. In the end it is a natural gas that have existed in the atmosphere in varying amounts (less and more) throughout earths history.
Free is too ambiguous and may be pejorative (as in no value). This is a very big misconception in many people's minds. That the market value of something has something to do with the real value. Although it sounds intuivly correct, it is isn't the case.
As long as you have competition, market value is far more dependent on the cost of production than it is on the actual value of a thing. Actually having competition and a decently informed market is another matter though.
The purpose of the economy isn't about 'making money'. The purpose of the free market economy is to maximize the creation of wealth by encouraging competition in overcharging sectors and constantly lowering the costs of production That, and to distribute scarce goods efficently (as in letting the consumer decide which scarce products he wants/needs the most).
One thing that is often ignored in economics is the fact that in a free market, the price of the product has more to do with the cost to produce it than it has to do with the value of the product itself. As long as there is healthy competition (something needed for a free market to function) and the consumer are informed (another needed thing), the producers will never be able to charge much more than the cost of production even if the product has an extremly high value.
Of course, a large portion of the modern western markets seems to be all about not having a free market. Monopolies, regulations that favor specific (usually large) companies and misinformation (a.k.a marketing) are among the biggest problems. They all serve to either prevent the consumer from choosing the best choice for him, or prevent the producer to produce products the consumer would want.
Yes the weather and climate are different, but at the same time they are pretty similar. They are both chaotic systems that are inherently hard to predict.
All science is tentative, but thus far the denier community has tried to push that to an extreme, and are even invoking similar kinds of arguments With the denier community I assume you mean those that don't believe that CO2 is the main cause of the current warming of earth. Note, that the denying isn't of the global warming, but of the causes. Calling them deniers is simply a way to invoke an emotional response from readers.
invoking conspiracies Done by CO2 followers also. (see oil money conspiracy)
questioning the peer-review process Understandable. Failure to do enough practical peer review is often one of the weaker points of the scientific process. Of course, the real way to question the peer review is to do your own peer review and check the results for yourself.
getting lists of "scientists" who disagree with global warming that often include non-climatologists No different from CO2 followers. (see IPCC)
that evolution-deniers use Comparing those questioning the accuracy of the CO2 theories with those of evolution deniers shows just how politically biased you are. Evolution in most parts is very well understood. There is of course lots of details that we can't fully explain yet, but the basics is atleast as good as Newton's theory of gravitation.
Climate however is far from that well understood. It consists of a huge amount of complex interactions that we are still just trying to understand the basics of. And the political bickering from all sides of the issue isn't helping.
Finally, painting the whole thing as us vs them is a big simplification. Beyond those that think humans have little to no cause in global warming, there is also those that believe we do, but don't think that CO2 is the main cause. Which reminds me of the pascal's wager of global warming.
"We should stop releasing so much CO2. In the worst case it does nothing, but in the best case it saves the world."
That arugment however fails to take into account, that if something human made other than CO2 causes most global warming, and that something becomes more common when we try to reduce CO2, the worst case scenario is not a non-negative.
Of course. Global Warming debate is the biggest pseudo scientific bitchfest in town. Trying to separate the real information from the huge amount of political bullshit is a big task in itself.
From the direct bullshit, like when you here anti GW people mention volcanos in relation to CO2. (really, can't they be bothered to atleast do some basic fact checking)
To the more subtle unscientific bullshit, like the GW people trying to explain the 800 year CO2 lag. (it was after reading the realclimate's attempt that I understood that they were agenda driven instead of scientifically driven)
ou don't have to wait for a seeder to appear before you can download (especially if it's a rare media file where there are usually no seeders in BT trackers)
Download rates are usually higher for streaming media than for bittorrent (and I'm *NOT* behind Comcast) The above statements are comparing apples and oranges
Of course you get higher speed from a streaming site since they are spend lots and lots of cash on providing more bandwidth, which is why they usually havelow quality video. (or get shut down like Stage6). Most torrents however are files distributed by ordinary people that don't have the money to pay for that kind of resources. If you were to try streaming from such as user you would have to wait for ever and ever.
