Well, it depends... did you intend to kill the real person? Was this chain of events an expected response? If so, you're using the robot like a tool, so it would be your "fault". If this was the expected response of your command to the robot, but you were unaware of that, you could be said to be negligently responsible. However, if this was an unpublished bug of the huggy killbot, I doubt many would consider you the one responsible.
It makes sense, though. Reactionary idiots (buy/sell) the stock because it looks like it's going to [skyrocket/tank]. Smart people do as well because they know the effect that reactionary idiots can have on the price, and that someone will be left [out in the cold/holding the bag] when the mass of idiotry drives the costs and returns [up/down]. Basically, everybody's fighting to steer the same boat, so nobody has the individual power to take it anywhere but where everyone else is pushing.
If it wasn't about wanting free songs, then there would just be a lack of interest altogether, with no songs being bought or pirated, or perhaps (given the altruistic motives some cite) the pirated songs would be taken as a protest action then discarded or disregarded. The things being traded are obviously desired, otherwise they would not be taken.
Worth can't really be determined in a skewed market where costs are set independently of the process of creation. By that logic, stolen goods are clearly worthless, since the "buyers" chose to pay nothing for them.
(For those of you about to say it, read again-- That was not a copyright=theft argument.)
Carbombing is an edge case. Think more along the lines of an improperly secured load (which is illegal in many jurisdictions) or forgoing maintenance until a catastrophic, preventable accident occurs.
Maybe it's just my skewed perspective, but I don't see how you can design with a non-standard browser in mind. Most of the documentation you'll find is written to the standard, or in the case of non-standard bugs, it's mentioned that alternate means are necessary to get around a problem. It's not like you'll find a CSS tutorial that teaches to the Whitespace Bug or the 3-Pixel Float Bug. I suppose you could make a "browser-specific" page by including things like ActiveX or XUL, but that's a conscious enough decision that you'd know the implications.
Most things, though, can be subsetted out or worked around with well-known procedures. IE-specific is often less a matter of things you can only do in IE, as a matter of not using certain notations or putting in workarounds to incorrect implementations. If anything, you end up losing functionality going from W3C to IE (so an IE to W3C transfer should lose little functionality.) I suppose there are the cases of ActiveX (which has so many alternatives as to have been a bad idea from the outset) or eye-candy like page transitions (which won't end the world should they not render.)
I'd think part of the problem is a feedback loop-- Doctors can charge more, so both the value of their services, the value of their mistakes (as a consequence of both "refund cost" and "repair cost"), as well as the apparent ability for them to compensate mistake victims go up. Furthermore, the value of human health is a very difficult thing to place a dollar amount on-- While the cost to restore health is often appraisable, the value of the healthy state itself (and the value of lost health) is rarely so. As a result of the real and apparent value of medical repair, and that being the only real metric for compensation, medical malpractice suit returns go up. As a result, doctors need to increase their prices to offset possible problems.
Then, medical insurance and the rarity of expensive procedures insulates many people from the actual costs of healthcare. That, plus the imperative nature of medical care, and the relative inability to "shop around" to negotiate on terms and costs, means that the consumer's role in cost control is greatly diminished.
So, as a result, prices can and do ratchet upward as costs increase settlements, and settlements increase costs.
If it's anything like the liquidation at my local store during the last round, it's probably not worth it. Anything of any value to anyone was barely marked down at all. The only "Up To"-rate markdowns were obscure and obsolete books, the printer ink that time forgot, and accessories for a specific model of peripheral that you don't own.
Less Web-savvy people aren't turning away, they're just going to blogs and social networking sites with pre-made templates. It's as simple as "sign up, pick a template, start typing." Sure, you don't get the control over design and visuals as much as you could before, but for most of those types of people, just having the content online is the important part of "putting something on the Web".
I'd say it depends on what you do with the knowledge once you have it. They seem to be going about it in a responsible manner-- releasing only enough relatively tame data to prove the viability of the process.
