Why can't an artist (who owns copyright to their work)
Because most artists sell the copyright to their record company. Not because they want to, but because the record companies have the power to demand this. The normal rule in the US market is that the copyright reverts to the artist after thirty-five years, and then into the public domain 50 years after the artist dies.
One presumes that record companies are afraid that they will lose this level of control, if artists realize that most of them can make more money selling their wares for $0.50 a song through some clearinghouse like Magnatune or Music Rebellion. Then the record companies will only get the top.01% of talent (at best), and their margins will go down due to having less lucrative contracts with already-proven artists. Plus their main value now is the monopoly they have on distribution channels; that will go away if MP3 becomes the default format for sale.
The whole supply/demand thing kind of falls apart though when the "paperback" format is MP3. The supply instantly becomes infinite. When marginal cost of production is so close to zero, you can't accrue the entire marginal benefit to the vendor. The purchaser won't stand for it. (That is essentially what's happening today.)
Maybe the ultimately right way to model this is on bandwidth? Charge people $0.05/MB for downloading the media. If you did that, it might be cheap enough that many people would forgo storing their own copies, and the vendors would make more over time. Really cheap folks (like me) would buy some personal storage (which may end up being more expensive!). An advantage of this method is that higher quality downloads would be more profitable.
I also want to reiterate that today's CD cost structure is still more profitable (adjusted for inflation) than the price of vinyl/casettes when those were the major media for music. By the time I bought my first CD, production costs were such that it cost 1/3 as much to produce a CD as it did to produce a vinyl LP. (At the typical published US quantities, >10,000 per album.) In a sense then it's not surprising that the RIAA membership wants a new medium to have an even better margin. (Keep in mind that those margins have never gone to the artists; even during the record companies' heyday, most artists were "starving" and made the lion's share of their earnings from tours.)
If the trend does go the way this article indicates, and songs go from being ~$0.40 each (on CD) to $2.99 each, I'll simply withdraw from music purchase altogether. I have enough CDs now to listen to until I die.
You buy Windows XP workstation and you actually receive a license for every prior (non-retired) workstation product, provided you uninstall XP before you use, say, Windows 2000 workstation.
Not according to M*ft's legal brochureware. They claim that using an XP license to install w2kpro is a violation. We had to look that up at work a while ago. (IANAL, though.)
As far as I'm concerned, international trade, obscenity laws and international copyright
regulations haven't changed simply because the content is now distributed nearly instantaneously
via an electronic medium.
Not directly, but the thing that has changed is the raw number of potential international transactions, when any individual can do business with any other individual around the world. If ten years ago there were say 50,000 international copyright violation lawsuits worldwide, there could potentially be as many as 5 million brought this year. Just the change in scale of the cross-boundary traffic requires a new, more efficient protocol. Not that I have any idea what it should be.
Not exactly. The authors state that MS-DOS and now Windows offer the best buy, not necessarily the technically superior product. The factors which go into the purchasing decision include much more than "technical superiority", no matter how defined. Windows cost 10% of what Solaris cost, and requires cheaper hardware. If you get 20% of Solaris' functionality, Windows wins for most users.
[...]
If one looks at what is bundled with the OS, and what is bundled with Office, the overall price trend is still down. MS may be abusing its monopoly position with the bundling that goes on, but the case for price increases isn't as strong as it looks on the surface.
[...]
The really important question is: Is MS's monopoly permanent? The answer appears to be no.
Not exactly. The authors assert that "network effects" are a good thing in the software universe, because the consumer *does* get the "best buy" (because of "network effects" (etc)). They similarly assert that monopolies are now a Good Thing because of the result of network effects, which in my mind misses the point. While this somewhat circular logic does have some merit, it ignores the real underlying issues.
As you might expect from laissez-faire promoters, they only focus on the monetary issues (all the while applying inapplicable manufacturing metaphors to the software arena), when the real problem is stifling/usurping innovation. It may be true, as they say, that the network effects don't guarantee an irrevocable monopoly, but it certainly does give M*ft enormous leverage to maintain their dominance in the software industry in general. They also seem to ignore the cross-segment leverage (e.g. OS => office suite; "network effects" between market segments that don't benefit consumers at all) that is the core of the DOJ case. They further ignore that, as Teraflop says in his post, since the economies of scale in software "manufacturing" are enormous (h/w companies pay M*ft for the right to "make" [bundle] the OS), the consumer really isn't getting a good deal financially either, and M*ft is artifically inflating prices even now.
