"A more general concern is that laws can never be fixed in perpetuity. As societies and economies evolve, the details of the law, though generally not its fundamental principles, need to change. But any uncertainty about the clarity and fixity of the law adds to the risk of trade, which as I noted, is reflected in a higher real cost of capital.
We in the United States endeavored to lessen legal uncertainty by embedding our most fundamental principles in a constitution, which we made difficult to amend. The commercially and economically salient specifics are typically expressed in federal or state statutes. In general, this arrangement seems to have provided us with a healthy balance of continuity and predictability and, yet, also the requisite flexibility to respond to evolving economic and societal circumstances.
* * *
Reflecting that flexibility, the direction and the emphasis of legislative revision over the generations have mirrored the changing structure of our economy. In recent decades, for example, the fraction of the total output of our economy that is essentially conceptual rather than physical has been rising. This trend has, of necessity, shifted the emphasis in asset valuation from physical property to intellectual property and to the legal rights that inhere in the latter. Though the shift may appear glacial, its impact on legal and economic risk is only beginning to be felt.
Over the past half century, the increase in the value of raw materials has accounted for only a fraction of the overall growth of U.S. gross domestic product. The rest of that growth reflects the embodiment of ideas in products and services that consumers value. This shift of emphasis from physical materials to ideas as the core of value creation appears to have accelerated in recent decades.
Technological advance is continually altering the shape and nature of our economic processes and, in particular, is promoting the trend toward increasing conceptualization of U.S. GDP. The size of our radios, for example, has been dramatically reduced by the substitution of transistors for vacuum tubes. Thin fiber optic cable has replaced huge tonnages of copper wire. New architectural, engineering, and materials technologies have enabled the construction of buildings enclosing the same space with far less physical material than was required, say, 50 or 100 years ago. More recently, mobile phones have markedly downsized as they have improved. The movement over the decades toward production of services requiring little physical input has also been a major contributor to the dramatic rise in the ratio of constant dollars of GDP per ton of input.
This dramatic shift toward product downsizing during the past half century stems from several causes. The challenge of accumulating physical goods and moving them in an ever more crowded geographical environment has clearly resulted in cost pressures to economize on size and space. Similarly, the prospect of increasing costs of discovering, developing, and processing ever larger quantities of physical resources has shifted producers toward downsized alternatives. Remember that dire concerns about the prospects of running out of the physical resources that allegedly were necessary to support our standards of living were reflected in a report from the Club of Rome three decades ago. Another cause of product downsizing is that, as we moved the technological frontier forward and pressed for information processing to speed up, the laws of physics required the relevant microchips to become ever more compact.
More generally, in the physical world, the usual situation is that each additional unit of output is more costly to produce than the previous one; that is, production, at least eventually, is characterized by increasing marginal cost. By contrast, in the conceptual world, much of production is characterized by constant, and perhaps even zero, marginal cost.
For example, though the set up cost of creating an on-line encyclopedia may be eno
Listen to Allan Greenspan, the laws must adapt to the technology, you cannot control distribution anymore with the internet, the artists need to give up that ability.
I mean I dont see any other industry asking for this much control, I dont see car makers suing car owners for sharing their car with people, Cars have more than one seat.
When you buy a TV I dont see the TV makers getting mad saying too many people are sharing TV and saying only one person per TV.
So what right does a musician have if no other industry (not even the movie industry) can control what we do with stuff once we buy it?
They need to stop being control freaks and follow the model used currently to pay for things which are free, follow the model we use for TV, Radio, etc. That business model has worked this long,I dont see why people are making it so complicated when the model already exists.
If they wanted to profit off P2P, they'd buy Kazaa and Grokster, then they'd make money off the free P2P services via Ad Revenue, they could build a streaming technology and stream video commercials through P2P, in the same way that TV is paid for, the P2P filesharing could be paid work.
It works for TV, it works for Radio, whats their excuse? We dont pay for TV or Radio, why do they think people will pay for filesharing?
only if it were a distributed proxy, meaning everyone on the network is a proxy for someone else. The RIAA will try to shut the proxies down if its a limited number.
I dont think programmers would be happy if computers programmed themselves.
I dont think repairmen would be happy if robots repaired computers.
people who get layed off arent happy period, it doesnt matter if you got layed off because someone else took your job or because a computer did it.
The difference is this, when a computer in the USA takes your job, at least the USA is making money off of it, when your job is shipped overseas now some other country is making money off of it, no taxes are paid, no benefits to the US economy.
Robots are good for labor based jobs, robots are bad if they learn to think.
