"..but let's start off by trivializing everything you've written."
movies whose box-office takes are considered "disappointing" by Disney tend to blow the revenues of American theatrical releases of anime out of the water.
Oh, please. What theatrical releases of anime? Princess Mononoke? Where did it premiere again, a converted gymnasium in eastern Wisconsin? Where was it advertised? Besides, Disney probably considered the Pokemon movies "disappointing." Must be why 12 of them were made.
Stop waiting for anime to make American animation irrelevant. It hasn't happened. It isn't happening. It isn't going to happen.
Uh huh. American animation *is* irrelevant, because there *isn't any.* Anime didn't have to do a thing. Except for the Pixar pixel-fests, and the occasional non-Disney film, any American animation is either cancelled or is itself a near-tribute to anime.
It also depends where you look. Fox just dumped Saturday morning cartoons. Nickelodeon and WB are frantically trying to find a reliable way to compete with Cartoon Network, which practically makes it's living on anime, achieves ratings that routinely smash the rest of cable television, and is now available in over 80 million households; so much so that WB actually pulled Toonami over to *network* television (and proceeded to try to out-Toonami Toonami, and failed, of course, because they don't get it either).
The only company that is still producing animated films in any appreciable quantity is Disney, and their recent efforts include a recycled version of Snow White (home video only) and sequels to Peter Pan and Cinderella. Sounds like they're doing just great.
by and large anime isn't groundbreaking, cutting edge stuff
That's one opinion.
It isn't less formulaic, either. They're just using different formulas. You may like the anime formulas better than the Disney formulas.
Then again, I might not. I'll say this: Anime, formulas or not, is written with more skill and attention to dramatic form than most current television shows or films.
Whatever they are using, it works, obviously.
but the quality of their feature animation group's work (as distinct from the TV group, which is the one responsible for such wonders as Cinderella II and other OAVs) usually isn't one of them.
It's not the animation, it's the writing. Interesting example, by the way. With all their millions, could they hire ONE WRITER, ONE??? ANYONE to come up with something better than trying to squeeze a sequel out of "happily ever after?" It doesn't matter if it's the "TV group" or not.
And in Hollywood, "daring" is relative.
So is "cutting edge."
Disney has made it very clear that they would rather do pixels and re-releases, and that they are not fans of anime in any form. Taking Princess Mononoke, and practically guaranteeing it's failure, THEN *COMPLAINING* that it was a disappointment, *THEN LICENSING A SECOND MOVIE FROM THE SAME DIRECTOR* is what causes the question marks.
The fact is, anime is cool, other (drawn) animation isn't. The reasons for this apparently cannot be grasped by animation/television/film company executives, and until it is, they will continue to have trouble competing.
Why even this? The whole work-for-hire thing is crazy.
Well, technically it isn't Work for Hire either. Work for Hire is someone independently producing something (not as an employee) for the specific purpose of being purchased by someone else. With the work of an employee, this is assumed, since the employee is paid for their time already.
Did Disney create that character design? Only legally. At the end of the day, some individual or a small group did so. Yet they don't even have moral rights to their work!
Unless they negotiated them in advance, then that is correct.
When one works in a creative capacity for someone else, clearly they should be granted the right to copy and make derivative works and so on. But they should not be granted THE Copyright.
Agreed, under a couple of conditions: Any derivative works should not be commercially competitive with the original, and copies should obviously be limited in that they cannot be sublicensed elsewhere.
Most companies that hire creative works are *very* heavy-handed about this stuff so they can "maximize their potential upside" and all that. I really don't think it's necessary.
I know a few people who work there and they make you sign a contract that says every thing you create while you are employed at disney is property of disney. It dosn't matter if you do it at home affter work. So for example you can't work on GPL software on your free time
Void and unenforceable in California. "Against the public policy of this State" I believe appears in the text of the statute. No amount of Tinkerbell fairy dust is going to make it any different.
Now, if it's related to Disney's business, and done on their time, then it should belong to Disney.
