McCain's prescription for the problem -- let the free market resolve the issue -- is the right starting point, the right instinct. But what his team doesn't seem to want to admit is that the telecomm market isn't a free market, it's a private-public partnership. Free-market solutions simply don't apply here.
The telecos want to lock in the user and get the best deal they can. That isn't evil, that's just business. The problem is that this partnership has no true competition. There is no balance. The government is the people's agent in this partnership. As such, the government has not only the right to regulate this market, they have a duty to do so.
At heart, network neutrality is about the balance of power. We, the people, deserve to get as good a deal as the telecos. The telecos aren't just going to lay down and GIVE it to us; we've got to get our agents to go and GET it.
That's why McCain's network neutrality plans are worthless. In this area, the Fighter Pilot isn't fighting for the home team, he's giving the away team a big, fat pass. Obama, at least, seems to get this very basic idea, so yeah, his plans are much, much better.
Network neutrality is the principle that a maximally useful public information network aspires to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally.
Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet.
Network neutrality is the principle of non-exclusivity in service contracts, even in a tiered system. Sir Tim Berners-Lee: "[We] each pay to connect to the Net, but no one can pay for exclusive access to me."
In my precinct, blind voters can either have someone help them cast their ballot, or they can use an audio ballot, with choices keyed to the four corners of the touch screen. ("To vote for Candidate X, touch the top-left corner; for Candidate Y, touch top-right...") I've never had a blind voter use the audio in actual practice, but it seems it might work well enough with a short ballot.
In my experience, there are many more people with physical limitations (can't stand, can't reach, can't hear, etc.) than are blind. For these folks, the fact that we can set the touch screen down in their lap or bring it out to their car is really great. I would guess that the ratio of physical to blind impairment is about 9:1 in my precinct.
I work at the polls here in Virginia, and we have an electronic voting machine. Here's my review of the Brazilian device compared to ours:
No touch screen on the Brazilian box, just a key pad. This is a great feature. Touch screens are not that easy for elderly people to use. They are unfamiliar with the concept, and, worse, tend to lean on the screen for support, causing the mouse pointer to jump all over the place. Simpler would be better, and a keypad is much more universally recognized.
20 hour battery life on the Brazilian box. Having a battery that can last for the entire voting period means that even in the event of a complete power failure, the vote can go on. A great feature. We have battery back-up on our machines, but they last only 2-3 hours.
The Brazilian box looks much more rugged that our machines. I bet they could take a drop onto the floor. Our machines are not bad for PCs, but there's no way they would survive a fall.
Lower cost. The Brazilian box costs $1000; ours cost $5000. Lower cost means more machines.
I couldn't tell how the ballot is entered on the machine, but it doesn't look like they use a PC Card to load the ballot each time, the ballot is loaded just once, and then voters vote. I've never liked using the card readers; if they get misaligned, you have to swipe the cards "just so". If a swipe fails, the vote has to be voided. If the swipe failure causes a hardware lock, the machine has to be rebooted. If the machine gets rebooted too many times, we have to take it out of circulation. A lot of potential trouble caused by a simple I/O device! Better to be without it.
Neither the Brazilian box nor mine is truly auditable. Ours at least has a paper tally report that gets printed at the end, so one could trace the tally on the flash drives to a tape. But there's no way to do a human recount on either machine. I have some heartburn over this, but with good voter registration controls, there are cross-checks that can be done to lower the security profile considerably. For example, we keep a paper tally of the number of voters, and each hour we cross-check the paper tally against the machines. If the machines show a different headcount than the paper, we investigate immediately. In my experience, the fault has so far always been on the human, paper side (but I'm relatively new at this.)
In any event, I think SL geeks are obvious choices to volunteer to be Officers of Election. We know the vulnerabilities of the technology, and have the necessary attention to detail to appreciate the kinds of auditing checks that need to be done to run a fair and open election.
Running a fair election is not a simple problem. To make sure the voter is legitimate, we must be able to prove their identity. But when it comes to actually casting the vote, we must not be able to know how they voted.
