Let's be realistic. Who actually NEEDS Vista right now? Not many if anyone. Eventually people will need it to run something, but that day isn't here now and until it is Vista is a pain in the tookus because of DRM, compatability issues and hardware requirements.
What happens to these genes 10-20,000 generations out?
Either the gene offers some competitive advantage or it gets washed out of the gene pool. It isn't going to give rise to Mansquito if that is what you are worried about. And it won't lead to large mosquitos either - if there was an advantage to that mosquitos would already be large.
The actual numbers are 85% after 3 years, 59% after 7 years, and 40% after 11 years. So the assertion that it is automatic is a crock.
And there are two fee tiers, one for large organizations, and a lower one for small organizations. The actual renewal rates are about the same for both sized organizations for 3 and 7 years. Since small companies come and go much faster than large one, it doesn't mean a lot that large companies pay the fee at 11 years more often.
The USPTO charges maintenance fees on patents. If you do not pony up $$$$ every few years the patent expires. Companies not being in the business of expending cash needlessly do not pay the fees on patents they own but have no interest in develeping. Ultimately this means there will be very few active but available patents to donate to such organizations. In fact the whole premise of the article is nonsense.
Doh! The USPTO already has a mechanism for this - maintainence fees. If you don't pony up $$$$$$ every few years the patent automatically expires. Companies, being greedy bastards don't maintain patents that they have no interest in. Which is probnably why this entire article and discussion thereof is stupid.
A generalization like that is of course at best a great oversimplification. Individual Americans often make financial plans that run across generations. Some financial plans made by governments also do the same. On the other hand company executives tend to live for quarterly results. Many Americans live from one paycheck to the next. The military plans weapons systems procurement cycles that last decades. Congressmen run in a 2 year re-election cycle.
Well, I've been around long enough to remember almost everything that is happening now from having happened in the past at least twice. During WWII there were plenty of abridgements of what most Americans believe to be due process. During the "Red Scare" ditto. It used to be illegal to be a member of the Communist Party. And of course during the Nixon administration there were plenty of problems. Now post-9/11 we see the same mistakes again. Eventually the pendulum will swing back, mostly because some serious abuses will be discovered.
What disturbs me most about all this is the failure to learn from past mistakes, and the possibility that it will take more time than it should for the reversal to begin. And of course maybe someday the reversal won't happen. That's when the Republic will be over.
That is not correct - this proposed rule only covers public carriers and I think was limited to air and sea, so you are free to leave by car or foot and maybe train. Also as far as I can tell it was never actually enacted, so it may not actually be in force at all. And the rule was proposed for January 2007.
That doesn't mean the DRM is required, it means that they believe the DRM is required. That doesn't mean anything except that the usual FUD is working.
It doesn't matter if it is FUD or not. If you want to realize a business model based on using this content you better have DRM. Otherwise it is a non-starter from viewpoint of the content owner, and that is the reality of the situation.
None of which come down to "you are ripping music rather than buying it", they come down to "the online version is less value for money". You're agreeing with my point: the DRM-burdened product costs more for what you get.
The online DRM product is of less value to me, but not primarily because it is DRM encumbered but because of other features I want. The DRM characteristic not the controlling factor so I really don't see anything relevant here. I do not buy online music, protected or not. I don't download ripped music either. I do buy SACDs which are currently uncopyable without conversion to analog or hardware hacking of the player.
Since iTunes is subsidised by the iPod and only recently stopped operating at a loss...
iTunes and iPod are part and parcel of the same (new) DRM-enabled (successful) business model. It is ridiculous to try to consider the finances of one as being independent of the other. The premise that such a business model is impossible is disproven by a very obvious counter example. Q.E.D.
As far as eMusic, I have no idea if it is succesful or not, and you do not either. Since it is a privately held company the finances are not available. Not only that, it is not important to the argument - that new DRM enabled business models can be sucessful. My suspicion is that since it has not been the subject of an IPO eMusic isn't exactly setting the world on fire.
Even more telling are the comments you have made about DRM protected content selling for higher prices than non-protected content. Price is set based on what the customer is willing to pay. If customers considered the DRM protected products to be actually less valuable the prices would be lower, not higher. In reality it appears that other characteristics of the content are what is determining the price people are willing to pay and what they want to buy, so there is no particular reason to believe DRM per se is a deal-breaker for end users.
1. It makes it more expensive to distribute product, reduces the profits per sale at a given price, and ensures that the products that don't take heroic measures to prevent copying will be cheaper and higher quality.
