> But maybe we should also think about how a world would actually look like if there were no trademarks.
Pretty shitty. Trademarks and counterfeit protection are in many cases excellent alternatives to copyright and design marks. The fashion industry for example thrives with no copyright protection and rampant copying, and it does so because cheap knock-offs are not a substitute for brand names in the eyes of consumers. Trademark protection makes untruthful claims about the origin of a product equivalent to the crime of fraud.
In a music industry with no copyright protection, trademarks and counterfeit protection would be essential. It would allow a musician to say "sure, you can download my latest track for free; but you can buy this original merchandise only from me, and that will help to fund more tracks". Anyone else can make equivalent merchandise, but only the musician can claim (legally) to be supplying the original stuff; so you know when you buy non-counterfeit original merchandise you are funding the artist.
If a well-known painter or sculptor has spent 25 years building up a reputation, and can now demand sizable commissions for their work, trademark and counterfeit protection stops some two-bit criminal from (legally) passing off their 3D printed plaster-dipped statuette as an Original Poncynamus.
In short, the value that we ascribe to a work (or art, or music, or prose) becomes synonymous with our respect for and valuation of the artist, and this association is predicated on the right of the artist to claim his/her works, and to deny anyone else from using his/her name.
As a matter of interest, what would you say is a reasonable term for copyright on books? Also, would you consider it fair to have different terms for different rights, e.g. duplication, translation, adaptation (to screen or stage), and derivative works?
What about talented writers who aren't musicians (or prefer to spend their time composing to playing live)? What about sound engineers (who are really essential to a quality recording) and producers?
Only allowing natural persons to own copyright is problematic for any capital-intensive work that requires multiple creative inputs. A movie, for example. The plot/concept developer, the scriptwriter, the director, the producer, the costumer designer, the author of the score, the musicians, would all have a partial claim on the copyright. Photography and cinematography are protected art forms, as is sculpture and (non-functional) painting; so the cameraman and the set decorators may well have claims as well. The production of a stage play is usually protected against audiovisual capture (without consent), so the actors probably have a claim.
IMHO copyright is too monolithic. Differentiating the rights and the term of each right according to the nature of the work would help. For example the duplication or translation of a book may be protected for 50 years, which the exclusive right to a derivative work may last only 5 years. Adaptations and derivative adaptions would require relatively long terms of protection. Art (painting & sculpture) requires minimal copyright protection - the value lies in the original, so the appropriate IP regime is trademarks and protection against counterfeiting.
Non-transferable copyright is a greedy response from people who think copyright should be a permanent meal-ticket for them. Case in point: in most countries in the world if you hire a photographer to take pictures of your wedding (i.e. pay them a pre-negotiated, large fee to appear and take photos), the photographer - NOT YOU - owns the copyright. Ever time you want to send a picture to your grandma, or post a.jpg on your blog, you have to pay a fee to the photography (who you paid in the first place to do a job, and to whom you have given a right of access to a private event in order to perform said job). Now I have yet to find anyone other than a photographer who thinks that this is in any way fair or sane.
The person who takes the monetary risk in undertaking the development of a (protectable) work should be the owner. If I pay you a salary and tell you to write a program that does X and Y, then I own the resulting work. If I pay you to take photographs of a specific event, and pay for or permit your access to the event, then I own the resulting work. If I commission a painting or a statue, then I own the resulting work. If on the other hand you - having received no payment or instructions from me - paint a painting, chisel a statue, write a program or take a photograph, then you own it, and can dispose of it in any manner you please.
It is sometimes possible to use that style, but generally you will need nesting if you want to handle errors. I can't think of a decent embedded example that doesn't require reams of context, but here's an illustration using shared memory under Windows. Try to translate the following code snippet to the style you suggest:
shmLen = VirtualQuery( shm, &meminfo, sizeof(meminfo) );
if ( shmLen == 0 ) {
result = E_SHM_ACCESS;
log( "get_shared_status: VirtualQuery() failed with error %08x", GetLastError() );
goto cleanupMapView;
}
if ( shmLen sizeof(meminfo) ) {
result = E_SHM_ACCESS;
log( "get_shared_status: VirtualQuery() returned too few bytes" );
goto cleanupMapView;
}
if ( meminfo.RegionSize SHM_V1_SIZE ) {
result = E_SHM_ACCESS;
log( "get_shared_status: Shared memory file too small to interpret" );
goto cleanupMapView;
}//FIXME do stuff
This is 2012. C is still used for on-the-metal programming of pretty much any embedded micro other than the Arduino. And C doesn't have try...finally. It has nested if statements, goto, or roll-your-own-goto using switch/for/while/do (which is just a style guide compliant obfuscated form of goto).
