The US government
isn't going to get anyone to use any particular liscence if they don't want to, or force develpoers to target their
software for some government standard.
From pg 8 item 2:
Requests for Proposals (RFPs) from Federal agencies for high end computing software, tools and libraries should include provisions allowing these efforts to be carried out using open source.
I think this indicates that there will be an effort to push vendors towards developing software that can be modified and redistributed. If the government pays the research bills, why should they need their code to be proprietary?
What I'm proposing is the reciprocal of privatizing a segment of the government: we publicize it, i.e., give the
control of the organization to those whom it affects, the public.
Any thoughts on this?
I have been thinking along very similar lines. An intellectual property consumers' union that would just flex it's muscle to keep producers honest. Volume buying of property for the benefit of members. This doesn't really address the issue of guarding the public interest, however.
Because intellectual property isn't a necessity, no one would ever consider rioting for their rights to share information. Many people consider it shameful to put media access in the same category as homelessness or poverty. Take away bread and the people will act. Take away TV and the people will... do nothing. I used to think that free speech and common cultural bonds were things worth fighting for. I don't think it's worth it anymore. People don't care about freedom of information (in the broadest sense of the words freedom and information) because they're justifiably concerned with other things.
At the same time, I think it's important for people to be participants in their shared culture, and not just consumers of it. Therefore, the fight against the "big, greedy corporations" is the wrong fight. Making something cheap or free doesn't make it yours. You have to participate in shaping the discourse in order to really make it public property.
The entertainment industry would like us to believe that consumers of information live on one side of the fence and producers of information live on the other. That is a lie. We all produce and consume ideas.
By making tv-dinners more readily available, we are only weakening the true public domain -- the arena of omnilateral engagement in cultural discourse. Cacophony is the sound of life, not a sine wave.
CFO.com is owned and operated by The Economist Group. The Economist Group is run by aristocrats from Britain who live in depraved decadence, and are probably afflicted with Kreutzfeld-Jacov's Syndrome. Let them rant all they want -- their time is running out. Here is the line up, for anyone who cares:
TRUSTEES
SIR CAMPBELL FRASER
A trustee since 1978. President of the CBI from 1982 to 1984. Former chairman of Dunlop, Scottish Television, Tandem Computers
and of the International Advisory Board of Wells Fargo. Consultant to Riversoft Ltd
LORD ALEXANDER OF WEEDON
A trustee since 1990. Chancellor of Exeter University. A director of Total. Chairman of the Bar Council from 1985 to 1986;
chairman of the Takeover Panel from 1987 to 1989; deputy chairman of the Securities and Investments Board from 1994 to 1996;
and chairman of Natwest Group from 1989 to 1999.
LORD RENWICK OF CLIFTON
Appointed a trustee in 1995. British ambassador to South Africa from 1987 to 1991 and to Washington from 1991 to 1995. Deputy
chairman of Robert Fleming, director of British Airways, Billiton, Liberty International, Fluor Corporation, Richemont, South
African Breweries and Canal Plus; chairman of Fluor Daniel.
CLAYTON BRENDISH
Appointed a trustee in June 1999. Co-founder and executive chairman of Admiral plc. Non-executive chairman of Beacon
Investment Fund, an external member of the Defence Meteorological Office Board, a member of the Independent Television
Commission and advisor to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service in
respect of the Next Steps executive agencies.
DIRECTORS
SIR DOMINIC CADBURY
Appointed non-executive chairman of the company in 1994, having served as a non-executive director since 1990. Chairman of
The Wellcome Trust, deputy chairman of the qualifications and Curriculum Authority, a director of EMI, president of the Food and
Drink Federation and a member of the CBI President's Committee. Chairman of Cadbury Schweppes plc from 1993 until May
2000.
HELEN ALEXANDER
Appointed as a director of the company in November 1996 and as group chief executive in January 1997. Joined the company in
1984, circulation and marketing director of The Economist from 1987 to 1993 and managing director of the EIU from 1993 until the
end of 1996. A non-executive director of Northern Foods and BT.
GEORGE BAIN
A Canadian who has pursued an academic career in Britain since 1963. Principal of London Business School from 1989 to 1997 and
since then president and vice-chancellor of The Queen's University of Belfast. A non-executive director of Bombardier
Aerospace Short Brothers, the Canada Life Assurance Company and Electra Investment Trust. Appointed as a non-executive
director of the company in 1992.
BILL EMMOTT
Editor of The Economist and a director of the company since 1993. Joined the company in 1980 and was formerly business affairs
editor of The Economist. Author of three books on Japan.
JOHN GARDINER
Appointed as a non-executive director in April 1998. Chairman of Tesco plc and The Laird Group plc.
DAVID HANGER
Appointed as a director of the company in November 1996. Publisher of The Economist. Joined the company in 1968. Formerly
advertising director of The Economist, group development director and director of specialist magazines. President of the
International Advertising Association.
KIRAN MALIK
Joined the company as group finance director in July 1997. Former group finance director of Associated Newspapers and
previously held several senior financial positions with The Gillette Company.
PHILIP MENGEL
Appointed as a non-executive director in July 1999. Chief executive of English Welsh & Scottish Railway Ltd. Previously chief
executive of Ibstock plc.
LORD STEVENSON OF CODDENHAM
Appointed as a non-executive director in July 1998. Chairman of Pearson plc, Halifax plc and AerFi Group plc.
PETER WOOD
Appointed as a non-executive director in July 1998. Founder and former chairman of Direct Line and a director of the board of The
Royal Bank of Scotland Group from June 1992 to June 1997. Until recently a director of Linea Direct Aseguradora, an advisory
director of Bankinter in Spain and a non-executive director of Centrica from which he has retired to become executive chairman of
esure.
BOARD COMMITTEES
REMUNERATION COMMITTEE
Sir Dominic Cadbury, CHAIRMAN
George Bain
Lord Stevenson of Coddenham
Helen Alexander (resigned November 23rd 1999)
AUDIT COMMITTEE
John Gardiner, CHAIRMAN
Sir Dominic Cadbury
Peter Wood (appointed June 3rd 1999)
GROUP MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE
Helen Alexander
Bill Emmott
David Hanger
Kiran Malik
David Laird-Director of the group's specialist magazines. Joined the group in 1978 as an advertising sales executive for The
Economist, worked in Frankfurt and New York before becoming the publisher of CFO magazine.
Judy Little-Group HR director. Joined the group in 1995 with 15 years' experience in human resources.
Nigel Ludlow-Managing director of the Economist Intelligence Unit. Joined the marketing team of The Economist in January 1984
and subsequently became global marketing director of the EIU.
Andrew Rashbass-Joined the Group from Associated Newspapers in December 1997 as Chief Information Officer; now director
of Economist.com (and acting CIO until a replacement arrives).
Martin Giles-Director of Economist Enterprises joined the group in 1988. Previously publisher of CFO Europe magazine and
before this, he was a journalist on The Economist Newspaper, where he became Finance Editor.
Tony Wales-until July 2000 Group general counsel and company secretary; about to take charge of E Vision, a TV and
web-based project for Economist Enterprises.
Who needs AI research when you have Harvard Business School?
Yes, it's true, folks. We already have the Sci-Fi scenario at hand. Corporations are organic beings that operate on a very simple set of rules. The only problem is that we can't turn them off -- they'll just keep going until they've consumed all the planet's resources. Then they'll use people as a power source. We'll all be "coppertops".