Self healing PCs, or PCs which can physically repair themselves would be a nightmare, self programming computers would basically end capitalism as we know it.
Yes I would be pissed off if my job was taken over by a robot. I dont like the new automated self healing server technology, that makes me and all my knowledge and certifications useless.
Do you think I have the time and money to not only compete with 6 billion people, but machines too?
So you need permission from the car company to give people rides? you need permission from the TV company to share TV? What about permission from the radio stations to play radio? why arent speakers outlawed in echange for headphones so you cant share sound?
If I release a car with one seat in it can i tell you that you cannot give anyone else a right?
Uhm, intangible property is a right and has been for very long time. That whole patent system thing, maybe you've heard about it.
If intangible property is going to be treated like physical property, why is it we can share cars, our tvs, chairs, swimming pools, etc without the pool company trying to rob us of our freedom and demand we use these things which we own in a certain way?
Why is TV free? Why is radio free? Why is this website free?
If I have the only car, and I control who gets to see my car, and you copy my car and let everybody see it you stole my revenue from my car (Defining revenue as some sort of trade of goods, whether it be information or money.)
So you have never given anyone a ride before? Should cars only come with one seat?
This is why it is stealing. It's not a very hard thing to understand. You are taking something that doesn't belong to you, and showing it to people who should not be allowed access to it.
When you ride in a car with someonne, you are robbing the car companies who could have sold a car to you.
Dont listen to the radio because you are stealing music, dont surf the web because its stealing html.
Information is like water not gold, theres no need to protect and hoard information as if its the most valueable substance on earth when we have so much information we have to filter through spam.
Musicians would sell their right arm for you to listen to their music, movie companies actually pay to put their ads on tv, record companies actually pay to have their music played on the radio.
First of all, its debateable right now if intangible property is a right, we havent really figured that out yet, the DMCA was not created in a democractic way.
Second, ok lets say intangible property is a right, no ones taking your intangible property when they copy it. If you own a tangible car and I take my major wand and copy that car, suddenly we both have a car. I havent taken your car, but I have your car.
This is how I can say its not stealing to simply make a unique copy of something.
Now if I made a copy and then sold it, then you can say I stole your profits, this is morally wrongn and we both agree.
If I copy however for myself and I dont sell it, I'm not taking money from you, I'm not really taking or removing anything from you, I'm simply refusing to give you control over the idea of "car".
I think it should be balanced, the creator of the car should have the exclusive right to profit from the "car", and no ones going to debate this.
However when we get to a point where our technology allows us to pull out a magic wand and create a clone or copy of the car, the person who created the car will need to keep creating new and better cars to compete with the market forces. "Theft is the unauthorized taking of anothers trade secrets and intangible property, for example."
Once again copying is not taking, its copying. When you take, you remove something from that person causing them harm. If I take your trade secret I remove your ability to profit using that trade secret. If I copy your software and then sell it for cheaper I remove your ability to profit.
However if I simply copy your software the act of copying it is not illegal because it causes no har m to you while it benefits me. The moral arguement only works when you can measure the harm caused by an action, when an action causes no harm and benefits everyone its very difficult to convince people that its morally wrong.
Its certainly not theft, even if you want it to be, it is copyright infringement only because in the current system the owners demand absolute control over distribution and use. However the users demand absolute control over distribution and use now because the users want the right to own what they pay for.
So the debate is, who controls what, and how much. People who do not respect Copyright simply want the right to distribute the software, given the current technology we have with the internet, etc etc, its against progress to "restrict" distribution, and try to control the market.
Just like trying to put taxes all over trade doesnt work, you cannot have absolute control over a product in a world where anyone and everyone can copy it, face it, information is like water or sunlight, trying to own the sun or water, its something you'll never be able to get away with in the real world.
So if you cannot get away with it in the real world why should you get away with it in the online world?
Yes people sell water, but water generally is free, anyone can get their own water. If you want clean water, or higher quality water you buy bottled water.
Information is like water, instead of trying to control the flow of it, we should learn to profit from it in a way which allows it to flow freely.
Main Entry: 2investment Function: noun Etymology: 2invest Date: 1615 : the outlay of money usually for income or profit : capital outlay; also : the sum invested or the property purchased
Transgaming is about a millionth of a percent more important to me than Mandrake. I don't purchase anything from Mandrake, either. Welcome to the free market.
Put your money where your mouth is, you dont pay for Slashdot, you dont pay for Mandrake, and you arent subscribed to Transgaming?
No, it's called a purchase in most cases. Donations are different, because you don't get anything in return. This is why I said if you can get something for your money, do it. Otherwise, don't. Do it because you are purchasing something, not because it's a doomed or successful company.
