They have spent their time. It's simply that they are in one of the few occupations where their time can be shifted and split yet still be effective. Yeah, you have to do some artificial division to find out your timeslice, and it's infinitesimal amount on its own, but there's still the fact that you aren't giving your part of the aggregate.
Perhaps we should stop paying for college classes and concerts as well. A packed room takes just as much time to teach as an empty one.
You do have a good point, and one that's difficult to refute, so I guess I'll just have to disagree. I think that position, although defensible, is in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, leaving a lack of copyright that may be just as dangerous as the current overbearing copyright.
I think the recent decade or two, with Free Software and Creative Commons, has taught people that they can manage their rights, not just accepting the legal bounds as guidelines. Perhaps I've got that belief-in-market-power naivete, but I say "Patronize the ones who manage well, and damn the DRMers and lawyers."
It's the same way that there's "no loss" if I hire you for some job and fail to pay once things are done. There's no physical loss, but you'd be pissed, I'm sure.
Of course, the expended effort with music is divided and timeshifted over numerous replications, but if that weren't the case, the amount of professional work involved in quality recorded music would require either patronage or socialism to keep the trade economically viable. In past days, the musician may have been able to make a good trade by live performance only, but at the time, that was the only game in town, not competing against radio or recording as a source of musical entertainment.
Re:This sort of thing...
on
RIAA Sues a Child
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Not one more cent is going into the pockets of the industry from me.
Which would be fine, if you'd actually be willing to back up your "principles" with some actual sacrifice. Otherwise, you're just an overpriveliged whiner who's trying to rationalize grabbing something valuable without paying.
If you want to fight it, fight it, but I'd put fair money down that your exasperated tone is more a product of consistently defending and rationalizing your illegal downloading (be it theft, theft of services, infringement, whatever) than the weariness that comes from championing your cause legitimately.
It all depends on how immortal we are. If you're really immortal there's no "resources" save for space that you'd need. As long as there are enough resources to get a significant amount of these hypothetically immortal people out of the pull of gravity, we're golden. That, or you could digitize them and put them all on disk, or stack them like cordwood and jack them into the simulator. (And why do some people find the cordwood/simulator model to be so offensive? If it could be perfected, I'd go for it, depending on the controls I'd get. A world minus physical limitations? Go for it!)
If you're talking "invulnerable to aging and disease, but not to malnutrition or physical injury", yes, that could create an overpopulated nightmare.
My big caveat: If I ever get the chance to wish for immortality, remember to include the suicide option clause.
They're expensive now because they're pushing the envelope of current resources (the economy). As/if technology increases the amount of available resources, something new will be "prohibitively expensive" and that will become comparably commonplace.
Well, it's just my bullshit theory, but I'd say that the shit-shoveler is happier because he has simple, physical challenges often met and bested. The modern well-to-do life gains a sense of ennui and purposelessness because the inadequately-evolved human animal is still freaking out over needing food, shelter, and crushing competition, even if everything is better than fine. Without real challenges to stimulate and satiate the hunting urge, petty trifles fill in the space with just as much gravity.
Your "new paradigm" ideas may be good, but I doubt you'd ever see them implimented. Movies and theatres are big, giant, slow businesses, because movies and most of the process of making and screening them, are big, costly, risk-steered endeavors. There's just too much inertia.
Of course, perhaps the smaller studios might innovate some way to emulate the cineplexes, and shake the whole thing up in reverse-order.
I'd counterguess (as good of a term as any) that the problem of arthouse films isn't so much the packed schedule of the arthouse viewer, but just that that breed of critical movie watchers is far enough off the mainstream to get ignored by the mainstream. A feedback loop ensues, in that the less likely the show is to get mass attention, the less investment is given to promoting it (along with other tighter budgets). The lesser money spent in promotion means that there is less awareness of the movie, which relegates it to specialty theatres and promotion, etc.
