"This is the last chance for America to prove it's not totally made up of braindead, religious, nutbag trailer trash. If the GOP steals this one, too..I'm moving to Canada."
Funny you say that when here is a list of people that support obama:
-Paris hilton -Britney spears -Hugo Chavez
A shining example of intelligence and freedom.
I don't think we want you in america anyway..we will be happy to see you go.
"By pirating it, I'm attempting to determine its worth."
Most software has 30 day trials..but software is still pirated. You can hear most albums before you purchase them..but music is still pirated.
"If I determine that it is worth the asking price, I purchase it."
and if not, do you still use it? also, if you feel a $50 adobe product is worth $30, will you send them a check? Your reasoning only seems to work in one direction.
"If I don't purchase it, by this policy, I am proving its lack of worth."
If you don't purchase it and don't pirate it..you are proving it's lack of worth. You can also prove it's worth by looking at the number of seeders on the pirate bay..most people will delete things they aren't using.
And why is it that albums, movies, and software that are really good are still pirated?
Hell, to further show that you point is complete and utter shit, the last harry potter book was scanned in as a pdf and pirated all over the internet. I don't think you can deny that it is worth the cost.
It has nothing to do with your arguments, it has more to do with greedy, selfish people not wanting to spend their hard-earned money on a product. I just wish you would admit that it is wrong and stop trying to justify it.
"That's how the free market works. If you charge too much and people won't pay what you are asking, then you lower your price or go out of business."
What you don't realize is that when you pirate movies and music you are actually keeping costs at ridiculously high rates. The reason is because in a truly free market, people would not pirate movies/software and they wouldn't buy them either (because the costs are too high). The RIAA/MPAA would realize they can't make a profit and lower costs.
But, because of sites like thepiratebay and the people downloading all of their content for free, they will never know if it's because the cost is too high (if you are presented with a new convertible for $200,000 and the exact same one for free..which one will you pick?) or because naturally, people are just choosing the free alternative. So, the only real solution from their perspective is to keep the costs the same and increase protections.
If the pirate bay was an independent record label, it might be a different story. But this would be much more difficult..and they like taking the cheap and easy way out (like most thieves).
"Only markets, where the price is fixed through conspiracy of the sellers, is this not true. (i.e. Gas, Movies, Music, etc)"
If you don't like gas at $4, do you take it form the station anyway? If movie tickets are too expensive, do you say fuck you to the theater and sneak in anyway? Why is it the same with software and music?
"But it's not up to the CUSTOMER to provide the product with a perception of value. That's the responsibility of the seller. If the seller fails at that task, the customer won't pay what the seller is asking for that product"
What you are talking about is a customer not wanting to pay the price and going elsewhere. What is actually happening is that the customer doesn't want to pay the price and they get it for free anyway.
"the seller might need to dress it up or do differential pricing -- STARTING at "free". (Witness the success of the recent NIN marketing experiment.)"
You forgot to mention the experiment that trent reznor tried earlier with his friend saul williams . Most people did not pay and he couldn't even cover the production costs. Sadly, this is what will happen when most people try this.
Something else interesting about his experiment:
He made $750,000 on a $300 deluxe package. He didn't have to sell as many copies as a regular album (12X as less) and I would imagine that most people that bought it at $300 wouldn't want to pirate it. I guess what we have learned from this experiment is that as an artist, you should charge $300 for you stuff. You won't have to sell nearly as many copies.
Nice story, but if you also added that thugs came in and stole the guy's merchandise and gave it out for free, it might be closer to what's happening to IP on p2p sites.
Real competition would be artists leaving the record companies and setting up shop independently on the Internet.
"What you say would be true, were it not for the fact that the free newspapers have a successful business model. I'd assumed that point was obvious - otherwise why would they undertake the costs of compiling, printing and distributing them?"
Free newspapers are worthless and they get a large amount of people to actually see it (because it's free). They make money on the direct sale of advertising. Without this advertising, they could not afford to give it out for free.
It might be the same with p2p sites, if they gave all software companies free advertising. But this just isn't the case.
"Incidentally, your point about counterfeiting shows you may not have RTFA, which points out that it's far from clear if counterfeiting actually harms economies in the long run anyway."
Then you (and the person that wrote the article) haven't taken an economics class.
If you start dumping fake money into the economy..do you know what happens? The value of the dollar slowly starts to decrease.
It's known as........inflation.
