Maybe we'd see less CGI in movies, and more basic storytelling (gasp!).
Now please explain to me how to make a movie like Toy Story, Up, Ratatouille, or Wall-E (all of which in most people's opinion had great storytelling) without CGI?
There was a model for artists to make a living before copyright law existed, and there would be a model if copyright was dismantled.
And by artists you mean painters and sculptors (and a couple of composers). That model was almost entirely based on patronage from the noble class, which clearly is not going to work any more. And besides, copying a statue, painting, or book back then required almost as much skill and effort as creating it in the first place.
The modern novel, newspaper, magazine, recorded music, television, movies, and video games/software were all created post-copyright, so no, there was no model for the creators of those forms of content before copyright law existed.
Let's see. Your movie has a budget of $100,000,000? My first thought is, damn, why are you paying your crew a million bucks each? But maybe your story required 30 weeks of filming in Tokyo and you had to blow up some actual buildings or something. That's showbiz.
Since you clearly don't know much about it, why even comment on that? I liked Avatar, as did about half a billion other people who saw it. It was absurdly expensive to make, sure, but they created an entirely new way of shooting 3D movies while making it. Pixar's and Dreamworks' last half dozen movies have all cost $150M+ each. When you have to pay many hundreds of animators, modelers, artists, techs, R&D engineers, etc (yes along with the high paid voice actors), let alone the 1000's of servers required, yes, it costs a lot of money.
I personally thought Up, Wall-E, Ratatouille, How To Train Your Dragon, etc, were all worth whatever I paid to watch them, and clearly millions of others did as well. You just can't make them for $10M, and any argument that people should just make "simpler" movies is completely idiotic and solely based on a personal opinion, as clearly there is a market for these movies!
Your numbers are way off, too. The studios usually make 30-70% of the ticket price (starts high the opening week and quickly declines as incentive for the theater to run it longer). Same with DVD sales, etc.
But that's really irrelevant anyway. Without *any copyright* the studio could get 0% of the ticket sales, 0% of the DVD sales, and 0% of the downloads. Whoever shows the movie, manufactures the DVD, or hosts the download service gets to set their price and keep all of the revenue, and their is NO barrier to competition that gives the producer any advantage as soon as the content is released. So they are going to make that $100M back with ad views on a short lived website? Or, what, just cross their fingers and hope that people will, out of some as of yet unseen side of human nature, pick the $10 DVD instead of the $2 DVD just because it's "the right thing to do"? Riight...
Economically China doesn't want the competition that cheap North Korean labor combined with an already highly industrialized South Korea would bring.
Militarily if you combined the armies of North and South Korea it would be the *second* largest by active personnel behind China (clearly behind US & Russia in technology, but not by as much as you'd think as the US provides a lot of hardware). If you combine their trained (active and reserve) military personnel, it absolutely dwarfs any other military besides Russia.
That's plenty of reason for China not to want to see a unified democratic Korea...
Please explain to me how someone can make a $100M+ movie or video game and freely allow anyone to copy, show, or use it in any way they want and still make back their expenses plus a reasonable profit (as should be expected from a somewhat risky venture).
I'm all for limiting copyright to levels way below their original mandate, let alone their absurd current state. Even the range of 3-5 years max would let most works make 95%+ of their lifetime earning potential (as is their right for creating the work!) until it passes into the public domain.
But there WAS good intent in the original copyright clause of the Constitution (at which time works of art were almost entirely individually produced) - it has just been perverted beyond recognition by modern corporate interests and the Congresspeople in their pockets...
Very true. Most major tech centers (India, UK, Germany, and many other European countries) have visa requirements that are at least as strict as the US. And many of the up-and-coming tech countries (like China) pay so little compared to Western standards (unless you work for a foreign company, which isn't really relevant then) that you probably wouldn't want to move there for the job anyway.
Sorry, you did not - I was just projecting to the surprisingly common (especially considering how many make their living on software or other high tech development) opinion here that all copyrights are bad;)
Actually, the GPL goes way beyond copyrighted code. Without copyright could basically follow the BSD license - you are free to use any code you see, but you aren't required to give back what you changed...