Another purely defensive license, before anime washes over the decks and the S.S. Wish Upon a Star founders.
So, how many theaters will this one appear in? Eight? Whaddya say guys? How about we go all out and book 100 theaters this time? Maybe a TV commercial or two?
While you're throwing money around, how about hiring some writers? You know, like the anime companies do? They've got television series for nine-year-olds with better dramatic structure and story quality than some Hollywood theater dramas.
Meanwhile, in other news, plans were just announced for (dalmatians, dalmatians<105, dalmatians++), Cinderella 3: I Just Want my Pumpkin Back, Your Honor, and Tron: The Musical.
..and that Suncoast anime DVD rack just keeps growing...
Don't know. Only been thinking about this for a few hours.
Perhaps users could publically comment and/or rate applications? Premiums could be paid for higher rated files, perhaps with certain ISP-sanctioned download locations being compensated for offering premium applications with the ability to track the number of successful downloads quarterly.
just questioning your business model.
lol.. well, this probably doesn't qualify as a business model yet, not even a back-of-the-napkin sketch.
The previous poster was asking how you would be able to distinguish applications from music and movies? That is a huge responsibility for the ISPs.
You can't, and they shouldn't try. That would reintroduce all of the current problems and then some.
Would we be paying $500/mo. Internet bills?
No. The amount paid would be directly tied to the amount of bandwidth used by each individual. If someone downloads a terabyte a month, then they pay a lot more than someone who just wants the latest #1 mp3 and a couple of weekends worth of movies.
It would be a good idea also to start the "clearing house" as a group of small companies, each responsible for a small area as opposed to one giant gatekeeper.
If there are really 3.5 billion songs (4MB each) downloaded a month, then there are 1000 terabytes of aggregate bandwidth. At $1/gig, that's $1M/month in royalties. Clearing house gets 5%, 10 record companies (example only) each get a maximum of $95,000 a month until their copyright runs out, provided they license their entire library. This would be *in addition to* their current businesses.
Not bad, considering they are getting $0 now, and it will be far simpler than retooling the entire technology industry and refitting the Internet.
And I uhhmm know people who are uploading 3 gigs in a few days and downloading the same in a day. All the while sharing DVD movies... although in VCD or divx format, great copies.
(Since I knew someone would disagree with the download speeds by citing some |337 connection somewhere, I prepared some figures)
At fully-efficient speeds, a standard (370Kbps, probably on the fast side) cable modem connection would need all available downstream bandwidth for five and a half hours to transfer one GB of data, and fully 17 and a half hours to upload the same, given the also-standard upstream limits.
Not practical at all. Especially when one considers the cost of transfer (who pays for thousands of gigs of downloads?). Such use of bandwidth will set off 47 different kinds of alarms at any broadband ISP (which would result in a disconnect under most AUPs), and would slow the network to a crawl anywhere else.
The problem with your system is that my ISP is the one who is collecting this tax and somehow will have to distinguish between what is free and what is un-free.
No they don't. They just collect the money and pay the clearing house. It doesn't matter what is downloaded.
If I'm downloading linux iso's I don't want the money to go to some Nazi content holder. Why can't debian/Red Hat/mandrake/Slackware get the money?
I'll pass on invoking Godwin. If Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake and Slackware license their distributions to the clearing house, they do get the money. Matter of fact, since they will likely be more willing to offer more products for free download, they will probably see higher than average royalties.
Well, the CD-R tax doesn't count if the "content" (I really hate that term) never makes it to disc.
This way, it doesn't matter where the content goes, or how many copies are made. The publishers get paid based on how much is licensed, not how much is downloaded.
A clearing-house of sorts (like the radio-royalty structure already in place) would solve 98% of the "file sharing problem."
I think the current limits on bandwidth really are going to make widespread DVD sharing a little unlikely, even with broadband. The files are just too big. If it takes 412 hours to download a movie (at lower quality with fewer features, etc.), people aren't going to care. They'd probably rather just go to Blockbuster and rent it for $4 or whatever.
