At Best Buy, they're selling 8-foot HDMI cables for $150. Why? Because they can, someone who has a $3500 new HDTV expects things that work with it to be expensive. Initially, HD discs (of any kind) will be expensive. Even if it costs twice as much initially for a Blu-Ray, it won't matter in the slightest (and as noted above, the increased cost is a one-time thing, as soon as it is amortized prices will become pretty much the same, or even less for Blu-Ray if you don't need to go dual-layer for something).
That's a mighty big IF. Of those 37 million DVD players sold, a vast majority are the $40-99 kind. HD-DVD players aren't going to get down to the $200-300 spot where people will start buying them in any quantity for a while. IF the capability of the PS3 to play Blu-Ray leads to increased sales of Blu-Ray discs over HD-DVD, Blu-Ray will start getting more shelf space, manufacturers will start jumping on the bandwagon to sell Blu-Ray players and by the time players get down to $200, HD-DVD could find itself with little market share.
No, by the time consumers were walking into stores with cheap no-name brands of VCRs and lots of competitors, the format wars were already over but for the shouting. Porn was part of the equation, recording length was another part. Maybe Sony was trying to get too much out of licensing fees, but even if they weren't, the other two factors would have sufficed.
After I bought my PS2, I bought a $15 or so accessory kit which included a stand, two cables to extend the length of the controller, and a DVD remote controller (with an IR receiver that plugs in to the controller connector). I've never used it, because I already had a DVD player at that time, but it was cheap enough that I didn't care I was getting something I didn't need. If I hadn't had a DVD player, I probably would have used the PS2 for watching DVDs.
It isn't that people are going to be buying PS3s so they can watch HD movies. What the PS3 will do is make people feel SAFE buying Blu-Ray titles, even before they have an HDTV to watch them in their full glory. Then they don't feel like they're getting burned buying old crummy standard DVDs that they'll only have to replace later on. It will make buying a Blu-Ray disc feel like they're SAVING money. At the same time, HD-DVD will bring up the fear that the format might go out of style before they ever get a chance to buy a player and screen for it. At least with the PS3, they already have something that can play it! If there's enough of that thinking going on, Blu-Ray will sell much more than HD-DVD, prices on players will come down, and the fear of HD-DVD going out of style might become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Either that or dual-format players will become the norm, which could keep both formats going for a long time (same as DVD-R and DVD+r),
One HD-DVD advantage is that the manufacturing equipment can be easily adapted from current DVD equipment, thus supposedly making them cheaper to manufacture. However, if they have to go dual-layer to match Blu-Ray, that might wipe out some or all of the cost savings. Without being able to compare them directly, I can't say if Blu-Ray single-layer would be more reliable and less subject to damage or deterioration than a double-layer HD-DVD, but it is certainly possible. You also wouldn't have that annoying layer-change pause that most DVD players have when switching. Also, that manufacturing cost advantage only lasts for a short while - once Blu-Ray plants are built, there's no reason to think they'd be any more expensive than HD-DVD. The cost of the actual DVD manufacturing is such a small part of buying a movie on DVD that it shouldn't make much difference.
What I didn't understand from the article was how HD-DVD will be "easier to copy movies to the hard drive". Huh? Given that both are going to be using essentially the same copy prevention, I don't see how there would be any difference. Blu-Ray should be faster, which would be "easier", but otherwise it would be exactly the same amount of effort.
I also thought the article had several inaccuracies, such as that only HD-DVD can do hybrid discs (not that I think that hybrid discs will be particularly important, unless they start selling them at the same price as standard DVD and you get the HD-DVD or Blu-Ray side "for free"). The way they said that, it also sounded like only HD-DVD players could play current DVDs (although if you re-read it a few times that isn't quite what they're saying - the sentence is confusing "current DVD" with the DVD side of a DVD/HD-DVD hybrid, which ought to be playable in a CURRENT DVD player, saying nothing about playing current DVDs in an HD-DVD player).
Personally, I think the PS3 effect will be the chicken to the Blu-Ray eggs, and could be enough to tip the balance (given that sales of HD-DVD players and media are likely to be quite slow up to that point). At the least, it should provide enough of a boost that at worst, both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have enough market share to keep things confused, to the point where players start coming out that support both - and then the market will eventually decide which one will stick around (and the ability to play the loser being no different from the ability to play any of the old almost-never-used CD formats). The typical player will eventually be able to read CD/CD-R/CD-RW/DVD/DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD+R/DVD+RW/DVD-RA M/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray (plus the -R and -RW versions of both of those), in every format known. Right around that point, they'll come out with something new.