Yes. We used to do that in some of our source code bases. I always like how "important programmers" at "big companies" think 'goto' is verboten, but don't notice switch statements with fall-through cases. Because they're sooo much safer;)
So I reversed that situation, and our incidence of resource handling errors went down markedly. As did our incidence of logic bugs from failing to break out of a switch.
In my opinion, obscuring the logic you're trying to express by using a workaround involving an arbitrarily "approved" keyword, obscures the logic.
Mmm. Yes. Very good class. Let's try again shall we?
Judicious use of GOTO can dramatically simplify resource cleanup when exception handling is not supported
And what is finally? That's right, it's part of the exception handling system. The concept of a "finally block" only makes sense if there are multiple paths by which the block can be reached (the normal path and the exceptional path); otherwise it would just be a statement at the end of the normal path.
Now, what about C? This is an important question because there are still (shock, horror!) some embedded environments that don't have a Java runtime environment. Why not, you may ask? Because they have 2kb code space and 512b memory!
So, what about C? Well, it doesn't have exception handling built in (more shock, more horror!). Instead, C programmers must check the result of each function call and branch to cleanup block if the result indicated an error.
Citations won't be found, because the explanation is incorrect. There is no technical issue with compilers implementing 'goto' so long as the destination is in the same lexical scope (C has this limitation). Nor is it worth considering execution context at the level of the CPU, as any high-level loop or branch instruction must be translated into one of a limited number of conditional or non-conditional, relative or absolute jumps. Ultimately whether you use 'goto' or some other control construct you are attempting to express the same programmatic flow, and the compiled instruction stream will be sufficiently similar that it's not worth splitting hairs over.
The reason 'goto' is "considered harmful" is because structured programming theorizes that any computable function can be expressed by combining simpler programs using sequence, selection and iteration; and this provides the opportunity for a constructive approach to program correctness. Dijkstra argues that we are cognitively limited and can benefit from code that is structured so that we can tell at any point where we are and where we have come from (a gross paraphrasing of what Dijkstra calls "coordinates"). But "[t]he unbridled use of the go to statement has as an immediate consequence that it becomes terribly hard to find a meaningful set of coordinates in which to describe the process progress". In other words careless use of 'goto' makes it hard to reason about your code.
It is important to realise that the claimed advantages of structured programming are undone by the use of break, continue, or exception handling. There are limited forms of goto, and using them prevents proofs of correctness (under the assumptions of structured programming; other techniques may be available) and reasoning using Dijkstra's "coordinates".
Judicious use of GOTO can dramatically simplify resource cleanup when exception handling is not supported. A function that must grab N resources in order (and free them in reverse order on success or failure) requires N nested blocks if you don't use GOTO (and no nesting if you do use GOTO). Often the only way to refactor such logic into sub-functions is by using continuation passing style, which is clear as mud.
Unless the composer, say, negotiates with multiple groups simultaneously. Or contractually binds the first one not to perform until he has sold the work to other groups.
Either of which reduce the value of the right of first performance.
It is also economically sensible for the composer to only sell the work for enough to support him while he creates and sells the next one.
According to what theory of economics? There is undoubtedly both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the production of creative works, but there exist at least some potential creators who are rational, self-interested actors who will pursue alternatives that have a higher expected return than the maximum recognisable value of their creation.
An economic incentive such as copyright monopoly raises the maximum recognisable value of a creation. In its absence there will be some actors that choose an alternative vocation, and society/culture will never receive those potential creations.
You have not provided a single example of a system which cannot be fatally undermined by a single self-interested party.
Just because you think that there must be a workable system that others are too stupid to see, doesn't mean you're right.