It's trivial to find. In fact there is a whole section about it on www.senate.gov:
Executive Agreements In addition to treaties, which may not enter into force and become binding on the United States without the advice and consent of the Senate, there are other types of international agreements concluded by the executive branch and not submitted to the Senate. These are classified in the United States as executive agreements, not as treaties, a distinction that has only domestic significance. International law regards each mode of international agreement as binding, whatever its designation under domestic law. The challenge of obtaining two-thirds vote on treaties was one of the motivating forces behind the vast increase in executive agreements after World War II. In 1952, for instance, the United States signed 14 treaties and 291 executive agreements. This was a larger number of executive agreements than had been reached during the entire century of 1789 to 1889. Executive agreements continue to grow at a rapid rate.
Not only a double standard, but mixed messages and blatant hypocrisy. If you get defrauded on the Internet and it's less than about $100K, good luck getting help from the FBI about it. It's your fault, since they already TOLD you that you should have used SSL and WPA to protect your valuable data and identity...
Evidence of a residential based internet provider (signs on to Comcast, AOL, etc.)
Using Comcast or AOL email makes you a suspected terrorist? Wow, I just thought it made you a suspected grandparent...
So is this because no one with a home ISP would need to go to a cafe to use the I think the Internet? I guess FBI forgot that some people still go to cafes to get *coffee*...
I'm sure we're both getting tired of this debate - but one more question... if you don't agree with his statement, can you provide one example of a company that has a successful business model of selling a *desktop Linux distro* to *consumers*? And by successful I mean profitable and with significant potential for growth.
Mandriva is about to go bankrupt for the second time, Canonical is not profitable, Novell went down in flames and got acquired (and Attachmate is no friend of Linux, having sold a lot of IP to Microsoft), and Oracle really only cares about servers/enterprise. Red Hat is the closest one, but their Enterprise Desktop is not consumer (hence "Enterprise") and not significant anyway. Is there one out there I missed? Honestly I hope there is, let me know...
I'm ready to lock and load to get MY America back.
British tourists got deported for quoting Family Guy on Twitter. Good luck with your threatening to take up arms against the US government on a public forum!
Red Hat doesn't sell a consumer desktop OS, they gave up on that and made Fedora a separate open source project years ago. And guess what? Red Hat is public, profitable, and in the S&P 500. It all goes back to the original point, a commercial consumer desktop Linux distro is not going to be successful...
I think you are totally misunderstanding the OP and me... breaking it down, it is that simple:
1. Mandriva wants to sell a desktop version of Linux with various minor support features no one cares about. 2. People (probably you included) decide that's really not worthwhile to pay 50 euros for it, and instead download it for free. 3. Mandriva now has no revenvue to pay the developers, etc. and goes out of business. 4. As you said, developers leave to a derivative distro they work on as *volunteers* (and probably go find another, possibly unrelated job to pay the bills).
In the end, without significant value add that can't easily be copied, it's not going to work out. Net result: commercial Linux desktop venture ist kaput...
Your reply really reinforced the GP, not contradicted it.
He's right, there isn't a market for a *commercial vendor* selling a desktop Linux distro only (which was the question), because people can just copy it for free.
Your example just explains how you can not only copy the resulting distro, but the source as a new project. It's yet another reason a commercial desktop Linux vendor is doomed - any derivatives get the aggregate efforts of the original without paying for those efforts, meaning they can distribute it for less with only as much additional effort as they want to put in (down to zero in both cases if they choose). The original vendor makes no money for their "value added", and doesn't survive.
That may sound like a knock against open source projects, but it's not. It's a knock against people who naively think they can make money selling the open source software itself, rather than support, training, enterprise integration, etc that a company like Red Hat does to earn their income...
It'd be a neat trick to hit a moving object from another moving object that's being affected by turbulence while diving at an angle, and hit it with the precision of an expert marksman
Yeah, that's called "a trained military pilot". Go to about 0:45 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCqXbfGEPMI - practically obliterated, and I don't think the tank moving at 30mph would have made much difference...
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Maybe we'd see less CGI in movies, and more basic storytelling (gasp!).
Now please explain to me how to make a movie like Toy Story, Up, Ratatouille, or Wall-E (all of which in most people's opinion had great storytelling) without CGI?
There was a model for artists to make a living before copyright law existed, and there would be a model if copyright was dismantled.