Perhaps it could even be tied to bandwidth and charged at the ISP level. Say $.10 for every gig of downstream bandwidth used. Money goes to a clearing house and member copyright holders are paid based on the amount of material they have licensed to the clearing house. The more stuff they license, the more they get paid. There should also be a limit on the cost of the licenses written into the agreement so once everyone signs up it doesn't become $1000/gig.
I think in radio now, anything with a particular label (or stamp or something) can be played royalty free without limits, incorporated into other forms (like commercials, etc.) and so on. Music industry doesn't complain about that at all, because it is free publicity for their product. Same thing here.
This really would help solve almost all of the problems with file-sharing and it is a win-win of sorts. Pay-per-play it isn't, but pay-per-play isn't going to work anyway.
Re:There's alway a way to break copy protection
on
SSSCA Hearing
·
· Score: 2
Probably a little late, but I just thought of it:
Won't this law make Battlebots (ones with memory) illegal too?
They do have a serious point: as a policy issue, individual states cannot be determining natiional issues, and shouldn't generally have standing to enforce national laws.
Horsefeathers. The 14th amendment guarantees equal protection for the states as well as the citizens. Everyone is presumed to have standing before a Federal Court under the 5th and 14th amendments.
It is not the states, but a Federal Court that is determining national "issues," and a Federal Court most certainly has the authority to interpret, and if necessary, enforce the law nationally.
"Permitting the nonsettling states to seek sweeping, nationwide relief under the federal antitrust laws and would raise serious constitutional questions"
Translation: Expect a Supreme Court appeal.
Are we really expected to believe that the states that comprise the Union (which are the only authorities that can amend the Constitution in the first place), have fewer rights under the Constitution than the Federal Government? Such an assertion offends the 10th amendment, and others.
Also, notice how this statement neatly frames the remedy in terms 100% favorable to MS?" I believe it up to the states what relief they are seeking. "Sweeping, nationwide relief" is inflammatory hyperbole.
So we just open the floodgates and make everything that can be digitized public domain?
Any idea what kind of effect that will have on the economy? Employment? Conservative estimate: Tens of millions out of work. Hundreds of billions, possibly a trillion dollars in lost value. Hundreds of thousands of products would no longer be produced.
I don't think that's progress. I think that's the opposite extreme. I'm not supporting the current system either, but if people are going to keep griping about how bad the "content corporations" are without offering a viable, workable solution that people will agree to *with their dollars*, then no progress will be made.
This is about the umptieth story about "IP vs. warez" this week, and it's only Wednesday.
Is there any hope for a solution here? Any hope for a compromise? Or is it going to be a constant yammering match between thousands of lawyers waving motions and C&D letters in the air on one side and thousands of |337 \/\/4R3zzzz d00dz waving keygen programs and blank CDRs in the air on the other?
Surely by now we've realized that the "all content must be stricty controlled and monitored 24-hours a day by DRM/DMCA/SSSCA/*AA position is no more or no less untenable than the "I'll NEVER EVER EVER pay for anything, especially a web site, or anything digital, and I will vigorously rip/copy/distribute every CDROM/DVD/download/movie/song/album/game I can find for the express purpose of celebrating the fact that I didn't have to pay for it, and then laugh as company after company (read: employer after employer) files chapter 11 because everything they have invested in has become totally worthless with a few clicks.... and everything sux anyway, except Everquest."
Is there any position a business can take that will allow them to avoid being cast as a "greed-driven corporate machine?" Just how much do they have to give away, and at what point can they say, "ok, here's your trainload of free stuff, now *this* we'd really like you to buy?"
SOMEONE HAS TO PAY THE BILLS. Businesses that sell things *employ* people too.
I agree that businesses by and large have not lived up to their end of the responsibility bargain. Business is given huge latitude and opportunity, and they should exchange good products and jobs for that. That's the responsible thing to do.
There must be a balance here, and if/when a new agreed-upon balance requires that some products be paid for, the responsible thing for customers to do is to meet their side of the bargain and pay for the product. It is no more fair for customers to play bait-and-switch than it is for a business.