I can do that now legally (depending on one's reading of the law, downloading is legal and not a single case was ever filed against someone for "downloading" and instead they lie and tell the media that downloading is illegal when no downloader has ever been taken to court)
Capitol v Thomas: 'the jury was instructed to find the owners' copyrights were infringed provided the ownership claims were valid and provided there was an infringement of either the reproduction right (via Thomas-Rasset "downloading copyrighted sound recordings on a peer-to-peer network, without license from the copyright owners") or the distribution right'.
In fact A M Records Inc v Napster found that a user infringes copyright by either download or uploading, and that Napster could be help liable for contributory infringement.
Please, do continue. Every ad hominem hurts you more than it does me.
The technological changes that saw the development of duplication tools dramatically altered the economic landscape for creative works. While the market became substantially larger, new forms of consumption were introduced (music could be heard via recording as well as live performance), as were new forms of competition (a recording could replace a live performance).
It is logically invalid to extrapolate from history the possibility of a future without copyright, unless you correct for the changed variables (described above).
If you have 1,000,000 DVDs on the shelves before anyone gets a chance to copy them, then you have an advantage.
Any how do you do that? If retailers are purchasing stock then they determine the volumes, not you. If you are offering stock on consignment then you will need to raise the ~ $1,000,000 cost of pressing the DVDs. What is the business model you are going to present when you ask for a loan? "Retailers will give me $2 per DVD sold, and hopefully no-one will get a cheaper copy onto the selves before at least 500k copies sell so that I can repay the loan"?
There is also at least one party that can beat you to market and undercut you: the DVD press.
Also, would you, personally, if you walked into a store and saw two DVDs side-by-side, one the "official" DVD by the actual creators and one "bootleg" for the same price, which would you pick? Why? And how much extra is that one worth to you?
Why would I be going into a store to buy DVDs, when I can copy the content from my friend's hard drive?
The fact this these works are popular indicates that your taste in art differs from the majority of consumers who are willing to pay for art. The fact that consumers are willing to pay indicates that these works have value to them. If consumers don't see value in the works, there is no economic incentive to produce them.
No, I assume that some works will only be produced if there is an economic incentive, allowing the creator to derive an income from his creations. There are some types of work that lend themselves to such endeavor in the absence of copyright (e.g. fine art), although the income potential may be increased by copyright. Other types of work (e.g. books, recorded music) are only valuable to the distributors in the absence of copyright.
It does if he charges the groups he sells his composition to properly.
Group, singular. Once the composition has been performed it can be recreated from the performance, and there is no need for any performer or group beyond the first to pay (to anyone) more than the cost of "reverse engineering" the performance (which many musicians can do quite easily). Given that a second group intending to perform the composition will either reverse engineer it or pay (someone), it is economically sensible for the first group to undercut any price requested by the composer, as this maximizes the first group's profit. In a very short time the marginal value of the composition tends to zero, and all profits are derived exclusively by the performers.
Which means, in your view, a composer's market is performers, and the value of a composition is determined by the amount which a performer is prepared to pay for the novelty of being the first to perform the composition (and the expectation that said novelty will cause audiences to choose to see that performer live, both initially and in future by virtue of being the seminal performer)?
Recorded music is cheaper than a live show of the same music. Were your conclusion valid, we would have already witnessed the death of live performances, as people would purchase the cheaper (and reusable !) recorded version instead.
As I said "the value of a performance will be determined only by the demand to see a particular performer playing live". This does not necessarily compensate the composer in any way. Many composers are not themselves performers, and any performer could perform the composition - live - with no compensation offered to the composer.
Why ? What prevents another performance from occurring ?
Who will pay for it? If you are satisfied with a recording you can obtain a copy (and as the availability of copies grows their marginal value tends to zero). If you want a live performance you will pay to see the performance, but that means you are paying the performer rather than the composer.
In the case where the performer is the composer, and is reasonably desired by audiences, then the composer gets to make money from additional performances. Contrary to popular belief there are relatively few live gigs where the face of the band (the performer who will draw audiences, irrespective of who the other band members are) is the composer of both the music and the lyrics.
The only ignorance here is yours. There is no media nor any form of broadcast or performance that is invulnerable to duplication. Given content and the technology to duplicate it, the only economic incentives in the system are to create duplication technology, or to duplicate at a lower cost than all competitors. There is no way to extract value from the creation of content, so no economic inventive to create content.
