Hehe! That's great. Now we'll never know if he meant a "retarded [flying disc toy]" or a "retarded [offspring of a fictional woman]". Technically both of them should be capitalized, so his failure to do that doesn't help.:)
"Retarded frisby" has my vote for next Slashdot In Joke of the Week(tm). Except that it's "Frisbee" and "Frisbee" is a registered trademark of Wham-O, Inc., you insensitive clod!
Right. I would still support upgrading. The cost of this software is probably less than 1% of your annual billings. You wouldn't even notice this expense.
Um, if you bill by the hour, saving 10 minutes here or there won't help you at all. You're getting paid for those 10 minutes whether you're fighting the software or doing the next task.
Computers are just pieces of equipment that some people understand, and some don't. Could you rebuild your car's engine from scratch, or do you take it to a mechanic?
I don't have a car you insensitive clod! But even I know which pedal makes the car go faster, which one makes it stop, which one makes it possible to wiggle the little stick to change "gears" (whatever those are). I also know not to put motor oil in the gas tank and that driving on icy or wet roads can impair the ability of the car to where I want it to, which I tell the car by spinning that little round thingy. I would suggest that anyone who knows less about cars than I do should not be allowed to drive one. I think that's the analogy you're looking for.
Hmmm. Let's see. He started with a blank disk (essentially), and wrote a heck of a lot of extremely useful software. And gave it away. And still manages to eat dinner every night of the week. And yet you have the nerve to make it sound like he couldn't get a "real" job. Is that envy I smell, or sour grapes?
Fair enough. I'm on your side, btw, i hate these calls. All of them, not just the sales pitches, but the surveys, the telepanhandlers, and especially the politicians. I just don't know that this law will help us. I think we have to help ourselves.... and work for laws where we can help ourselves.
What industry-specific software are you running on Microsoft? Most of the serious software in the world (financial and otherwise) is no way, no how, going to run on any shoddy little MS box. You almost have a point about inter-office files, but it's easy enough to send them as HTML or.txt or.rtf or.jpg or whatever. In fact, every time I get a.doc file or other MS file, I cringe. Usually it's a huge byte-moat around a very small amount of data that now clogs the heck out of my email box.
I would have switched anyway, since the cell phone package is a more affordable bundle that includes caller ID and voice messaging. But more importantly, to the point that you think is some sort of inconsistency: the cell phone is a metered service, landlines service is typically unmetered (except for outbound long distance calls). Answering a cell phone more costs me more money. Answering my home phone more does not. And even if it wasn't illegal to solicit to a cell phone (so go ahead and lobby for the repeal of that law for all I care), the technology inherent in the device still helps me filter out the bad guys at a better price than my local landline monopoly does. The part that helps is that there is an actual free market happening in the cell phone business. Not so with the children of Ma Bell.
And sheesh. Really. Just because I chide Slashbots to maybe put the old Thinking Cap(tm) on, doesn't mean I don't support this law or any other law in particular. I'm just surprised at this crowd, that's all. Normally all we ever hear is Libertarian yada-yada-yada around here or "information wants to be free", except when it comes to spam and telemarketers, and then suddenly it's "shoot those scum!" I should think that the same brilliant minds that go around doing crazy stuff like internet-enabling TI calculators or building terabyte RAID filesystems out of 5.25 inch floppy drives would be excited to think up fun and interesting ways to defeat spammers and telemarketers.
There is a big difference between an aural assault and whether someone chooses to pick up the phone (or even have the ringer turned on). One would think that here on Slashdot, News for Nerds, that people would be able to think a little farther than "someone ought to make a law". Where's your hacker spirit Slashbots? How about some clever hacks, both device-wise and prank-wise, that put these folks in their place-- or at least let you spend your evenings in peace?
I know what's worked for me may not work for everyone, but switching to caller ID and voicemail has done wonders. Plus I only have the cell phone, so that's doubly helpful since it's already illegal to cold call a cell phone. With these devices, the only regulation I feel strongly about is something that prevents number blocking or other measures to render caller ID useless.
Well, here is the main bit wrong with your viewpoint. The right to free speech does not mean that the other person has to be burdened to listen to your free speech. As they say, your right to free speech stops on my doorstep.
I DID NOT SAY ANYONE, ESPECIALLY A BUSINESS, HAD A RIGHT TO MAKE YOU LISTEN TO SALES PITCHES IN YOUR OWN HOME. I NEVER SAID THAT.
