It is getting broken. The current actions of certain companies to use the freedom of GPL code without passing on that same freedom to recepients of that code, through the use of, for example, DRM hardware detecting and preventing modification of the code, essentially is an example of 'broken'.
Anyone vaguely familiar with the history of the FSF and RMS can recall one of the origin stories of the FSF, involving RMS recieving a buggy printer driver he wasnt allowed to fix due to its proprietary nature and closed source. Had he recieved the source, but then the printer had refused to use the updated drivers, nobody can reasonably come to any other conclusion than that DRM restrictions on the running of GPL code would be just as disallowed in GPL v2.
The changes are exactly in line with the FSF reasoning, like it or not, and a natural evolution of the GPL to cope with new issues. Anyone more concerned with the freedom of those wanting to restrict others has a perfectly good selection of BSD type licenses to use. For those deliberatly and knowingly placing code under GPL these updates come as no surprise, and are not at all unwelcome.
"the invention had to be previously publically known or disclosed."
Yes, and this is intentional. The patent system was arguably intended to encourage disclosure in a time when we had nothing like the communications infrastructure we have today and science and innovation were not as collaborative with as rapid turnover as today. Therefore, the first-to-file system actively discourages sitting on inventions for years without disclosing them, essentially forcing a publish or patent situation.
Of course, at that time, such things were matters of years or even decades, and research and innovation was far more centralized and a far smaller community, creating a situation where the system could actually provide a benefit through increasing disclosure rate and communication.
These days with the foundation of knowledge needed for furthering innovation is available anywhere where there's a computer, an internet connection and a problem, the innovations can be published anywhere from a blog in rural India to a fishing village in Norway, and idea turnover rate is in the range of hours or days, the previous 'disclosure' system has become redundant and is now hindering, rather than furthering, the evolution of ideas.
"go start a manufacturing business that produces in America"
The indirect taxation effects of US IP legislation on American workers is part of why it's too expensive to produce in the US.
"as it means we aren't getting shafted so badly anymore."
Actually, it just means the Chinese will get shafted as badly as Americans. The economic impact of intellectual property is comparable to communist-era state factories; one protected business form has just been replaced with another, both are more or less equivalent drains of inefficiency on the economy as a whole.
Protect companies from competition and they will quickly cease to be competetive.
And please. Dont kid yourself that the actual production of intellectual monopoly material wont be moved to lower cost countries. At which point the US will really get screwed every way and backwards, unless the US politicians imagine they'll be able to extricate themselves from the IP nightmare they've built at that point.
Yes. The citizens needs to kick them both out, scrap all first-past-post systems and get proportional representation.
Any two party system is one party away from a dictatorship.
Heck, the current US senates leading party has the direct support of no more than 17% of eligible voters. Ex-dictator parties in recently democratic states often get support in those ranges.
Proportional representation has its problems, but at least the ruling coalitions tend to represent a far higher percentage of the voter base. And it's a lot harder to buy half a dozen parties than it is to buy two.
The actual problem is fundamentally tied to the monopoly control aspects of intellectual property. There were numerous solutions accomplishing the same thing before iTunes, but as the RIAA corps wanted to keep control, they weren't acceptable to them.
Amazing how the DOJ has the gall to point to this issue as an example of regulation hindering innovation; strict IP legislation has already held innovation in the field back for the last decade, and the US has been a prime example.
Imagine the applications possible without monopoly based IP... you could have a vast library with all human culture available at the touch of a button. You could navigate through genres, performers, creators, country and culture of origin, you could mix and create and derive and enrich the culture to your hearts content. (Oh, and without the money drains of the RIAA/MPAA corps, we could pay even more creative talent for the same resources we spend today).
There is no inherent need for the copyright incentive to be possible to sign away, any more than social security or any other transfer system can be.
It would be perfectly possible to remove the exclusive aspect of copyright, allow the record companies to publish whatever they want to their hearts desire and simply levy a tax off their sales, giving the artists 50-80% of the proceedings, effectively bypassing the entire contract aspect and ensuring most of the money the consumers spend on such material actually goes to the production of more such material, rather than marketing and lawsuits.
CDs and music in general are subject to monopoly rights, and thus have no actual competition. Prices on them will rise to absorb any economic elbow room available, and even worse, the cost structure will adjust to the revenue, essentially negating the entire purpose of a free market economy.
Memory on the other hand is interchangable with other memory, thus subject to a much more fierce competition, which drives prices down.
"Not if you appreciate the higher resolution video."
Considering the limits of human visual acuity is in the range of 0.5-1 mm at 1 meters distance, which is in the same range as ordinary dvd on a 32 inch tv at a meters distance, the actual ability to appreciate the higher resolution video is strictly limited to people standing very close to very large screens. And people with cybernetic eye upgrades.
