1. Overall product quality: down 2. Tech support: largely useless 3. Marketing: too expensive 4. Clue factor at 90% of tech companies: 0 5. Experienced IT staff: laid off 6. Salaries: down 7. Benefits: gone 8. Investment: way down 9. New ideas: not approved, obstructed, suppressed 10. Average workday: 80% meetings, 20% e-mail 11. Profit margins: thinning 12. Search for new qualified staff: failed 13. Money spent: incalculable 14. Projections: bleak 15. Likelihood of reaching anyone except a receptionist at any company: 0
Now, how do we know this is directly and completely the fault of management? They are the only people STILL EMPLOYED.
When was the last announcement of several thousand managers being laid off? BZZZT Time's up!
Each of these things is NOT happening in a vaccuum. At some point, these problems have to be fixed or all businesses are going to have problems.
vast majority of people was willing to pay for content on the internet?
They all already do. They have to pay to connect. Some people have nine Everquest accounts. Ebay does eleventy billion a day in sales. Someone's paying for something.
Now if they want professional "content" (ARGH I hate that word), and the site becomes popular, then the costs of delivering the site (bandwidth, upkeep) have to be covered by advertising (which everyone ignores), subscriptions or product sales.
bunch of moronic marketing "Consultants" like you
ROFL!! Oh, I can't stand it. I'm a marketing consultant now?? Oh, goody.
saw the interent as some sort of "Get Rich Quick Scheme"
I don't believe in "get rich quick." How about a "make a decent living scheme?"
That's also why open source will never win out in the end right? Open source doesn't generate any revenue for a person so they need to earn income by working on something else
Wouldn't it be nice if they could earn income by working on Open Source? If the programs are that good (and I think they are) then that's what they should be doing, right? That's a good economy.
and effectively donate their open source programming time.
Which is why the cost is $0. But when there is more to the equation than just donated time, like $10/gig for bandwidth, then the costs have to be recouped, or the site goes subscription. That's the way it is.
You know, it's funny. The same thing is said to the people who complain they can't find a decent job. "Well, the company doesn't need good people. That's the way it is."
That costs $0. Someone is paying for it, and if they want to keep offering connections, then they have to pass those costs on.
and I find something
That's the point. How long will this take? An hour? Three? A day? Why go through all that if you can just go to Gamespot *right now* and find what you're looking for.
The Internet is not free. There has always been a cost to get access to the Internet, and there has always been a cost to run a server on the Internet. These costs can only be donated up to a point (and usually are, and then some).
If people won't click and then buy from ads, then the sites go subscription. That's the way it is. It *cannot* work any other way, because the site operators and ISPs can't afford it.
It's amazing. All of these free sites have been giving away millions of dollars worth of bandwidth and information for years, and nobody ever said "hey, thanks." Now that they want to pay their own bills, it's "WE'LL NEVER PAY!! NYAAAAHHH!!!!"
sigh... It's almost to the point where the comments can be written with only the headline.
Myths:
1. Nobody will pay for content 2. People don't trust on-line transactions 3. "I'll never pay for anything on-line" 4. I don't have a credit card therefore I can't buy anything on-line
Colloquialisms for "pay" that ALWAYS replace the word "pay" when describing an actual transaction of less than $100:
1. Plunk down 2. Shell out 3. Fork over
Example: "Before I [colloquialism] [$amount] I want [impossible amount of value]"
The reality is that the economy of the Internet will include many billions of dollars of purchases, and that these purchases not only will happen but are happening already. If people want to have any influence on this, then they HAVE TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS ECONOMY. "Vote with your dollars" appears in almost every group of comments. Fine. Everyone should not abstain when it comes to electronic commerce.
The Internet costs money. It always has, and it always will. It was never, is not and will never be free as in soda.:)
These articles are almost always on the same page with "Quake|Everquest|Neverwinter LXVII Almost Here!" and "Will E-books work?" articles, both of which routinely contain at least 200 comments with something along the lines of "Ooooh GIMME! GIMME! GIMME!" and the electronic equivalent of waving a handful of cash in the air.