If another company used bittorrent and spent only half that amount of cash on bandwidth, relying on users to provide the rest, the speeds would be greater.
You can only wait one or two minutes before you can enjoy your show, as opposed to waiting 30-240 minutes with bittorrent True. There is a lack of bittorrent clients that prioritize early pieces, while fetching later pieces to use for trading.
Yup. Just to clarify the terms slightly. What is created is real value.
There is also the market value which simultaneously gets decreased, as it is dependent on supply & demand. If you debate with IP proponents they will try to confuse the issue by simply calling the market value, value.
I always thought it was the other way around. It is evolution that has the more solid mathematical construct, which is why it is used in computing via genetic algorithms.
Sure, evolution gets much more complex than gravity when you add in all the details such as environmental changes, but the foundation is very simple. It is the simple fact that individuals with genes that causes them to have a higher chance to procreate than the average individual will spread those genes to their offspring at a higher rate than the average individual, causing those genes to increase in commonality.
Translations:
marketplace remains fundamentally healthy, the non market driven place where the minimal competition allows us to dicate all the terms, remains a good place for us to squeeze money.
and the purported 'cure' could only make it sick, the suggested changes would make it more difficult for us to squeeze money out of our customers.
"At best, the network-management restrictions proposed by Free Press and others would inflict wasteful costs on broadband providers in the form of expensive and needless capacity upgrades The suggested changes would force us to spend money on upgrades, that we could avoid spending by capping everyone so much that they become unneeded.
ordinary broadband consumers customers who hardly use the broadband they paid for.
the bandwidth-hogging activities of a few. the activities that we advertise our services for, but that we don't want our customers to use.
True. But that is a different case. If you have fiber optical last mile offering, I wouldn't call it cable any longer. It may be a cable company offering the service, but it isn't delivered over the traditional cable tv infrastructure.
Btw, on a related question. Do comcast run traffic interference on those fiber connections, or are they left alone and handled differently? Just curious.
Then again, judging from some of the comments regarding climate change, it seems to me that science education in general needs to be addressed. Agreed. Listening to either side of the issue is very much like listening to a combination of a politican and a priest. That there is sides in the first place is depressing enough. This is supposed to be science, not a popularity contest. The only falsifiability that exists seems to be "wait and see" which is somewhat useless.
Here's something I often read on/. written though it were gospel: "correlation != causation" - true, but I'd challenge anyone to name a single scientific "law" we _know_ to be caused, and don't "merely" observe correlation.
The interesting thing is that the correlation between CO2 and temperature is far less certain than most people seem to think. CO2 follows temperature, not the other side around. And please don't point me to the realclimate link about this. Its "explanation" is somewhat laughable. Oh, the temperature begins to increase earlier, but CO2 is the thing that continues the temperature increase. And when the temperature increase stops (for a completly unknown reason that none of our models include), CO2 just happens to continue to increase for another bunch of years. OK, it could be true, but they would need very good evidence for such a non obvious claim.
This isn't to say that the other side is any better. Everytime I hear anyone bring up the completly false volcano argument, I get embarrased. Humans are the ones releasing CO2 into the atmosphere there is no doubt about that. It is simply fact. That is what happens when you burn coal and oil. And that humans aren't affecting climate? Just the amount of heat we release into the atmosphere should have a pretty significant effect on earth. In fact it does. Big cities are warmer than wilderness.
The other thing that amazes me are the number of people who believe really weird things about climate change research. For example, I've read comments alleging that climate scientists "tweak" their models to fit known weather patterns, but never verify those models on other data. This is such a patently ridiculous allegation
Todays climate models are quite bad. Incoorporating runaway processes (CO2->Warmth->CO2) which goes against the basic fact that if positive feedback processes could occur that easily in nature, we wouldn't exist in the first place. Uncertainty because of chaos in climate patterns. And simply not being accurate enough.
