Private schools have to very important advantages over public schools. The first is that the children going to private schools generally have parents that are concerned about their child's academic progress. Teachers can send children home with homework knowing that the homework will get done, and if a child steps out of line they can be relatively certain that a simple call to the parents will achieve the required results. A great deal of any public school teacher's time is spent working around discipline problems. In a private school that simply isn't the case.
The second advantage that private schools have is related to the first. If a private school has a child that continues to be a problem they can kick the child out and never have to worry about the child again.
What this means is that teachers in private schools spend a lot less time dealing with kids that don't want to learn. It's not that the schools are any better, it's that there are far fewer distractions in a private school. Teachers can basically take it for granted that the children are there to learn, and they can also rely on the parents for most of the discipline.
The reason that school vouchers have such appeal is that there are millions of parents who can't afford to send their child to a private school that would love to be able to do so. They don't care about the state of the public school system, they simply want the best possible education for their children. The worst part is that private schools generally cost quite a bit less than what the government spends per child on public schooling. Part of this is due to the fact that most private schools offer far less in the way of extra-curricular activities, but an good deal of the discrepancy is due to the fact that public schools have to take any children between the ages of 5 and 18. Special needs children cost far more to educate than children that are candidates for private school.
The problems with our schools today are a reflection of problems with the modern family, and public schools simply don't have any effective way to deal with these problems. The school voucher system would basically allow parents that care about their children's education to separate their children from the children of parents that don't care about their children's education. That's a perfectly valid solution for those students with parents that care, but it certainly doesn't help the state of public schools.
I started high school in a public school and finished it in a private school (my family moved to South America) and I can testify to the fact that there is a huge difference between the two systems. That difference has little to do with the relative class sizes or the quality of the teaching staff. It has everything to do with the quality of the students. Private school students aren't smarter. I had some classmates that were so dim as to be nearly subhuman. However, even the dimmest private school students are concerned about their grades, and expulsion was a threat that would shake even the most recalcitrant private student.
I don't have an answer to what needs to be done to fix public schools, but my little girl started kindergarten a week ago, and there is no question that I would put her in a private school if there were a voucher system in place. I am concerned about the children that are currently being left behind by our public school system, but I am not so concerned about these children that I want my little girl to have to go to school with them.
The folks working on Gimp have other things that they would rather work on than gimping (ha) PhotoShop's interface. Basically the Gimp developers know that current PhotoShop users aren't particularly interested in switching to the Gimp, and so they are aiming at the masses below the current PhotoShop users. If the Gimp can become popular with the folks that don't want to spend hundreds of dollars to edit photos then they will win in the long run.
Eventually PhotoShop might even have to emulate the Gimp:).
So the Gimp hackers work on the functionality that they need to compete with PS (like adjustment layers), and they have created an interface that they think will compete well with PS (instead of merely stealing PS's interface).
It is the government's job to enforce the laws, and we have laws against the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material.
This isn't about corporatism, this is about the rule of law. Lots of folks have copyrights that they would like to see protected (I have a few myself).
Anyone with small children can attest to the fact that they are the quintessential "destructive force." Heck, my children are good kids but that doesn't mean that I leave them alone for any period of time whatsoever with anything valuable.
Fah, our legal system is working just fine. The problem is that some people don't agree that distributing other people's copyrighted material should be a crime.
The fact of the matter is that the reason that the RIAA hasn't taken anyone to court yet is that they have been pretty darn careful about only targetting folks that they had piles of evidence on. The copyright infringement laws were designed to stop mobsters from making bootleg copies of records, and now they are being leveled against ordinary citizens because ordinary citizens are now breaking the law in ways that used to require the type of infrastructure only organized crime had at its disposal.
When faced with the choice of paying a "token" $11,000 and the choice of paying millions, the $11,000 sounds like a pretty benevolent gesture.
If you don't agree with the law, then you need to get it changed, but you'll find that lots of folks, including most authors, artists, musicians, and other creative folks *like* copyrights. They like being able to control how their work is distributed.
If you feel differently write your own music, and share it with whoever you want. Or better yet find some artists that *want* you to share their music and listen to them, there's plenty of folks that are more than happy to let you download their songs. Don't take someone else's work and distribute it against their wishes.
Look, this is a complex issue, and I appreciate being able to discuss it with you rationally, but I think you need to re-examine your argument at the core level. You have to realize that giving victories to the RIAA will only embolden it and make it more powerful. When it's more powerful it will have an even easier time pushing mandated-DRM through Congress. Think of RIAA/MPAA/Microsoft like they are Terminators. They can't be reasoned with. They can't be bargained with. They will not stop - EVER - until you are DRM'ed.
You and I agree on basically every point. I believe that P2P filesharing is going to be the dominant force in the music industry going forward. People like sharing music, and they like being exposed to a wide variety of music, and filesharing does this much better than radio and CD stores. I also agree that copyrights last for too long, and that something should be done to shorten the time it takes to get copyrighted works into the public domain.
Where we differ is that you believe that copyright should be done away with entirely, and I disagree. Actually you probably wouldn't even argue that copyright should be abolished completely. You would object, for instance, to the RIAA taking your music and putting it on one of their CDs, but you apparently don't object to someone distributing an RIAA tune to thousands of people. Unfortunately, this is a two way street.
