Personally, I find the N900 is pretty much the first phone I don't hate. Not that it's so much a phone as a very slick ultraportable that you can make calls with.
I can mount my filesystems at home and play my mp3's over the radio transmitter. I can use it as a GPS. I can use it for pretty much anything I could use a netbook for.
As far as phone functionality goes, I'm considering not bothering and simply keeping the cheap fixed rate unlimited wireless data SIM I've got in it now and simply using skype, or perhaps even going to SIP with a PBX of my own. Meh. We'll see. (hmmm, maybe the n900 can run asterisk and _be_ a pbx...)
If I was looking for a 'phone', on the other hand, I think I'd be looking at one of the $30 ones, and certainly not at any of the current generation smart phones.
the DOJ can step in and smack them down for price fixing.
It's hard to successfully nail IP industries for price fixing as copyright itself is price fixing and the products are not exactly fungible. Even when you nail them in the short term, monopoly pricing is set as a function of the consumers disposable income, not as a function of production cost and competition. Thus the prices will always tend to rise (in nominal terms, as reductions in disposable income will be hidden with inflation in the current economic system) and are unlikely to diverge far from each other (either lower or higher prices will result in lower revenue than the optimum monopoly pricing). You'll get the effect of price fixing whether they collude or not.
Basically the only way to affect pricing is to encourage large scale private copying and distribution of the products in question, which is pretty much what passes for 'competition' in that segment of the economy.
How about a world-wide go-slow on terrorist event coverage?
Something like a reasonable requirement for death-frequency adjusted coverage as a part of 'unbiased' reporting.
Want to write one article about terrorist killings? Fine, but then you have to write a hundred about traffic death, another hundred about cancer death, etc. Perhaps if the 'terrorist threat' is assigned the importance it merits, a blurb on page 56, priorities might shift onto something that actually has a chance to affect the vast majority of people.
Patents are about getting information into the public as quickly as possible
Of course, that purpose might be much better served and without the economically damaging aspects of patents, if we just outright paid people for publishing patents. Simply require companies to register use of public 'patents' and pay the filer a useful amount if and when their 'patents' get used. Easy, no need for much litigation, all the stakeholders get an interest in a balanced system as the financing is finite, and it accommodates both 'trolls' and everyone else.
Sure they could. First mover advantage always lets you profit from your inventions, and as all invention is evolutionary it's just a question of matching the steps and investment with the inherent advantage.
Patents merely slow innovation down; when you're protected from the evolutionary pressure of competition there's less reason to improve.
Stupidity is doing the same thing you did before and expecting different results.
Not merely stupidity, but that fits some definitions of insanity.
Of course it will fail, it's fundamental economics. Fewer views for the NYT means less competition for advertising means other papers become more profitable. They're pretty much voluntarily making themselves a non-player.
The industry needs massive consolidation - like maybe 90% of the print papers folding.
Without a doubt. When there's half a dozen reporters covering a white house press conference and you can fit the press covering the olympics in a bus or two we'd be reaching levels of disturbingly low redundancy. But until then, there simply are nowhere enough readers or hours in the day to consume and carry the resources for the vast overproduction of redundant material produced today.
Any DVD or CD you have is certainly your property; copyright is simply a limitation to your property rights that denies you the right to make copies of your own property. Once the copyright on any works instantiated on your property expires, you can do whatever you wish with it. This is one of the aspects unequivocally demonstrating how 'ip' is in no way actual 'property'; once it expires it's simply a limitation on _your_ property that's gone, no transfer of actual ownership of anything happens.
So legally, they're certainly within their rights.
Of course, personally I don't regard copyright as either ethically or democratically legitimate, so go ahead and copy all you want. In fact, it could easily be considered to be your moral duty as a citizen to do anything you can to prevent revenue from reaching the likes of CBS.
Eh, no, that's just the patents proponents theory.
Developing new technology always carries an incentive in and of itself, as it (presumably) cuts costs or offers desirable features, thus spurring revenue. The fact that it'll get ripped off is irrelevant; either you do it, or someone else does it and your product won't get sold as it's always a step behind. As long as you keep release cycles short enough and matched with R&D you recoup your investment through first mover advantage.
Granting patents on top of the first mover advantage merely slows development down; if you don't have to innovate to keep ahead of the competition, then why bother? Much more comfortable to sit back and collect royalties.
That's why it doesn't make sense to have patents.
So there you have two theories. In the absence of empirical evidence, and as long as you believe free market competition is the most efficient market, mine wins on basis of least interference.
So, have any actual empirical evidence to back up the theory that we get more innovation from lack of competition? Most economic growth does not seem to be dependent on IPR enforcement, and in fact current rates around the world seem to indicate the opposite.
Because with monopoly pricing, the price isn't set in relation to the cost to produce but in relation to the consumers disposable income. You don't lower prices unless the cost of lost sales exceed the revenue lost by lower per-unit price (and sometimes not even then; costs seem to be notoriously difficult for companies to get rid of, basically only competitors undercutting them seem to get it done).
So until copyright is replaced with a system working as a competitive market, you're simply not going to see any cost savings passed along; it would be economically incompatible with the fundamental structure of monopoly rights.