The proper term is "investment". For an English major you sure dont know the definition of the words you choose to use even if you spell them properly and/or have mastered the use of the spellcheck program in your OfficeXP ware.
Investments are money given in advance in the hopes that a company will give returns. A purchase is buying a product or license, you purchase software from Microsoft, you invest in the stock market.
if its really as low as 2500-5000, Mandrake is a dead company and I'll give my money to Transgaming.
Mandrake was at the 2500-5000 level a couple years ago when they were begginng people to join, they better be at 15k+ if they expect me to invest in them.
Why is it important? What difference does this make at all? If it's a good company, with a good product than they deserve to be helped.
If Mandrake only had 100 members theres no point in helping them, they'll go out of business no matter what you do, like BeOS.
Anybody who thinks they can get something for their buck, even if it's just piece of mind, should part with it and join the MandrakeClub. Fuck thinking if it's helping a prosperous or doomed company.
There are alot of companies which arent doomed that are just as important such as Transgaming, even Slashdot. To say Mandrake should be helped by the masses even if its a waste of our money is to think we are rich and have unlimited money. WE DONT!
This is what you call an investment, like the stock market, we invest when we expect to see returns, we dont invest as a donation.
So the only way to see how many members are in the Mandrake Club is to actually join?
Yeah right, people arent going to join unless they can see how many members have joined before them, they dont want to feel like they are wasting their money.
15,000 however is alot of members, I think if Mandrake can double that number they'd be fine. What mandrake needs is to keep a stat on their website which in realtime tells exactly how many members they have. Its important for people to know if they are helping a business which is dying, or if they are helping a business which is thriving.
Slashdot Mirror
"A more general concern is that laws can never be fixed in perpetuity. As societies and economies evolve, the details of the law, though generally not its fundamental principles, need to change. But any uncertainty about the clarity and fixity of the law adds to the risk of trade, which as I noted, is reflected in a higher real cost of capital.
We in the United States endeavored to lessen legal uncertainty by embedding our most fundamental principles in a constitution, which we made difficult to amend. The commercially and economically salient specifics are typically expressed in federal or state statutes. In general, this arrangement seems to have provided us with a healthy balance of continuity and predictability and, yet, also the requisite flexibility to respond to evolving economic and societal circumstances.
* * *
Reflecting that flexibility, the direction and the emphasis of legislative revision over the generations have mirrored the changing structure of our economy. In recent decades, for example, the fraction of the total output of our economy that is essentially conceptual rather than physical has been rising. This trend has, of necessity, shifted the emphasis in asset valuation from physical property to intellectual property and to the legal rights that inhere in the latter. Though the shift may appear glacial, its impact on legal and economic risk is only beginning to be felt.
Over the past half century, the increase in the value of raw materials has accounted for only a fraction of the overall growth of U.S. gross domestic product. The rest of that growth reflects the embodiment of ideas in products and services that consumers value. This shift of emphasis from physical materials to ideas as the core of value creation appears to have accelerated in recent decades.
Technological advance is continually altering the shape and nature of our economic processes and, in particular, is promoting the trend toward increasing conceptualization of U.S. GDP. The size of our radios, for example, has been dramatically reduced by the substitution of transistors for vacuum tubes. Thin fiber optic cable has replaced huge tonnages of copper wire. New architectural, engineering, and materials technologies have enabled the construction of buildings enclosing the same space with far less physical material than was required, say, 50 or 100 years ago. More recently, mobile phones have markedly downsized as they have improved. The movement over the decades toward production of services requiring little physical input has also been a major contributor to the dramatic rise in the ratio of constant dollars of GDP per ton of input.
This dramatic shift toward product downsizing during the past half century stems from several causes. The challenge of accumulating physical goods and moving them in an ever more crowded geographical environment has clearly resulted in cost pressures to economize on size and space. Similarly, the prospect of increasing costs of discovering, developing, and processing ever larger quantities of physical resources has shifted producers toward downsized alternatives. Remember that dire concerns about the prospects of running out of the physical resources that allegedly were necessary to support our standards of living were reflected in a report from the Club of Rome three decades ago. Another cause of product downsizing is that, as we moved the technological frontier forward and pressed for information processing to speed up, the laws of physics required the relevant microchips to become ever more compact.
More generally, in the physical world, the usual situation is that each additional unit of output is more costly to produce than the previous one; that is, production, at least eventually, is characterized by increasing marginal cost. By contrast, in the conceptual world, much of production is characterized by constant, and perhaps even zero, marginal cost.
