As the article has a quote about it, here's specifically WHY I am against "Net Neutrality" -- the ISP has no control over throttling particular sites or protocols that can have major negative effects on their overall user experience. I've already noticed some network slowdowns, but in the past 60 days I dumped broadband and rely primarily on my EDGE connection from T-Mobile (200kbps). Latency isn't too shabby. When I use my T1 at the office though, I have noticed some slowdowns.
The solution isn't just more bandwidth. We're not talking about more users accessing the same sites, we're talking about more users accessing more sites -- significantly more. The "long tail" of the web is exploding in access; all the blogs, vlogs, MP3 downloads and videos are across a huge incongruent group of sites. The solution is to nix net-neutrality legislation and allow the consumer and the producer to come to terms on need versus price.
At home, I'd be more than happy for a Port80/Port110 prioritized connection, with other ports reduced in speed or performance. Sure, videos come over Port80, but the vast majority of cable users in my neighborhood are downloading torrentz and other similar protocols. I don't see a reason why everyone should pay the same price for different service. Sure, the telecom industry is scared of Net Neutrality because they WANT to ban Skype and VoIP, but that is why the FCC needs to back off on over-regulating the opportunity for competitors to enter the market. There is a huge opportunity for more wireless providers and more people bringing FTTH or other options.
I know, I know, you were promised 160 Mbps and you want every last speck of it. Those ads will change, I think, as more people do get connected. I'd be happy with lower latency than higher data-rates, and I think this article forgets that it is latency that is just as important (if not more so) than just pure bandwidth speed.
The Internet doesn't really have "bandwidth" limitations, because all it takes is more ISPs and more backbones to come into being. If the pro-Net Neutrality parties have their way, though, we may see significant restrictions in investment on both those fronts. The companies who invested in offering new limbs on the internet took great risks -- and some made great rewards. We want to keep that risk/reward ratio uncluttered by excess regulation legislation so others can offer us more options for who we can connect to.
I'm sure if YouTube/Google had it their way, they'd get special consideration for providing more bandwidth -- State-paid consideration maybe? I sure hope not.
When things slow down, it will give new competitors reason for entering the market. 20% more backbone speed interconnecting some Level 2 ISPs and things will be fine, until the next slowdown brings another run of entrants into the game, or gives the old companies reason to expand their network. Envision 2010: "Is your latency too low? Comcast Ultra offers you 50ms or less ping times across the board, guaranteed!" It may sound fishy, but who would have thought 10 years ago that we'd hear about Mbps on basic cable ads?
The last paragraph is the most insightful part of the article: Any service degradation will be spotty and transient, predicted (John) Ryan (of Level 3), who said that underinvestment by some operators may "drive quality traffic to quality networks."
EXACTLY.
Sidenote: That damned GoogleBot sometimes hits my sites 5000 times a day -- maybe Google is doing a little more to aggravate the problem than they want to admit? Thankfully I use server-side compression and caching, so things aren't hammered too bad by the bot, but there have been times when things on my end were running slow and I had 100 "Guests" all registered at Google's IPs.
But are you not confusing inflation and exchange rates? I hardly think US inflation is the cause of the weak dollar, though they may share a common source. I'm not an economist, so I hope the guy who wrote the Wikipedia article on the US public debt is:
Exchange rates are a good way to show inflation. For example, let us assume there are 100 dollars in the world total. Let us assume there are 100 Euros, too. In the global market, if demand for dollars and euros was equal, we would have an exchange rate of US$1 to EU$1. If the U.S. expanded the money supply to 120 dollars, we would experience 20% inflation overall. Some markets might get more (40%) some might get none, based on supply and demand. Inflation of the money supply tends to give producers bad signals in where to invest, though, so we get bubbles. The dotcom bubble happened because of Greenspan's idiocy in over-expanding the money supply. Now, let us assume that the Euros were expanded to 140 Euros. This leaves a ratio of US120 to EU140, so a US$1 would go for EU$0.86 due to the different inflation rates.
We've been fairly lucky because foreign producers have tried to tie their currencies to the USD to keep us buying their junk. The Yen, the Yuan, and various other global currencies have been inflating just as badly as the US dollar has.
The problem is that this really transfers wealth from the middle class and poor to the rich. It makes people feel wealthier than they really are, and it also makes some assets appreciate quicker than they should -- look at housing. I've been warning about a housing bubble since early 2005, and the result is happening -- foreclosures, REOs, and other madness.
Gold is a decent indicator of inflation, but not an absolute. Remember, the US dollar has only been off the gold standard since 1973 -- 34 years. It has taken almost 30 years for people to realize how bad the USD really is, and the world is turning from it slowly, but surely. If things go as planned, the USD will be worthless, which actually is a GOOD thing for US unions and producers -- if we can't afford foreign TVs, cars, steel and gas, we will have to make them ourselves. We'll be cheaper than the rest of the world, so we might actually export. During this whole process, more and more physical assets move to the wealthy, and they'll be in control of the industries that spring up from the mass devaluing of the dollar.
I hope it doesn't happen, but this is why I save primarily in hard assets such as gold, silver, land and appreciating assets. I've been happy with my "investments" because they aren't tied to any one particular currency, and they tend to appreciate along with inflation as close to par as possible.
When I say that gold will be worth US$1000 in 2007 or early 2008, I'm right. I said it would be US$600 last year and no one agreed, today it is US$680. 5 years ago it was US$300. That is inflation, friends, not outright extra-demand. Your US-denominated bonds will be worthless in mere years (months, for some), and the stock market only is going up because there are so many new dollars in creation pushing the prices higher -- even though the value of a lot of stocks is declining based on overall dollars produced.
Inflation is only created by money supply expansion -- so called legal counterfeiting.
The US dollar has fallen 50% versus the Euro. Cars and houses are 50%+ more expensive in the last 5 years. Many people's wages have not gone up 50%, but their available credit has (this is where money supply expansion rears its ugly head -- easy credit at low rates), which more than makes up for their wage inflation not matching statistics. Gasoline has gone up, so has energy otherwise. The price of food has skyrocketed, even bottled water and soda is edging up higher lately. Wendy's just raised their 99 cent menu up 40% in my area, and I'm seeing inflation in cotton shirts, socks, jeans and glasses.
Don't believe what the State-enabled organizations are telling you -- believe in what your wallet tells you.
Actually, the vast majority of Slashdot visitors to my site already block ads. I use a webhost called NearlyFreeSpeech.Net where I pay for every visit, so slashdot visitors actually LOSE me income -- I don't really think I've ever made any financial profit on slashdot users.
Guess what profit I _DO_ make from slashdot visitors? I get their opinions -- for and against my opinions. This helps me formulate my debates better, and even helps me find flaws in my thinking.
People may call me a spammer, but I get moderated +1/Insightful more than -1/Troll, so just stop replying to my posts and mod me down.
I can't begin to count how often in the past people cheered about a product that ended up either vaporware or less-than-desired. I also can't begin to count on the opposite happening: a non-starter product release that turned out to be better than expected. I've been a PDA user since the Apple Newton days, and I've been a PDA Phone user since pre-Blackberry days (although I never had a Blackberry, I prefer full PDAs). I currently use an HTC Trinity P3600 and love it -- GPS, EDGE/3G, 2GB storage card, WiFi, and more. It runs the horrid Windows Mobile 5 but I absolutely love the phone, and combined with Google Maps online + GPS, it replaced 3 devices that I had tethered with me constantly.
The iPhone looks terrible to me for a variety of reasons -- locked application support, AT&T (love my T-Mobile), restrictive networking (GPRS and not EDGE/3G?), etc. But the iPhone will probably win in version 2 because of what has made Apple a powerhouse -- it's the interface, stupid. My iPod is really a great device (even though I don't use it since I have EDGE-radio streamed from my home media PC). I loved the iPod for the interface. I'm glad my wife, sister, father, mother and brother all have iPods -- I have to do absolutely NO work to keep them happy.
My #1 complaint about ALL PDAs and ALL phones has always been the interface. It seems that techies designed a horrid interface around features, rather than integrating everything into a smooth GUI. Apple's interface alone will sell millions, and people will pay the price.
One thing that people seem to forget time and again is that you can not judge tomorrow's prices on yesterday's prices. Inflation has destroyed the US dollar (down 50% in 5 years), so prices double of what we paid 5 years ago can be considered "par" with the fall in value of the dollar. I think $500 is a reasonable price for all of what the iPhone offers -- even though it is merely version 1.0. By the time the iPhone is actually released, who knows how much inflation has caused wages to "rise" and incomes to "soar." With the Democrats taking over, I don't doubt that inflation will get worse than even the high-spending Republicans forced the issue.