The 2nd-run theater (which have disappeared in many areas) is usually a run-down low-rent place. I also didn't reject time-based pricing, just cost-based pricing. The price going down works as long as people put a premium on seeing it now and in a good theater. It also makes sense to differentiate between time of showing - there's a fixed number of seats, so there's less demand for them at slack times of the day (even if the theater isn't sold out, there are limited seats that are "good", and there's pressure to not go if the theater is too crowded).
You make a good point that there is a logistic element to it as well. However, if that was the primary issue, they'd have as much problem with people watching two shows on one ticket. If it were important to charge more for the "better" films, they'd find a way to isolate people to the correct tier, it isn't that hard. Most people will be honest, and that's all that counts.
The primary distinguisher on price of books seems to be format, not content, unless you get into "useful" books, such as text books, or professional level books. You might see a slight difference in the price of paperbacks, but not much. Trade paperbacks are a different price, and hardbacks are a different price.
Other series that I haven't seen yet that are better than at least some of the ones that were on "the list": The 4400, ALF, Earth 2, VR.5, Harsh Realm, Roswell. I've also just been told to add in The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr. If we're going to have super-heroes and sitcoms, then My Hero should also be there. If Lois & Clark are on there, what about Smallville?
Threshold seems to be working up to be a good entry, but it is a bit too early to have made that list.
What about Highlander? Or Millennium? Or Charmed? Land of the Giants? The Pretender? Strange Luck? The Kindred? Wolf Lake? You can argue about their "Science Fiction" status, but they all are as close as some on the list (and most are arguably better than some as well). Oh yeah, Point Pleasant as well.
If you're going to have Man from U.N.C.L.E, Alias and La Femme Nikita qualify as well. I don't think I saw Get Smart listed, either.
Already mentioned, but I'd have to vote for Farscape and Blake's 7 as the two most prominent missing series, followed closely by The Prisoner. I also have a soft spot in my heart for Search (1972-73, I think some people were referring to it as "Probe" (not the Asimov one), which I don't think it was ever called; Probe was the name of the organization).
I don't even want to get into all the anime that maybe ought to be on there as well, e.g. Astroboy.
Science fiction and fantasy blend into each other quite a ways. For me, SF is based on taking a premise and following it out to see the results. The premise can be based on current science and future technology, or can be based on alternate science. Buffy did a pretty good job of making, then following, rules for vampires and demons and magic. For that matter, so did (does) Charmed. I don't see how postulating the existence of, say, telepathy and pyscho-kinesis and teleportation (whether with transporters or quantum leaps), is any more "sciencey" than going with the existence of vampires and demons and magic and hell mouths and such. Why would Q be "science fiction" and Angel be "fantasy"?
First, the marginal cost difference of 3 CDs vs 1 CD is minimal, but could justify a few dollars difference in price. Second, software is FUNCTIONAL - the pricing model on something functional is going to be different from something that is entertainment. Software also has a more limited lifetime, it becomes obsolete much more quickly than entertainment products, thus creation costs have to be recovered earlier. Even given all that, the price of software is not closely tied to the cost of creating it.
It might be reasonable to make the pricing of entertainment based on size (e.g. number of pages in a book, length of a song or a movie), but that would tend to make creators try to pad their work to make it longer.
The individual copy is NOT intrinsically more valuable. I may have ZERO interest in the new work, and have NON-zero interest in the old work. For me, the worth of the new work is ZERO. There is no "intrinsic value" to it at all, only a value to each specific individual. The worth of the COPYRIGHT is higher for the more popular work because there are more people interested in buying it, but the worth of the individual copy is not higher.
If song prices are variable based on popularity, then popular songs will become less expensive as soon as the next big hit comes along. What that means is that many (not all, but many) people will figure out that if they really like a song, they just wait a few weeks until the price drops and then they can buy it. Since that effect itself will drop the popularity very quickly, I think they'll find they can't sustain a high price on any song for any length of time, and will probably LOSE money on it for that time period compared to how much they would have made if they kept the price fixed.