The same copyright laws that allows you to keep "big business" from using your work without permission is what should keep folks from distributing Brittney Spear's latest album without permission. I believe that artists should have the power to choose for themselves how their work is distributed. In the long run the abuse of this basic right hurts all artists, even those artists that would generally like to share their work.
In the end economics is going to force the music industry towards filesharing. However, in the meantime the music industry has every right to sue folks that distribute their copyrighted material illegally. I would much rather see the industry use existing laws to stop the illegal distribution of their copyrighted material than to see them push for new laws that would mandate DRM and wreck the system for everyone.
When the RIAA sues folks that are distributing their copyrighted material they really are fighting for the rights of artists everywhere to choose how their work is distributed. Personally I think that the RIAA artists have made a poor choice about how to distribute their music, but it is their choice to make. When the RIAA seeks to mandate DRM, on the other hand, they are restricting my freedom to run the software I want to run. That's a big difference.
You just aren't looking hard enough, my friend.Here's a source with plenty of Bach music.
When you purchase classic sheet music what you are really paying for is the actual printing and distribution process. That's why classical music is generally so much less expensive than copyrighted works. You can purchase classical sheet music from a wide array of vendors, and that keeps the price down. Printing still costs money though. Unless, of course, you download the PDF (or TeX source!) and print your own copy.
Yes, that's it precisely. I think that in the long run legal music downloads is going to be one of the biggest and most important ways that people hear new music. If the RIAA doesn't want their acts in on the deal, so be it. There is plenty of good music available now, and there will be more as musicians see file sharing as a way to gain exposure.
Most folks around here take their efforts as a challenge, an affront to our liberties. We'd work harder to get the files we want. Secondly, it would have to greatly distort the network, if not "wreck" it. And how, exactly, would the RIAA even accomplish this goal without resorting to driver-level DRM, like you mentioned earlier in the same breath as "Microsoft"? Remember, many/most of the people sharing files on P2P networks are oversees and thus out of the reach of the RIAA. Until they become a global cabal with UN-sanctioned powers we don't have to worry about them shutting down file sharing. No doubt they do crave more power, but if we don't give up and keep fighting they shall be reduced to a shell of what they are now.
The folks outside the U.S. should care what happens here in the U.S. because they are going to be greatly effected by it. If, for instance, strong DRM gets mandated here in the U.S. then you can bet your bottom dollar that Microsoft will push it out to the rest of the world. Sure, the technical among us will figure out how to get around whatever roadblocks Microsoft puts up, but the rest of the population will be stuck with DRM. The warez scene is an order of magnitude smaller than the music filesharing scene, and organized crime is heavily involved in it. If Microsoft and the RIAA get their way then the music sharing scene will suffer a similar fate. The music sharing scene works well today because you don't have to be a computer genius to participate.
I see no reason to give up - even a small part of the battle as you suggest. I think you're implying it will give us legal and moral cover, but I think you're wrong - it will do the opposite. I truly believe that music was meant to be free, and to betray that belief is to agree with you. I'm a musician myself, and I have MP3s available on my website. I hope to God that one day they are all over P2P networks. I'm not doing it for the money - I'm not making any.
My whole point is that whether or not your copyrighted material is on the P2P networks should be a voluntary thing. You want your music on the P2P networks, and that's a good thing, you should be able to put your music there to increase its exposure. If someone else doesn't want their copyrighted material on the P2P networks that should likewise be their choice. If the RIAA took your music, without your permission, and put it on one of their albums you would probably be upset. It's no different when you take someone else's copyrighted material and share it without their permission.
Over time more and more people are going to be looking to the Internet as one of their primary sources of new music. If the Internet is flooded with RIAA music then the chances of your music getting noticed is less than if the P2P networks contained primarily music that was legal to share. You might not be making money from your downloaded music now, but eventually there will be a breakout artist that went outside the RIAA system. When that happens the current music regime will crumble.
I agree that songs are too precious to lock away, but I also believe very strongly that artists should be able to make choices about how their music is shared themselves. Forcing artists to share is not right. I believe that the economics of the music industry are eventually going to force bands to allow downloading for the same reason that radio exposure is currently key to musical popularity.
The problem is that even artists that aren't part of the RIAA cartel still want to get paid, and they still want to be able to protect their copyrighted works too. Just because they allow people to share certain files doesn't mean that they want to give up on copyright entirely.
Bach is a bad example, because his stuff has been in the public domain forever. Sure musicians still can copyright their performances of his work, but there are so many folks willing to perform Bach that his tunes are usually available at a very decent price. You can get a classical CD very inexpensively, and you can get a used classical CD for almost nothing. Push comes to shove you can get a copy of the music yourself (free) and learn to play the tune yourself.
When you take someone else's copyrighted material and distribute it illegally you aren't "working around the RIAA middlemen," you are breaking the law. Worse, you are promoting RIAA acts. If you really want to screw the RIAA you have to learn to like acts that aren't part of the RIAA cartel.
Most folks that disregard other people's copyrights aren't doing it in protest of the current music regime. Instead they are doing it because the chances of getting caught are slim, and they like the idea of getting music for free. That's fine and good, but you should call a spade a spade.