Don't look at prices as a constant. In terms of US dollars, we're almost all wealthier in the number of dollars we earn -- even though we are poorer in terms of what those dollars can buy us.
Sidenote: Apple is also wise to set this price point. It is just pricey-enough-sounding to make the device a little more elitist than the $49 Razr that every 12 year old seems to have. Getting the superstars and Paris-Hilton-models using their phone will make everyone want one, and as sales go up, prices tend to go down. Apple's biggest problem in the short run will be supply -- I guarantee they won't have enough to keep up with demand, even at $500.
I paid $650 for my HTC Trinity P3600, and if Apple can integrate a GPS and EDGE/3G, I'd pay $1000 for it just on the interface alone. Give it a few weeks after release, and I think people's opinions of the device will change. They'll see what it can do for them (especially business folks, teenagers with money, and young adults with new credit cards), and they'll jump at the chance to have one early for $500.
There is a huge black market in CFCs. Very, VERY large, actually. It is so large that one of the mob rackets in Miami is supposedly dedicated full-time to bringing it in and selling it to people who need it due to the cost of replacing hardware that requires CFC-12.
One of my vehicles is a 1993 Chevy Blazer, and it requires R-12 freon. I ran out of it, and my mechanic in my tiny town told me he can get as much as I want for $30 a pound -- as much as I want and as often as I want. I elected to upgrade to the newer freon replacement, which was a $1000 upgrade. Now my vehicle's air conditioner performs about 70% less than before -- in the hot summers of Chicago the vehicle isn't used because it won't chill enough. I've had it looked at by 3 mechanics, and they all told me to go back to the old R-12 freon, which is readily available on the black market.
Don't believe for a minute that CFCs are gone -- they're banned, but they're still in use and will continue to be.
There is no "MIGHT", these bulbs are better for everybody.
I have seen conclusive evidence in theory and have experienced in real life in my implementation of paying large amounts of money to replace my bulbs but having it pay off in the long run. It is both better economically & for the environment. Why do you use the word 'might'?
Because a "one-size fits all" mandate harms people, even if they are just a minority. I hate the buzzing of the CFLs, and I hate the color. As I said in my OP, I hate the fact that they give off no heat. I can afford to spend a bit more for incandescents (about $10 a month more, according to my 6 month trial of CFLs), and that $10 a month more gives me more happiness than being forced to use substandard lighting. Freedom means you get to choose what you want, and you have to pay for the level you expect.
The bulb should serve one purpose instead of dividing the energy spent into two. It is simply common sense that it is more efficient to either heat or light instead of a mandatory both. Can you guarantee me that every summer you want your room heated when it is lit? I highly doubt that.
It is common sense that the market of consumers decides what it wants. Wal*Mart's campaign will likely change millions if not tens of millions of consumers on to the possible advantages of CFLs for their situation and needs and budget. It won't convince me, and it won't convince millions more who are accustomed to incandescents and prefer them. My entire office in Chicago was CFLs and fluorescents until we switched to incandescents and even indirect incandescents. My employees were and are happier -- less headaches, more productive work and a better environment. If I was forced to use CFLs, I'd have to defend a choice that isn't mine. Freedom is what I want, not coercion because SOME people think something is better for me.
You, though, probably would love to force people to drive battery-operated solar-driven cars with 5 horsepower. I love my 5.8 liter SUV, because it tows my two box trucks, drives through any hill grade and also gives me decent gas mileage when I need it, but the power is there when I need it. The pro-socialist crowd forgets that freedom means freedom to figure out what is best for your situation, that might change over time.
It doesn't matter if you are trying to prohibit drinking alcohol or paying someone else for sexual favors, prohibition doesn't work -- all it does is create artificial scarcity which then develops a black market for the product or service. When alcohol was prohibited in the U.S., the mob was created. When incandescent light bulbs are banned, the black market will flourish, unless people see a real reason to switch.
We tried CFLs in my household and we hated them. We found some random buzzing issues, hated the color of our walls and furniture, and didn't really see a huge savings over incandescent because we turn off lights we don't use (and we use home automation in the bathroom and bedroom). I don't see how the Australian government can really enforce this law other than going after retailers who try to circumvent it. Putting the onus on the retailer will just make Australia that much less competitive -- you can bet that eBay.com.au will have thousands of listings for the old bulbs -- and there is no way that the Australian customs office can afford to search every box for illegal bulbs.
I'm sure it will work in the short run, but I wonder who is really behind this. It could be Phillips, who is sure to gain a huge profit from the mandate. Maybe it is the mercury disposal company that has a brother in office -- CFLs do contain mercury and need to be disposed of properly (I know there are alternatives, but the seem to reduce the cost-effectiveness of the bulb in the first place). When your CFL bulb dies, you're supposed to return it to the store for recycling or disposal. I'm sure everyone does that, right? *sarcasm* Of course, it is debated that coal-burning plants create a lot of mercury, but I assume that mercury is disposed of properly, unlike the mercury that is in your CFL bulb and ends up in the trash.
I prefer what Wal*Mart is doing -- working to convince the market that these bulbs MIGHT be better for them. I also wonder about the ancillary effect of the incandescent -- namely, heat. In the cold Midwest, I actually like reading under my incandescent lamp over my bed -- the warmth is nice, it is focused, and it is better than overheating my entire house. This way, I get just enough heat that I need when I am awake, as when I am asleep I can tolerate much lower heat requirements.
The other two problems with the CFLs is the ugly light they give off (although it is getting better), and how few of them fit into the lamps I have in my household. I also can't dim them (there are dimmable units now, I've heard), which we utilize all the time for effect, especially when watching movies or for social parties we host.
I'll take a prop bet with anyone here that the black market of light bulbs in Australia after 2010 will be very profitable -- and very easy to maintain.
The U.S. copyright lobby exists for one purpose: to give distributors sole custody of intellectual property "rights." In the past, pre-copyright, there was no intellectual property -- there was only marketing material that provided an artist or creator access to the market so they could sell their true product: live productions of that marketing material. Shakespeare wrote for acclaim, but it was his live performances that produced his income. He was also paid by wealthy patrons of the arts who wanted to see more from him. For centuries, this is why art was created. Those who didn't want acclaim but still wanted to produce art would do what we all do for incomes -- they got jobs in creating something for someone else.
For 200 years, copyright was considered the only way to protect your creations, but what came out of copyright is the worst-case scenario for amateur artists: instead of copyright protecting your creations, it only protected the monopoly networks of distribution, what I would call distribution cartels.
Now, 200 years later, we have a majority of opinion that believes that people wouldn't create if their intellectual property wasn't protected. But this isn't true. I created the Global Unanimocracy Network"> of blogs and forums in order to prove that you could generate an income for your talents without the need for copyright. All my writings are now public domain -- I freely encourage others to copy my writings and posts and repost them under their own name, on their own sites, for their own income. Why? Because it generates interest in the niche topics I cover, and eventually people find their way to my site. I make a decent income through advertising and individual support for my future writings. People pay me so that I will write more in the future. Even better, my network of blogs has also gotten me writing gigs for other sites that pay me to write content for them in a "ghost writing" type of deal.
If you are a musician, you have two options: record a record and use it as marketing to get people to your shows (as my brother's band Maps & Atlases has done), or go and get a job as a studio musician creating music for commercial ventures (movies, TV shows, muzak, etc). The idea that you can spend 2 weeks or 2 years creating one record and then reap 70 years of income is ridiculous. Does a plumber go to school for 2 years to learn how to fix toilets only to get paid for 70 years whenever you flush that toilet? No, they continue to work. Does an architect spend 2 years designing plans only to get paid forever by those who live or use the building that came forth from the plans? No, they keep designing. Artists are no different -- they should continue their labors in order to continue to reap incomes.
Right now, copyright has placed in the hands of powerful mercantilists the monopoly of distribution. The FCC decides who can transmit over public airwaves, and this blocks amateurs from the airwaves. Yet those days are coming to an end as the airwaves are growing less important as the Internet is available in more and more places (for example, I have a consistent WiFi connection to the net in my car at about 200kbps via T-Mobile's EDGE network). As the Internet finds its way to more parts of the country and the world, the public airwaves will be less utilized and way less efficient. The copyright lobby knows this, and they're trying hard to restrict future growth in "piracy" and non-licensed distributors. Yet for amateur artists, the non-licensed distributors are the best way to get the word out about their real product: continued labor to make new and unique art.
A friend's band, 38 Acres, now tells their audience and online visitors to freely copy their albums for friends. They make a decent income selling unique performances, and they also make an income selling their T-shirts and hats and posters. People who "pirated" t
I had XM for a few months -- loved it for about 15 days. Then I was too lazy to extricate myself from the deal, so I turned it over to a friend who travels over the road a lot.