Live performances (theater, music concerts, and the like) can extract value from the novelty of attending the live performance, but this in no way compensates the composers of the musical score, lyrics, stageplay, etc.
The only party to profit here is the one that can press DVDs at the lowest cost. The content of the DVDs is irrelevant and effectively has no value. There is no economically sensible reason to create content.
The farmer puts time and effort into rearing and maintaining a hen. The hen can produce physical resources (eggs), each of which may be disposed of (sold, consumed or destroyed) by the farmer exactly once. Once the purchaser has used/consumer or disposed of the egg, it is gone (*). The farmer could also opt to sell the hen, albeit at a much higher price to compensate for the loss of expected income from the sale of eggs.
(*) In general it is not possible for a buyer to produce a chicken from an egg, as the eggs are unfertilised. A farmer may sell you a fertilised egg at a higher price, mindful of future competition; the buyer would still face a relatively large investment to rear the hen.
The composer puts time and effort into creating a composition. The value of a composition derives from an audience paying for the performance of that composition, but (1) the composer may not be the performer, and (2) any audience member could be a performance or could record the performance and subsequently re-perform it (possibly for another audience). In effect any performer, or audience member with technological support, can duplicate eggs with no need for a hen, or can recreate the hen from the egg. The composer, who has created a unique and original "immortal hen", stands to gain no benefit from this creation.
Economics dictates that when the marginal cost of duplication approaches zero, the marginal value of the composition will tend towards zero, and the value of a performance will be determined only by the demand to see a particular performer playing live. The only economically sensible approach for the composer is to recover the entire compensation for his/her time and effort from the first audience, who are willing to pay for the novelty of being the first audience of a new composition.
You are ignoring the essential role of HMI in SCADA systems. A SCADA can acquire data and coordinate components without a UI, but operators cannot monitor a plant or take corrective action without an HMI.
The HMI is graphical and allows the operator to override normal operation in order to respond to abnormal situations. It needs all the input and output devices a normal workstation requires.
You are also ignoring the issue of data storage by SCADA systems, and the generation of reports on that data which are used by various business departments in real-time. A Manufacturing Execution System may provide real-time reports for sales staff so that they can give customers accurate estimates of completion/delivery dates. Orders are added to a queue and will be automatically executed by the SCADA. Stores will receive low-stock notices for just-in-time ordering. Line stops exceeding 2 hours will result in automatic escalation to the COO.
This level of automation brings huge business benefits. The business is more responsive to customer needs, and there are fewer manual steps involved in completing an order (leading to fewer mistakes, less waste, fewer unsatisfied customers). The downside is that the business network is directly connected to the MES and the SCADA in a manner that allows at least some commands to be issued (as opposed to having read-only access to a database). An air-wall is not possible.
So now you have PCs on the business network able to interact with a MES which is necessarily able to access the network with the SCADA and HMI. And there's a 100% chance that the business PCs have e-mail access, which means that somewhere there is a physical cable to the outside world.
They could have developed their own operating system
Yeah, because they have extensive expertise in OS development and oodles of cash to throw at the problem, and as we well know the available commercial and free embedded OSes never have bugs.
The problem is that the environment is not conducive to upgrades/patches and is hard to isolate logically. The economic reality is that for any given SCADA environment the risk* inherent in regular upgrades is larger than the risk of a malicious attack (for now).
* = (likelihood of event) x (cost of event), where cost includes recovery plus the direct and opportunity costs of downtime.
Slashdot Mirror
> But maybe we should also think about how a world would actually look like if there were no trademarks.
Pretty shitty. Trademarks and counterfeit protection are in many cases excellent alternatives to copyright and design marks. The fashion industry for example thrives with no copyright protection and rampant copying, and it does so because cheap knock-offs are not a substitute for brand names in the eyes of consumers. Trademark protection makes untruthful claims about the origin of a product equivalent to the crime of fraud.
In a music industry with no copyright protection, trademarks and counterfeit protection would be essential. It would allow a musician to say "sure, you can download my latest track for free; but you can buy this original merchandise only from me, and that will help to fund more tracks". Anyone else can make equivalent merchandise, but only the musician can claim (legally) to be supplying the original stuff; so you know when you buy non-counterfeit original merchandise you are funding the artist.