Lately IP proponents have been focusing heavily on the economic side of the issue. More accuratly they are trying to confuse two distinct terms. Market value and Real value.
Market value is what an item sells for on the market. It is heavily affected by supply & demand and is always lower than the real value. Real value is the usefulness an item has to a specific person. Note, that while the real value remains constant as supply increases, the Sum(Real Value) for all items on the market doesn't increase linearly simply because not all people value the item the same, and those that value it most will get hold of it first.
It is very difficult if not impossible to calculate the real value for most items, and for most economic systems this is a big problem when you want to measure the prosperity of the population.
So why are IP proponents so intent on confusing the different between market value and real value. It is simple. The monopoly on copyright does a single thing. It increases the scarcity of the copyrighted item, making the market value higher, which allows the holder of the copyright to earn more money. In contrast, with no copyright, scarcity is removed and when there is no scarcity on an item, the market value will approach zero. Just look at air. It has quite a high real value. Without it you would die. It is however next to impossible to find anyone willing to pay for common air.
There are of course other ways to increase market value even without a copyright which is often mentioned by those who are against copyright. That however in my opinion is secondary to the real issue of market value vs real value. Copyright may increase the total number of works produced, but it has a hefty price as it also simultaneously decreases the total number of copies of those works that gets produced. It may have been acceptable a couple of hundred years ago, when there weren't so many works of art produced, but today the price of that exchange is simply not worth it.
Modern p2p protocols use cryptography (usually secure hashes, but cryptographically signed data also works) to verify that what you downloaded is authentic.
In the case of secure hashes, you only have to trust that you got the hash value from a trusted source. In other words, you have to trust the original distributor as well as any intermediate distibutor that provides the hash.
With signed data you don't even have to trust any intermediate distributor. The data can automatically be verified to have originated from the original distributor.
Of course, if you can't trust the original distributor, such when you download random files from p2p, then you are on your own. But that isn't what we are talking about here.
Hmmm... maybe because they created and own it? Actually they don't own it. They have a state sponsored monopoly for a limited (or not so limited) time, but that is it.
Can I have your car after you're 60? No, but if you can copy it, go for it.
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Actually, the only time real price actually plays a role in market value is when the supply is restricted compared to demand in which case the supplier(s) can price his(their) product closer to the real value, or when the production costs exceed the real value in which case the product won't be produced in the first place.
That is of course slightly simplified. As you said, different people value things differently. Also, competitors usually manufacture slightöy different products, meaning that they can use product uniqueness to decrease the competition factor. So physical restriction is better than simply a a legal restriction? You're still restricting art from people - Yes, like many others, I think physical restriction is better. That the hurting party is actually directly involved in the transgression is a big bonus in proving the need for goverment protection.
Though, as I said in my earlier post, yours is a valid argument in this regard. How will the obscure artist get a greater piece? If there is any piece to be had it will be quickly gobbled by the marketing powers with no compensation. How is this any different than marketing with copyright? Right, it isn't. The only difference is that in a society without copyright, it will be easier for people to sample new music, meaning that they will be slightly less affected by the marketing powers. And no, I am not saying that marketing wouldn't have an effect, just that it would have slightly less effect. The guy sitting in a club playing will only get the compensation if he's marketable, otherwise his work will just be used by somebody else. First obscurness and marketable are two different things. If he isn't marketable he may very well be better of in another industry, or cooperating with someone who is marketable.
The reason performances are expensive is because they can't be duplicated, meaning that the supply is limited. Sure, you can sneak into the back of a concert or movie theater, but people can physically stop you from doing that.
Information however can be copied without ever involving the original creator.