It's the basic market-force crap filter. Of course, it's more of an evolutionary-theory definition of the term "crap filter", "crap", in this case, being properties which are less likely to promote quick and steady survival, regardless of outside definitions of positive and negative features. Survival, in the case of theatre viewership, depends a lot on the promotional ability of a film. A film that may be complex and insightful may get driven underground because it lacks the ability to excite and entice a mass audience with its 20-second teaser. With the resources involved in making and promoting a mass-market movie, the water level for "saleable" versus "non" is quite high. When the average movie can capture 45%* of both interested and uninterested general-populus, it's not enough to get "in theatres everywhere" to have, say, the 30%* share that consists of discriminating movie fans.
* Percentages were determined by the anal estimation statistical method, "SHOWN = a + b * ACTUAL", where a and b are correcting factors representing the difference between actual percentages and the numbers I just pulled out of my ass. Margin of error: +/-100%
Movies being illegally copied online have nothing at all to do with things like region encoding. Macrovision and CSS I'd support, but things like region coding are simply pocket-liners for distributors who can't stand that their product might have a resale market that's... *gasp!*... outside of their control! To paraphrase the old saying-- "With victims like these, who needs criminals?"
On that note, does anyone know if cracking region encoding has ever been brought up as a DMCA violation, and did it pass? I'm wondering if the defense that "Regions aren't copy protection, so no copy protection was circumvented" has ever been brought up.
Even with intangibles... short of genome patents, which, well, I don't know... you are patenting a specific method of obtaining a result. I may have one patented method of, say, factoring large numbers quickly, which wouldn't infringe on a completely different method to factor the same large numbers (or whatever in mathematics is amazingly difficult these days and patentworthy -- not really my area in the least).
Slashdot Mirror
They have spent their time. It's simply that they are in one of the few occupations where their time can be shifted and split yet still be effective. Yeah, you have to do some artificial division to find out your timeslice, and it's infinitesimal amount on its own, but there's still the fact that you aren't giving your part of the aggregate.
Perhaps we should stop paying for college classes and concerts as well. A packed room takes just as much time to teach as an empty one.
You do have a good point, and one that's difficult to refute, so I guess I'll just have to disagree. I think that position, although defensible, is in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, leaving a lack of copyright that may be just as dangerous as the current overbearing copyright.
I think the recent decade or two, with Free Software and Creative Commons, has taught people that they can manage their rights, not just accepting the legal bounds as guidelines. Perhaps I've got that belief-in-market-power naivete, but I say "Patronize the ones who manage well, and damn the DRMers and lawyers."
Nothing. No loss, how can it be theft?
It's the same way that there's "no loss" if I hire you for some job and fail to pay once things are done. There's no physical loss, but you'd be pissed, I'm sure.
Of course, the expended effort with music is divided and timeshifted over numerous replications, but if that weren't the case, the amount of professional work involved in quality recorded music would require either patronage or socialism to keep the trade economically viable. In past days, the musician may have been able to make a good trade by live performance only, but at the time, that was the only game in town, not competing against radio or recording as a source of musical entertainment.
Not one more cent is going into the pockets of the industry from me.
Which would be fine, if you'd actually be willing to back up your "principles" with some actual sacrifice. Otherwise, you're just an overpriveliged whiner who's trying to rationalize grabbing something valuable without paying.
If you want to fight it, fight it, but I'd put fair money down that your exasperated tone is more a product of consistently defending and rationalizing your illegal downloading (be it theft, theft of services, infringement, whatever) than the weariness that comes from championing your cause legitimately.
I hate you forever.
Not much difference between that and getting plowed by a bus.
It all depends on how immortal we are. If you're really immortal there's no "resources" save for space that you'd need. As long as there are enough resources to get a significant amount of these hypothetically immortal people out of the pull of gravity, we're golden. That, or you could digitize them and put them all on disk, or stack them like cordwood and jack them into the simulator. (And why do some people find the cordwood/simulator model to be so offensive? If it could be perfected, I'd go for it, depending on the controls I'd get. A world minus physical limitations? Go for it!)
If you're talking "invulnerable to aging and disease, but not to malnutrition or physical injury", yes, that could create an overpopulated nightmare.
My big caveat: If I ever get the chance to wish for immortality, remember to include the suicide option clause.