One solution to this dilemma is to require people to physically show up and prove who they are, and then have them cast a secret ballot while they are sequestered in the same room where they proved their identity.
The reason online banking works is because your transactions never need to be done in secret, just in private. Totally different situation.
The Foundation will launch with three projects: Web Science and Research, Web Technology and Practice, and Web for Society.
The output of the projects will be:
- Studies - Basic research - Thought leadership - Curricula - Conferences, workshops, etc. - Support for organizations developing Web standards - Support for organizations using the web to solve social problems - Training materials, guidelines, etc.
True, there is a lot of public domain music out there. There is even an international project dedicated to finding public domain scores and publishing them on the web.
However, music tastes are very generational. I can take a public domain tune, write a modern arrangement, and copyright that. Or, I can take a public domain text and write a new tune, and copyright that. This happens all the time, and it's a good thing -- it keeps the great music alive from generation to generation.
But, anything rewritten or rearranged since 1920 involves a copyright search. And, since anything put into a "fixed form" is automatically under copyright protection, anything any musician creates also involves a search and permission. It's a TON of work.
I have some direct experience with blanket music licenses, and they work well.
Churches are big users of music, both traditional and modern. They have to deal with issues of duplication and performance rights for 6-10 songs, every week. The level of effort needed to clear copyrights song-by-song would be impossible.
Ten years ago, the Church Copyright License was created, representing the catalogs of 120 publishers. After one year, they had 9,500 annual licensee holders. They now have over 170,000.
The churches pay a very reasonable annual fee, and get blanket permission to reproduce and perform any songs in the combined catalogs. There are sensible limits on what can be done legally, all basically to the effect of limiting the use to a normal church service.
A random sample of licensees are sent an audit form each year, and they record all the music they've used during the past few months. CCLI also provides software to do the accounting work, so the audit can be completely automated if the church wants.
Payouts to the copyright holders are done in proportion to the usage audits. The payout ratio is very fair. I know several song writers and performers who receive royalty checks, so I know the system really does work.
I've written some hymns myself (New Hymns for Worship), and have looked over the CCLI contracts in detail. They look pretty clean (but IANAL). Although I ultimately decided to publish under a Create Commons license instead, if I had wanted to make money, I would have definitely signed up with CCLI myself.
So, blanket licenses can work. They don't need to be expensive. They let consumers roam freely through whole catalogs of music. It's a good model.
The most interesting aspect of re-reading Love's rant from the year 2000 is how open she was to putting a torch to the whole, stinkin' mess, and trying something genuinely, radically new.
She was way ahead of the curve -- too far ahead.
Eight years on, the labels are still in control, and the lack of quality and innovation is worse than ever, with no end in sight. From a business standpoint, one has to admit that the labels have done a terrible job dealing with the internet. I can't think of any other business that has failed so spectacularly. EVERBODY has learned how to make money using the internet. There are WHOLE SECTORS of the economy that have been invented, grown up, and are making real money based on the internet.
But from the music distributors, we get lawsuits and six radio stations all playing the same classic rock playlist.
It's just sad and pathetic, really. It's clear they have no earthly idea how to make a buck.
When I read this rant before, I was saying to myself, "yeah, right -- in your dreams". Now, I'm not so sure. I think I may be ready now.
My scorecard for the McCain platform. Rated on a uninflated A-F grading scale, where a "C" means the norm.
John McCain Supports Risk Capital For Investment In American Innovation
Grade: C. OK; nothing specific to the tech sector, though.
John McCain Will Not Tax Innovation By Keeping Capital Gains Taxes Low.
Grade: C. A good idea in general, but not of particular help to technology.
John McCain Will Reform And Make Permanent The R&D Tax Credit.
Grade: B. Good idea.
John McCain Will Lower the Corporate Tax Rate To 25 Percent To Retain Investment In U.S. Technologies.
Grade: C. Again, a good idea for the economy in general, but doesn't do anything to specifically address technology.
John McCain Will Allow First-Year Expensing Of New Equipment And Technology.