If you consider that most content publishers do not distribute electronically because of ineffective or unavailable DRM, and still rely on physical media this is obviously false.
2. It doesn't prevent online distribution of unauthorised copies.
That's why online music distribution hasn't taken off. NOT because people are ripping music rather than buying it, but because the online version is worth so much less to the consumer than the DRM-free CD version.
I think that point is very debatable. I buy CDs for several reasons, not just the lack of DRM. I like having 44k x 16 bit fidelity rather than lossy compressed junk. I like having a physically robust copy rather than data on relatively unreliable media. The CD catalog is vastly larger than the licensed online catalog. I also buy DVDs that do come with DRM. CDs are currently more versatile than downloadable media in more than one respect.
3. Not having DRM doesn't prevent producers from being rewarded.
Since DRM doesn't actually do much to prevent unauthorised copies, and providers are still getting rewarded, it seems like DRM isn't what's making it possible for producers to get rewarded after all
Your argument is a study in self-contradiction - people don't buy DRM protected media because it is not as valuable (they can't copy it) yet at the same time DRM doesn't prevent copying at all. The truth is that while DRM does not prevent all copying, it does hinder copying significantly. Many people do not want to take the trouble to track down the software needed to defeat a particular scheme or go online and expose themselves to the dark side of the internet. In some cases the volume of sales of a product is too low to attract enough interest in cracking the scheme - like in the case of SACDs.
As far as eMusic, exactly what is their market share compared to iTunes? Isn't iTunes itself a perfect counter-example to the thesis that DRM cannot enable succesful new business models?
Sorry, but economic theory says that a succesful business model depends on both the consumer and producer benefiting from the model. Producers in the business of content production (music, movies, software, pharmacueticals etc.) will eventually stop if they don't get some sort of benefit from this. DRM provides new ways of assuring getting this benefit and thus enables new business models.
I'm not saying the content production will stop if producers don't get rewarded - people will still write, take pictures and make music for fun. But the business of producing it will stop.
YES! The one near me is closed. This is great because no longer will I have to dodge CumpUSA traffic when leaving my local theater. Oh.. wait.. there never was any CompUSA traffic. Oh well, nevermind.
Maybe I'll be able to get a good price on some useless POC hardware.... No, wait I already have a house full of that. Anyone want a 512K pixel digital camera?
Capitalist society relies on free competition to compel businesses to adopt an "enlightened self interest" approach - i.e. you are unlikely to turn away business (that will probably end up going to a competitor) without a good reason. This is all fine and dandy until a few big players reach such a dominant position that they have a captive market and can give the finger to competition. Hence, yes, the big dogs need to be held to a different set of standards.
And that is why the FCC gets to regulate the airwaves. But the internet is not in the same situation - there is no effective barrier imposed by Google that would prevent you from setting up your own web site to display your own advertising.
Corporations are merely groups of people associated in order to get something accomplished. They may or may not be for-profit, publicly traded, etc. If you treat the corporation differently a group of people you are restricting the rights of people, interfering with property rights, and so on. A corporation is NOT a disembodied entity separate from the people that participate in its operation.
Even more to the point is that free speech means you get to say what you want on your property. This guy was trying to force Google to say what he wanted (i.e. take away Google's right to free speech). The courts rightly decided that Google has a right to free speech, and the Constitution prevents the court from taking it away, and this individual's own right to the same thing does not trump Google's.
Is your backyards entertainment SOX-compliant? Do you practice non-discrimination in who you let in your backyard? There are hundreds of laws that apply only to corporation and corporate behavior, not to individuals.
As far as SOX, do you realize that this law was put in place to govern the behavior of individuals who are officers of public corporations? It is not much about the behavior of corporations at all.
The fact is that in general laws governing business behavior apply to individuals just as much as corporations. That is the biggest reason to establish a corporation; to shield yourself as an individual from whatever liabilities the corporation might incur. If you conduct activities in without establishment of a corporate identity, you become personally liable for all that happens. I know someone who lost his house because he was foolish enough to take on business debt without actually forming a company first.
Tax avoidance is always a worthy goal, and sales tax is one of the least fair taxes there is for the simple reason that it is a flat tax levied against what are the necessities of life for many people with low incomes.
There are so many large problems with the current hodge-podge of taxes as implemented in this country that I believe that it is an affront to morality.
