I'd say its the Feds who are taking advantage of the situation, rushing to install Carnivore within hours of the plane crashes everywhere they could while people were still emotionally vulnerable. For shame.
This is the moment of greatest vulnerability for civil libertarians. This is no time to be meek, quiet or accepting, it is the time when those who previously only sympathized must begin to act.
And thank you for providing such a scabrous, troll-like platform of a post for me to take advantage of. I can't say I blame you for AC'ing.
The first two chapters were exactly perfect for me. I've done some programming with Python and some other higher level languages, but much of the way Linux and GCC were organized just sort of mystified me. So, even though Hall says that he doesn't mean to provide a tutorial, the walkthrough of using gcc, ar, creating makefiles, cvs, etc. was just the right amount of information so that I could understand what's been going on all this time. The problem with many of the other manuals for this sort of thing suffer from two problems: 1. They provide too much information (the gcc info entries) and 2. they only provide information on a specific tool, they don't wrap it all together.
As far as the games/SDL part of the book, I don't have much to add since I haven't gotten that far yet:) But I wish I had seen the introductory chapters 6 months ago, it would have saved me a lot of frustrating headaches.
Anyone who watches my comments knows I'm the first to complain when people don't respect free software, but everyone from Stallman to Mundie agrees on one thing: attribution is important. Even in a world without legal "ownership", it's important to make it clear who was responsible for ideas. This doesn't mean that the person responsible should control those ideas, but using the name LegOS does come dangerously close to making it seem as though the authors are speaking for Lego. I hope the authors will simply change the name and take advantage of the free publicity it will generate rather than put Lego in the unfortunate position of using the ugly tools of intellectual property to enforce their will. Don't get me wrong- I'm not saying Lego would be right to do this, but that's not to say that they don't have a valid complaint.
the way to defeat terrorism is to eliminate terrorists
I disagree.
1. You can't eliminate terrorism. Anyone willing to die for a cause is going to be VERY hard to stop no matter how hard you try to root them out. And the harder you try to root them out, the more false positives you get, and the more power the authorities who prefer authoritarian rule are given.
2. The best you can do is eliminate the *motives* for terrorism. This involves trying to deal more fairly with people everywhere. People who live comfortable lives generally do not want to die for causes. If everyone were a little more comfortable and a little less fearful, we'd be better off. This means not being greedy with our wealth, and being more compassionate and even-handed in our foreign policy.
3. The American Colonists were "terrorists", often waging a guerilla war against the "organized" and "civilized" army of Britain. Were they wrong? Should we condemn our past? What if the only champions of free speech in the world were terrorists- would it change anything then? This isn't such a simple issue as it seems at first. To those who feel bullied by the US, it's not hard to see why they would interpret this as a military victory instead of an act of "faceless cowardice", to paraphrase our erstwhile president. I'd say flying a plane into a building, however misguided the act may be, is no act of cowardice. It's a sign that someone hates us *very* much, and it behooves us to at least understand *why*.
Well, this is similar to intellectual property in the sense that the scarcity is all artificial, but dissimilar in that the people playing the game have agreed to the creation of that scarcity.
Well, let me rephrase. It is not really important to my argument whether talent is scarce or not. I think gnovos is right, that people overestimate the scarcity of talent, and I think that if talent *is* scarce, it should be easy to monetize it.
Scarcity is what drives price. This is the law of supply and demand, it's not just because I say so. Scarcity means in short supply, and any demand that outstrips the supply raises the price.
You say "calling them monopolies is nonsense", but that's the whole point of ip- no one except the creator has a right to profit from it. It's not a monopoly over all art, that clearly would be regardless- it's a monopoly over whatever they are given credit for, and all derivative works thereof. You say it's not a big loss that you can't sell Mickey Mouse t-shirts, I say it's sucky that children who are too young to understand how their culture reeks of corporate consumerism play games like dungeons and dragons or magic the gathering, only to learn later that the games they played as a child are in fact the property of a corporation and they have no right to expand creatively on their favorite hobbies (see the controversies over Apprentice and KingMagic if you don't believe me, and the way TSR cracked down on the distribution of fan-created D&D modules over the internet for fear they would compete with their own products, effectively killing a burgeoning genre.)
How do I know the biggest and strongest wouldn't dominate? Two answers. 1. that's what happens now it can't get worse 2. if there's no ip, there's no "dominating"- you can't control someone else's ideas because no one owns them.
You say fix the system, I say it can't be fixed, not because we couldn't find reasonable rules if we tried, but because the temptation to change the rules over time to benefit property holders is too great to avoid.
You apologize for not attaching your name, then you neglect to do it again. This shows a certain lack of consistency on your part.
Please back up your statement NOW, how is the ability to create music not scarce? I'll await your reply
should I send my reply to anonymouscoward@thereisnowarranttomyargument.com?