Grade: B. Good idea.
John McCain Will Ensure Technology And Innovation Is Not Hampered By Taxes On Internet Users.
Grade: C. OK, fine, but I'm not buying the rationale at all here. I think this is code for "no government regulation". A vast amount of bricks-and-mortar commerce has been moved onto the Internet. If we accept taxation of commerce, we should have no problem accepting taxation of it on the Internet.
John McCain Opposes Higher Taxes On Wireless Services.
Grade: C. OK, lower taxes, yeah, but what we are buying with our taxes in the first place?
America Must Educate Its Workforce For The Innovation Age.
Grade: B. Grants for higher ed are a good bargain for taxpayers.
Fill Critical Shortages Of Skilled Workers To Remain Competitive.
Grade: B. Good idea. More flexibility on H-1B visas will help.
John McCain Has Been A Long And Ardent Supporter Of Fair And Open World Trade.
Grade: C. Nice to know.
Competition Has Been A Great Strength For America -- Offering Opportunity, Low Prices, And Increased Choice For Our Citizens. Markets work best when there is robust competition.
Grade: D. McCain had a chance to address the real problems of non-competitiveness that plague the technology sector, and ducked.
John McCain Will Protect The Creative Industries From Piracy.
Grade: D. Another disappointment. The "creative industries" already have plenty of money, lawyers, lobbyists, and memberships in the exclusive clubs needed to get the protection they need. Who's giving the people the protection they need? Not the government, apparently.
John McCain Will Push For Greater Resources For The Patent Office.
Grade: C. Obviously needed; basic good management.
John McCain Will Pursue Protection Of Intellectual Property Around The Globe.
Grade: C. OK, fine; more good management.
Provide Alternative Approaches To Resolving Patent Challenges.
Grade: B. Some innovation here is long overdue. Good idea.
John McCain Will Preserve Consumer Freedoms.
Grade: B. Freedom is good, and additional attention in this area is needed to keep a level playing field.
When Regulation Is Warranted, John McCain Acts.
Grade: C. OK, that's the right pattern, but McCain seems to not get the fact that the tech sector really needs some tough love from the government right now. If regulation is not warranted now, when would it be?
John McCain does not believe in prescriptive regulation like "net-neutrality," but rather he believes that an open marketplace with a variety of consumer choices is the best deterrent against unfair practices.
Recompense is fine (hey, I'm a capitalist, too). It's just saddens me that the market values collecting the payment for a song greater than it values the actual writing or performing of it. That just doesn't feel right to me.
It seems to be a truly balanced study, full of interesting insights and recommendations. Some bits I liked:
Page 34, Models of Innovation - a nice explanation of 'open' and 'closed' innovation
Page 35, Cost of licensing spending - where I learned that in 1999, 90% of companies spent less than 10% of their R&D budget on licensing, but by 2009, that figure had dropped to only 10% of companies spending less than 10% on licensing. Wow.
Page 49, IP "performance" scorecard - a frame for judging the cost/benefit of patents, copyrights, trademarks, and designs.
Page 56, Revenue Distribution of Songs - where I learned that even the credit card companies make more on downloaded songs than the artist does (!). That's just sad.
Page 58, Sales of fiction by year of publication - proof that an extremely small number of works makes any money beyond just a few years after publication
And I could go on with the remedies suggested by the study, but I'll stop here. If the world were to adopt the recommendations in this Study, I do think it would be a huge step forward.
Reading the tortured history of this case was a real eye-opener. I hadn't really thought about the lengths that some people will apparently go to steal from the community, lie to regulators, and engage in what must have been a very expensive legal fight.
All that for model railroad software?
I am so thankful we have the legal support to fight and win these kinds of battles. Thanks to all involved for sticking up for all our rights.
Because if you had, your rant would have been a lot more effective. The author does a great job showing exactly how the intent of copyright has been changing ever since it was first introduced right up to the present day. For example, the sense of copy that you rant against ("to copy" as a verb, as opposed to "the copy", the thing copy-editors edit and publishers publish) was introduced in 1909.