I am more than happy to allow the RIAA to control their proprietary files by suing folks that distribute them illegally. This doesn't wreck the network, it simply makes it more likely that folks will share files legally. When the P2P networks are chock full of music that the artists actually want you to share then the RIAA will well and truly be screwed because that will mean that people are getting their music fix without the RIAA middlemen. Once artists can get their music heard by a wide audience without the RIAA then the RIAA will cease to exist.
The RIAA was fighting for control of the Internet, and the courts just told them that since the filesharing networks have significant legal uses that they can't prosecute the creators of the software. However, they pointed out that Congress could change the law if they wanted. If the choice that we give Congress is the complete abolition of copyright or the legislation of copyright controls on all computers in the U.S. then Congress will probably choose to mandate copyright controls. If copyright controls are mandated across the board then you can kiss any chance of real change happening goodbye. The Internet will become just like radio is today.
That's why the end user lawsuits are so important. If it can be shown that prosecution curbs the illegal distribution of copyrighted files then Congress will be less likely to kill the Internet with legislation.
I'll take saving the Internet over stealing Boy Band MP3s every day of the week.
Yeah, I will agree with that. I wish the RIAA was successful in shutting down illegal file sharing. I am more than happy listening to the music of folks that want to share.
Exactly. It's free publicity, and that's always good. The real reason that the RIAA and the MPAA don't like P2P is that they have set themselves up to be the middleman between the artists and the consumers. Right now it takes piles of advertising, retail contacts, radio programming contacts, etc. to get folks to see a movie, purchase a CD, or buy a DVD. The Internet changes all of that. Distribution becomes simple, and it becomes far easier for artists to do their own advertising and promotion. P2P networks essentially put the middlemen out of a job.
The RIAA doesn't like P2P because they can't control it, not because it is bad for sales.
That being the case, it is still their copyrighted material, and folks that distribute their copyrighted material without permission deserve to be punished. If you really want to break the backs of these middlemen download music from artists that encourage filesharing (there are piles of them).
I agree that the RIAA is evil, and I likewise agree that their day in the sun is coming to an end. However, I think that the correct way to get rid of the RIAA is for musicians and fans to work around the RIAA middlemen. There are plenty of bands that encourage people to download their music. If you really want to put a stake in the RIAA's heart find a few bands that encourage filesharing that you like, purchase their CDs, and tell your friends.
Downloading the latest RIAA boy band's newest album on Grokster doesn't do anything but give publicity to RIAA acts. The RIAA pays good money to the radio stations so that folks can hear their music for free. The RIAA doesn't hate P2P because the tunes are free, they hate it because they can't control it. The RIAA companies know that if customers get used to getting their music off of the Internet that their contacts in the radio and retailing businesses are worth a heck of a lot less.
I am sure that Microsoft would happily create versions of their software that only copied software correctly. Microsoft would simply make sure that all files had some sort of DRM flags, and it would obey them implicitly. In fact, Microsoft would love to see this sort of thing mandated by law because Free Software would never be able to comply. If I can get the source to cp then I can modify it so that it doesn't give a hoot about DRM. Microsoft would be happy as clams to see Free Software (and all of the other small-time developers) shut down for good.
That's why I will happily support the RIAA in their efforts to track down and punish file swappers. I can live without free beer copies of the latest boy band, but I can't live without Free Software.
Good. People distributing copyrighted material without permission of the owners are breaking the law. These distributors are the folks that should end up in court, not the folks writing software with plenty of legal uses. I would much rather have millions of end user lawsuits than laws telling me what kind of software can be written. If Grokster would have lost then every hacker that had ever worked on a piece of software that copied bits (from cp to ftpd) could have been liable for someone else's bad actions.
Personally I hope that the RIAA is successful in shutting down music file swapping. I can get along without a free copy of the newest Brittney Spears song, but I couldn't live with the type of Internet that the RIAA wants to create through legislation.
Your post was very interesting, thank you very much. However, it sums up in a nutshell what is wrong with software patents. There are only two cases where it makes sense to create software patents. The first case is the case of the huge and successful software business that creates patents to keep competitors from entering into their software markets. Microsoft, for example, is excited about software patents because they know that they can afford to file them, and their smaller competitors can't. Microsoft wants to raise the minimum requirements for software creation from having access to a computer to having access to a computer and having access to a pile of software patents that you can cross-license to protect your business. All of the large software houses want to keep out the riff raff, and software patents are a great way to do that.
The other case where it makes sense to create software patents is if you are a small company like Eolas that doesn't actually write software. The best part is that companies like this don't even have to invent stuff. They can simply patent ideas that everyone uses (digital timestamps, collision algorithms), and can use these patents to intimidate all sorts of small businesses that can't afford to go to court over patents. Sometimes these businesses might actually patent something that is truly novel (and useful), and then they can go to war with the Microsoft's and IBM's of the world. The important thing to remember is that these small businesses can't actually write software if they are going to go for the big money. If Eolas had made a bit of money over the years selling their own web browser, for example, then the Eolas suit would never have gone to trial. Microsoft would have found a patent or two that Eolas violated, and Microsoft would have forced Eolas to cross-license the web-browser plugin patent. Since Eolas didn't really have any products, that tactic was impossible.
In other words software patents are basically useful to large corporations that want to keep small businesses from writing software and to small businesses that want to profit from someone else's hard work. Everyone else gets screwed under the current regime.