Actually, I think you've got what I'm saying wrong. I'm not saying talent's not scarce, although it's probably not as scarce as some people think. I'm saying that only those things that are scarce ought to have a price. There is no "breathing license" or "sunshine license" because these things are in infinite supply (or so close that it makes no difference). So it should be with copies of digital materials- once made, they are no longer scarce unless someone makes them scarce by keeping them from other people.
The ability to create something does not imply that the government ought to let you control what you've created. The government monopolies created by intellectual property law have a specific purpose- to cause a net increase in the intellectual property available in the commons by creating a short term profit motive for creators. The unfortunate truth is that it's not creating anything for the commons (see the Sonny Bono protection of mickey mouse act) and it's actually hurting innovation by raising the entry barrier for anyone who'd like to create new material without infringing on existing ip protections.
Your post sounds hysterical, I don't blame you for not attaching your name to it. I sure wouldn't.
People just don't understand. I don't mean they don't see it my way- I really mean they don't understand. Most people have never had a serious discussion about property rights and the way that the government grants monopolies to creators with the stated goal of fostering innovation.
Another more pithy way to put it is this: We don't subsidize the pony express now that mechanical transportation is available.
The bottom line is scarcity. gnovos is trying to say that some people think it's the talent that's scarce even if copies of their works are free, but that people are wrong and talent is not in fact scarce. This is basically right on the money. If talent *is* scarce, then the music industry needs to find ways to reward talent that make sense, like charging for live performances and other things that can't happen without talent, rather than trying to jealously contain free copies of recordings.
Glass uses ad hominem attacks against John Perry Barlow, but fails to instruct us in any way as to why Brett Glass is any more credible than John Perry Barlow- in fact Glass strongly urges that anyone looking for legal advice regarding this legal license look elsewhere.
But there's a world of difference between indirect influence and direct instruction, which Michael claims.
I actually agree with this statement. When a president wants to take credit for an action, she will directly instruct her inferiors. When she wants to avoid blame, she will not announce her direct culpability.
Bryguy
ps- I'm sure someone will complain about my use of the feminine preferred. My statement applies to any hypothetical president, and all our female presidents so far have been hypothetical:)
The only way that this wasn't Bush's decision is if all the stories about Cheney really running the country are true. The decision may well have been issued and executed by Ashcroft and his cronies, but Bush is his boss, and can fire him if he makes decisions with which he disagrees.
It's not like Ashcroft is some gunslinging maverick who doesn't toe the party line- he does what Bush wants, or he is replaced by someone who will.
from http://www.law.indiana.edu/fclj/pubs/v49/no1/johns on.html
"Videotape first emerged as a cheap and efficient alternative to film (later kinescope) for TV production. Its development for home use owes its birth to Sony and Betamax but its maturity to porn. Predicting that the greatest use of home VCRs would be time-shifting, that is, recording TV shows off the air for later viewing, Sony designed Betamax tape with a one hour playing time.(40) When the market for videotape proved not to be time shifting, but prerecorded movies instead, longer-playing tape was demanded, and VHS arose to meet the demand. Though Beta eventually went to a four hour format, it was too late. Within years, two-, four-, and six-hour VHS tape became the industry standard.(41)
What were people watching on these early videotapes? The early home video rental stores, the outlets that drove Betamax from the market, were almost exclusively pornographic, drawing on the same clientele as early nickelodeons.(42) The same was true of home video sales.(43) It was not until the mid-1980s that first, local videorental stores, and next, national chains like Blockbuster entered the field with videos for the massmarket. By then, porn had shown the way. Thus, the victory of VHS over Betamax, and the triumph of video rental and purchase over time-shifting, is a rare example of pornography specifically adopting a product and a method of retailing that drove its competitor from the market. "
I know Richard Stallman says we should always use Free software because it is a morally superior thing to do. However I worry about the future when we are using technology that is inferior, just because it may save a bit of money. There are a lot of people counting on this initiative!
You make it sound as if moral superiority is nothing more than "saving a buck or two", to paraphrase those everpresent 1800 collect commercials. We should use free software because it's morally superior and that should be enough, even if it's got some problems, just like many people saw divestment from South Africa during Apartheid as the morally correct, if somewhat less profitable, path. Furthermore, even if free software turns out to be substandard, which I would argue it's actually not, but for the sake of argument let's pretend that it is. The proprietary lockin factor is too much to take- upgrade to the new version of Word if you want to read these documents, accept the anti-piracy provisions in our software, etc., etc. Microsoft, even if it makes software that does its job better, and even arguably cheaper, wants to control your work, and that's ultimately the worst.
Windows is like Betamax. VHS might not be a better videotape, but since Sony didn't want porn recorded on Betamax, VHS won. Microsoft might not care about porn, but they will lose out in the end for the same reason betamax did- they are trying to control too much.