I would suggest that we seriously look at eradicating these beasts before they kill us all.
My friends, you are wasting your time and your breath here. Go out in the streets and make war until these Conglomerates kneel and kiss our feet. The free market is a disaster and a lie perpetrated by rapacious bankkkers and child-molester tobacco companies. They are too big for the government. They are too big for boycotts. They are too diversified for boycotts. They are only responsible to shareholders. Ordinary people (in fact even ordinary shareholders) have no voice at all in their games. Mergers and acquisitions have one purpose: to put more distance between consumers and producers. The less a company depends on it's customers, the more powerful it becomes. Microsoft and Sun Microsystems and Citibank and Time/Warner-AOL and IBM and General Electric and Phillip Morris and AT&T are not merchants or entrepreneurs. These companies are not interested in selling anything. They want to own the means by which commerce is conducted. They want to "own the pipes". They want control over every piece of the infrastructure on the planet because infrastructure is the most inelastic of all markets. These liars and cheats want to set up a toll booth every ten feet. When they control all the pipes, all the phone lines, all the banking infrastructure, all the cable systems, all the railways, airlines, educational institutions, languages, and knowledge you will have no power at all. Your government will be powerless; your consumer choice (which is supposedly the cornerstone of competition) will be decimated and you will be at the mercy of the Old Boys Club.
I have given up all hope for creating change by using words. Whoever said that the pen is mightier than the sword was dreaming. No one cares about constitutions or rights. No one cares about freedom. We have let corporate interests dictate the agenda of the public interest, and they have decided that there is NO public interest. There is only profit. The Free Market was a bad experiment and we need to stop it now before we have nothing left. There is no time left -- they are destroying the planet and our families. They want us to be rich and yet they want us to be slaves. They want to divide us so that we will fight against each other when they know that if we co-operated we might avoid being co-opted.
I have never felt more despair for humanity than I do now. We have given up every ideal and every virtue in the name of Economy. I don't see any hope for the greedy, mean-spirited, selfish despots who are growing fatter by the minute. They are making trillions of dollars and answer to no one. Arguments do not move them. Passion does not move them. Only numbers move them. They are soulless. Trade and commerce do not have to be soulless endeavours. Real entrepreneurs can be very human and forgiving. They can bend the rules for every customer. They can accept responsibility for things over which they have no control. Yes, I said things over which they have no control. Accountability is the buzzword of these Leviathans of commerce. But don't be fooled. They have no accountability whatsoever. They only take responsibility for the things they can "control". This is like leaving the scene of an accident. Hey, I couldn't help hitting that kid when he ran in front of my car -- but that doesn't mean I can just leave the kid there. This is what corporations are doing to our Civilization and to our Earth. They are not people. They don't have feelings and they never get hungry. They don't suffer when someone close to them dies. They are the AI machines that have overpowered their creators. Science fiction fantasies about computers were a mere trifle compared to the voracious, unstoppable, hypnotic hum of the death machines.
The lawmakers and the government are accomplices in this. They don't care about democracy or even about getting re-elected. Your vote means nothing to them. They are just praying that they can keep you busy enough to stop you from thinking about anything. They prattle on about the virtues of industriousness, ingenuity and moral integrity. They are obsessed with motion, activity, incessant, compulsive, blinding, deafening factories that churn out soap, seeds, movies, microchips, cereal, cars, fat-substitutes, abortions, financial "products", software, socks and other distractions. The less time we have to think, the less time we'll have to realize we don't need 90% of the stuff that gets cranked out. We don't have consumer choice. We don't have the choice to live peacefully without the daily infestation of salesmongers, tallymen, and trained chimps dressed in butler suits. These are unstoppable forces because we don't know what they own. We don't know who owns them. We don't know who sits on whose board of directors. These corporate machines have gone too far. This is not freedom or democracy or a Civilization -- this is the War of All Against All, carefully orchestrated by the Invisible Hand-gun of corporate coercion.
We have no alternative. We have no voice. We have no power. We have no government. Our only alternative is to declare War on corporations and fight until there's no one left standing. I don't mean letter writing campaigns. The time for that has come and gone. The letters are screened and sanitized by handlers and PR monkeys. Then they let the lawyers lose. You are food for the maggots. Your family starves while the lawyers eat thick, bloody steaks at the table of the CEO.
Give these sick motherfuckers what they deserve. NOTHING!
I didn't say it would be easy. Let's see... He's definitely never coveted his neighbor's Ass, nor his neighbor's Wife. He may also have kept the Sabbath holy a couple of times. Never during all his presentations at Comdex did he take the name of the Lord in vain. And he hasn't killed anyone as far as I know. I mean come on... the guy may be a monster, but he's not Wicked!
First: Gates has only started donating to charity very recently
This wouldn't surprise me if it were true. Nevertheless, charitable donations -- even late ones -- are helpful (except if you're Ayn Rand). I think I agree with you in a way, though. Absolute Good and Evil, if they exist at all, are by definition independent of human minds and judgements. Who knows which acts will ultimately be for the Good and which will serve Evil? Apart from our intuitions about what we should and shouldn't be doing, we really have no way of knowing which is which. And we can't really hold ourselves to a standard of judgement which is perpetually beyond our reach. So we draw a pragmatic line between judgements made by man and those made by (__DEITY_OF_CHOICE__). From a purely human, relativistic perspective, as opposed to a "divine", absolute perspective, we may then judge with more confidence than the sanguine agnostic or cautious moral realist. We can say: "Yes, he's definitely done stuff that we consider wrong. In our books, he's bad. We'll leave the final balancing of the books to (__DEITY_OF_CHOICE__)."
That's the root of the problem with knowing a person's genome. It isn't the knowledge itself. Rather, it's control over it. Most (but not all) of the horror stories you hear about (eg being denied health insurance because of a genetic trait) tend to come about because Big Corporations have your genetic data and use it in their best interest.
This is a very real concern, as anyone who has followed the exploits of Monsanto can tell you. Companies that license genetically modified organisms have "reach through" rights which give them control over the offspring of the organisms purchased by consumers. Farmers are required to sign licensing agreements which prevent them from saving any seed for planting -- they have to purchase new seed every year from Monsanto.
What if human genetic modifications were licensed similarly? How much would you pay to forever eradicate schizophrenia from your offspring? Would you be prepared to pay perpetually, as you would for life insurance? Would you be prepared to have your offspring become wards of the state if you fail to pay? I'm being somewhat alarmist, I know, but these things are better played out in speculation than in retrospect.
Me: Bill Gates has been responsible for good things...
You: Name one?
He's donated quite a lot of money to charity. He's created employment for thousands of people. Granted, he's not on the Pope's short list for Canonization, but that's exactly my point. I'm not defending the bad things he's done, only pointing out that, like everyone else, he does good things and bad things. If you want him to stop doing the bad things, you have to appeal to something good in him. If you only see him as the enemy, he will ever remain that.
Hunkapiller's work will produce as many benefits as dangers. Bill Gates has been responsible for good things as well as bad. The line between good and evil doesn't run between corporatists and non-corporatists. It runs right through the middle of the human heart.