I am sure that Doyle is a nice enough guy, and he may even believe that his "ideas" are worth more than someone else's actual implementation. The fact of the matter is that the folks at Microsoft didn't read Doyle's patent and think to themselves, "hey, that's a great idea. Internet Explorer should do that!" They simply came to the same conclusion that Doyle did, that the web browser would be a great place to run applications. The difference was that someone at Microsoft actually sat down in front of a text editor and actually wrote the software to implement the idea. Doyle is simply setting up landmines for other inventors that are actually trying to make their visions a reality. He is essentially trying to profit from someone else's work, and that's not right. Doyle and his ilk will get no support or sympathy from me.
Microsoft also gets no sympathy from me because they are actively promoting the current patent regime. The folks at Microsoft know that software patents are detrimental to actual software innovation. In fact, Microsoft has gotten to the place it is precisely because there were no software patents when they were first starting out. Microsoft would have had a much harder time competing with IBM if software had been patentable back in the day. As long as Microsoft promotes the current patent regime then I wish the Eolases of the world the best of luck.
Yes, but Microsoft is one of the reasons why the current patent regime exists. In fact, Microsoft is hard at work trying to spread the U.S. patent system over the rest of the planet. The reason that Microsoft wants to spread the patent regime around the planet is because they want to raise the price of developing software. Microsoft is tired of competing against every small-time developer with an idea and a PC, and so they are using patents to guarantee that only large corporations with hordes of patent attorneys and huge cross-licensing deals can create software.
The problem, of course, is that you don't have to actually write software to get a patent. Eolas never wrote any software. They just saw where the market was headed and submitted a patent. The Eolases of the world are always going to target the large businesses like Microsoft. If enough of these Eolas-style suits are successful then Microsoft, IBM, and the rest of the pro-patent crowd will rethink their strategy. If Microsoft changes their mind on software patents then it is very likely that the laws will end up getting changed to be more sane.
So I say screw Microsoft. I hope hundreds of Eolas style patent suits get filed against them, and I hope they lose every single one. IP companies like Eolas are never going to target small time developers because there is no money there. The only folks really susceptible to these suits are those highly successful software companies that are pushing for software patentability.
Generally I would agree with you. Anyone defending themself in a software patent lawsuit deserves to win because software patents are evil. However, Microsoft is one of the major forces keeping the current patent regime in place. They are currently pushing for software patents all over the world.
I am starting to believe that the only way that the current software patent mess is ever going to be cleaned up is for large and prosperous corporations like Microsoft (and IBM) to realize that it is in their best interest to do away with software patents. If IBM and Microsoft came out against software patents then the laws that support them would change fairly quickly.
Groups like Eolas aren't the slightest bit interested in Free Software. They sued Microsoft because Microsoft has piles of money, and they aren't going to sue Mozilla because Mozilla has nothing. If Eolas scores a big payday then thousands of other small companies with nothing to their name but some patents and attack lawyers are also likely to join in the feeding frenzy, and eventually Microsoft will realize that software patents aren't in their best interest. The beauty of this business model is that you don't have to go through all the hard work of actually writing software. You just have to come up with an idea, patent it, and wait for someone to violate your patent. If companies like Eolas start winning lawsuits then Microsoft will almost certainly have a change of heart regarding software patents.
Microsoft is hard at work creating roadblocks for Free Software with their growing portfolio of software patents. If Microsoft can't be made to feel the heat from these intellectual property companies then very soon it might become impossible for Free Software developers to write software.
Ah, good point. I probably could have used a better analogy. Perhaps I should have said something along the lines of "Microsoft's ridiculously high profit margins draws new competitors like chum draws sharks."
No one is going to be "the Microsoft" of home computers because home computers are a commodity market. That being the case, eMachines has done pretty well for themselves by selling extreme low cost machines.
The essential difference between a commodity market and a monopolized market is that in a commodity market you can purchase essentially the same good from a wide variety of vendors. To use a computer example, you can purchase basically the same machine from Dell, eMachines, HP, or your local whitebox vendor. Likewise you can purchase any automobile you want and you don't have to worry about using special gas stations or roads. Because there is very little differentiation in commodity markets the winners tend to be those vendors with the lowest prices (Dell, eMachines).
Operating systems aren't quite to the point where they are commodities, but they are getting close. I can sit down at a Mac, a Windows machine, or a Linux box, and quite a bit is exactly the same. As the parity between operating systems increases there will be more and more pressure to simply choose whatever is the least expensive (which currently is Linux). We are already seeing this at work on the server, and the desktop is next.
The good news, for Linux anyway, is that it doesn't really matter if people care about Windows vs. Linux. One of the reasons that Microsoft has done so well is that they could guarantee that they were installed on all machines. Linux doesn't need to make a profit to win, but Microsoft does. So as Linux makes it more and more difficult for Microsoft to charge money for an operating system, Linux wins. If a customer isn't willing to pay to have Windows pre-installed (even if that is what they plan on using) then Microsoft loses a sale. Thanks to Linux Wal-Mart, and lots of other vendors, are more than happy to sell you a computer without Windows.
However, I think that you are understating the value proposition of Linux. People don't care about Windows or Linux, they just want to get their stuff done. Free Software is a very inexpensive way to accomplish a whole pile of stuff. A barebones Windows install is not nearly as useful as moderate (and still free as in free beer) Linux installation.