The problems we have today we built up, law by law, court case by court case, over two centuries.
So, it sounds like a viable workaround would be to mail the flashdrive to myself at my U.S. address, then cross the border. My flashdrive gets the protection of the court. My person does not.
I think the GP is pretty much on the mark. If MS loses the mind-share of the next generation of developers, their software stack will become the outlier, the exception to the rule. This, MS literally cannot afford.
IE is a good case in point. Anyone doing web development follows the pattern of developing first for the standards-compliant browsers then tweaking (and tweaking) for IE. This strategy works even though the "compliant" browsers really aren't that compliant. They're just a whole lot closer to each other than they are to IE, and that's enough. (Maybe IE8 will fix all that. Maybe not. We'll see.)
Nevertheless, one thing to remember is that MS has an exceptional track record of delivering wonderful developer tools. Visual Studio is very impressive. Blend is terrific, and integrates very nicely with Silverlight. The design of.NET is nothing short of inspired. The architecture of the Simplicity OS is very innovative. If MS can get lift-off on their cloud computing tools, I'm sure they will create quite a stir.
In a word, MS really does have the chops to compete.
But if they lose the mind-share of the next generation, if they are perceived as the outlier technology, they're toast. This means their tools are going to have to play nice with data protocols, file formats, and other industry standards. It's reached the level of a business necessity.
MS must interoperate, or die.
Happily, I very much doubt MS will die. I look forward to some true engineering competition from MS. I think they'll push hard on the F/OSS community, and everyone will be better for it.
Officers may not read or permit others to read correspondence contained in sealed letter class mail (the international equivalent of First Class) without an appropriate search warrant or consent. Only articles in the postal system are deemed "mail." Letters carried by individuals or private carriers such as DHL, UPS, or Federal Express, for example, are not considered to be mail, even if they are stamped, and thus are subject to a border search as provided in this policy.
IANAL. Does this mean I could seal a flashdrive in a letter-class envelope, put a US Mail stamp on it, and they would need a court order to unseal it?
In any case, it's an interesting clause in the regulations. Why is sealed mail treated with a higher standard of privacy than other forms of communication? Historical reasons only?
The Op-Ed piece is getting closer, but McDowell is putting up a bit of a strawman, isn't he? He says the choice is between engineers or politicians, but that's way too simplistic.
The reality is far more nuanced. Clearly, we need both engineers and politicians. We need them to do the jobs only they can do: engineers to solve technical problems, and politicians to make the kinds of public policies that ensure a free and open society.
The real reason they are doing this is to make the option of running Apache on Windows more appealing.
Not sure how this makes running Apache more "appealing" on Windows. I was under the impression that the Apache web server already ran fairly well on Windows. The code MS was donating was to the PHP project; the only thing they've given the ASF is money.
Nevertheless, I think I see your larger point about being wary of Microsoft's intentions. They certainly have a lot of ground to make up to win people's trust, especially with the debacle of the OOXML fast-track process.
However, I think what we're seeing with these OSS moves is that some of the new technical leadership MS has brought on board -- in particular, Ray Ozzie -- are beginning to turn the ship around. Better interoperability is truly in everyone's best interest. It vastly increases the size of the pie for MS products, especially in the larger, international market.
I think people like Ozzie "get" this in that fundamentally important, engineering sort of way that can override marketing's objections. I'd like to see where this goes, to "trust, but verify", in the words of a recent politican.
[Web advertising is] only sustainable so long [as] Google enjoys near-monopoly status. Once that status is gone, then all keywords -- even the ones Google chooses to price out of the market -- become competitively priced...[which] means everybody that depends on AdWord revenue suddenly makes less.
No, when things get more competitive, it just means that the list of keywords which Google can afford to price out of the market will get shorter, not disappear altogether. The result will be a net increase in the number of adwords available at both Google and its competition, making the market larger, not smaller.
When Google gets some real competition, the smart advertiser will of course rent keywords wherever it is profitable to do so.
