> Nobody can argue that the sharing of music > online necessarily deprives the music industry > (or artists) of any incentive to create music.
Isn't that exactly what they're arguing?
I create a song. People on the Net then take that song, not compensating me at all, and distribute and do whatever they want with it.
I have no incentive to release another song which I won't control.
Katz's proto-ideas about some sort of slush fund for artists doesn't take into account an artist's individuality: I don't want a predetermined fraction of all the profits, I want my profits from my songs.
When Katz realizes that the individual of the creators must be respected more than any rights of consumers, he'll start getting the picture.
Why? Because they create.
While Ayn Rand may be a bit over the top, the kind of things she warns against are exactly the kinds of things Katz is describing: appropriating one person's work for the good of the "community."
She called them looters. How's that for a better term than "thieves," eh?
If you're looney enough to run a file of unknown origin with a.vbs extension, that would be referred to as Darwinism.
No, that's referred to as computer novices, computer newbies, or non-computer geeks.
My God! The hubris that comment reveals! How many of your non-programmer, non-power-user relatives would open that vbs script in a second, if it superficially resembled an advertised movie? How long would it take you to explain what VB Script is to them, and how long would they remember?
They've got better things to do with their time than learn a lot of computer jargon! And if Microsoft is willing to give them a system where they don't have to, then they'll choose it over "open source" every single time!
Before trying to Take Over The World, why don't you try to understand it first?
: Ownership of ideas and creative works is no longer a simple, black-or-white issue.
But it *is*. There's a law, it's called copyright, and it means if I make a creative work, it's mine to own all the rights to it. Distribution included.
Jon Katz's argument basically boils down to: It's the Internet, everything taken from other media and put there should be free, because, gee, it's the Internet, and the Internet is really neat.
I can't claim to know all the ramifications of copyright on the Internet, but I know that as a writer myself, I want to own my own works. I don't *care* what the medium is.
I just don't understand why he's advocating throwing all that away.
Both Jon Katz and Cmdr Taco have talked about how the accusations about profiteering and fame-mongering have hurt them.
I have some sympathy, but not too much.
Katz would not have as high-profile a commentator career right now if he hadn't hitched his star to SlashDot. I could see from the beginning that he was not at all suited to the majority of the site's normal, techie population, but he persevered.
I think the Hellmouth series is interesting and worthwhile, but I also think Katz *is* going to have to keep dealing with the fact that his forum doesn't suit his message.
He said as much by saying that most of the Hellmouth messagers were from elsewhere.
And Cmdr Taco will have to deal with running a high-profile, influential site. He has a lot of power right now. It may not feel like it, with the constant sniping he gets;-) but he does, to bring things up and be visible.
The site's influence and visibility is based on its community, and how its community can give feedback. So complaining when that feedback is overwhelmingly negative or irrational is, to some degree, trying to have your cake and eat it too.
At least as important as the special effects will be the acting, so here's hoping they get that right, too.
It's incredibly important to bring across the geniality of the hobbits, and Frodo's mistakes in the initial flight from the Shire, and Strider's transformation from Ranger to King, etc. etc.
J.R.R. Tolkien wasn't necessarily the most natural writer of dialogue, but I've seen enough bad fantasy movies to know he's much better than most of them, and it will kill the movie if we don't care about anything but the next special effect.
Sounds a little like Echo, the East Coast Hang Out started in 1989 by Stacy Horn in NYC, (http://www.echonyc.com) though Echo is really probably more like the Well in being geared toward non-techie social interaction. Still, the flamewars, the RL meeting, the elitism of the old-timers, etc., all sounds familiar. As does the fact that it's really only limping along now, not necessarily growing, due to its difficult interface in these times of Internet startups for the masses.
There's an application server that was developed in-house by what used to be Small World in New York, now iXL's New York office.
It was originally just called "the Filter," but on its 3rd rewrite in 1998 was rechristened "Velma" (yes, from Scooby Doo). Info on it is available at http://velma.ixl.com/.