The total amount of money people have available to spend on buying music is probably fairly constant - dropping the price or raising the price, the total amount of money the music industry makes won't change much (until they raise it so high that people find better uses for their money). Since the "quantity" of their product is unlimited, especially when downloaded, the proper price point is one where the average amount of money spent on music by the "average person" gets you about half of all music currently being produced. As in half of ALL new releases each month for the average amount spent per person per month. Which is probably only a few cents a song or so. At that price, NO one would pirate music, it just wouldn't make sense. and the music industry would be making the same amount of money regardless.
The reason you don't charge a different price for a more expensive movie is that the cost per showing is exactly the same regardless of the cost to create it (e.g. cost of wear and tear on the print, cost to the theater for projector maintenance, etc). You get more money back from a $200 million movie than for a $2 million movie because the more expensive movie is better. Supposedly. Being better, more people will go see it. Supposedly.
If it isn't better, that's the fault of the producers, not the consumers. You still have a market effect, its that stupid producers who produce excessively expensive movies that aren't worth it go out of business.
Same thing for the popular hit music - you'll get more money because you sell more, not because you charge more.
You mean, like the Unix file system, 1K allocation size on a 97GB partition? Or Mac HFS extended (journaled), 158GB partition, 4K allocation size? It looks like ext2 uses 4K as well.
You own that copy if making and distributing that copy was "authorized". The GPL is one way it can be authorized. If the GPL wasn't valid, you could have gotten an authorized copy directly from the copyright owner, or from a third party who had some other means of authorization than the GPL. Regardless, whether the copy you own is authorized because of the GPL or some other authorization, you (the owner of the copy) do not care about the terms of the GPL, because they do not apply to you (unless you want to make your own authorized copies or derivative works and distribute them). YOU do not need a license to run the program, the person who made the authorized copy (if not the owner of the copyright) needed a license.
Note that "if you own the program" means "if you own AN AUTHORIZED COPY OF the program", not that you are the owner of the copyright. The owner of the copyright wouldn't need any special permission from copyright law in order to make a transient copy in order to run the program.
All right, how many times do we have to go over "ownership" versus license to use. No matter how much you want the former, the latter is what actually exists and will continue to exist. If you don't agree to the EULA, you take back the software
Possibly until you get it right. When I buy a book, I am not buying a "license to read a book", I am buying an authorized copy of that book. I OWN it. I can write in it. I can read it. I can loan it to a friend. I can sell it. I can burn it. I OWN it. I don't own the copyright on it, but I own that particular specific authorized copy that I bought. Now tell me how software that I go buy in a retail store is any different. And let's see you try to return opened software and get a refund.
Once I decline to accept the license the software tries to force on me, I see no reason why I can't modify the software to bypass asking me to agree to it. I've declined to accept any limitations on what i can legally do under copyright law, so I can reverse engineer it to find out how it works, and modify it to run under my conditions.
Copyright law is about protecting expression, NOT functionality. It should be explicitly against the policy of the United States to have copyright law be used as a protection of function in any way. Trying to apply the DMCA to protecting garage door openers has already been shot down. Adding a sticker to the garage door opener that says "pressing the button on this garage door opener means you accept the EULA on the package" wouldn't get around that decision, I hope.
Copyright law is meaningless if a company can add any restrictions it wants to software merely because software is functional and has the ability to restrict itself. Again, copyright is not supposed to protect functionality. Any EULA that is not negotiable, and is not negotiated (or even presented) before the sale, should not be considered a valid contract. Either that, or my writing on the box "by allowing the program to run when I click I Agree, you agree that all terms of this EULA are null and void" should be considered just as valid. After all, the program seems to be acting as an agent, actively preventing me from accessing functionality unless I agree.
License terms for a service can be reasonably defended, e.g. "you may not use a modified client program to connect to this server", "no being mean to other people", whatever. Reverse engineering the protocol in order to create a different server (as opposed to creating a bot, for example) should not be an allowable term, however. So what if someone wants to create a different server? That's called competition, not infringement.
First off, I never said A and B (or C) were moving relative to each other. I explicitly stated that they were at rest in the NTP example (each side sees pulses from the other at the same rate as expected, thus time must be going at the same rate; round trip time is staying constant, so they can't be moving with respect to each other). So why can't things happen simultaneously, even when separated by large distances? And with such a setup (everything at rest with each other), how would FTL transmission be traveling in time?