Actually there is a certain truth to your argument. What if the theater isn't full. Why shouldn't you be able to sneak in. It isn't like you are taking someone's spot. The defense for this is that we value private property laws. If we allowed people to sit in the back of a movie theater if there was a seat free, we would simultanously allow for somenoe to come into your house and sit in front of the TV as long as the sofa isn't occupied. Problem comes when through massive marketing the former overshadows the latter True. Advertising counts as something that can create the illusion of uniqueness, and illusion vs reality doesn't matter in the psychology of the buyer. This is why I personally think advertising is one of the worst enemies of the free market which wants informed buyers to maximize efficency, but instead gets disinformed buyers. The performance overshadows the true art - those who are flashy and marketable live the highlife on the back of those with talen Ignoring the marketing part for a second, I simply hate the "art is something special" attitude. My personally value of art is how enjoyable it is for me to consume. I don't care if it has been created using sophisticated methods. If I don't thoroughly enjoy it I call it crap.
Sure, you are completly within your right to value art in another way that includes the sophistication and intellectual debates that can be held about it (lots of people do). That is however your subjective valuation and has no bearing on how society as a whole values a specific piece of art.
This isn't to say that marketing and lack of marketing in the case of obscure artists doesn't have anything to do with it. Pretty much same at it is now, except at least in the current system the obscure artist gets compensated. Actually, in a system without copyright the obscure artists gets a greater piece of the cake for the simple reason that people will try before bying, making them less affected by marketing. That the total cake will be smaller is of course also true.
It may have worked decently in the past because the reproduction and distribution wasn't as easy and protected by a goverment monopoly that most thought was a good idea.
However, with today's easy of distribution and reproduction even by private citizens the goverment monopoly is losing its morale stature. Every day more people begin understand how harmful the laws are and what they could have had without it. Instead of access to select pieces of art depending on your economic status, you instead get access to most of human culture with a few mouse clicks.
Sure, it becomes harder for those that create arts of work to make money. They have to work harder for the same amount of money, just like pretty much everyone else (known as increasing efficency). If there isn't enough money to be made in the industry, and they aren't skilled enough to be among those able to get that money, they may even have to go and work with something else instead.
Mankind may lose out on some works of art that don't get produced because of the lesser financial incentive. But the price we pay for those works of art is simply to big. We may have gotten some more unique pieces of art, but in return we as a whole had less actual access to art as a whole. All because of an artifical goverment restriction.
Businesses that rely on easily reproduced goods have two options (exluding quitting). Efficency or uniqueness. Efficency is obvious, but not what artists would be interested in, since as we know, they are undercut by filesharing.
Uniqueness on the other hand is very good. It means they don't have to compete directly with others on even terms and instead can charge a premium.
Concerts and performances are one such uniqueness. Being the original creator of a work is another uniqueness. Which is why lots of people focus on those.
Finally, as a disclaimer. I wouldn't steal a car, but I would copy one if I could.
It could have something to do with the -260 billion/year trade balance that the US currently have with China.
If the US suddenly stopped trading with China, it would lose access to 320 billion/year of production, and ramping up to that production level would take a while possibly sending the whole of US into a new depression. China on the other hand would lose access to 60 billion/year of trade, most of which it could replace locally or get from other trading partners. Not being able to sell their products is much less of a problem that not being able to produce them. It isn't like China has a lack of people that could use them.
And this havn't even mentioned the big US dollar cash reserve that China could decide to play with if the US began to behave badly against them.
OK, I know that not that preferred trade status doesn't mean sanctions, but the above should still you a pretty good idea of why.
Which just goes to prove that the last people you would want sitting in goverment is rich old people. Unless you like having old lying hypocrites in power.
OK, that may be a little unfair to a few of them. But really, looking at it statistically, rich old people in power aren't really the best choice unless you want cynical people that could sell their own mother and afterwards convince everyone that it was for her own good.
Age may reflect wisdom, but it also reflects stagnation and cynicism. Riches may reflect good business sense and willingness to work, but it also reflects the ability to convince others to buy your bullshit lies. And wanting to be in power increases the chance that it is the bad traits that are strongest.