As for effectual: we'll see how effectual this law actually is if it's even found valid and then how it's enforced.
Thank you for the voice of sanity in this discussion. It's been my position for some time that the best way to prevent abuse of this type of data is not to try and abolish it altogether, but to put some public accountability into the system (i.e. being able to audit the records they hold on me). After all, understanding trip patterns or customer behaviors or whatever is highly valuable information for those providing services of this type. This allows them (hopefully) to model various situations and to attempt to improve service. What I'd be curious to hear is how well people have found the system to work in London for requesting this stuff. Is there any evidence of governmental misuse of the data?
I have to take exception to this. Unless you honestly think the process of natural selection is weeding out genes for smartness, kids today have all the same inherent ability that any kids have ever had.
If anything, it is the parents who are dumber than ever-- or maybe it's just that they don't give a shit. If the parents truly oppose these things they would never happen in schools. At the very least, they need to recognize that schools are only part of the picture and take an active role in teaching their child the "missing skillset" that the kids won't be learning in school.
For the people (several of them now) who have accused me of not knowing anything about free speech: I think I apparently know as much as you do. In fact, I cited the very interesting case of the suit against Nike for allegedly false claims they made in press releases. They settled the case out of court in order to prevent a judge and jury from having an opportunity to determine that even non-advertising speech of corporations was subject to less protections than the speech of persons. So my point wasn't that companies had a free speech right to contact you, which I don't think they do... I don't think a corporation can have any rights not given to it because it is not a natural being that would therefore have any natural rights of its own.
On the other hand, I think this law (like so many other regulations in effect) will place a larger burden on smaller businesses than on larger businesses. Which I find typical of most governmental solutions to private problems. I think if the government had actually been more proactive in writing and enforcing a decent telemarketing law in the first place, this sort of list would have been unnecessary.
Imagine if the damages for calling someone back after being requested to not call again were huge (before, they look pretty substantial now-- but again, a large business can afford this fine no problem, whereas it might bankrupt some smaller businesses). Imagine if it had been written as a civil tort so that the burden of proof would be lower (probably was, but I am not a lawyer and really paid more attention to how I could help myself avoid these calls than how government could protect me-- which it does so poorly as to be laughable in most cases). Imagine if the government had put all the DNC money into a fund to help regular folks pay lawyers to file against repeat callers. Imagine if they had simply required caller ID functions to work properly and always identify business calls as such (similar to the "ADV"-style spam laws). I can think of a million better ideas than some massive DNC list that are probably cheaper, more workable, would quite possibly be useful in limiting other annoying calls, would be fairer to smaller businesses, and would provide some flexibility down the road. For instance, I have a cell phone (it is my only phone): what happens when I finally get on the charity/politics call lists? Is there going to be any good way for me to avoid those calls or distinguish them from wrong numbers and/or friends/relatives calling me from unknown numbers? Is there going to be a way for me to distinguish legitimate business calls from sales calls? You see where I'm going with this?
I never said the Open Source fund would be used for end users. I never said it addressed any legal issues for end users. In fact, I asked a question. You even quoted it. I'll ask it again and maybe this time you'll answer it: Do you really think RH will just let their customers hang out to dry on this one?
Maybe the link between the text I quoted and the question I asked was too subtle. My point was: if they are willing to go that far for other companies and non-profit groups, it seems likely to me that they are not going to leave their customers in the lurch.
From RedHat: To further protect the integrity of Open Source software and the Open Source community, Red Hat has established the Open Source Now Fund. The purpose of the fund will be to cover legal expenses associated with infringement claims brought against companies developing software under the GPL license and non-profit organizations supporting the efforts of companies developing software under a GPL license. Red Hat has pledged one million dollars to be provided as funding in this initiative. Do you really think RH will just let their customers hang out to dry on this one? This is my point: they aren't just sitting back waiting for SCO to attack their customers, they are actively engaged in going after SCO right now in order to prevent SCO from ever having an opportunity to go after users.
Why should Red Hat go out of their way to offer indemnification when doing so may actually weaken their own case against SCO? Why don't we wait for SCO to actually have a case against a Red Hat customer before we judge how well Red Hat handles liabilities incurred by their customers?
If the telemarketing firm is not communicating DNCs back to the company they are working for and if that company is not scrubbing future lists to be sent to other telemarketing firms, then the problem clearly resides with the company and not the telemarketing firms. If I'm not mistaken, using different telemarketing firms is not a legal end-run around do-not-call requests.