That's a hefty pricetag, but the companies they hope to sell to ("market--financial-services companies and service providers") aren't shy about investing in tools. Of course, an S/390 isn't cheap either, no matter how many GNU/Linux images it's running;)
This must be what microsoft is talking about when they say that Linux has a high total cost of ownership;)
You know how you tell people that intellectual property is broken, and letting corporations own ideas can cause tyranny, and they just give you a blank stare?
That's because none of this is part of their experience. So, to get through to most people, you can't just lay out the arguments in syllogism form, you have to "tell a story". And this can be a more or less literal strategy for persuasion. People tend to dismiss chicken little pronouncements until you make them seem real through a story.
A related anecdote that I found amusing but insightful: In the Times of London a few years back, someone was editorializing about how Ellen coming out on her show ushered in an increasing acceptance of homosexuals in society. The quote, paraphrased, was this: "Americans never believe anything until it's been fictionally validated on television".
Why shouldn't a person be able to profit (in anyway not just monetarily) from his work whether it be mental or physical?
Perhaps a better question is, why should a person be able to profit from this work? The answer is usually obvious- someone wants the work and will pay for it, and if they won't do it someone else will or it won't get done. If I want you to build me a house, you have a right to demand payment for it.
Ideas aren't the same way though. Because they are not scarce once made, we impose artificial scarcity on them. And please, don't give me the "expression of the idea" business. This is taken about as seriously as the "limited times" provision in the constitution: that is, it is ignored. Furthermore, even the expression of an idea is not scarce once transferred to digital media- again, it is the creation of the idea that is scarce, not the idea itself once created. Perhaps we should pay people to create, but certainly we shouldn't create artificial scarcity for their goods after they've created them.
Sometimes there is only one way to express a simple idea (one-click patents, I know, not strictly copyright, but that's not really important). Sometimes one idea is a whole bottleneck for a bunch of other ideas (Windows and all the software that runs on it, the derivative "The Wind Done Gone, the Phantom Edit, etc.).
You say we shouldn't copy word for word. I agree we shouldn't plagiarize (i.e., we should retain attribution), but what if we COULD copy word for word. What would be the harm if no one had a monopoly on any particular expression of an idea?
Imagine a world where intellectual property were slowly phased out of the law. Two major things would happen. The barriers to entry to a number of fields (literature, software, music) would be immediately lowered, and the corporate influence would diminish as companies find their non-monopoly intellectual properly holdings to be less lucrative than they originally imagined.
A few writers and musicians would find it difficult to survive publishing the way they used to. Most would adapt. Some would be replaced. New forms of patronage and payment would emerge. Without fear of prosecution, a new artistic revolution would occur with derivative works of all manner of art being created, as well as new works.
You may be familiar with the controversy over "The wind done gone", a novel told from a slave's perspective on the "Gone with the wind" story. You probably think the person who told this story was stealing. I think she was "Standing on the shoulders of giants", to paraphrase Sir Isaac Newton, taking something good and making something better with it. Finally, consider Shakespeare, many of whose plays were simply retellings of other works that came before. Was he the greatest playwright ever to use the english language, or a common thief?
It's hard to imagine a world where ideas can't be owned and where speech really is free, because it's so different from the one we live in. But that's no reason not to try.
Arandir's post constitutes a thoughtful response, although I still disagree.
to wit:
A government recognition of a class of property is most certainly not the sole basis for that property. When the government recognizes real estate as property, I gain the benefit of access to the government police and courts to defend my land property with. Should the government cease recognizing real estate, my task of protecting my property will be considerably harder, but it will still be my property. Ditto for intellectual property.
Here, you have claimed that property is more than what you can defend as your own (or with the help of the state), but you gloss over what right allows you to own any property at all. What makes something your property? I argue that property rights serve a societal purpose, that is, to prevent permanent violent conflict over the control of scarce resources. However, since information is not scarce, it is not possible to have a 'moral' right to that property, only a government enforced and illegitimate right to that property.
Of course, the current system of copyrights are flawed. But seeing flaws in copyright laws does not infer that software should not be owned.
This is true. The fact that the copyright system does not achieve the goal of fostering innovation does not, by itself, suggest that ideas should not be owned. However, the notion that property is an arbitrary set of rules which prevent permanent conflict over scarce resources suggests that claiming anything non-scarce as "property" is illegitimate. Imagine is someone claimed the air to be their property. Obviously this is ridiculous but by your theory, how do we determine that their right to the air is illegitimate? Once you take the idea of scarcity away from property, there is no limit to the ability of those with control of the most property to coerce those with less.
We've veered *far* from the original argument, I don't think I'll be responding much deeper into this thread.
