"Of course there can, and that's exactly what is happening. There is too much venture capital out there and few good places to invest it. There is a recession because oil and other commodities have cut into corporate profits and a bubble because billions of VC funding is available, due to GWB's tax cuts for the rich"
Are you "rich" or are you just speculating on the tax cuts. People making > $100,000 have to pay between 30-50% in taxes. This isn't fair for people that actually want to make money.
"A recession and a bubble at the same time? Of course. When oil and bank corps, and the people who own & run them are bathing in record profits (above the records set every year for the past decade and a half, above the records set every year except maybe one or two of every twenty for the past few centuries), but literally millions of people are getting their homes foreclosed, millions more are always 6 weeks paychecks from losing their homes, income has shrunk over the past 25 years while prices have doubled, tripled or more (especially oil/gas prices and bank fees)..."
and why is this? millions of people took on a loan they couldn't handle. It has to do with the fact that many banks were forced to give out loans (by the government) to people that they knew were not making enough to pay it back.
What the fuck did you expect would happen?
It reminds me of the Internet bust in the 90s. VCs invested millions in companies that had terrible business models..and the companies eventually went under when they weren't making a profit the next year.
"Of course there's a recession and a bubble possible. Where do you think that bubble money comes from? And do you think that when it pops, everyone loses their shirt? Or maybe the rich people who run the country (*cough* Bear Stearns *cough*) will never see any real risk, while the poor are as free as the rich to sleep under a bridge.
The biggest lie about "the economy" is that it's "the" economy. There are separate economies for the rich and everyone else, shunted and fed back into each other separately. Except the rich economy has a siphon into the other economy."
Why does it always come down to rich against poor? I saw a study a couple of months ago and 90% of all people that are making a million or more a year or more started out making nothing or a regular wage. The other 10% are people that have rich families, etc.
Most people that are rich have earned it (of course there are exceptions) through hard work and dedication that the majority of the population just aren't willing to go through. Many people like you would just rather bitch about it..while not doing anything to better themselves.
"The way to combat is is not to create DRM. That only makes annoyed. It's like trying to enact legislation against or beat people who use cloth buttons [weblogsinc.com]. The solution is to realize that the data is a non-scarce good."
1's and 0's are not scarce, but the arrangement of them that makes them a good (worth watching, listening, or using) mp3, movie, or software application are. Otherwise, there would be no money in selling a software application such as photoshop (because anyone could create it. But since anyone can't, there is a market). That would be like saying that the mona lisa isn't a unique work because of the paint that was used.
"trying to artificially make it so is only calling the grass purple. The fact remains that it's green. What you monetize on is the time, services and other actually scarce goods."
You mean the time it takes to create a song or the service of actually singing it and trying to make an actual living by selling the mp3 (which is scarce)?
"Use the free music to gain listeners who will pay to see your shows or buy things relating to your band. Use your free software to sell your reputation to companies that will hire you to make the software work like they want it to, or to support it. Whatever."
It should be up to the person that creates the art or music to decide this. Not you.
"The money's there if you want to work for it. What's not there is the gravy train of artificial scarcity. If you want to keep eating, you have to keep working. Imagine that... being just like everyone else."
Most of the time it takes years for an artist to create something worth selling and if they choose, they should be able to earn money from it. If it really doesn't have a market value, the artist won't make money.
I hear a hint of jealousy here. It's very easy in life to sit back, go to your job, and get paid. It's not easy to take a risk at something and try to make a living with it.
"What is it you say, you aren't spending any money reading the comments on slashdot? Shame on you. You should buy a subscription, you leech!"
Now you are just trolling. Slashdot is paid for by the advertisements. If there was a paid section and I had an account that I had gotten for free (1 person paid and gave it to all of his friends) then, I would be a leech.
"A person may have worked very hard on the song, but the organization worked very hard to screw them over. Artists aren't kids, but they aren't lawyers either. Artists (especially new ones) are taken advantage of more times than not in the contracts."
It's called business and it happens every day. As a freelance programmer, If I got a contract for a 1000 hour project at $5/Hour, I would refuse it and find something better (or negociate). A good artist also has these options. A quick run-down of a contract from a lawyer doesn't cost that much either. Most of the big name artists aren't complaining about their contracts (and large amounts of money and publicity that it provides them).
"Also note that music and movies are part of our culture. We want to participate in the culture, but only when we feel there's a fair exchange going on. Just because the media is available for a price does NOT mean that it's a reasonable price. People will pay what they feel is reasonable, when they feel they're getting benefit for their money. Fix DRM, fix asinine "copyright" lawsuits that actually have no basis in copyright law, give people a decent value for their money, and they'll pay you. If you act as if you deserve something simply because you're an artist, or try to artificially limit people's abilities, they will resent you for it. Stop acting as if people are consumers and pockets to take money from, realize that they're customers and people to be catered to, and you'll start succeeding."
Downloading may have an effect, but only in the following way: more people are downloading, less people are buying, they are losing money and have to change their strategy. It's a means to the end that you want, which is lower prices for music. The only problem with this strategy is that it's not real competition. Real competition would mean that the industry has to compete with some other company other entity in terms of quality or content. Since just being free provides neither, the only way to combat it is to start creating defense mechanisms (IE: DRM).