The first version was Perl-with-CGI, the second C/C++-with-CGI. The third, Velma, is C/C++ with a persistent connection, like most professional app servers.
Though it was originally written for Solaris, I know of at least one port to Linux.
The idea when iXL decided not to support it was to release it Open Source. I don't know if that happened officially, but certainly unofficially it's available. The developers who made it have all left the company, so there's probably no one officially "in charge" of it or of dealing with other open-source contributers, but if someone offered to take it off their hands, I'm sure they'd listen.
It really is good technology, I wrote custom dynamic web sites in it for almost a year.
Please email me (take out the S_P_A_M, sorry) for more info, I think I could hook you up with the right people.
Jon Katz seems to be implying that the only way to allow "freedom" and "culture" to survive in our society is to all people to exchange illegally copied MP3s with impunity.
Now he may be right that the fact that all these corporations own all this music is culturally problematic.
But asserting that the solution is to, well, allow copyright to be bent for all those good souls who don't want to pay for their CDs, is crazy. Maybe we should be able to steal and read his book, too, without paying for it, in the name of "freedom"?
Copyright is copyright. They own the music. They get to charge what they like, and they get to prosecute the people who break it. Is anyone really arguing these students aren't primarily getting illegal music via Napster?
Attack this some other way, or you'll be destroying the freedom of authors to own their own works -- if you could in fact break copyright law for good, which you probably can't.
I've read Katz all along on SlashDot, and I still don't think he "gets it".
Most of his style is still more suited to a magazine article than a more bare-bones, technologically-oriented community like SlashDot. I feel like he's not talking *to* us, he's talking *at* us.
Only occasionally does the pretense falter, when he switches from "them" to "us", from "at SlashDot" to "here".
One of the conclusions I've drawn is that he's more interested in retaining the ability to reproduce his articles in a book or magazine than really becoming "one of us". He's already produced a book, right? With content from SlashDot?
And now it seems like he's intent on changing SlashDot into his vision of an online community. Except he doesn't come out straight and say, "Hey, let's try this?" He writes a whole column that sounds like a generic opinion column, but really is a dig at SlashDot's current procedures.
Come out and *say* it. Stop being the magazine columnist.
If they Open Sourced it tomorrow, would anyone work on it? No, because it has very tiny mindshare as being an OS worth investing in -- either buying it, making apps for it, or developing it.
With other OSes still going strong -- Windows, Mac, Linux -- they have to find some way to compete for mindshare, and Open Sourcing won't do it, because most Open Source hackers are already committed to BSD or Linux.
Show of hands -- who'd buy it or work on it if it were Open Source? Really?
Sounds to me like this isn't a case of the "evil corporation, it's just one guy.
Real big corporations would rather ignore negative Web sites or bury them some other way, not resort to these amateurish tactics.
It's all how you look at it
on
Copyright!
·
· Score: 1
Why do people assume a company holding the rights to a particular creation is "wrong" or "unfair"?
If you take that right away from corporations, you also take it away from individuals, individuals who may have spent years creating or inventing something.
It's the Many ganging up on the Few to say, "We've decided you don't have the rights to your own creation anymore."
Jon Katz has specifically said he's getting paid for this article.
Will he at least be mentioning as co-authors the people who give him the best ideas?
Could any of them then peddle this article elsewhere? Or variants thereof?
I think this smacks of exploitation, that he can rely on SlashDotties to be his inspiration, or at least his 'secret ingredient', but otherwise it's the same old deal: he owns the copyright, he gets the money.
Saying Apple is not being as open to consumers as it could be (by helping a rival OS on its own hardware, the BeOS) is different from saying the outlook is grim.
Linux is not ready for consumer prime time. It just isn't. Until you can hide *all* the command line functionality *all* the time there will be room for the BeOS, Windows, and other consumer-oriented OSes.
And for most consumers out there, the off-the-shelf options they have are Windows and Mac. And guess what?? There are more apps being written for the Mac, and more Macs being sold, than in many years. This is "grim"??
Sorry, but Linux will *not* be taking over the desktop any time soon.