If a well-known painter or sculptor has spent 25 years building up a reputation, and can now demand sizable commissions for their work, trademark and counterfeit protection stops some two-bit criminal from (legally) passing off their 3D printed plaster-dipped statuette as an Original Poncynamus.
In short, the value that we ascribe to a work (or art, or music, or prose) becomes synonymous with our respect for and valuation of the artist, and this association is predicated on the right of the artist to claim his/her works, and to deny anyone else from using his/her name.
As a matter of interest, what would you say is a reasonable term for copyright on books? Also, would you consider it fair to have different terms for different rights, e.g. duplication, translation, adaptation (to screen or stage), and derivative works?
What about talented writers who aren't musicians (or prefer to spend their time composing to playing live)? What about sound engineers (who are really essential to a quality recording) and producers?
Only allowing natural persons to own copyright is problematic for any capital-intensive work that requires multiple creative inputs. A movie, for example. The plot/concept developer, the scriptwriter, the director, the producer, the costumer designer, the author of the score, the musicians, would all have a partial claim on the copyright. Photography and cinematography are protected art forms, as is sculpture and (non-functional) painting; so the cameraman and the set decorators may well have claims as well. The production of a stage play is usually protected against audiovisual capture (without consent), so the actors probably have a claim.
IMHO copyright is too monolithic. Differentiating the rights and the term of each right according to the nature of the work would help. For example the duplication or translation of a book may be protected for 50 years, which the exclusive right to a derivative work may last only 5 years. Adaptations and derivative adaptions would require relatively long terms of protection. Art (painting & sculpture) requires minimal copyright protection - the value lies in the original, so the appropriate IP regime is trademarks and protection against counterfeiting.
Non-transferable copyright is a greedy response from people who think copyright should be a permanent meal-ticket for them. Case in point: in most countries in the world if you hire a photographer to take pictures of your wedding (i.e. pay them a pre-negotiated, large fee to appear and take photos), the photographer - NOT YOU - owns the copyright. Ever time you want to send a picture to your grandma, or post a .jpg on your blog, you have to pay a fee to the photography (who you paid in the first place to do a job, and to whom you have given a right of access to a private event in order to perform said job). Now I have yet to find anyone other than a photographer who thinks that this is in any way fair or sane.
The person who takes the monetary risk in undertaking the development of a (protectable) work should be the owner. If I pay you a salary and tell you to write a program that does X and Y, then I own the resulting work. If I pay you to take photographs of a specific event, and pay for or permit your access to the event, then I own the resulting work. If I commission a painting or a statue, then I own the resulting work. If on the other hand you - having received no payment or instructions from me - paint a painting, chisel a statue, write a program or take a photograph, then you own it, and can dispose of it in any manner you please.
It is sometimes possible to use that style, but generally you will need nesting if you want to handle errors. I can't think of a decent embedded example that doesn't require reams of context, but here's an illustration using shared memory under Windows. Try to translate the following code snippet to the style you suggest:
errno_t get_shared_status( LPCTSTR fileName ) {
errno_t result = E_UNKNOWN;
HANDLE f = INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE;
HANDLE fMap = NULL;
LPVOID shm = NULL;
MEMORY_BASIC_INFORMATION meminfo;
SIZE_T shmLen = 0;
f = CreateFile( fileName, GENERIC_READ, FILE_SHARE_READ, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING,
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, NULL );
if ( f == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE ) {
result = E_SHM_ACCESS;
log( "get_shared_status: CreateFile() failed with error %08x", GetLastError() );
goto cleanupNone;
}
fMap = CreateFileMapping( f, NULL, PAGE_READONLY, 0, 0, NULL );
if ( fMap == NULL ) {
result = E_SHM_ACCESS;
log( "get_shared_status: CreateFileMapping() failed with error %08x", GetLastError() );
goto cleanupCreateFile;
}
shm = MapViewOfFile( fMap, FILE_MAP_READ, 0, 0, 0 );
if ( shm == NULL ) {
result = E_SHM_ACCESS;
log( "get_shared_status: MapViewOfFile() failed with error %08x", GetLastError() );