The first to market company (the inventor) still has the advantage of getting users used to their specific product, as well as establishing business relations. My small company currently has software patents pending. Our valuation and chance of obtaining funding depends on these patents. In today's post dotcom industry, it has become very hard to obtain funding on just an idea alone. This is one of the better reasons for patents in general. Showcasing a product that has yet to reach the market so you can gain funding from venture capitalists becomes riskier if the venture capitalists can turn tail and give the idea to someone else.
However, if the idea is not obvious, it should usually be pretty difficult to reverse engineer it. You just have to make sure that the venture capitalists don't get a hold of the inner workings of the product. Of course that requires stricter security, but it is probably a price worth paying.
If you don't even have a working prototype to demonstrate, remember that the patent office once upon a time required a prototype for every application.
As for the idea of using the patent itself as a bargaining chip to increase the chance of venture capital. That isn't different from the first argument, where you allow one company to make a profit (increase value of that company) at the expense of decreasing inovation associated with that patent. If an abolishment somehow comes to fruition, what are the mechanics going to be? Like I mentioned, we have patents pending and have invested a substantial amount of money on lawyer and other patent fees. Are we going to get our money back? From whom? What if you already have a software patent? Will there be a refund? As with any change in laws (just look at tax laws that change yearly) there is of course reprecussions. And with a system as complex as patents, there is a lot to details that have to be looked at.
While abolishing patents completly may extreme to some people, I would atleast like to see a real decrease in time of effect, just like with copyright. 5 years is a long period of time to get a head start in todays society. When the original copyright and patent lengths were set, development and distribution was much slower. Todays society is moving at a much more rapid pace, and we simply can't afford giving out generation (or in the case of copyright life) long monopolies.
The only reason the real world works like it does is because of that exact attitude your are displaying.
"Don't question authority. Just shut up an work. If you have any time to question authority, work some more."
Keeping the general population apathetic, tired, scared and separated on unimportant issues is vital to maintaining the most control so you can reap the most benefits.
A population that care enough and have energy to activly questions new legislation, that can't be fooled by scare tactics and that don't fight among each other is the worst nightmare for anyone looking to gain more power.
Incorrect. Note that I specifically mentioned that you need competition.
In markets with little competitition, such as your picasso where the value is in owning the original picasso you have a scarcity that the seller can use to set a price far above the production cost of the item.
Note that competition is a relative term. Unless two items are percieved to be exactly the same, they aren't competiting fully. They can still be competing to a certain degree though. Many successful business make a living by making their product and/or image differ in some way from the competition.
Anyway, the better the competition the closer the market price gets to the production price. It is the half the point of the free market. (The other half being that of allowing the consumer to choose which things he value the most)
A final cavecat. If two products are the same (competing) but have different production costs, the producer that makes the "cheaper" product has two options. He can either outcompete the more expensive product and take all the market, or he can price his product closer to the more expensive product and take a bigger profit.
There are basically three modifiers on how much people are willing to pay for something.
1. How much people need/want a thing. It sets the upper limit on what someone would be willing to pay for something. It can even be less than 0 if it is something that the person doesn't want.
2. How much it costs to manufacture a thing. It sets the lower limit on the price.
3. How much competition there is with "equal" products. This one is important. The better the competition, the closer the price get to the lower limit, and the worse the competition the closer the price gets to the upper limit.
In perfect markets (some raw products are a good example) where a product is actually wanted by the consumer and produced by many producers, the price will be near the amount of effort put into the product.
In a market with scarcity (internet in some places), artifical scarcity (intellectual property) or imaginary scarcity (branding) the price will be higher than the amount of effort put into it.
In a non market (Horse-drawn carriages) the price of production is so high that the consumer simply isn't willing to pay for it, and no product can be made.
This is of course a simplification. As every person value things differently they are willing to pay different amounts for it. This mostly affects markets with scarcity.
If there was such a positive feedback, how come we are here today? The CO2 changing is such a commonly occuring phenomena that it simply can't have a positive feedback or earth as we know it with its current relativly stable climate wouldn't be able to exist.
Of course you can have a limit on the positive feedback such as diminishing returns on CO2 or an independant trigger that counteracts the CO2 effect.