From the Do Not Call FAQ: Even if you put your number on the National Do Not Call Registry, a company with which you have an established business relationship may call you for up to 18 months after your last purchase or delivery from it, or your last payment to it, unless you ask the company not to call again. (In that case, the company must honor your request not to call. If they subsequently call you again, they may be subject to a fine of up to $11,000.) Also, if you make an inquiry to a company or submit an application to it, for three months afterwards the company can call you. If you make a specific request to that company not to call you, however, then the company may not call you, even if you have an established business relationship with that company.
Of course the telemarketing firm isn't going to put you on the DNC list for every one of their customers, just the one they are calling you about at the moment.
Finally, let's be clear, I support the National DNC list myself. I don't think it goes far enough when telepanhandlers, politicians, and surveyors can still call me... oh, and people dialing wrong numbers. I get way too many of those.
In Red Hat's defense I'd like to point out that rather than some mamby-pamby "indemnification" nonsense Red Hat actually took the far more courageous step of suing SCO over SCO's out of court claims.
So what you're proposing is not only the abolition of copyright but then make a separate law so that we can continue to enforce the GPL? Sounds good to me.
Oops! A bit unclear on my part. I didn't mean that there was no time limit on how long they couldn't call, but that they couldn't even contact you a first time.
No. It's not already the case. Currently if I share my source code it is subject to copyright law, which makes the GPL enforceable. If copyright goes away, then my ability to enforce the GPL goes away too. So the question gets to be, how to get subsequent developers to share their changes to the source code. Sure, users could share the binaries all day long, but what if they were trojaned? That sort of thing is easy to detect with the source code available by examining the diff output from a trusted source compared against the new code.
Yes, actually. This is not a simple do-not-call list, which reputable companies take pretty seriously. This is the government actively soliciting the names/numbers of people in order to prevent marketers from contacting them. Furthermore this list prevents marketers from contacting you ever, whereas the normal existing situation was that you would request that they not contact you again. Finally, this list places a burden on speech and is bound to create some difficult lawsuits, especially as to what constitutes an advertisment.
Forcing a company to obtain this list prior to making calls is a much different situation from requiring them to keep and honor a list of numbers they have called and been asked not to call again. The crux of the matter is the notion that advertising is not fully protected speech... which is fine. Regulate away. But to blatantly allow not-for-profit organizations to solicit donations while restricting for-profits from calling? Whatever.
I find the telepanhandlers way more annoying than the people who actually want to sell me something-- I don't see why the "speech" of charities is somehow more worthwhile than the speech of corporations. Want to guess how many more calls I'll get after this list goes into full play from groups like the Nation Foundation or the ACLU Foundation? Can't wait to see which new foundations are founded just for the purpose of making it possible for companies to do "branded" mailings and callings under the cover of a non-profit. Even without a sales pitch, anything with a corporate logo on it could very well be considered "advertising" (witness the recent Nike lawsuit).
Of course I talk to very few telemarketers/telepanhandlers/bill-collectors anyway... I use caller ID and an answering machine to my benefit. Best of all, neither of the above can realistically be regulated into existence or arbitrarily wiped out of existence by a capricious Judiciary.
The GPL is not an anti-copyright. You do not have to share anything in order to use GPL software. If you got rid of copyright laws, the GPL would lack any force as it depends on copyright law in order to obligate "downstream" distributors of binary package to make the source code available. Three strikes. You're out.
In fact, while some of us might oppose copyright laws, the fact that they exist and give force to licenses like the GPL is a great boon to Free Software. Without them, anyone could simply compile the code from a Free Software package and sell it as a binary only package. It is not likely, in a free market unburdened by copyright, that this would be a very profitable strategy, because any one of us would then be free to give away copies of those binaries. But even so, at the end of the day, obtaining actual source code would be more problematic than it is now. It is quite possible that programmers would be more inclined to keep their source code secret because it would be the source code that would be of incredible value, not the binaries themselves.
I have come full circle on this issue myself. It seems to me that the best copyright/patent rules are those favored by the Founders. Short terms with plenty of requirements on the part of the copyright seeker to obtain and maintain. This allows inventors, writers, musicians, artists, programmers and others a short time to monopolize their work, but makes it more likely that they will only be able to do so during the key initial period after the idea is first implemented or the work published.
Slashdot Mirror
er, fictional female mouse.