The "browser debate" is, in my mind, a perfect example of this: while they started in a severely disadvantageous position (i.e. totally ignorant of the 'net), they managed to gain dominance in the "browser market" by loss-leading, and by redefining the rules ("browsers are part of the operating system!") based on their existing dominant market segment. What have we, the consumers, lost in this power play? Well, the problem is that we'll never know. But if you consider that the existing market (either consumers or ISPs) could easily have borne a $15 browser, times 20 million users or more, a lot of funding could have gone to Netscape (or Opera, or whomever) to do R&D in the browser arena.
Other examples abound. The fact that the Macintosh didn't explode in 1984 was undoubtedly due to the inertia caused by an installed user base of millions of DOS-based IBM PCs in the corporate world. It took so long for that "network effect" to start being overcome that M*ft dallied until 1990 to "innovate" a competetive product. That's the most stunning one to me; if you agree that GUIs have valuable properties (which I do), then explain why the "beneficial" monopoly didn't get this great feature out to their customers for the better part of a decade.
In any case, the key is what RMS and the FSF say: that the fundamental benefit in the software arena isn't dollar cost, it is opportunity (innovation) cost. That's where the consumer is getting screwed by M*ft's predatory practices.
Anyway, now that Solaris will be "free", I predict that it will further show that price isn't a factor at all, and that network effects in the OS arena are so strong that a no-cost, industrial-strength, x86-compatible platform can't compete with M*ft's clearly inferior product.
2a) DVORAK is more efficient than QWERTY, but the cost of retraining everyone, new equipment, etc.. outweighs the benefits of switching. There is no market failure in this case either.
Right, there is no "market failure", if you assume that network effects exist and are not themselves a "market failure". The original argument that used the keyboard difference as "evidence" argued that network effects are a market failure.
While the Linux crowd (e.g. slashdot readers) will never accept non-free software per se, most companies aren't trying to sell software to hobbyists. They are trying to sell to private companies, which are for the most part perfectly willing to buy software that they can't fix themselves.
Furthermore, many people who work for private companies (such as myself) are willing to make the "sacrifice" of recommending a non-free software package to get the benefit of running Linux, instead of running a similar non-free application on a non-free operating system. Thus even the people who bitch and moan about Company X being evil or whatever will end up being potential customers in the end.
Now, in the long term, there might be a problem: once the operating system is commoditized, the next step for the OSS community may become making first-rate free versions of whatever applications are most widely used. This could turn into a problem for certain market segments. But I submit that most companies don't think in time frames anywhere near that long; in a standard five-year (or six month:) business plan, porting a non-free application to Linux and supporting it does make sense.
I'm picking up a copy of Ender's Shadow this afternoon, and now I'm/really/ looking forward to it. As an added bonus, Card is doing an appearance at the Border's downtown, so I may actually get to meet him, too.
Why haven't music companies sued all the search engines?
They are using the great American legal tactic known as "making an example out of the little guy". The heavily capitalized search engine companies have too much money for lawyers to be easy to crucify.
Mmm, yeah, "acquitted" was the word I was hunting for, not exonerated. For clarity's sake, Skövde is a city; it's the "county seat" of a region in Västergötland.
It's funny, but when I went looking for an article in Swedish about this topic the other day, I couldn't find anything. But this item implies that the case got a lot of press.
(1999-09-15 14:12) Tingsrätten [approx. "district court"] in Skövde [an administrative region in south-central Sweden] reports that the 17-year-old who had links on his home page to websites with mp3-files has been freed [exonerated?]. The motivation is that the 17-year-old hasn't distributed the mp3-files, but has only pointed them out [linked to them].
Today the decision was handed down in the noted case against a 17-year-old who linked to home pages with MP3-files [sic]. The charges were violation of copyright law via digital MP3 technology.
Even though he is now exonerated[?] of these charges, the court considers him guilty of abetting violations of copyright law. But since he isn't being charged for it, he is allowed to go free.
First case in Europe This case is about the music industry's concern about pirating musik and the case is unique -- it is the first time in Europe that an MP3-case has been taken up in Europe [sic].
It is the record companies' branch organization IFPI,nternational Federation of the Phonographic Industry, that has brought this case against the 17-year-old. The organization has pushed for daily fines, but violations of copyright law can yield up to two years in jail. IFPI has not yet indicated whether the organization will contest the decision.
The court followed lawyer Per-Olof Almer's line of reasoning. He doesn't view the accused's actions as criminal. The 17-year-old has only pointed out interested parties to others' MP3-files.
All we would do would be futzing around with configuration files and recompiling kernels...