goto cleanupCreateFmap;
}
shmLen = VirtualQuery( shm, &meminfo, sizeof(meminfo) );
if ( shmLen == 0 ) {
result = E_SHM_ACCESS;
log( "get_shared_status: VirtualQuery() failed with error %08x", GetLastError() );
goto cleanupMapView;
}
if ( shmLen sizeof(meminfo) ) {
result = E_SHM_ACCESS;
log( "get_shared_status: VirtualQuery() returned too few bytes" );
goto cleanupMapView;
}
if ( meminfo.RegionSize SHM_V1_SIZE ) { //FIXME do stuff
result = E_SHM_ACCESS;
log( "get_shared_status: Shared memory file too small to interpret" );
goto cleanupMapView;
}
cleanupMapView:
if ( 0 == UnmapViewOfFile( shm ) ) {
log( "get_shared_status: UnmapViewOfFile() failed with error %08x", GetLastError() );
}
shm = NULL;
cleanupFmap:
if ( 0 == CloseHandle( fMap ) ) {
log( "get_shared_status: CloseHandle(fMap) failed with error %08x", GetLastError() );
}
fMap = NULL;
cleanupCreateFile
if ( 0 == CloseHandle( f ) ) {
log( "get_shared_status: CloseHandle(f) failed with error %08x", GetLastError() );
}
f = INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE;
cleanupNone:
return result;
}
Here's the start:
f = CreateFile( fileName, GENERIC_READ, FILE_SHARE_READ, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING,
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, NULL );
if ( f != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE ) {
fMap = CreateFileMapping( f, NULL, PAGE_READONLY, 0, 0, NULL );
} else {
result = E_SHM_ACCESS;
log( "get_shared_status: CreateFile() failed with
This is 2012. C is still used for on-the-metal programming of pretty much any embedded micro other than the Arduino. And C doesn't have try...finally. It has nested if statements, goto, or roll-your-own-goto using switch/for/while/do (which is just a style guide compliant obfuscated form of goto).
Yes. We used to do that in some of our source code bases. I always like how "important programmers" at "big companies" think 'goto' is verboten, but don't notice switch statements with fall-through cases. Because they're sooo much safer ;)
So I reversed that situation, and our incidence of resource handling errors went down markedly. As did our incidence of logic bugs from failing to break out of a switch.
In my opinion, obscuring the logic you're trying to express by using a workaround involving an arbitrarily "approved" keyword, obscures the logic.
Mmm. Yes. Very good class. Let's try again shall we?
And what is finally? That's right, it's part of the exception handling system. The concept of a "finally block" only makes sense if there are multiple paths by which the block can be reached (the normal path and the exceptional path); otherwise it would just be a statement at the end of the normal path.
Now, what about C? This is an important question because there are still (shock, horror!) some embedded environments that don't have a Java runtime environment. Why not, you may ask? Because they have 2kb code space and 512b memory!
So, what about C? Well, it doesn't have exception handling built in (more shock, more horror!). Instead, C programmers must check the result of each function call and branch to cleanup block if the result indicated an error.
</condescending >
Suit yourself, but I'll take Knuth over Dijkstra: http://pplab.snu.ac.kr/courses/adv_pl05/papers/p261-knuth.pdf.
Citations won't be found, because the explanation is incorrect. There is no technical issue with compilers implementing 'goto' so long as the destination is in the same lexical scope (C has this limitation). Nor is it worth considering execution context at the level of the CPU, as any high-level loop or branch instruction must be translated into one of a limited number of conditional or non-conditional, relative or absolute jumps. Ultimately whether you use 'goto' or some other control construct you are attempting to express the same programmatic flow, and the compiled instruction stream will be sufficiently similar that it's not worth splitting hairs over.
The reason 'goto' is "considered harmful" is because structured programming theorizes that any computable function can be expressed by combining simpler programs using sequence, selection and iteration; and this provides the opportunity for a constructive approach to program correctness. Dijkstra argues that we are cognitively limited and can benefit from code that is structured so that we can tell at any point where we are and where we have come from (a gross paraphrasing of what Dijkstra calls "coordinates"). But "[t]he unbridled use of the go to statement has as an immediate consequence that it becomes terribly hard to find a meaningful set of coordinates in which to describe the process progress". In other words careless use of 'goto' makes it hard to reason about your code.
Knuth contended that one could created structured programs with 'goto' statements, and provided examples of how 'goto' make the program more elegant.