The truth:
1. Free on-line content is only free if your time is worth nothing.
2. Even on the Internet, you get what you pay for.
Why? Because almost everyone understands, on at least a subconscious level, that "time is money." For the great majority of people, "saving" $4 or $5 is simply not worth the time and trouble they would have to go through to find a pirated edition
All of which together don't add up to more than 1% of the GDP of the US, and not all of which will disappear.
lol
ok. whatever.
Movies, for one, would continue to be made because they will always be able to draw a crowd to a theatre for a good show.
A crowd of people with camcorders and wireless links back to warez-r-us.com, right?
The rest of this part of your post is based on the flawed premise that the economy would collapse without an 'entertainment industry'.
I didn't say the economy would "collapse." However, without these businesses there to support other businesses (and provide jobs) there will be a lot of purchases suddenly missing from the economy.
Just don't expect me to be a part of your payoff.
Great. Good to see everyone is concerned with supporting the artists.
Fair can only be defined by stating what is not fair. Zero compensation is not fair. Demanding oranges, then watching a farmer plant, tend and grow an orchard, only to go in and steal the crop in a clandestine harvest is unfair to the farmer.
We have become accustomed to a very select group of megastars who earn monopoly profits. We will instead have thousands of minor stars making a more realistic income. I think that is a net gain for art and society.
Agreed, as long as we don't drift to the other extreme viewpoint, oft quoted here and elsewhere: "if you publish it, we will copy it, and we will never pay for digital content, ever." Such a viewpoint contributes nothing.
Lucasfilm saved its best goodies, though, for the Web geeks, a stratum of "Star Wars" fandom that, in the past, it had communicated with only via cease-and-desist orders.
in which two inexorable forces are going to drive down the market value of their content.
To what? If it's zero, bye-bye content.
Again (and again.. sigh...), I am not defending making $50M on plastic disks. I'm advocating the same thing that everyone else in this debate is advocating: compensating the artists, writers and developers fairly.
If the Internet is allowed to turn into the warez network, then these self-proclaimed supporters of the artists will have done nothing of the kind.
I think most people will pay a fair price for a good CD or book. I think those same people should frown on people who don't pay that fair price.
Well, you did have something to do with it, in that you used the IE functionality made available by the ActiveX OCX or DLLs.
Which should not have then proceeded to "upgrade" themselves on someone else's machine. It makes it appear as if my program is only a vehicle for MSIE upgrades.
Turns out VB is full of little surprises like this. The "setup kit" is whole 'nother adventure (that works about 60% of the time), for example.
If you've chosen to sell canned content, you certainly picked a bad time to do it.
Ok. Put the music, television, film, software, publishing, and radio industries out of business.
Then, severely damage the shipping, electronics, real estate, utility, insurance, professional services and computer (hardware) businesses.
Then, moderately damage the banks, export companies, retailers, wholesalers, and heavy shipping industries.
Then, take a nice, continent-sized bite out of the tax revenues for all 50 states and the Federal government.
Then, decide what to do with the eight-figures of people that just lost their jobs.
Then, watch the capital markets disappear.
Lather, rinse and repeat for every nation in the world that does business with any of these industries.
How's that? Sounds alarmist, but that is a very real possibility if all the Internet means to people is a digital lootmobile. If we're going to commoditize content (which I think is a paradox anyway), fine. But we can't call it a commodity unless it has at least a marginal value. If it has 0 value, then it will not be produced.
What agreement?
Ok. This will be complicated.
In a capitalist economy, it will be impossible to conduct any kind of value-based transaction unless a business model can be constructed which demonstrates the value of production.
This is why all work has value, no matter how small. Time is money. Time spent on something gives it value by virtue of the value of the time spent.