Personally, I don't really mind GM foods, but I'd feel much safer if anything Monsanto touched was banned. Considering their track record of deliberate contamination and knowingly poisoning employees and residents in areas they've operated I certainly wouldn't expect them to warn anyone should they discover their products were hazardous to health. In fact, I'd expect them to try to cover it up any way they could, and attempt to silence any whistle blowers or outside researchers, and probably bribe officials to let them continue to operate if they can.
It's foolhardy to use this statistic to infer that American firms are losing ground to foreign competitors because with patents, it’s important to consider quality, as well as quantity
Ah, except the patent office isn't exactly concerned with quality. A patent is a patent, regardless of quality, and granting more of them is in the interest of anyone in the system (as the actual cost of the economic burden it imposes isn't accounted for by the granters, legislators or recipients).
While American companies continue to add patents, IFI Patent Intelligence says foreign firms are also working to win patents at a "frenetic pace," which could be considered a good thing for the U.S. economy overall.
Right. As IPR is macro-economically equivalent to taxation, that's the same thing as saying 'more taxes are a good thing for the economy overall'. As a general rule, I don't actually think that's an accepted theory within any economic branch; even the most tax friendly theories usually prefer a somewhat efficient use of the taxation burden.
"The silver lining may be that the high priority foreign firms place on U.S. patents is a confirmation of the value and importance that the U.S. market represents."
The question is why wouldn't a foreign company be interested in obtaining taxation rights to the US economy? There's nothing as lucrative as having government enforced rights to take money without doing anything.
Of course it utterly screws those paying for the system, but it certainly is nice for those who can skim the pot. Eventually it falls apart of course, as the burdens on industry and workers mean they simply cannot compete and when the ability to borrow to keep going is lost one ends up without industrial base, in deep debt and with significant legal risks to any industry trying to operate within the economy.
It's a nice sounding quip, but it's too easy to drop the last three words and have what is possibly a control issue into a business issue: "And to the extent which a CxO controls assets, is the extent to which others can't use them". The problem is what is unexpected and to what extent the CxO's actually 'expect' internal requirements, and the extent to which, when they're told the requirements, come up with solutions rather than an inane 'that's not policy'.
For most companies, being 'secure' is not their core business, and the bottom line is what matters. If security gets in the way of generating revenue, then, well, risk doesn't really matter to companies that aren't in business. Many security incidents are merely embarrassing or a nuisance and may not cause significant harm to the bottom line, and you have to weigh cost against benefit.
Some comments like 'A CxO should fire people who wilfully avoid compliance with security policy.' certainly suggest control freak rather than productive security. Did the employee bypass security policy after trying to work within it? Did the employee do it in the line of work? Did it expose the company to risk? If the policy is harming business, perhaps the problem lies not with the employee but with the CxO policies.
There's a vast difference between someone surfing pr0n on work computers and someone who, after filing his 35'th request for a website clearance in a week simply doesn't have the time any more and bypasses an obviously deficient website policy in a secure way. Defective policies that get in the way of legitimate business are counter productive and they will make people bypass them; trying to make it a power game is even more counter productive, internal turf wars and conflicts cost far more than re-evaluating policies and making them support both business and security requirements.
At my work, there are lots of things we just don't do.
It certainly sounds as if your place of employment has reasonable policies and is managing to get employees 'on board' with the program. Mine is usually fairly sane as well.
I could be messing about with any number of questionable things, but it's not worth it.
Which is the strongest indication that your employer is doing it right.
Now, my home machines, that's different.:)
Personally it's the other way around, I run much tighter security at home. But then, I have much better knowledge of expectations here...
Meh. If men had been the ones getting pregnant, we'd have had actual 'baby making machines' in the late 30's. As it is, it's not that far away.
And really, the actual baby production isn't the problem. With a reasonable premium I'd wager you could get a whole baby carrying industry going, but are you going to raise them?
So a whole lot of people do the responsible thing and don't get pets if they don't want to, or have time to, take care of them. Or kids. And that's certainly not 'the women', it applies to both men and women. It's often a joint decision not to get kids, and the man could just as well offer to dedicate his time to the raising, so the whole misogynist 'limited roles' is unfounded.
Personally I'd say the main issue is a general lack of free time, followed by space and decent circumstances in an urban lifestyle; it's not exactly conducive to wanting kids. You don't just add an extra room to your hotel capsule if you decide to get a child. I think you could take that highly reproductive rural population, stick it in a city center and watch the fertility rate drop off a cliff (roles or no roles, Japan certainly isn't very modern in that aspect).
Perhaps more radical alternatives like cutting down standard working hours to 20 hours per week (with the option of holding multiple jobs instead) might get you see significant increases in reproductive statistics. That would also solve a lot of the aged-population issue as it'd be much easier to remain at work for longer with shorter standard hours, and which incidentally also solves many social issues for elderly. But however one goes with it, ultimately, a far more balanced and distributed support burden over the lifetime is needed; nailing the theoretically most desirable reproductive segment of the population with the burdens of supporting everyone else certainly isn't going to make them want to make more people to support.