Since I had that subscription, I realized that satellite radio -- like all "one size fits all" radio, is dead. Honestly. It may not actually have died yet, but the days are numbered.
I have a great MP3 collection at home -- running on a (yes, lame) Windows Media Center PC with a ton of storage. I also have a bunch of my favorite movies encoded both for highdef and lowdef. Why? Because I can now access everything I "own" remotely.
My phone is an HTC Trinity P3600 -- currently unavailable in the States as far as I know. With the Dopod 810 ROM, I am able to utilize T-Mobile's EDGE network to my advantage. If I want to listen to my MP3s, I do so remotely using that EDGE network. Often times I am able to get a sustained 200kbps download rate, which drops to about 80kbps in more remote areas. For most of my travel (nationwide), I am able to listen to my entire playlist without having to carry with me anything more than my PDA phone. It works great -- and I can plug my phone into my car stereo and listen to my tracks at will. I even created a nice interface for picking songs, and it works great. I pay one flat rate for my EDGE connection, and for an additional $20 a month I also get unlimited use of Starbuck's WiFi network, which works great when I am really in the boonies.
Will most people do this right now? No, because the costs are a bit too high, and most people aren't technically adept enough to set it up. Yet those days are coming to a close as more people are buying cell phones that aren't locked by the vendor (T-Mobile loves to lock great features out of their cell phones, so I buy mine on the grey market). I've seen alpha versions of bittorrent-protocol software that runs on Windows Mobile, and I'm sure more is on its way for other phone/portable OSes. As this happens, we will soon see peer-to-peer "radio" stations taking over and giving the consumer what they REALLY want.
I'm sure that XM and SIRIUS will be watched closely by the "evil" FCC, but no matter what happens, their days/years ARE numbered. Regular radio is having a huge problem attracting advertisers, because the new generation now has iPods. The iPod is a great device, but it is limited to only what you brought from home.
If Microsoft wants to kill Apple, all they need to do is come up with an iPod-like player that has EDGE/GPRS connectivity, and offer people music-by-the-song or MP3-over-the-air accessibility. Imagine what will happen to the "broadcast" market when the unicast market can destroy it at any time?
Small detail : in the US, the capitalists control the government, as well as the sh^H^Hpeople; So, what is this anarcho-capitalism because it has obviously nothing to do with capitalism?
Wrong, in the US, the mercantilists control the government. Capitalists are only concerned with the mutual exchange of labor/currency for the mutual profit of both parties. Capitalists don't use the force of government to mandate THEIR way -- mercantilists do. Our bloodiest war in the US was founded on mercantilists principles, based on the mercantilist viewpoint of dictator Abraham Lincoln.
It is funny that you list one tyrannous group after another in order to try to "fix" the initial group -- the local police.
If Wal*Mart serves me badly, against what I consider a profitable exchange, I stop shopping there. Eventually, we see stores fail -- even big ones, often. If Burger King serves me badly, against what I consider a profitable exchange, I stop eating there. Eventually, we see restaurants fail -- even big ones, often. If the police serve me badly, what can I do? I can risk upsetting them by tattling on them. I can not stop using them, because I am forced to pay for them. Even worse, if I stop paying for them, guess who can come knocking on my door, with force? The very same people I am not happy with.
Your solution sounds great, but how often would any of us take the risk to tattle on them? For proof, see original article.
Like any job that any of us have, most people work in order to better their own lives. We work out deals with our employers to enter a relationship where both parties profit -- the worker doesn't have to worry about handling the day-to-day surivival of the business, and the employer fulfills a position that he/she can not do as efficiently as the employee. All employment is mutually beneficial or the two parties would not enter into the agreement in the first place. This is true of all positions, but it is especially true of any "public" official -- cops, public school teachers, politicians.
The problem with public officials is that they have the right to use excessive force in order to protect their position. The average citizen has no right to call out any public official on any illegal actions since the average citizen has no real power against non-elected public officials. If a cop breaks the law, there is almost nothing you can do to fight them. There is a lot they can do, off the public record, that can harm you more than they harm you in their lawbreaking. Remember, cops are not here to protect you, there are there to protect their jobs -- and many of them love the power they wield over the average citizen. Why else do we have cop unions?
We are not free from the tyranny of cameras -- many police cars already have them, and they are not audited by any watchdog group. Our phones can be tapped, but we have no right to listen in on the phones of those who supposedly serve us. The public official is the watchdog of the general public, not vice versa. Is it any wonder that I am anti-State?
What you do on your property is no one's responsibility but yours. If someone's light-rays that bounce off their body enter your property, they are now YOUR property. You might even say that those light-rays are pollution, but I think that is pushing the definition of pollution a little too far. When a bunch of cops stopped an alleged speeder in front of my old house, I complained about the constant blue and red lights and strobes keeping me awake -- I was told I have no right to prevent it. If a cop speeds in front of my house, I should be able to to make note of it, but I can not. Informing your elected official about the problem will do only one thing -- give them reason to make a new law protecting their kin in tyranny. It surely won't help you, it won't bring you more freedom.
Don't be shocked as the tyrants find more ways to increase their power of tyranny. They are not here to help you, there are not here to protect you -- there are there to protect their own incomes and pensions, and you are powerless to stop it as long as you continue to vote into office people who love the authoritarian powers attached to both the liberal and conservative sides of the political system. When will people learn that it isn't left or right, it is pro-tyranny and against-tyranny -- liberals and conservatives are on the "pro-tyranny" side of the coin. The opposite side of the coin is not a libertarian, as some might think, but an anarcho-capitalist.
You will reap what you sow, friends. These folks put up cameras because the police did nothing for them to prevent speeders. This is to be expected -- when you need help, you won't find any.
...the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
It's a justified analogy to what the RIAA is doing, but I welcome the work they spend trying to button up music "piracy." For one thing, the costs of the RIAA are pushed onto the consumer -- leading to higher prices of the music they're trying to protect, giving consumers more reason to work with alternative distribution mechanisms. This will also hopefully lead to more anonymous forms of file sharing, or even file-piece sharing, where you're only hosting a tiny portion of a specific songfile. At what point would a "pirate" not really be guilty of much if they're only sharing a small portion of a particular songfile, say 0.01%?
ISPs are being financially harmed, too, because they're going to have to keep these logs, and also keep them consistent. DHCP makes things more difficult since it increases the amount of tracking they have to do. What all will they track? Port usage, IP address, data transfer totals and rates, etc? As the ISPs have to spend more for legal aid and log data stores, their costs will go up. I can see a market for third party services off-shore that allow you to transfer all of your data through their proxies for a given price -- especially as bandwidth prices fall as bandwidth becomes a commodity.
Consider this: most of us demand fast (low latency) response to websites we browse. We need less response time for some use -- e-mail, file sharing, software patches. The RIAA is powerful in the US, and its power is growing internationally, but it is impossible for a cartel to control everything -- we even see that in the energy market as alternative forms of energy are a barrier to the oil cartel increasing their costs beyond a certain price point. All the RIAA can do is make their overhead so expensive that artists find reason to pick alternative distribution mechanisms.
I'm noticing that medium-level artists are finding more ways to produce an income without the sale of recorded music. I received an e-mail about David Martin, an artist I never heard of, offering a free T-shirt if you pre-buy his album. That's value added incentive to buy HIS album, rather than bootleg it. Good idea. His downloadable music is right from his site, a great way to get music without worrying about the RIAA. What will the RIAA do when their legal costs outweigh their collections, which then creates a high overhead for their artists in the form of lowered commissions?
Are these "early settlements" financially profitable for the RIAA? Lawyers aren't cheap, and settlement lawyers even less so. Even if you agree to a settlement, they still need collections agents to process the payment and make sure it is done in full.
This form of cartelization can't last forever, not with the Internet changing faster than the law can control. I'm surprised the RICO act doesn't cover an industry where 90% of published music is controlled by one cartel. The law fails us in both cases, as the law always does. If you're in a band that isn't in the top 1% of music sales (the long tail is appropriate here), do you find that you make most of your music from ticket sales, beer sales percentage, and T-shirt/sticker/button sales? Why would you need the RIAA?
When will artists start appearing with logos imprinted on their merchandise that says "0% of the proceeds of this CD/t-shirt/sticker goes to the RIAA cartel"? If you're in a band, maybe that time is now. Maybe it is time for small to medium artists to be the ones to inform the customers that there is NO reason to buy a CD or a download from a distributor affiliated with the RIAA?
I can't wait for the day when the RIAA goes back to what they started doing -- making sure that music sounds good across all playback systems through equalization and consistent sound modification.
Good luck creating the equivalent of "live performances" for TV shows, Movies, games, and animation.