The agreement is that work invested will give the product enough value that it can be sold for an amount sufficiently exceeding the value of the work to justify the original transaction or investment. This is the basic gamble of all businesses. But it ceases to be a gamble if the business knows ahead of time that the market has decided to buy one and ONLY ONE unit of their product and then proceed to warezzzzzzzzzzz it eleventy hundred million times.
If the latter is the case, there will never be an original investment, which will prevent the work from being done. If digital products can no longer be sold, there will be no investment of time, work or money in them, and they will cease to exist as a professional pursuit.
If you produce something that can be copied infinitely many times, you should make sure that you are paid before you ever release that thing.
Impossible. Who's going to pay for it? If it has no value and cannot be resold, it will command no price.
Something only has value if someone wants that thing.
Not any more. Not if wanting it is measured in clicks instead of dollars.
What am I not getting now that you think I will get by blindly continuing to follow the current system?
Did I say follow the current system? No. If you want $.25 a song CDs, great. If you want to copy, time-shift, location-shift, etc. Fine. I'm all for it.
What I am NOT all for is people becoming their own *AA and hoarding money at the expense of the artists they *claim* to want to compensate fairly.
Compensate the artists and developers fairly. That's all they are asking for, and IMHO they have the right to insist on it.
JetBlue is only paying $9/hr.? A little low, even for part-time. Good to see a company that's finally figuring out that there are benefits (and not all economic) to telecommuting.
The guy who isn't patenting BigFoot sounds very cool.
The virtual queuing was extremely cool. Too bad they are charging for it though ($10 a PERSON???). Should be included.
Well, it qualifies under at least two, and likely three of the four criteria for Fair Use, and since licenses depend on copyright, it sounds like Fair Use is applicable.
So you think that all the money that people spend on CD's now would be lost to the economic
Yep.
It would be spent on nice things and services, so there would be a need for more employes in other areas.
In theory. On the other hand, putting a couple dozen industries out of business over five years or so could knock the economy into a depression for decades too.
People have to get paid. Fact of life. We cannot in good conscience use the freedom and potential of the Internet as license to shoplift every bit of value produced by people on the AGREEMENT that they will receive value in kind for their work.
All work has value.
Lower prices? Fine. More features? Fine. More freedom? Fine. But when all these things are put down on the counter, it is dishonest to just walk away from the transaction without returning some reward, or there will be no further value transactions, meaning no further value.
The sooner we get past this debate, the sooner we can have all the cool promised products.
It would be spent on nice things and services, so there would be a need for more employes in other areas.
In theory. On the other hand, putting a couple dozen industries out of business over five years or so could knock the economy into a depression for decades too.
People have to get paid. Fact of life. We cannot in good conscience use the freedom and potential of the Internet as license to shoplift every bit of value produced by people on the AGREEMENT that they will receive value in kind for their work.
All work has value.
Lower prices? Fine. More features? Fine. More freedom? Fine. But when all these things are put down on the counter, it is dishonest to just walk away from the transaction without returning some reward, or there will be no further value transactions, meaning no further value.
The sooner we get past this debate, the sooner we can have all the cool promised products.
Has nothing to do with "owed." It's one thing for an artist or developer to fail. It's an entirely different thing for them to have never had the opportunity to succeed.
If there is no possibility of making a living in the first place because anything that can be digitized is universally warezed, then there *will* be no ability for these people to do anything creative, because they'll be working double shifts at the FoodKing.
No, this isn't a troll. Just because Big Company Inc. hoards all the money and starves artists doesn't make it right for individuals to do the same. Until everything is free, people have to sell things to eat. It's that simple, and there's no way around it, utopian idealism notwithstanding.
Actually that is a good point, even if the numbers are off.
5 100GB drives would be about $1K, BTW. I suppose there might be a need for 500GB of drive space... o.O
Again, as long as the discussion and policy changes lead to *fairly compensated artists* then we're on the right track. If it leads to a warezzzzzzzzz wonderland, then that wouldn't be fair, pun intended.