The trouble with this idea, as with people who years ago argued that Apple could go bankrupt but the Mac would live on, is that in order to stay competitive with Microsoft, Apple has to keep putting huge amounts of work into its OS.
New features like Java 2.0 (not here yet), faster performance, search functionality, better navigation, multi-user support....
All these things don't come cheap, and wouldn't come at all if Apple just open-sourced it and forgot about it.
So they make some of that money back in upgrade sales, and the rest in just selling more hardware because people buy the competitive hardware/software combination.
And trust me: you, me, everybody would buy cheaper Intel versions of MacOS if they could. If some company ported a 99% compatible MacOS to Intel and undersold Apple by $1000, Apple would be out of business. Unfortunate, but true.
Apple will never opensource everything, and it shouldn't. Its business model is just too different from other opensource companies.
Can't tell if that was an ironic comment, but I'm going to take it that way.
Just because there are some sub-par free options, does that mean people won't pay for a quality option? (Not that Opera for Linux will be quality, we'll see.)
Just because Linux is based on GPL software, will anyone who runs it pay for shareware/commercial programs? I'm not necessarily talking the philosophy of it all, which has been gone over multiple times on SlashDot. Just...would people pay? If Opera is good, will Linux users pay for it?
I just download QT4 for NT yesterday, but when I just went to the trailer page QT is already telling me I need to download new components to see the trailer.
Only a 800K download, and it does it for you.
The initial install was also a 'dynamic download' thing, so you only downloaded some sort of nub installer and got the rest when you chose what option you wanted to install.
In general, I think such dynamic installers are evil, but from work with a T1 that doesn't go down, it went fine. QT 4 hasn't stumbled yet.
Slashdot Mirror
> Nobody can argue that the sharing of music
> online necessarily deprives the music industry
> (or artists) of any incentive to create music.
Isn't that exactly what they're arguing?
I create a song. People on the Net then take that song, not compensating me at all, and distribute and do whatever they want with it.
I have no incentive to release another song which I won't control.
Katz's proto-ideas about some sort of slush fund for artists doesn't take into account an artist's individuality: I don't want a predetermined fraction of all the profits, I want my profits from my songs.
When Katz realizes that the individual of the creators must be respected more than any rights of consumers, he'll start getting the picture.
Why? Because they create.
While Ayn Rand may be a bit over the top, the kind of things she warns against are exactly the kinds of things Katz is describing: appropriating one person's work for the good of the "community."
She called them looters. How's that for a better term than "thieves," eh?
If you're looney enough to run a file of unknown origin with a .vbs extension, that would be referred to as Darwinism.
No, that's referred to as computer novices, computer newbies, or non-computer geeks.
My God! The hubris that comment reveals! How many of your non-programmer, non-power-user relatives would open that vbs script in a second, if it superficially resembled an advertised movie? How long would it take you to explain what VB Script is to them, and how long would they remember?
They've got better things to do with their time than learn a lot of computer jargon! And if Microsoft is willing to give them a system where they don't have to, then they'll choose it over "open source" every single time!
Before trying to Take Over The World, why don't you try to understand it first?
Here I go again.
: Ownership of ideas and creative works is no longer a simple, black-or-white issue.
But it *is*. There's a law, it's called copyright, and it means if I make a creative work, it's mine to own all the rights to it. Distribution included.
Jon Katz's argument basically boils down to: It's the Internet, everything taken from other media and put there should be free, because, gee, it's the Internet, and the Internet is really neat.
I can't claim to know all the ramifications of copyright on the Internet, but I know that as a writer myself, I want to own my own works. I don't *care* what the medium is.
I just don't understand why he's advocating throwing all that away.
Both Jon Katz and Cmdr Taco have talked about how the accusations about profiteering and fame-mongering have hurt them.
;-) but he does, to bring things up and be visible.
I have some sympathy, but not too much.
Katz would not have as high-profile a commentator career right now if he hadn't hitched his star to SlashDot. I could see from the beginning that he was not at all suited to the majority of the site's normal, techie population, but he persevered.