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Actually, in every single case that you cited Microsoft was the low cost leader that ended up completely dominating an entrenched (and usually superior) product. "Good enough" and less expensive wins out in the end, and Microsoft is living proof of that. Microsoft has gotten where it is today by being less expensive than the competition, and now Free Software is using Microsoft's trick against them.
Lots of businesses are currently gearing up to do battle with Microsoft on the desktop. All sorts of organizations from IBM and Novell to Linspire and Wal-Mart have Linux initiatives, and as these initiatives start to make money even more companies are likely to get into the act. Sure, these service and support based businesses aren't likely to generate the profit margins that Microsoft does with Windows and MS Office, but there are already plenty of profitable Free Software businesses.
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Private schools have to very important advantages over public schools. The first is that the children going to private schools generally have parents that are concerned about their child's academic progress. Teachers can send children home with homework knowing that the homework will get done, and if a child steps out of line they can be relatively certain that a simple call to the parents will achieve the required results. A great deal of any public school teacher's time is spent working around discipline problems. In a private school that simply isn't the case.
The second advantage that private schools have is related to the first. If a private school has a child that continues to be a problem they can kick the child out and never have to worry about the child again.
What this means is that teachers in private schools spend a lot less time dealing with kids that don't want to learn. It's not that the schools are any better, it's that there are far fewer distractions in a private school. Teachers can basically take it for granted that the children are there to learn, and they can also rely on the parents for most of the discipline.
The reason that school vouchers have such appeal is that there are millions of parents who can't afford to send their child to a private school that would love to be able to do so. They don't care about the state of the public school system, they simply want the best possible education for their children. The worst part is that private schools generally cost quite a bit less than what the government spends per child on public schooling. Part of this is due to the fact that most private schools offer far less in the way of extra-curricular activities, but an good deal of the discrepancy is due to the fact that public schools have to take any children between the ages of 5 and 18. Special needs children cost far more to educate than children that are candidates for private school.
The problems with our schools today are a reflection of problems with the modern family, and public schools simply don't have any effective way to deal with these problems. The school voucher system would basically allow parents that care about their children's education to separate their children from the children of parents that don't care about their children's education. That's a perfectly valid solution for those students with parents that care, but it certainly doesn't help the state of public schools.
I started high school in a public school and finished it in a private school (my family moved to South America) and I can testify to the fact that there is a huge difference between the two systems. That difference has little to do with the relative class sizes or the quality of the teaching staff. It has everything to do with the quality of the students. Private school students aren't smarter. I had some classmates that were so dim as to be nearly subhuman. However, even the dimmest private school students are concerned about their grades, and expulsion was a threat that would shake even the most recalcitrant private student.
I don't have an answer to what needs to be done to fix public schools, but my little girl started kindergarten a week ago, and there is no question that I would put her in a private school if there were a voucher system in place. I am concerned about the children that are currently being left behind by our public school system, but I am not so concerned about these children that I want my little girl to have to go to school with them.
The folks working on Gimp have other things that they would rather work on than gimping (ha) PhotoShop's interface. Basically the Gimp developers know that current PhotoShop users aren't particularly interested in switching to the Gimp, and so they are aiming at the masses below the current PhotoShop users. If the Gimp can become popular with the folks that don't want to spend hundreds of dollars to edit photos then they will win in the long run.
Eventually PhotoShop might even have to emulate the Gimp :).
So the Gimp hackers work on the functionality that they need to compete with PS (like adjustment layers), and they have created an interface that they think will compete well with PS (instead of merely stealing PS's interface).
It is the government's job to enforce the laws, and we have laws against the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material.
This isn't about corporatism, this is about the rule of law. Lots of folks have copyrights that they would like to see protected (I have a few myself).
Anyone with small children can attest to the fact that they are the quintessential "destructive force." Heck, my children are good kids but that doesn't mean that I leave them alone for any period of time whatsoever with anything valuable.
Fah, our legal system is working just fine. The problem is that some people don't agree that distributing other people's copyrighted material should be a crime.
The fact of the matter is that the reason that the RIAA hasn't taken anyone to court yet is that they have been pretty darn careful about only targetting folks that they had piles of evidence on. The copyright infringement laws were designed to stop mobsters from making bootleg copies of records, and now they are being leveled against ordinary citizens because ordinary citizens are now breaking the law in ways that used to require the type of infrastructure only organized crime had at its disposal.
When faced with the choice of paying a "token" $11,000 and the choice of paying millions, the $11,000 sounds like a pretty benevolent gesture.
If you don't agree with the law, then you need to get it changed, but you'll find that lots of folks, including most authors, artists, musicians, and other creative folks *like* copyrights. They like being able to control how their work is distributed.
If you feel differently write your own music, and share it with whoever you want. Or better yet find some artists that *want* you to share their music and listen to them, there's plenty of folks that are more than happy to let you download their songs. Don't take someone else's work and distribute it against their wishes.
You and I agree on basically every point. I believe that P2P filesharing is going to be the dominant force in the music industry going forward. People like sharing music, and they like being exposed to a wide variety of music, and filesharing does this much better than radio and CD stores. I also agree that copyrights last for too long, and that something should be done to shorten the time it takes to get copyrighted works into the public domain.
Where we differ is that you believe that copyright should be done away with entirely, and I disagree. Actually you probably wouldn't even argue that copyright should be abolished completely. You would object, for instance, to the RIAA taking your music and putting it on one of their CDs, but you apparently don't object to someone distributing an RIAA tune to thousands of people. Unfortunately, this is a two way street.