Hehe! That's great. Now we'll never know if he meant a "retarded [flying disc toy]" or a "retarded [offspring of a fictional woman]". Technically both of them should be capitalized, so his failure to do that doesn't help. :)
"Retarded frisby" has my vote for next Slashdot In Joke of the Week(tm). Except that it's "Frisbee" and "Frisbee" is a registered trademark of Wham-O, Inc., you insensitive clod!
Right. I would still support upgrading. The cost of this software is probably less than 1% of your annual billings. You wouldn't even notice this expense.
Um, if you bill by the hour, saving 10 minutes here or there won't help you at all. You're getting paid for those 10 minutes whether you're fighting the software or doing the next task.
Computers are just pieces of equipment that some people understand, and some don't. Could you rebuild your car's engine from scratch, or do you take it to a mechanic?
I don't have a car you insensitive clod! But even I know which pedal makes the car go faster, which one makes it stop, which one makes it possible to wiggle the little stick to change "gears" (whatever those are). I also know not to put motor oil in the gas tank and that driving on icy or wet roads can impair the ability of the car to where I want it to, which I tell the car by spinning that little round thingy. I would suggest that anyone who knows less about cars than I do should not be allowed to drive one. I think that's the analogy you're looking for.
Hmmm. Let's see. He started with a blank disk (essentially), and wrote a heck of a lot of extremely useful software. And gave it away. And still manages to eat dinner every night of the week. And yet you have the nerve to make it sound like he couldn't get a "real" job. Is that envy I smell, or sour grapes?
Fair enough. I'm on your side, btw, i hate these calls. All of them, not just the sales pitches, but the surveys, the telepanhandlers, and especially the politicians. I just don't know that this law will help us. I think we have to help ourselves.... and work for laws where we can help ourselves.
What industry-specific software are you running on Microsoft? Most of the serious software in the world (financial and otherwise) is no way, no how, going to run on any shoddy little MS box. You almost have a point about inter-office files, but it's easy enough to send them as HTML or .txt or .rtf or .jpg or whatever. In fact, every time I get a .doc file or other MS file, I cringe. Usually it's a huge byte-moat around a very small amount of data that now clogs the heck out of my email box.
I would have switched anyway, since the cell phone package is a more affordable bundle that includes caller ID and voice messaging. But more importantly, to the point that you think is some sort of inconsistency: the cell phone is a metered service, landlines service is typically unmetered (except for outbound long distance calls). Answering a cell phone more costs me more money. Answering my home phone more does not. And even if it wasn't illegal to solicit to a cell phone (so go ahead and lobby for the repeal of that law for all I care), the technology inherent in the device still helps me filter out the bad guys at a better price than my local landline monopoly does. The part that helps is that there is an actual free market happening in the cell phone business. Not so with the children of Ma Bell.
And sheesh. Really. Just because I chide Slashbots to maybe put the old Thinking Cap(tm) on, doesn't mean I don't support this law or any other law in particular. I'm just surprised at this crowd, that's all. Normally all we ever hear is Libertarian yada-yada-yada around here or "information wants to be free", except when it comes to spam and telemarketers, and then suddenly it's "shoot those scum!" I should think that the same brilliant minds that go around doing crazy stuff like internet-enabling TI calculators or building terabyte RAID filesystems out of 5.25 inch floppy drives would be excited to think up fun and interesting ways to defeat spammers and telemarketers.
There is a big difference between an aural assault and whether someone chooses to pick up the phone (or even have the ringer turned on). One would think that here on Slashdot, News for Nerds, that people would be able to think a little farther than "someone ought to make a law". Where's your hacker spirit Slashbots? How about some clever hacks, both device-wise and prank-wise, that put these folks in their place-- or at least let you spend your evenings in peace?
I know what's worked for me may not work for everyone, but switching to caller ID and voicemail has done wonders. Plus I only have the cell phone, so that's doubly helpful since it's already illegal to cold call a cell phone. With these devices, the only regulation I feel strongly about is something that prevents number blocking or other measures to render caller ID useless.
Well, here is the main bit wrong with your viewpoint. The right to free speech does not mean that the other person has to be burdened to listen to your free speech. As they say, your right to free speech stops on my doorstep.
I DID NOT SAY ANYONE, ESPECIALLY A BUSINESS, HAD A RIGHT TO MAKE YOU LISTEN TO SALES PITCHES IN YOUR OWN HOME. I NEVER SAID THAT.