The Internet has made it tougher for the industry in other ways. It's easy for an artist to put up a myspace page and get free publicity and possibly start selling music without a contract (That is of course if it's not shared on p2p networks). Even if music is great, most people would rather get it for free than pay for it (this works for about anything). If I could get a 72" plasma monitor for free rather than pay $5000, I would.
You seem to have this idea that it is somehow your right and part of "culture" to get music,movies (and I assume software) for free, which is complete and utter bullshit.
"they're not satisfied with having the best year of their existance, they're not satisfied with making a plus when the economy as a whole is struggling to avoid that big bad word that starts with an r and ends in cession. they want to have more than they already have. And they see some way to make more (i.e. crack down on those that copy), so they try to get rid of them. If they found a way to make you pay for every time you watch that movie, they would gladly do so."
I want more than I already have..it's called having ambition. As long as it's legal, I should be able to make a billion dollars and not have to give a fucking penny of it to anyone else because they feel that I'm making too much.
The copyright infringers of the world always have excuses as to why they want they don't want to spend their money.
1) It's too expensive
-netflix and blockbuster have unlimited accounts. You can rent DVDS for as low as $8/month and get movies when they are released.
-music can be downloaded for as little as $1/song on itunes
2) It's our right
-just as big companies trampling on the GNU isn't their right..neither is copyright infringement yours.
3) It's all about the rights' of the artists
-Artists aren't little kids. They know full well that by signing a contract with a recording studio, they are giving away creative rights in exchange for a paycheck.
-Software publishing houses typically will take 70% of the profits in exchange for marketing you product. Why aren't the same people up-in-arms about this? Or what about book publishing deals? Is it only valid when it stops you from getting free shit on the Internet?
If you don't want to spend the money on a movie or song a company or person worked very hard to create, don't download it for free either.
"You're right. It's a boring cliché, but so is religion. And as long as someone keeps claiming that evolution is a myth I'll keep poking fun at them, even if it's not fun for you. Looking at the mod-points there's at least one person who thought it was funny and one who found it "Interesting" which is interesting in itself.:-)"
The existence of god can neither be proven or dis-proven.
And we may have evolved as humans, but how was the system that allows us to evolve created? Hell, even our own DNA is more of an intelligent design than any technology humans have created to date.:-)
"My point is that you have research and implementation time with both. Unless the problem is so well explored that there's one obvious proprietary solution, you'll probably have to evaluate several different products regardless of whether you choose proprietary or free software."
True, but many times, free software requires lots of extra time for configuration/sometimes compiling, finding fixes for bugs, etc.
"How much of that is due to competition being shut out by patents and copyrights?"
none. I was going to use a open source mail server only to find out that all of them are pieces of shit. I ended up using a proprietary one that is much better in terms of features and support.
"Well, I'm an economics expert, maybe the best in the world on this topic. The underlying incentive for all creation is not "money" but the the results (value) that the creation imparts (yes, this is economic wealth, a form of "money").People will only develop code for others because others have a need for the results that code can give them. This means removing copyright/patent monopoly alleged incentive does not in the slightest remove the incentive for wanting the results the code can give. Just like not monopoly limiting the business of cutting hair through patent or copyright does not remove the incentive for people to pay for getting hair cuts."
The best in the world? That's a bold statement..don't you think? If there was not a want, there wouldn't be a market, and thus, no money. This much is obvious.
You are right. The incentive will always be there, but patents and copyrights do protect your work.
If we had no patents or copyrights, you could spend years developing something only to have another larger company with more money take your idea, resell it, and leave you out of the picture. Eventually, we would be left with a few large companies poaching all of the smaller ones that had no money or resources. Businesses would adapt and most likely create their own protections.
I hope I see a day where copyrights and patents are gone (and I hope I have lots of money), because it will be very easy to become a powerhouse in any industry.
"That government interference is only creating artificial scarcity, higher prices, and a net slower rate of technological innovation for society (which, compounding through time, results in a vastly net poorer society than would otherwise be the case)."
okay, so how is a company selling an exact copy of a product under the same name using cheaper quality parts slowing innovation? Money and business have both driven our technological advancement and it is faster and better than ever.
"With proprietary apps, you typically have to look to find someone to pay for a solution that you might just be able to find free online with OSS"
That's just it. You can, but companies don't care. Time is more important than money in most companies (beyond very small ones). If a company can have a solution in a month with windows that costs more or a solution in 3 months with OSS, they will choose the former. In my experience, the inital cost with OSS is less, but the man-hours involved is almost always more.
"Similarly here, forcing someone to pay for an operating system may seem to create jobs for OS makers, but it's really just draining money from other parts of the economy. A business that saves money because of free software can spend that money on more employees, raw materials, etc."
Companies don't care about the cost of the actual software, they care about the time that it saves them. With OSS, you typically have to look online to find solutions to problems that you might be able to just pay someone to give you with a proprietary app.