Most likely, yes. The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima killed (in the blast, and over the next decades) in the range of 5 years worth of US traffic deaths (about 50kdeaths/year), so even nuclear equipped terrorists would be a minor threat next to driving a car. For even more perspective, over the last decade, statistically as many have died in freak bathtub accidents (which nails a couple of hundred per year) as died in that plane into building thing about a decade ago.
If killing a lot of people was the point, the terrorists would be far better off ensuring a cheap supply of oil, or an expensive supply of drugs, or something. Oh, wait.
Today, the sheer inertia and scale of civilization and the vast amount of carnage and rebirth that happens every day as a matter of everyday life means that, if assigned the significance they merit, there is nothing a group of piss-ant terrorists can accomplish that makes any significant impact.
Unless they're given the leverage of media and opportunistic politicians.
Sony certainly is, if you're going by Big 5-6 movie studios, being larger than either of NBCU, Newscorp or Disney in 2008 according to wikipedia. Arguably, Sony might historically have had a stronger identity in its electronics branch, but after Howard "I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet" Stringer took over it seems to be shifting over from not being entirely competitive in the electronics market to trying to be a 'media company'. Which may not exactly be a brilliant idea these days. And with a CEO like that, they've certainly become a company I avoid handing any money to as far as far as possible.
Bad for the selling software part of business, perhaps, but good for the buying and using software part of business. Which is the vast majority of businesses. So if you want to generalize, the GPL is without a doubt great for business.
If one could feed a family
Anything that helps you cut costs makes it easier to feed a family. Profitability has two parts, not only revenue but also expenses.
Why would anyone... use a license that undermines their business?
Because it simply doesn't undermine most businesses. It undermines a few business models based completely on monopoly rights, but for most businesses software or software development is simply a cost centre. They get a higher profitability by cutting the costs and using (and/or modifying and/or producing) GPL software than they would by taking the whole cost themselves and having to increase revenue elsewhere.
Microsoft would probably have a hard time switching over to the GPL+services model as they've accumulated so much fat from living in a high-margin uncompetitive segment for so long they'd get a corporate aneurysm if they actually had to shed that fat. But Microsoft is hardly the average company in the computing industry.
Ok. It's actually a review of the book in question. And to sum up the review: Lanier feels the same way about creativity as most people do about hot dogs. You'd rather see the finished work than the million steps between. The earlier process didn't show these steps of inspiration so you could imagine things were more revolutionary than evolutionary.
You could argue that the problem is political/social
Perhaps. Or it may be that it's just a matter of evolutionary pressure; previously people may not have bothered as there have been few advantages to using highly protected communications forms, but as surveillance and tracking increases people may shift over to cryptographically protected and anonymous/pseudonymous/f2f routed networks.
If governments go on bowing to lobbyists agendas I suspect we'll see exactly that all-or-nothing shift within the next decade.
I think the minimum of what needs to happen to make a legitimate economy
Well, there are other things, such as the freedom to purchase from other producers, etc. So as long as competing providers can sell 'virtual tractors', there's no problem, competition works and the production of 'virtual tractors' is maximized for the resources spent on them.
On the other hand, if the 'virtual goods' can only be bought from one place, their price will be far beyond the free market value, and the 'real world' economy will be damaged as resources are diverted from cost-effective production into rent seeking ventures and economic output falls (for example, a competitive market would provide virtual tractors at a cost of near zero, so the consumer could have both a pizza and the virtual tractor, while the non-competitive market results in an either/or situation, eventually resulting in lower total wealth and the loss of pizza producers in exchange for artificially scarce objects).
That said, minor discrepancies and non-competitive pockets in an economy aren't a necessarily significant problem, but if and when 'virtual economies' become significant it may be necessary to apply some economic rules or 'free trade' requirements to them lest significant real-world resources be diverted towards flipping database bits in an extremely inefficient fashion. A pizza lost here and there is one thing, but if hundreds of thousands of real-world jobs become dedicated to camping bits in mmorpgs, then maybe one would have to require that the database interfaces be exported so those bits could be generated and provided by the lowest bidder (ie, without actual labour). Or that 'very easy' instances of games be provided to remove the incentive for mis-allocation.
Another factor in the trade deficit is their willingness to simply rip off Western IP
You mean, the west is willing to damage it's own economy by implementing the various privatized taxation equivalents called IP, while the Chinese economy practices a freer market, gaining the advantages of lower costs through competition. Not to mention that those IP taxation rights are more and more often held by companies in other countries anyway, which means it'll end up creating even further deficits.
The west could certainly learn something from that; decommission the various inefficient and anti-competitive IP systems and with lower costs on everything from healthcare to high-tech the western economy and western workers would be that much more competitive.
They rely on the same system to counter the effects of the system. Without the system they would not need the system.
The focus should be limited copyright terms
Limiting copyright terms is ultimately futile. As long as copyright works as an artificial scarcity it damages the economy, and as long as it's implemented as a privatized taxation for you're basically not going to get it to stick at whatever number of years you want it stuck at. The incentive to increase it will always remain among the profiting stakeholders and the parties paying for the transactions will not be represented as long as the system cost is not accounted for.