New products are developed, usually at some non-trivial level of risk, on the implied promise that if they are of sufficient quality (usually the result of VERY hard work), then customers will buy the product, allowing the business to earn back their costs plus a profit.
But there WILL BE NO NEW PRODUCTS if businesses hear "HA HA!! I'm going use it anyway and not pay!! nyyahhh nyahhh nyahhhhhhhh!!!" often enough. There will be no way to make even a moderate business model work.
I think there are sufficient ideas among developers to find a better balance. Instead of spending time repeating "all copy protection can be defeated" over and over, how about a little time spent helping find that balance?
Having now spent a while studying the "web compatibility" issues for our various projects, I (and others) have come across some of the tradeoffs, and noted them, since the information has been very useful for us:
1. Pop-up windows are very useful if a page is being designed for a specific resolution. Having a set resolution (as most game developers and DTP developers will agree) makes development of a good GUI *far* easier. Having to support all available resolutions from Palm Pilots through 640x480 on up to 1600x1200 and all possible color depths, *and* have a great GUI is impossible. (No, the percentages in style sheets don't help. Been there, done that).
800x600 is a minimal resolution, IMHO.
2. CSS is great. XSLT is better.
3. Javascript is necessary to development of a good GUI too. Visual cues are vital to explaining to a user what the GUI is doing, and those cues usually require Javascript.
4. Unless a common (black text on white background) color scheme is the only goal, changing the default link colors will almost always be necessary. Royal blue looks terrible on almost every background color except white and pastels (yarg). Yellow backgrounds give people headaches. Purple is invisible everywhere royal blue looks terrible. And so on..
5. Requiring a specific browser will be necessary until all browsers support the proper standards *or* all (or most) users use current browsers. Our sites generally do not support Netscape 4x well. Mainly because we use style sheets and inline styles, which Netscape happily renders wrong every chance it gets (not to mention what it does to nested tables). We would need to maintain a seperate (broken) site for Netscape 4, and that isn't practical.
If Mozilla, for example, were the only browser, we could do incredible things with web interfaces (like put more information on each page with a simpler navigation mechanism). Having to support IE, Opera, etc., means that all the advanced cool stuff won't work reliably, so we can't use it.
6. Mozilla, BTW, should set it's default resolution to 120dpi to match IE. Yeah, yeah, I know, Linux is great and all, but 7pt fonts that are 4 pixels high aren't readable, and bumping the font size to 960pt to read one site, then finding an 'E' that fills 80% of the screen on the next site is less than ideal.
7. I'm very intrigued by Shockwave and Flash, but have hesitated to use it because everyone complains about it so much. Some of the Flash things can be done with DHTML, but then the compatibility problem comes up again.
8. I'm always intrigued by the word "content." Here's the basic tradeoff: If people want *really* good "content" on the web, then web developers (client-side people) need a bigger palette than the HTML 2.0 tags, default color links, tables and 8-bit static jpegs. Sorry, but that's the way it is. HTML and JPEGS have been pushed about as far as they can go, and while these are adequate (and actually preferred) for information like 'man' pages and HOWTOs, when it comes to making something genuinely interesting, it is difficult to get more than a yawn without something better.
I agree about testing with people who aren't experienced with web pages/computers. I just grow fatigued sometimes at the "people are idiots" line. If people are treated like idiots, they have little incentive to not behave like idiots.
Slashdot Mirror
"..but let's start off by trivializing everything you've written."
movies whose box-office takes are considered "disappointing" by Disney tend to blow the revenues of American theatrical releases of anime out of the water.
Oh, please. What theatrical releases of anime? Princess Mononoke? Where did it premiere again, a converted gymnasium in eastern Wisconsin? Where was it advertised? Besides, Disney probably considered the Pokemon movies "disappointing." Must be why 12 of them were made.
Stop waiting for anime to make American animation irrelevant. It hasn't happened. It isn't happening. It isn't going to happen.