As for effectual: we'll see how effectual this law actually is if it's even found valid and then how it's enforced.
Thank you for the voice of sanity in this discussion. It's been my position for some time that the best way to prevent abuse of this type of data is not to try and abolish it altogether, but to put some public accountability into the system (i.e. being able to audit the records they hold on me). After all, understanding trip patterns or customer behaviors or whatever is highly valuable information for those providing services of this type. This allows them (hopefully) to model various situations and to attempt to improve service. What I'd be curious to hear is how well people have found the system to work in London for requesting this stuff. Is there any evidence of governmental misuse of the data?
I have to take exception to this. Unless you honestly think the process of natural selection is weeding out genes for smartness, kids today have all the same inherent ability that any kids have ever had.
If anything, it is the parents who are dumber than ever-- or maybe it's just that they don't give a shit. If the parents truly oppose these things they would never happen in schools. At the very least, they need to recognize that schools are only part of the picture and take an active role in teaching their child the "missing skillset" that the kids won't be learning in school.
For the people (several of them now) who have accused me of not knowing anything about free speech: I think I apparently know as much as you do. In fact, I cited the very interesting case of the suit against Nike for allegedly false claims they made in press releases. They settled the case out of court in order to prevent a judge and jury from having an opportunity to determine that even non-advertising speech of corporations was subject to less protections than the speech of persons. So my point wasn't that companies had a free speech right to contact you, which I don't think they do... I don't think a corporation can have any rights not given to it because it is not a natural being that would therefore have any natural rights of its own.
On the other hand, I think this law (like so many other regulations in effect) will place a larger burden on smaller businesses than on larger businesses. Which I find typical of most governmental solutions to private problems. I think if the government had actually been more proactive in writing and enforcing a decent telemarketing law in the first place, this sort of list would have been unnecessary.
Imagine if the damages for calling someone back after being requested to not call again were huge (before, they look pretty substantial now-- but again, a large business can afford this fine no problem, whereas it might bankrupt some smaller businesses). Imagine if it had been written as a civil tort so that the burden of proof would be lower (probably was, but I am not a lawyer and really paid more attention to how I could help myself avoid these calls than how government could protect me-- which it does so poorly as to be laughable in most cases). Imagine if the government had put all the DNC money into a fund to help regular folks pay lawyers to file against repeat callers. Imagine if they had simply required caller ID functions to work properly and always identify business calls as such (similar to the "ADV"-style spam laws). I can think of a million better ideas than some massive DNC list that are probably cheaper, more workable, would quite possibly be useful in limiting other annoying calls, would be fairer to smaller businesses, and would provide some flexibility down the road. For instance, I have a cell phone (it is my only phone): what happens when I finally get on the charity/politics call lists? Is there going to be any good way for me to avoid those calls or distinguish them from wrong numbers and/or friends/relatives calling me from unknown numbers? Is there going to be a way for me to distinguish legitimate business calls from sales calls? You see where I'm going with this?
I never said the Open Source fund would be used for end users. I never said it addressed any legal issues for end users. In fact, I asked a question. You even quoted it. I'll ask it again and maybe this time you'll answer it: Do you really think RH will just let their customers hang out to dry on this one?
Maybe the link between the text I quoted and the question I asked was too subtle. My point was: if they are willing to go that far for other companies and non-profit groups, it seems likely to me that they are not going to leave their customers in the lurch.
From RedHat: To further protect the integrity of Open Source software and the Open Source community, Red Hat has established the Open Source Now Fund. The purpose of the fund will be to cover legal expenses associated with infringement claims brought against companies developing software under the GPL license and non-profit organizations supporting the efforts of companies developing software under a GPL license. Red Hat has pledged one million dollars to be provided as funding in this initiative. Do you really think RH will just let their customers hang out to dry on this one? This is my point: they aren't just sitting back waiting for SCO to attack their customers, they are actively engaged in going after SCO right now in order to prevent SCO from ever having an opportunity to go after users.
Why should Red Hat go out of their way to offer indemnification when doing so may actually weaken their own case against SCO? Why don't we wait for SCO to actually have a case against a Red Hat customer before we judge how well Red Hat handles liabilities incurred by their customers?
If the telemarketing firm is not communicating DNCs back to the company they are working for and if that company is not scrubbing future lists to be sent to other telemarketing firms, then the problem clearly resides with the company and not the telemarketing firms. If I'm not mistaken, using different telemarketing firms is not a legal end-run around do-not-call requests.