From a software perspective..the same thing happens. More and more value the software at $0 and less people are going to pay for it.
"If you read the newspaper (you know, all of them) you can run for Vice President [wikipedia.org]. Even better, if you can't read you can run for President [wikipedia.org]."
and if you read socialist monthly, you can run as the first african american president.
"what part of Deliberate, open, and peaceful violation of particular laws, decrees, regulations, military or police orders, or other governmental directives are you having trouble understanding?"
well, real civil disobedience might actually get the RIAA to listen. We can see that all the pirating in the world only causes companies to create larger, and more complicated locks.
"You're wrong, if you read free culture it provides more then enough evidence to show that equating every pirated instance to a lost sale is not true."
If you read Forbes magazine, it shows data that proves otherwise.
"Probably for the same reason as I read the crappy free daily news sheets they hand out on the subway: they're free, they pass some time, and if they bore me I can throw them over my shoulder without a second thought. Nothing lost, nothing gained.
Oh, and nobody loses a sale:-)"
Copyright infringement/piracy is more like counterfeiting than stealing.:-)
They may not lose a direct sale, but over time, the original owner trying to sell the song/software, etc..will lose money. In people's minds, it's worthless...which is exactly what you have just proven with your statements.
"producing something for $1 m total cost, and then trying to sell it for $10 bucks to millions while having $0.01 distribution costs (thats cd distribution costs actually. not even online) per item and trying to make at least 10 times the profit whilst having a total control of the market is not something we consumers like. your price should be comparable with your cost. you should NOT fuck us under the guise of selling stuff."
so...$1 million per copy then?
and who are you to say how much someone can charge for something?
"Because civil disobedience is an excellent way to show your disapproval of bad business models."
No.
This is not even close to civil disobedience. Civil disobedience would be convincing others not to buy music by the RIAA (and not download it)..which might actually get the record industry to lower prices. Now, they will just create more DRM-like protections.
It's all about getting stuff for free. I have been around pirated software and music on the internet for at least 10 years now...and there hasn't been any group that has proven otherwise.
"I'm going to do a little work on something and then just sit on my arse earning royalties in perpetuity whilst those lowly peons work hard every day and only get paid once for it." Very ethical."
They may be getting royalties, but the recipients of that work are getting enjoyment/use out of it...which is why it costs money each time.
Also, movies and software take thousands of man-hours to create. The only reason they aren't $1,000,000 per copy is because of the fact that it can be re-sold many times over for a small price.
If Obama becomes president and fucks up the United States beyond all recognition, I hope people like you take the credit for voting him into office.
"Remember? He was the guy who was smart enough to warn you about peak oil back in the 70s and tell you some uncomfortable truths you didn't want to hear."
You mean the guy that decided "windfall taxes" were a good thing and actually increased the price of oil in the United States?
"You would not state such nonsense if you knew what a Socialist and a Marxist is."
I decided to look them up for you:
Socialist: "an advocate or supporter of socialism."
Socialism (my favorite definition): "the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles."
"Very few people in Europe are taxed to the levels you mention, certainly taxes are higher, but it seems that many countries in Europe are better educated, healthier and happier than people in the US,"
Prove it to me. I personally know people that live in France that have to pay 65% of their paycheck to the government.
It's because he's a socialist and a marxist. Which pretty much describes the type of government in most of the nations in europe, where taxes are > 50%.
Obama isn't about change, he's about bringing back nearly all the ideas from our beloved ex-president.....Jimmy Carter.
A better question is why do terrorists and actual evil dictators love Obama? It's a question nobody seems to want to know the answer to.
"You realize the irony of this statement, right? Taken out if its anti-TPB rant, it quite easily applies to the Recording industry distributors. In fact, it almost better applies to them because TPB's so-called profits and effect on music sales are pretty questionable. Whereas the coercive and immoral contracts of the music distributors are widely accepted facts. "
If you google it, the guys that run TPB have stated that they have made similar amounts over the years. However, I'm not sure how much bandwidth costs.
It's also an accepted fact that before you sign a contract, you need to read the fine-print.
"Intellectual Property" laws have become tools of oppression and exploitation. It should not be surprising that people are resisting them, even if such resistance has ulterior self-serving motive."
I know, because you are sooooooooooo oppressed when you can't download half-life for free or the latest metallica album.
When there is a good reason to violate copyright law besides a thinly veiled argument for getting free shit...people might actually start to listen. Otherwise it will only mean more DRM like protection schemes.