The exclusive right to control copying is what needs to be done in with. If you want to fund creators out of what is the equivalent of state funds, then just fund them out of state funds (with funding gathered out of, for example, a vat system on content carrying copies). Tie it to number of copies made or something if you want economic effects equivalent to today, altho actually recognizing it as a transfer system has more interesting possibilities (what number of years maximizes public benefits is grossly generalized), more appropriate targets would be amount of payout to author per year, perhaps capped, perhaps scaled per work for a number of years, etc, to create an incentive for maximizing productivity. That would also dissuade from the non-core activities such as marketing, lobbying, partying and distribution, as those would not, and should not be funded out of creator incentives.
If we want to get there, defending piracy
Piracy is unavoidable and well on the way to being utterly uncontrollable. Further, in light of the media lobbyists attacks on freedom and democracy denying them revenue by any means necessary has become an ethical obligation. Whether it's making sure all your friends and relatives have access to any media they could desire to prevent them from providing funds to the media lobbyists, or to provide random strangers with copies they may desire, both are socially responsible things to do in the face of efforts such as ACTA.
And really, having 'reasonable' dialogue has gotten us well on the way towards multi-century copyright where artists and creators barely get the crumbs falling off the table (and far lower part of revenue than in any other state-run transfer system). You may want to update your idea of what 'helpful' means in this case.
Eh, what exactly do you think copyright is? A tax by any other name... copyright is fundamentally a privatized taxation right on copying. From a macroeconomic perspective it's no different from any other tax and support scheme.
Or is it just that you can't easily (AKA cheaply) copy a car?
Oh, if cars were easily copyable you can bet the 'content industry' would be screaming about some form of infringement as soon as the first copy was made.
copying isn't stealing
It seems we would have irreconcilable differences on that point.
If it was some song/film/game/widget you wrote
No, not really. Personally I'll keep costs and investment low enough that it doesn't really matter, and as most creative work is such that I actually enjoy doing it, and would do it for myself either way, I cant really see why I should expect to get paid. Getting paid is something you do in exchange for a loss of value and I have not lost any value for either the time or the investments I've made.
"Pirate(d) Software"
You need to update your etymology. Pirate has changed yet again in it's meanings, just as 'tories' no longer means irish outlaws, the connotations of 'pirate' is no longer so clear cut.
it's OK to steal from a bully?
If you're giving back people their lunch money and preventing the bully from collecting more there's certainly a moral case to be argued for that, yes.
I've seen more suggestions for workable systems than I can count on my digits.
what system do you propose instead,
Personally I doubt there is any extra incentive needed at all. But I'll indulge you; if we want extra benefits for creators, personally I'm leaning towards 'creative incentive tax' structured as a VAT on any works or services derived from a specific content, payable directly to the creator. Not wholly different from how radio broadcast payments work today, but applicable in general to all protected material. Anyone can duplicate, but from any revenue derived off the duplication a percentage (not a fixed number, we're after 'competition') goes to the creator. Wal-mart wants to sell books? Fine, they can print them on demand and 50% revenue goes to the author. EMI wants to open stores? Fine, but 50% off sales goes to creator. CableCo wants to broadcast a show? Go ahead, but 50% of the segment revenue goes to the creator.
Such a system is easily tunable and you can even modify it by maxing out payment or tuning years of payment for each work to maximize incentive efficiency.
These are trivially refuted by observing that you need an Internet connection to use any of these technically clever systems
Actually, ignoring the facts of impenetrable cell networks, no, you don't need an internet connection. A 2TB disk represents a week with a 34Mbit line, and routing software making use of datastores synced anytime you meet your friends wouldn't be that hard.
You can deny them revenue by simply not using their product.
Not efficiently enough in light of the attacks on freedom and democracy.
You don't have to material under copyright illegally,
I certainly don't, but unless others can be convinced not to use that material either, they can at least be convinced not to pay for it.
But copyright also protects authors, illustrators, software developers...
All of which have proven existence with or without copyright, and many of which gets so little payment from copyright anyway that it makes little difference in practice. Copyright is demonstrably not needed to promote the creation of works.
But if you still want to pay them from the public purse, then do just that. It makes little macroeconomic difference if you call the tax 'copyright' or 'creator tax', but as long as you dump the exclusive copying aspect you're economically far ahead either way.
It also supports the numerous valuable secondary roles
All of which can do their work as works for hire. If an author wants his work edited, he can pay the editor. If he wants it advertized he can pay the advertizer. If he wants it available for download he can pay the... well, that might not exactly be necessary to pay for.
What copyright does is prevent many more valuable secondary roles; without copyright, editing would be possible for anyone. So very much media is in desperate need of serious editing (heh, star wars...) that will never happen due to copyright. So very much media could be built upon that will never happen either.
condone a harmful action
There is no harmful action in copying. It's a fundamentally good action that creates more value for the economy as a whole.
they represent a concensus of what society collectively considers acceptable behaviour.
And most studies I've seen consider sharing acceptable by a wide, wide margin. Copyright itself is not socially acceptable behaviour, and the discrepancy between law and social mores on this is becoming damaging to the respect for law itself.
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Personally, I find the N900 is pretty much the first phone I don't hate. Not that it's so much a phone as a very slick ultraportable that you can make calls with.
I can mount my filesystems at home and play my mp3's over the radio transmitter. I can use it as a GPS. I can use it for pretty much anything I could use a netbook for.