"Poverty is just too useful to ever become obsolete."
That's downright quotable.
They're expensive now because they're pushing the envelope of current resources (the economy). As/if technology increases the amount of available resources, something new will be "prohibitively expensive" and that will become comparably commonplace.
Well, where else can he get food? He's tilling snow!
Well, it's just my bullshit theory, but I'd say that the shit-shoveler is happier because he has simple, physical challenges often met and bested. The modern well-to-do life gains a sense of ennui and purposelessness because the inadequately-evolved human animal is still freaking out over needing food, shelter, and crushing competition, even if everything is better than fine. Without real challenges to stimulate and satiate the hunting urge, petty trifles fill in the space with just as much gravity.
Or you could... you know... remember to renew your domains after you get the first or second warning email.
Just a thought.
Uhh... do you think they'd fall for the ol' 127.0.0.1?
Your "new paradigm" ideas may be good, but I doubt you'd ever see them implimented. Movies and theatres are big, giant, slow businesses, because movies and most of the process of making and screening them, are big, costly, risk-steered endeavors. There's just too much inertia.
Of course, perhaps the smaller studios might innovate some way to emulate the cineplexes, and shake the whole thing up in reverse-order.
I'd counterguess (as good of a term as any) that the problem of arthouse films isn't so much the packed schedule of the arthouse viewer, but just that that breed of critical movie watchers is far enough off the mainstream to get ignored by the mainstream. A feedback loop ensues, in that the less likely the show is to get mass attention, the less investment is given to promoting it (along with other tighter budgets). The lesser money spent in promotion means that there is less awareness of the movie, which relegates it to specialty theatres and promotion, etc.
It's the basic market-force crap filter. Of course, it's more of an evolutionary-theory definition of the term "crap filter", "crap", in this case, being properties which are less likely to promote quick and steady survival, regardless of outside definitions of positive and negative features. Survival, in the case of theatre viewership, depends a lot on the promotional ability of a film. A film that may be complex and insightful may get driven underground because it lacks the ability to excite and entice a mass audience with its 20-second teaser. With the resources involved in making and promoting a mass-market movie, the water level for "saleable" versus "non" is quite high. When the average movie can capture 45%* of both interested and uninterested general-populus, it's not enough to get "in theatres everywhere" to have, say, the 30%* share that consists of discriminating movie fans.
* Percentages were determined by the anal estimation statistical method, "SHOWN = a + b * ACTUAL", where a and b are correcting factors representing the difference between actual percentages and the numbers I just pulled out of my ass. Margin of error: +/-100%
Movies being illegally copied online have nothing at all to do with things like region encoding. Macrovision and CSS I'd support, but things like region coding are simply pocket-liners for distributors who can't stand that their product might have a resale market that's... *gasp!*... outside of their control! To paraphrase the old saying-- "With victims like these, who needs criminals?"
On that note, does anyone know if cracking region encoding has ever been brought up as a DMCA violation, and did it pass? I'm wondering if the defense that "Regions aren't copy protection, so no copy protection was circumvented" has ever been brought up.
Yeah, but it's negative.
Then, if you eliminate irrelevant books and passages, you can get whatever you need to get done... done.
Simple solution:
Try calling Emergency Services on both teeth. Same basic outcome both ways.
Just what I want. Some idiot surreptitiously talking on the cell phone all the while he should be working.
Not really a compelling argument.
Even with intangibles... short of genome patents, which, well, I don't know... you are patenting a specific method of obtaining a result. I may have one patented method of, say, factoring large numbers quickly, which wouldn't infringe on a completely different method to factor the same large numbers (or whatever in mathematics is amazingly difficult these days and patentworthy -- not really my area in the least).
There was no implementation.
It's like trying to patent the concept of a "flying car" using nothing but a CG graphic. You file a patent on the method, not the result.
It wasn't real. It was a movie.
Or, at least, come to the realization that you aren't cut out for it, and refrain from bitching.
Rent a car.
Put giant squid in car.
Hilarity, yes, but also loss of deposit.