"I'm terrified, really. You're almost certainly right: in a matter of days, all the software that anyone will ever need will be on sourceforge for free and no company will ever need developers again."
I never said that. You are not looking at the big picture.
All software won't be on sourceforge, but, many of the things most businesses need will be there. There will still be a need for developers to work on this source-code. But, business owners will realize that they won't have to pay a software engineer $80,000 a year, when they can get the engineered part for free and just hire a software mechanic for $10/hour to make changes.
I have already seen this happen. My company would have had to hire 3 or 4 developers, but because we based everything on open source, they only had to hire me.
So, many of the same people that are software engineers and are giving out their code in the form of open source projects might just see themselves out of a job in the future when their future employer just gets it for free.
"Meaning, that even if all software was open source tomorrow, those people would still have jobs developing software."
There will most likely be jobs developing software in the future. But, as open source becomes more prevalent, these jobs will start to become low-paying "code monkey" jobs. Why pay someone a huge wage to engineer a large piece of software when you can get the base code for free and make changes to it? (and the changes can be done by less-experienced programmers).
Developers need to understand that they may be putting themselves out of a job in the future by contributing to open source.
"The republicans tend to push for more government, laws and war and the democrats push for less."
no, both push for more laws and government..just in different directions.
"It's truly a beautiful democratic balance. The problems occur when people like Bush and his IN-GROUP go outside the law and take control in a dishonorable fashion. Be aware this isn't a fault of democracy (our system is very good), but of evil forces working to undue democracy. WE MUST RESIST OPPRESSION"
and HOW did bush go "outside the law and take control in a dishonorable fashion"?
It's funny, the democrats always say that bush is a moron..but then talk about how he planned the war so him and his buddies could make money on it..which is obviously not the work of someone with little intelligence. They really need to make up their minds...
"You can equate that to fear in terms of self-preservation...not that I'm itching to die for any cause, but I feel I'm less important than the whole. Many republicans I know don't even consider the whole...it's about Sunday dinner, spending time with the kids, etc."
Republicans I know DO think about the community as a whole. Take universal health care as an example. Most republicans are against it because they know that it is a broken system and as a whole, will make it more difficult for people in the community to get the care that they need.
To me, Democrats are the ones in fear.
1)Afraid to defend our freedom. When push comes to shove, freedom needs to be defended. One of the reason's I will not be voting for Obama is that I feel that he is to much of a pussy to go to war. Now we shouldn't be invading other countries, but sometimes brute force is necessary.
2)afraid of success (many liberal programs make success seem like a bad thing. make more money? pay more taxes! Another short-coming of this is that businesses will high-tail it out of the US as their taxes increase and that will mean less jobs for US citizens). #2 reason I will not be voting for Obama.
3) afraid of the truth. Most journalists and newspapers in the united states have a liberal democratic slant (and slashdot). Republicans have only a few (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh,etc). I constantly hear my liberal friends bitch about how fox news should be taken off the air. Obama, if elected, is also going to bring back the fairness doctrine. #3 reason I will not be voting for Obama.
The basis for this article was so fucking slanted to the left, it makes me sick.
"How many teenagers are looking forward to compiling their own Grand Theft Auto? (And they say teenagers are lazy.) Not having the source code does very little to prevent theft of intellectual property by the end user, and in a way encourages theft by commercial interests since the code they steal is obfuscated. If company A published their source code, and Company B published their source code, it would be a heck of a lot easier to see anything copied from A to B."
encourages theft? If there is no source-code released in the first place, how is company B going to get anything from company A?
If I was company A, why would I bother creating a new feature for my product if it could be immediately copied by company B. Your plan for intellectual property would lead to a few large companies, with more money and resources, cherry-picking all of the ideas from smaller companies and most likely putting them out of business (because they don't have the same amount of money or resources).
"They won't sell their product in the United States because they are forced to place a value on it? Because it wouldn't make any difference where the product was created. If auto companies were obligated to declare the value of their cars in Japan, you wouldn't see "To hell with you, Japan, we'll just sell them somewhere else."
Any tax a company would have to pay on software/intellectual property will go directly to the consumer. This would mean higher costs for anything copyright related.
"If our current laws are encouraging software as a service, how would it be any different?"
Microsoft and other companies are slowly trying this out as more and more people get broadband. We would see service-based apps popping up at a much faster rate.