I, for one, certainly hope that *if* the tide does turn, and copyright law is interpreted to give the market exactly what it seems to want:
1. Downloadable music/video/software/games 2. The freedom to burn CDs 3. The freedom to share (to a certain extent) 4. The freedom to switch formats and time/location shift 5. More reasonable prices ($.25 a song or so)
and so forth, that the people who enjoy this music/software/games/video etc. respond IN KIND and don't take that opportunity to deprive musicians/developers of the means to make a living by refusing to pay under any circumstances.
I think the loosening of the current restrictions is probably very likely. I also think people are basically honest and are willing to pay a fair price for a good product. I also think if people were able to do business on-line reliably enough to support themselves, we could very easily see an unemployment rate of 1%-2%, and an economic advance that would make the dot-com era look like the mid 70s, but without the bubble.
I certainly hope the net doesn't just become a warez wasteland, or we will have insulted the potential of the Internet and in the process wasted a spectacular opportunity to improve a lot of things.
Taking someone's work and calling it your own is "plagiarism." Benefitting commercially from a copyrighted work is called "copyright infringement." They are two entirely different things.
How much does she make again? There seems to be a basic disconnect with the simplest elements of intellectual property laws here, and this isn't the first example.
sigh... 90% of debates seem to be teaching the ABCs of logic, argument and the definitions of words.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Overall product quality: down
2. Tech support: largely useless
3. Marketing: too expensive
4. Clue factor at 90% of tech companies: 0
5. Experienced IT staff: laid off
6. Salaries: down
7. Benefits: gone
8. Investment: way down
9. New ideas: not approved, obstructed, suppressed
10. Average workday: 80% meetings, 20% e-mail
11. Profit margins: thinning
12. Search for new qualified staff: failed
13. Money spent: incalculable
14. Projections: bleak
15. Likelihood of reaching anyone except a receptionist at any company: 0
Now, how do we know this is directly and completely the fault of management? They are the only people STILL EMPLOYED.
When was the last announcement of several thousand managers being laid off? BZZZT Time's up!
Each of these things is NOT happening in a vaccuum. At some point, these problems have to be fixed or all businesses are going to have problems.
(and here come the apologists... sigh...)
vast majority of people was willing to pay for content on the internet?
They all already do. They have to pay to connect. Some people have nine Everquest accounts. Ebay does eleventy billion a day in sales. Someone's paying for something.
Now if they want professional "content" (ARGH I hate that word), and the site becomes popular, then the costs of delivering the site (bandwidth, upkeep) have to be covered by advertising (which everyone ignores), subscriptions or product sales.
bunch of moronic marketing "Consultants" like you
ROFL!! Oh, I can't stand it. I'm a marketing consultant now?? Oh, goody.
saw the interent as some sort of "Get Rich Quick Scheme"
I don't believe in "get rich quick." How about a "make a decent living scheme?"
That's also why open source will never win out in the end right? Open source doesn't generate any revenue for a person so they need to earn income by working on something else
Wouldn't it be nice if they could earn income by working on Open Source? If the programs are that good (and I think they are) then that's what they should be doing, right? That's a good economy.
and effectively donate their open source programming time.
Which is why the cost is $0. But when there is more to the equation than just donated time, like $10/gig for bandwidth, then the costs have to be recouped, or the site goes subscription. That's the way it is.
You know, it's funny. The same thing is said to the people who complain they can't find a decent job. "Well, the company doesn't need good people. That's the way it is."
If I have an unmetered connection
That costs $0. Someone is paying for it, and if they want to keep offering connections, then they have to pass those costs on.
and I find something
That's the point. How long will this take? An hour? Three? A day? Why go through all that if you can just go to Gamespot *right now* and find what you're looking for.
Convenience is the value.