I think the Hellmouth series is interesting and worthwhile, but I also think Katz *is* going to have to keep dealing with the fact that his forum doesn't suit his message.
He said as much by saying that most of the Hellmouth messagers were from elsewhere.
And Cmdr Taco will have to deal with running a high-profile, influential site. He has a lot of power right now. It may not feel like it, with the constant sniping he gets
The site's influence and visibility is based on its community, and how its community can give feedback. So complaining when that feedback is overwhelmingly negative or irrational is, to some degree, trying to have your cake and eat it too.
Some companies of trolls were organized by Mordor, yes. Pippin was almost crushed by one in the last battle. Re-read Return of the King.
At least as important as the special effects will be the acting, so here's hoping they get that right, too.
It's incredibly important to bring across the geniality of the hobbits, and Frodo's mistakes in the initial flight from the Shire, and Strider's transformation from Ranger to King, etc. etc.
J.R.R. Tolkien wasn't necessarily the most natural writer of dialogue, but I've seen enough bad fantasy movies to know he's much better than most of them, and it will kill the movie if we don't care about anything but the next special effect.
So here's hopin'!
Sounds a little like Echo, the East Coast Hang Out started in 1989 by Stacy Horn in NYC, (http://www.echonyc.com) though Echo is really probably more like the Well in being geared toward non-techie social interaction. Still, the flamewars, the RL meeting, the elitism of the old-timers, etc., all sounds familiar. As does the fact that it's really only limping along now, not necessarily growing, due to its difficult interface in these times of Internet startups for the masses.
There's an application server that was developed in-house by what used to be Small World in New York, now iXL's New York office.
It was originally just called "the Filter," but on its 3rd rewrite in 1998 was rechristened "Velma" (yes, from Scooby Doo). Info on it is available at http://velma.ixl.com/.
The first version was Perl-with-CGI, the second C/C++-with-CGI. The third, Velma, is C/C++ with a persistent connection, like most professional app servers.
Though it was originally written for Solaris, I know of at least one port to Linux.
The idea when iXL decided not to support it was to release it Open Source. I don't know if that happened officially, but certainly unofficially it's available. The developers who made it have all left the company, so there's probably no one officially "in charge" of it or of dealing with other open-source contributers, but if someone offered to take it off their hands, I'm sure they'd listen.
It really is good technology, I wrote custom dynamic web sites in it for almost a year.
Please email me (take out the S_P_A_M, sorry) for more info, I think I could hook you up with the right people.
Jon Katz seems to be implying that the only way to allow "freedom" and "culture" to survive in our society is to all people to exchange illegally copied MP3s with impunity.
Now he may be right that the fact that all these corporations own all this music is culturally problematic.
But asserting that the solution is to, well, allow copyright to be bent for all those good souls who don't want to pay for their CDs, is crazy. Maybe we should be able to steal and read his book, too, without paying for it, in the name of "freedom"?
Copyright is copyright. They own the music. They get to charge what they like, and they get to prosecute the people who break it. Is anyone really arguing these students aren't primarily getting illegal music via Napster?
Attack this some other way, or you'll be destroying the freedom of authors to own their own works -- if you could in fact break copyright law for good, which you probably can't.
I've read Katz all along on SlashDot, and I still don't think he "gets it".
Most of his style is still more suited to a magazine article than a more bare-bones, technologically-oriented community like SlashDot. I feel like he's not talking *to* us, he's talking *at* us.
Only occasionally does the pretense falter, when he switches from "them" to "us", from "at SlashDot" to "here".
One of the conclusions I've drawn is that he's more interested in retaining the ability to reproduce his articles in a book or magazine than really becoming "one of us". He's already produced a book, right? With content from SlashDot?
And now it seems like he's intent on changing SlashDot into his vision of an online community. Except he doesn't come out straight and say, "Hey, let's try this?" He writes a whole column that sounds like a generic opinion column, but really is a dig at SlashDot's current procedures.
Come out and *say* it. Stop being the magazine columnist.
It's not a question of open vs. closed source.