Mmm, no. I've been using Linux [Slackware w/ 2.0.x kernel] on my desktop at work for over three years, and the only time I really "futz around" is when I install new hardware (video, NIC, etc.) and need a new driver. Last time I patched the kernel was February '97.
Compare with my counterparts who run NT, each of whom has had to reinstall their operating system anywhere from once to 6 times during the same interval. That's in addition to "futzing" with new drivers (for bug fixes), application upgrades/reinstalls, and the like. Not to mention recovering from random BSODs as often as once a week.
I'm sure Macs are fine, too, but don't think that just because you can configure a Linux system as much as you want, it means that you have to do it.
It is depressing to see that the FBI's "right" to spy on the citizenry supersedes the right to privacy. So much for that constitution/bill of rights thing.
From an international perspective, this is even more disappointing -- one gets the impression that this means the FBI will essentially be hooking these satphone ground stations into Echelon.
I just read Yahoo's privacy policy and TOS, and they're pretty clear about not releasing your private information (including e-mail address) without your explicit permission. But on the flipside, their TOS has so much legalese that says they're immune from any kind of legal action, I think you'd have a hard time getting anything out of them even if they did violate their privacy policy.
In their defense, I have had an e-mail account on Yahoo for about two years, and I've never gotten a single spam. Now on dejanews, that's another story....
It seems to me that the one in this slashdot article from January is still in the running, once you add the inevitable peripherals (esp. the power supply or battery). And that one's been operational for over a year now.
This is ridiculous. I suppose this is the same money that they're already losing to pirated copies of M*ft systems and applications.
From what little information the article gives, the premise of this study seems to be that competing versions of Windows would emerge. I would expect that the most likely outcome would be that only one Windows system would exist, either owned by the current M*ft OS group in the form of a separate company, or (in my little dream universe) as open source software.
... from
his culture he presumes to dictate what MY culture can do.
No, he is basing his argument on the precept that Americans are free to do as they please as long as they don't violate any laws. My guess is that's part of "your" culture, too.
The question is not whether we will judge another culture...
You're right. You are free to criticize and "judge" these cultures that you don't like, but not to deny them their existence. Certainly not to damn them by your perception of them. Please remember we're talking about geek and gamer cultures, not some mass-murder culture.
I want to say up front that I agree completely with your original first point. The idea of internet access as a positive right (or any kind of right) is preposterous at present. It is particularly foolish from a libertarian point of view, if that is in fact the camp that Katz is in. It might be a different story if the internet were a publicly provided infrastructure service like the interstates, or if he were talking about selectively restricting access to individuals in an educational context (which he wasn't).
On your second assertion, I disagree completely. There are two salient points here that I want to address: the relative validity of cultures in general and the meaning of the term culture in this context.
You would be right about Katz being arrogant if he were somehow excluding "your culture" by affirming another, but that's not what he is doing. He only says that "your culture" doesn't need to affirm itself by denying and denigrating other cultures. That's a sign of insecurity, not superiority. Your examples of "other bad cultures" are similarly telling. (I use the quoted phrase "your culture" to indicate mainstream American culture, with which you seem to associate yourself. I apologize if this isn't your feeling.)
In the context of this article, "culture" doesn't mean a national or even regional culture, it refers to a clique or "sub-culture" within a larger framework. The existence of such a sub-culture does not invalidate or impugn the values of the larger culture, nor does it in any way restrict of the larger culture's right to ignore this clique. This is true irrespective of the tenets of that sub-culture, as long as the actions of the sub-culture do not violate laws of the larger culture. Thus "a death-obsessed culture" for example is not "ethically illegitimate" unless you think that blindly ignoring that death exists is fundamental to the wider American culture. Which isn't to say that you can't criticize it, just don't dismiss it out of hand without actually experiencing it, or at least getting to know someone who is a part of it.
You also show yourself as a promulgator of a problem "sub-culture" when you categorize anyone mentioned in Katz's article as "death-obsessed". In my experience, goths and Doom players alike are no more obsessed with death than cheerleaders or basketball players.
It has been my experience that some "mainstream" Americans are overly dismissive of all things unfamiliar. The "sub-cultures" (from jocks to teachers to parents) criticized in this article are an ugly instance of this kind of behavior. Your implicit assertion is yet another example. An example of a similar sub-culture that is "ethically illegitimate" would be the KKK. Obviously that is an extreme case, the criteria for which neither jocks nor goths nor geeks can fulfill.