The Internet is not free. There has always been a cost to get access to the Internet, and there has always been a cost to run a server on the Internet. These costs can only be donated up to a point (and usually are, and then some).
If people won't click and then buy from ads, then the sites go subscription. That's the way it is. It *cannot* work any other way, because the site operators and ISPs can't afford it.
It's amazing. All of these free sites have been giving away millions of dollars worth of bandwidth and information for years, and nobody ever said "hey, thanks." Now that they want to pay their own bills, it's "WE'LL NEVER PAY!! NYAAAAHHH!!!!"
sigh...
And the best part is it isn't even $24 a year, it's $19.95.
Less than $2 a month. Better than a one year subscription to a lot of paper game magazines, and with more downloads.
sigh... It's almost to the point where the comments can be written with only the headline.
:)
Myths:
1. Nobody will pay for content
2. People don't trust on-line transactions
3. "I'll never pay for anything on-line"
4. I don't have a credit card therefore I can't buy anything on-line
Colloquialisms for "pay" that ALWAYS replace the word "pay" when describing an actual transaction of less than $100:
1. Plunk down
2. Shell out
3. Fork over
Example: "Before I [colloquialism] [$amount] I want [impossible amount of value]"
The reality is that the economy of the Internet will include many billions of dollars of purchases, and that these purchases not only will happen but are happening already. If people want to have any influence on this, then they HAVE TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS ECONOMY. "Vote with your dollars" appears in almost every group of comments. Fine. Everyone should not abstain when it comes to electronic commerce.
The Internet costs money. It always has, and it always will. It was never, is not and will never be free as in soda.
These articles are almost always on the same page with "Quake|Everquest|Neverwinter LXVII Almost Here!" and "Will E-books work?" articles, both of which routinely contain at least 200 comments with something along the lines of "Ooooh GIMME! GIMME! GIMME!" and the electronic equivalent of waving a handful of cash in the air.
The truth:
1. Free on-line content is only free if your time is worth nothing.
2. Even on the Internet, you get what you pay for.
Why? Because almost everyone understands, on at least a subconscious level, that "time is money." For the great majority of people, "saving" $4 or $5 is simply not worth the time and trouble they would have to go through to find a pirated edition
Thank you.
Court of Appeals.
Judicial review applies to Judges and Attorneys as well. Then there are numerous agencies of the State Bar Associations, etc.
All of which together don't add up to more than 1% of the GDP of the US, and not all of which will disappear.
lol
ok. whatever.
Movies, for one, would continue to be made because they will always be able to draw a crowd to a theatre for a good show.
A crowd of people with camcorders and wireless links back to warez-r-us.com, right?
The rest of this part of your post is based on the flawed premise that the economy would collapse without an 'entertainment industry'.
I didn't say the economy would "collapse." However, without these businesses there to support other businesses (and provide jobs) there will be a lot of purchases suddenly missing from the economy.
Just don't expect me to be a part of your payoff.
Great. Good to see everyone is concerned with supporting the artists.
Clicks don't cost anything.
I believe that was my point.
But what is fair?
Fair can only be defined by stating what is not fair. Zero compensation is not fair. Demanding oranges, then watching a farmer plant, tend and grow an orchard, only to go in and steal the crop in a clandestine harvest is unfair to the farmer.
We have become accustomed to a very select group of megastars who earn monopoly profits. We will instead have thousands of minor stars making a more realistic income. I think that is a net gain for art and society.
Agreed, as long as we don't drift to the other extreme viewpoint, oft quoted here and elsewhere: "if you publish it, we will copy it, and we will never pay for digital content, ever." Such a viewpoint contributes nothing.
Lucasfilm saved its best goodies, though, for the Web geeks, a stratum of "Star Wars" fandom that, in the past, it had communicated with only via cease-and-desist orders.
Absolutely brilliant line.
in which two inexorable forces are going to drive down the market value of their content.
To what? If it's zero, bye-bye content.