"Slow Finder animations" is the biggest crock. I can't even click a stopwatch fast enough to time it, and it isn't as if your cursor is frozen or you can't go on to do the next thing. Command-Shift-N, Command-Delete - no animation, a folder appears, then disappears, all in less than a second.
Even if there was a real delay, I've wasted more time trying to get wireless networking going on a Windows machine than I've EVER used waiting for some icons to plot when opening a folder with lots of files. There are delays when doing that in Windows as well, so I don't know why you think that Mac OS X is any slower.
If Vista is anywhere close to as good as a Mac at configuring a network connection, it will be a vast improvement.
Even accepting that an author should get a similar return on writing a book, the price-demand-profit curve with electronic distribution is so different that a fairly nominal pricing is probably reasonable - and with such pricing, most people will pay it even without DRM. You don't have to charge $18 for a book, you can charge $.50 and still make more net profit because so many more people will be willing to try it out, and even if they don't like it, just shrug it off. I often buy a newspaper for $.50 because I saw one or two articles that I could have read there in the store, but would rather take it home and relax while I read it, and maybe I'll find something else worthwhile in it (and there's always the comics). Newspapers are sold almost on the honor system out of the news boxes, and usually people are willing to pay that $.50 so they can get a fresh copy, rather than that copy that's been folded over, is missing one section and has a coffee ring on the back page. Unauthorized significant copying (i.e. copying by someone who would have paid for it if the unauthorized copy wasn't available) would drop to an insignificant level. DRM would be totally unnecessary.
Many libraries have rentals for current popular books. With such rentals, a portion of the rental fee could go directly to the author. Being digital copies, there's no need to get rid of the extra copies after demand has dropped, and if demand is higher than anticipated, then the author does even better.
There are all sorts of potential models someone can use to sell their work. Publishing it, taking advantage of a mass market, is one that has many advantages, and some disadvantages. Without copyright, which is not something that an author is entitled to, just something that we (through our laws) choose to offer, being paid for your work, but not later reproduction, would be natural.
The whole "we only have a license for 3 copies" with schemes like TFA is talking about seems like a cross between people flagellating themselves and a scene I remember seeing in a documentary about the depression where perfectly good oranges were being doused with kerosene because no one could afford to buy them, while people were lining up at soup kitchens a block away and (wait for it - think about the children!) poor little starving orphan waifs looking at those oranges on the other side of a fence, unable to get to them before they're rendered inedible. The author doesn't get a single penny more by making someone wait an extra 2 weeks before they can "check out" a digital copy of a work. All you've done is added extra complexity, made it less capable/flexible, and made someone wait for it. By adding DRM, you've burdened society.
The creators would get a lot more than they do now, all the burdensome accounting and licensing and auditing and self-flagellation required would be eliminated, and everyone except the middlemen would be happier.
Of course, you can still create a modified version of your work, and you retain full control over that - and for commercial uses, that's worth quite a bit. That's something that only you can do. Frankly, if I wrote a song, released it under CC, and it was used in Star Wars Episode 7, I'd be thrilled even if I didn't get any royalties out of it. It's quite likely that if I hadn't released it as such, it wouldn't be in that movie and not only wouldn't I get any royalties, I wouldn't get any exposure either.
There have been several TV shows that were delayed coming out on DVD because of copyright clearance issues. A good example is Roswell. They used a bunch of bands, and arguably helped those bands gain popularity, but when the DVD was being produced, the bands wanted more money, or wouldn't give permission. Result? The bands not only didn't get any money, but they're not getting any exposure on the DVD anymore. Too bad, since some of the action was specifically cut to the music - the producers hand-picked replacement music and tried to fit it in properly, but not having the music that was originally aired is a loss.
Copyright law should require that any license to use something as part of another work be irrevocable and transferable to any medium that essentially maintains the work as it was originally released. No issues with republishing archival CDs with old issues of magazines, or with copyright lapsing on a movie but not on some of the music used in the movie (Its a Wonderful Life). No issues with putting TV shows on DVD as originally broadcast (and no, taking commercials out doesn't "change" it). It doesn't mean that just because you have a movie with 10 seconds of a song, you'd have the right to put out a soundtrack album with that song on it. You'd only have license to the song (or part of the song) as actually used along with the video images.