Many games already have moved away from the "buy once" mentality -- subscriptions to multiplayer online games are the true source of income for the more popular games. As time progresses, I think we'll see more value-added items that people will be willing to pay for in terms of why they would pay for a game rather than "steal" it. One reason to purchase a product is for the physical items that entice people to buy the real deal -- Ultima always had maps and books that were interesting. Sure, the pirated versions had these in digital format, but the real fans (and the amateur fans) were happy to buy the real version to acquire these tokens. Also, as piracy is accepted rather than disparaged, people who like a given game and want to see a future one made will support the game in order to promote the idea that they want more of the same in the future -- this is already happening.
TV shows already have secondary markets for the stars -- how many stars of TV shows do you know that are doing theater productions and musicals? How many shows have fans behind them that want the show to continue but the show was canceled because the distribution company said so? Firefly comes to mind, as do many other shows. The fans will eventually be the financial producers of shows after the initial pilot and episodes are made. If fans want the show to continue, they'll purchase subscriptions that finance future shows. Cable TV currently limits this ability, but as everything moves to VoD, I believe this will be a viable alternative. The same is true for Anime, a market which was NOTHING until "piracy" saved it and brought Anime interest in the market. Do you think that Anime/Manga would exist if not for the huge black market in the US for the first few years? Now there is a growing market that exists WITHOUT big distributors enabling it to exist and blossom -- fans pay for what fans want to see more of.
I appreciate this article because it shows common sense in how the market of distribution operates. Would daddy give his daughter The Little Mermaid on a DVD written with a Sharpie? But that isn't the key element of why "piracy" is good for the market of art creation -- "piracy" is the return of power to everyone, rather than just those who are politically powerful.
Regardless of what the State tries to do to create monopolies using force, you can't stop the commoditizing of a product. In the case of copyright, the commoditizing isn't the actual movie or song, but the distribution system. For the first few thousand years or so of writing on paper, the distribution mechanism was a tiny industry of copy-writers. Most villages had one Bible as their own written word, and it stayed this way for generations. The printing press blew open the door for people getting their ideas out -- that is all it was about. People wrote to increase their power to attract an audience to pay them for their knowledge. Shakespeare's money didn't come from bookmaking, but from attracting others to his plays. His name was strong because of the press, but his money came from his repeat labor of continuing his work throughout his life. Can you imagine if Shakespeare had copyright to protect his first book, and never returned to the writing desk to continue writing? That's sort of what we're seeing today with the implementation of ridiculous copyright laws -- forced monopolies that give the distribution system more power than the author or the actor.
After 100 years of copyright really dooming the amateur and the new content creators to obscurity, we're finally seeing distribution move from a coerced monopoly to the masses. We're moving to the day that everyone will have a level playing field in terms of their ability to market their product to the masses -- but no one will be able to "get rich quick" with only a few months or a year of hard work -- if you want continued success, you will have to continue to work. This is how income has always existed -- you work, you find a market/customer, you get paid, you continue to work and the cycle repeats. Copyright has destroyed that cycle for the top tier elite, and thankfully The Pirate Bay and the Internet at large is destroying that State-perversion of the market so we all can have access to the system of distribution -- if we work hard at marketing our product.
I can't wait to see what happens to the current distribution systems as our preteens and teens hit their 30s and 40s. They've grown up around knowing that information is readily available freely. For a short period of time, artists and producers may get harmed by this fact -- they will see much of their work copied freely without reimbursement. But this means we'll see more artists and producers moving to a repeat-labor market where they work for their dollar -- more concerts, more plays/live productions, more face-time with their fans, etc. You can copy the new Fall Out Boy album for free, but their concerts will cost you $30-$50 a ticket. Why? Because these famous, popular musicians have the opportunity to provide their customers with a unique experience, and the supply of this particular artist does not meet the demand for them -- the price goes up. This is a GOOD THING.
I'm paying $180 to see Prince in Vegas in March. We love seeing him play live. He made a good decision to go around Universal and the rest of the collusive monopolists in the distribution market -- he plays lives twice a week at his club. He sells it out. Good for him. I see Matthew Broderick and David Hasselhoff have embraced this market too -- instead of just making movies, now they act live in musicals and theater productions -- commanding high ticket prices for the truly scarce product. As I've said before, an artist might spend 3-6 months creating something new and unique, and they hope to make money on it forever without more work. A plumber might spend 3-6 months learning a new task to fix a bathroom sink, but the
You're right, and thanks for that insight. Yet we see that the multinational corporations are more powerful BECAUSE of their ability to utilize patents to the fullest -- not to protect themselves, but to destroy competition.
How does the individual inventor find protection with a patent? Can the individual inventor afford to fight a multinational corporation if they "steal" his ideas? I doubt it. If you create something and I have more money and more legal power than you, how would you fight me? Chances are, you won't. The State prefers those who pander to them, not those who find loopholes in the system made to keep the big companies big and the little guys little and subservient to the big companies.
Honestly, if you take this opinion further, you can see that all patents are bad -- when it comes to the general populace. Patents are a post-market solution to create scarcity of a supply of something. Scarcity is needed to increase the price per the supply/demand curve. By artificially making an item scarce, a higher demand will mean a higher price. Patents are uncompetitive, though, the absolute sole reason why certain monopolies exist.
Some will say that inventors won't invent without patents, but this is untrue if you look at the vast number of modern inventions that we use every day that have 10,000 parts that have expired patents and maybe 10-20 that are still patented. Look at cell phones -- each phone has some obscure patent pending, but the vast majority of phones are fairly identical, and yet there is still a HUGE market for phones. Why do inventors keep creating new phones if the majority of their parts are unprotected?
Some will say that drugs won't get invented, but if you look at the initial medical treatment market, we had doctors who actually wanted to help people by creating new drugs and allowing them to be manufacturered by others regardless of who invented it. Consider this: if you knew of 3 companies making the same new drug, who would you trust more? The company who spent years in clinical trials, showing you that their ingredients is safe, or the 2 companies who attempted to copy said drug through reverse engineering it -- possibly incorporating something unsafe? The same is true with any "invention" that isn't patented -- you decide what product you need based on the cost and the safety. Sometimes the less expensive product is less safe or less effective, something that isn't the case.
Gene patents are also ridiculous -- why should an artificial State-enforced monopoly be placed on something that obviously can be utilized better by a market of competitors. If you want to be cautious about your competition "stealing" your research, just start your own clinics that don't share their research with the open market. Call it DRM of genetic research -- don't share it with others, and the chance that they'll steal it is slim. For most companies, it would be more advantageous for them to purchase the information outright than try to "steal" it through corporate espionage. They can also work to develop their own solutions if they realize that you found a solution -- but that development will cost money and time, of course. Still, it would seem to be better for the public and all the various markets to have a competitive market for genetic research rather than a monopolistic one that keeps only a few companies in the top tier and the rest out of the business.
A surge of non-video-game-playing 18 to 24 year olds have been seen purchasing games from GameStop that they have no interest in playing. When questioned, they said "I don't even have that console." Experts are unsure of why these post-teenage shoppers would be purchasing games and then quickly losing them, but experts will be watching closely to understand the phenomenon.
FWIW, I read Hazlitt when I was 13. I've publicly spoken about market reactions to force for the past 9 years. I'm slashdot's first anarch-capitalist:)
And here is the reason you pay so much in taxes, folks. Those grants come from somewhere. Whether or not you like green power, if you live near this guy or in this guy's state (or worse, if it was a federal grant), you're paying for it. Out of your pocket. Today. If it was a federal grant, that money is debt money -- it could take a generation to pay off his grant, federally.
Government has no right to steal from me, or you, to pay for this guy's pipe dream. If he really wanted to do it, he should have done it with his own dollars, not robbing the tax payer of anything.
Of course the average greenie socialist here would mod me down, but I speak the truth -- there is no such thing as a free lunch, and this guy will get one after only 8 years or so. On your back.
Now I can get ProComm to dial into those old Telegard BBSes that I still have the phone numbers for in my Apple Newton. I hope that someone ports a terminal emulator that supports the RIP protocol, because ANSI and AVATAR are just boring.
...the State Department decides this is considered a terrorist activity and finds a way to make it law/international treaty that this is abolished? Honestly, I can see the out-of-whack State security thugs deciding that this is an act of war.
I'm a big fan of teams like this in unraveling the security defects out there -- giving others more reason to make more secure schemes. I'd love to know how one can finance these groups (legally?). What does her group specifically gain from all this labor? Who pays for them?
I rely on EDGE for high speed access throughout most of the West (US) and a large part of the East that I visit (Poland, Switzerland, India). This phone looks nice, but no EDGE means antiquated technology.