It is important to realise that the claimed advantages of structured programming are undone by the use of break, continue, or exception handling. There are limited forms of goto, and using them prevents proofs of correctness (under the assumptions of structured programming; other techniques may be available) and reasoning using Dijkstra's "coordinates".
Judicious use of GOTO can dramatically simplify resource cleanup when exception handling is not supported. A function that must grab N resources in order (and free them in reverse order on success or failure) requires N nested blocks if you don't use GOTO (and no nesting if you do use GOTO). Often the only way to refactor such logic into sub-functions is by using continuation passing style, which is clear as mud.
Either of which reduce the value of the right of first performance.
According to what theory of economics? There is undoubtedly both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the production of creative works, but there exist at least some potential creators who are rational, self-interested actors who will pursue alternatives that have a higher expected return than the maximum recognisable value of their creation.
An economic incentive such as copyright monopoly raises the maximum recognisable value of a creation. In its absence there will be some actors that choose an alternative vocation, and society/culture will never receive those potential creations.
You have not provided a single example of a system which cannot be fatally undermined by a single self-interested party.
Just because you think that there must be a workable system that others are too stupid to see, doesn't mean you're right.
Capitol v Thomas: 'the jury was instructed to find the owners' copyrights were infringed provided the ownership claims were valid and provided there was an infringement of either the reproduction right (via Thomas-Rasset "downloading copyrighted sound recordings on a peer-to-peer network, without license from the copyright owners") or the distribution right'.
In fact A M Records Inc v Napster found that a user infringes copyright by either download or uploading, and that Napster could be help liable for contributory infringement.
Um, wow. Yeah, you keep on believing that.
Please, do continue. Every ad hominem hurts you more than it does me.
The technological changes that saw the development of duplication tools dramatically altered the economic landscape for creative works. While the market became substantially larger, new forms of consumption were introduced (music could be heard via recording as well as live performance), as were new forms of competition (a recording could replace a live performance).
It is logically invalid to extrapolate from history the possibility of a future without copyright, unless you correct for the changed variables (described above).
Any how do you do that? If retailers are purchasing stock then they determine the volumes, not you. If you are offering stock on consignment then you will need to raise the ~ $1,000,000 cost of pressing the DVDs. What is the business model you are going to present when you ask for a loan? "Retailers will give me $2 per DVD sold, and hopefully no-one will get a cheaper copy onto the selves before at least 500k copies sell so that I can repay the loan"?
There is also at least one party that can beat you to market and undercut you: the DVD press.
Why would I be going into a store to buy DVDs, when I can copy the content from my friend's hard drive?
The fact this these works are popular indicates that your taste in art differs from the majority of consumers who are willing to pay for art. The fact that consumers are willing to pay indicates that these works have value to them. If consumers don't see value in the works, there is no economic incentive to produce them.
1877: the first practical sound recording and reproduction device is invented.
1896: the first public exhibition of projected motion pictures in America.
Prior to that there was no novelty in live performance, there was simply no alternative.
I'm sure the Broadway production of Avatar will be along soon, and will be able to recover the $300 million cost of making the movie.
No, I assume that some works will only be produced if there is an economic incentive, allowing the creator to derive an income from his creations. There are some types of work that lend themselves to such endeavor in the absence of copyright (e.g. fine art), although the income potential may be increased by copyright. Other types of work (e.g. books, recorded music) are only valuable to the distributors in the absence of copyright.
Group, singular. Once the composition has been performed it can be recreated from the performance, and there is no need for any performer or group beyond the first to pay (to anyone) more than the cost of "reverse engineering" the performance (which many musicians can do quite easily). Given that a second group intending to perform the composition will either reverse engineer it or pay (someone), it is economically sensible for the first group to undercut any price requested by the composer, as this maximizes the first group's profit. In a very short time the marginal value of the composition tends to zero, and all profits are derived exclusively by the performers.
Which means, in your view, a composer's market is performers, and the value of a composition is determined by the amount which a performer is prepared to pay for the novelty of being the first to perform the composition (and the expectation that said novelty will cause audiences to choose to see that performer live, both initially and in future by virtue of being the seminal performer)?
As I said "the value of a performance will be determined only by the demand to see a particular performer playing live". This does not necessarily compensate the composer in any way. Many composers are not themselves performers, and any performer could perform the composition - live - with no compensation offered to the composer.