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At Best Buy, they're selling 8-foot HDMI cables for $150. Why? Because they can, someone who has a $3500 new HDTV expects things that work with it to be expensive. Initially, HD discs (of any kind) will be expensive. Even if it costs twice as much initially for a Blu-Ray, it won't matter in the slightest (and as noted above, the increased cost is a one-time thing, as soon as it is amortized prices will become pretty much the same, or even less for Blu-Ray if you don't need to go dual-layer for something).
That's a mighty big IF. Of those 37 million DVD players sold, a vast majority are the $40-99 kind. HD-DVD players aren't going to get down to the $200-300 spot where people will start buying them in any quantity for a while. IF the capability of the PS3 to play Blu-Ray leads to increased sales of Blu-Ray discs over HD-DVD, Blu-Ray will start getting more shelf space, manufacturers will start jumping on the bandwagon to sell Blu-Ray players and by the time players get down to $200, HD-DVD could find itself with little market share.
No, by the time consumers were walking into stores with cheap no-name brands of VCRs and lots of competitors, the format wars were already over but for the shouting. Porn was part of the equation, recording length was another part. Maybe Sony was trying to get too much out of licensing fees, but even if they weren't, the other two factors would have sufficed.
After I bought my PS2, I bought a $15 or so accessory kit which included a stand, two cables to extend the length of the controller, and a DVD remote controller (with an IR receiver that plugs in to the controller connector). I've never used it, because I already had a DVD player at that time, but it was cheap enough that I didn't care I was getting something I didn't need. If I hadn't had a DVD player, I probably would have used the PS2 for watching DVDs.
It isn't that people are going to be buying PS3s so they can watch HD movies. What the PS3 will do is make people feel SAFE buying Blu-Ray titles, even before they have an HDTV to watch them in their full glory. Then they don't feel like they're getting burned buying old crummy standard DVDs that they'll only have to replace later on. It will make buying a Blu-Ray disc feel like they're SAVING money. At the same time, HD-DVD will bring up the fear that the format might go out of style before they ever get a chance to buy a player and screen for it. At least with the PS3, they already have something that can play it! If there's enough of that thinking going on, Blu-Ray will sell much more than HD-DVD, prices on players will come down, and the fear of HD-DVD going out of style might become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Either that or dual-format players will become the norm, which could keep both formats going for a long time (same as DVD-R and DVD+r),
One HD-DVD advantage is that the manufacturing equipment can be easily adapted from current DVD equipment, thus supposedly making them cheaper to manufacture. However, if they have to go dual-layer to match Blu-Ray, that might wipe out some or all of the cost savings. Without being able to compare them directly, I can't say if Blu-Ray single-layer would be more reliable and less subject to damage or deterioration than a double-layer HD-DVD, but it is certainly possible. You also wouldn't have that annoying layer-change pause that most DVD players have when switching. Also, that manufacturing cost advantage only lasts for a short while - once Blu-Ray plants are built, there's no reason to think they'd be any more expensive than HD-DVD. The cost of the actual DVD manufacturing is such a small part of buying a movie on DVD that it shouldn't make much difference.
What I didn't understand from the article was how HD-DVD will be "easier to copy movies to the hard drive". Huh? Given that both are going to be using essentially the same copy prevention, I don't see how there would be any difference. Blu-Ray should be faster, which would be "easier", but otherwise it would be exactly the same amount of effort.
I also thought the article had several inaccuracies, such as that only HD-DVD can do hybrid discs (not that I think that hybrid discs will be particularly important, unless they start selling them at the same price as standard DVD and you get the HD-DVD or Blu-Ray side "for free"). The way they said that, it also sounded like only HD-DVD players could play current DVDs (although if you re-read it a few times that isn't quite what they're saying - the sentence is confusing "current DVD" with the DVD side of a DVD/HD-DVD hybrid, which ought to be playable in a CURRENT DVD player, saying nothing about playing current DVDs in an HD-DVD player).
Personally, I think the PS3 effect will be the chicken to the Blu-Ray eggs, and could be enough to tip the balance (given that sales of HD-DVD players and media are likely to be quite slow up to that point). At the least, it should provide enough of a boost that at worst, both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have enough market share to keep things confused, to the point where players start coming out that support both - and then the market will eventually decide which one will stick around (and the ability to play the loser being no different from the ability to play any of the old almost-never-used CD formats). The typical player will eventually be able to read CD/CD-R/CD-RW/DVD/DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD+R/DVD+RW/DVD-RA M/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray (plus the -R and -RW versions of both of those), in every format known. Right around that point, they'll come out with something new.