- Cigarette taxes - rather than treating tobacco as the giant public health problem it is and trying to stamp it out state legislatures treat it as a cash cow. - Gasoline Tax - Some level of gasoline consumption is a necessity of modern life. More than that is a problem that distorts international relations, requires a large military to support and threatens the environment in many ways. Yet we have a flat tax administered by the states. This is not sound policy. - Sales tax - the people who can afford it least pay the largest percentage of their income in this tax. - Real estate tax - used by locales to support their school systems, resulting in great inequities between neighboring towns in the funding they can provide their schools.
the point is that that corporations are, in fact, not free to do as they please in the same way you are in your back yard.
Example or citations please.
It would be entirely reasonable and consistent with existing legal practice to require a company like YouTube to act in accordance with free speech principles.
Absolutely not. Existing legal practice includes the 5th amendment and a ban on bills of attainder.
First of all, they are publicly traded corporations, which already imposes strong requirements on their conduct, in particular with regards to discriminatory practices.
As far as I know there is no difference under the law between a privately owned company and a publicly traded company when it comes to discriminatory practices. Even individual property owners have such constraints - say a landlord looking to rent an apartment is enjoined from making a decision based on race or creed. The issue here is that there is no such law governing the editorial content of a publication. Any publisher is free to choose what goes out on his web site; in fact requiring him to carry opinions he does not agree with would be infringing both on his right of free speach and his property rights under the 5th amendment. Rules against discriminatory practices in fact take away significant 5th amendment rights in order to address certain inequities - in general they should be used very sparingly.
US phone companies are non-governmental, yet they can't pick and choose what kinds of speech they allow on their wires.
What you are talking about is common carrier status. I am sure that YouTube would LOVE to have this; if they did they could not be sued for the copyrighted materials that are posted on their site. Since they don't have common carrier status they are in a very different legal class than the phone companies.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's be realistic. Who actually NEEDS Vista right now? Not many if anyone. Eventually people will need it to run something, but that day isn't here now and until it is Vista is a pain in the tookus because of DRM, compatability issues and hardware requirements.
That's the benefit of digital, it doesn't degrade over copies, so each generation of storage media gets a perfect copy from the last.
That is certainly not true, and even worse digital is less resiliant to errors than analog formats.
So you are equating DHS with giant terroristic insectoid aliens bent on universal destruction? Hum. Seems reasonable.
What happens to these genes 10-20,000 generations out?
Either the gene offers some competitive advantage or it gets washed out of the gene pool. It isn't going to give rise to Mansquito if that is what you are worried about. And it won't lead to large mosquitos either - if there was an advantage to that mosquitos would already be large.
$30,000 damn I want to be your lawyer. We normally pay more like $10-15K per patent.
The actual numbers are 85% after 3 years, 59% after 7 years, and 40% after 11 years. So the assertion that it is automatic is a crock.
And there are two fee tiers, one for large organizations, and a lower one for small organizations. The actual renewal rates are about the same for both sized organizations for 3 and 7 years. Since small companies come and go much faster than large one, it doesn't mean a lot that large companies pay the fee at 11 years more often.
CD Paranoia. I've used it to recover CDs that a $1000 player choked on.
The USPTO charges maintenance fees on patents. If you do not pony up $$$$ every few years the patent expires. Companies not being in the business of expending cash needlessly do not pay the fees on patents they own but have no interest in develeping. Ultimately this means there will be very few active but available patents to donate to such organizations. In fact the whole premise of the article is nonsense.
Doh! The USPTO already has a mechanism for this - maintainence fees. If you don't pony up $$$$$$ every few years the patent automatically expires. Companies, being greedy bastards don't maintain patents that they have no interest in. Which is probnably why this entire article and discussion thereof is stupid.
A generalization like that is of course at best a great oversimplification. Individual Americans often make financial plans that run across generations. Some financial plans made by governments also do the same. On the other hand company executives tend to live for quarterly results. Many Americans live from one paycheck to the next. The military plans weapons systems procurement cycles that last decades. Congressmen run in a 2 year re-election cycle.
Well, I've been around long enough to remember almost everything that is happening now from having happened in the past at least twice. During WWII there were plenty of abridgements of what most Americans believe to be due process. During the "Red Scare" ditto. It used to be illegal to be a member of the Communist Party. And of course during the Nixon administration there were plenty of problems. Now post-9/11 we see the same mistakes again. Eventually the pendulum will swing back, mostly because some serious abuses will be discovered.
What disturbs me most about all this is the failure to learn from past mistakes, and the possibility that it will take more time than it should for the reversal to begin. And of course maybe someday the reversal won't happen. That's when the Republic will be over.