For example, though the set up cost of creating an on-line encyclopedia may be eno
Listen to Allan Greenspan, the laws must adapt to the technology, you cannot control distribution anymore with the internet, the artists need to give up that ability.
I mean I dont see any other industry asking for this much control, I dont see car makers suing car owners for sharing their car with people, Cars have more than one seat.
When you buy a TV I dont see the TV makers getting mad saying too many people are sharing TV and saying only one person per TV.
So what right does a musician have if no other industry (not even the movie industry) can control what we do with stuff once we buy it?
They need to stop being control freaks and follow the model used currently to pay for things which are free, follow the model we use for TV, Radio, etc. That business model has worked this long,I dont see why people are making it so complicated when the model already exists.
If they wanted to profit off P2P, they'd buy Kazaa and Grokster, then they'd make money off the free P2P services via Ad Revenue, they could build a streaming technology and stream video commercials through P2P, in the same way that TV is paid for, the P2P filesharing could be paid work.
It works for TV, it works for Radio, whats their excuse? We dont pay for TV or Radio, why do they think people will pay for filesharing?
only if it were a distributed proxy, meaning everyone on the network is a proxy for someone else. The RIAA will try to shut the proxies down if its a limited number.
I dont think programmers would be happy if computers programmed themselves.
I dont think repairmen would be happy if robots repaired computers.
people who get layed off arent happy period, it doesnt matter if you got layed off because someone else took your job or because a computer did it.
The difference is this, when a computer in the USA takes your job, at least the USA is making money off of it, when your job is shipped overseas now some other country is making money off of it, no taxes are paid, no benefits to the US economy.
Robots are good for labor based jobs, robots are bad if they learn to think.
Self healing PCs, or PCs which can physically repair themselves would be a nightmare, self programming computers would basically end capitalism as we know it.
Yes I would be pissed off if my job was taken over by a robot. I dont like the new automated self healing server technology, that makes me and all my knowledge and certifications useless.
Do you think I have the time and money to not only compete with 6 billion people, but machines too?
In a few days Michael Robertson will announce Lindows Xbox Edition.
New features? The ability to completely hiijack a competitors hardware technology.
When I buy a CD its MY CD. When you buy a car its FORDS car, you are just paying for the right to drive in it.
What happen to your rights?
So you need permission from the car company to give people rides? you need permission from the TV company to share TV? What about permission from the radio stations to play radio? why arent speakers outlawed in echange for headphones so you cant share sound?
If I release a car with one seat in it can i tell you that you cannot give anyone else a right?
Uhm, intangible property is a right and has been for very long time. That whole patent system thing, maybe you've heard about it.
If intangible property is going to be treated like physical property, why is it we can share cars, our tvs, chairs, swimming pools, etc without the pool company trying to rob us of our freedom and demand we use these things which we own in a certain way?
Why is TV free? Why is radio free? Why is this website free?
If I have the only car, and I control who gets to see my car, and you copy my car and let everybody see it you stole my revenue from my car (Defining revenue as some sort of trade of goods, whether it be information or money.)
So you have never given anyone a ride before? Should cars only come with one seat?
This is why it is stealing. It's not a very hard thing to understand. You are taking something that doesn't belong to you, and showing it to people who should not be allowed access to it.
When you ride in a car with someonne, you are robbing the car companies who could have sold a car to you.
Dont listen to the radio because you are stealing music, dont surf the web because its stealing html.
Information is like water not gold, theres no need to protect and hoard information as if its the most valueable substance on earth when we have so much information we have to filter through spam.
Musicians would sell their right arm for you to listen to their music, movie companies actually pay to put their ads on tv, record companies actually pay to have their music played on the radio.
First of all, its debateable right now if intangible property is a right, we havent really figured that out yet, the DMCA was not created in a democractic way.
Second, ok lets say intangible property is a right, no ones taking your intangible property when they copy it. If you own a tangible car and I take my major wand and copy that car, suddenly we both have a car. I havent taken your car, but I have your car.
This is how I can say its not stealing to simply make a unique copy of something.
Now if I made a copy and then sold it, then you can say I stole your profits, this is morally wrongn and we both agree.
If I copy however for myself and I dont sell it, I'm not taking money from you, I'm not really taking or removing anything from you, I'm simply refusing to give you control over the idea of "car".
I think it should be balanced, the creator of the car should have the exclusive right to profit from the "car", and no ones going to debate this.
However when we get to a point where our technology allows us to pull out a magic wand and create a clone or copy of the car, the person who created the car will need to keep creating new and better cars to compete with the market forces.
"Theft is the unauthorized taking of anothers trade secrets and intangible property, for example."