It can't be that the oceans CO2 runs out since CO2 continues to increase for a few hundred years after the temperature starts to drop. An unknown trigger may be possible, but I have yet to hear anyone come up with a good one.
The diminishing returns on CO2 may very well be true. It would not be a popular idea among the more political elements of climate research though as it would mean that the effects of CO2 according to the current models are heavily overexaggerated.
Personally, I am more concerned about such things as the way way we are destroying the life in the ocean (a true tragedy of the commons phenomena) or the way the human population continues to increase. There are many ways we humans affect nature. CO2 is probably one of the less serious ones. In the end it is a natural gas that have existed in the atmosphere in varying amounts (less and more) throughout earths history.
As long as you have competition, market value is far more dependent on the cost of production than it is on the actual value of a thing. Actually having competition and a decently informed market is another matter though.
One thing that is often ignored in economics is the fact that in a free market, the price of the product has more to do with the cost to produce it than it has to do with the value of the product itself. As long as there is healthy competition (something needed for a free market to function) and the consumer are informed (another needed thing), the producers will never be able to charge much more than the cost of production even if the product has an extremly high value.
Of course, a large portion of the modern western markets seems to be all about not having a free market. Monopolies, regulations that favor specific (usually large) companies and misinformation (a.k.a marketing) are among the biggest problems. They all serve to either prevent the consumer from choosing the best choice for him, or prevent the producer to produce products the consumer would want.
Climate however is far from that well understood. It consists of a huge amount of complex interactions that we are still just trying to understand the basics of. And the political bickering from all sides of the issue isn't helping.
Finally, painting the whole thing as us vs them is a big simplification. Beyond those that think humans have little to no cause in global warming, there is also those that believe we do, but don't think that CO2 is the main cause. Which reminds me of the pascal's wager of global warming.
"We should stop releasing so much CO2. In the worst case it does nothing, but in the best case it saves the world."
That arugment however fails to take into account, that if something human made other than CO2 causes most global warming, and that something becomes more common when we try to reduce CO2, the worst case scenario is not a non-negative.
Of course. Global Warming debate is the biggest pseudo scientific bitchfest in town. Trying to separate the real information from the huge amount of political bullshit is a big task in itself.
From the direct bullshit, like when you here anti GW people mention volcanos in relation to CO2. (really, can't they be bothered to atleast do some basic fact checking)
To the more subtle unscientific bullshit, like the GW people trying to explain the 800 year CO2 lag. (it was after reading the realclimate's attempt that I understood that they were agenda driven instead of scientifically driven)
Download rates are usually higher for streaming media than for bittorrent (and I'm *NOT* behind Comcast) The above statements are comparing apples and oranges
Of course you get higher speed from a streaming site since they are spend lots and lots of cash on providing more bandwidth, which is why they usually havelow quality video. (or get shut down like Stage6). Most torrents however are files distributed by ordinary people that don't have the money to pay for that kind of resources. If you were to try streaming from such as user you would have to wait for ever and ever.
If another company used bittorrent and spent only half that amount of cash on bandwidth, relying on users to provide the rest, the speeds would be greater. You can only wait one or two minutes before you can enjoy your show, as opposed to waiting 30-240 minutes with bittorrent True. There is a lack of bittorrent clients that prioritize early pieces, while fetching later pieces to use for trading.
Yup. Just to clarify the terms slightly. What is created is real value.
There is also the market value which simultaneously gets decreased, as it is dependent on supply & demand. If you debate with IP proponents they will try to confuse the issue by simply calling the market value, value.
I always thought it was the other way around. It is evolution that has the more solid mathematical construct, which is why it is used in computing via genetic algorithms.
Sure, evolution gets much more complex than gravity when you add in all the details such as environmental changes, but the foundation is very simple. It is the simple fact that individuals with genes that causes them to have a higher chance to procreate than the average individual will spread those genes to their offspring at a higher rate than the average individual, causing those genes to increase in commonality.