Yow, that's really too many words. Hopefully I got my ideas across to you. I think that my most salient point is the one implicit in my argument: that all people are members of more than one "culture", and that's okay. I feel that this underscores the entire problem of this whole witch-hunt mentality in the aftermath of the horrible events in Littleton.
I too want to be able to ban unsolicited e-mail, but not strongly enough to condone the idea of doing it retroactively.
It is difficult for me to support the idea that you give your "permission" after the message has been sent. That gives you (as the recipient of an e-mail, or the owner of the e-mail storage) too much power. You get to decide my fate as a trespasser after the damage has been done.
Now if there was some way of publishing your preference (i.e. a public directory entry where I could find out what flavor of spam you like [yes, this is only a dream]), that is more reasonable. Or if I sent you a message once, and you bounced it back or told me to stop bothering you, then I can see some form of `trespassing' being applicable. Otherwise existing harassment laws should be your only recourse.
In any case, this Intel thing should fall under the aegis of harassment, not trespass.
Mouse Systems has a PS/2 compatible optical mouse that's only US $30. Sure it needs the special mouse pad, but that's included. It appears that they also have one coming soon that has a `scroll wheel' with no moving parts AND a third button. I'd say that this is a much better alternative if you're looking for a mouse for the really long term.
Slashdot Mirror
How concerned should we be about nanotechnology equivalents of the software threats we see today?
I would hate to have my circulatory system held hostage for bitcoin.
What are the working hours like? Long? Flexible?
Are all your teammates also from the States?
Do you interact with the locals after hours, or do they have you in a Western Ghetto?
Do you have a career path at the company, or is this basically like an internship?
Because most artists sell the copyright to their record company. Not because they want to, but because the record companies have the power to demand this. The normal rule in the US market is that the copyright reverts to the artist after thirty-five years, and then into the public domain 50 years after the artist dies.
One presumes that record companies are afraid that they will lose this level of control, if artists realize that most of them can make more money selling their wares for $0.50 a song through some clearinghouse like Magnatune or Music Rebellion. Then the record companies will only get the top .01% of talent (at best), and their margins will go down due to having less lucrative contracts with already-proven artists. Plus their main value now is the monopoly they have on distribution channels; that will go away if MP3 becomes the default format for sale.
The whole supply/demand thing kind of falls apart though when the "paperback" format is MP3. The supply instantly becomes infinite. When marginal cost of production is so close to zero, you can't accrue the entire marginal benefit to the vendor. The purchaser won't stand for it. (That is essentially what's happening today.)
Maybe the ultimately right way to model this is on bandwidth? Charge people $0.05/MB for downloading the media. If you did that, it might be cheap enough that many people would forgo storing their own copies, and the vendors would make more over time. Really cheap folks (like me) would buy some personal storage (which may end up being more expensive!). An advantage of this method is that higher quality downloads would be more profitable.
I also want to reiterate that today's CD cost structure is still more profitable (adjusted for inflation) than the price of vinyl/casettes when those were the major media for music. By the time I bought my first CD, production costs were such that it cost 1/3 as much to produce a CD as it did to produce a vinyl LP. (At the typical published US quantities, >10,000 per album.) In a sense then it's not surprising that the RIAA membership wants a new medium to have an even better margin. (Keep in mind that those margins have never gone to the artists; even during the record companies' heyday, most artists were "starving" and made the lion's share of their earnings from tours.)
If the trend does go the way this article indicates, and songs go from being ~$0.40 each (on CD) to $2.99 each, I'll simply withdraw from music purchase altogether. I have enough CDs now to listen to until I die.
Not according to M*ft's legal brochureware. They claim that using an XP license to install w2kpro is a violation. We had to look that up at work a while ago. (IANAL, though.)
Not directly, but the thing that has changed is the raw number of potential international transactions, when any individual can do business with any other individual around the world. If ten years ago there were say 50,000 international copyright violation lawsuits worldwide, there could potentially be as many as 5 million brought this year. Just the change in scale of the cross-boundary traffic requires a new, more efficient protocol. Not that I have any idea what it should be.
--
Not exactly. The authors assert that "network effects" are a good thing in the software universe, because the consumer *does* get the "best buy" (because of "network effects" (etc)). They similarly assert that monopolies are now a Good Thing because of the result of network effects, which in my mind misses the point. While this somewhat circular logic does have some merit, it ignores the real underlying issues.
