I completely agree with you. However, there is one point where the exchange of information may be naturally, and consequently ethically controlled and that is across the boundary of one's private domain. Having clear and effective control here also remains viable (without totalitarianism). Yes, of course. But, as you imply, this is a totally different beast. That which has to be spread all over the world can not, by it's very nature, be controlled - by technical or other means. That which is kept at home can very easily be controlled.
It's very simple, really: Information that's private should be kept private and what's public should be kept public. All attempts to forcibly make information cross these natural boundaries are doomed to fail.
I am also developing software to facilitate such business models (that do not rely upon the unnatural privileges of copyright or patent). Interesting. Anything you can talk about? Would it be a good fit for a scenario such as this: http://slashdot.org/~richie2000/journal/138354 ?
You don't. The trick is to find something that's somehow tied to the information and charge for that. You can, for example, charge for structuring the information; as an example we can imagine a website where people can buy music, if they know it reaches a certain level of quality (perhaps even with different rates for different quality), the meta-data is correct and well-formed, it's easy to pay a reasonable price and the artists get a fair share, you would not have to control the mp3s themselves as what you are actually charging for is the service, not the music.
I disagree. Intellectual Property = structured information. That's what information is, as opposed to data.
But regardless of the semantics, does your definition in any way change the premise that the dissemination of that structured information needs to be controlled, in order to uphold any kind of IP regime?
But intellectual property is starting to fail at 2 in more than one way.
For most creators, IP has always failed at 1. The myth of the starving artist is not really a myth, but reality. The economics of IP has always benefited the already known or wealthy. The Internet, digitization and filesharing doesn't change the fact that it's very difficult to make money on creating imaginary goods. What it does, is lower the barrier-to-entry and create a slew of new business models based on offering the service of supplying the goods as opposed to selling rights to use the goods themselves. These business models are much more robust in light of new distribution models, and can in fact be seen as thriving from them whereas the old models wither and die.
The philosophical/social side of the equation looks like this: Intellectual Property = information.
Thus, if you want to control intellectual property, you need to be able to control the information exchanged between people. That is a very difficult thing to do, and will most likely give you a totalitarian society as a side effect.
"Sure, that'll be $50 an hour until I get it sorted."
But seriously, from his question it doesn't sound like that's the kind of customers he'll be having, he just wants to let some friends setup simple websites on his otherwise idle server. That's more or less how I started out, and nine years and 50+ customers later, no one has still needed more than the basic LAMP stack. Hell, I still have a few with static HTML sites.
Just as a counter-point to all the posters who seem hell-bent on ignoring your question.
You'll need Ubuntu Server, Drupal, Webmin and Virtualmin. All are F/OSS and usable out-of-the-box with large and friendly support communities. Good luck, have fun.
Sure, there's less sea-ice than there was 30 years ago, but ocen levels have not risen. "The leaders of Tuvalu - a tiny island country in the Pacific Ocean midway between Hawaii and Australia - have conceded defeat in their battle with the rising sea, announcing that they will abandon their homeland."
http://www.truehealth.org/climnw05.html
Actually, it's time to see if "regular" patents work as intended. If they don't we need to see if they can be fixed or if we have to get rid of them, and if so, if we should replace them with something else.
any writing done for a "non-CNN outlet" must be run through the network's standards and practices department A clear written policy? Any writing? Really? Like "A loaf of bread and some milk"-writing? Oh? Not so clear written, then?
It would not be far-fetched to assume that "any writing" in this context means "any professional writing that may constitute working for a competitor" as opposed to "any writing whatsoever, even if it's a shopping list or a personal blog".
Well if they really are going to be a bunch of fucked up phreaks, why don't they make it a criminal offence, to download infringing copyrighted content, Actually, downloading infringing copyrighted content off the Internet has been a criminal offense in Sweden since July 1st, 2005.
And may I guess you will fill the account with files like big-assfile.mpg.txt, all encoded in the binary-only language of Swapr0nski, a small island off the coast of Zimbabwe?
In the section describing how to set up the menus, the weights for the "Home" and "Contact Us" links are supposedly set to 10 and -10, respectively, which would place the former to the left of the latter; yet the illustration on page 148 shows the opposite. A menu item with a weight of -10 would always be displayed to the left/above one with a weight of 10. "Lighter" values float, "heavier" sink. A "Home" with a weight of 10 would therefore be displayed to the right of "Contact Us".