"Even the biggest slouches that freeload absolutely everything can be harnessed as raters of quality merely by market based evaluation of clicks and content usage. Corporate proprietary closed source won't be able to compete with open source voluntary collaboration."
This isn't true. In the past couple of months, I have passed over OSS projects for their proprietary counterparts. Mainly because of features and usability. I see some open source projects that are in the equivalent of the digital stone age. It took linux 10 years as a desktop operating system to get to the level of usability of windows or mac.
You are forgetting an import part of the equation: human nature. Without an incentive, nothing will get completed (one can look at all the abandoned projects in sourceforge or freshmeat for a good example of this). Money is the prime motivating factor.
Look at the Internet as a whole. Businesses brought it into nearly every home in the world over the past 20 years or so. Before that, it was just a tool of academia.
"Give me an open source collaboration including the brightest scientific minds, and we can have effective human immortality in twenty years, renewable 1,000 year life spans. Copyright and patent are the only things in the way from that occurring."
any great open source collaboration has great funding by large corporations. Copyright and patents are good ideas, we just need to update the current system.
At my current job, we have a patented product (that is very unique..and non-software related). About 3 months ago, a wholesale client of ours decides to get an exact duplicate of our product manufactured in china and start selling it as his own product. Without the current system, we would not be able to get this guy shutdown.
"That can be paid by robots that produce all the necessities of life, such as robots that plant seeds and farm crops, robots that harvest cotton, and produce clothing, robots that grow trees (harnessing and massively speeding up the process of DNA replication, such that trees can be grown from seed to red oak size in a minute, and then build you a house. The labor of past generations that invent replicator technology, internet copying is just the first step, will forever pay for your leisure time, during which you can develop content because you enjoy developing content, or you can just freeload all the content as a lazy slug that harms nobody."
A robot bulding a house might be possible. You can give it a defined set of instructions to do so. A robot developing a software app is different. You could give it a defined set of instructions, but that's called being a developer. Robots will not have this type of creativity and intelligence until they are almost human..which I don't see happening for at least a hundred years.
Let's talk the present...where my point still stands. Software is not free. It either takes time or money (choose your currency).
"The linux billionaires are those who _use_ linux and save money"
so, the developers get shafted and the people that use it for free save money. I think the original poster was talking about a company that sells linux as its main product (Not someone that uses it for free).
"The purpose of the economy isn't about 'making money'. The purpose of the free market economy is to maximize the creation of wealth by encouraging competition in overcharging sectors and constantly lowering the costs of production. When the cost of production reaches zero we've all won; we've got infinite wealth."
The cost of software production will never be 0. Unless I can push a button and create large and complex pieces of software in a second (IE: not copying, but actually creating) there is a time cost associated with software development.
proprietary software has a cost associated too. The cost of the developers. This is equivalent to the physical cost of an item for other non-digital types of businesses. Eventually, when everyone has high-speed internet access, most proprietary software will just be a service. That way, there's no chance for piracy.
"You are basically saying that movies like "Lord of the Rings" or "The Godfather" are worthless since they have been copied so many times."
No. I'm saying that if everyone could easily get a copy of the lord of the rings DVD for free, the perceived value of that particular DVD would be almost nothing. This applies to any digital goods/something that can easily be copied over the Internet.
"When you are talking about value, what you are actually referring to is price (an easy mistake to make). Price is a mix of cost of production, supply & demand and various other things such as monopoly rights and goverment regulations."
No, im talking about value. You even mentioned it below, which is exactly what I am referring to: "Value (which is the basis of wealth) is about the perception of those who consume the service/goods.".
"People won't value a movie less just because it has been copied many times. They may however not be willing to pay as much if it is easy accessible. The best example to demonstrate this is air. Air is very valuable as you would die without it. It does however have a price of zero, since it is easily accessible anywhere. (clean air is another matter though)"
See above. It applies more to software than music or movies, but the idea is the same.
"While copying doesn't decrease the value of the work itself, it can decrease the value of other works. If you have the ability to get copies of a 1000 masterpiece songs, the value of each song will go down slightly, simply because you won't have time to enjoy them all. Fortunally, this decrease in value is far less than the increase in value of having all that music availible to you. Also, the decrease in value is mostly limited to the songs you like the least. The favorite songs keep their value even if you get access to other songs."
Many new and independent artists these days only release their songs as an mp3 (or in some other digital format). As an example, if an artist sold their mp3s for 99 cents each, but it got shared and copied enough times on a p2p network, most people would not be willing to pay for it (because they can get it for free). This would devalue the mp3 to almost 0.
"The reason software companies try to prevent piracy is simple. It is profitable to have a monopoly on distribution. I never claimed otherwise."
This is true. But what many people don't realize is the fact that the value of the software includes the time and effort that went into that software (not just the cost of distribution..which might be very little). Eventually, everyone will have a faster internet connection and software companies will only release their products as services (no sourcecode = no pirating). The other alternative is to charge $30,000 per copy (or however much it costs for R&D+a profit)...and the person that buys it will not be willing to give out free copies because of all the money they spent on it.