Uh huh. American animation *is* irrelevant, because there *isn't any.* Anime didn't have to do a thing. Except for the Pixar pixel-fests, and the occasional non-Disney film, any American animation is either cancelled or is itself a near-tribute to anime.
It also depends where you look. Fox just dumped Saturday morning cartoons. Nickelodeon and WB are frantically trying to find a reliable way to compete with Cartoon Network, which practically makes it's living on anime, achieves ratings that routinely smash the rest of cable television, and is now available in over 80 million households; so much so that WB actually pulled Toonami over to *network* television (and proceeded to try to out-Toonami Toonami, and failed, of course, because they don't get it either).
The only company that is still producing animated films in any appreciable quantity is Disney, and their recent efforts include a recycled version of Snow White (home video only) and sequels to Peter Pan and Cinderella. Sounds like they're doing just great.
by and large anime isn't groundbreaking, cutting edge stuff
That's one opinion.
It isn't less formulaic, either. They're just using different formulas. You may like the anime formulas better than the Disney formulas.
Then again, I might not. I'll say this: Anime, formulas or not, is written with more skill and attention to dramatic form than most current television shows or films.
Whatever they are using, it works, obviously.
but the quality of their feature animation group's work (as distinct from the TV group, which is the one responsible for such wonders as Cinderella II and other OAVs) usually isn't one of them.
It's not the animation, it's the writing. Interesting example, by the way. With all their millions, could they hire ONE WRITER, ONE??? ANYONE to come up with something better than trying to squeeze a sequel out of "happily ever after?" It doesn't matter if it's the "TV group" or not.
And in Hollywood, "daring" is relative.
So is "cutting edge."
Disney has made it very clear that they would rather do pixels and re-releases, and that they are not fans of anime in any form. Taking Princess Mononoke, and practically guaranteeing it's failure, THEN *COMPLAINING* that it was a disappointment, *THEN LICENSING A SECOND MOVIE FROM THE SAME DIRECTOR* is what causes the question marks.
The fact is, anime is cool, other (drawn) animation isn't. The reasons for this apparently cannot be grasped by animation/television/film company executives, and until it is, they will continue to have trouble competing.
Billion. $1000 million is one billion.
:)
$1.8 trillion would be about a third of the Gross Domestic Product. *That's* a lot.
Why even this? The whole work-for-hire thing is crazy.
Well, technically it isn't Work for Hire either. Work for Hire is someone independently producing something (not as an employee) for the specific purpose of being purchased by someone else. With the work of an employee, this is assumed, since the employee is paid for their time already.
Did Disney create that character design? Only legally. At the end of the day, some individual or a small group did so. Yet they don't even have moral rights to their work!
Unless they negotiated them in advance, then that is correct.
When one works in a creative capacity for someone else, clearly they should be granted the right to copy and make derivative works and so on. But they should not be granted THE Copyright.
Agreed, under a couple of conditions: Any derivative works should not be commercially competitive with the original, and copies should obviously be limited in that they cannot be sublicensed elsewhere.
Most companies that hire creative works are *very* heavy-handed about this stuff so they can "maximize their potential upside" and all that. I really don't think it's necessary.
I know a few people who work there and they make you sign a contract that says every thing you create while you are employed at disney is property of disney. It dosn't matter if you do it at home affter work. So for example you can't work on GPL software on your free time
Void and unenforceable in California. "Against the public policy of this State" I believe appears in the text of the statute. No amount of Tinkerbell fairy dust is going to make it any different.
Now, if it's related to Disney's business, and done on their time, then it should belong to Disney.
And as usual, the rest of the world scratches its head in puzzlement over Japan's antics.
Well, we really should cut 'em some slack. They're just in a hurry trying to figure out where to put all that anime licensing money.
Another purely defensive license, before anime washes over the decks and the S.S. Wish Upon a Star founders.
So, how many theaters will this one appear in? Eight? Whaddya say guys? How about we go all out and book 100 theaters this time? Maybe a TV commercial or two?
While you're throwing money around, how about hiring some writers? You know, like the anime companies do? They've got television series for nine-year-olds with better dramatic structure and story quality than some Hollywood theater dramas.