The problem is, though, by removing copyright protection against "noncommercial" infringement, you legitimize things like wholesale P2P sharing and the zero-priced competition it creates against anyone who puts out a creative work. Perhaps you are removing profit from the professionals, but the ranks of the professionals pale in contrast to the number of people who can fire up their P2P app and turn on Sharing.
Now, I could see turning down the duration and easing back protection for transformative work (things like mashups, sampling-- things that actually are a creative product beyond and outside the original creation.
Being as it is a matter of public record though that they have the technology, one has to wonder if/when some organization such as the NAACP set up for the protection of minorities might sue and file for discovery to ascertain the degree to which minorities are being discriminated against by these methods.
Get Firefox and use the User Agent Switcher extension:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Caucasian; Male;)
It's not so much about trying the music as finding the music to try. Self-promotion, without agents, means that the band has promotional skills and resources on par with countless other self-promoting bands, many of whom suck (promotion ability and musical ability are not really correlated in any way). Since no one else is gatekeeping, it would become the listener's job to plow through the crap-pile to find the gems.
Promotion avenues (record stores, radio stations, even friends) all have avenues for finding music with a level of assured quality... they aren't going to go out of their way to make their job more difficult and uncertain by stocking, listening to, or sifting through unknown bands. The amount of completely unsigned music getting any buzz at all is miniscule.
For the artist, disregarding promotion and distribution is just putting unnecessary hurdles between them and listenership. Sure, there are some bands who can jump these hurdles, promote themselves, and service customers effectively using at-hand means, but that ability doesn't rest with the majority of unsigneds by a long shot.
The "middle man" does provide a service, though. It provides a service to the artist, in that it helps to raise their work above the noise threshold of unsigned bands, and provide infrastructure and existing relationships to distribute product. It's not directly a service to you, but it has to be paid from somewhere (if that service is desired). If not from the buyer directly, then the artist would just be paying from their increased revenue.
The direct sales idea is interesting, but I don't see it working on a significant scale outside the ranks of artists who have already established themselves through traditional means. An established band doesn't need the marketing or advertising support, since they're already recognized-- the music press and the radio already knows them, the public has already heard of them and heard their music. On the other hand, some just-outta-local band has little chance, short of self-driven publicity stunts, of growing on a decent level without some sort of promotion and backing.
As for direct listener benefit, there is some: Remember mp3.com? It was pretty much useless, because anyone who could record and audio file could be listed, without any sort of quality control. It wasn't worth sifting through the crapflood to find the brilliant band sitting at #232 on the charts. Buying from a label guarantees some level of quality control, and often can be an indicator of what to expect.
Of course, we all know the horrors of the major label, and I'm not saying that's the best or the right solution, but that some sort of a label with a support structure, existing respect, and promotion needs to be there, and paying the "middlemen" is part of the price of being heard.
If you want what's fair, argue for what's fair. Pushing the extreme agendas of either the lock-it-down or the free-it-all crowds just fuels the irrational fire. By putting forth extreme and untenable solutions on either side, it makes it all that much easier for the other side to see you as someone dismissable, an unreasonable zealot.
Personally, I think the ideas behind basic copyright and IP protection are sound. The fruits of intellectual labor have none of the enforced reproduction difficulty inherent in physical labor or goods. However, lack of general interest in the effects of poor copyright legislation have allowed people with self-weighted viewpoints and interests in unfairness to sway the lawmakers, while the issue remains too complex and niche to raise a blip on voters' radars.
Things are getting better though, I think. The battle isn't turning toward reduction by any means, but the issues are becoming a bit more visible in today's world. Home publishing, computers, and the Internet mean that copyright issues are becoming tangible to more and more people. Efforts like Creative Commons are helping-- if in no other way than to make people realize that these rights are flexible, and to put the copyright debate in a more world-focused framework (as opposed to me-me-me protectionism). The recent folding of some DRM-issuing companies, and the subsequent bricking of their customers' "purchases" is making the downside of DRM clear, and consumers are becoming more savvy and realizing the value of unrestricted formats.