"Copying however is extremly productive. That is the real differencce between copying and stealing. Copying creates wealth, while stealing doesn't."
copying does NOT create wealth. It is actually closer to counterfeiting than stealing. The more something is copied, the less value it has over time (because it starts to have a perceived value that approaches $0). This is why software companies try so hard to prevent piracy.
"Without copyright laws, selling software would be rather pointless, closed-source or not. So there simply wouldn't be any binaries without source."
actually, software would either move to all service based (most likely) or the price would go very high per app (since there would be no way to protect software or prevent sharing, each application would sell for the total cost of R&D).
"I do. RMS himself stated that, were there no copyright, there would simply be no need for GPL."
There would still be a need for the GPL. Companies could still take the source, make additions, and release the binaries with no copyright laws. The end user could copy the binary with no legal implications, but they would not be able to learn from the source. Isn't this the point of the GPL? to learn? and even if there were no copyright laws, commercial software vendors would move their products online (software as a service).
"Selling air would be more viable too if people were "honest" and would buy it even though they could get it for free. But they don't, and it's not. It's not any more bad or unfair than the fact that water is wet."
All companies violating the GPL are fair too then..right? I say it's not a viable license anymore because I can just close the source and release it without giving back to the community. However, The zealots disagree with me. I don't think we should protect it in the US court system. Why protect a dying licensing model?
"We shouldn't deliberately protect their business model at any cost. Noone is restricting their choices on purpose. If it happens that the model they choose is non-viable, too bad for them."
The same laws that protect the musicians also protect licenses like the GPL. You should remember this. Also, the model is only non-viable because of dishonest users giving out their music for free. It would be viable without a label, if people were a little more honest about purchasing music.
"This is a crock. Many, if not most of the bands out there are not making any profits off the labels so nothing will change on that front. Also, not every band out there does it for the money. Many do it for *GASP* the music or *GASP* the recognition for the real money maker, concerts. In the days before big mega media corps, many bands released their music to their local radio stations for this recognition. When was the last time you heard one on your local radio? Maybe it's time to break up the stranglehold the labels have on the media market. Maybe it is time the labels cartel was broken up starting with the RIAA itself."
don't you think we should *GASP* give the musicians a choice? Also, when you don't make shit from concerts unless you are signed with a label.
"Nah; the copyright system should be abolished because it leads to our current mess in which a few giant companies use it to deprive the artists of their rightful income. We should toss such copyright laws, and devise a revised scheme that guarantees that the artists get most of the money."
The system already exists..it's called an education in copyright law. If you, as an artists, sign your rights away to get famous..you shouldn't complain when a huge company owns your work.
An artist doesn't have to sign with a big company..they can sell their music online...if the kiddies aren't going to pirate it (which may be another reason why they will continue to sign..because they can't make a living on their own due to piracy).
"I was nearly crucified when I suggested my boss to recode a piece of an application in C so it scales better than the current shitty VB COM version. He just looked through me and said: add another server! Lot of today's code is written by people who don't even understand how the code is getting executed"
Was it more cost effective to have a programmer recode it in C (which includes the required maintenance) or use the less optimal but easier to maintain VB COM? I'm all for using C over C#, Java, and VB, but sometimes you need to look at the situation from a business standpoint.
"It's time to stamp out the myth that "without copyright, nothing creative would ever be produced." It wasn't true in the past, it won't be true in the future. The only thing that won't be produced is fat-cat middlemen who think music isn't something to be ENJOYED, it's merely something to be bought and sold!"
This scenario explains why we need copyright to some degree:
J.K. Rowling creates the first Harry Potter book and an already established company (with more money and resources) starts writing additional Harry potter books, not giving the original author credit.
Hell, with no copyright law, the publishing company could even start selling it as their own (before rowling had a chance to make any money).
also, it wasn't true in the past because it was very difficult to re-produce a book (before the printing press). It may be hard for you to believe, but the copyright law was created for a reason.
"Right now, I'm having to accomplish time-shifting of talk radio via a thumb drive and an FM-broadcasting MP3 player. I'd rather have the convenience of an in-dash Tivo-style device that did it for me. No, it's not something that couldn't be copied by terrestial and Internet radio, but satellite radio could be first."
XM has had this for at least a couple of years. It's called the inno
You can time-shift all XM programming, it's portable and you can set it up in your car.
Money corrupts any profession where the motivation to do a particular thing, and do it well for it's own sake is displaced by a crass fixation on money. It doesn't really work in ANY job. Some jobs are just more tolerant of the crappy output generated by people who really don't want to be there. Creative occupations are not tolerant of that crassness.
most people want to make as much money as possible. If you don't believe this, you are delusional. Passion and good work need to be there as well, but money is definitely a motivating factor.
Artists that are making more money have time to make more music and can play more gigs (since they don't have to have a shitty 9-5).
Although it's not so much about whether or not ARTISTS will be making mad money but whether or not the A&R men will be skimming most of the money straight off the top
Artists need to learn not to sign contracts that take away all of their creative rights and give them little stake in the overall profits.