Test it yourself, create a checkerboard dithered image of black and white pixels in the 1mm range on your monitor, move away from it, and see how far away you get before it basically turns grey. And that's with a high-contrast still picture.
"(Some people do.)"
Yes. Well. Considering the survey a year or two ago where almost all consumers with HD sets really enjoyed the higher resolution, despite not even half of them actually having tuned to the HD channels, I'm not sure actual HD is necessary for the appreciation.
Even worse, the best kinds of inventions can easily have a negative economic impact as measured by GDP, as they often simplify or make production of things more efficient, thus resulting in fewer jobs and lowering prices on those goods. Take a look at something like Linux, consider the implications and impact on the measured economy, and notice the jarring discrepancy between the measurement and the actual increase in (unmeasured) wealth.
Of course, that only further points out the absurdity and failure of current GDP calculations, and the failure of intellectual 'property' system as incentive to account for and support the most economically beneficial innovations.
The articles may have a price for the first user, but as copyright has lapsed on them since long, either google or wikipedia or someone else can easily create a 'republish' plugin automatically posting such content to a collaborative site.
"The online currency is as scarce as the online makes wish it to be"
And they make no guarantees that they will keep it at a particular level, so there you go. With real currencies you tend to have some guarantee of stability enforced through the central banks monetary policy.
"Same with goverment mandated monopolies, patents, regulations, etc."
Dont get me started on those... the 'real' economy is by no means free from other imaginary value or labyrinthine scams.
"But well, you can buy anything in the game (or "world")"
Whose scarcity is just as fictional and can alter in value (as in time needed to obtain the particular good) instantly. The actual 'cost' and scarcity limit of producing the goods in question is a database update; the hoops needed to jump through to obtain the good are artificial, and without a free market creating the product at cost there is no fundamental capital needed to produce the good.
"Do you trust the coin in the virtual world to be stable"
"You can't trade goods from one world to another."
Essentially the same state as with the monopoly game. The hotels, houses and monopoly money are no more or less real than the MMORPG versions. The scale just makes the illusion more compelling.
And coincidentally, also pretty much the reason why you should be very careful with investing in the currency of countries lacking trade and monetary guarantees.
"they make GOOD experiments though"
Without a doubt. While buying 'property' in virtal worlds may less sane than investing in Soviet rubles a few decades ago, that doesnt really detract from their value as economic simulations.
I dont get the desire to treat wireless networks like an extension of the local wired ones. Treat the wireless like you treat any other insecure transport network; ie, firewalled away and with inwards access granted only via VPN tunnels, and you dont have to care about which wireless encryption gets broken by whom and who tries to spoof what.
As IP licensing fees are pretty much comparable to actual outright taxes on the economy, it's time to get them reported as such and accounted for, just like VAT or any other product tax.
Once the actual cost of the IP systems is accounted for in state budgets instead of hidden away, it would be far easier to get a rational discussion about the cost and benefits of the systems.
"Except these online currencies end up being worth real money, do they not?"
No. There is no actual scarcity and no central bank backing the currency, nor any financial controls. The same applies to any items and other 'valuables' in those games; any particular scarcity of any particular item is purely artificial and can be instantly changed at the whim of the company (or any less than honest admin or someone exploiting the game).
The lack of scarcity based value of course doesnt mean you cant pay to avoid actually playing the game (altho anyone actually paying to not play the game should seriously consider not playing the game for free and doing something else instead).
"So it could, arguably, be more like stealing the chips from a poker game."
Casinos back the chips. Most MMORPG's do not back their currencies.
Unfortunately, the medical profession hasnt gotten that far at non-human eye upgrades.
Human eyes just simply arent very good at appreciating high resolutions on moving pictures. The highest resolution is only available for a few degrees in the middle, and even at best it can barely resolve a bit better than the millimeter range at a meters distance. Try it out, make a chessboard dithered black/white field of one mm pixels on your monitor, and sit a meter from it. Personally, I can see that it's actually pixels for about an inch in the middle, and the rest simply turns grey (interestingly enough, moving away slowly, the pixelization remains for a few seconds before the brain 'forgets' that it was all pixels and just fills in with grey).
So, yes, you can easily tell the difference between HD and SD on a still picture if you're standing up close to a large TV. But on a 32 inch TV, even 720 pixels wide approaches the limits of human visual acuity at a meters distance. Move away to the usual distance people are sitting at, unpause the picture, and you need to be Superman to appreciate HD.
Or, well, maybe not. I recall reading about some HD research that had gone through consumer satisfaction and most really appreciated the much better picture. Of course, not even half of them had actually tuned to the HD channels, so...