As far as phone functionality goes, I'm considering not bothering and simply keeping the cheap fixed rate unlimited wireless data SIM I've got in it now and simply using skype, or perhaps even going to SIP with a PBX of my own. Meh. We'll see. (hmmm, maybe the n900 can run asterisk and _be_ a pbx...)
If I was looking for a 'phone', on the other hand, I think I'd be looking at one of the $30 ones, and certainly not at any of the current generation smart phones.
the DOJ can step in and smack them down for price fixing.
It's hard to successfully nail IP industries for price fixing as copyright itself is price fixing and the products are not exactly fungible. Even when you nail them in the short term, monopoly pricing is set as a function of the consumers disposable income, not as a function of production cost and competition. Thus the prices will always tend to rise (in nominal terms, as reductions in disposable income will be hidden with inflation in the current economic system) and are unlikely to diverge far from each other (either lower or higher prices will result in lower revenue than the optimum monopoly pricing). You'll get the effect of price fixing whether they collude or not.
Basically the only way to affect pricing is to encourage large scale private copying and distribution of the products in question, which is pretty much what passes for 'competition' in that segment of the economy.
How about a world-wide go-slow on terrorist event coverage?
Something like a reasonable requirement for death-frequency adjusted coverage as a part of 'unbiased' reporting.
Want to write one article about terrorist killings? Fine, but then you have to write a hundred about traffic death, another hundred about cancer death, etc. Perhaps if the 'terrorist threat' is assigned the importance it merits, a blurb on page 56, priorities might shift onto something that actually has a chance to affect the vast majority of people.
Mainly because it's not worth it, people bypass the whole problem by just downloading instead.
For any serious attempt I'd expect a record and post-process approach would work fairly well, with or without key sharing.
Patents are about getting information into the public as quickly as possible
Of course, that purpose might be much better served and without the economically damaging aspects of patents, if we just outright paid people for publishing patents. Simply require companies to register use of public 'patents' and pay the filer a useful amount if and when their 'patents' get used. Easy, no need for much litigation, all the stakeholders get an interest in a balanced system as the financing is finite, and it accommodates both 'trolls' and everyone else.
nobody would make money inventing.
Sure they could. First mover advantage always lets you profit from your inventions, and as all invention is evolutionary it's just a question of matching the steps and investment with the inherent advantage.
Patents merely slow innovation down; when you're protected from the evolutionary pressure of competition there's less reason to improve.
Stupidity is doing the same thing you did before and expecting different results.
Not merely stupidity, but that fits some definitions of insanity.
Of course it will fail, it's fundamental economics. Fewer views for the NYT means less competition for advertising means other papers become more profitable. They're pretty much voluntarily making themselves a non-player.
The industry needs massive consolidation - like maybe 90% of the print papers folding.
Without a doubt. When there's half a dozen reporters covering a white house press conference and you can fit the press covering the olympics in a bus or two we'd be reaching levels of disturbingly low redundancy. But until then, there simply are nowhere enough readers or hours in the day to consume and carry the resources for the vast overproduction of redundant material produced today.
Any DVD or CD you have is certainly your property; copyright is simply a limitation to your property rights that denies you the right to make copies of your own property. Once the copyright on any works instantiated on your property expires, you can do whatever you wish with it. This is one of the aspects unequivocally demonstrating how 'ip' is in no way actual 'property'; once it expires it's simply a limitation on _your_ property that's gone, no transfer of actual ownership of anything happens.
So legally, they're certainly within their rights.
Of course, personally I don't regard copyright as either ethically or democratically legitimate, so go ahead and copy all you want. In fact, it could easily be considered to be your moral duty as a citizen to do anything you can to prevent revenue from reaching the likes of CBS.
That's why it makes sense to have patents.
Eh, no, that's just the patents proponents theory.
Developing new technology always carries an incentive in and of itself, as it (presumably) cuts costs or offers desirable features, thus spurring revenue. The fact that it'll get ripped off is irrelevant; either you do it, or someone else does it and your product won't get sold as it's always a step behind. As long as you keep release cycles short enough and matched with R&D you recoup your investment through first mover advantage.
Granting patents on top of the first mover advantage merely slows development down; if you don't have to innovate to keep ahead of the competition, then why bother? Much more comfortable to sit back and collect royalties.
That's why it doesn't make sense to have patents.
So there you have two theories. In the absence of empirical evidence, and as long as you believe free market competition is the most efficient market, mine wins on basis of least interference.
So, have any actual empirical evidence to back up the theory that we get more innovation from lack of competition? Most economic growth does not seem to be dependent on IPR enforcement, and in fact current rates around the world seem to indicate the opposite.
Because with monopoly pricing, the price isn't set in relation to the cost to produce but in relation to the consumers disposable income. You don't lower prices unless the cost of lost sales exceed the revenue lost by lower per-unit price (and sometimes not even then; costs seem to be notoriously difficult for companies to get rid of, basically only competitors undercutting them seem to get it done).
So until copyright is replaced with a system working as a competitive market, you're simply not going to see any cost savings passed along; it would be economically incompatible with the fundamental structure of monopoly rights.
that will cause even the safe GM foods to banned.