Stop making these people out to be cartoon villains or heroes. The real answer to your question is that being famous is irrelevant to issues of public concern. You seem to be saying that fame or infamy is a measure of one's importance to society. While it may be true that infamous people are well-known, the actual reasons for their infamy are far more important than their 'top-of-mind' rating in focus groups. As others have pointed out, genetics has been widely discussed for several years. People are already aware of the issues -- they only need data to help them understand the risks and benefits of genetic engineering, and you haven't provided any. If you think Hunkapiller should be more famous, perhaps you should get him an agent.
Wittgenstein could be seen as a bridge between the logical positivists and European phenomenology, and actually, he didn't say that.
Well, that depends on what you meant by "that". If you mean "rules about words reflect, mirror, or parallel rules about the things to which the words refer", then I suppose technically no, he didn't say that. If you mean "That of which we cannot speak..." etc, then I suggest you read the Tractatus, or at least the last line of it. Wittgenstein would have taken issue with the notion that logic, the *only* rule governing the use of symbols, wasn't *about* anything. No propositions could be true with a probability of 1 because no state of affairs logically necessitated any other state of affairs.
Wittgenstein had a much more direct impact on positivists (much to his chagrin, I think) than did Auguste Comte, who only coined the term Positivism. Comte was more concerned with social issues than logic. Wittgenstein, on the other hand was a contemporary of the positivists and met with the Vienna Circle.
How could anyone, positivists or otherwise, judge when symbols had been successfully manipulated? How can inferences be accurate? How can I make an inference that wasn't already logically implied by the premises? If the success of artificial intelligence depends on machines making ampliative inferences and discoveries, then rules-based symbol manipulation won't really help their cause. The fact that the system obeyed the rules which I gave it should have been obvious from the start, and hardly worthy of billion dollar NSF grants. As Wittgenstein said "there can never be surprises in Logic".
"That" being said:-) I did miss the mark a bit by implying that the Tractatus was anti-science. On the contrary, Wittgenstein probably preferred the work of science to the flatulence of Metaphysics. But Wittgenstein's concern was much more about what kind of conditions must be met by a language in order for propositions to "picture" a state of affairs. How do we decide whether one language gives a more accurate representation of the world than another?
My comments had no bearing at all on questions about the nature of consciousness or intelligence. My only point was that the limitations of language which have been evident to literary critics and philosophers for decades seem to have been swept under the carpet by scientists in general and by AI researchers especially.
Personally, while I think that the criminalization of marijuana use is ridiculous, there are some drugs that are best left illegal (cocaine, heroin, etc.) I don't see how this is a censorship issue.
It's not a censorship issue, but it's similar to censorship in the sense that both are paternalistic and unecessary.
In a nutshell, the presumptions were that we could attach a series of rules and claims about a word, and it would be essentially the same as the rules and claims we derive from our experience of the thing that the word describes.
Philosophers dismissed this idea long ago. Why has it taken the AI community so long to catch up?
Ludwig Wittgenstein presented this view of language in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus publshed around the time of the First World War. But unlike many of today's AI acolytes, he could see through modernist propoganda. He saw the limitation of relying on symbol manipulation to convey meaning and value: "That of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence" he said. Symbols cannot "say" anything about mind-independent or language-independent reality. In the end, they're just symbols. I'm surprised that people are still spouting this non-sense.
You can tell it's been a while since I've used windows!! My point still stands, I think. An application should have as it's leftmost and topmost menu something other than "File" -- even if it is just "Options" and "Exit". Don't bother me with details like "Minesweeper doesn't have a File menu". You get my point. But thanks for the correction.
The API should include: 1) Unified standard printing architecture. 2) Reusable components for the primary functions of applications. 3) a standard for user interface (menu options etc.) Like edit->prefrences and not tools->options and file properties and every other place. 4) A standard method for software installation. Like src goes here and binaries go here and so on. 5) An API to make installation easy such that icons get put in the menu and links get created automatically on the desktop.
I agree with you that Tools->Options is incredibly brain-dead UI design. But replacing it with Edit->Preferences isn't much better. In fact, I have always wondered why top-level menus always have "File" in the leftmost position. What the hell do I need a "File" for if I've opened Minesweeper or a Calculator? The first toplevel menu option in *every* application should be *application*!
When the first menu deals with the highest level controlled by the application, everything else makes sense -- solitaire games don't have to have confusing and unecessary "File" menus at all. Application menu should have application instance and session management options like "Exit all instances" or "Exit this instance" or "Kill instance..." or even "Remeber-> ObjName-> Property-> state_value". Moreover, the "Application" menu item would be the most sensible place to put the application's "Preferences..." menu option.
[Dictionary definition of 'Olympic' snipped for brevity]
So, the word itself refers to the Olympic games, and there is no reference to other uses.
Actually, Webster's dictionary sold the rights to the definition. Hey, with their dictionary freely available online, they've got to have some kind of "business model", right? Why not sell the right to modify the meanings of words? Microsoft could define 'internet' as 'MSN'. Coke could pay to have the metallurgical meanings of their name removed from the dictionary.
My point, all kidding aside, is that the dictionary is hardly the place you want to be looking for establishing who is the rightful owner of anything. Dictionaries describe language use, they don't *prescribe* it. At most one could argue that they do a little of both. In neither case are dictionaries authoritative in a legal sense. If they were authoritative, no one could trademark any words because to do so would fail to fully conform to the 'canonical' use of the word. In other words, you imply that in order to qualify as a *potential* trademark, any commercial use of a word must conform to the dictionary-defined usage. I find such a proposition ludicrous at best.
Dictionaries can be corrupted and bent to serve a nefarious purpose just like any other human institution. When it comes to dictionaries, it seems as if we are still stuck with the 18th Century's optimism about objectivity, despite showing considerable cynicism about absolute truth in other matters.
You're definition of freedom at this point leaves a lot to be desired. Why do you get to decide there is less music available? I am perfectly willing for you not to listen to it. But without IP, the diversity of music available now just won't be there for those of us who enjoy it.
I disagree with your assumption that diversity will suffer in the absence of IP laws. Without statutory protection, fewer pre-recorded offerings would be pressed and distributed, but that doesn't imply a lack of diversity. Quite the contrary, intellectual property laws reward people who produce music that palatable to the largest possible market. That means mediocrity and *not* diversity: more Britney Spears, more Spice Girls, more Jennifer Lopez, more Backstreet Boys, more 98 Degrees, etc, etc. Commercialism is what's killing diversity in the music industry. Intellectual property laws are the basis of culture-commerce. Music is not like pork bellies or crude oil. You can't just dig it out of the ground by brute force or strength of will. Creative impulses cannot turned on and off. All the money and intellectual property laws in the world will not help me become Shakespeare.
Can I even really take credit for the music I write. Wouldn't someone else have eventually thought of a similar idea? Is what I produce so uniqe that it deserves the status of property? What kind of property lines can we draw around individual works using the notion of uniqueness? The reason why the big corporations like intellectual property law so much (or at least their legal departments do) is that it allows them to manipulate the system to create an endless supply of property. Disney can churn out an animated version of Grimm's Fairy Tales without paying a dime in royalties, and suddenly they have a whole new continent to pillage. If we try to eliminate this cultural recycling by tightening up the requirements for copyright (e.g. precisely define what we mean by 'original' or 'creative'), very little of what is under copyright protection today would survive such scrutiny. This indeterminacy of the notion of 'creativity' is at the heart of what makes intellectual property evil. The law *cannot* be more precise about how it defines 'creativity' because of the nature of creativity itself. It's like trying to describe someone's personality -- you can say all you want about what a person is like, but that won't help you identify them at the airport. If the law isn't precise, then the land grab that's going on is just a free-for-all. Unfortunately, that's exactly what the current situation has become.