You seem to be saying you can keep information scarce by keeping it a secret. Yes, and you could make any physical object scarce by hiding it. That's not what I'm talking about. Unlike chairs and tables and bricks, if I show you my information, there are now two copies of it, yours and mine, which cost essentially nothing (the cost of media, which in the internet age is essentially free.) If I show you my chair, I either have to give it to you or sit on it myself. THAT is the kind of scarcity I'm talking about. If we cooperate, we can create almost unlimited copies of information. It's specifically the copyright laws that make this kind of cooperation impractical because a government enforced monopoly is too valuable to give up.
You say if society can't read information will be scarce to them. Well, not true exactly - they just won't be able to *use* the information. You keep using "scarce" to mean something other than "in short supply". In fact, if people can't "read", as your metaphor goes, then there will be plenty of opportunities to make money interpreting the information, even if you don't *own* the information. Again, return to the Physics teacher example. Lots of people in this country make a living teaching physics even though they don't own the laws of physics. These ideas are not in themselves scarce, but the ability to use them in useful fashion is- so that's what people pay for.
If someone keeps information to themselves, then you're right, they can charge what they like for it. But the rub is this: once it's been published, it's not scarce at all unless people conspire to make it so.
The reason windows executables can't run on linux (in general, wine libs excepted) is not because windows sourcecode is a big secret, but because using it would be illegal. In a world where people weren't allowed to own or monopolize ideas, reverse engineering the code would be relatively trivial, both because the process of reverse engineering, if it was necessary at all, wouldn't be so onerous due to the law, and because more people would work on it if there were no fear of prosecution.
ESR's article rests on a fundamental ambiguity about what "property" really means. If I make software, then sell you a copy, you own the physical copy, I own the software itself. Does my owning a physical copy give me the right to do with it as I please? Or does the software author still own it?
This whole discussion is really about who owns what. The post I'm replying to takes the "Flerbage really protects my right to fair use" tack, in other words, property rests in the hands of the physical object's owner, which exposes the contradiction in ESR's thinking.
The other way to approach it is to accept that ESR really meant that physical property ownership is trumped by intellectual property ownership, and that physical copy of the software really isn't yours to do with as you please. Then we must be "anti-flerbage" which ESR thinks we won't want to be since all our property rights depend on flerbage. But again, this begs the question- what is property, and who owns it? You can't resolve the flerbage dispute without resolving that question first.
The FSF approach, in this light, is sensible. Physical objects are scarce, information (once created) is not. So rather than confusing property law by allowing the ownership of ideas (or a temporary monopoly over them, which amounts to the same thing), let's invalidate the ownership of ideas and only allow the ownership of scarce, physical property. Problem solved. Either flerbage is good and the FSF position protects it better than ESR would, or flerbage is actually bad and the FSF position is the only way out of it, depending on how you resolve the ambiguity in ESR's writing over the notion of property.
Your point is true, but doesn't support your conclusion. You say there is potential information that hasn't been expressed, hence information is scarce. Scarcity lies in the cost of *reproducing* materials, not in the cost of producing the first one. Information, as opposed to potential information, is not scarce. Potential information, which might also be expressed as "the willingness of people to have ideas and express them", or more simply, "labor", is scarce. But the products of these labors can be recreated essentially for free forever.
So you want the free market to protect the viability of those who make software? Pay people to create products, not for products they've already created, because the creation is the scarce part, not the reproduction.
I think you are mistaken. The media on which some data are transferred are scarce, but the point is that the cost of reproducing pure information, aside from government monopolies and their side effects, is essentially zero.
The scarcity lies in the ability to create the stuff, not the stuff once it's created. That's a critical point. You pay for an education, but that's paying someone to show you ideas they don't own. The fact that physics teachers don't own the laws of physics does not stop them from making a living.
It is my property, I can and will choose a license that fits MY needs as a developer.
Actually, that's not true. There are many licenses that you can not choose no matter what your twisted needs are. Perhaps you are Vincent VanGogh and you feel a deep need for each user of your software to mail you one of their ears before using your software. I am no lawyer, but I would dare say that this license would be invalid.
So the real question is, what makes a license a valid restriction on someone else's behavior? Answer: the law. What part of the law are we talking about? Copyright. How should copyright work? Well, you've begged the crap out of this question. Whether it's your property depends on whether the government grants you a monopoly on the information you've assembled into a finished work. I think the FSF folks are saying that locking up information and giving somoene a monopoly on it should be invalid because it creates an impermissible monopoly on information which is not scarce.
To put it another way, it's not your property just because it came from your mind. If you thought up RSA encryption independently, too bad, it's already been patented (and expired, hooray!). So what's really at stake is not "whose idea was it" but "who got there first". With scarce goods this is an ok compromise, maybe. With non-scarce goods, we don't have to divy up the spoils, we can make an infinite number of copies.
You just want to get paid because you work, not because you are creating something that has value outside of a government granted monopoly. Who's the communist now? Stalin indeed.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say its the Feds who are taking advantage of the situation, rushing to install Carnivore within hours of the plane crashes everywhere they could while people were still emotionally vulnerable. For shame.