The 2nd-run theater (which have disappeared in many areas) is usually a run-down low-rent place. I also didn't reject time-based pricing, just cost-based pricing. The price going down works as long as people put a premium on seeing it now and in a good theater. It also makes sense to differentiate between time of showing - there's a fixed number of seats, so there's less demand for them at slack times of the day (even if the theater isn't sold out, there are limited seats that are "good", and there's pressure to not go if the theater is too crowded).
You make a good point that there is a logistic element to it as well. However, if that was the primary issue, they'd have as much problem with people watching two shows on one ticket. If it were important to charge more for the "better" films, they'd find a way to isolate people to the correct tier, it isn't that hard. Most people will be honest, and that's all that counts.
The primary distinguisher on price of books seems to be format, not content, unless you get into "useful" books, such as text books, or professional level books. You might see a slight difference in the price of paperbacks, but not much. Trade paperbacks are a different price, and hardbacks are a different price.
A couple I missed: Dark Skies, Witchblade, Salvage. One that is Science Fiction but DOESN'T deserve to be on the list is Jake 2.0!
At least you're not afraid to show your ignorance and bad taste!
Are you referring to Ark II?
Other series that I haven't seen yet that are better than at least some of the ones that were on "the list": The 4400, ALF, Earth 2, VR.5, Harsh Realm, Roswell. I've also just been told to add in The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr. If we're going to have super-heroes and sitcoms, then My Hero should also be there. If Lois & Clark are on there, what about Smallville?
Threshold seems to be working up to be a good entry, but it is a bit too early to have made that list.
What about Highlander? Or Millennium? Or Charmed? Land of the Giants? The Pretender? Strange Luck? The Kindred? Wolf Lake? You can argue about their "Science Fiction" status, but they all are as close as some on the list (and most are arguably better than some as well). Oh yeah, Point Pleasant as well.
If you're going to have Man from U.N.C.L.E, Alias and La Femme Nikita qualify as well. I don't think I saw Get Smart listed, either.
Already mentioned, but I'd have to vote for Farscape and Blake's 7 as the two most prominent missing series, followed closely by The Prisoner. I also have a soft spot in my heart for Search (1972-73, I think some people were referring to it as "Probe" (not the Asimov one), which I don't think it was ever called; Probe was the name of the organization).
I don't even want to get into all the anime that maybe ought to be on there as well, e.g. Astroboy.
Science fiction and fantasy blend into each other quite a ways. For me, SF is based on taking a premise and following it out to see the results. The premise can be based on current science and future technology, or can be based on alternate science. Buffy did a pretty good job of making, then following, rules for vampires and demons and magic. For that matter, so did (does) Charmed. I don't see how postulating the existence of, say, telepathy and pyscho-kinesis and teleportation (whether with transporters or quantum leaps), is any more "sciencey" than going with the existence of vampires and demons and magic and hell mouths and such. Why would Q be "science fiction" and Angel be "fantasy"?
First, the marginal cost difference of 3 CDs vs 1 CD is minimal, but could justify a few dollars difference in price. Second, software is FUNCTIONAL - the pricing model on something functional is going to be different from something that is entertainment. Software also has a more limited lifetime, it becomes obsolete much more quickly than entertainment products, thus creation costs have to be recovered earlier. Even given all that, the price of software is not closely tied to the cost of creating it.
It might be reasonable to make the pricing of entertainment based on size (e.g. number of pages in a book, length of a song or a movie), but that would tend to make creators try to pad their work to make it longer.
The Best Buy here sells appliances (fridge, oven, washer/dryer, microwaves, etc).
The individual copy is NOT intrinsically more valuable. I may have ZERO interest in the new work, and have NON-zero interest in the old work. For me, the worth of the new work is ZERO. There is no "intrinsic value" to it at all, only a value to each specific individual. The worth of the COPYRIGHT is higher for the more popular work because there are more people interested in buying it, but the worth of the individual copy is not higher.
If song prices are variable based on popularity, then popular songs will become less expensive as soon as the next big hit comes along. What that means is that many (not all, but many) people will figure out that if they really like a song, they just wait a few weeks until the price drops and then they can buy it. Since that effect itself will drop the popularity very quickly, I think they'll find they can't sustain a high price on any song for any length of time, and will probably LOSE money on it for that time period compared to how much they would have made if they kept the price fixed.