The same copyright laws that allows you to keep "big business" from using your work without permission is what should keep folks from distributing Brittney Spear's latest album without permission. I believe that artists should have the power to choose for themselves how their work is distributed. In the long run the abuse of this basic right hurts all artists, even those artists that would generally like to share their work.
In the end economics is going to force the music industry towards filesharing. However, in the meantime the music industry has every right to sue folks that distribute their copyrighted material illegally. I would much rather see the industry use existing laws to stop the illegal distribution of their copyrighted material than to see them push for new laws that would mandate DRM and wreck the system for everyone.
When the RIAA sues folks that are distributing their copyrighted material they really are fighting for the rights of artists everywhere to choose how their work is distributed. Personally I think that the RIAA artists have made a poor choice about how to distribute their music, but it is their choice to make. When the RIAA seeks to mandate DRM, on the other hand, they are restricting my freedom to run the software I want to run. That's a big difference.
You just aren't looking hard enough, my friend.Here's a source with plenty of Bach music.
When you purchase classic sheet music what you are really paying for is the actual printing and distribution process. That's why classical music is generally so much less expensive than copyrighted works. You can purchase classical sheet music from a wide array of vendors, and that keeps the price down. Printing still costs money though. Unless, of course, you download the PDF (or TeX source!) and print your own copy.
Yes, that's it precisely. I think that in the long run legal music downloads is going to be one of the biggest and most important ways that people hear new music. If the RIAA doesn't want their acts in on the deal, so be it. There is plenty of good music available now, and there will be more as musicians see file sharing as a way to gain exposure.
The folks outside the U.S. should care what happens here in the U.S. because they are going to be greatly effected by it. If, for instance, strong DRM gets mandated here in the U.S. then you can bet your bottom dollar that Microsoft will push it out to the rest of the world. Sure, the technical among us will figure out how to get around whatever roadblocks Microsoft puts up, but the rest of the population will be stuck with DRM. The warez scene is an order of magnitude smaller than the music filesharing scene, and organized crime is heavily involved in it. If Microsoft and the RIAA get their way then the music sharing scene will suffer a similar fate. The music sharing scene works well today because you don't have to be a computer genius to participate.
My whole point is that whether or not your copyrighted material is on the P2P networks should be a voluntary thing. You want your music on the P2P networks, and that's a good thing, you should be able to put your music there to increase its exposure. If someone else doesn't want their copyrighted material on the P2P networks that should likewise be their choice. If the RIAA took your music, without your permission, and put it on one of their albums you would probably be upset. It's no different when you take someone else's copyrighted material and share it without their permission.
Over time more and more people are going to be looking to the Internet as one of their primary sources of new music. If the Internet is flooded with RIAA music then the chances of your music getting noticed is less than if the P2P networks contained primarily music that was legal to share. You might not be making money from your downloaded music now, but eventually there will be a breakout artist that went outside the RIAA system. When that happens the current music regime will crumble.
I agree that songs are too precious to lock away, but I also believe very strongly that artists should be able to make choices about how their music is shared themselves. Forcing artists to share is not right. I believe that the economics of the music industry are eventually going to force bands to allow downloading for the same reason that radio exposure is currently key to musical popularity.
The problem is that even artists that aren't part of the RIAA cartel still want to get paid, and they still want to be able to protect their copyrighted works too. Just because they allow people to share certain files doesn't mean that they want to give up on copyright entirely.
Bach is a bad example, because his stuff has been in the public domain forever. Sure musicians still can copyright their performances of his work, but there are so many folks willing to perform Bach that his tunes are usually available at a very decent price. You can get a classical CD very inexpensively, and you can get a used classical CD for almost nothing. Push comes to shove you can get a copy of the music yourself (free) and learn to play the tune yourself.
When you take someone else's copyrighted material and distribute it illegally you aren't "working around the RIAA middlemen," you are breaking the law. Worse, you are promoting RIAA acts. If you really want to screw the RIAA you have to learn to like acts that aren't part of the RIAA cartel.
Most folks that disregard other people's copyrights aren't doing it in protest of the current music regime. Instead they are doing it because the chances of getting caught are slim, and they like the idea of getting music for free. That's fine and good, but you should call a spade a spade.
I am more than happy to allow the RIAA to control their proprietary files by suing folks that distribute them illegally. This doesn't wreck the network, it simply makes it more likely that folks will share files legally. When the P2P networks are chock full of music that the artists actually want you to share then the RIAA will well and truly be screwed because that will mean that people are getting their music fix without the RIAA middlemen. Once artists can get their music heard by a wide audience without the RIAA then the RIAA will cease to exist.
The RIAA was fighting for control of the Internet, and the courts just told them that since the filesharing networks have significant legal uses that they can't prosecute the creators of the software. However, they pointed out that Congress could change the law if they wanted. If the choice that we give Congress is the complete abolition of copyright or the legislation of copyright controls on all computers in the U.S. then Congress will probably choose to mandate copyright controls. If copyright controls are mandated across the board then you can kiss any chance of real change happening goodbye. The Internet will become just like radio is today.
That's why the end user lawsuits are so important. If it can be shown that prosecution curbs the illegal distribution of copyrighted files then Congress will be less likely to kill the Internet with legislation.