From the Do Not Call FAQ: Even if you put your number on the National Do Not Call Registry, a company with which you have an established business relationship may call you for up to 18 months after your last purchase or delivery from it, or your last payment to it, unless you ask the company not to call again. (In that case, the company must honor your request not to call. If they subsequently call you again, they may be subject to a fine of up to $11,000.) Also, if you make an inquiry to a company or submit an application to it, for three months afterwards the company can call you. If you make a specific request to that company not to call you, however, then the company may not call you, even if you have an established business relationship with that company.
Of course the telemarketing firm isn't going to put you on the DNC list for every one of their customers, just the one they are calling you about at the moment.
Finally, let's be clear, I support the National DNC list myself. I don't think it goes far enough when telepanhandlers, politicians, and surveyors can still call me... oh, and people dialing wrong numbers. I get way too many of those.
In Red Hat's defense I'd like to point out that rather than some mamby-pamby "indemnification" nonsense Red Hat actually took the far more courageous step of suing SCO over SCO's out of court claims.
So what you're proposing is not only the abolition of copyright but then make a separate law so that we can continue to enforce the GPL? Sounds good to me.
Oops! A bit unclear on my part. I didn't mean that there was no time limit on how long they couldn't call, but that they couldn't even contact you a first time.
No. It's not already the case. Currently if I share my source code it is subject to copyright law, which makes the GPL enforceable. If copyright goes away, then my ability to enforce the GPL goes away too. So the question gets to be, how to get subsequent developers to share their changes to the source code. Sure, users could share the binaries all day long, but what if they were trojaned? That sort of thing is easy to detect with the source code available by examining the diff output from a trusted source compared against the new code.
Yes, actually. This is not a simple do-not-call list, which reputable companies take pretty seriously. This is the government actively soliciting the names/numbers of people in order to prevent marketers from contacting them. Furthermore this list prevents marketers from contacting you ever, whereas the normal existing situation was that you would request that they not contact you again. Finally, this list places a burden on speech and is bound to create some difficult lawsuits, especially as to what constitutes an advertisment.
Forcing a company to obtain this list prior to making calls is a much different situation from requiring them to keep and honor a list of numbers they have called and been asked not to call again. The crux of the matter is the notion that advertising is not fully protected speech... which is fine. Regulate away. But to blatantly allow not-for-profit organizations to solicit donations while restricting for-profits from calling? Whatever.
I find the telepanhandlers way more annoying than the people who actually want to sell me something-- I don't see why the "speech" of charities is somehow more worthwhile than the speech of corporations. Want to guess how many more calls I'll get after this list goes into full play from groups like the Nation Foundation or the ACLU Foundation? Can't wait to see which new foundations are founded just for the purpose of making it possible for companies to do "branded" mailings and callings under the cover of a non-profit. Even without a sales pitch, anything with a corporate logo on it could very well be considered "advertising" (witness the recent Nike lawsuit).
Of course I talk to very few telemarketers/telepanhandlers/bill-collectors anyway... I use caller ID and an answering machine to my benefit. Best of all, neither of the above can realistically be regulated into existence or arbitrarily wiped out of existence by a capricious Judiciary.
Score: -1, Misinformed.
The GPL is not an anti-copyright. You do not have to share anything in order to use GPL software. If you got rid of copyright laws, the GPL would lack any force as it depends on copyright law in order to obligate "downstream" distributors of binary package to make the source code available. Three strikes. You're out.
In fact, while some of us might oppose copyright laws, the fact that they exist and give force to licenses like the GPL is a great boon to Free Software. Without them, anyone could simply compile the code from a Free Software package and sell it as a binary only package. It is not likely, in a free market unburdened by copyright, that this would be a very profitable strategy, because any one of us would then be free to give away copies of those binaries. But even so, at the end of the day, obtaining actual source code would be more problematic than it is now. It is quite possible that programmers would be more inclined to keep their source code secret because it would be the source code that would be of incredible value, not the binaries themselves.
I have come full circle on this issue myself. It seems to me that the best copyright/patent rules are those favored by the Founders. Short terms with plenty of requirements on the part of the copyright seeker to obtain and maintain. This allows inventors, writers, musicians, artists, programmers and others a short time to monopolize their work, but makes it more likely that they will only be able to do so during the key initial period after the idea is first implemented or the work published.