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As the article has a quote about it, here's specifically WHY I am against "Net Neutrality" -- the ISP has no control over throttling particular sites or protocols that can have major negative effects on their overall user experience. I've already noticed some network slowdowns, but in the past 60 days I dumped broadband and rely primarily on my EDGE connection from T-Mobile (200kbps). Latency isn't too shabby. When I use my T1 at the office though, I have noticed some slowdowns.
The solution isn't just more bandwidth. We're not talking about more users accessing the same sites, we're talking about more users accessing more sites -- significantly more. The "long tail" of the web is exploding in access; all the blogs, vlogs, MP3 downloads and videos are across a huge incongruent group of sites. The solution is to nix net-neutrality legislation and allow the consumer and the producer to come to terms on need versus price.
At home, I'd be more than happy for a Port80/Port110 prioritized connection, with other ports reduced in speed or performance. Sure, videos come over Port80, but the vast majority of cable users in my neighborhood are downloading torrentz and other similar protocols. I don't see a reason why everyone should pay the same price for different service. Sure, the telecom industry is scared of Net Neutrality because they WANT to ban Skype and VoIP, but that is why the FCC needs to back off on over-regulating the opportunity for competitors to enter the market. There is a huge opportunity for more wireless providers and more people bringing FTTH or other options.
I know, I know, you were promised 160 Mbps and you want every last speck of it. Those ads will change, I think, as more people do get connected. I'd be happy with lower latency than higher data-rates, and I think this article forgets that it is latency that is just as important (if not more so) than just pure bandwidth speed.
The Internet doesn't really have "bandwidth" limitations, because all it takes is more ISPs and more backbones to come into being. If the pro-Net Neutrality parties have their way, though, we may see significant restrictions in investment on both those fronts. The companies who invested in offering new limbs on the internet took great risks -- and some made great rewards. We want to keep that risk/reward ratio uncluttered by excess regulation legislation so others can offer us more options for who we can connect to.
I'm sure if YouTube/Google had it their way, they'd get special consideration for providing more bandwidth -- State-paid consideration maybe? I sure hope not.
When things slow down, it will give new competitors reason for entering the market. 20% more backbone speed interconnecting some Level 2 ISPs and things will be fine, until the next slowdown brings another run of entrants into the game, or gives the old companies reason to expand their network. Envision 2010: "Is your latency too low? Comcast Ultra offers you 50ms or less ping times across the board, guaranteed!" It may sound fishy, but who would have thought 10 years ago that we'd hear about Mbps on basic cable ads?
The last paragraph is the most insightful part of the article:
Any service degradation will be spotty and transient, predicted (John) Ryan (of Level 3), who said that underinvestment by some operators may "drive quality traffic to quality networks."
EXACTLY.
Sidenote: That damned GoogleBot sometimes hits my sites 5000 times a day -- maybe Google is doing a little more to aggravate the problem than they want to admit? Thankfully I use server-side compression and caching, so things aren't hammered too bad by the bot, but there have been times when things on my end were running slow and I had 100 "Guests" all registered at Google's IPs.
But are you not confusing inflation and exchange rates? I hardly think US inflation is the cause of the weak dollar, though they may share a common source. I'm not an economist, so I hope the guy who wrote the Wikipedia article on the US public debt is:
Exchange rates are a good way to show inflation. For example, let us assume there are 100 dollars in the world total. Let us assume there are 100 Euros, too. In the global market, if demand for dollars and euros was equal, we would have an exchange rate of US$1 to EU$1. If the U.S. expanded the money supply to 120 dollars, we would experience 20% inflation overall. Some markets might get more (40%) some might get none, based on supply and demand. Inflation of the money supply tends to give producers bad signals in where to invest, though, so we get bubbles. The dotcom bubble happened because of Greenspan's idiocy in over-expanding the money supply. Now, let us assume that the Euros were expanded to 140 Euros. This leaves a ratio of US120 to EU140, so a US$1 would go for EU$0.86 due to the different inflation rates.
We've been fairly lucky because foreign producers have tried to tie their currencies to the USD to keep us buying their junk. The Yen, the Yuan, and various other global currencies have been inflating just as badly as the US dollar has.
The problem is that this really transfers wealth from the middle class and poor to the rich. It makes people feel wealthier than they really are, and it also makes some assets appreciate quicker than they should -- look at housing. I've been warning about a housing bubble since early 2005, and the result is happening -- foreclosures, REOs, and other madness.
Gold is a decent indicator of inflation, but not an absolute. Remember, the US dollar has only been off the gold standard since 1973 -- 34 years. It has taken almost 30 years for people to realize how bad the USD really is, and the world is turning from it slowly, but surely. If things go as planned, the USD will be worthless, which actually is a GOOD thing for US unions and producers -- if we can't afford foreign TVs, cars, steel and gas, we will have to make them ourselves. We'll be cheaper than the rest of the world, so we might actually export. During this whole process, more and more physical assets move to the wealthy, and they'll be in control of the industries that spring up from the mass devaluing of the dollar.
I hope it doesn't happen, but this is why I save primarily in hard assets such as gold, silver, land and appreciating assets. I've been happy with my "investments" because they aren't tied to any one particular currency, and they tend to appreciate along with inflation as close to par as possible.
When I say that gold will be worth US$1000 in 2007 or early 2008, I'm right. I said it would be US$600 last year and no one agreed, today it is US$680. 5 years ago it was US$300. That is inflation, friends, not outright extra-demand. Your US-denominated bonds will be worthless in mere years (months, for some), and the stock market only is going up because there are so many new dollars in creation pushing the prices higher -- even though the value of a lot of stocks is declining based on overall dollars produced.
Those sites are blatant lies or just plain wrong.
Inflation is only created by money supply expansion -- so called legal counterfeiting.
The US dollar has fallen 50% versus the Euro. Cars and houses are 50%+ more expensive in the last 5 years. Many people's wages have not gone up 50%, but their available credit has (this is where money supply expansion rears its ugly head -- easy credit at low rates), which more than makes up for their wage inflation not matching statistics. Gasoline has gone up, so has energy otherwise. The price of food has skyrocketed, even bottled water and soda is edging up higher lately. Wendy's just raised their 99 cent menu up 40% in my area, and I'm seeing inflation in cotton shirts, socks, jeans and glasses.
Don't believe what the State-enabled organizations are telling you -- believe in what your wallet tells you.
Actually, the vast majority of Slashdot visitors to my site already block ads. I use a webhost called NearlyFreeSpeech.Net where I pay for every visit, so slashdot visitors actually LOSE me income -- I don't really think I've ever made any financial profit on slashdot users.
Guess what profit I _DO_ make from slashdot visitors? I get their opinions -- for and against my opinions. This helps me formulate my debates better, and even helps me find flaws in my thinking.
People may call me a spammer, but I get moderated +1/Insightful more than -1/Troll, so just stop replying to my posts and mod me down.
I can't begin to count how often in the past people cheered about a product that ended up either vaporware or less-than-desired. I also can't begin to count on the opposite happening: a non-starter product release that turned out to be better than expected. I've been a PDA user since the Apple Newton days, and I've been a PDA Phone user since pre-Blackberry days (although I never had a Blackberry, I prefer full PDAs). I currently use an HTC Trinity P3600 and love it -- GPS, EDGE/3G, 2GB storage card, WiFi, and more. It runs the horrid Windows Mobile 5 but I absolutely love the phone, and combined with Google Maps online + GPS, it replaced 3 devices that I had tethered with me constantly.
The iPhone looks terrible to me for a variety of reasons -- locked application support, AT&T (love my T-Mobile), restrictive networking (GPRS and not EDGE/3G?), etc. But the iPhone will probably win in version 2 because of what has made Apple a powerhouse -- it's the interface, stupid. My iPod is really a great device (even though I don't use it since I have EDGE-radio streamed from my home media PC). I loved the iPod for the interface. I'm glad my wife, sister, father, mother and brother all have iPods -- I have to do absolutely NO work to keep them happy.
My #1 complaint about ALL PDAs and ALL phones has always been the interface. It seems that techies designed a horrid interface around features, rather than integrating everything into a smooth GUI. Apple's interface alone will sell millions, and people will pay the price.
One thing that people seem to forget time and again is that you can not judge tomorrow's prices on yesterday's prices. Inflation has destroyed the US dollar (down 50% in 5 years), so prices double of what we paid 5 years ago can be considered "par" with the fall in value of the dollar. I think $500 is a reasonable price for all of what the iPhone offers -- even though it is merely version 1.0. By the time the iPhone is actually released, who knows how much inflation has caused wages to "rise" and incomes to "soar." With the Democrats taking over, I don't doubt that inflation will get worse than even the high-spending Republicans forced the issue.
Don't look at prices as a constant. In terms of US dollars, we're almost all wealthier in the number of dollars we earn -- even though we are poorer in terms of what those dollars can buy us.