Meanwhile, in other news, plans were just announced for (dalmatians, dalmatians<105, dalmatians++), Cinderella 3: I Just Want my Pumpkin Back, Your Honor, and Tron: The Musical.
..and that Suncoast anime DVD rack just keeps growing...
just XOR the data with 'give us all your money' and call it DRM,
LOL!!!!!
How much do and I get paid?
Don't know. Only been thinking about this for a few hours.
Perhaps users could publically comment and/or rate applications? Premiums could be paid for higher rated files, perhaps with certain ISP-sanctioned download locations being compensated for offering premium applications with the ability to track the number of successful downloads quarterly.
just questioning your business model.
lol.. well, this probably doesn't qualify as a business model yet, not even a back-of-the-napkin sketch.
The previous poster was asking how you would be able to distinguish applications from music and movies? That is a huge responsibility for the ISPs.
You can't, and they shouldn't try. That would reintroduce all of the current problems and then some.
Would we be paying $500/mo. Internet bills?
No. The amount paid would be directly tied to the amount of bandwidth used by each individual. If someone downloads a terabyte a month, then they pay a lot more than someone who just wants the latest #1 mp3 and a couple of weekends worth of movies.
It would be a good idea also to start the "clearing house" as a group of small companies, each responsible for a small area as opposed to one giant gatekeeper.
If there are really 3.5 billion songs (4MB each) downloaded a month, then there are 1000 terabytes of aggregate bandwidth. At $1/gig, that's $1M/month in royalties. Clearing house gets 5%, 10 record companies (example only) each get a maximum of $95,000 a month until their copyright runs out, provided they license their entire library. This would be *in addition to* their current businesses.
Not bad, considering they are getting $0 now, and it will be far simpler than retooling the entire technology industry and refitting the Internet.
And I uhhmm know people who are uploading 3 gigs in a few days and downloading the same in a day. All the while sharing DVD movies... although in VCD or divx format, great copies.
(Since I knew someone would disagree with the download speeds by citing some |337 connection somewhere, I prepared some figures)
At fully-efficient speeds, a standard (370Kbps, probably on the fast side) cable modem connection would need all available downstream bandwidth for five and a half hours to transfer one GB of data, and fully 17 and a half hours to upload the same, given the also-standard upstream limits.
Not practical at all. Especially when one considers the cost of transfer (who pays for thousands of gigs of downloads?). Such use of bandwidth will set off 47 different kinds of alarms at any broadband ISP (which would result in a disconnect under most AUPs), and would slow the network to a crawl anywhere else.
The problem with your system is that my ISP is the one who is collecting this tax and somehow will have to distinguish between what is free and what is un-free.
No they don't. They just collect the money and pay the clearing house. It doesn't matter what is downloaded.
If I'm downloading linux iso's I don't want the money to go to some Nazi content holder. Why can't debian/Red Hat/mandrake/Slackware get the money?
I'll pass on invoking Godwin. If Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake and Slackware license their distributions to the clearing house, they do get the money. Matter of fact, since they will likely be more willing to offer more products for free download, they will probably see higher than average royalties.
Well, the CD-R tax doesn't count if the "content"
(I really hate that term) never makes it to disc.
This way, it doesn't matter where the content goes, or how many copies are made. The publishers get paid based on how much is licensed, not how much is downloaded.
A clearing-house of sorts (like the radio-royalty structure already in place) would solve 98% of the "file sharing problem."
I think the current limits on bandwidth really are going to make widespread DVD sharing a little unlikely, even with broadband. The files are just too big. If it takes 412 hours to download a movie (at lower quality with fewer features, etc.), people aren't going to care. They'd probably rather just go to Blockbuster and rent it for $4 or whatever.
Perhaps it could even be tied to bandwidth and charged at the ISP level. Say $.10 for every gig of downstream bandwidth used. Money goes to a clearing house and member copyright holders are paid based on the amount of material they have licensed to the clearing house. The more stuff they license, the more they get paid. There should also be a limit on the cost of the licenses written into the agreement so once everyone signs up it doesn't become $1000/gig.