The author states that enabling a theme and setting it as the default, applies it to "both front end and back end of the site" (page 31). Actually, it only changes the front-end theme; the back-end theme is set via Administer > Site configuration > Administration theme; oddly, he actually acknowledges this much later. Actually, that setting DOES change both the main and admin theme, unless the admin theme setting is specifically changed to another theme. Its default is to follow the main theme setting.
Books are the last thing to go digital, so they will be the last thing that gets copied wholesale.
Also, we're approaching a tipping point where most authors make more money from book-signing tours and lectures than they do from royalties. One reason for this is that books haven't gone digital, in the sense that they have not enjoyed the same drastic drop in production costs that music and video has. Another is that book prices have gone down, most likely in a bid to compete with other forms of entertainment.
Actually the only ones I see that would suffer from a drastic reduction of copyright protection in any way are big-budget low-quality movies and single-player computer games. All others are, in reality, already out of protection and doing fine. We live in a world with rampant online piracy and the entertainment business as a whole is posting yet another record year. Physical copy sales are down, but experience-based entertainment (like concerts and even cinema visits in many regions) is way up.
Slashdot Mirror
I am also developing software to facilitate such business models (that do not rely upon the unnatural privileges of copyright or patent). Interesting. Anything you can talk about? Would it be a good fit for a scenario such as this: http://slashdot.org/~richie2000/journal/138354 ?It's very simple, really: Information that's private should be kept private and what's public should be kept public. All attempts to forcibly make information cross these natural boundaries are doomed to fail.
Oh, I guess I just described allofmp3.com...
But regardless of the semantics, does your definition in any way change the premise that the dissemination of that structured information needs to be controlled, in order to uphold any kind of IP regime?
For most creators, IP has always failed at 1. The myth of the starving artist is not really a myth, but reality. The economics of IP has always benefited the already known or wealthy. The Internet, digitization and filesharing doesn't change the fact that it's very difficult to make money on creating imaginary goods. What it does, is lower the barrier-to-entry and create a slew of new business models based on offering the service of supplying the goods as opposed to selling rights to use the goods themselves. These business models are much more robust in light of new distribution models, and can in fact be seen as thriving from them whereas the old models wither and die.
The philosophical/social side of the equation looks like this: Intellectual Property = information.
Thus, if you want to control intellectual property, you need to be able to control the information exchanged between people. That is a very difficult thing to do, and will most likely give you a totalitarian society as a side effect.
But seriously, from his question it doesn't sound like that's the kind of customers he'll be having, he just wants to let some friends setup simple websites on his otherwise idle server. That's more or less how I started out, and nine years and 50+ customers later, no one has still needed more than the basic LAMP stack. Hell, I still have a few with static HTML sites.
You'll need Ubuntu Server, Drupal, Webmin and Virtualmin. All are F/OSS and usable out-of-the-box with large and friendly support communities. Good luck, have fun.
That could simply be because Linux distros don't need to use TPB since they have their own trackers.
Actually, it's time to see if "regular" patents work as intended. If they don't we need to see if they can be fixed or if we have to get rid of them, and if so, if we should replace them with something else.
No idea, but they're probably renamed "personal legal assistants" or something.
Problem solved: http://www.randpeer.com/
Next, please.
And may I guess you will fill the account with files like big-assfile.mpg.txt, all encoded in the binary-only language of Swapr0nski, a small island off the coast of Zimbabwe?
Vista and Linux sucks, go back to XP. Also, use sunscreeen and Firefox.
They're post-asteroid dinosaurs, with brains so small they don't even know they're dead...
Downloading is illegal in Sweden, since July 1st 2005.
Books are the last thing to go digital, so they will be the last thing that gets copied wholesale.
Also, we're approaching a tipping point where most authors make more money from book-signing tours and lectures than they do from royalties. One reason for this is that books haven't gone digital, in the sense that they have not enjoyed the same drastic drop in production costs that music and video has. Another is that book prices have gone down, most likely in a bid to compete with other forms of entertainment.
Actually the only ones I see that would suffer from a drastic reduction of copyright protection in any way are big-budget low-quality movies and single-player computer games. All others are, in reality, already out of protection and doing fine. We live in a world with rampant online piracy and the entertainment business as a whole is posting yet another record year. Physical copy sales are down, but experience-based entertainment (like concerts and even cinema visits in many regions) is way up.