Sidenote: Apple is also wise to set this price point. It is just pricey-enough-sounding to make the device a little more elitist than the $49 Razr that every 12 year old seems to have. Getting the superstars and Paris-Hilton-models using their phone will make everyone want one, and as sales go up, prices tend to go down. Apple's biggest problem in the short run will be supply -- I guarantee they won't have enough to keep up with demand, even at $500.
I paid $650 for my HTC Trinity P3600, and if Apple can integrate a GPS and EDGE/3G, I'd pay $1000 for it just on the interface alone. Give it a few weeks after release, and I think people's opinions of the device will change. They'll see what it can do for them (especially business folks, teenagers with money, and young adults with new credit cards), and they'll jump at the chance to have one early for $500.
There is a huge black market in CFCs. Very, VERY large, actually. It is so large that one of the mob rackets in Miami is supposedly dedicated full-time to bringing it in and selling it to people who need it due to the cost of replacing hardware that requires CFC-12.
One of my vehicles is a 1993 Chevy Blazer, and it requires R-12 freon. I ran out of it, and my mechanic in my tiny town told me he can get as much as I want for $30 a pound -- as much as I want and as often as I want. I elected to upgrade to the newer freon replacement, which was a $1000 upgrade. Now my vehicle's air conditioner performs about 70% less than before -- in the hot summers of Chicago the vehicle isn't used because it won't chill enough. I've had it looked at by 3 mechanics, and they all told me to go back to the old R-12 freon, which is readily available on the black market.
Don't believe for a minute that CFCs are gone -- they're banned, but they're still in use and will continue to be.
There is no "MIGHT", these bulbs are better for everybody.
I have seen conclusive evidence in theory and have experienced in real life in my implementation of paying large amounts of money to replace my bulbs but having it pay off in the long run. It is both better economically & for the environment. Why do you use the word 'might'?
Because a "one-size fits all" mandate harms people, even if they are just a minority. I hate the buzzing of the CFLs, and I hate the color. As I said in my OP, I hate the fact that they give off no heat. I can afford to spend a bit more for incandescents (about $10 a month more, according to my 6 month trial of CFLs), and that $10 a month more gives me more happiness than being forced to use substandard lighting. Freedom means you get to choose what you want, and you have to pay for the level you expect.
The bulb should serve one purpose instead of dividing the energy spent into two. It is simply common sense that it is more efficient to either heat or light instead of a mandatory both. Can you guarantee me that every summer you want your room heated when it is lit? I highly doubt that.
It is common sense that the market of consumers decides what it wants. Wal*Mart's campaign will likely change millions if not tens of millions of consumers on to the possible advantages of CFLs for their situation and needs and budget. It won't convince me, and it won't convince millions more who are accustomed to incandescents and prefer them. My entire office in Chicago was CFLs and fluorescents until we switched to incandescents and even indirect incandescents. My employees were and are happier -- less headaches, more productive work and a better environment. If I was forced to use CFLs, I'd have to defend a choice that isn't mine. Freedom is what I want, not coercion because SOME people think something is better for me.
You, though, probably would love to force people to drive battery-operated solar-driven cars with 5 horsepower. I love my 5.8 liter SUV, because it tows my two box trucks, drives through any hill grade and also gives me decent gas mileage when I need it, but the power is there when I need it. The pro-socialist crowd forgets that freedom means freedom to figure out what is best for your situation, that might change over time.
It doesn't matter if you are trying to prohibit drinking alcohol or paying someone else for sexual favors, prohibition doesn't work -- all it does is create artificial scarcity which then develops a black market for the product or service. When alcohol was prohibited in the U.S., the mob was created. When incandescent light bulbs are banned, the black market will flourish, unless people see a real reason to switch.
We tried CFLs in my household and we hated them. We found some random buzzing issues, hated the color of our walls and furniture, and didn't really see a huge savings over incandescent because we turn off lights we don't use (and we use home automation in the bathroom and bedroom). I don't see how the Australian government can really enforce this law other than going after retailers who try to circumvent it. Putting the onus on the retailer will just make Australia that much less competitive -- you can bet that eBay.com.au will have thousands of listings for the old bulbs -- and there is no way that the Australian customs office can afford to search every box for illegal bulbs.
I'm sure it will work in the short run, but I wonder who is really behind this. It could be Phillips, who is sure to gain a huge profit from the mandate. Maybe it is the mercury disposal company that has a brother in office -- CFLs do contain mercury and need to be disposed of properly (I know there are alternatives, but the seem to reduce the cost-effectiveness of the bulb in the first place). When your CFL bulb dies, you're supposed to return it to the store for recycling or disposal. I'm sure everyone does that, right? *sarcasm* Of course, it is debated that coal-burning plants create a lot of mercury, but I assume that mercury is disposed of properly, unlike the mercury that is in your CFL bulb and ends up in the trash.
I prefer what Wal*Mart is doing -- working to convince the market that these bulbs MIGHT be better for them. I also wonder about the ancillary effect of the incandescent -- namely, heat. In the cold Midwest, I actually like reading under my incandescent lamp over my bed -- the warmth is nice, it is focused, and it is better than overheating my entire house. This way, I get just enough heat that I need when I am awake, as when I am asleep I can tolerate much lower heat requirements.
The other two problems with the CFLs is the ugly light they give off (although it is getting better), and how few of them fit into the lamps I have in my household. I also can't dim them (there are dimmable units now, I've heard), which we utilize all the time for effect, especially when watching movies or for social parties we host.
I'll take a prop bet with anyone here that the black market of light bulbs in Australia after 2010 will be very profitable -- and very easy to maintain.
The U.S. copyright lobby exists for one purpose: to give distributors sole custody of intellectual property "rights." In the past, pre-copyright, there was no intellectual property -- there was only marketing material that provided an artist or creator access to the market so they could sell their true product: live productions of that marketing material. Shakespeare wrote for acclaim, but it was his live performances that produced his income. He was also paid by wealthy patrons of the arts who wanted to see more from him. For centuries, this is why art was created. Those who didn't want acclaim but still wanted to produce art would do what we all do for incomes -- they got jobs in creating something for someone else.
For 200 years, copyright was considered the only way to protect your creations, but what came out of copyright is the worst-case scenario for amateur artists: instead of copyright protecting your creations, it only protected the monopoly networks of distribution, what I would call distribution cartels.
Now, 200 years later, we have a majority of opinion that believes that people wouldn't create if their intellectual property wasn't protected. But this isn't true. I created the Global Unanimocracy Network"> of blogs and forums in order to prove that you could generate an income for your talents without the need for copyright. All my writings are now public domain -- I freely encourage others to copy my writings and posts and repost them under their own name, on their own sites, for their own income. Why? Because it generates interest in the niche topics I cover, and eventually people find their way to my site. I make a decent income through advertising and individual support for my future writings. People pay me so that I will write more in the future. Even better, my network of blogs has also gotten me writing gigs for other sites that pay me to write content for them in a "ghost writing" type of deal.
If you are a musician, you have two options: record a record and use it as marketing to get people to your shows (as my brother's band Maps & Atlases has done), or go and get a job as a studio musician creating music for commercial ventures (movies, TV shows, muzak, etc). The idea that you can spend 2 weeks or 2 years creating one record and then reap 70 years of income is ridiculous. Does a plumber go to school for 2 years to learn how to fix toilets only to get paid for 70 years whenever you flush that toilet? No, they continue to work. Does an architect spend 2 years designing plans only to get paid forever by those who live or use the building that came forth from the plans? No, they keep designing. Artists are no different -- they should continue their labors in order to continue to reap incomes.
Right now, copyright has placed in the hands of powerful mercantilists the monopoly of distribution. The FCC decides who can transmit over public airwaves, and this blocks amateurs from the airwaves. Yet those days are coming to an end as the airwaves are growing less important as the Internet is available in more and more places (for example, I have a consistent WiFi connection to the net in my car at about 200kbps via T-Mobile's EDGE network). As the Internet finds its way to more parts of the country and the world, the public airwaves will be less utilized and way less efficient. The copyright lobby knows this, and they're trying hard to restrict future growth in "piracy" and non-licensed distributors. Yet for amateur artists, the non-licensed distributors are the best way to get the word out about their real product: continued labor to make new and unique art.
A friend's band, 38 Acres, now tells their audience and online visitors to freely copy their albums for friends. They make a decent income selling unique performances, and they also make an income selling their T-shirts and hats and posters. People who "pirated" t
I had XM for a few months -- loved it for about 15 days. Then I was too lazy to extricate myself from the deal, so I turned it over to a friend who travels over the road a lot.