Slashdot Mirror
"Of course there can, and that's exactly what is happening. There is too much venture capital out there and few good places to invest it. There is a recession because oil and other commodities have cut into corporate profits and a bubble because billions of VC funding is available, due to GWB's tax cuts for the rich"
Are you "rich" or are you just speculating on the tax cuts. People making > $100,000 have to pay between 30-50% in taxes. This isn't fair for people that actually want to make money.
The US should have a flat tax system.
"A recession and a bubble at the same time? Of course. When oil and bank corps, and the people who own & run them are bathing in record profits (above the records set every year for the past decade and a half, above the records set every year except maybe one or two of every twenty for the past few centuries), but literally millions of people are getting their homes foreclosed, millions more are always 6 weeks paychecks from losing their homes, income has shrunk over the past 25 years while prices have doubled, tripled or more (especially oil/gas prices and bank fees)..."
and why is this? millions of people took on a loan they couldn't handle. It has to do with the fact that many banks were forced to give out loans (by the government) to people that they knew were not making enough to pay it back.
What the fuck did you expect would happen?
It reminds me of the Internet bust in the 90s. VCs invested millions in companies that had terrible business models..and the companies eventually went under when they weren't making a profit the next year.
"Of course there's a recession and a bubble possible. Where do you think that bubble money comes from? And do you think that when it pops, everyone loses their shirt? Or maybe the rich people who run the country (*cough* Bear Stearns *cough*) will never see any real risk, while the poor are as free as the rich to sleep under a bridge.
The biggest lie about "the economy" is that it's "the" economy. There are separate economies for the rich and everyone else, shunted and fed back into each other separately. Except the rich economy has a siphon into the other economy."
Why does it always come down to rich against poor? I saw a study a couple of months ago and 90% of all people that are making a million or more a year or more started out making nothing or a regular wage. The other 10% are people that have rich families, etc.
Most people that are rich have earned it (of course there are exceptions) through hard work and dedication that the majority of the population just aren't willing to go through. Many people like you would just rather bitch about it..while not doing anything to better themselves.
"The way to combat is is not to create DRM. That only makes annoyed. It's like trying to enact legislation against or beat people who use cloth buttons [weblogsinc.com]. The solution is to realize that the data is a non-scarce good."
1's and 0's are not scarce, but the arrangement of them that makes them a good (worth watching, listening, or using) mp3, movie, or software application are. Otherwise, there would be no money in selling a software application such as photoshop (because anyone could create it. But since anyone can't, there is a market). That would be like saying that the mona lisa isn't a unique work because of the paint that was used.
"trying to artificially make it so is only calling the grass purple. The fact remains that it's green. What you monetize on is the time, services and other actually scarce goods."
You mean the time it takes to create a song or the service of actually singing it and trying to make an actual living by selling the mp3 (which is scarce)?
"Use the free music to gain listeners who will pay to see your shows or buy things relating to your band. Use your free software to sell your reputation to companies that will hire you to make the software work like they want it to, or to support it. Whatever."
It should be up to the person that creates the art or music to decide this. Not you.
"The money's there if you want to work for it. What's not there is the gravy train of artificial scarcity. If you want to keep eating, you have to keep working. Imagine that... being just like everyone else."
Most of the time it takes years for an artist to create something worth selling and if they choose, they should be able to earn money from it. If it really doesn't have a market value, the artist won't make money.
I hear a hint of jealousy here. It's very easy in life to sit back, go to your job, and get paid. It's not easy to take a risk at something and try to make a living with it.
"What is it you say, you aren't spending any money reading the comments on slashdot? Shame on you. You should buy a subscription, you leech!"
Now you are just trolling. Slashdot is paid for by the advertisements. If there was a paid section and I had an account that I had gotten for free (1 person paid and gave it to all of his friends) then, I would be a leech.
"A person may have worked very hard on the song, but the organization worked very hard to screw them over. Artists aren't kids, but they aren't lawyers either. Artists (especially new ones) are taken advantage of more times than not in the contracts."
It's called business and it happens every day. As a freelance programmer, If I got a contract for a 1000 hour project at $5/Hour, I would refuse it and find something better (or negociate). A good artist also has these options. A quick run-down of a contract from a lawyer doesn't cost that much either. Most of the big name artists aren't complaining about their contracts (and large amounts of money and publicity that it provides them).
"Also note that music and movies are part of our culture. We want to participate in the culture, but only when we feel there's a fair exchange going on. Just because the media is available for a price does NOT mean that it's a reasonable price. People will pay what they feel is reasonable, when they feel they're getting benefit for their money. Fix DRM, fix asinine "copyright" lawsuits that actually have no basis in copyright law, give people a decent value for their money, and they'll pay you. If you act as if you deserve something simply because you're an artist, or try to artificially limit people's abilities, they will resent you for it. Stop acting as if people are consumers and pockets to take money from, realize that they're customers and people to be catered to, and you'll start succeeding."
Downloading may have an effect, but only in the following way: more people are downloading, less people are buying, they are losing money and have to change their strategy. It's a means to the end that you want, which is lower prices for music. The only problem with this strategy is that it's not real competition. Real competition would mean that the industry has to compete with some other company other entity in terms of quality or content. Since just being free provides neither, the only way to combat it is to start creating defense mechanisms (IE: DRM).