Creativity is not the kind of resource that we can manipulate by tweaking some economic parameters. Sure, you'll get output, but you also get distortions like the Disney example I mentioned. And probably the same proportion of the output is 'genius' as would be the case if there were no IP laws. Intellectual property laws make the a bigger pie, so to speak. If you grant that we cannot control creativity with economic levers, then why have intellectual property laws at all? Where does inspiration come from? Do I extract it from my soul the way a dentist extracts a tooth? I have no control over how ideas come into my head. I don't force myself to think of them. If someone were to offer me a million dollars to write a great musical, I wouldn't have a clue where to start. I couldn't even learn how to do such a thing. You cannot legislate creativity into existence. By offering cash for intellectual output, you get exactly what you deserve -- commercial crap tailored to please everyone and offend no one. I would rather have NO music than be forced to listen to another Back Street Boys CD. I'm not being elitist, either. No moreso than intellectual property laws themselves. Intellectual property laws give the most money to the people who sell the most stuff. To me that's a kind of elitism. What about the inaccessible genius of someone like Stockhausen (20th C. avant-garde composer who was one of the first to use electronic instruments)? A fat lot of good intellectual property laws do him! No one wants to *buy* his music. If we got rid of IP laws, the people who are in music just for the money will quit, which will be a good thing for the industry.
I am perfectly willing to let you listen to whomever you please. I just don't think the state should be encouraging any more artistic flatulence than we already have.
But there's so much wonderful stuff that just can't be done live. Sampling, and distorting and echoing and morphing sounds.
I'm not saying people have to stop using technology. Far from it. I think it's great to incorporate all the sequenced stuff, distortions, morphing, phasing, sampling and so on. My only objection is to selling music in little plastic cases and calling that music. Whatever you can do in a recording studio, you can do live one way or another. It won't always be easy, but then nothing worth doing every is. There's also nothing in what I suggest that would prevent you from giving an entirely prerecorded concert, if that's what turns your crank. I imagine if you rent a big screen video projector you could do your own Floyd-esque show.
Your use of the 'arguably' in parentheses is the kicker here.
Are you new to the English language or something? That's why I put the word in there: in order to leave open the question of whether musicians are harmed (particularly in comparison to physical harm) by free redistribution of their work. The point of using the word 'arguably' is: tell me what you think! Don't just respond by saying "hey, you left yourself open to argument". Yes that's what it means to qualify a proposition with the word 'arguably'.
As for the rest of your post, I only partially grasp what you are saying. If we're arguing about numbers, then I plead ignorance. I don't have a clue (aside from what's been in the mainstream media) how many people do what with Napster. My point doesn't depend on numbers as much as it does on the assertion that it is not the state's place to guarantee that anyone's job will exist tomorrow. In fact many people believe that that is categorically *not* the state's business. I don't see anyone rushing to guarantee that GM will not close plants and move jobs elsewhere. The harm that you're talking about results from musicians' diminished or extinguished ability to support themselves at their chosen vocation. This is not the kind of harm from which the state need protect its citizens. Therefore, although it is unfortunate that musicians would have a harder time making money, or that some would wind up working at other jobs, that in itself is not an argument in favour of maintaining the status quo. Otherwise, every job loss in every industry should be the concern of state policy makers.
If x is illegal, then it's illegal. Whether it's ethical is another matter. I happen to believe it's immoral, but my beliefs and the law have no common roots.
After re-reading my original post I realized how nonsensical it sounded. It didn't express my meaning properly at all. Of course it is undeniable that if something is illegal it's illegal. Its meaningless to deny and also meaningless to assert. It is a tautology and doesn't say anything about the world at all. Here is what I should have said: When two people are discussing whether a type of action x ought (or ought not) to be legal, it doesn't contribute to the debate to say "But x is illegal!". Of course x is illegal. We are arguing about whether or not it *should* be illegal.
The rest of your post is very good. I'll try to answer your objections as well as I can.
There also needs to be a distinction between public information and art.
This is a category error. Art is a subset of public information and so there *cannot* be a distinction between them.
If we are trying to destroy the RIAA, we should boycott CDs and attend concerts, which would benefit the artist and not their overlords.
Using RIAA as a scapegoat is as bad as using Microsoft as a scapegoat. These organizations are only problematic insofar as they are symptoms of something larger that needs to be addressed. I don't really want to destroy anyone. The rules need to be changed more than the players.
As far as supporting the artists rather than their overlords, I *have* many times, in this forum and in others, advocated attending concerts as an alternative to recorded music. I completely agree with you on that point.
Finally, some more food for thought: What if it was your music? Or your Web graphics? Is my freedom your slavery?
This question, and the "Sour Grapes" variant of it (i.e. you want to steal other peoples' ideas because you have none of your own) are matters that each person has do deal with privately. It doesn't touch on the consistency or coherence of the views I have presented, only on their emotional impact. I cannot say for sure whether any, some, many, or all people who share my views would be bothered by those questions. I do think that your rhetorical question has a bearing on the discussion, but only to the extent that each person's reaction to it will be part of what pushes them to one side of the debate or the other (there are more than two sides, of course, but you get the picture).
Personally, I say PLEASE take my music and enjoy it and make it better. What was it that gave me the idea in the first place? Was it the sound of a bird? A voice inside my head? I don't own these things any more than I own the rights to the beauty of trees, or the smell of lilacs. I have in fact had several songs of mine used without permission by local bands whose members I had jammed with at various times. I was glad that they liked my music enough to want to play it for other people. I could have made money off the songs myself, if I had wanted to. Granted, it would have been upsetting to me if *they* had copyrighted the songs and then sued *me* for using them, but in a world without copyright laws, that type of injustice could never happen.
Protesting what? The fact that CD's cost $15+? On the social scale of important things to protest, that ranks right around there with "The garbage man should collect on Tuesdays instead of Wednesdays".
Not quite *that* insignificant, but it certainly doesn't rank with anti-war demonstrations or Amnetsty International's work. I really shouldn't have mentioned civil disobedience at all. It was a moment of weakness and you're right -- it isn't relevant to this discussion. However, that doesn't detract from my original point that we raise the level of debate from this:
while (TRUE) {
printf("You: That's stealing!\n");
printf("Me: No it's not!\n");
}
to something a little more erudite.
Here are some of the questions I like to ask:
What goal do you want to achieve by granting property rights in information?
Is the goal a worthy one?
If so, is the granting of patents and copyrights the only way to achieve that goal?
If not, what other means could we use to achieve it?
Is the path that we have chosen the one that has the highest benefit to cost ratio?
What sort of evidence would count as supporting one possible solution over another?
I'm not saying that this is an exhaustive or perfect list of what needs to be considered. I am saying that in order to really deal with this topic, questions like these have to be discussed. Just restating the received opinion isn't going to lead us to a better means of achieving whatever goals we can agree upon.
I said:
I haven't harmed the creator of the music. I have complimented him or her. I enjoyed their music. That doesn't mean I necessarily must pay for it.