If they Open Sourced it tomorrow, would anyone work on it? No, because it has very tiny mindshare as being an OS worth investing in -- either buying it, making apps for it, or developing it.
With other OSes still going strong -- Windows, Mac, Linux -- they have to find some way to compete for mindshare, and Open Sourcing won't do it, because most Open Source hackers are already committed to BSD or Linux.
Show of hands -- who'd buy it or work on it if it were Open Source? Really?
Sounds to me like this isn't a case of the "evil corporation, it's just one guy.
Real big corporations would rather ignore negative Web sites or bury them some other way, not resort to these amateurish tactics.
Why do people assume a company holding the rights to a particular creation is "wrong" or "unfair"?
If you take that right away from corporations, you also take it away from individuals, individuals who may have spent years creating or inventing something.
It's the Many ganging up on the Few to say, "We've decided you don't have the rights to your own creation anymore."
Jon Katz has specifically said he's getting paid for this article.
Will he at least be mentioning as co-authors the people who give him the best ideas?
Could any of them then peddle this article elsewhere? Or variants thereof?
I think this smacks of exploitation, that he can rely on SlashDotties to be his inspiration, or at least his 'secret ingredient', but otherwise it's the same old deal: he owns the copyright, he gets the money.
What do you think?
I was flabberghasted by the comment made in the article that Apple should make the hardware but let Linus and friends make the O.S.
WHAT?!???
Through all the years of indecision and drift at Apple, when Intel machines were killing them, all that Apple had to go on was its user-friendly O.S.
And now we're supposed to let that go...for good...for the *least* friendly O.S. in widespread current use?!? Is he fucking *insane*???
What a crock. This person definitely has an axe to grind, and shouldn't be considered a reliable source. Colorful, sure. But not reliable.
And here I was going to buy LinuxPPC someday.
Saying Apple is not being as open to consumers as it could be (by helping a rival OS on its own hardware, the BeOS) is different from saying the outlook is grim.
Linux is not ready for consumer prime time. It just isn't. Until you can hide *all* the command line functionality *all* the time there will be room for the BeOS, Windows, and other consumer-oriented OSes.
And for most consumers out there, the off-the-shelf options they have are Windows and Mac. And guess what?? There are more apps being written for the Mac, and more Macs being sold, than in many years. This is "grim"??
Sorry, but Linux will *not* be taking over the desktop any time soon.
The trouble with this idea, as with people who years ago argued that Apple could go bankrupt but the Mac would live on, is that in order to stay competitive with Microsoft, Apple has to keep putting huge amounts of work into its OS.
New features like Java 2.0 (not here yet), faster performance, search functionality, better navigation, multi-user support....
All these things don't come cheap, and wouldn't come at all if Apple just open-sourced it and forgot about it.
So they make some of that money back in upgrade sales, and the rest in just selling more hardware because people buy the competitive hardware/software combination.
And trust me: you, me, everybody would buy cheaper Intel versions of MacOS if they could. If some company ported a 99% compatible MacOS to Intel and undersold Apple by $1000, Apple would be out of business. Unfortunate, but true.
Apple will never opensource everything, and it shouldn't. Its business model is just too different from other opensource companies.
Heh.
Can't tell if that was an ironic comment, but I'm going to take it that way.
Just because there are some sub-par free options, does that mean people won't pay for a quality option? (Not that Opera for Linux will be quality, we'll see.)
Just because Linux is based on GPL software, will anyone who runs it pay for shareware/commercial programs? I'm not necessarily talking the philosophy of it all, which has been gone over multiple times on SlashDot. Just...would people pay? If Opera is good, will Linux users pay for it?
I just download QT4 for NT yesterday, but when I just went to the trailer page QT is already telling me I need to download new components to see the trailer.
Only a 800K download, and it does it for you.
The initial install was also a 'dynamic download' thing, so you only downloaded some sort of nub installer and got the rest when you chose what option you wanted to install.
In general, I think such dynamic installers are evil, but from work with a T1 that doesn't go down, it went fine. QT 4 hasn't stumbled yet.