The total amount of money people have available to spend on buying music is probably fairly constant - dropping the price or raising the price, the total amount of money the music industry makes won't change much (until they raise it so high that people find better uses for their money). Since the "quantity" of their product is unlimited, especially when downloaded, the proper price point is one where the average amount of money spent on music by the "average person" gets you about half of all music currently being produced. As in half of ALL new releases each month for the average amount spent per person per month. Which is probably only a few cents a song or so. At that price, NO one would pirate music, it just wouldn't make sense. and the music industry would be making the same amount of money regardless.
The reason you don't charge a different price for a more expensive movie is that the cost per showing is exactly the same regardless of the cost to create it (e.g. cost of wear and tear on the print, cost to the theater for projector maintenance, etc). You get more money back from a $200 million movie than for a $2 million movie because the more expensive movie is better. Supposedly. Being better, more people will go see it. Supposedly.
If it isn't better, that's the fault of the producers, not the consumers. You still have a market effect, its that stupid producers who produce excessively expensive movies that aren't worth it go out of business.
Same thing for the popular hit music - you'll get more money because you sell more, not because you charge more.
You mean, like the Unix file system, 1K allocation size on a 97GB partition? Or Mac HFS extended (journaled), 158GB partition, 4K allocation size? It looks like ext2 uses 4K as well.
You own that copy if making and distributing that copy was "authorized". The GPL is one way it can be authorized. If the GPL wasn't valid, you could have gotten an authorized copy directly from the copyright owner, or from a third party who had some other means of authorization than the GPL. Regardless, whether the copy you own is authorized because of the GPL or some other authorization, you (the owner of the copy) do not care about the terms of the GPL, because they do not apply to you (unless you want to make your own authorized copies or derivative works and distribute them). YOU do not need a license to run the program, the person who made the authorized copy (if not the owner of the copyright) needed a license.
Note that "if you own the program" means "if you own AN AUTHORIZED COPY OF the program", not that you are the owner of the copyright. The owner of the copyright wouldn't need any special permission from copyright law in order to make a transient copy in order to run the program.
Possibly until you get it right. When I buy a book, I am not buying a "license to read a book", I am buying an authorized copy of that book. I OWN it. I can write in it. I can read it. I can loan it to a friend. I can sell it. I can burn it. I OWN it. I don't own the copyright on it, but I own that particular specific authorized copy that I bought. Now tell me how software that I go buy in a retail store is any different. And let's see you try to return opened software and get a refund.
Once I decline to accept the license the software tries to force on me, I see no reason why I can't modify the software to bypass asking me to agree to it. I've declined to accept any limitations on what i can legally do under copyright law, so I can reverse engineer it to find out how it works, and modify it to run under my conditions.
Copyright law is about protecting expression, NOT functionality. It should be explicitly against the policy of the United States to have copyright law be used as a protection of function in any way. Trying to apply the DMCA to protecting garage door openers has already been shot down. Adding a sticker to the garage door opener that says "pressing the button on this garage door opener means you accept the EULA on the package" wouldn't get around that decision, I hope.
Copyright law is meaningless if a company can add any restrictions it wants to software merely because software is functional and has the ability to restrict itself. Again, copyright is not supposed to protect functionality. Any EULA that is not negotiable, and is not negotiated (or even presented) before the sale, should not be considered a valid contract. Either that, or my writing on the box "by allowing the program to run when I click I Agree, you agree that all terms of this EULA are null and void" should be considered just as valid. After all, the program seems to be acting as an agent, actively preventing me from accessing functionality unless I agree.
License terms for a service can be reasonably defended, e.g. "you may not use a modified client program to connect to this server", "no being mean to other people", whatever. Reverse engineering the protocol in order to create a different server (as opposed to creating a bot, for example) should not be an allowable term, however. So what if someone wants to create a different server? That's called competition, not infringement.
First off, I never said A and B (or C) were moving relative to each other. I explicitly stated that they were at rest in the NTP example (each side sees pulses from the other at the same rate as expected, thus time must be going at the same rate; round trip time is staying constant, so they can't be moving with respect to each other). So why can't things happen simultaneously, even when separated by large distances? And with such a setup (everything at rest with each other), how would FTL transmission be traveling in time?