Again (and again.. sigh...), I am not defending making $50M on plastic disks. I'm advocating the same thing that everyone else in this debate is advocating: compensating the artists, writers and developers fairly.
If the Internet is allowed to turn into the warez network, then these self-proclaimed supporters of the artists will have done nothing of the kind.
I think most people will pay a fair price for a good CD or book. I think those same people should frown on people who don't pay that fair price.
Ok, this was my first sentence:
Has nothing to do with "owed."
Now, how does this make sense:
So we owe people the ability
Hello??
Cool, I'm owed the chance to make a living sitting on my couch and watching my tv
Reductio ad absurdum.
You are not owed an oppurtunity to make a living doing anything, nor are you owed CONTINUED oppurtunity to make a living doing anything.
Fine. Keep your money and put 'em all out of business. No better at "supporting the artists" than the RIAA.
Well, you did have something to do with it, in that you used the IE functionality made available by the ActiveX OCX or DLLs.
Which should not have then proceeded to "upgrade" themselves on someone else's machine. It makes it appear as if my program is only a vehicle for MSIE upgrades.
Turns out VB is full of little surprises like this. The "setup kit" is whole 'nother adventure (that works about 60% of the time), for example.
If you've chosen to sell canned content, you certainly picked a bad time to do it.
Ok. Put the music, television, film, software, publishing, and radio industries out of business.
Then, severely damage the shipping, electronics, real estate, utility, insurance, professional services and computer (hardware) businesses.
Then, moderately damage the banks, export companies, retailers, wholesalers, and heavy shipping industries.
Then, take a nice, continent-sized bite out of the tax revenues for all 50 states and the Federal government.
Then, decide what to do with the eight-figures of people that just lost their jobs.
Then, watch the capital markets disappear.
Lather, rinse and repeat for every nation in the world that does business with any of these industries.
How's that? Sounds alarmist, but that is a very real possibility if all the Internet means to people is a digital lootmobile. If we're going to commoditize content (which I think is a paradox anyway), fine. But we can't call it a commodity unless it has at least a marginal value. If it has 0 value, then it will not be produced.
What agreement?
Ok. This will be complicated.
In a capitalist economy, it will be impossible to conduct any kind of value-based transaction unless a business model can be constructed which demonstrates the value of production.
This is why all work has value, no matter how small. Time is money. Time spent on something gives it value by virtue of the value of the time spent.
The agreement is that work invested will give the product enough value that it can be sold for an amount sufficiently exceeding the value of the work to justify the original transaction or investment. This is the basic gamble of all businesses. But it ceases to be a gamble if the business knows ahead of time that the market has decided to buy one and ONLY ONE unit of their product and then proceed to warezzzzzzzzzzz it eleventy hundred million times.
If the latter is the case, there will never be an original investment, which will prevent the work from being done. If digital products can no longer be sold, there will be no investment of time, work or money in them, and they will cease to exist as a professional pursuit.
If you produce something that can be copied infinitely many times, you should make sure that you are paid before you ever release that thing.
Impossible. Who's going to pay for it? If it has no value and cannot be resold, it will command no price.
Something only has value if someone wants that thing.
Not any more. Not if wanting it is measured in clicks instead of dollars.
What am I not getting now that you think I will get by blindly continuing to follow the current system?
Did I say follow the current system? No. If you want $.25 a song CDs, great. If you want to copy, time-shift, location-shift, etc. Fine. I'm all for it.
What I am NOT all for is people becoming their own *AA and hoarding money at the expense of the artists they *claim* to want to compensate fairly.
Compensate the artists and developers fairly. That's all they are asking for, and IMHO they have the right to insist on it.
Some things good, some not so good.
JetBlue is only paying $9/hr.? A little low, even for part-time. Good to see a company that's finally figuring out that there are benefits (and not all economic) to telecommuting.
The guy who isn't patenting BigFoot sounds very cool.