And by artists you mean painters and sculptors (and a couple of composers). That model was almost entirely based on patronage from the noble class, which clearly is not going to work any more. And besides, copying a statue, painting, or book back then required almost as much skill and effort as creating it in the first place.
The modern novel, newspaper, magazine, recorded music, television, movies, and video games/software were all created post-copyright, so no, there was no model for the creators of those forms of content before copyright law existed.
Let's see. Your movie has a budget of $100,000,000? My first thought is, damn, why are you paying your crew a million bucks each? But maybe your story required 30 weeks of filming in Tokyo and you had to blow up some actual buildings or something. That's showbiz.
Since you clearly don't know much about it, why even comment on that? I liked Avatar, as did about half a billion other people who saw it. It was absurdly expensive to make, sure, but they created an entirely new way of shooting 3D movies while making it. Pixar's and Dreamworks' last half dozen movies have all cost $150M+ each. When you have to pay many hundreds of animators, modelers, artists, techs, R&D engineers, etc (yes along with the high paid voice actors), let alone the 1000's of servers required, yes, it costs a lot of money.
I personally thought Up, Wall-E, Ratatouille, How To Train Your Dragon, etc, were all worth whatever I paid to watch them, and clearly millions of others did as well. You just can't make them for $10M, and any argument that people should just make "simpler" movies is completely idiotic and solely based on a personal opinion, as clearly there is a market for these movies!
Your numbers are way off, too. The studios usually make 30-70% of the ticket price (starts high the opening week and quickly declines as incentive for the theater to run it longer). Same with DVD sales, etc.
But that's really irrelevant anyway. Without *any copyright* the studio could get 0% of the ticket sales, 0% of the DVD sales, and 0% of the downloads. Whoever shows the movie, manufactures the DVD, or hosts the download service gets to set their price and keep all of the revenue, and their is NO barrier to competition that gives the producer any advantage as soon as the content is released. So they are going to make that $100M back with ad views on a short lived website? Or, what, just cross their fingers and hope that people will, out of some as of yet unseen side of human nature, pick the $10 DVD instead of the $2 DVD just because it's "the right thing to do"? Riight...
Economically China doesn't want the competition that cheap North Korean labor combined with an already highly industrialized South Korea would bring.
Militarily if you combined the armies of North and South Korea it would be the *second* largest by active personnel behind China (clearly behind US & Russia in technology, but not by as much as you'd think as the US provides a lot of hardware). If you combine their trained (active and reserve) military personnel, it absolutely dwarfs any other military besides Russia.
That's plenty of reason for China not to want to see a unified democratic Korea...
Please explain to me how someone can make a $100M+ movie or video game and freely allow anyone to copy, show, or use it in any way they want and still make back their expenses plus a reasonable profit (as should be expected from a somewhat risky venture).
I'm all for limiting copyright to levels way below their original mandate, let alone their absurd current state. Even the range of 3-5 years max would let most works make 95%+ of their lifetime earning potential (as is their right for creating the work!) until it passes into the public domain.
But there WAS good intent in the original copyright clause of the Constitution (at which time works of art were almost entirely individually produced) - it has just been perverted beyond recognition by modern corporate interests and the Congresspeople in their pockets...
Very true. Most major tech centers (India, UK, Germany, and many other European countries) have visa requirements that are at least as strict as the US. And many of the up-and-coming tech countries (like China) pay so little compared to Western standards (unless you work for a foreign company, which isn't really relevant then) that you probably wouldn't want to move there for the job anyway.
When it becomes money for your work getting other people's work, and your share goes up several factors beyond theirs.
Welcome to all commerce, politics, business, and industry of all types for the last couple of millenia.
Sorry, you did not - I was just projecting to the surprisingly common (especially considering how many make their living on software or other high tech development) opinion here that all copyrights are bad ;)
Actually, the GPL goes way beyond copyrighted code. Without copyright could basically follow the BSD license - you are free to use any code you see, but you aren't required to give back what you changed...
Never understood why people thought getting money for your work was a bad idea...
It's trivial to find. In fact there is a whole section about it on www.senate.gov:
Executive Agreements
In addition to treaties, which may not enter into force and become binding on the United States without the advice and consent of the Senate, there are other types of international agreements concluded by the executive branch and not submitted to the Senate. These are classified in the United States as executive agreements, not as treaties, a distinction that has only domestic significance. International law regards each mode of international agreement as binding, whatever its designation under domestic law.