As you might expect from laissez-faire promoters, they only focus on the monetary issues (all the while applying inapplicable manufacturing metaphors to the software arena), when the real problem is stifling/usurping innovation. It may be true, as they say, that the network effects don't guarantee an irrevocable monopoly, but it certainly does give M*ft enormous leverage to maintain their dominance in the software industry in general. They also seem to ignore the cross-segment leverage (e.g. OS => office suite; "network effects" between market segments that don't benefit consumers at all) that is the core of the DOJ case. They further ignore that, as Teraflop says in his post, since the economies of scale in software "manufacturing" are enormous (h/w companies pay M*ft for the right to "make" [bundle] the OS), the consumer really isn't getting a good deal financially either, and M*ft is artifically inflating prices even now.
The "browser debate" is, in my mind, a perfect example of this: while they started in a severely disadvantageous position (i.e. totally ignorant of the 'net), they managed to gain dominance in the "browser market" by loss-leading, and by redefining the rules ("browsers are part of the operating system!") based on their existing dominant market segment. What have we, the consumers, lost in this power play? Well, the problem is that we'll never know. But if you consider that the existing market (either consumers or ISPs) could easily have borne a $15 browser, times 20 million users or more, a lot of funding could have gone to Netscape (or Opera, or whomever) to do R&D in the browser arena.
Other examples abound. The fact that the Macintosh didn't explode in 1984 was undoubtedly due to the inertia caused by an installed user base of millions of DOS-based IBM PCs in the corporate world. It took so long for that "network effect" to start being overcome that M*ft dallied until 1990 to "innovate" a competetive product. That's the most stunning one to me; if you agree that GUIs have valuable properties (which I do), then explain why the "beneficial" monopoly didn't get this great feature out to their customers for the better part of a decade.
In any case, the key is what RMS and the FSF say: that the fundamental benefit in the software arena isn't dollar cost, it is opportunity (innovation) cost. That's where the consumer is getting screwed by M*ft's predatory practices.
Anyway, now that Solaris will be "free", I predict that it will further show that price isn't a factor at all, and that network effects in the OS arena are so strong that a no-cost, industrial-strength, x86-compatible platform can't compete with M*ft's clearly inferior product.
--
--
While the Linux crowd (e.g. slashdot readers) will never accept non-free software per se, most companies aren't trying to sell software to hobbyists. They are trying to sell to private companies, which are for the most part perfectly willing to buy software that they can't fix themselves.
Furthermore, many people who work for private companies (such as myself) are willing to make the "sacrifice" of recommending a non-free software package to get the benefit of running Linux, instead of running a similar non-free application on a non-free operating system. Thus even the people who bitch and moan about Company X being evil or whatever will end up being potential customers in the end.
Now, in the long term, there might be a problem: once the operating system is commoditized, the next step for the OSS community may become making first-rate free versions of whatever applications are most widely used. This could turn into a problem for certain market segments. But I submit that most companies don't think in time frames anywhere near that long; in a standard five-year (or six month:) business plan, porting a non-free application to Linux and supporting it does make sense.
(Yes, this is *completely* off-topic.)
--
I'm picking up a copy of Ender's Shadow this afternoon, and now I'm /really/ looking forward to it. As an added bonus, Card is doing an appearance at the Border's downtown, so I may actually get to meet him, too.
It's funny, but when I went looking for an article in Swedish about this topic the other day, I couldn't find anything. But this item implies that the case got a lot of press.
(1999-09-15 14:12)
Tingsrätten [approx. "district court"] in Skövde [an administrative region in south-central Sweden] reports that the 17-year-old who had links on his home page to websites with mp3-files has been freed [exonerated?]. The motivation is that the 17-year-old hasn't distributed the mp3-files, but has only pointed them out [linked to them].
Today the decision was handed down in the noted case against a 17-year-old who linked to home pages with MP3-files [sic]. The charges were violation of copyright law via digital MP3 technology.
Even though he is now exonerated[?] of these charges, the court considers him guilty of abetting violations of copyright law. But since he isn't being charged for it, he is allowed to go free.
First case in Europe
This case is about the music industry's concern about pirating musik and the case is unique -- it is the first time in Europe that an MP3-case has been taken up in Europe [sic].
It is the record companies' branch organization IFPI,nternational Federation of the Phonographic Industry, that has brought this case against the 17-year-old. The organization has pushed for daily fines, but violations of copyright law can yield up to two years in jail. IFPI has not yet indicated whether the organization will contest the decision.
The court followed lawyer Per-Olof Almer's line of reasoning. He doesn't view the accused's actions as criminal. The 17-year-old has only pointed out interested parties to others' MP3-files.