True. But that is a different case. If you have fiber optical last mile offering, I wouldn't call it cable any longer. It may be a cable company offering the service, but it isn't delivered over the traditional cable tv infrastructure.
Btw, on a related question. Do comcast run traffic interference on those fiber connections, or are they left alone and handled differently? Just curious.
"correlation != causation" - true, but I'd challenge anyone to name a single scientific "law" we _know_ to be caused, and don't "merely" observe correlation.
The interesting thing is that the correlation between CO2 and temperature is far less certain than most people seem to think. CO2 follows temperature, not the other side around. And please don't point me to the realclimate link about this. Its "explanation" is somewhat laughable. Oh, the temperature begins to increase earlier, but CO2 is the thing that continues the temperature increase. And when the temperature increase stops (for a completly unknown reason that none of our models include), CO2 just happens to continue to increase for another bunch of years. OK, it could be true, but they would need very good evidence for such a non obvious claim.
This isn't to say that the other side is any better. Everytime I hear anyone bring up the completly false volcano argument, I get embarrased. Humans are the ones releasing CO2 into the atmosphere there is no doubt about that. It is simply fact. That is what happens when you burn coal and oil. And that humans aren't affecting climate? Just the amount of heat we release into the atmosphere should have a pretty significant effect on earth. In fact it does. Big cities are warmer than wilderness.
The other thing that amazes me are the number of people who believe really weird things about climate change research. For example, I've read comments alleging that climate scientists "tweak" their models to fit known weather patterns, but never verify those models on other data. This is such a patently ridiculous allegationTodays climate models are quite bad. Incoorporating runaway processes (CO2->Warmth->CO2) which goes against the basic fact that if positive feedback processes could occur that easily in nature, we wouldn't exist in the first place. Uncertainty because of chaos in climate patterns. And simply not being accurate enough.
Lately IP proponents have been focusing heavily on the economic side of the issue. More accuratly they are trying to confuse two distinct terms. Market value and Real value.
Market value is what an item sells for on the market. It is heavily affected by supply & demand and is always lower than the real value. Real value is the usefulness an item has to a specific person. Note, that while the real value remains constant as supply increases, the Sum(Real Value) for all items on the market doesn't increase linearly simply because not all people value the item the same, and those that value it most will get hold of it first.
It is very difficult if not impossible to calculate the real value for most items, and for most economic systems this is a big problem when you want to measure the prosperity of the population.
So why are IP proponents so intent on confusing the different between market value and real value. It is simple. The monopoly on copyright does a single thing. It increases the scarcity of the copyrighted item, making the market value higher, which allows the holder of the copyright to earn more money. In contrast, with no copyright, scarcity is removed and when there is no scarcity on an item, the market value will approach zero. Just look at air. It has quite a high real value. Without it you would die. It is however next to impossible to find anyone willing to pay for common air.
There are of course other ways to increase market value even without a copyright which is often mentioned by those who are against copyright. That however in my opinion is secondary to the real issue of market value vs real value. Copyright may increase the total number of works produced, but it has a hefty price as it also simultaneously decreases the total number of copies of those works that gets produced. It may have been acceptable a couple of hundred years ago, when there weren't so many works of art produced, but today the price of that exchange is simply not worth it.
Actually they are doing it because they have an outdated badly scaling last mile network and don't want to spend the nescessary capital to improve it.
There is a reason that it only is cable companies talking about bandwidth caps, and not the dsl companies.
There is absolutly no need to trust your peers.
Modern p2p protocols use cryptography (usually secure hashes, but cryptographically signed data also works) to verify that what you downloaded is authentic.
In the case of secure hashes, you only have to trust that you got the hash value from a trusted source. In other words, you have to trust the original distributor as well as any intermediate distibutor that provides the hash.
With signed data you don't even have to trust any intermediate distributor. The data can automatically be verified to have originated from the original distributor.
Of course, if you can't trust the original distributor, such when you download random files from p2p, then you are on your own. But that isn't what we are talking about here.