The challenge of obtaining two-thirds vote on treaties was one of the motivating forces behind the vast increase in executive agreements after World War II. In 1952, for instance, the United States signed 14 treaties and 291 executive agreements. This was a larger number of executive agreements than had been reached during the entire century of 1789 to 1889. Executive agreements continue to grow at a rapid rate.
Not only a double standard, but mixed messages and blatant hypocrisy. If you get defrauded on the Internet and it's less than about $100K, good luck getting help from the FBI about it. It's your fault, since they already TOLD you that you should have used SSL and WPA to protect your valuable data and identity...
Evidence of a residential based internet provider (signs on to Comcast, AOL, etc.)
Using Comcast or AOL email makes you a suspected terrorist? Wow, I just thought it made you a suspected grandparent...
So is this because no one with a home ISP would need to go to a cafe to use the I think the Internet? I guess FBI forgot that some people still go to cafes to get *coffee*...
I'm sure we're both getting tired of this debate - but one more question... if you don't agree with his statement, can you provide one example of a company that has a successful business model of selling a *desktop Linux distro* to *consumers*? And by successful I mean profitable and with significant potential for growth.
Mandriva is about to go bankrupt for the second time, Canonical is not profitable, Novell went down in flames and got acquired (and Attachmate is no friend of Linux, having sold a lot of IP to Microsoft), and Oracle really only cares about servers/enterprise. Red Hat is the closest one, but their Enterprise Desktop is not consumer (hence "Enterprise") and not significant anyway. Is there one out there I missed? Honestly I hope there is, let me know...
AC is the ultimate pussy.
I'm ready to lock and load to get MY America back.
British tourists got deported for quoting Family Guy on Twitter. Good luck with your threatening to take up arms against the US government on a public forum!
Red Hat has Fedora and RHEL
Red Hat doesn't sell a consumer desktop OS, they gave up on that and made Fedora a separate open source project years ago. And guess what? Red Hat is public, profitable, and in the S&P 500. It all goes back to the original point, a commercial consumer desktop Linux distro is not going to be successful...
Dirty minds think alike...
I think you are totally misunderstanding the OP and me... breaking it down, it is that simple:
1. Mandriva wants to sell a desktop version of Linux with various minor support features no one cares about.
2. People (probably you included) decide that's really not worthwhile to pay 50 euros for it, and instead download it for free.
3. Mandriva now has no revenvue to pay the developers, etc. and goes out of business.
4. As you said, developers leave to a derivative distro they work on as *volunteers* (and probably go find another, possibly unrelated job to pay the bills).
In the end, without significant value add that can't easily be copied, it's not going to work out. Net result: commercial Linux desktop venture ist kaput...
Good god no. It's 4 inches *long*, not wide. Caliber = diameter. From the picture it looks no more than .45 caliber (11.5mm).
If you are going to fire a 100mm shell at someone you don't need quite that pinpoint accuracy ;)
No, that's what goldaryn said ;)
Your post whooshing over the head of all of the replies must make you feel a bit like Gen. Sedgwick right now!
Your reply really reinforced the GP, not contradicted it.
He's right, there isn't a market for a *commercial vendor* selling a desktop Linux distro only (which was the question), because people can just copy it for free.
Your example just explains how you can not only copy the resulting distro, but the source as a new project. It's yet another reason a commercial desktop Linux vendor is doomed - any derivatives get the aggregate efforts of the original without paying for those efforts, meaning they can distribute it for less with only as much additional effort as they want to put in (down to zero in both cases if they choose). The original vendor makes no money for their "value added", and doesn't survive.
That may sound like a knock against open source projects, but it's not. It's a knock against people who naively think they can make money selling the open source software itself, rather than support, training, enterprise integration, etc that a company like Red Hat does to earn their income...
It'd be a neat trick to hit a moving object from another moving object that's being affected by turbulence while diving at an angle, and hit it with the precision of an expert marksman
Yeah, that's called "a trained military pilot". Go to about 0:45 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCqXbfGEPMI - practically obliterated, and I don't think the tank moving at 30mph would have made much difference...
Tell that to the A-10. One 30mm round against a modern tank is a joke. 60+ 30mm rounds hitting that tank in under a second is not...
In Soviet Russia, terminal control codes backspace you!