Personally, I don't really mind GM foods, but I'd feel much safer if anything Monsanto touched was banned. Considering their track record of deliberate contamination and knowingly poisoning employees and residents in areas they've operated I certainly wouldn't expect them to warn anyone should they discover their products were hazardous to health. In fact, I'd expect them to try to cover it up any way they could, and attempt to silence any whistle blowers or outside researchers, and probably bribe officials to let them continue to operate if they can.
FTA:
It's foolhardy to use this statistic to infer that American firms are losing ground to foreign competitors because with patents, it’s important to consider quality, as well as quantity
Ah, except the patent office isn't exactly concerned with quality. A patent is a patent, regardless of quality, and granting more of them is in the interest of anyone in the system (as the actual cost of the economic burden it imposes isn't accounted for by the granters, legislators or recipients).
While American companies continue to add patents, IFI Patent Intelligence says foreign firms are also working to win patents at a "frenetic pace," which could be considered a good thing for the U.S. economy overall.
Right. As IPR is macro-economically equivalent to taxation, that's the same thing as saying 'more taxes are a good thing for the economy overall'. As a general rule, I don't actually think that's an accepted theory within any economic branch; even the most tax friendly theories usually prefer a somewhat efficient use of the taxation burden.
"The silver lining may be that the high priority foreign firms place on U.S. patents is a confirmation of the value and importance that the U.S. market represents."
The question is why wouldn't a foreign company be interested in obtaining taxation rights to the US economy? There's nothing as lucrative as having government enforced rights to take money without doing anything.
Of course it utterly screws those paying for the system, but it certainly is nice for those who can skim the pot. Eventually it falls apart of course, as the burdens on industry and workers mean they simply cannot compete and when the ability to borrow to keep going is lost one ends up without industrial base, in deep debt and with significant legal risks to any industry trying to operate within the economy.
She nailed it.
It's a nice sounding quip, but it's too easy to drop the last three words and have what is possibly a control issue into a business issue: "And to the extent which a CxO controls assets, is the extent to which others can't use them". The problem is what is unexpected and to what extent the CxO's actually 'expect' internal requirements, and the extent to which, when they're told the requirements, come up with solutions rather than an inane 'that's not policy'.
For most companies, being 'secure' is not their core business, and the bottom line is what matters. If security gets in the way of generating revenue, then, well, risk doesn't really matter to companies that aren't in business. Many security incidents are merely embarrassing or a nuisance and may not cause significant harm to the bottom line, and you have to weigh cost against benefit.
Some comments like 'A CxO should fire people who wilfully avoid compliance with security policy.' certainly suggest control freak rather than productive security. Did the employee bypass security policy after trying to work within it? Did the employee do it in the line of work? Did it expose the company to risk? If the policy is harming business, perhaps the problem lies not with the employee but with the CxO policies.
There's a vast difference between someone surfing pr0n on work computers and someone who, after filing his 35'th request for a website clearance in a week simply doesn't have the time any more and bypasses an obviously deficient website policy in a secure way. Defective policies that get in the way of legitimate business are counter productive and they will make people bypass them; trying to make it a power game is even more counter productive, internal turf wars and conflicts cost far more than re-evaluating policies and making them support both business and security requirements.
At my work, there are lots of things we just don't do.
It certainly sounds as if your place of employment has reasonable policies and is managing to get employees 'on board' with the program. Mine is usually fairly sane as well.
I could be messing about with any number of questionable things, but it's not worth it.
Which is the strongest indication that your employer is doing it right.
Now, my home machines, that's different. :)
Personally it's the other way around, I run much tighter security at home. But then, I have much better knowledge of expectations here...
Meh. If men had been the ones getting pregnant, we'd have had actual 'baby making machines' in the late 30's. As it is, it's not that far away.
And really, the actual baby production isn't the problem. With a reasonable premium I'd wager you could get a whole baby carrying industry going, but are you going to raise them?
So a whole lot of people do the responsible thing and don't get pets if they don't want to, or have time to, take care of them. Or kids. And that's certainly not 'the women', it applies to both men and women. It's often a joint decision not to get kids, and the man could just as well offer to dedicate his time to the raising, so the whole misogynist 'limited roles' is unfounded.
Personally I'd say the main issue is a general lack of free time, followed by space and decent circumstances in an urban lifestyle; it's not exactly conducive to wanting kids. You don't just add an extra room to your hotel capsule if you decide to get a child. I think you could take that highly reproductive rural population, stick it in a city center and watch the fertility rate drop off a cliff (roles or no roles, Japan certainly isn't very modern in that aspect).
Perhaps more radical alternatives like cutting down standard working hours to 20 hours per week (with the option of holding multiple jobs instead) might get you see significant increases in reproductive statistics. That would also solve a lot of the aged-population issue as it'd be much easier to remain at work for longer with shorter standard hours, and which incidentally also solves many social issues for elderly. But however one goes with it, ultimately, a far more balanced and distributed support burden over the lifetime is needed; nailing the theoretically most desirable reproductive segment of the population with the burdens of supporting everyone else certainly isn't going to make them want to make more people to support.
will previous frequency data still apply?