You said:
Um, yes it does. By releasing music on a CD through a record company, an artist is saying, "Here are some songs I wrote and performed. They are the property of myself and my record company. If you wish to have a copy of this music, you must pay X amount of dollars for this tape/CD/record/MP3/etc."
I am not asking if what I am doing is against the law. I know that it is. I am asking a slightly more philosophical question: Given that intellectual property laws were enacted to promote a public good, what is the nature of that public good? Was the public good the fact that someone wrote a song? Was it the fact that the song they wrote was *original* in some way? Was it the fact that it was useful to me in the sense of bringing enjoyment? Which of these am I paying for when I buy music? The answer you give determines, in part, whether or not the public good could have been achieved without granting property rights. I contend further that because property rights restrict freedom significantly, that they should be limited to purposes which are absolutely essential for a stable society. Laws governing the disposition and acquisition of tangible property, I regard as essential in this way. Laws governing the traffic in information, I believe, are not essential to maintaining a stable, peaceful society. If such laws restrict our freedom without providing a benefit, and a benefit moreover which is at least commensurate with the social and economic cost of IP laws, then they ought not to be laws.
I think that if you really wanted to push the notion that I ought to pay for *whatever* I enjoy, you've got a lot of enforcement and collection problems. I just enjoyed reading your post. How much do I owe you? I saw a pretty girl walk by. Who gave me the pleasure of just seeing her? Is she responsible for making me feel pleasure? Do I ower her money for seeing her? In fact, this is what modeling does. It makes you think that you owe someone something for being able to enjoy their beauty. I'm not comfortable with enjoyment as the measure of my debt to the creator.
Furthermore, if you say that enjoyment is the goal of copyright law, you've put judges and the copyright office in the position of arbiters of taste, an outcome that most proponents of intellectual property law would find repugnant.
Slashdot Mirror
From pg 8 item 2:
I think this indicates that there will be an effort to push vendors towards developing software that can be modified and redistributed. If the government pays the research bills, why should they need their code to be proprietary?
I have been thinking along very similar lines. An intellectual property consumers' union that would just flex it's muscle to keep producers honest. Volume buying of property for the benefit of members. This doesn't really address the issue of guarding the public interest, however.
Because intellectual property isn't a necessity, no one would ever consider rioting for their rights to share information. Many people consider it shameful to put media access in the same category as homelessness or poverty. Take away bread and the people will act. Take away TV and the people will... do nothing. I used to think that free speech and common cultural bonds were things worth fighting for. I don't think it's worth it anymore. People don't care about freedom of information (in the broadest sense of the words freedom and information) because they're justifiably concerned with other things.
At the same time, I think it's important for people to be participants in their shared culture, and not just consumers of it. Therefore, the fight against the "big, greedy corporations" is the wrong fight. Making something cheap or free doesn't make it yours. You have to participate in shaping the discourse in order to really make it public property.
The entertainment industry would like us to believe that consumers of information live on one side of the fence and producers of information live on the other. That is a lie. We all produce and consume ideas.
By making tv-dinners more readily available, we are only weakening the true public domain -- the arena of omnilateral engagement in cultural discourse. Cacophony is the sound of life, not a sine wave.
CFO.com is owned and operated by The Economist Group. The Economist Group is run by aristocrats from Britain who live in depraved decadence, and are probably afflicted with Kreutzfeld-Jacov's Syndrome. Let them rant all they want -- their time is running out. Here is the line up, for anyone who cares:
TRUSTEES
SIR CAMPBELL FRASER
A trustee since 1978. President of the CBI from 1982 to 1984. Former chairman of Dunlop, Scottish Television, Tandem Computers
and of the International Advisory Board of Wells Fargo. Consultant to Riversoft Ltd
LORD ALEXANDER OF WEEDON
A trustee since 1990. Chancellor of Exeter University. A director of Total. Chairman of the Bar Council from 1985 to 1986;
chairman of the Takeover Panel from 1987 to 1989; deputy chairman of the Securities and Investments Board from 1994 to 1996;
and chairman of Natwest Group from 1989 to 1999.
LORD RENWICK OF CLIFTON
Appointed a trustee in 1995. British ambassador to South Africa from 1987 to 1991 and to Washington from 1991 to 1995. Deputy
chairman of Robert Fleming, director of British Airways, Billiton, Liberty International, Fluor Corporation, Richemont, South
African Breweries and Canal Plus; chairman of Fluor Daniel.
CLAYTON BRENDISH
Appointed a trustee in June 1999. Co-founder and executive chairman of Admiral plc. Non-executive chairman of Beacon
Investment Fund, an external member of the Defence Meteorological Office Board, a member of the Independent Television
Commission and advisor to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service in
respect of the Next Steps executive agencies.
DIRECTORS
SIR DOMINIC CADBURY
Appointed non-executive chairman of the company in 1994, having served as a non-executive director since 1990. Chairman of
The Wellcome Trust, deputy chairman of the qualifications and Curriculum Authority, a director of EMI, president of the Food and
Drink Federation and a member of the CBI President's Committee. Chairman of Cadbury Schweppes plc from 1993 until May
2000.
HELEN ALEXANDER
Appointed as a director of the company in November 1996 and as group chief executive in January 1997. Joined the company in
1984, circulation and marketing director of The Economist from 1987 to 1993 and managing director of the EIU from 1993 until the
end of 1996. A non-executive director of Northern Foods and BT.
GEORGE BAIN
A Canadian who has pursued an academic career in Britain since 1963. Principal of London Business School from 1989 to 1997 and
since then president and vice-chancellor of The Queen's University of Belfast. A non-executive director of Bombardier
Aerospace Short Brothers, the Canada Life Assurance Company and Electra Investment Trust. Appointed as a non-executive
director of the company in 1992.
BILL EMMOTT
Editor of The Economist and a director of the company since 1993. Joined the company in 1980 and was formerly business affairs
editor of The Economist. Author of three books on Japan.
JOHN GARDINER
Appointed as a non-executive director in April 1998. Chairman of Tesco plc and The Laird Group plc.
DAVID HANGER
Appointed as a director of the company in November 1996. Publisher of The Economist. Joined the company in 1968. Formerly
advertising director of The Economist, group development director and director of specialist magazines. President of the
International Advertising Association.
KIRAN MALIK
Joined the company as group finance director in July 1997. Former group finance director of Associated Newspapers and
previously held several senior financial positions with The Gillette Company.
PHILIP MENGEL
Appointed as a non-executive director in July 1999. Chief executive of English Welsh & Scottish Railway Ltd. Previously chief
executive of Ibstock plc.
LORD STEVENSON OF CODDENHAM
Appointed as a non-executive director in July 1998. Chairman of Pearson plc, Halifax plc and AerFi Group plc.
PETER WOOD
Appointed as a non-executive director in July 1998. Founder and former chairman of Direct Line and a director of the board of The
Royal Bank of Scotland Group from June 1992 to June 1997. Until recently a director of Linea Direct Aseguradora, an advisory
director of Bankinter in Spain and a non-executive director of Centrica from which he has retired to become executive chairman of
esure.