I think in radio now, anything with a particular label (or stamp or something) can be played royalty free without limits, incorporated into other forms (like commercials, etc.) and so on. Music industry doesn't complain about that at all, because it is free publicity for their product. Same thing here.
This really would help solve almost all of the problems with file-sharing and it is a win-win of sorts. Pay-per-play it isn't, but pay-per-play isn't going to work anyway.
Probably a little late, but I just thought of it:
:)
Won't this law make Battlebots (ones with memory) illegal too?
They do have a serious point: as a policy issue, individual states cannot be determining natiional issues, and shouldn't generally have standing to enforce national laws.
Horsefeathers. The 14th amendment guarantees equal protection for the states as well as the citizens. Everyone is presumed to have standing before a Federal Court under the 5th and 14th amendments.
It is not the states, but a Federal Court that is determining national "issues," and a Federal Court most certainly has the authority to interpret, and if necessary, enforce the law nationally.
There's no such thing as an inalienable right.
The Constitution disagrees.
"Permitting the nonsettling states to seek sweeping, nationwide relief under the federal antitrust laws and would raise serious constitutional questions"
Translation: Expect a Supreme Court appeal.
Are we really expected to believe that the states that comprise the Union (which are the only authorities that can amend the Constitution in the first place), have fewer rights under the Constitution than the Federal Government? Such an assertion offends the 10th amendment, and others.
Also, notice how this statement neatly frames the remedy in terms 100% favorable to MS?" I believe it up to the states what relief they are seeking. "Sweeping, nationwide relief" is inflammatory hyperbole.
So we just open the floodgates and make everything that can be digitized public domain?
Any idea what kind of effect that will have on the economy? Employment? Conservative estimate: Tens of millions out of work. Hundreds of billions, possibly a trillion dollars in lost value. Hundreds of thousands of products would no longer be produced.
I don't think that's progress. I think that's the opposite extreme. I'm not supporting the current system either, but if people are going to keep griping about how bad the "content corporations" are without offering a viable, workable solution that people will agree to *with their dollars*, then no progress will be made.
This is about the umptieth story about "IP vs. warez" this week, and it's only Wednesday.
Is there any hope for a solution here? Any hope for a compromise? Or is it going to be a constant yammering match between thousands of lawyers waving motions and C&D letters in the air on one side and thousands of |337 \/\/4R3zzzz d00dz waving keygen programs and blank CDRs in the air on the other?
Surely by now we've realized that the "all content must be stricty controlled and monitored 24-hours a day by DRM/DMCA/SSSCA/*AA position is no more or no less untenable than the "I'll NEVER EVER EVER pay for anything, especially a web site, or anything digital, and I will vigorously rip/copy/distribute every CDROM/DVD/download/movie/song/album/game I can find for the express purpose of celebrating the fact that I didn't have to pay for it, and then laugh as company after company (read: employer after employer) files chapter 11 because everything they have invested in has become totally worthless with a few clicks.... and everything sux anyway, except Everquest."
Is there any position a business can take that will allow them to avoid being cast as a "greed-driven corporate machine?" Just how much do they have to give away, and at what point can they say, "ok, here's your trainload of free stuff, now *this* we'd really like you to buy?"
SOMEONE HAS TO PAY THE BILLS. Businesses that sell things *employ* people too.
I agree that businesses by and large have not lived up to their end of the responsibility bargain. Business is given huge latitude and opportunity, and they should exchange good products and jobs for that. That's the responsible thing to do.
There must be a balance here, and if/when a new agreed-upon balance requires that some products be paid for, the responsible thing for customers to do is to meet their side of the bargain and pay for the product. It is no more fair for customers to play bait-and-switch than it is for a business.
New products are developed, usually at some non-trivial level of risk, on the implied promise that if they are of sufficient quality (usually the result of VERY hard work), then customers will buy the product, allowing the business to earn back their costs plus a profit.