Who will pay for it? If you are satisfied with a recording you can obtain a copy (and as the availability of copies grows their marginal value tends to zero). If you want a live performance you will pay to see the performance, but that means you are paying the performer rather than the composer.
In the case where the performer is the composer, and is reasonably desired by audiences, then the composer gets to make money from additional performances. Contrary to popular belief there are relatively few live gigs where the face of the band (the performer who will draw audiences, irrespective of who the other band members are) is the composer of both the music and the lyrics.
You're right! It will be available the previous week for free!
The only ignorance here is yours. There is no media nor any form of broadcast or performance that is invulnerable to duplication. Given content and the technology to duplicate it, the only economic incentives in the system are to create duplication technology, or to duplicate at a lower cost than all competitors. There is no way to extract value from the creation of content, so no economic inventive to create content.
Live performances (theater, music concerts, and the like) can extract value from the novelty of attending the live performance, but this in no way compensates the composers of the musical score, lyrics, stageplay, etc.
The only party to profit here is the one that can press DVDs at the lowest cost. The content of the DVDs is irrelevant and effectively has no value. There is no economically sensible reason to create content.
Invalid analogy. Eggs have integrated DRM.
The farmer puts time and effort into rearing and maintaining a hen. The hen can produce physical resources (eggs), each of which may be disposed of (sold, consumed or destroyed) by the farmer exactly once. Once the purchaser has used/consumer or disposed of the egg, it is gone (*). The farmer could also opt to sell the hen, albeit at a much higher price to compensate for the loss of expected income from the sale of eggs.
(*) In general it is not possible for a buyer to produce a chicken from an egg, as the eggs are unfertilised. A farmer may sell you a fertilised egg at a higher price, mindful of future competition; the buyer would still face a relatively large investment to rear the hen.
The composer puts time and effort into creating a composition. The value of a composition derives from an audience paying for the performance of that composition, but (1) the composer may not be the performer, and (2) any audience member could be a performance or could record the performance and subsequently re-perform it (possibly for another audience). In effect any performer, or audience member with technological support, can duplicate eggs with no need for a hen, or can recreate the hen from the egg. The composer, who has created a unique and original "immortal hen", stands to gain no benefit from this creation.
Economics dictates that when the marginal cost of duplication approaches zero, the marginal value of the composition will tend towards zero, and the value of a performance will be determined only by the demand to see a particular performer playing live. The only economically sensible approach for the composer is to recover the entire compensation for his/her time and effort from the first audience, who are willing to pay for the novelty of being the first audience of a new composition.
You are ignoring the essential role of HMI in SCADA systems. A SCADA can acquire data and coordinate components without a UI, but operators cannot monitor a plant or take corrective action without an HMI.
The HMI is graphical and allows the operator to override normal operation in order to respond to abnormal situations. It needs all the input and output devices a normal workstation requires.
You are also ignoring the issue of data storage by SCADA systems, and the generation of reports on that data which are used by various business departments in real-time. A Manufacturing Execution System may provide real-time reports for sales staff so that they can give customers accurate estimates of completion/delivery dates. Orders are added to a queue and will be automatically executed by the SCADA. Stores will receive low-stock notices for just-in-time ordering. Line stops exceeding 2 hours will result in automatic escalation to the COO.
This level of automation brings huge business benefits. The business is more responsive to customer needs, and there are fewer manual steps involved in completing an order (leading to fewer mistakes, less waste, fewer unsatisfied customers). The downside is that the business network is directly connected to the MES and the SCADA in a manner that allows at least some commands to be issued (as opposed to having read-only access to a database). An air-wall is not possible.
So now you have PCs on the business network able to interact with a MES which is necessarily able to access the network with the SCADA and HMI. And there's a 100% chance that the business PCs have e-mail access, which means that somewhere there is a physical cable to the outside world.
Yeah, because they have extensive expertise in OS development and oodles of cash to throw at the problem, and as we well know the available commercial and free embedded OSes never have bugs.
The problem is that the environment is not conducive to upgrades/patches and is hard to isolate logically. The economic reality is that for any given SCADA environment the risk* inherent in regular upgrades is larger than the risk of a malicious attack (for now).
* = (likelihood of event) x (cost of event), where cost includes recovery plus the direct and opportunity costs of downtime.