That is not correct - this proposed rule only covers public carriers and I think was limited to air and sea, so you are free to leave by car or foot and maybe train. Also as far as I can tell it was never actually enacted, so it may not actually be in force at all. And the rule was proposed for January 2007.
That doesn't mean the DRM is required, it means that they believe the DRM is required. That doesn't mean anything except that the usual FUD is working.
It doesn't matter if it is FUD or not. If you want to realize a business model based on using this content you better have DRM. Otherwise it is a non-starter from viewpoint of the content owner, and that is the reality of the situation.
None of which come down to "you are ripping music rather than buying it", they come down to "the online version is less value for money". You're agreeing with my point: the DRM-burdened product costs more for what you get.
The online DRM product is of less value to me, but not primarily because it is DRM encumbered but because of other features I want. The DRM characteristic not the controlling factor so I really don't see anything relevant here. I do not buy online music, protected or not. I don't download ripped music either. I do buy SACDs which are currently uncopyable without conversion to analog or hardware hacking of the player.
Since iTunes is subsidised by the iPod and only recently stopped operating at a loss...
iTunes and iPod are part and parcel of the same (new) DRM-enabled (successful) business model. It is ridiculous to try to consider the finances of one as being
independent of the other. The premise that such a business model is impossible is disproven by a very obvious counter example. Q.E.D.
As far as eMusic, I have no idea if it is succesful or not, and you do not either. Since it is a privately held company the finances are not available. Not only that, it is not important to the argument - that new DRM enabled business models can be sucessful. My suspicion is that since it has not been the subject of an IPO eMusic isn't exactly setting the world on fire.
Even more telling are the comments you have made about DRM protected content selling for higher prices than non-protected content. Price is set based on what the customer is willing to pay. If customers considered the DRM protected products to be actually less valuable the prices would be lower, not higher. In reality it appears that other characteristics of the content are what is determining the price people are willing to pay and what they want to buy, so there is no particular reason to believe DRM per se is a deal-breaker for end users.
1. It makes it more expensive to distribute product, reduces the profits per sale at a given price, and ensures that the products that don't take heroic measures to prevent copying will be cheaper and higher quality.
If you consider that most content publishers do not distribute electronically because of ineffective or unavailable DRM, and still rely on physical media this is obviously false.
2. It doesn't prevent online distribution of unauthorised copies.
That's why online music distribution hasn't taken off. NOT because people are ripping music rather than buying it, but because the online version is worth so much less to the consumer than the DRM-free CD version.
I think that point is very debatable. I buy CDs for several reasons, not just the lack of DRM. I like having 44k x 16 bit fidelity rather than lossy compressed junk. I like having a physically robust copy rather than data on relatively unreliable media. The CD catalog is vastly larger than the licensed online catalog. I also buy DVDs that do come with DRM. CDs are currently more versatile than downloadable media in more than one respect.
3. Not having DRM doesn't prevent producers from being rewarded.
Since DRM doesn't actually do much to prevent unauthorised copies, and providers are still getting rewarded, it seems like DRM isn't what's making it possible for producers to get rewarded after all
Your argument is a study in self-contradiction - people don't buy DRM protected media because it is not as valuable (they can't copy it) yet at the same time DRM doesn't prevent copying at all. The truth is that while DRM does not prevent all copying, it does hinder copying significantly. Many people do not want to take the trouble to track down the software needed to defeat a particular scheme or go online and expose themselves to the dark side of the internet. In some cases the volume of sales of a product is too low to attract enough interest in cracking the scheme - like in the case of SACDs.
As far as eMusic, exactly what is their market share compared to iTunes? Isn't iTunes itself a perfect counter-example to the thesis that DRM cannot enable succesful new business models?
Sorry, but economic theory says that a succesful business model depends on both the consumer and producer benefiting from the model. Producers in the business of content production (music, movies, software, pharmacueticals etc.) will eventually stop if they don't get some sort of benefit from this. DRM provides new ways of assuring getting this benefit and thus enables new business models.
I'm not saying the content production will stop if producers don't get rewarded - people will still write, take pictures and make music for fun. But the business of producing it will stop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_stabilization
YES! The one near me is closed. This is great because no longer will I have to dodge CumpUSA traffic when leaving my local theater. Oh.. wait.. there never was any CompUSA traffic. Oh well, nevermind.