Your first link is beside the point, I would say. Even if P2P makes every artist it touches fabulously rich, it's still infringing on the rights of artists to not use it. Creators of content have the right to reasonably control the first-sale value, terms, and distribution of their work. It should not be the public's right to determine an artist's marketing plan, even if that artist is apparently shooting themselves in the foot. That's capitalism and respect for the individual.
You mentioned Radiohead's album as an example of how the freeloaders can be tapped for cashflow, but the few times this model has been touted as successful have been with bands that have come to the table with airplay and name recognition already (Nine Inch Nails, Prince, Harvey Danger, Radiohead). If people already know and like you enough, a certain number are guaranteed to follow you to whatever self-press, no-promotion label or payment scheme you want to try. For anyone else, the method isn't tested or sound enough to be an example of "how to do it".
And what does quality have to do with it? Just because the critics say it's crap, that doesn't disqualify something from realizing its market value.
Basically, it boils down to the fact that some people know how to use the law better than they know how to fill in the "password" box... and there are enough frightened, unknowledgable, and indifferent people to back them up. It might not be right, it might even be destructive, but unfortunately, it's the law in an increasing number of places. The people have spoken, and the people don't know how to configure their router.
Can you point me to any other job where you can do work for a few hours, and then reap income for the rest of your life?
The income method copyright allows gives artists the ability to realize the large aggregate value of a work (and recoup the large investment involved in production) by subdividing that value and offering it at a palatable price to the buyer by creating exclusive copies. If the sum total of that value is greater than other jobs, then it's simply a matter that the skills employed or the results given are of more value than those from other jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
One happy side effect is that the people who would look into that and be shied away by it... probably aren't the types you'd want to associate with.
You're multilingual?
Well, it depends... did you intend to kill the real person? Was this chain of events an expected response? If so, you're using the robot like a tool, so it would be your "fault". If this was the expected response of your command to the robot, but you were unaware of that, you could be said to be negligently responsible. However, if this was an unpublished bug of the huggy killbot, I doubt many would consider you the one responsible.
It makes sense, though. Reactionary idiots (buy/sell) the stock because it looks like it's going to [skyrocket/tank]. Smart people do as well because they know the effect that reactionary idiots can have on the price, and that someone will be left [out in the cold/holding the bag] when the mass of idiotry drives the costs and returns [up/down]. Basically, everybody's fighting to steer the same boat, so nobody has the individual power to take it anywhere but where everyone else is pushing.
If it wasn't about wanting free songs, then there would just be a lack of interest altogether, with no songs being bought or pirated, or perhaps (given the altruistic motives some cite) the pirated songs would be taken as a protest action then discarded or disregarded. The things being traded are obviously desired, otherwise they would not be taken.
Worth can't really be determined in a skewed market where costs are set independently of the process of creation. By that logic, stolen goods are clearly worthless, since the "buyers" chose to pay nothing for them.
(For those of you about to say it, read again-- That was not a copyright=theft argument.)
Carbombing is an edge case. Think more along the lines of an improperly secured load (which is illegal in many jurisdictions) or forgoing maintenance until a catastrophic, preventable accident occurs.
The Phone Losers of America? Are they still around?
Maybe it's just my skewed perspective, but I don't see how you can design with a non-standard browser in mind. Most of the documentation you'll find is written to the standard, or in the case of non-standard bugs, it's mentioned that alternate means are necessary to get around a problem. It's not like you'll find a CSS tutorial that teaches to the Whitespace Bug or the 3-Pixel Float Bug. I suppose you could make a "browser-specific" page by including things like ActiveX or XUL, but that's a conscious enough decision that you'd know the implications.