I'll take saving the Internet over stealing Boy Band MP3s every day of the week.
Yeah, I will agree with that. I wish the RIAA was successful in shutting down illegal file sharing. I am more than happy listening to the music of folks that want to share.
Holy smoke! That was the coolest thing I have ever read.
Would you believe Utah? That's right, I am just down the road from SCO headquarters.
Exactly. It's free publicity, and that's always good. The real reason that the RIAA and the MPAA don't like P2P is that they have set themselves up to be the middleman between the artists and the consumers. Right now it takes piles of advertising, retail contacts, radio programming contacts, etc. to get folks to see a movie, purchase a CD, or buy a DVD. The Internet changes all of that. Distribution becomes simple, and it becomes far easier for artists to do their own advertising and promotion. P2P networks essentially put the middlemen out of a job.
The RIAA doesn't like P2P because they can't control it, not because it is bad for sales.
That being the case, it is still their copyrighted material, and folks that distribute their copyrighted material without permission deserve to be punished. If you really want to break the backs of these middlemen download music from artists that encourage filesharing (there are piles of them).
I agree that the RIAA is evil, and I likewise agree that their day in the sun is coming to an end. However, I think that the correct way to get rid of the RIAA is for musicians and fans to work around the RIAA middlemen. There are plenty of bands that encourage people to download their music. If you really want to put a stake in the RIAA's heart find a few bands that encourage filesharing that you like, purchase their CDs, and tell your friends.
Downloading the latest RIAA boy band's newest album on Grokster doesn't do anything but give publicity to RIAA acts. The RIAA pays good money to the radio stations so that folks can hear their music for free. The RIAA doesn't hate P2P because the tunes are free, they hate it because they can't control it. The RIAA companies know that if customers get used to getting their music off of the Internet that their contacts in the radio and retailing businesses are worth a heck of a lot less.
I am sure that Microsoft would happily create versions of their software that only copied software correctly. Microsoft would simply make sure that all files had some sort of DRM flags, and it would obey them implicitly. In fact, Microsoft would love to see this sort of thing mandated by law because Free Software would never be able to comply. If I can get the source to cp then I can modify it so that it doesn't give a hoot about DRM. Microsoft would be happy as clams to see Free Software (and all of the other small-time developers) shut down for good.
That's why I will happily support the RIAA in their efforts to track down and punish file swappers. I can live without free beer copies of the latest boy band, but I can't live without Free Software.
Good. People distributing copyrighted material without permission of the owners are breaking the law. These distributors are the folks that should end up in court, not the folks writing software with plenty of legal uses. I would much rather have millions of end user lawsuits than laws telling me what kind of software can be written. If Grokster would have lost then every hacker that had ever worked on a piece of software that copied bits (from cp to ftpd) could have been liable for someone else's bad actions.
Personally I hope that the RIAA is successful in shutting down music file swapping. I can get along without a free copy of the newest Brittney Spears song, but I couldn't live with the type of Internet that the RIAA wants to create through legislation.
Your post was very interesting, thank you very much. However, it sums up in a nutshell what is wrong with software patents. There are only two cases where it makes sense to create software patents. The first case is the case of the huge and successful software business that creates patents to keep competitors from entering into their software markets. Microsoft, for example, is excited about software patents because they know that they can afford to file them, and their smaller competitors can't. Microsoft wants to raise the minimum requirements for software creation from having access to a computer to having access to a computer and having access to a pile of software patents that you can cross-license to protect your business. All of the large software houses want to keep out the riff raff, and software patents are a great way to do that.
The other case where it makes sense to create software patents is if you are a small company like Eolas that doesn't actually write software. The best part is that companies like this don't even have to invent stuff. They can simply patent ideas that everyone uses (digital timestamps, collision algorithms), and can use these patents to intimidate all sorts of small businesses that can't afford to go to court over patents. Sometimes these businesses might actually patent something that is truly novel (and useful), and then they can go to war with the Microsoft's and IBM's of the world. The important thing to remember is that these small businesses can't actually write software if they are going to go for the big money. If Eolas had made a bit of money over the years selling their own web browser, for example, then the Eolas suit would never have gone to trial. Microsoft would have found a patent or two that Eolas violated, and Microsoft would have forced Eolas to cross-license the web-browser plugin patent. Since Eolas didn't really have any products, that tactic was impossible.
In other words software patents are basically useful to large corporations that want to keep small businesses from writing software and to small businesses that want to profit from someone else's hard work. Everyone else gets screwed under the current regime.
I am sure that Doyle is a nice enough guy, and he may even believe that his "ideas" are worth more than someone else's actual implementation. The fact of the matter is that the folks at Microsoft didn't read Doyle's patent and think to themselves, "hey, that's a great idea. Internet Explorer should do that!" They simply came to the same conclusion that Doyle did, that the web browser would be a great place to run applications. The difference was that someone at Microsoft actually sat down in front of a text editor and actually wrote the software to implement the idea. Doyle is simply setting up landmines for other inventors that are actually trying to make their visions a reality. He is essentially trying to profit from someone else's work, and that's not right. Doyle and his ilk will get no support or sympathy from me.