But there WILL BE NO NEW PRODUCTS if businesses hear "HA HA!! I'm going use it anyway and not pay!! nyyahhh nyahhh nyahhhhhhhh!!!" often enough. There will be no way to make even a moderate business model work.
I think there are sufficient ideas among developers to find a better balance. Instead of spending time repeating "all copy protection can be defeated" over and over, how about a little time spent helping find that balance?
Just a thought or two.
Having now spent a while studying the "web compatibility" issues for our various projects, I (and others) have come across some of the tradeoffs, and noted them, since the information has been very useful for us:
1. Pop-up windows are very useful if a page is being designed for a specific resolution. Having a set resolution (as most game developers and DTP developers will agree) makes development of a good GUI *far* easier. Having to support all available resolutions from Palm Pilots through 640x480 on up to 1600x1200 and all possible color depths, *and* have a great GUI is impossible. (No, the percentages in style sheets don't help. Been there, done that).
800x600 is a minimal resolution, IMHO.
2. CSS is great. XSLT is better.
3. Javascript is necessary to development of a good GUI too. Visual cues are vital to explaining to a user what the GUI is doing, and those cues usually require Javascript.
4. Unless a common (black text on white background) color scheme is the only goal, changing the default link colors will almost always be necessary. Royal blue looks terrible on almost every background color except white and pastels (yarg). Yellow backgrounds give people headaches. Purple is invisible everywhere royal blue looks terrible. And so on..
5. Requiring a specific browser will be necessary until all browsers support the proper standards *or* all (or most) users use current browsers. Our sites generally do not support Netscape 4x well. Mainly because we use style sheets and inline styles, which Netscape happily renders wrong every chance it gets (not to mention what it does to nested tables). We would need to maintain a seperate (broken) site for Netscape 4, and that isn't practical.
If Mozilla, for example, were the only browser, we could do incredible things with web interfaces (like put more information on each page with a simpler navigation mechanism). Having to support IE, Opera, etc., means that all the advanced cool stuff won't work reliably, so we can't use it.
6. Mozilla, BTW, should set it's default resolution to 120dpi to match IE. Yeah, yeah, I know, Linux is great and all, but 7pt fonts that are 4 pixels high aren't readable, and bumping the font size to 960pt to read one site, then finding an 'E' that fills 80% of the screen on the next site is less than ideal.
7. I'm very intrigued by Shockwave and Flash, but have hesitated to use it because everyone complains about it so much. Some of the Flash things can be done with DHTML, but then the compatibility problem comes up again.
8. I'm always intrigued by the word "content." Here's the basic tradeoff: If people want *really* good "content" on the web, then web developers (client-side people) need a bigger palette than the HTML 2.0 tags, default color links, tables and 8-bit static jpegs. Sorry, but that's the way it is. HTML and JPEGS have been pushed about as far as they can go, and while these are adequate (and actually preferred) for information like 'man' pages and HOWTOs, when it comes to making something genuinely interesting, it is difficult to get more than a yawn without something better.
Just another $0.02
Don't make the user think.
That's fairly depressing.
Yeah, yeah, I know, "that's just the way it is, so deal with it/get a life/quit whining/get a job/go outside/computers aren't everything(tm) ©©©®®®"
Whatever. Doesn't make it any less depressing.
I agree about testing with people who aren't experienced with web pages/computers. I just grow fatigued sometimes at the "people are idiots" line. If people are treated like idiots, they have little incentive to not behave like idiots.
It's about big corporations milking everyone else for every single penny they have.
While finding new and innovative ways to tell them they are unqualified for a job.
but information alone will not make money.
Google
I'm sure heaps of IT managers will be reading his column around the world, nodding their heads sagely.
As they, without looking, drop 50 lbs. of resumes in the trash.
I think this describes about 90% of the problems in the "IT Industry." It doesn't get any better after someone gets hired either.
What's .NET written in?
oh...
hmmmm....
GOODNIGHT EVERYBODY!!!!!!!
...the programming language being used by a potential employer.