From Thomas Jefferson's letter to Isaac McPherson,August 13, 1813:
...It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body...
A very interesting proposal. I like the way you've balanced it so artists can make a living for a period of time, but to make a lifetime career of it, they would have to keep on producing. The 10-15 year timeframe sounds about right because it can take a decade to really introduce a new work of art to the world. We can get things published much more quickly now, but individual people's capacity for change hasn't improved at the same pace. It still takes a long time for things to be really widely adopted.
I would consider the provision for permanent attribution to be just good manners among fellow artists. For example, I am a hymn writer, and often use texts from hundreds of years ago. I frequently need to alter them a bit to fit our modern ears, and always attribute the original author along with a note about my alteration.
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Here's my take, for what it's worth.
McCain's prescription for the problem -- let the free market resolve the issue -- is the right starting point, the right instinct. But what his team doesn't seem to want to admit is that the telecomm market isn't a free market, it's a private-public partnership. Free-market solutions simply don't apply here.
The telecos want to lock in the user and get the best deal they can. That isn't evil, that's just business. The problem is that this partnership has no true competition. There is no balance. The government is the people's agent in this partnership. As such, the government has not only the right to regulate this market, they have a duty to do so.
At heart, network neutrality is about the balance of power. We, the people, deserve to get as good a deal as the telecos. The telecos aren't just going to lay down and GIVE it to us; we've got to get our agents to go and GET it.
That's why McCain's network neutrality plans are worthless. In this area, the Fighter Pilot isn't fighting for the home team, he's giving the away team a big, fat pass. Obama, at least, seems to get this very basic idea, so yeah, his plans are much, much better.
Sorry, but you are over-simplifying the argument. There is not just one definition of Network Neutrality, but three commonly-held definitions.
The main topic link to Network Neutrality on Wikipedia is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality#Definitions_of_network_neutrality The links you provided are to the sub-topic of Network Neutrality in the United States.
The three definitions are:
In my precinct, blind voters can either have someone help them cast their ballot, or they can use an audio ballot, with choices keyed to the four corners of the touch screen. ("To vote for Candidate X, touch the top-left corner; for Candidate Y, touch top-right...") I've never had a blind voter use the audio in actual practice, but it seems it might work well enough with a short ballot.
In my experience, there are many more people with physical limitations (can't stand, can't reach, can't hear, etc.) than are blind. For these folks, the fact that we can set the touch screen down in their lap or bring it out to their car is really great. I would guess that the ratio of physical to blind impairment is about 9:1 in my precinct.
I work at the polls here in Virginia, and we have an electronic voting machine. Here's my review of the Brazilian device compared to ours:
In any event, I think SL geeks are obvious choices to volunteer to be Officers of Election. We know the vulnerabilities of the technology, and have the necessary attention to detail to appreciate the kinds of auditing checks that need to be done to run a fair and open election.
Running a fair election is not a simple problem. To make sure the voter is legitimate, we must be able to prove their identity. But when it comes to actually casting the vote, we must not be able to know how they voted.
One solution to this dilemma is to require people to physically show up and prove who they are, and then have them cast a secret ballot while they are sequestered in the same room where they proved their identity.
The reason online banking works is because your transactions never need to be done in secret, just in private. Totally different situation.
"Listen, I'm a politician, which means I'm a cheat and a liar, and when I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing their lollipops ..."
From http://www.webfoundation.org/programs/
The Foundation will launch with three projects:
Web Science and Research, Web Technology and Practice, and Web for Society.
The output of the projects will be:
- Studies
- Basic research
- Thought leadership
- Curricula
- Conferences, workshops, etc.
- Support for organizations developing Web standards
- Support for organizations using the web to solve social problems
- Training materials, guidelines, etc.
True, there is a lot of public domain music out there. There is even an international project dedicated to finding public domain scores and publishing them on the web.
However, music tastes are very generational. I can take a public domain tune, write a modern arrangement, and copyright that. Or, I can take a public domain text and write a new tune, and copyright that. This happens all the time, and it's a good thing -- it keeps the great music alive from generation to generation.