This is the moment of greatest vulnerability for civil libertarians. This is no time to be meek, quiet or accepting, it is the time when those who previously only sympathized must begin to act.
And thank you for providing such a scabrous, troll-like platform of a post for me to take advantage of. I can't say I blame you for AC'ing.
Bryguy
The first two chapters were exactly perfect for me. I've done some programming with Python and some other higher level languages, but much of the way Linux and GCC were organized just sort of mystified me. So, even though Hall says that he doesn't mean to provide a tutorial, the walkthrough of using gcc, ar, creating makefiles, cvs, etc. was just the right amount of information so that I could understand what's been going on all this time. The problem with many of the other manuals for this sort of thing suffer from two problems: 1. They provide too much information (the gcc info entries) and 2. they only provide information on a specific tool, they don't wrap it all together.
:) But I wish I had seen the introductory chapters 6 months ago, it would have saved me a lot of frustrating headaches.
As far as the games/SDL part of the book, I don't have much to add since I haven't gotten that far yet
Bryon
Anyone who watches my comments knows I'm the first to complain when people don't respect free software, but everyone from Stallman to Mundie agrees on one thing: attribution is important. Even in a world without legal "ownership", it's important to make it clear who was responsible for ideas. This doesn't mean that the person responsible should control those ideas, but using the name LegOS does come dangerously close to making it seem as though the authors are speaking for Lego. I hope the authors will simply change the name and take advantage of the free publicity it will generate rather than put Lego in the unfortunate position of using the ugly tools of intellectual property to enforce their will. Don't get me wrong- I'm not saying Lego would be right to do this, but that's not to say that they don't have a valid complaint.
Bryguy
the way to defeat terrorism is to eliminate terrorists
I disagree.
1. You can't eliminate terrorism. Anyone willing to die for a cause is going to be VERY hard to stop no matter how hard you try to root them out. And the harder you try to root them out, the more false positives you get, and the more power the authorities who prefer authoritarian rule are given.
2. The best you can do is eliminate the *motives* for terrorism. This involves trying to deal more fairly with people everywhere. People who live comfortable lives generally do not want to die for causes. If everyone were a little more comfortable and a little less fearful, we'd be better off. This means not being greedy with our wealth, and being more compassionate and even-handed in our foreign policy.
3. The American Colonists were "terrorists", often waging a guerilla war against the "organized" and "civilized" army of Britain. Were they wrong? Should we condemn our past? What if the only champions of free speech in the world were terrorists- would it change anything then? This isn't such a simple issue as it seems at first. To those who feel bullied by the US, it's not hard to see why they would interpret this as a military victory instead of an act of "faceless cowardice", to paraphrase our erstwhile president. I'd say flying a plane into a building, however misguided the act may be, is no act of cowardice. It's a sign that someone hates us *very* much, and it behooves us to at least understand *why*.
Well, this is similar to intellectual property in the sense that the scarcity is all artificial, but dissimilar in that the people playing the game have agreed to the creation of that scarcity.
Bryguy
Well, let me rephrase. It is not really important to my argument whether talent is scarce or not. I think gnovos is right, that people overestimate the scarcity of talent, and I think that if talent *is* scarce, it should be easy to monetize it.
Scarcity is what drives price. This is the law of supply and demand, it's not just because I say so. Scarcity means in short supply, and any demand that outstrips the supply raises the price.
You say "calling them monopolies is nonsense", but that's the whole point of ip- no one except the creator has a right to profit from it. It's not a monopoly over all art, that clearly would be regardless- it's a monopoly over whatever they are given credit for, and all derivative works thereof. You say it's not a big loss that you can't sell Mickey Mouse t-shirts, I say it's sucky that children who are too young to understand how their culture reeks of corporate consumerism play games like dungeons and dragons or magic the gathering, only to learn later that the games they played as a child are in fact the property of a corporation and they have no right to expand creatively on their favorite hobbies (see the controversies over Apprentice and KingMagic if you don't believe me, and the way TSR cracked down on the distribution of fan-created D&D modules over the internet for fear they would compete with their own products, effectively killing a burgeoning genre.)
How do I know the biggest and strongest wouldn't dominate? Two answers. 1. that's what happens now it can't get worse 2. if there's no ip, there's no "dominating"- you can't control someone else's ideas because no one owns them.
You say fix the system, I say it can't be fixed, not because we couldn't find reasonable rules if we tried, but because the temptation to change the rules over time to benefit property holders is too great to avoid.
You apologize for not attaching your name, then you neglect to do it again. This shows a certain lack of consistency on your part.
Bryguy
Please back up your statement NOW, how is the ability to create music not scarce? I'll await your reply
should I send my reply to anonymouscoward@thereisnowarranttomyargument.com?