Maybe I'll be able to get a good price on some useless POC hardware.... No, wait I already have a house full of that. Anyone want a 512K pixel digital camera?
Ah forget it. CompUSA was useless.
The internet may not be the reason for the demise of CompUSA, but it sure did kill Computer Shopper.
Capitalist society relies on free competition to compel businesses to adopt an "enlightened self interest" approach - i.e. you are unlikely to turn away business (that will probably end up going to a competitor) without a good reason. This is all fine and dandy until a few big players reach such a dominant position that they have a captive market and can give the finger to competition. Hence, yes, the big dogs need to be held to a different set of standards.
And that is why the FCC gets to regulate the airwaves. But the internet is not in the same situation - there is no effective barrier imposed by Google that would prevent you from setting up your own web site to display your own advertising.
Corporations are merely groups of people associated in order to get something accomplished. They may or may not be for-profit, publicly traded, etc. If you treat the corporation differently a group of people you are restricting the rights of people, interfering with property rights, and so on. A corporation is NOT a disembodied entity separate from the people that participate in its operation.
Even more to the point is that free speech means you get to say what you want on your property. This guy was trying to force Google to say what he wanted (i.e. take away Google's right to free speech). The courts rightly decided that Google has a right to free speech, and the Constitution prevents the court from taking it away, and this individual's own right to the same thing does not trump Google's.
Is your backyards entertainment SOX-compliant? Do you practice non-discrimination in who you let in your backyard? There are hundreds of laws that apply only to corporation and corporate behavior, not to individuals.
. html. These cases are the same thing as your private backyard party.
Corporations do not have to practice non-discrimination in many cases. For example many golf clubs are corporations and do not admit members belonging to certain categories, such as women and are corporations. Example: http://www.now.org/issues/wfw/111202augusta.html http://www.masters.org/en_US/info/copyright/index
As far as SOX, do you realize that this law was put in place to govern the behavior of individuals who are officers of public corporations? It is not much about the behavior of corporations at all.
The fact is that in general laws governing business behavior apply to individuals just as much as corporations. That is the biggest reason to establish a corporation; to shield yourself as an individual from whatever liabilities the corporation might incur. If you conduct activities in without establishment of a corporate identity, you become personally liable for all that happens. I know someone who lost his house because he was foolish enough to take on business debt without actually forming a company first.
I recommend always avoiding it whenever possible.
Tax avoidance is always a worthy goal, and sales tax is one of the least fair taxes there is for the simple reason that it is a flat tax levied against what are the necessities of life for many people with low incomes.
There are so many large problems with the current hodge-podge of taxes as implemented in this country that I believe that it is an affront to morality.
- Cigarette taxes - rather than treating tobacco as the giant public health problem it is and trying to stamp it out state legislatures treat it as a cash cow.
- Gasoline Tax - Some level of gasoline consumption is a necessity of modern life. More than that is a problem that distorts international relations, requires a large military to support and threatens the environment in many ways. Yet we have a flat tax administered by the states. This is not sound policy.
- Sales tax - the people who can afford it least pay the largest percentage of their income in this tax.
- Real estate tax - used by locales to support their school systems, resulting in great inequities between neighboring towns in the funding they can provide their schools.
And so on, to nausea.
the point is that that corporations are, in fact, not free to do as they please in the same way you are in your back yard.
Example or citations please.
It would be entirely reasonable and consistent with existing legal practice to require a company like YouTube to act in accordance with free speech principles.
Absolutely not. Existing legal practice includes the 5th amendment and a ban on bills of attainder.
First of all, they are publicly traded corporations, which already imposes strong requirements on their conduct, in particular with regards to discriminatory practices.
As far as I know there is no difference under the law between a privately owned company and a publicly traded company when it comes to discriminatory practices. Even individual property owners have such constraints - say a landlord looking to rent an apartment is enjoined from making a decision based on race or creed. The issue here is that there is no such law governing the editorial content of a publication. Any publisher is free to choose what goes out on his web site; in fact requiring him to carry opinions he does not agree with would be infringing both on his right of free speach and his property rights under the 5th amendment. Rules against discriminatory practices in fact take away significant 5th amendment rights in order to address certain inequities - in general they should be used very sparingly.
US phone companies are non-governmental, yet they can't pick and choose what kinds of speech they allow on their wires.
What you are talking about is common carrier status. I am sure that YouTube would LOVE to have this; if they did they could not be sued for the copyrighted materials that are posted on their site. Since they don't have common carrier status they are in a very different legal class than the phone companies.