"And stop selling that work where these laws are in place? A hundred percent of nothing doesn't help the balance sheet."
Many companies don't sell software (or anything IP related) in China or Russia because they don't abide by US copyright laws. I could see the same thing happening in the US if it becomes difficult to make any kind of profit here.
"And you get $1001 dollars. Yep."
This would destroy the software industry.
(a company as big as Microsoft already has billions in the bank and can easily pay all taxes for their software).
They would just need to follow these steps:
step 1: find new products and software that have been valued that could compete with MS products step 2: buy them and make them Public domain step 3: (since it is now public domain), take parts and integrate into new MS products. Unlike the GNU license, which requires the copyright law to even be effective, they wouldn't be required to share any of their source. step 4: sell new product with newly "found" ideas or features step 5: original company no longer has product and microsoft gets new features for cheap step 6: goto step 1
IP value also can go up over time. As an example, a company just starting out might not be able to afford taxes on a million dollars, so they value their software at $10,000. If they start getting millions of dollars in sales over the course of a year, is it still worth $10,000? A competitor could just buy it for $10,001 and put them out of business even though it is clearly worth more than that amount.
Copyright laws are in place to not only protect large companies..but smaller ones that are just starting out.
and I would agree with the tax issue if all other taxes were reduced to 10% for any company selling anything requiring copyrights or IP.
Not really. I see lots of open source contribution as more likely to leak commercial code into open source projects.
Also, with the FSF going after all of these companies in court over GPL violations, why would I want to take a risk on a programmer that might "accidentally" add GPLd code in our codebase and risk the entire company's IP.
Slashdot Mirror
"This is the last chance for America to prove it's not totally made up of braindead, religious, nutbag trailer trash. If the GOP steals this one, too..I'm moving to Canada."
Funny you say that when here is a list of people that support obama:
-Paris hilton
-Britney spears
-Hugo Chavez
A shining example of intelligence and freedom.
I don't think we want you in america anyway..we will be happy to see you go.
"Certainly he is a reluctant hero."
It actually just shows the mind-set of the people from the left.
Breaking the law = okay, as long as it is against the democratic party...which is scary if that same idea is applied to more situations..
"By pirating it, I'm attempting to determine its worth."
Most software has 30 day trials..but software is still pirated. You can hear most albums before you purchase them..but music is still pirated.
"If I determine that it is worth the asking price, I purchase it."
and if not, do you still use it? also, if you feel a $50 adobe product is worth $30, will you send them a check? Your reasoning only seems to work in one direction.
"If I don't purchase it, by this policy, I am proving its lack of worth."
If you don't purchase it and don't pirate it..you are proving it's lack of worth. You can also prove it's worth by looking at the number of seeders on the pirate bay..most people will delete things they aren't using.
And why is it that albums, movies, and software that are really good are still pirated?
Hell, to further show that you point is complete and utter shit, the last harry potter book was scanned in as a pdf and pirated all over the internet. I don't think you can deny that it is worth the cost.
It has nothing to do with your arguments, it has more to do with greedy, selfish people not wanting to spend their hard-earned money on a product. I just wish you would admit that it is wrong and stop trying to justify it.
"That's how the free market works. If you charge too much and people won't pay what you are asking, then you lower your price or go out of business."
What you don't realize is that when you pirate movies and music you are actually keeping costs at ridiculously high rates. The reason is because in a truly free market, people would not pirate movies/software and they wouldn't buy them either (because the costs are too high). The RIAA/MPAA would realize they can't make a profit and lower costs.
But, because of sites like thepiratebay and the people downloading all of their content for free, they will never know if it's because the cost is too high (if you are presented with a new convertible for $200,000 and the exact same one for free..which one will you pick?) or because naturally, people are just choosing the free alternative. So, the only real solution from their perspective is to keep the costs the same and increase protections.
If the pirate bay was an independent record label, it might be a different story. But this would be much more difficult..and they like taking the cheap and easy way out (like most thieves).
"Only markets, where the price is fixed through conspiracy of the sellers, is this not true. (i.e. Gas, Movies, Music, etc)"
If you don't like gas at $4, do you take it form the station anyway? If movie tickets are too expensive, do you say fuck you to the theater and sneak in anyway? Why is it the same with software and music?
"But it's not up to the CUSTOMER to provide the product with a perception of value. That's the responsibility of the seller. If the seller fails at that task, the customer won't pay what the seller is asking for that product"
What you are talking about is a customer not wanting to pay the price and going elsewhere. What is actually happening is that the customer doesn't want to pay the price and they get it for free anyway.