Since I had that subscription, I realized that satellite radio -- like all "one size fits all" radio, is dead. Honestly. It may not actually have died yet, but the days are numbered.
I have a great MP3 collection at home -- running on a (yes, lame) Windows Media Center PC with a ton of storage. I also have a bunch of my favorite movies encoded both for highdef and lowdef. Why? Because I can now access everything I "own" remotely.
My phone is an HTC Trinity P3600 -- currently unavailable in the States as far as I know. With the Dopod 810 ROM, I am able to utilize T-Mobile's EDGE network to my advantage. If I want to listen to my MP3s, I do so remotely using that EDGE network. Often times I am able to get a sustained 200kbps download rate, which drops to about 80kbps in more remote areas. For most of my travel (nationwide), I am able to listen to my entire playlist without having to carry with me anything more than my PDA phone. It works great -- and I can plug my phone into my car stereo and listen to my tracks at will. I even created a nice interface for picking songs, and it works great. I pay one flat rate for my EDGE connection, and for an additional $20 a month I also get unlimited use of Starbuck's WiFi network, which works great when I am really in the boonies.
Will most people do this right now? No, because the costs are a bit too high, and most people aren't technically adept enough to set it up. Yet those days are coming to a close as more people are buying cell phones that aren't locked by the vendor (T-Mobile loves to lock great features out of their cell phones, so I buy mine on the grey market). I've seen alpha versions of bittorrent-protocol software that runs on Windows Mobile, and I'm sure more is on its way for other phone/portable OSes. As this happens, we will soon see peer-to-peer "radio" stations taking over and giving the consumer what they REALLY want.
I'm sure that XM and SIRIUS will be watched closely by the "evil" FCC, but no matter what happens, their days/years ARE numbered. Regular radio is having a huge problem attracting advertisers, because the new generation now has iPods. The iPod is a great device, but it is limited to only what you brought from home.
If Microsoft wants to kill Apple, all they need to do is come up with an iPod-like player that has EDGE/GPRS connectivity, and offer people music-by-the-song or MP3-over-the-air accessibility. Imagine what will happen to the "broadcast" market when the unicast market can destroy it at any time?
Small detail : in the US, the capitalists control the government, as well as the sh^H^Hpeople; So, what is this anarcho-capitalism because it has obviously nothing to do with capitalism?
Wrong, in the US, the mercantilists control the government. Capitalists are only concerned with the mutual exchange of labor/currency for the mutual profit of both parties. Capitalists don't use the force of government to mandate THEIR way -- mercantilists do. Our bloodiest war in the US was founded on mercantilists principles, based on the mercantilist viewpoint of dictator Abraham Lincoln.
It is funny that you list one tyrannous group after another in order to try to "fix" the initial group -- the local police.
If Wal*Mart serves me badly, against what I consider a profitable exchange, I stop shopping there. Eventually, we see stores fail -- even big ones, often. If Burger King serves me badly, against what I consider a profitable exchange, I stop eating there. Eventually, we see restaurants fail -- even big ones, often. If the police serve me badly, what can I do? I can risk upsetting them by tattling on them. I can not stop using them, because I am forced to pay for them. Even worse, if I stop paying for them, guess who can come knocking on my door, with force? The very same people I am not happy with.
Your solution sounds great, but how often would any of us take the risk to tattle on them? For proof, see original article.
Like any job that any of us have, most people work in order to better their own lives. We work out deals with our employers to enter a relationship where both parties profit -- the worker doesn't have to worry about handling the day-to-day surivival of the business, and the employer fulfills a position that he/she can not do as efficiently as the employee. All employment is mutually beneficial or the two parties would not enter into the agreement in the first place. This is true of all positions, but it is especially true of any "public" official -- cops, public school teachers, politicians.
The problem with public officials is that they have the right to use excessive force in order to protect their position. The average citizen has no right to call out any public official on any illegal actions since the average citizen has no real power against non-elected public officials. If a cop breaks the law, there is almost nothing you can do to fight them. There is a lot they can do, off the public record, that can harm you more than they harm you in their lawbreaking. Remember, cops are not here to protect you, there are there to protect their jobs -- and many of them love the power they wield over the average citizen. Why else do we have cop unions?
We are not free from the tyranny of cameras -- many police cars already have them, and they are not audited by any watchdog group. Our phones can be tapped, but we have no right to listen in on the phones of those who supposedly serve us. The public official is the watchdog of the general public, not vice versa. Is it any wonder that I am anti-State?
What you do on your property is no one's responsibility but yours. If someone's light-rays that bounce off their body enter your property, they are now YOUR property. You might even say that those light-rays are pollution, but I think that is pushing the definition of pollution a little too far. When a bunch of cops stopped an alleged speeder in front of my old house, I complained about the constant blue and red lights and strobes keeping me awake -- I was told I have no right to prevent it. If a cop speeds in front of my house, I should be able to to make note of it, but I can not. Informing your elected official about the problem will do only one thing -- give them reason to make a new law protecting their kin in tyranny. It surely won't help you, it won't bring you more freedom.
Don't be shocked as the tyrants find more ways to increase their power of tyranny. They are not here to help you, there are not here to protect you -- there are there to protect their own incomes and pensions, and you are powerless to stop it as long as you continue to vote into office people who love the authoritarian powers attached to both the liberal and conservative sides of the political system. When will people learn that it isn't left or right, it is pro-tyranny and against-tyranny -- liberals and conservatives are on the "pro-tyranny" side of the coin. The opposite side of the coin is not a libertarian, as some might think, but an anarcho-capitalist.
You will reap what you sow, friends. These folks put up cameras because the police did nothing for them to prevent speeders. This is to be expected -- when you need help, you won't find any.
...the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
It's a justified analogy to what the RIAA is doing, but I welcome the work they spend trying to button up music "piracy." For one thing, the costs of the RIAA are pushed onto the consumer -- leading to higher prices of the music they're trying to protect, giving consumers more reason to work with alternative distribution mechanisms. This will also hopefully lead to more anonymous forms of file sharing, or even file-piece sharing, where you're only hosting a tiny portion of a specific songfile. At what point would a "pirate" not really be guilty of much if they're only sharing a small portion of a particular songfile, say 0.01%?
ISPs are being financially harmed, too, because they're going to have to keep these logs, and also keep them consistent. DHCP makes things more difficult since it increases the amount of tracking they have to do. What all will they track? Port usage, IP address, data transfer totals and rates, etc? As the ISPs have to spend more for legal aid and log data stores, their costs will go up. I can see a market for third party services off-shore that allow you to transfer all of your data through their proxies for a given price -- especially as bandwidth prices fall as bandwidth becomes a commodity.
Consider this: most of us demand fast (low latency) response to websites we browse. We need less response time for some use -- e-mail, file sharing, software patches. The RIAA is powerful in the US, and its power is growing internationally, but it is impossible for a cartel to control everything -- we even see that in the energy market as alternative forms of energy are a barrier to the oil cartel increasing their costs beyond a certain price point. All the RIAA can do is make their overhead so expensive that artists find reason to pick alternative distribution mechanisms.
I'm noticing that medium-level artists are finding more ways to produce an income without the sale of recorded music. I received an e-mail about David Martin, an artist I never heard of, offering a free T-shirt if you pre-buy his album. That's value added incentive to buy HIS album, rather than bootleg it. Good idea. His downloadable music is right from his site, a great way to get music without worrying about the RIAA. What will the RIAA do when their legal costs outweigh their collections, which then creates a high overhead for their artists in the form of lowered commissions?
Are these "early settlements" financially profitable for the RIAA? Lawyers aren't cheap, and settlement lawyers even less so. Even if you agree to a settlement, they still need collections agents to process the payment and make sure it is done in full.
This form of cartelization can't last forever, not with the Internet changing faster than the law can control. I'm surprised the RICO act doesn't cover an industry where 90% of published music is controlled by one cartel. The law fails us in both cases, as the law always does. If you're in a band that isn't in the top 1% of music sales (the long tail is appropriate here), do you find that you make most of your music from ticket sales, beer sales percentage, and T-shirt/sticker/button sales? Why would you need the RIAA?
When will artists start appearing with logos imprinted on their merchandise that says "0% of the proceeds of this CD/t-shirt/sticker goes to the RIAA cartel"? If you're in a band, maybe that time is now. Maybe it is time for small to medium artists to be the ones to inform the customers that there is NO reason to buy a CD or a download from a distributor affiliated with the RIAA?
I can't wait for the day when the RIAA goes back to what they started doing -- making sure that music sounds good across all playback systems through equalization and consistent sound modification.
Good luck creating the equivalent of "live performances" for TV shows, Movies, games, and animation.