Most likely, yes. The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima killed (in the blast, and over the next decades) in the range of 5 years worth of US traffic deaths (about 50kdeaths/year), so even nuclear equipped terrorists would be a minor threat next to driving a car. For even more perspective, over the last decade, statistically as many have died in freak bathtub accidents (which nails a couple of hundred per year) as died in that plane into building thing about a decade ago.
If killing a lot of people was the point, the terrorists would be far better off ensuring a cheap supply of oil, or an expensive supply of drugs, or something. Oh, wait.
Today, the sheer inertia and scale of civilization and the vast amount of carnage and rebirth that happens every day as a matter of everyday life means that, if assigned the significance they merit, there is nothing a group of piss-ant terrorists can accomplish that makes any significant impact.
Unless they're given the leverage of media and opportunistic politicians.
Sony certainly is, if you're going by Big 5-6 movie studios, being larger than either of NBCU, Newscorp or Disney in 2008 according to wikipedia. Arguably, Sony might historically have had a stronger identity in its electronics branch, but after Howard "I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet" Stringer took over it seems to be shifting over from not being entirely competitive in the electronics market to trying to be a 'media company'. Which may not exactly be a brilliant idea these days. And with a CEO like that, they've certainly become a company I avoid handing any money to as far as far as possible.
but it is bad for business.
Bad for the selling software part of business, perhaps, but good for the buying and using software part of business. Which is the vast majority of businesses. So if you want to generalize, the GPL is without a doubt great for business.
If one could feed a family
Anything that helps you cut costs makes it easier to feed a family. Profitability has two parts, not only revenue but also expenses.
Why would anyone ... use a license that undermines their business?
Because it simply doesn't undermine most businesses. It undermines a few business models based completely on monopoly rights, but for most businesses software or software development is simply a cost centre. They get a higher profitability by cutting the costs and using (and/or modifying and/or producing) GPL software than they would by taking the whole cost themselves and having to increase revenue elsewhere.
Microsoft would probably have a hard time switching over to the GPL+services model as they've accumulated so much fat from living in a high-margin uncompetitive segment for so long they'd get a corporate aneurysm if they actually had to shed that fat. But Microsoft is hardly the average company in the computing industry.
Ok. It's actually a review of the book in question. And to sum up the review: Lanier feels the same way about creativity as most people do about hot dogs. You'd rather see the finished work than the million steps between. The earlier process didn't show these steps of inspiration so you could imagine things were more revolutionary than evolutionary.
You could argue that the problem is political/social
Perhaps. Or it may be that it's just a matter of evolutionary pressure; previously people may not have bothered as there have been few advantages to using highly protected communications forms, but as surveillance and tracking increases people may shift over to cryptographically protected and anonymous/pseudonymous/f2f routed networks.
If governments go on bowing to lobbyists agendas I suspect we'll see exactly that all-or-nothing shift within the next decade.
I think the minimum of what needs to happen to make a legitimate economy
Well, there are other things, such as the freedom to purchase from other producers, etc. So as long as competing providers can sell 'virtual tractors', there's no problem, competition works and the production of 'virtual tractors' is maximized for the resources spent on them.
On the other hand, if the 'virtual goods' can only be bought from one place, their price will be far beyond the free market value, and the 'real world' economy will be damaged as resources are diverted from cost-effective production into rent seeking ventures and economic output falls (for example, a competitive market would provide virtual tractors at a cost of near zero, so the consumer could have both a pizza and the virtual tractor, while the non-competitive market results in an either/or situation, eventually resulting in lower total wealth and the loss of pizza producers in exchange for artificially scarce objects).
That said, minor discrepancies and non-competitive pockets in an economy aren't a necessarily significant problem, but if and when 'virtual economies' become significant it may be necessary to apply some economic rules or 'free trade' requirements to them lest significant real-world resources be diverted towards flipping database bits in an extremely inefficient fashion. A pizza lost here and there is one thing, but if hundreds of thousands of real-world jobs become dedicated to camping bits in mmorpgs, then maybe one would have to require that the database interfaces be exported so those bits could be generated and provided by the lowest bidder (ie, without actual labour). Or that 'very easy' instances of games be provided to remove the incentive for mis-allocation.
Another factor in the trade deficit is their willingness to simply rip off Western IP
You mean, the west is willing to damage it's own economy by implementing the various privatized taxation equivalents called IP, while the Chinese economy practices a freer market, gaining the advantages of lower costs through competition. Not to mention that those IP taxation rights are more and more often held by companies in other countries anyway, which means it'll end up creating even further deficits.
The west could certainly learn something from that; decommission the various inefficient and anti-competitive IP systems and with lower costs on everything from healthcare to high-tech the western economy and western workers would be that much more competitive.
Open source licenses rely on the same system
They rely on the same system to counter the effects of the system. Without the system they would not need the system.
The focus should be limited copyright terms
Limiting copyright terms is ultimately futile. As long as copyright works as an artificial scarcity it damages the economy, and as long as it's implemented as a privatized taxation for you're basically not going to get it to stick at whatever number of years you want it stuck at. The incentive to increase it will always remain among the profiting stakeholders and the parties paying for the transactions will not be represented as long as the system cost is not accounted for.