Once again copying is not taking, its copying. When you take, you remove something from that person causing them harm. If I take your trade secret I remove your ability to profit using that trade secret. If I copy your software and then sell it for cheaper I remove your ability to profit.
However if I simply copy your software the act of copying it is not illegal because it causes no har m to you while it benefits me. The moral arguement only works when you can measure the harm caused by an action, when an action causes no harm and benefits everyone its very difficult to convince people that its morally wrong.
Its certainly not theft, even if you want it to be, it is copyright infringement only because in the current system the owners demand absolute control over distribution and use. However the users demand absolute control over distribution and use now because the users want the right to own what they pay for.
So the debate is, who controls what, and how much. People who do not respect Copyright simply want the right to distribute the software, given the current technology we have with the internet, etc etc, its against progress to "restrict" distribution, and try to control the market.
Just like trying to put taxes all over trade doesnt work, you cannot have absolute control over a product in a world where anyone and everyone can copy it, face it, information is like water or sunlight, trying to own the sun or water, its something you'll never be able to get away with in the real world.
So if you cannot get away with it in the real world why should you get away with it in the online world?
Yes people sell water, but water generally is free, anyone can get their own water. If you want clean water, or higher quality water you buy bottled water.
Information is like water, instead of trying to control the flow of it, we should learn to profit from it in a way which allows it to flow freely.
1 : to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as an habitual or regular practice
This means to TAKE. That means if I copy all the files on your computer then I delete your files I have "took" your files.
Copying is not "Taking" away.
Main Entry: 2investment
Function: noun
Etymology: 2invest
Date: 1615
: the outlay of money usually for income or profit : capital outlay; also : the sum invested or the property purchased
Transgaming is about a millionth of a percent more important to me than Mandrake. I don't purchase anything from Mandrake, either. Welcome to the free market.
Put your money where your mouth is, you dont pay for Slashdot, you dont pay for Mandrake, and you arent subscribed to Transgaming?
No, it's called a purchase in most cases. Donations are different, because you don't get anything in return. This is why I said if you can get something for your money, do it. Otherwise, don't. Do it because you are purchasing something, not because it's a doomed or successful company.
The proper term is "investment". For an English major you sure dont know the definition of the words you choose to use even if you spell them properly and/or have mastered the use of the spellcheck program in your OfficeXP ware.
Investments are money given in advance in the hopes that a company will give returns. A purchase is buying a product or license, you purchase software from Microsoft, you invest in the stock market.
Maybe if you made more intelligent posts, your karma wouldnt be so low. Try to make an insightful post Mr.Troll
Just like P2P users pay via the ads in those programs?
Stealing content is taking content that is available only through a subscription and giving it to other people
No thats sharing content thats under copyright, stealing content is hacking into the site, copying it and then deleting the data from their harddrive.
Get your facts straight, if you are an English major you should at least know the difference between copyright infringement and stealing.
Since its stealing, why havent you paid for Slashdot? Why arent you payinng for every site? I mean you steal all these other websites.
I'm a slashdot subscriber, are you?
if its really as low as 2500-5000, Mandrake is a dead company and I'll give my money to Transgaming.
Mandrake was at the 2500-5000 level a couple years ago when they were begginng people to join, they better be at 15k+ if they expect me to invest in them.
Why is it important? What difference does this make at all? If it's a good company, with a good product than they deserve to be helped.
If Mandrake only had 100 members theres no point in helping them, they'll go out of business no matter what you do, like BeOS.
Anybody who thinks they can get something for their buck, even if it's just piece of mind, should part with it and join the MandrakeClub. Fuck thinking if it's helping a prosperous or doomed company.
There are alot of companies which arent doomed that are just as important such as Transgaming, even Slashdot. To say Mandrake should be helped by the masses even if its a waste of our money is to think we are rich and have unlimited money. WE DONT!
This is what you call an investment, like the stock market, we invest when we expect to see returns, we dont invest as a donation.
I dont trust any company, I never said they are lying but this is a company we are talking about here. They need to provide proof.
Then you can run photoshop under Linux
LinuxToday, Slashdot and OSDN do a better job eating my donations and I consider these sites more important.
Lets not forget transgaming.
So the only way to see how many members are in the Mandrake Club is to actually join?
Yeah right, people arent going to join unless they can see how many members have joined before them, they dont want to feel like they are wasting their money.
15,000 however is alot of members, I think if Mandrake can double that number they'd be fine. What mandrake needs is to keep a stat on their website which in realtime tells exactly how many members they have. Its important for people to know if they are helping a business which is dying, or if they are helping a business which is thriving.
Why dont you post the article here so we can actually read it.