BOARD COMMITTEES
REMUNERATION COMMITTEE
Sir Dominic Cadbury, CHAIRMAN
George Bain
Lord Stevenson of Coddenham
Helen Alexander (resigned November 23rd 1999)
AUDIT COMMITTEE
John Gardiner, CHAIRMAN
Sir Dominic Cadbury
Peter Wood (appointed June 3rd 1999)
GROUP MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE
Helen Alexander
Bill Emmott
David Hanger
Kiran Malik
David Laird-Director of the group's specialist magazines. Joined the group in 1978 as an advertising sales executive for The
Economist, worked in Frankfurt and New York before becoming the publisher of CFO magazine.
Judy Little-Group HR director. Joined the group in 1995 with 15 years' experience in human resources.
Nigel Ludlow-Managing director of the Economist Intelligence Unit. Joined the marketing team of The Economist in January 1984
and subsequently became global marketing director of the EIU.
Andrew Rashbass-Joined the Group from Associated Newspapers in December 1997 as Chief Information Officer; now director
of Economist.com (and acting CIO until a replacement arrives).
Martin Giles-Director of Economist Enterprises joined the group in 1988. Previously publisher of CFO Europe magazine and
before this, he was a journalist on The Economist Newspaper, where he became Finance Editor.
Tony Wales-until July 2000 Group general counsel and company secretary; about to take charge of E Vision, a TV and
web-based project for Economist Enterprises.
Who needs AI research when you have Harvard Business School?
Yes, it's true, folks. We already have the Sci-Fi scenario at hand. Corporations are organic beings that operate on a very simple set of rules. The only problem is that we can't turn them off -- they'll just keep going until they've consumed all the planet's resources. Then they'll use people as a power source. We'll all be "coppertops".
I would suggest that we seriously look at eradicating these beasts before they kill us all.
__________________________________________________
I agree with you. Moderation is good for a laugh and that's about all. Browse at -1 and don't fire til you see the whites of their eyes.
You must be very angry about being abandoned as a child. Don't worry, time heals all wounds.
I have given up all hope for creating change by using words. Whoever said that the pen is mightier than the sword was dreaming. No one cares about constitutions or rights. No one cares about freedom. We have let corporate interests dictate the agenda of the public interest, and they have decided that there is NO public interest. There is only profit. The Free Market was a bad experiment and we need to stop it now before we have nothing left. There is no time left -- they are destroying the planet and our families. They want us to be rich and yet they want us to be slaves. They want to divide us so that we will fight against each other when they know that if we co-operated we might avoid being co-opted.
I have never felt more despair for humanity than I do now. We have given up every ideal and every virtue in the name of Economy. I don't see any hope for the greedy, mean-spirited, selfish despots who are growing fatter by the minute. They are making trillions of dollars and answer to no one. Arguments do not move them. Passion does not move them. Only numbers move them. They are soulless. Trade and commerce do not have to be soulless endeavours. Real entrepreneurs can be very human and forgiving. They can bend the rules for every customer. They can accept responsibility for things over which they have no control. Yes, I said things over which they have no control. Accountability is the buzzword of these Leviathans of commerce. But don't be fooled. They have no accountability whatsoever. They only take responsibility for the things they can "control". This is like leaving the scene of an accident. Hey, I couldn't help hitting that kid when he ran in front of my car -- but that doesn't mean I can just leave the kid there. This is what corporations are doing to our Civilization and to our Earth. They are not people. They don't have feelings and they never get hungry. They don't suffer when someone close to them dies. They are the AI machines that have overpowered their creators. Science fiction fantasies about computers were a mere trifle compared to the voracious, unstoppable, hypnotic hum of the death machines.
The lawmakers and the government are accomplices in this. They don't care about democracy or even about getting re-elected. Your vote means nothing to them. They are just praying that they can keep you busy enough to stop you from thinking about anything. They prattle on about the virtues of industriousness, ingenuity and moral integrity. They are obsessed with motion, activity, incessant, compulsive, blinding, deafening factories that churn out soap, seeds, movies, microchips, cereal, cars, fat-substitutes, abortions, financial "products", software, socks and other distractions. The less time we have to think, the less time we'll have to realize we don't need 90% of the stuff that gets cranked out. We don't have consumer choice. We don't have the choice to live peacefully without the daily infestation of salesmongers, tallymen, and trained chimps dressed in butler suits. These are unstoppable forces because we don't know what they own. We don't know who owns them. We don't know who sits on whose board of directors. These corporate machines have gone too far. This is not freedom or democracy or a Civilization -- this is the War of All Against All, carefully orchestrated by the Invisible Hand-gun of corporate coercion.
We have no alternative. We have no voice. We have no power. We have no government. Our only alternative is to declare War on corporations and fight until there's no one left standing. I don't mean letter writing campaigns. The time for that has come and gone. The letters are screened and sanitized by handlers and PR monkeys. Then they let the lawyers lose. You are food for the maggots. Your family starves while the lawyers eat thick, bloody steaks at the table of the CEO.
Give these sick motherfuckers what they deserve. NOTHING!
I didn't say it would be easy. Let's see...
He's definitely never coveted his neighbor's Ass, nor his neighbor's Wife. He may also have kept the Sabbath holy a couple of times. Never during all his presentations at Comdex did he take the name of the Lord in vain. And he hasn't killed anyone as far as I know. I mean come on... the guy may be a monster, but he's not Wicked!
This wouldn't surprise me if it were true. Nevertheless, charitable donations -- even late ones -- are helpful (except if you're Ayn Rand). I think I agree with you in a way, though. Absolute Good and Evil, if they exist at all, are by definition independent of human minds and judgements. Who knows which acts will ultimately be for the Good and which will serve Evil? Apart from our intuitions about what we should and shouldn't be doing, we really have no way of knowing which is which. And we can't really hold ourselves to a standard of judgement which is perpetually beyond our reach. So we draw a pragmatic line between judgements made by man and those made by (__DEITY_OF_CHOICE__). From a purely human, relativistic perspective, as opposed to a "divine", absolute perspective, we may then judge with more confidence than the sanguine agnostic or cautious moral realist. We can say: "Yes, he's definitely done stuff that we consider wrong. In our books, he's bad. We'll leave the final balancing of the books to (__DEITY_OF_CHOICE__)."
<KIRK>
must--stop--blathering--like--an--idiot
</KIRK>
This is a very real concern, as anyone who has followed the exploits of Monsanto can tell you. Companies that license genetically modified organisms have "reach through" rights which give them control over the offspring of the organisms purchased by consumers. Farmers are required to sign licensing agreements which prevent them from saving any seed for planting -- they have to purchase new seed every year from Monsanto.
What if human genetic modifications were licensed similarly? How much would you pay to forever eradicate schizophrenia from your offspring? Would you be prepared to pay perpetually, as you would for life insurance? Would you be prepared to have your offspring become wards of the state if you fail to pay? I'm being somewhat alarmist, I know, but these things are better played out in speculation than in retrospect.
You: Name one?
He's donated quite a lot of money to charity. He's created employment for thousands of people. Granted, he's not on the Pope's short list for Canonization, but that's exactly my point. I'm not defending the bad things he's done, only pointing out that, like everyone else, he does good things and bad things. If you want him to stop doing the bad things, you have to appeal to something good in him. If you only see him as the enemy, he will ever remain that.