"the seller might need to dress it up or do differential pricing -- STARTING at "free". (Witness the success of the recent NIN marketing experiment.)"
You forgot to mention the experiment that trent reznor tried earlier with his friend saul williams . Most people did not pay and he couldn't even cover the production costs. Sadly, this is what will happen when most people try this.
Something else interesting about his experiment:
He made $750,000 on a $300 deluxe package. He didn't have to sell as many copies as a regular album (12X as less) and I would imagine that most people that bought it at $300 wouldn't want to pirate it. I guess what we have learned from this experiment is that as an artist, you should charge $300 for you stuff. You won't have to sell nearly as many copies.
"The media cartels are doing the same thing."
Nice story, but if you also added that thugs came in and stole the guy's merchandise and gave it out for free, it might be closer to what's happening to IP on p2p sites.
Real competition would be artists leaving the record companies and setting up shop independently on the Internet.
"What you say would be true, were it not for the fact that the free newspapers have a successful business model. I'd assumed that point was obvious - otherwise why would they undertake the costs of compiling, printing and distributing them?"
Free newspapers are worthless and they get a large amount of people to actually see it (because it's free). They make money on the direct sale of advertising. Without this advertising, they could not afford to give it out for free.
It might be the same with p2p sites, if they gave all software companies free advertising. But this just isn't the case.
"Incidentally, your point about counterfeiting shows you may not have RTFA, which points out that it's far from clear if counterfeiting actually harms economies in the long run anyway."
Then you (and the person that wrote the article) haven't taken an economics class.
If you start dumping fake money into the economy..do you know what happens? The value of the dollar slowly starts to decrease.
It's known as........inflation.
From a software perspective..the same thing happens. More and more value the software at $0 and less people are going to pay for it.
"If you read the newspaper (you know, all of them) you can run for Vice President [wikipedia.org]. Even better, if you can't read you can run for President [wikipedia.org]."
and if you read socialist monthly, you can run as the first african american president.
"what part of Deliberate, open, and peaceful violation of particular laws, decrees, regulations, military or police orders, or other governmental directives are you having trouble understanding?"
well, real civil disobedience might actually get the RIAA to listen. We can see that all the pirating in the world only causes companies to create larger, and more complicated locks.
"You're wrong, if you read free culture it provides more then enough evidence to show that equating every pirated instance to a lost sale is not true."
If you read Forbes magazine, it shows data that proves otherwise.
"Probably for the same reason as I read the crappy free daily news sheets they hand out on the subway: they're free, they pass some time, and if they bore me I can throw them over my shoulder without a second thought. Nothing lost, nothing gained.
Oh, and nobody loses a sale :-)"
Copyright infringement/piracy is more like counterfeiting than stealing. :-)
They may not lose a direct sale, but over time, the original owner trying to sell the song/software, etc..will lose money. In people's minds, it's worthless...which is exactly what you have just proven with your statements.
"By pirating it, I am avoiding purchasing it."
but, you are proving it's worth. If you didn't purchase or pirate it, you might have an actual argument.
"producing something for $1 m total cost, and then trying to sell it for $10 bucks to millions while having $0.01 distribution costs (thats cd distribution costs actually. not even online) per item and trying to make at least 10 times the profit whilst having a total control of the market is not something we consumers like. your price should be comparable with your cost. you should NOT fuck us under the guise of selling stuff."
so...$1 million per copy then?
and who are you to say how much someone can charge for something?
"Because civil disobedience is an excellent way to show your disapproval of bad business models."
No.
This is not even close to civil disobedience. Civil disobedience would be convincing others not to buy music by the RIAA (and not download it)..which might actually get the record industry to lower prices. Now, they will just create more DRM-like protections.
It's all about getting stuff for free. I have been around pirated software and music on the internet for at least 10 years now...and there hasn't been any group that has proven otherwise.
"I'm going to do a little work on something and then just sit on my arse earning royalties in perpetuity whilst those lowly peons work hard every day and only get paid once for it." Very ethical."
They may be getting royalties, but the recipients of that work are getting enjoyment/use out of it...which is why it costs money each time.
Also, movies and software take thousands of man-hours to create. The only reason they aren't $1,000,000 per copy is because of the fact that it can be re-sold many times over for a small price.
"Carter was the USA's last good President."