Microsoft also gets no sympathy from me because they are actively promoting the current patent regime. The folks at Microsoft know that software patents are detrimental to actual software innovation. In fact, Microsoft has gotten to the place it is precisely because there were no software patents when they were first starting out. Microsoft would have had a much harder time competing with IBM if software had been patentable back in the day. As long as Microsoft promotes the current patent regime then I wish the Eolases of the world the best of luck.
Yes, but Microsoft is one of the reasons why the current patent regime exists. In fact, Microsoft is hard at work trying to spread the U.S. patent system over the rest of the planet. The reason that Microsoft wants to spread the patent regime around the planet is because they want to raise the price of developing software. Microsoft is tired of competing against every small-time developer with an idea and a PC, and so they are using patents to guarantee that only large corporations with hordes of patent attorneys and huge cross-licensing deals can create software.
The problem, of course, is that you don't have to actually write software to get a patent. Eolas never wrote any software. They just saw where the market was headed and submitted a patent. The Eolases of the world are always going to target the large businesses like Microsoft. If enough of these Eolas-style suits are successful then Microsoft, IBM, and the rest of the pro-patent crowd will rethink their strategy. If Microsoft changes their mind on software patents then it is very likely that the laws will end up getting changed to be more sane.
So I say screw Microsoft. I hope hundreds of Eolas style patent suits get filed against them, and I hope they lose every single one. IP companies like Eolas are never going to target small time developers because there is no money there. The only folks really susceptible to these suits are those highly successful software companies that are pushing for software patentability.
Generally I would agree with you. Anyone defending themself in a software patent lawsuit deserves to win because software patents are evil. However, Microsoft is one of the major forces keeping the current patent regime in place. They are currently pushing for software patents all over the world.
I am starting to believe that the only way that the current software patent mess is ever going to be cleaned up is for large and prosperous corporations like Microsoft (and IBM) to realize that it is in their best interest to do away with software patents. If IBM and Microsoft came out against software patents then the laws that support them would change fairly quickly.
Groups like Eolas aren't the slightest bit interested in Free Software. They sued Microsoft because Microsoft has piles of money, and they aren't going to sue Mozilla because Mozilla has nothing. If Eolas scores a big payday then thousands of other small companies with nothing to their name but some patents and attack lawyers are also likely to join in the feeding frenzy, and eventually Microsoft will realize that software patents aren't in their best interest. The beauty of this business model is that you don't have to go through all the hard work of actually writing software. You just have to come up with an idea, patent it, and wait for someone to violate your patent. If companies like Eolas start winning lawsuits then Microsoft will almost certainly have a change of heart regarding software patents.
Microsoft is hard at work creating roadblocks for Free Software with their growing portfolio of software patents. If Microsoft can't be made to feel the heat from these intellectual property companies then very soon it might become impossible for Free Software developers to write software.
For $565 million they would probably buy into all sorts of stuff.
Ah, good point. I probably could have used a better analogy. Perhaps I should have said something along the lines of "Microsoft's ridiculously high profit margins draws new competitors like chum draws sharks."
You get the idea.
No one is going to be "the Microsoft" of home computers because home computers are a commodity market. That being the case, eMachines has done pretty well for themselves by selling extreme low cost machines.
The essential difference between a commodity market and a monopolized market is that in a commodity market you can purchase essentially the same good from a wide variety of vendors. To use a computer example, you can purchase basically the same machine from Dell, eMachines, HP, or your local whitebox vendor. Likewise you can purchase any automobile you want and you don't have to worry about using special gas stations or roads. Because there is very little differentiation in commodity markets the winners tend to be those vendors with the lowest prices (Dell, eMachines).
Operating systems aren't quite to the point where they are commodities, but they are getting close. I can sit down at a Mac, a Windows machine, or a Linux box, and quite a bit is exactly the same. As the parity between operating systems increases there will be more and more pressure to simply choose whatever is the least expensive (which currently is Linux). We are already seeing this at work on the server, and the desktop is next.
The good news, for Linux anyway, is that it doesn't really matter if people care about Windows vs. Linux. One of the reasons that Microsoft has done so well is that they could guarantee that they were installed on all machines. Linux doesn't need to make a profit to win, but Microsoft does. So as Linux makes it more and more difficult for Microsoft to charge money for an operating system, Linux wins. If a customer isn't willing to pay to have Windows pre-installed (even if that is what they plan on using) then Microsoft loses a sale. Thanks to Linux Wal-Mart, and lots of other vendors, are more than happy to sell you a computer without Windows.
However, I think that you are understating the value proposition of Linux. People don't care about Windows or Linux, they just want to get their stuff done. Free Software is a very inexpensive way to accomplish a whole pile of stuff. A barebones Windows install is not nearly as useful as moderate (and still free as in free beer) Linux installation.
Actually, in every single case that you cited Microsoft was the low cost leader that ended up completely dominating an entrenched (and usually superior) product. "Good enough" and less expensive wins out in the end, and Microsoft is living proof of that. Microsoft has gotten where it is today by being less expensive than the competition, and now Free Software is using Microsoft's trick against them.
Lots of businesses are currently gearing up to do battle with Microsoft on the desktop. All sorts of organizations from IBM and Novell to Linspire and Wal-Mart have Linux initiatives, and as these initiatives start to make money even more companies are likely to get into the act. Sure, these service and support based businesses aren't likely to generate the profit margins that Microsoft does with Windows and MS Office, but there are already plenty of profitable Free Software businesses.