The Internet has made it tougher for the industry in other ways. It's easy for an artist to put up a myspace page and get free publicity and possibly start selling music without a contract (That is of course if it's not shared on p2p networks). Even if music is great, most people would rather get it for free than pay for it (this works for about anything). If I could get a 72" plasma monitor for free rather than pay $5000, I would.
You seem to have this idea that it is somehow your right and part of "culture" to get music,movies (and I assume software) for free, which is complete and utter bullshit.
"they're not satisfied with having the best year of their existance, they're not satisfied with making a plus when the economy as a whole is struggling to avoid that big bad word that starts with an r and ends in cession. they want to have more than they already have. And they see some way to make more (i.e. crack down on those that copy), so they try to get rid of them. If they found a way to make you pay for every time you watch that movie, they would gladly do so."
I want more than I already have..it's called having ambition. As long as it's legal, I should be able to make a billion dollars and not have to give a fucking penny of it to anyone else because they feel that I'm making too much.
The copyright infringers of the world always have excuses as to why they want they don't want to spend their money.
1) It's too expensive
-netflix and blockbuster have unlimited accounts. You can rent DVDS for as low as $8/month and get movies when they are released.
-music can be downloaded for as little as $1/song on itunes
2) It's our right
-just as big companies trampling on the GNU isn't their right..neither is copyright infringement yours.
3) It's all about the rights' of the artists
-Artists aren't little kids. They know full well that by signing a contract with a recording studio, they are giving away creative rights in exchange for a paycheck.
-Software publishing houses typically will take 70% of the profits in exchange for marketing you product. Why aren't the same people up-in-arms about this? Or what about book publishing deals? Is it only valid when it stops you from getting free shit on the Internet?
If you don't want to spend the money on a movie or song a company or person worked very hard to create, don't download it for free either.
"You're right. It's a boring cliché, but so is religion. And as long as someone keeps claiming that evolution is a myth I'll keep poking fun at them, even if it's not fun for you. :-)"
:-)
Looking at the mod-points there's at least one person who thought it was funny and one who found it "Interesting" which is interesting in itself.
The existence of god can neither be proven or dis-proven.
And we may have evolved as humans, but how was the system that allows us to evolve created? Hell, even our own DNA is more of an intelligent design than any technology humans have created to date.
"My point is that you have research and implementation time with both. Unless the problem is so well explored that there's one obvious proprietary solution, you'll probably have to evaluate several different products regardless of whether you choose proprietary or free software."
True, but many times, free software requires lots of extra time for configuration/sometimes compiling, finding fixes for bugs, etc.
"How much of that is due to competition being shut out by patents and copyrights?"
none. I was going to use a open source mail server only to find out that all of them are pieces of shit. I ended up using a proprietary one that is much better in terms of features and support.
"Well, I'm an economics expert, maybe the best in the world on this topic. The underlying incentive for all creation is not "money" but the the results (value) that the creation imparts (yes, this is economic wealth, a form of "money").People will only develop code for others because others have a need for the results that code can give them. This means removing copyright/patent monopoly alleged incentive does not in the slightest remove the incentive for wanting the results the code can give. Just like not monopoly limiting the business of cutting hair through patent or copyright does not remove the incentive for people to pay for getting hair cuts."
The best in the world? That's a bold statement..don't you think? If there was not a want, there wouldn't be a market, and thus, no money. This much is obvious.
You are right. The incentive will always be there, but patents and copyrights do protect your work.
If we had no patents or copyrights, you could spend years developing something only to have another larger company with more money take your idea, resell it, and leave you out of the picture. Eventually, we would be left with a few large companies poaching all of the smaller ones that had no money or resources. Businesses would adapt and most likely create their own protections.
I hope I see a day where copyrights and patents are gone (and I hope I have lots of money), because it will be very easy to become a powerhouse in any industry.
"That government interference is only creating artificial scarcity, higher prices, and a net slower rate of technological innovation for society (which, compounding through time, results in a vastly net poorer society than would otherwise be the case)."
okay, so how is a company selling an exact copy of a product under the same name using cheaper quality parts slowing innovation? Money and business have both driven our technological advancement and it is faster and better than ever.
"With proprietary apps, you typically have to look to find someone to pay for a solution that you might just be able to find free online with OSS"
That's just it. You can, but companies don't care. Time is more important than money in most companies (beyond very small ones). If a company can have a solution in a month with windows that costs more or a solution in 3 months with OSS, they will choose the former. In my experience, the inital cost with OSS is less, but the man-hours involved is almost always more.
"Similarly here, forcing someone to pay for an operating system may seem to create jobs for OS makers, but it's really just draining money from other parts of the economy. A business that saves money because of free software can spend that money on more employees, raw materials, etc."
Companies don't care about the cost of the actual software, they care about the time that it saves them. With OSS, you typically have to look online to find solutions to problems that you might be able to just pay someone to give you with a proprietary app.
"Even the biggest slouches that freeload absolutely everything can be harnessed as raters of quality merely by market based evaluation of clicks and content usage. Corporate proprietary closed source won't be able to compete with open source voluntary collaboration."