The exclusive right to control copying is what needs to be done in with. If you want to fund creators out of what is the equivalent of state funds, then just fund them out of state funds (with funding gathered out of, for example, a vat system on content carrying copies). Tie it to number of copies made or something if you want economic effects equivalent to today, altho actually recognizing it as a transfer system has more interesting possibilities (what number of years maximizes public benefits is grossly generalized), more appropriate targets would be amount of payout to author per year, perhaps capped, perhaps scaled per work for a number of years, etc, to create an incentive for maximizing productivity. That would also dissuade from the non-core activities such as marketing, lobbying, partying and distribution, as those would not, and should not be funded out of creator incentives.
If we want to get there, defending piracy
Piracy is unavoidable and well on the way to being utterly uncontrollable. Further, in light of the media lobbyists attacks on freedom and democracy denying them revenue by any means necessary has become an ethical obligation. Whether it's making sure all your friends and relatives have access to any media they could desire to prevent them from providing funds to the media lobbyists, or to provide random strangers with copies they may desire, both are socially responsible things to do in the face of efforts such as ACTA.
And really, having 'reasonable' dialogue has gotten us well on the way towards multi-century copyright where artists and creators barely get the crumbs falling off the table (and far lower part of revenue than in any other state-run transfer system). You may want to update your idea of what 'helpful' means in this case.
State support of the content industries?
Eh, what exactly do you think copyright is? A tax by any other name... copyright is fundamentally a privatized taxation right on copying. From a macroeconomic perspective it's no different from any other tax and support scheme.
Or is it just that you can't easily (AKA cheaply) copy a car?
Oh, if cars were easily copyable you can bet the 'content industry' would be screaming about some form of infringement as soon as the first copy was made.
copying isn't stealing
It seems we would have irreconcilable differences on that point.
If it was some song/film/game/widget you wrote
No, not really. Personally I'll keep costs and investment low enough that it doesn't really matter, and as most creative work is such that I actually enjoy doing it, and would do it for myself either way, I cant really see why I should expect to get paid. Getting paid is something you do in exchange for a loss of value and I have not lost any value for either the time or the investments I've made.
"Pirate(d) Software"
You need to update your etymology. Pirate has changed yet again in it's meanings, just as 'tories' no longer means irish outlaws, the connotations of 'pirate' is no longer so clear cut.
it's OK to steal from a bully?
If you're giving back people their lunch money and preventing the bully from collecting more there's certainly a moral case to be argued for that, yes.
no-one has ever managed to answer reasonably
I've seen more suggestions for workable systems than I can count on my digits.
what system do you propose instead,
Personally I doubt there is any extra incentive needed at all. But I'll indulge you; if we want extra benefits for creators, personally I'm leaning towards 'creative incentive tax' structured as a VAT on any works or services derived from a specific content, payable directly to the creator. Not wholly different from how radio broadcast payments work today, but applicable in general to all protected material. Anyone can duplicate, but from any revenue derived off the duplication a percentage (not a fixed number, we're after 'competition') goes to the creator. Wal-mart wants to sell books? Fine, they can print them on demand and 50% revenue goes to the author. EMI wants to open stores? Fine, but 50% off sales goes to creator. CableCo wants to broadcast a show? Go ahead, but 50% of the segment revenue goes to the creator.
Such a system is easily tunable and you can even modify it by maxing out payment or tuning years of payment for each work to maximize incentive efficiency.
These are trivially refuted by observing that you need an Internet connection to use any of these technically clever systems
Actually, ignoring the facts of impenetrable cell networks, no, you don't need an internet connection. A 2TB disk represents a week with a 34Mbit line, and routing software making use of datastores synced anytime you meet your friends wouldn't be that hard.
You can deny them revenue by simply not using their product.
Not efficiently enough in light of the attacks on freedom and democracy.
You don't have to material under copyright illegally,
I certainly don't, but unless others can be convinced not to use that material either, they can at least be convinced not to pay for it.
But copyright also protects authors, illustrators, software developers...
All of which have proven existence with or without copyright, and many of which gets so little payment from copyright anyway that it makes little difference in practice. Copyright is demonstrably not needed to promote the creation of works.
But if you still want to pay them from the public purse, then do just that. It makes little macroeconomic difference if you call the tax 'copyright' or 'creator tax', but as long as you dump the exclusive copying aspect you're economically far ahead either way.
It also supports the numerous valuable secondary roles
All of which can do their work as works for hire. If an author wants his work edited, he can pay the editor. If he wants it advertized he can pay the advertizer. If he wants it available for download he can pay the... well, that might not exactly be necessary to pay for.
What copyright does is prevent many more valuable secondary roles; without copyright, editing would be possible for anyone. So very much media is in desperate need of serious editing (heh, star wars...) that will never happen due to copyright. So very much media could be built upon that will never happen either.
condone a harmful action
There is no harmful action in copying. It's a fundamentally good action that creates more value for the economy as a whole.
they represent a concensus of what society collectively considers acceptable behaviour.
And most studies I've seen consider sharing acceptable by a wide, wide margin. Copyright itself is not socially acceptable behaviour, and the discrepancy between law and social mores on this is becoming damaging to the respect for law itself.