That's a fine idea, but collision detection would be a bitch. ;-)
Compare with my counterparts who run NT, each of whom has had to reinstall their operating system anywhere from once to 6 times during the same interval. That's in addition to "futzing" with new drivers (for bug fixes), application upgrades/reinstalls, and the like. Not to mention recovering from random BSODs as often as once a week.
I'm sure Macs are fine, too, but don't think that just because you can configure a Linux system as much as you want, it means that you have to do it.
It is depressing to see that the FBI's "right" to spy on the citizenry supersedes the right to privacy. So much for that constitution/bill of rights thing.
From an international perspective, this is even more disappointing -- one gets the impression that this means the FBI will essentially be hooking these satphone ground stations into Echelon.
I just read Yahoo's privacy policy and TOS, and they're pretty clear about not releasing your private information (including e-mail address) without your explicit permission. But on the flipside, their TOS has so much legalese that says they're immune from any kind of legal action, I think you'd have a hard time getting anything out of them even if they did violate their privacy policy.
In their defense, I have had an e-mail account on Yahoo for about two years, and I've never gotten a single spam. Now on dejanews, that's another story....
It seems to me that the one in this slashdot article from January is still in the running, once you add the inevitable peripherals (esp. the power supply or battery). And that one's been operational for over a year now.
From what little information the article gives, the premise of this study seems to be that competing versions of Windows would emerge. I would expect that the most likely outcome would be that only one Windows system would exist, either owned by the current M*ft OS group in the form of a separate company, or (in my little dream universe) as open source software.
On your second assertion, I disagree completely. There are two salient points here that I want to address: the relative validity of cultures in general and the meaning of the term culture in this context.
You would be right about Katz being arrogant if he were somehow excluding "your culture" by affirming another, but that's not what he is doing. He only says that "your culture" doesn't need to affirm itself by denying and denigrating other cultures. That's a sign of insecurity, not superiority. Your examples of "other bad cultures" are similarly telling. (I use the quoted phrase "your culture" to indicate mainstream American culture, with which you seem to associate yourself. I apologize if this isn't your feeling.)
In the context of this article, "culture" doesn't mean a national or even regional culture, it refers to a clique or "sub-culture" within a larger framework. The existence of such a sub-culture does not invalidate or impugn the values of the larger culture, nor does it in any way restrict of the larger culture's right to ignore this clique. This is true irrespective of the tenets of that sub-culture, as long as the actions of the sub-culture do not violate laws of the larger culture. Thus "a death-obsessed culture" for example is not "ethically illegitimate" unless you think that blindly ignoring that death exists is fundamental to the wider American culture. Which isn't to say that you can't criticize it, just don't dismiss it out of hand without actually experiencing it, or at least getting to know someone who is a part of it.
You also show yourself as a promulgator of a problem "sub-culture" when you categorize anyone mentioned in Katz's article as "death-obsessed". In my experience, goths and Doom players alike are no more obsessed with death than cheerleaders or basketball players.
It has been my experience that some "mainstream" Americans are overly dismissive of all things unfamiliar. The "sub-cultures" (from jocks to teachers to parents) criticized in this article are an ugly instance of this kind of behavior. Your implicit assertion is yet another example. An example of a similar sub-culture that is "ethically illegitimate" would be the KKK. Obviously that is an extreme case, the criteria for which neither jocks nor goths nor geeks can fulfill.
Yow, that's really too many words. Hopefully I got my ideas across to you. I think that my most salient point is the one implicit in my argument: that all people are members of more than one "culture", and that's okay. I feel that this underscores the entire problem of this whole witch-hunt mentality in the aftermath of the horrible events in Littleton.
It is difficult for me to support the idea that you give your "permission" after the message has been sent. That gives you (as the recipient of an e-mail, or the owner of the e-mail storage) too much power. You get to decide my fate as a trespasser after the damage has been done.
Now if there was some way of publishing your preference (i.e. a public directory entry where I could find out what flavor of spam you like [yes, this is only a dream]), that is more reasonable. Or if I sent you a message once, and you bounced it back or told me to stop bothering you, then I can see some form of `trespassing' being applicable. Otherwise existing harassment laws should be your only recourse.
In any case, this Intel thing should fall under the aegis of harassment, not trespass.
Mouse Systems has a PS/2 compatible optical mouse that's only US $30. Sure it needs the special mouse pad, but that's included. It appears that they also have one coming soon that has a `scroll wheel' with no moving parts AND a third button. I'd say that this is a much better alternative if you're looking for a mouse for the really long term.