This isn't true. In the past couple of months, I have passed over OSS projects for their proprietary counterparts. Mainly because of features and usability. I see some open source projects that are in the equivalent of the digital stone age. It took linux 10 years as a desktop operating system to get to the level of usability of windows or mac.
You are forgetting an import part of the equation: human nature. Without an incentive, nothing will get completed (one can look at all the abandoned projects in sourceforge or freshmeat for a good example of this). Money is the prime motivating factor.
Look at the Internet as a whole. Businesses brought it into nearly every home in the world over the past 20 years or so. Before that, it was just a tool of academia.
"Give me an open source collaboration including the brightest scientific minds, and we can have effective human immortality in twenty years, renewable 1,000 year life spans. Copyright and patent are the only things in the way from that occurring."
any great open source collaboration has great funding by large corporations. Copyright and patents are good ideas, we just need to update the current system.
At my current job, we have a patented product (that is very unique..and non-software related). About 3 months ago, a wholesale client of ours decides to get an exact duplicate of our product manufactured in china and start selling it as his own product. Without the current system, we would not be able to get this guy shutdown.
"That can be paid by robots that produce all the necessities of life, such as robots that plant seeds and farm crops, robots that harvest cotton, and produce clothing, robots that grow trees (harnessing and massively speeding up the process of DNA replication, such that trees can be grown from seed to red oak size in a minute, and then build you a house. The labor of past generations that invent replicator technology, internet copying is just the first step, will forever pay for your leisure time, during which you can develop content because you enjoy developing content, or you can just freeload all the content as a lazy slug that harms nobody."
A robot bulding a house might be possible. You can give it a defined set of instructions to do so. A robot developing a software app is different. You could give it a defined set of instructions, but that's called being a developer. Robots will not have this type of creativity and intelligence until they are almost human..which I don't see happening for at least a hundred years.
Let's talk the present...where my point still stands. Software is not free. It either takes time or money (choose your currency).
"The linux billionaires are those who _use_ linux and save money"
so, the developers get shafted and the people that use it for free save money. I think the original poster was talking about a company that sells linux as its main product (Not someone that uses it for free).
"The purpose of the economy isn't about 'making money'. The purpose of the free market economy is to maximize the creation of wealth by encouraging competition in overcharging sectors and constantly lowering the costs of production. When the cost of production reaches zero we've all won; we've got infinite wealth."
The cost of software production will never be 0. Unless I can push a button and create large and complex pieces of software in a second (IE: not copying, but actually creating) there is a time cost associated with software development.
proprietary software has a cost associated too. The cost of the developers. This is equivalent to the physical cost of an item for other non-digital types of businesses. Eventually, when everyone has high-speed internet access, most proprietary software will just be a service. That way, there's no chance for piracy.
"That is some bad economics."
"You are basically saying that movies like "Lord of the Rings" or "The Godfather" are worthless since they have been copied so many times."
No. I'm saying that if everyone could easily get a copy of the lord of the rings DVD for free, the perceived value of that particular DVD would be almost nothing. This applies to any digital goods/something that can easily be copied over the Internet.
"When you are talking about value, what you are actually referring to is price (an easy mistake to make). Price is a mix of cost of production, supply & demand and various other things such as monopoly rights and goverment regulations."
No, im talking about value. You even mentioned it below, which is exactly what I am referring to: "Value (which is the basis of wealth) is about the perception of those who consume the service/goods.".
"People won't value a movie less just because it has been copied many times. They may however not be willing to pay as much if it is easy accessible. The best example to demonstrate this is air. Air is very valuable as you would die without it. It does however have a price of zero, since it is easily accessible anywhere. (clean air is another matter though)"
See above. It applies more to software than music or movies, but the idea is the same.
"While copying doesn't decrease the value of the work itself, it can decrease the value of other works. If you have the ability to get copies of a 1000 masterpiece songs, the value of each song will go down slightly, simply because you won't have time to enjoy them all. Fortunally, this decrease in value is far less than the increase in value of having all that music availible to you. Also, the decrease in value is mostly limited to the songs you like the least. The favorite songs keep their value even if you get access to other songs."
Many new and independent artists these days only release their songs as an mp3 (or in some other digital format). As an example, if an artist sold their mp3s for 99 cents each, but it got shared and copied enough times on a p2p network, most people would not be willing to pay for it (because they can get it for free). This would devalue the mp3 to almost 0.
"The reason software companies try to prevent piracy is simple. It is profitable to have a monopoly on distribution. I never claimed otherwise."
This is true. But what many people don't realize is the fact that the value of the software includes the time and effort that went into that software (not just the cost of distribution..which might be very little). Eventually, everyone will have a faster internet connection and software companies will only release their products as services (no sourcecode = no pirating). The other alternative is to charge $30,000 per copy (or however much it costs for R&D+a profit)...and the person that buys it will not be willing to give out free copies because of all the money they spent on it.
"Copying however is extremly productive. That is the real differencce between copying and stealing. Copying creates wealth, while stealing doesn't."
copying does NOT create wealth. It is actually closer to counterfeiting than stealing. The more something is copied, the less value it has over time (because it starts to have a perceived value that approaches $0). This is why software companies try so hard to prevent piracy.