If Obama becomes president and fucks up the United States beyond all recognition, I hope people like you take the credit for voting him into office.
"Remember? He was the guy who was smart enough to warn you about peak oil back in the 70s and tell you some uncomfortable truths you didn't want to hear."
You mean the guy that decided "windfall taxes" were a good thing and actually increased the price of oil in the United States?
"You would not state such nonsense if you knew what a Socialist and a Marxist is."
I decided to look them up for you:
Socialist: "an advocate or supporter of socialism."
Socialism (my favorite definition): "the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles."
"Very few people in Europe are taxed to the levels you mention, certainly taxes are higher, but it seems that many countries in Europe are better educated, healthier and happier than people in the US,"
Prove it to me. I personally know people that live in France that have to pay 65% of their paycheck to the government.
you are so un-informed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_France
"The European Union Value Added Tax (TVA) (sales-tax): 48% of tax revenue;
The income tax (impÃt sur le revenu): 16% of tax revenue;
The tax on corporations: 12% of tax revenue;
The tax on petrol and fuels (TIPP, taxe intérieure sur les produits pétroliers): 6%
"
Notice, VAT is pretty much in all of Europe, not just France. How the fuck else are all those social programs going to get paid for?
"As for your assertions regarding terrorists and dictators, you are pulling that from your ass."
Oh no?
Fidel Castro backs Obamas:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/2039018/Barack-Obama-gets-Fidel-Castro's-support.html
"so why the love for obama?"
It's because he's a socialist and a marxist. Which pretty much describes the type of government in most of the nations in europe, where taxes are > 50%.
Obama isn't about change, he's about bringing back nearly all the ideas from our beloved ex-president.....Jimmy Carter.
A better question is why do terrorists and actual evil dictators love Obama? It's a question nobody seems to want to know the answer to.
"You realize the irony of this statement, right? Taken out if its anti-TPB rant, it quite easily applies to the Recording industry distributors. In fact, it almost better applies to them because TPB's so-called profits and effect on music sales are pretty questionable. Whereas the coercive and immoral contracts of the music distributors are widely accepted facts. "
so-called profits?
This article says otherwise:
http://rixstep.com/1/20060708,00.shtml
If you google it, the guys that run TPB have stated that they have made similar amounts over the years. However, I'm not sure how much bandwidth costs.
It's also an accepted fact that before you sign a contract, you need to read the fine-print.
"Intellectual Property" laws have become tools of oppression and exploitation. It should not be surprising that people are resisting them, even if such resistance has ulterior self-serving motive."
I know, because you are sooooooooooo oppressed when you can't download half-life for free or the latest metallica album.
When there is a good reason to violate copyright law besides a thinly veiled argument for getting free shit...people might actually start to listen. Otherwise it will only mean more DRM like protection schemes.
"I'm terrified, really. You're almost certainly right: in a matter of days, all the software that anyone will ever need will be on sourceforge for free and no company will ever need developers again."
I never said that. You are not looking at the big picture.
All software won't be on sourceforge, but, many of the things most businesses need will be there. There will still be a need for developers to work on this source-code. But, business owners will realize that they won't have to pay a software engineer $80,000 a year, when they can get the engineered part for free and just hire a software mechanic for $10/hour to make changes.
I have already seen this happen. My company would have had to hire 3 or 4 developers, but because we based everything on open source, they only had to hire me.
So, many of the same people that are software engineers and are giving out their code in the form of open source projects might just see themselves out of a job in the future when their future employer just gets it for free.
"Meaning, that even if all software was open source tomorrow, those people would still have jobs developing software."
There will most likely be jobs developing software in the future. But, as open source becomes more prevalent, these jobs will start to become low-paying "code monkey" jobs. Why pay someone a huge wage to engineer a large piece of software when you can get the base code for free and make changes to it? (and the changes can be done by less-experienced programmers).
Developers need to understand that they may be putting themselves out of a job in the future by contributing to open source.
"The republicans tend to push for more government, laws and war and the democrats push for less."
no, both push for more laws and government..just in different directions.
"It's truly a beautiful democratic balance. The problems occur when people like Bush and his IN-GROUP go outside the law and take control in a dishonorable fashion. Be aware this isn't a fault of democracy (our system is very good), but of evil forces working to undue democracy. WE MUST RESIST OPPRESSION"
and HOW did bush go "outside the law and take control in a dishonorable fashion"?