Stop making these people out to be cartoon villains or heroes. The real answer to your question is that being famous is irrelevant to issues of public concern. You seem to be saying that fame or infamy is a measure of one's importance to society. While it may be true that infamous people are well-known, the actual reasons for their infamy are far more important than their 'top-of-mind' rating in focus groups. As others have pointed out, genetics has been widely discussed for several years. People are already aware of the issues -- they only need data to help them understand the risks and benefits of genetic engineering, and you haven't provided any. If you think Hunkapiller should be more famous, perhaps you should get him an agent.
Should be:
Wittgenstein would have taken issue with the notion that logic, the *only* rule governing the use of symbols, was *about* anything.
Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Well, that depends on what you meant by "that". If you mean "rules about words reflect, mirror, or parallel rules about the things to which the words refer", then I suppose technically no, he didn't say that. If you mean "That of which we cannot speak..." etc, then I suggest you read the Tractatus, or at least the last line of it. Wittgenstein would have taken issue with the notion that logic, the *only* rule governing the use of symbols, wasn't *about* anything. No propositions could be true with a probability of 1 because no state of affairs logically necessitated any other state of affairs.
Wittgenstein had a much more direct impact on positivists (much to his chagrin, I think) than did Auguste Comte, who only coined the term Positivism. Comte was more concerned with social issues than logic. Wittgenstein, on the other hand was a contemporary of the positivists and met with the Vienna Circle.
How could anyone, positivists or otherwise, judge when symbols had been successfully manipulated? How can inferences be accurate? How can I make an inference that wasn't already logically implied by the premises? If the success of artificial intelligence depends on machines making ampliative inferences and discoveries, then rules-based symbol manipulation won't really help their cause. The fact that the system obeyed the rules which I gave it should have been obvious from the start, and hardly worthy of billion dollar NSF grants. As Wittgenstein said "there can never be surprises in Logic".
"That" being said :-) I did miss the mark a bit by implying that the Tractatus was anti-science. On the contrary, Wittgenstein probably preferred the work of science to the flatulence of Metaphysics. But Wittgenstein's concern was much more about what kind of conditions must be met by a language in order for propositions to "picture" a state of affairs. How do we decide whether one language gives a more accurate representation of the world than another?
My comments had no bearing at all on questions about the nature of consciousness or intelligence. My only point was that the limitations of language which have been evident to literary critics and philosophers for decades seem to have been swept under the carpet by scientists in general and by AI researchers especially.
It's not a censorship issue, but it's similar to censorship in the sense that both are paternalistic and unecessary.
Philosophers dismissed this idea long ago. Why has it taken the AI community so long to catch up?
Ludwig Wittgenstein presented this view of language in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus publshed around the time of the First World War. But unlike many of today's AI acolytes, he could see through modernist propoganda. He saw the limitation of relying on symbol manipulation to convey meaning and value: "That of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence" he said. Symbols cannot "say" anything about mind-independent or language-independent reality. In the end, they're just symbols. I'm surprised that people are still spouting this non-sense.
You can tell it's been a while since I've used windows!! My point still stands, I think. An application should have as it's leftmost and topmost menu something other than "File" -- even if it is just "Options" and "Exit". Don't bother me with details like "Minesweeper doesn't have a File menu". You get my point. But thanks for the correction.
The API should include:
1) Unified standard printing architecture.
2) Reusable components for the primary functions of applications.
3) a standard for user interface (menu options etc.) Like edit->prefrences and not tools->options and file properties and every other place.
4) A standard method for software installation. Like src goes here and binaries go here and so on.
5) An API to make installation easy such that icons get put in the menu and links get created automatically on the desktop.
I agree with you that Tools->Options is incredibly brain-dead UI design. But replacing it with Edit->Preferences isn't much better. In fact, I have always wondered why top-level menus always have "File" in the leftmost position. What the hell do I need a "File" for if I've opened Minesweeper or a Calculator? The first toplevel menu option in *every* application should be *application*!
When the first menu deals with the highest level controlled by the application, everything else makes sense -- solitaire games don't have to have confusing and unecessary "File" menus at all. Application menu should have application instance and session management options like "Exit all instances" or "Exit this instance" or "Kill instance..." or even "Remeber-> ObjName-> Property-> state_value". Moreover, the "Application" menu item would be the most sensible place to put the application's "Preferences..." menu option.
So, the word itself refers to the Olympic games, and there is no reference to other uses.
Actually, Webster's dictionary sold the rights to the definition. Hey, with their dictionary freely available online, they've got to have some kind of "business model", right? Why not sell the right to modify the meanings of words? Microsoft could define 'internet' as 'MSN'. Coke could pay to have the metallurgical meanings of their name removed from the dictionary.
My point, all kidding aside, is that the dictionary is hardly the place you want to be looking for establishing who is the rightful owner of anything. Dictionaries describe language use, they don't *prescribe* it. At most one could argue that they do a little of both. In neither case are dictionaries authoritative in a legal sense. If they were authoritative, no one could trademark any words because to do so would fail to fully conform to the 'canonical' use of the word. In other words, you imply that in order to qualify as a *potential* trademark, any commercial use of a word must conform to the dictionary-defined usage. I find such a proposition ludicrous at best.
Dictionaries can be corrupted and bent to serve a nefarious purpose just like any other human institution. When it comes to dictionaries, it seems as if we are still stuck with the 18th Century's optimism about objectivity, despite showing considerable cynicism about absolute truth in other matters.
I disagree with your assumption that diversity will suffer in the absence of IP laws. Without statutory protection, fewer pre-recorded offerings would be pressed and distributed, but that doesn't imply a lack of diversity. Quite the contrary, intellectual property laws reward people who produce music that palatable to the largest possible market. That means mediocrity and *not* diversity: more Britney Spears, more Spice Girls, more Jennifer Lopez, more Backstreet Boys, more 98 Degrees, etc, etc. Commercialism is what's killing diversity in the music industry. Intellectual property laws are the basis of culture-commerce. Music is not like pork bellies or crude oil. You can't just dig it out of the ground by brute force or strength of will. Creative impulses cannot turned on and off. All the money and intellectual property laws in the world will not help me become Shakespeare.
Can I even really take credit for the music I write. Wouldn't someone else have eventually thought of a similar idea? Is what I produce so uniqe that it deserves the status of property? What kind of property lines can we draw around individual works using the notion of uniqueness? The reason why the big corporations like intellectual property law so much (or at least their legal departments do) is that it allows them to manipulate the system to create an endless supply of property. Disney can churn out an animated version of Grimm's Fairy Tales without paying a dime in royalties, and suddenly they have a whole new continent to pillage. If we try to eliminate this cultural recycling by tightening up the requirements for copyright (e.g. precisely define what we mean by 'original' or 'creative'), very little of what is under copyright protection today would survive such scrutiny. This indeterminacy of the notion of 'creativity' is at the heart of what makes intellectual property evil. The law *cannot* be more precise about how it defines 'creativity' because of the nature of creativity itself. It's like trying to describe someone's personality -- you can say all you want about what a person is like, but that won't help you identify them at the airport. If the law isn't precise, then the land grab that's going on is just a free-for-all. Unfortunately, that's exactly what the current situation has become.