Actually, I think you've got what I'm saying wrong. I'm not saying talent's not scarce, although it's probably not as scarce as some people think. I'm saying that only those things that are scarce ought to have a price. There is no "breathing license" or "sunshine license" because these things are in infinite supply (or so close that it makes no difference). So it should be with copies of digital materials- once made, they are no longer scarce unless someone makes them scarce by keeping them from other people.
The ability to create something does not imply that the government ought to let you control what you've created. The government monopolies created by intellectual property law have a specific purpose- to cause a net increase in the intellectual property available in the commons by creating a short term profit motive for creators. The unfortunate truth is that it's not creating anything for the commons (see the Sonny Bono protection of mickey mouse act) and it's actually hurting innovation by raising the entry barrier for anyone who'd like to create new material without infringing on existing ip protections.
Your post sounds hysterical, I don't blame you for not attaching your name to it. I sure wouldn't.
Bryguy
People just don't understand. I don't mean they don't see it my way- I really mean they don't understand. Most people have never had a serious discussion about property rights and the way that the government grants monopolies to creators with the stated goal of fostering innovation.
Another more pithy way to put it is this: We don't subsidize the pony express now that mechanical transportation is available.
The bottom line is scarcity. gnovos is trying to say that some people think it's the talent that's scarce even if copies of their works are free, but that people are wrong and talent is not in fact scarce. This is basically right on the money. If talent *is* scarce, then the music industry needs to find ways to reward talent that make sense, like charging for live performances and other things that can't happen without talent, rather than trying to jealously contain free copies of recordings.
Here is a short critique of Glass's article:
Glass uses ad hominem attacks against John Perry Barlow, but fails to instruct us in any way as to why Brett Glass is any more credible than John Perry Barlow- in fact Glass strongly urges that anyone looking for legal advice regarding this legal license look elsewhere.
Here.
You can browse the music that's up there already, download it, whatever. I've got a few songs up there, give them a listen.
Bryguy
The Democrats would have done the same thing.
Except for the Clinton administration, who actually prosecuted the case. And Clinton was from which party? I forget...
geez
But there's a world of difference between indirect influence and direct instruction, which Michael claims.
I actually agree with this statement. When a president wants to take credit for an action, she will directly instruct her inferiors. When she wants to avoid blame, she will not announce her direct culpability.
Bryguy
ps- I'm sure someone will complain about my use of the feminine preferred. My statement applies to any hypothetical president, and all our female presidents so far have been hypothetical
The only way that this wasn't Bush's decision is if all the stories about Cheney really running the country are true. The decision may well have been issued and executed by Ashcroft and his cronies, but Bush is his boss, and can fire him if he makes decisions with which he disagrees.
It's not like Ashcroft is some gunslinging maverick who doesn't toe the party line- he does what Bush wants, or he is replaced by someone who will.
Bryguy
from http://www.law.indiana.edu/fclj/pubs/v49/no1/johns on.html
"Videotape first emerged as a cheap and efficient alternative to film (later kinescope) for TV production. Its development for home use owes its birth to Sony and Betamax but its maturity to porn. Predicting that the greatest use of home VCRs would be time-shifting, that is, recording TV shows off the air for later viewing, Sony designed Betamax tape with a one hour playing time.(40) When the market for videotape proved not to be time shifting, but prerecorded movies instead, longer-playing tape was demanded, and VHS arose to meet the demand. Though Beta eventually went to a four hour format, it was too late. Within years, two-, four-, and six-hour VHS tape became the industry standard.(41)
What were people watching on these early videotapes? The early home video rental stores, the outlets that drove Betamax from the market, were almost exclusively pornographic, drawing on the same clientele as early nickelodeons.(42) The same was true of home video sales.(43) It was not until the mid-1980s that first, local videorental stores, and next, national chains like Blockbuster entered the field with videos for the massmarket. By then, porn had shown the way. Thus, the victory of VHS over Betamax, and the triumph of video rental and purchase over time-shifting, is a rare example of pornography specifically adopting a product and a method of retailing that drove its competitor from the market. "
I know Richard Stallman says we should always use Free software because it is a morally superior thing to do. However I worry about the future when we are using technology that is inferior, just because it may save a bit of money. There are a lot of people counting on this initiative!
You make it sound as if moral superiority is nothing more than "saving a buck or two", to paraphrase those everpresent 1800 collect commercials. We should use free software because it's morally superior and that should be enough, even if it's got some problems, just like many people saw divestment from South Africa during Apartheid as the morally correct, if somewhat less profitable, path. Furthermore, even if free software turns out to be substandard, which I would argue it's actually not, but for the sake of argument let's pretend that it is. The proprietary lockin factor is too much to take- upgrade to the new version of Word if you want to read these documents, accept the anti-piracy provisions in our software, etc., etc. Microsoft, even if it makes software that does its job better, and even arguably cheaper, wants to control your work, and that's ultimately the worst.