"Without copyright laws, selling software would be rather pointless, closed-source or not. So there simply wouldn't be any binaries without source."
actually, software would either move to all service based (most likely) or the price would go very high per app (since there would be no way to protect software or prevent sharing, each application would sell for the total cost of R&D).
"I do. RMS himself stated that, were there no copyright, there would simply be no need for GPL."
There would still be a need for the GPL. Companies could still take the source, make additions, and release the binaries with no copyright laws. The end user could copy the binary with no legal implications, but they would not be able to learn from the source. Isn't this the point of the GPL? to learn? and even if there were no copyright laws, commercial software vendors would move their products online (software as a service).
"Selling air would be more viable too if people were "honest" and would buy it even though they could get it for free. But they don't, and it's not. It's not any more bad or unfair than the fact that water is wet."
All companies violating the GPL are fair too then..right? I say it's not a viable license anymore because I can just close the source and release it without giving back to the community. However, The zealots disagree with me. I don't think we should protect it in the US court system. Why protect a dying licensing model?
"We shouldn't deliberately protect their business model at any cost. Noone is restricting their choices on purpose. If it happens that the model they choose is non-viable, too bad for them."
The same laws that protect the musicians also protect licenses like the GPL. You should remember this. Also, the model is only non-viable because of dishonest users giving out their music for free. It would be viable without a label, if people were a little more honest about purchasing music.
"This is a crock. Many, if not most of the bands out there are not making any profits off the labels so nothing will change on that front. Also, not every band out there does it for the money. Many do it for *GASP* the music or *GASP* the recognition for the real money maker, concerts. In the days before big mega media corps, many bands released their music to their local radio stations for this recognition. When was the last time you heard one on your local radio? Maybe it's time to break up the stranglehold the labels have on the media market. Maybe it is time the labels cartel was broken up starting with the RIAA itself."
don't you think we should *GASP* give the musicians a choice? Also, when you don't make shit from concerts unless you are signed with a label.
"Nah; the copyright system should be abolished because it leads to our current mess in which a few giant companies use it to deprive the artists of their rightful income. We should toss such copyright laws, and devise a revised scheme that guarantees that the artists get most of the money."
The system already exists..it's called an education in copyright law. If you, as an artists, sign your rights away to get famous..you shouldn't complain when a huge company owns your work.
An artist doesn't have to sign with a big company..they can sell their music online...if the kiddies aren't going to pirate it (which may be another reason why they will continue to sign..because they can't make a living on their own due to piracy).
"I was nearly crucified when I suggested my boss to recode a piece of an application in C so it scales better than the current shitty VB COM version. He just looked through me and said: add another server! Lot of today's code is written by people who don't even understand how the code is getting executed"
Was it more cost effective to have a programmer recode it in C (which includes the required maintenance) or use the less optimal but easier to maintain VB COM? I'm all for using C over C#, Java, and VB, but sometimes you need to look at the situation from a business standpoint.
"It's time to stamp out the myth that "without copyright, nothing creative would ever be produced." It wasn't true in the past, it won't be true in the future. The only thing that won't be produced is fat-cat middlemen who think music isn't something to be ENJOYED, it's merely something to be bought and sold!"
This scenario explains why we need copyright to some degree:
J.K. Rowling creates the first Harry Potter book and an already established company (with more money and resources) starts writing additional Harry potter books, not giving the original author credit.
Hell, with no copyright law, the publishing company could even start selling it as their own (before rowling had a chance to make any money).
also, it wasn't true in the past because it was very difficult to re-produce a book (before the printing press). It may be hard for you to believe, but the copyright law was created for a reason.
"Right now, I'm having to accomplish time-shifting of talk radio via a thumb drive and an FM-broadcasting MP3 player. I'd rather have the convenience of an in-dash Tivo-style device that did it for me. No, it's not something that couldn't be copied by terrestial and Internet radio, but satellite radio could be first."
XM has had this for at least a couple of years. It's called the inno
You can time-shift all XM programming, it's portable and you can set it up in your car.
"The Digg social experiment proves that you need mature and sensible editors to maintain quality, objectivity and worthiness"
I'm not sure if you know this or not..but the articles on digg are moderated. There are people that decide whether an article gets on the front page.
Reddit is a perfect example of how NOT to run a social bookmarking website (and I don't think they have any moderators at the top).
Money corrupts any profession where the motivation to do a particular thing, and do it well for it's own sake is displaced by a crass fixation on money. It doesn't really work in ANY job. Some jobs are just more tolerant of the crappy output generated by people who really don't want to be there. Creative occupations are not tolerant of that crassness.
most people want to make as much money as possible. If you don't believe this, you are delusional. Passion and good work need to be there as well, but money is definitely a motivating factor.
Artists that are making more money have time to make more music and can play more gigs (since they don't have to have a shitty 9-5).
Although it's not so much about whether or not ARTISTS will be making mad money but whether or not the A&R men will be skimming most of the money straight off the top
Artists need to learn not to sign contracts that take away all of their creative rights and give them little stake in the overall profits.