It's funny, the democrats always say that bush is a moron..but then talk about how he planned the war so him and his buddies could make money on it..which is obviously not the work of someone with little intelligence. They really need to make up their minds...
"You can equate that to fear in terms of self-preservation...not that I'm itching to die for any cause, but I feel I'm less important than the whole. Many republicans I know don't even consider the whole...it's about Sunday dinner, spending time with the kids, etc."
Republicans I know DO think about the community as a whole. Take universal health care as an example. Most republicans are against it because they know that it is a broken system and as a whole, will make it more difficult for people in the community to get the care that they need.
To me, Democrats are the ones in fear.
1)Afraid to defend our freedom. When push comes to shove, freedom needs to be defended. One of the reason's I will not be voting for Obama is that I feel that he is to much of a pussy to go to war. Now we shouldn't be invading other countries, but sometimes brute force is necessary.
2)afraid of success (many liberal programs make success seem like a bad thing. make more money? pay more taxes! Another short-coming of this is that businesses will high-tail it out of the US as their taxes increase and that will mean less jobs for US citizens). #2 reason I will not be voting for Obama.
3) afraid of the truth. Most journalists and newspapers in the united states have a liberal democratic slant (and slashdot). Republicans have only a few (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh,etc). I constantly hear my liberal friends bitch about how fox news should be taken off the air. Obama, if elected, is also going to bring back the fairness doctrine. #3 reason I will not be voting for Obama.
The basis for this article was so fucking slanted to the left, it makes me sick.
"How many teenagers are looking forward to compiling their own Grand Theft Auto? (And they say teenagers are lazy.) Not having the source code does very little to prevent theft of intellectual property by the end user, and in a way encourages theft by commercial interests since the code they steal is obfuscated. If company A published their source code, and Company B published their source code, it would be a heck of a lot easier to see anything copied from A to B."
encourages theft? If there is no source-code released in the first place, how is company B going to get anything from company A?
If I was company A, why would I bother creating a new feature for my product if it could be immediately copied by company B. Your plan for intellectual property would lead to a few large companies, with more money and resources, cherry-picking all of the ideas from smaller companies and most likely putting them out of business (because they don't have the same amount of money or resources).
"They won't sell their product in the United States because they are forced to place a value on it? Because it wouldn't make any difference where the product was created. If auto companies were obligated to declare the value of their cars in Japan, you wouldn't see "To hell with you, Japan, we'll just sell them somewhere else."
Any tax a company would have to pay on software/intellectual property will go directly to the consumer. This would mean higher costs for anything copyright related.
"If our current laws are encouraging software as a service, how would it be any different?"
Microsoft and other companies are slowly trying this out as more and more people get broadband. We would see service-based apps popping up at a much faster rate.
"And stop selling that work where these laws are in place? A hundred percent of nothing doesn't help the balance sheet."
Many companies don't sell software (or anything IP related) in China or Russia because they don't abide by US copyright laws. I could see the same thing happening in the US if it becomes difficult to make any kind of profit here.
"And you get $1001 dollars. Yep."
This would destroy the software industry.
(a company as big as Microsoft already has billions in the bank and can easily pay all taxes for their software).
They would just need to follow these steps:
step 1: find new products and software that have been valued that could compete with MS products
step 2: buy them and make them Public domain
step 3: (since it is now public domain), take parts and integrate into new MS products. Unlike the GNU license, which requires the copyright law to even be effective, they wouldn't be required to share any of their source.
step 4: sell new product with newly "found" ideas or features
step 5: original company no longer has product and microsoft gets new features for cheap
step 6: goto step 1
IP value also can go up over time. As an example, a company just starting out might not be able to afford taxes on a million dollars, so they value their software at $10,000. If they start getting millions of dollars in sales over the course of a year, is it still worth $10,000? A competitor could just buy it for $10,001 and put them out of business even though it is clearly worth more than that amount.
Copyright laws are in place to not only protect large companies..but smaller ones that are just starting out.
and I would agree with the tax issue if all other taxes were reduced to 10% for any company selling anything requiring copyrights or IP.
Your ideas sound as ridiculous as carbon credits.
"only if the office PHB is not a moron."
Not really. I see lots of open source contribution as more likely to leak commercial code into open source projects.
Also, with the FSF going after all of these companies in court over GPL violations, why would I want to take a risk on a programmer that might "accidentally" add GPLd code in our codebase and risk the entire company's IP.