Windows is like Betamax. VHS might not be a better videotape, but since Sony didn't want porn recorded on Betamax, VHS won. Microsoft might not care about porn, but they will lose out in the end for the same reason betamax did- they are trying to control too much.
This must be what microsoft is talking about when they say that Linux has a high total cost of ownership ;)
Bryguy
You know how you tell people that intellectual property is broken, and letting corporations own ideas can cause tyranny, and they just give you a blank stare?
That's because none of this is part of their experience. So, to get through to most people, you can't just lay out the arguments in syllogism form, you have to "tell a story". And this can be a more or less literal strategy for persuasion. People tend to dismiss chicken little pronouncements until you make them seem real through a story.
A related anecdote that I found amusing but insightful: In the Times of London a few years back, someone was editorializing about how Ellen coming out on her show ushered in an increasing acceptance of homosexuals in society. The quote, paraphrased, was this: "Americans never believe anything until it's been fictionally validated on television".
Bryguy
Why shouldn't a person be able to profit (in anyway not just monetarily) from his work whether it be mental or physical?
Perhaps a better question is, why should a person be able to profit from this work? The answer is usually obvious- someone wants the work and will pay for it, and if they won't do it someone else will or it won't get done. If I want you to build me a house, you have a right to demand payment for it.
Ideas aren't the same way though. Because they are not scarce once made, we impose artificial scarcity on them. And please, don't give me the "expression of the idea" business. This is taken about as seriously as the "limited times" provision in the constitution: that is, it is ignored. Furthermore, even the expression of an idea is not scarce once transferred to digital media- again, it is the creation of the idea that is scarce, not the idea itself once created. Perhaps we should pay people to create, but certainly we shouldn't create artificial scarcity for their goods after they've created them.
Sometimes there is only one way to express a simple idea (one-click patents, I know, not strictly copyright, but that's not really important). Sometimes one idea is a whole bottleneck for a bunch of other ideas (Windows and all the software that runs on it, the derivative "The Wind Done Gone, the Phantom Edit, etc.).
You say we shouldn't copy word for word. I agree we shouldn't plagiarize (i.e., we should retain attribution), but what if we COULD copy word for word. What would be the harm if no one had a monopoly on any particular expression of an idea?
Imagine a world where intellectual property were slowly phased out of the law. Two major things would happen. The barriers to entry to a number of fields (literature, software, music) would be immediately lowered, and the corporate influence would diminish as companies find their non-monopoly intellectual properly holdings to be less lucrative than they originally imagined.
A few writers and musicians would find it difficult to survive publishing the way they used to. Most would adapt. Some would be replaced. New forms of patronage and payment would emerge. Without fear of prosecution, a new artistic revolution would occur with derivative works of all manner of art being created, as well as new works.
You may be familiar with the controversy over "The wind done gone", a novel told from a slave's perspective on the "Gone with the wind" story. You probably think the person who told this story was stealing. I think she was "Standing on the shoulders of giants", to paraphrase Sir Isaac Newton, taking something good and making something better with it. Finally, consider Shakespeare, many of whose plays were simply retellings of other works that came before. Was he the greatest playwright ever to use the english language, or a common thief?
It's hard to imagine a world where ideas can't be owned and where speech really is free, because it's so different from the one we live in. But that's no reason not to try.
to wit:
A government recognition of a class of property is most certainly not the sole basis for that property. When the government recognizes real estate as property, I gain the benefit of access to the government police and courts to defend my land property with. Should the government cease recognizing real estate, my task of protecting my property will be considerably harder, but it will still be my property. Ditto for intellectual property.
Here, you have claimed that property is more than what you can defend as your own (or with the help of the state), but you gloss over what right allows you to own any property at all. What makes something your property? I argue that property rights serve a societal purpose, that is, to prevent permanent violent conflict over the control of scarce resources. However, since information is not scarce, it is not possible to have a 'moral' right to that property, only a government enforced and illegitimate right to that property.
Of course, the current system of copyrights are flawed. But seeing flaws in copyright laws does not infer that software should not be owned.
This is true. The fact that the copyright system does not achieve the goal of fostering innovation does not, by itself, suggest that ideas should not be owned. However, the notion that property is an arbitrary set of rules which prevent permanent conflict over scarce resources suggests that claiming anything non-scarce as "property" is illegitimate. Imagine is someone claimed the air to be their property. Obviously this is ridiculous but by your theory, how do we determine that their right to the air is illegitimate? Once you take the idea of scarcity away from property, there is no limit to the ability of those with control of the most property to coerce those with less.
We've veered *far* from the original argument, I don't think I'll be responding much deeper into this thread.