Creativity is not the kind of resource that we can manipulate by tweaking some economic parameters. Sure, you'll get output, but you also get distortions like the Disney example I mentioned. And probably the same proportion of the output is 'genius' as would be the case if there were no IP laws. Intellectual property laws make the a bigger pie, so to speak. If you grant that we cannot control creativity with economic levers, then why have intellectual property laws at all? Where does inspiration come from? Do I extract it from my soul the way a dentist extracts a tooth? I have no control over how ideas come into my head. I don't force myself to think of them. If someone were to offer me a million dollars to write a great musical, I wouldn't have a clue where to start. I couldn't even learn how to do such a thing. You cannot legislate creativity into existence. By offering cash for intellectual output, you get exactly what you deserve -- commercial crap tailored to please everyone and offend no one. I would rather have NO music than be forced to listen to another Back Street Boys CD. I'm not being elitist, either. No moreso than intellectual property laws themselves. Intellectual property laws give the most money to the people who sell the most stuff. To me that's a kind of elitism. What about the inaccessible genius of someone like Stockhausen (20th C. avant-garde composer who was one of the first to use electronic instruments)? A fat lot of good intellectual property laws do him! No one wants to *buy* his music. If we got rid of IP laws, the people who are in music just for the money will quit, which will be a good thing for the industry.
I am perfectly willing to let you listen to whomever you please. I just don't think the state should be encouraging any more artistic flatulence than we already have.
True, I've often used it as a paperweight.
I'm not saying people have to stop using technology. Far from it. I think it's great to incorporate all the sequenced stuff, distortions, morphing, phasing, sampling and so on. My only objection is to selling music in little plastic cases and calling that music. Whatever you can do in a recording studio, you can do live one way or another. It won't always be easy, but then nothing worth doing every is. There's also nothing in what I suggest that would prevent you from giving an entirely prerecorded concert, if that's what turns your crank. I imagine if you rent a big screen video projector you could do your own Floyd-esque show.
Are you new to the English language or something? That's why I put the word in there: in order to leave open the question of whether musicians are harmed (particularly in comparison to physical harm) by free redistribution of their work. The point of using the word 'arguably' is: tell me what you think! Don't just respond by saying "hey, you left yourself open to argument". Yes that's what it means to qualify a proposition with the word 'arguably'.
As for the rest of your post, I only partially grasp what you are saying. If we're arguing about numbers, then I plead ignorance. I don't have a clue (aside from what's been in the mainstream media) how many people do what with Napster. My point doesn't depend on numbers as much as it does on the assertion that it is not the state's place to guarantee that anyone's job will exist tomorrow. In fact many people believe that that is categorically *not* the state's business. I don't see anyone rushing to guarantee that GM will not close plants and move jobs elsewhere. The harm that you're talking about results from musicians' diminished or extinguished ability to support themselves at their chosen vocation. This is not the kind of harm from which the state need protect its citizens. Therefore, although it is unfortunate that musicians would have a harder time making money, or that some would wind up working at other jobs, that in itself is not an argument in favour of maintaining the status quo. Otherwise, every job loss in every industry should be the concern of state policy makers.
After re-reading my original post I realized how nonsensical it sounded. It didn't express my meaning properly at all. Of course it is undeniable that if something is illegal it's illegal. Its meaningless to deny and also meaningless to assert. It is a tautology and doesn't say anything about the world at all. Here is what I should have said: When two people are discussing whether a type of action x ought (or ought not) to be legal, it doesn't contribute to the debate to say "But x is illegal!". Of course x is illegal. We are arguing about whether or not it *should* be illegal.
The rest of your post is very good. I'll try to answer your objections as well as I can.
There also needs to be a distinction between public information and art.
This is a category error. Art is a subset of public information and so there *cannot* be a distinction between them.
If we are trying to destroy the RIAA, we should boycott CDs and attend concerts, which would benefit the artist and not their overlords.
Using RIAA as a scapegoat is as bad as using Microsoft as a scapegoat. These organizations are only problematic insofar as they are symptoms of something larger that needs to be addressed. I don't really want to destroy anyone. The rules need to be changed more than the players.
As far as supporting the artists rather than their overlords, I *have* many times, in this forum and in others, advocated attending concerts as an alternative to recorded music. I completely agree with you on that point.
Finally, some more food for thought: What if it was your music? Or your Web graphics? Is my freedom your slavery?
This question, and the "Sour Grapes" variant of it (i.e. you want to steal other peoples' ideas because you have none of your own) are matters that each person has do deal with privately. It doesn't touch on the consistency or coherence of the views I have presented, only on their emotional impact. I cannot say for sure whether any, some, many, or all people who share my views would be bothered by those questions. I do think that your rhetorical question has a bearing on the discussion, but only to the extent that each person's reaction to it will be part of what pushes them to one side of the debate or the other (there are more than two sides, of course, but you get the picture).
Personally, I say PLEASE take my music and enjoy it and make it better. What was it that gave me the idea in the first place? Was it the sound of a bird? A voice inside my head? I don't own these things any more than I own the rights to the beauty of trees, or the smell of lilacs. I have in fact had several songs of mine used without permission by local bands whose members I had jammed with at various times. I was glad that they liked my music enough to want to play it for other people. I could have made money off the songs myself, if I had wanted to. Granted, it would have been upsetting to me if *they* had copyrighted the songs and then sued *me* for using them, but in a world without copyright laws, that type of injustice could never happen.
Not quite *that* insignificant, but it certainly doesn't rank with anti-war demonstrations or Amnetsty International's work. I really shouldn't have mentioned civil disobedience at all. It was a moment of weakness and you're right -- it isn't relevant to this discussion. However, that doesn't detract from my original point that we raise the level of debate from this:
while (TRUE) {
}to something a little more erudite.
Here are some of the questions I like to ask:
I'm not saying that this is an exhaustive or perfect list of what needs to be considered. I am saying that in order to really deal with this topic, questions like these have to be discussed. Just restating the received opinion isn't going to lead us to a better means of achieving whatever goals we can agree upon.
I said:
You said:
I am not asking if what I am doing is against the law. I know that it is. I am asking a slightly more philosophical question: Given that intellectual property laws were enacted to promote a public good, what is the nature of that public good? Was the public good the fact that someone wrote a song? Was it the fact that the song they wrote was *original* in some way? Was it the fact that it was useful to me in the sense of bringing enjoyment? Which of these am I paying for when I buy music? The answer you give determines, in part, whether or not the public good could have been achieved without granting property rights. I contend further that because property rights restrict freedom significantly, that they should be limited to purposes which are absolutely essential for a stable society. Laws governing the disposition and acquisition of tangible property, I regard as essential in this way. Laws governing the traffic in information, I believe, are not essential to maintaining a stable, peaceful society. If such laws restrict our freedom without providing a benefit, and a benefit moreover which is at least commensurate with the social and economic cost of IP laws, then they ought not to be laws.
I think that if you really wanted to push the notion that I ought to pay for *whatever* I enjoy, you've got a lot of enforcement and collection problems. I just enjoyed reading your post. How much do I owe you? I saw a pretty girl walk by. Who gave me the pleasure of just seeing her? Is she responsible for making me feel pleasure? Do I ower her money for seeing her? In fact, this is what modeling does. It makes you think that you owe someone something for being able to enjoy their beauty. I'm not comfortable with enjoyment as the measure of my debt to the creator.
Furthermore, if you say that enjoyment is the goal of copyright law, you've put judges and the copyright office in the position of arbiters of taste, an outcome that most proponents of intellectual property law would find repugnant.