"Slow Finder animations" is the biggest crock. I can't even click a stopwatch fast enough to time it, and it isn't as if your cursor is frozen or you can't go on to do the next thing. Command-Shift-N, Command-Delete - no animation, a folder appears, then disappears, all in less than a second.
Even if there was a real delay, I've wasted more time trying to get wireless networking going on a Windows machine than I've EVER used waiting for some icons to plot when opening a folder with lots of files. There are delays when doing that in Windows as well, so I don't know why you think that Mac OS X is any slower.
If Vista is anywhere close to as good as a Mac at configuring a network connection, it will be a vast improvement.
Even accepting that an author should get a similar return on writing a book, the price-demand-profit curve with electronic distribution is so different that a fairly nominal pricing is probably reasonable - and with such pricing, most people will pay it even without DRM. You don't have to charge $18 for a book, you can charge $.50 and still make more net profit because so many more people will be willing to try it out, and even if they don't like it, just shrug it off. I often buy a newspaper for $.50 because I saw one or two articles that I could have read there in the store, but would rather take it home and relax while I read it, and maybe I'll find something else worthwhile in it (and there's always the comics). Newspapers are sold almost on the honor system out of the news boxes, and usually people are willing to pay that $.50 so they can get a fresh copy, rather than that copy that's been folded over, is missing one section and has a coffee ring on the back page. Unauthorized significant copying (i.e. copying by someone who would have paid for it if the unauthorized copy wasn't available) would drop to an insignificant level. DRM would be totally unnecessary.
Many libraries have rentals for current popular books. With such rentals, a portion of the rental fee could go directly to the author. Being digital copies, there's no need to get rid of the extra copies after demand has dropped, and if demand is higher than anticipated, then the author does even better.
There are all sorts of potential models someone can use to sell their work. Publishing it, taking advantage of a mass market, is one that has many advantages, and some disadvantages. Without copyright, which is not something that an author is entitled to, just something that we (through our laws) choose to offer, being paid for your work, but not later reproduction, would be natural.
The whole "we only have a license for 3 copies" with schemes like TFA is talking about seems like a cross between people flagellating themselves and a scene I remember seeing in a documentary about the depression where perfectly good oranges were being doused with kerosene because no one could afford to buy them, while people were lining up at soup kitchens a block away and (wait for it - think about the children!) poor little starving orphan waifs looking at those oranges on the other side of a fence, unable to get to them before they're rendered inedible. The author doesn't get a single penny more by making someone wait an extra 2 weeks before they can "check out" a digital copy of a work. All you've done is added extra complexity, made it less capable/flexible, and made someone wait for it. By adding DRM, you've burdened society.
The creators would get a lot more than they do now, all the burdensome accounting and licensing and auditing and self-flagellation required would be eliminated, and everyone except the middlemen would be happier.Of course, you can still create a modified version of your work, and you retain full control over that - and for commercial uses, that's worth quite a bit. That's something that only you can do. Frankly, if I wrote a song, released it under CC, and it was used in Star Wars Episode 7, I'd be thrilled even if I didn't get any royalties out of it. It's quite likely that if I hadn't released it as such, it wouldn't be in that movie and not only wouldn't I get any royalties, I wouldn't get any exposure either.
There have been several TV shows that were delayed coming out on DVD because of copyright clearance issues. A good example is Roswell. They used a bunch of bands, and arguably helped those bands gain popularity, but when the DVD was being produced, the bands wanted more money, or wouldn't give permission. Result? The bands not only didn't get any money, but they're not getting any exposure on the DVD anymore. Too bad, since some of the action was specifically cut to the music - the producers hand-picked replacement music and tried to fit it in properly, but not having the music that was originally aired is a loss.
Copyright law should require that any license to use something as part of another work be irrevocable and transferable to any medium that essentially maintains the work as it was originally released. No issues with republishing archival CDs with old issues of magazines, or with copyright lapsing on a movie but not on some of the music used in the movie (Its a Wonderful Life). No issues with putting TV shows on DVD as originally broadcast (and no, taking commercials out doesn't "change" it). It doesn't mean that just because you have a movie with 10 seconds of a song, you'd have the right to put out a soundtrack album with that song on it. You'd only have license to the song (or part of the song) as actually used along with the video images.