But, anything rewritten or rearranged since 1920 involves a copyright search. And, since anything put into a "fixed form" is automatically under copyright protection, anything any musician creates also involves a search and permission. It's a TON of work.
I have some direct experience with blanket music licenses, and they work well.
Churches are big users of music, both traditional and modern. They have to deal with issues of duplication and performance rights for 6-10 songs, every week. The level of effort needed to clear copyrights song-by-song would be impossible.
Ten years ago, the Church Copyright License was created, representing the catalogs of 120 publishers. After one year, they had 9,500 annual licensee holders. They now have over 170,000.
The churches pay a very reasonable annual fee, and get blanket permission to reproduce and perform any songs in the combined catalogs. There are sensible limits on what can be done legally, all basically to the effect of limiting the use to a normal church service.
A random sample of licensees are sent an audit form each year, and they record all the music they've used during the past few months. CCLI also provides software to do the accounting work, so the audit can be completely automated if the church wants.
Payouts to the copyright holders are done in proportion to the usage audits. The payout ratio is very fair. I know several song writers and performers who receive royalty checks, so I know the system really does work.
I've written some hymns myself (New Hymns for Worship), and have looked over the CCLI contracts in detail. They look pretty clean (but IANAL). Although I ultimately decided to publish under a Create Commons license instead, if I had wanted to make money, I would have definitely signed up with CCLI myself.
So, blanket licenses can work. They don't need to be expensive. They let consumers roam freely through whole catalogs of music. It's a good model.
The most interesting aspect of re-reading Love's rant from the year 2000 is how open she was to putting a torch to the whole, stinkin' mess, and trying something genuinely, radically new.
She was way ahead of the curve -- too far ahead.
Eight years on, the labels are still in control, and the lack of quality and innovation is worse than ever, with no end in sight. From a business standpoint, one has to admit that the labels have done a terrible job dealing with the internet. I can't think of any other business that has failed so spectacularly. EVERBODY has learned how to make money using the internet. There are WHOLE SECTORS of the economy that have been invented, grown up, and are making real money based on the internet.
But from the music distributors, we get lawsuits and six radio stations all playing the same classic rock playlist.
It's just sad and pathetic, really. It's clear they have no earthly idea how to make a buck.
When I read this rant before, I was saying to myself, "yeah, right -- in your dreams". Now, I'm not so sure. I think I may be ready now.
My scorecard for the McCain platform. Rated on a uninflated A-F grading scale, where a "C" means the norm.
John McCain Supports Risk Capital For Investment In American Innovation
Grade: C. OK; nothing specific to the tech sector, though.
John McCain Will Not Tax Innovation By Keeping Capital Gains Taxes Low.
Grade: C. A good idea in general, but not of particular help to technology.
John McCain Will Reform And Make Permanent The R&D Tax Credit.
Grade: B. Good idea.
John McCain Will Lower the Corporate Tax Rate To 25 Percent To Retain Investment In U.S. Technologies.
Grade: C. Again, a good idea for the economy in general, but doesn't do anything to specifically address technology.
John McCain Will Allow First-Year Expensing Of New Equipment And Technology.
Grade: B. Good idea.
John McCain Will Ensure Technology And Innovation Is Not Hampered By Taxes On Internet Users.
Grade: C. OK, fine, but I'm not buying the rationale at all here. I think this is code for "no government regulation". A vast amount of bricks-and-mortar commerce has been moved onto the Internet. If we accept taxation of commerce, we should have no problem accepting taxation of it on the Internet.
John McCain Opposes Higher Taxes On Wireless Services.
Grade: C. OK, lower taxes, yeah, but what we are buying with our taxes in the first place?
America Must Educate Its Workforce For The Innovation Age.
Grade: B. Grants for higher ed are a good bargain for taxpayers.
Fill Critical Shortages Of Skilled Workers To Remain Competitive.
Grade: B. Good idea. More flexibility on H-1B visas will help.