Most things, though, can be subsetted out or worked around with well-known procedures. IE-specific is often less a matter of things you can only do in IE, as a matter of not using certain notations or putting in workarounds to incorrect implementations. If anything, you end up losing functionality going from W3C to IE (so an IE to W3C transfer should lose little functionality.) I suppose there are the cases of ActiveX (which has so many alternatives as to have been a bad idea from the outset) or eye-candy like page transitions (which won't end the world should they not render.)
Simple. Red is often invisible to a barcode scanner.
I'd think part of the problem is a feedback loop-- Doctors can charge more, so both the value of their services, the value of their mistakes (as a consequence of both "refund cost" and "repair cost"), as well as the apparent ability for them to compensate mistake victims go up. Furthermore, the value of human health is a very difficult thing to place a dollar amount on-- While the cost to restore health is often appraisable, the value of the healthy state itself (and the value of lost health) is rarely so. As a result of the real and apparent value of medical repair, and that being the only real metric for compensation, medical malpractice suit returns go up. As a result, doctors need to increase their prices to offset possible problems.
Then, medical insurance and the rarity of expensive procedures insulates many people from the actual costs of healthcare. That, plus the imperative nature of medical care, and the relative inability to "shop around" to negotiate on terms and costs, means that the consumer's role in cost control is greatly diminished.
So, as a result, prices can and do ratchet upward as costs increase settlements, and settlements increase costs.
If it's anything like the liquidation at my local store during the last round, it's probably not worth it. Anything of any value to anyone was barely marked down at all. The only "Up To"-rate markdowns were obscure and obsolete books, the printer ink that time forgot, and accessories for a specific model of peripheral that you don't own.
Less Web-savvy people aren't turning away, they're just going to blogs and social networking sites with pre-made templates. It's as simple as "sign up, pick a template, start typing." Sure, you don't get the control over design and visuals as much as you could before, but for most of those types of people, just having the content online is the important part of "putting something on the Web".
If artists want to use P2P, then they have the right to open their licensing. They can even use a handy, prepackaged Creative Commons license.
I'd say it depends on what you do with the knowledge once you have it. They seem to be going about it in a responsible manner-- releasing only enough relatively tame data to prove the viability of the process.
The problem is, though, by removing copyright protection against "noncommercial" infringement, you legitimize things like wholesale P2P sharing and the zero-priced competition it creates against anyone who puts out a creative work. Perhaps you are removing profit from the professionals, but the ranks of the professionals pale in contrast to the number of people who can fire up their P2P app and turn on Sharing.
Now, I could see turning down the duration and easing back protection for transformative work (things like mashups, sampling-- things that actually are a creative product beyond and outside the original creation.
Being as it is a matter of public record though that they have the technology, one has to wonder if/when some organization such as the NAACP set up for the protection of minorities might sue and file for discovery to ascertain the degree to which minorities are being discriminated against by these methods.
Get Firefox and use the User Agent Switcher extension:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Caucasian; Male;)
It's not so much about trying the music as finding the music to try. Self-promotion, without agents, means that the band has promotional skills and resources on par with countless other self-promoting bands, many of whom suck (promotion ability and musical ability are not really correlated in any way). Since no one else is gatekeeping, it would become the listener's job to plow through the crap-pile to find the gems.
Promotion avenues (record stores, radio stations, even friends) all have avenues for finding music with a level of assured quality... they aren't going to go out of their way to make their job more difficult and uncertain by stocking, listening to, or sifting through unknown bands. The amount of completely unsigned music getting any buzz at all is miniscule.
For the artist, disregarding promotion and distribution is just putting unnecessary hurdles between them and listenership. Sure, there are some bands who can jump these hurdles, promote themselves, and service customers effectively using at-hand means, but that ability doesn't rest with the majority of unsigneds by a long shot.
The "middle man" does provide a service, though. It provides a service to the artist, in that it helps to raise their work above the noise threshold of unsigned bands, and provide infrastructure and existing relationships to distribute product. It's not directly a service to you, but it has to be paid from somewhere (if that service is desired). If not from the buyer directly, then the artist would just be paying from their increased revenue.