Many games already have moved away from the "buy once" mentality -- subscriptions to multiplayer online games are the true source of income for the more popular games. As time progresses, I think we'll see more value-added items that people will be willing to pay for in terms of why they would pay for a game rather than "steal" it. One reason to purchase a product is for the physical items that entice people to buy the real deal -- Ultima always had maps and books that were interesting. Sure, the pirated versions had these in digital format, but the real fans (and the amateur fans) were happy to buy the real version to acquire these tokens. Also, as piracy is accepted rather than disparaged, people who like a given game and want to see a future one made will support the game in order to promote the idea that they want more of the same in the future -- this is already happening.
TV shows already have secondary markets for the stars -- how many stars of TV shows do you know that are doing theater productions and musicals? How many shows have fans behind them that want the show to continue but the show was canceled because the distribution company said so? Firefly comes to mind, as do many other shows. The fans will eventually be the financial producers of shows after the initial pilot and episodes are made. If fans want the show to continue, they'll purchase subscriptions that finance future shows. Cable TV currently limits this ability, but as everything moves to VoD, I believe this will be a viable alternative. The same is true for Anime, a market which was NOTHING until "piracy" saved it and brought Anime interest in the market. Do you think that Anime/Manga would exist if not for the huge black market in the US for the first few years? Now there is a growing market that exists WITHOUT big distributors enabling it to exist and blossom -- fans pay for what fans want to see more of.
I appreciate this article because it shows common sense in how the market of distribution operates. Would daddy give his daughter The Little Mermaid on a DVD written with a Sharpie? But that isn't the key element of why "piracy" is good for the market of art creation -- "piracy" is the return of power to everyone, rather than just those who are politically powerful.
Regardless of what the State tries to do to create monopolies using force, you can't stop the commoditizing of a product. In the case of copyright, the commoditizing isn't the actual movie or song, but the distribution system. For the first few thousand years or so of writing on paper, the distribution mechanism was a tiny industry of copy-writers. Most villages had one Bible as their own written word, and it stayed this way for generations. The printing press blew open the door for people getting their ideas out -- that is all it was about. People wrote to increase their power to attract an audience to pay them for their knowledge. Shakespeare's money didn't come from bookmaking, but from attracting others to his plays. His name was strong because of the press, but his money came from his repeat labor of continuing his work throughout his life. Can you imagine if Shakespeare had copyright to protect his first book, and never returned to the writing desk to continue writing? That's sort of what we're seeing today with the implementation of ridiculous copyright laws -- forced monopolies that give the distribution system more power than the author or the actor.
After 100 years of copyright really dooming the amateur and the new content creators to obscurity, we're finally seeing distribution move from a coerced monopoly to the masses. We're moving to the day that everyone will have a level playing field in terms of their ability to market their product to the masses -- but no one will be able to "get rich quick" with only a few months or a year of hard work -- if you want continued success, you will have to continue to work. This is how income has always existed -- you work, you find a market/customer, you get paid, you continue to work and the cycle repeats. Copyright has destroyed that cycle for the top tier elite, and thankfully The Pirate Bay and the Internet at large is destroying that State-perversion of the market so we all can have access to the system of distribution -- if we work hard at marketing our product.
I can't wait to see what happens to the current distribution systems as our preteens and teens hit their 30s and 40s. They've grown up around knowing that information is readily available freely. For a short period of time, artists and producers may get harmed by this fact -- they will see much of their work copied freely without reimbursement. But this means we'll see more artists and producers moving to a repeat-labor market where they work for their dollar -- more concerts, more plays/live productions, more face-time with their fans, etc. You can copy the new Fall Out Boy album for free, but their concerts will cost you $30-$50 a ticket. Why? Because these famous, popular musicians have the opportunity to provide their customers with a unique experience, and the supply of this particular artist does not meet the demand for them -- the price goes up. This is a GOOD THING.
I'm paying $180 to see Prince in Vegas in March. We love seeing him play live. He made a good decision to go around Universal and the rest of the collusive monopolists in the distribution market -- he plays lives twice a week at his club. He sells it out. Good for him. I see Matthew Broderick and David Hasselhoff have embraced this market too -- instead of just making movies, now they act live in musicals and theater productions -- commanding high ticket prices for the truly scarce product. As I've said before, an artist might spend 3-6 months creating something new and unique, and they hope to make money on it forever without more work. A plumber might spend 3-6 months learning a new task to fix a bathroom sink, but the
You're right, and thanks for that insight. Yet we see that the multinational corporations are more powerful BECAUSE of their ability to utilize patents to the fullest -- not to protect themselves, but to destroy competition.
How does the individual inventor find protection with a patent? Can the individual inventor afford to fight a multinational corporation if they "steal" his ideas? I doubt it. If you create something and I have more money and more legal power than you, how would you fight me? Chances are, you won't. The State prefers those who pander to them, not those who find loopholes in the system made to keep the big companies big and the little guys little and subservient to the big companies.
Honestly, if you take this opinion further, you can see that all patents are bad -- when it comes to the general populace. Patents are a post-market solution to create scarcity of a supply of something. Scarcity is needed to increase the price per the supply/demand curve. By artificially making an item scarce, a higher demand will mean a higher price. Patents are uncompetitive, though, the absolute sole reason why certain monopolies exist.
Some will say that inventors won't invent without patents, but this is untrue if you look at the vast number of modern inventions that we use every day that have 10,000 parts that have expired patents and maybe 10-20 that are still patented. Look at cell phones -- each phone has some obscure patent pending, but the vast majority of phones are fairly identical, and yet there is still a HUGE market for phones. Why do inventors keep creating new phones if the majority of their parts are unprotected?
Some will say that drugs won't get invented, but if you look at the initial medical treatment market, we had doctors who actually wanted to help people by creating new drugs and allowing them to be manufacturered by others regardless of who invented it. Consider this: if you knew of 3 companies making the same new drug, who would you trust more? The company who spent years in clinical trials, showing you that their ingredients is safe, or the 2 companies who attempted to copy said drug through reverse engineering it -- possibly incorporating something unsafe? The same is true with any "invention" that isn't patented -- you decide what product you need based on the cost and the safety. Sometimes the less expensive product is less safe or less effective, something that isn't the case.
Gene patents are also ridiculous -- why should an artificial State-enforced monopoly be placed on something that obviously can be utilized better by a market of competitors. If you want to be cautious about your competition "stealing" your research, just start your own clinics that don't share their research with the open market. Call it DRM of genetic research -- don't share it with others, and the chance that they'll steal it is slim. For most companies, it would be more advantageous for them to purchase the information outright than try to "steal" it through corporate espionage. They can also work to develop their own solutions if they realize that you found a solution -- but that development will cost money and time, of course. Still, it would seem to be better for the public and all the various markets to have a competitive market for genetic research rather than a monopolistic one that keeps only a few companies in the top tier and the rest out of the business.
A surge of non-video-game-playing 18 to 24 year olds have been seen purchasing games from GameStop that they have no interest in playing. When questioned, they said "I don't even have that console." Experts are unsure of why these post-teenage shoppers would be purchasing games and then quickly losing them, but experts will be watching closely to understand the phenomenon.
FWIW, I read Hazlitt when I was 13. I've publicly spoken about market reactions to force for the past 9 years. I'm slashdot's first anarch-capitalist :)
Bullshit. There are no free grants or tax breaks -- those are paid by everyone else.
Don't start spewing that garbage. If you make 3x market value, the taxpayer is paying the other 2x over market, plus the bureaucratic overhead, too.
And here is the reason you pay so much in taxes, folks. Those grants come from somewhere. Whether or not you like green power, if you live near this guy or in this guy's state (or worse, if it was a federal grant), you're paying for it. Out of your pocket. Today. If it was a federal grant, that money is debt money -- it could take a generation to pay off his grant, federally.
Government has no right to steal from me, or you, to pay for this guy's pipe dream. If he really wanted to do it, he should have done it with his own dollars, not robbing the tax payer of anything.
Of course the average greenie socialist here would mod me down, but I speak the truth -- there is no such thing as a free lunch, and this guy will get one after only 8 years or so. On your back.
Now I can get ProComm to dial into those old Telegard BBSes that I still have the phone numbers for in my Apple Newton. I hope that someone ports a terminal emulator that supports the RIP protocol, because ANSI and AVATAR are just boring.
This will completely let me replace my Coco3.
Tradewars door, here I come!
I'm a big fan of teams like this in unraveling the security defects out there -- giving others more reason to make more secure schemes. I'd love to know how one can finance these groups (legally?). What does her group specifically gain from all this labor? Who pays for them?
I rely on EDGE for high speed access throughout most of the West (US) and a large part of the East that I visit (Poland, Switzerland, India). This phone looks nice, but no EDGE means antiquated technology.
That, by itself, makes it a non-starter.