John McCain Has Been A Long And Ardent Supporter Of Fair And Open World Trade.
Grade: C. Nice to know.
Competition Has Been A Great Strength For America -- Offering Opportunity, Low Prices, And Increased Choice For Our Citizens. Markets work best when there is robust competition.
Grade: D. McCain had a chance to address the real problems of non-competitiveness that plague the technology sector, and ducked.
John McCain Will Protect The Creative Industries From Piracy.
Grade: D. Another disappointment. The "creative industries" already have plenty of money, lawyers, lobbyists, and memberships in the exclusive clubs needed to get the protection they need. Who's giving the people the protection they need? Not the government, apparently.
John McCain Will Push For Greater Resources For The Patent Office.
Grade: C. Obviously needed; basic good management.
John McCain Will Pursue Protection Of Intellectual Property Around The Globe.
Grade: C. OK, fine; more good management.
Provide Alternative Approaches To Resolving Patent Challenges.
Grade: B. Some innovation here is long overdue. Good idea.
John McCain Will Preserve Consumer Freedoms.
Grade: B. Freedom is good, and additional attention in this area is needed to keep a level playing field.
When Regulation Is Warranted, John McCain Acts.
Grade: C. OK, that's the right pattern, but McCain seems to not get the fact that the tech sector really needs some tough love from the government right now. If regulation is not warranted now, when would it be?
John McCain does not believe in prescriptive regulation like "net-neutrality," but rather he believes that an open marketplace with a variety of consumer choices is the best deterrent against unfair practices.
Grade: F. The telco marketplace is anything
Recompense is fine (hey, I'm a capitalist, too). It's just saddens me that the market values collecting the payment for a song greater than it values the actual writing or performing of it. That just doesn't feel right to me.
I highly recommend skimming through the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, the 2006 study on IP that seems to be the basis for this new law.
It seems to be a truly balanced study, full of interesting insights and recommendations. Some bits I liked:
And I could go on with the remedies suggested by the study, but I'll stop here. If the world were to adopt the recommendations in this Study, I do think it would be a huge step forward.
Reading the tortured history of this case was a real eye-opener. I hadn't really thought about the lengths that some people will apparently go to steal from the community, lie to regulators, and engage in what must have been a very expensive legal fight.
All that for model railroad software?
I am so thankful we have the legal support to fight and win these kinds of battles. Thanks to all involved for sticking up for all our rights.
A fascinating viewpoint. Thank you.
Because if you had, your rant would have been a lot more effective. The author does a great job showing exactly how the intent of copyright has been changing ever since it was first introduced right up to the present day. For example, the sense of copy that you rant against ("to copy" as a verb, as opposed to "the copy", the thing copy-editors edit and publishers publish) was introduced in 1909.
The problems we have today we built up, law by law, court case by court case, over two centuries.
So, it sounds like a viable workaround would be to mail the flashdrive to myself at my U.S. address, then cross the border. My flashdrive gets the protection of the court. My person does not.
An interesting twist. I guess we have Ben Franklin to thank for this.
I think the GP is pretty much on the mark. If MS loses the mind-share of the next generation of developers, their software stack will become the outlier, the exception to the rule. This, MS literally cannot afford.
IE is a good case in point. Anyone doing web development follows the pattern of developing first for the standards-compliant browsers then tweaking (and tweaking) for IE. This strategy works even though the "compliant" browsers really aren't that compliant. They're just a whole lot closer to each other than they are to IE, and that's enough. (Maybe IE8 will fix all that. Maybe not. We'll see.)
Nevertheless, one thing to remember is that MS has an exceptional track record of delivering wonderful developer tools. Visual Studio is very impressive. Blend is terrific, and integrates very nicely with Silverlight. The design of .NET is nothing short of inspired. The architecture of the Simplicity OS is very innovative. If MS can get lift-off on their cloud computing tools, I'm sure they will create quite a stir.
In a word, MS really does have the chops to compete.