The direct sales idea is interesting, but I don't see it working on a significant scale outside the ranks of artists who have already established themselves through traditional means. An established band doesn't need the marketing or advertising support, since they're already recognized-- the music press and the radio already knows them, the public has already heard of them and heard their music. On the other hand, some just-outta-local band has little chance, short of self-driven publicity stunts, of growing on a decent level without some sort of promotion and backing.
As for direct listener benefit, there is some: Remember mp3.com? It was pretty much useless, because anyone who could record and audio file could be listed, without any sort of quality control. It wasn't worth sifting through the crapflood to find the brilliant band sitting at #232 on the charts. Buying from a label guarantees some level of quality control, and often can be an indicator of what to expect.
Of course, we all know the horrors of the major label, and I'm not saying that's the best or the right solution, but that some sort of a label with a support structure, existing respect, and promotion needs to be there, and paying the "middlemen" is part of the price of being heard.
If it was rights to make a cover (mechanicals), that's statutory-- there's an rate set by law, and the writer can't refuse. (USA, AFAIK, IANAL)
If you want what's fair, argue for what's fair. Pushing the extreme agendas of either the lock-it-down or the free-it-all crowds just fuels the irrational fire. By putting forth extreme and untenable solutions on either side, it makes it all that much easier for the other side to see you as someone dismissable, an unreasonable zealot.
Personally, I think the ideas behind basic copyright and IP protection are sound. The fruits of intellectual labor have none of the enforced reproduction difficulty inherent in physical labor or goods. However, lack of general interest in the effects of poor copyright legislation have allowed people with self-weighted viewpoints and interests in unfairness to sway the lawmakers, while the issue remains too complex and niche to raise a blip on voters' radars.
Things are getting better though, I think. The battle isn't turning toward reduction by any means, but the issues are becoming a bit more visible in today's world. Home publishing, computers, and the Internet mean that copyright issues are becoming tangible to more and more people. Efforts like Creative Commons are helping-- if in no other way than to make people realize that these rights are flexible, and to put the copyright debate in a more world-focused framework (as opposed to me-me-me protectionism). The recent folding of some DRM-issuing companies, and the subsequent bricking of their customers' "purchases" is making the downside of DRM clear, and consumers are becoming more savvy and realizing the value of unrestricted formats.
Your first link is beside the point, I would say. Even if P2P makes every artist it touches fabulously rich, it's still infringing on the rights of artists to not use it. Creators of content have the right to reasonably control the first-sale value, terms, and distribution of their work. It should not be the public's right to determine an artist's marketing plan, even if that artist is apparently shooting themselves in the foot. That's capitalism and respect for the individual.
You mentioned Radiohead's album as an example of how the freeloaders can be tapped for cashflow, but the few times this model has been touted as successful have been with bands that have come to the table with airplay and name recognition already (Nine Inch Nails, Prince, Harvey Danger, Radiohead). If people already know and like you enough, a certain number are guaranteed to follow you to whatever self-press, no-promotion label or payment scheme you want to try. For anyone else, the method isn't tested or sound enough to be an example of "how to do it".
And what does quality have to do with it? Just because the critics say it's crap, that doesn't disqualify something from realizing its market value.
Basically, it boils down to the fact that some people know how to use the law better than they know how to fill in the "password" box... and there are enough frightened, unknowledgable, and indifferent people to back them up. It might not be right, it might even be destructive, but unfortunately, it's the law in an increasing number of places. The people have spoken, and the people don't know how to configure their router.
Any backing principle, or just the lure of free stuff?
Can you point me to any other job where you can do work for a few hours, and then reap income for the rest of your life?
The income method copyright allows gives artists the ability to realize the large aggregate value of a work (and recoup the large investment involved in production) by subdividing that value and offering it at a palatable price to the buyer by creating exclusive copies. If the sum total of that value is greater than other jobs, then it's simply a matter that the skills employed or the results given are of more value than those from other jobs.
Okay, so it would be a naturally criminal game. I could see that.