The virtual queuing was extremely cool. Too bad they are charging for it though ($10 a PERSON???). Should be included.
Just some thoughts.
Well, it qualifies under at least two, and likely three of the four criteria for Fair Use, and since licenses depend on copyright, it sounds like Fair Use is applicable.
So you think that all the money that people spend on CD's now would be lost to the economic
Yep.
It would be spent on nice things and services, so there would be a need for more employes in other areas.
In theory. On the other hand, putting a couple dozen industries out of business over five years or so could knock the economy into a depression for decades too.
People have to get paid. Fact of life. We cannot in good conscience use the freedom and potential of the Internet as license to shoplift every bit of value produced by people on the AGREEMENT that they will receive value in kind for their work.
All work has value.
Lower prices? Fine. More features? Fine. More freedom? Fine. But when all these things are put down on the counter, it is dishonest to just walk away from the transaction without returning some reward, or there will be no further value transactions, meaning no further value.
The sooner we get past this debate, the sooner we can have all the cool promised products.
Yep.
It would be spent on nice things and services, so there would be a need for more employes in other areas.
In theory. On the other hand, putting a couple dozen industries out of business over five years or so could knock the economy into a depression for decades too.
People have to get paid. Fact of life. We cannot in good conscience use the freedom and potential of the Internet as license to shoplift every bit of value produced by people on the AGREEMENT that they will receive value in kind for their work.
All work has value.
Lower prices? Fine. More features? Fine. More freedom? Fine. But when all these things are put down on the counter, it is dishonest to just walk away from the transaction without returning some reward, or there will be no further value transactions, meaning no further value.
The sooner we get past this debate, the sooner we can have all the cool promised products.
Has nothing to do with "owed." It's one thing for an artist or developer to fail. It's an entirely different thing for them to have never had the opportunity to succeed.
If there is no possibility of making a living in the first place because anything that can be digitized is universally warezed, then there *will* be no ability for these people to do anything creative, because they'll be working double shifts at the FoodKing.
Sounds great.
How does 50% unemployment sound?
No, this isn't a troll. Just because Big Company Inc. hoards all the money and starves artists doesn't make it right for individuals to do the same. Until everything is free, people have to sell things to eat. It's that simple, and there's no way around it, utopian idealism notwithstanding.
Actually that is a good point, even if the numbers are off.
5 100GB drives would be about $1K, BTW. I suppose there might be a need for 500GB of drive space... o.O
Again, as long as the discussion and policy changes lead to *fairly compensated artists* then we're on the right track. If it leads to a warezzzzzzzzz wonderland, then that wouldn't be fair, pun intended.
I, for one, certainly hope that *if* the tide does turn, and copyright law is interpreted to give the market exactly what it seems to want:
1. Downloadable music/video/software/games
2. The freedom to burn CDs
3. The freedom to share (to a certain extent)
4. The freedom to switch formats and time/location shift
5. More reasonable prices ($.25 a song or so)
and so forth, that the people who enjoy this music/software/games/video etc. respond IN KIND and don't take that opportunity to deprive musicians/developers of the means to make a living by refusing to pay under any circumstances.
I think the loosening of the current restrictions is probably very likely. I also think people are basically honest and are willing to pay a fair price for a good product. I also think if people were able to do business on-line reliably enough to support themselves, we could very easily see an unemployment rate of 1%-2%, and an economic advance that would make the dot-com era look like the mid 70s, but without the bubble.
I certainly hope the net doesn't just become a warez wasteland, or we will have insulted the potential of the Internet and in the process wasted a spectacular opportunity to improve a lot of things.
Taking someone's work and calling it your own is "plagiarism." Benefitting commercially from a copyrighted work is called "copyright infringement." They are two entirely different things.
How much does she make again? There seems to be a basic disconnect with the simplest elements of intellectual property laws here, and this isn't the first example.
sigh... 90% of debates seem to be teaching the ABCs of logic, argument and the definitions of words.