But if they lose the mind-share of the next generation, if they are perceived as the outlier technology, they're toast. This means their tools are going to have to play nice with data protocols, file formats, and other industry standards. It's reached the level of a business necessity.
MS must interoperate, or die.
Happily, I very much doubt MS will die. I look forward to some true engineering competition from MS. I think they'll push hard on the F/OSS community, and everyone will be better for it.
Game on, MS!
Officers may not read or permit others to read correspondence contained in sealed letter class mail (the international equivalent of First Class) without an appropriate search warrant or consent. Only articles in the postal system are deemed "mail." Letters carried by individuals or private carriers such as DHL, UPS, or Federal Express, for example, are not considered to be mail, even if they are stamped, and thus are subject to a border search as provided in this policy.
IANAL. Does this mean I could seal a flashdrive in a letter-class envelope, put a US Mail stamp on it, and they would need a court order to unseal it?
In any case, it's an interesting clause in the regulations. Why is sealed mail treated with a higher standard of privacy than other forms of communication? Historical reasons only?
The Op-Ed piece is getting closer, but McDowell is putting up a bit of a strawman, isn't he? He says the choice is between engineers or politicians, but that's way too simplistic.
The reality is far more nuanced. Clearly, we need both engineers and politicians. We need them to do the jobs only they can do: engineers to solve technical problems, and politicians to make the kinds of public policies that ensure a free and open society.
The real reason they are doing this is to make the option of running Apache on Windows more appealing.
Not sure how this makes running Apache more "appealing" on Windows. I was under the impression that the Apache web server already ran fairly well on Windows. The code MS was donating was to the PHP project; the only thing they've given the ASF is money.
Nevertheless, I think I see your larger point about being wary of Microsoft's intentions. They certainly have a lot of ground to make up to win people's trust, especially with the debacle of the OOXML fast-track process.
However, I think what we're seeing with these OSS moves is that some of the new technical leadership MS has brought on board -- in particular, Ray Ozzie -- are beginning to turn the ship around. Better interoperability is truly in everyone's best interest. It vastly increases the size of the pie for MS products, especially in the larger, international market.
I think people like Ozzie "get" this in that fundamentally important, engineering sort of way that can override marketing's objections. I'd like to see where this goes, to "trust, but verify", in the words of a recent politican.
From FTA:
[Web advertising is] only sustainable so long [as] Google enjoys near-monopoly status. Once that status is gone, then all keywords -- even the ones Google chooses to price out of the market -- become competitively priced...[which] means everybody that depends on AdWord revenue suddenly makes less.
No, when things get more competitive, it just means that the list of keywords which Google can afford to price out of the market will get shorter, not disappear altogether. The result will be a net increase in the number of adwords available at both Google and its competition, making the market larger, not smaller.
When Google gets some real competition, the smart advertiser will of course rent keywords wherever it is profitable to do so.
Hardly the end of the world as we know it.
http://news.cnet.com/2300-1044_3-6239928-1.html
From Thomas Jefferson's letter to Isaac McPherson,August 13, 1813:
...It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,)
that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their
inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to
their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of
any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be
singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to
inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the
subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate
property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law,
indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men
equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who
occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property
goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is
given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if
an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of
natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If
nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an
idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps
it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into
the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess
himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses
the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who
receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light
without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to
another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man,
and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and
benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire,
expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any
point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our
physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society
may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an
encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but
this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of
the society, without claim or complaint from any body...
The Full Text of the letter.
A very interesting proposal. I like the way you've balanced it so artists can make a living for a period of time, but to make a lifetime career of it, they would have to keep on producing. The 10-15 year timeframe sounds about right because it can take a decade to really introduce a new work of art to the world. We can get things published much more quickly now, but individual people's capacity for change hasn't improved at the same pace. It still takes a long time for things to be really widely adopted.
I would consider the provision for permanent attribution to be just good manners among fellow artists. For example, I am a hymn writer, and often use texts from hundreds of years ago. I frequently need to alter them a bit to fit our modern ears, and always attribute the original author along with a note about my alteration.