You seem to be saying you can keep information scarce by keeping it a secret. Yes, and you could make any physical object scarce by hiding it. That's not what I'm talking about. Unlike chairs and tables and bricks, if I show you my information, there are now two copies of it, yours and mine, which cost essentially nothing (the cost of media, which in the internet age is essentially free.) If I show you my chair, I either have to give it to you or sit on it myself. THAT is the kind of scarcity I'm talking about. If we cooperate, we can create almost unlimited copies of information. It's specifically the copyright laws that make this kind of cooperation impractical because a government enforced monopoly is too valuable to give up.
You say if society can't read information will be scarce to them. Well, not true exactly - they just won't be able to *use* the information. You keep using "scarce" to mean something other than "in short supply". In fact, if people can't "read", as your metaphor goes, then there will be plenty of opportunities to make money interpreting the information, even if you don't *own* the information. Again, return to the Physics teacher example. Lots of people in this country make a living teaching physics even though they don't own the laws of physics. These ideas are not in themselves scarce, but the ability to use them in useful fashion is- so that's what people pay for.
bryguy
You're confusing secrets with monopolies.
If someone keeps information to themselves, then you're right, they can charge what they like for it. But the rub is this: once it's been published, it's not scarce at all unless people conspire to make it so.
The reason windows executables can't run on linux (in general, wine libs excepted) is not because windows sourcecode is a big secret, but because using it would be illegal. In a world where people weren't allowed to own or monopolize ideas, reverse engineering the code would be relatively trivial, both because the process of reverse engineering, if it was necessary at all, wouldn't be so onerous due to the law, and because more people would work on it if there were no fear of prosecution.
Bryguy
This is a good post, and here's why.
ESR's article rests on a fundamental ambiguity about what "property" really means. If I make software, then sell you a copy, you own the physical copy, I own the software itself. Does my owning a physical copy give me the right to do with it as I please? Or does the software author still own it?
This whole discussion is really about who owns what. The post I'm replying to takes the "Flerbage really protects my right to fair use" tack, in other words, property rests in the hands of the physical object's owner, which exposes the contradiction in ESR's thinking.
The other way to approach it is to accept that ESR really meant that physical property ownership is trumped by intellectual property ownership, and that physical copy of the software really isn't yours to do with as you please. Then we must be "anti-flerbage" which ESR thinks we won't want to be since all our property rights depend on flerbage. But again, this begs the question- what is property, and who owns it? You can't resolve the flerbage dispute without resolving that question first.
The FSF approach, in this light, is sensible. Physical objects are scarce, information (once created) is not. So rather than confusing property law by allowing the ownership of ideas (or a temporary monopoly over them, which amounts to the same thing), let's invalidate the ownership of ideas and only allow the ownership of scarce, physical property. Problem solved. Either flerbage is good and the FSF position protects it better than ESR would, or flerbage is actually bad and the FSF position is the only way out of it, depending on how you resolve the ambiguity in ESR's writing over the notion of property.
Bryguy
Your point is true, but doesn't support your conclusion. You say there is potential information that hasn't been expressed, hence information is scarce. Scarcity lies in the cost of *reproducing* materials, not in the cost of producing the first one. Information, as opposed to potential information, is not scarce. Potential information, which might also be expressed as "the willingness of people to have ideas and express them", or more simply, "labor", is scarce. But the products of these labors can be recreated essentially for free forever.
So you want the free market to protect the viability of those who make software? Pay people to create products, not for products they've already created, because the creation is the scarce part, not the reproduction.
Bryguy
I think you are mistaken. The media on which some data are transferred are scarce, but the point is that the cost of reproducing pure information, aside from government monopolies and their side effects, is essentially zero.
The scarcity lies in the ability to create the stuff, not the stuff once it's created. That's a critical point. You pay for an education, but that's paying someone to show you ideas they don't own. The fact that physics teachers don't own the laws of physics does not stop them from making a living.
bryguy
Actually, that's not true. There are many licenses that you can not choose no matter what your twisted needs are. Perhaps you are Vincent VanGogh and you feel a deep need for each user of your software to mail you one of their ears before using your software. I am no lawyer, but I would dare say that this license would be invalid.
So the real question is, what makes a license a valid restriction on someone else's behavior? Answer: the law. What part of the law are we talking about? Copyright. How should copyright work? Well, you've begged the crap out of this question. Whether it's your property depends on whether the government grants you a monopoly on the information you've assembled into a finished work. I think the FSF folks are saying that locking up information and giving somoene a monopoly on it should be invalid because it creates an impermissible monopoly on information which is not scarce.
To put it another way, it's not your property just because it came from your mind. If you thought up RSA encryption independently, too bad, it's already been patented (and expired, hooray!). So what's really at stake is not "whose idea was it" but "who got there first". With scarce goods this is an ok compromise, maybe. With non-scarce goods, we don't have to divy up the spoils, we can make an infinite number of copies.
You just want to get paid because you work, not because you are creating something that has value outside of a government granted monopoly. Who's the communist now? Stalin indeed.
Bryguy