"Representational multiparty systems are much more prone to political extremism"
Common claim, but easily disproven. Extremist parties do not gain more power than they are given in the parliament; the majority can always vote down any extremist ideas. Usually coalitions form between the non-extremist parties in such cases, or the governing party works on a jumping majority instead.
"As such, it tends to pull the parties toward the political center,"
On which issue? There isnt 'a' political center, there are _many_ political centers. Take a look at the US party system; the parties themselves support many extremist views on many issues. There are many economy republicans who'd vote for a non-religious non-interventionist political agenda, but as it is they're offered no choice and have to take the extremist view on certain issues to get their agenda on the economy. In a proportional system, parties tend to divide themselves over the various axis and offer palatable choices for most people, eventually resulting in a representative majority on more issues.
"The US, close to a dictatorship?"
In a one party system you can vote for one policy. In a two party system you get two. That's not a lot of choice.
And yes, primaries are better than nothing, but not that much different from party-internal elective systems in PR democracies. And as party hierarchies tend to become rigid and party policy enforced, internal elections are no substitute for the higher independence of separate affiliation.
'No one is arguing "that it's unnecessary to protect the works of content creators."'
Actually, there are a whole bunch of us who do. Monopoly protection is inherently damaging to the economy, hinders the creation of wealth, art and knowledge, and slows down the progress of the arts and science.
That's an entirely separate issue from the possible usefulness and desireability of creating further economic incentives for content creation beyond what the free market can provide; it simply means that with efficiency levels at fractions of spent resources, it's become obvious that a monopoly is among the absolutely worst ways to create an economic incentive for a particular activity. We'd get more value for the actual money spent (as in creators supported per dollar cost to the economy) if we simply paid for the production outright with such a bad economic construct as taxes, and without all those negative effects.
"and make it cheap enough that no one cares."
With monopoly rights that's not going to work. Revenue maximization for a monopoly simply isnt created that way; when you have no competition, you raise prices until a certain number of consumers simply must do without, at which point you have the highest revenue. As piracy is more or less the only competition, that means the less piracy the higher the price you can set, which creates the imperative to prevent piracy while maintaining the goal of raising price.
The whole issue is a natural result of monopoly rights; no matter how much we wish it wouldnt be an issue, that the industry would lower prices to solve their sales problems, that the artists and composers would get paid more, etc, it simply isnt going to happen as long as the incentive remains a monopoly right. The economic incentive _is_ to raise prices, pay the artists and composers as little as possible, maintain control of channels, limit consumer choice, etc.
As the problem is inherent to the construct, it simply isnt possible to resolve within the current framework.
Which is why I will restate; it is _necessary_ that we stop protecting IP and start paying content creators instead.
"Make it illegal for any more than 10-20% of sale value to go to middle men."
Another model would be to allow any copying, but put a sales tax of, say, 50-80% of any end price to consumer, with the proceeds going directly to the artists and composers of the particular work generating the revenue. That way anyone could run on-demand cd presses, sell mix CD's, set up an online music store, or come up with pretty much any distribution and marketing model conceivable, while the artists and creators would get paid much more than today. Heck, such a model could support pretty much any media form, ranging from books to live performances to broadcasting.
"If you break copyright for one you break copyright for all."
So, I lose my ability to enforce the freedom of my code in exchange for everything else actually gaining that freedom?
Sounds like a fair deal to me.
Yes, your argument has been dealt with many times before. While the GPL depends on copyright to disable the restrictions created by copyright, without copyright it would essentially be unnecessary.
"you are saying it's ok for Microsoft to borrow pieces of Linux code"
Without copyright, we would have had a merge between the codebases long since; there'd have been no problem running applications written for either API, and the sharing would have gone both ways. Microsoft would have been unable to remain a coercive monopoly, as anyone they tried to coerce could have forked the code. They would have had to remain competetive and offer value above their competition, and would probably have been a far better company shipping a far better product for a far lower price.
Provided the sharing and removal of copyright goes both ways, I really dont see the problem. Which is the exact situation the GPL creates.
"Just because it is easy to copy music it doesn't make it right to do so."
Just because it's easy to copy music it doesnt make it wrong to do so.
If I buy a chair and then make one just like it, it's in no way wrong. If I had a chair-copying machine, and started churning out copies, it still wouldnt be wrong. Yet you somehow appear to believe that ease of duplication should merit legal prevention of such duplication?
"but someone's lost something."
Yes, the economy as a whole constantly loses because of intellectual property. The money that brother isnt spending on buying protected material is spent on other things. If he would have had to buy the material he wouldnt have been able to spend money on those other things. This in turn would mean less wealth was created within the economy as a whole (the other stuff _or_ the ip, as opposed to the other stuff _and_ the ip), leading to an actual loss to the economy.
This problem is squarely tied to monopoly pricing. In a competetive market, the price falls towards cost of production, leading to a maximization of available wealth, and a fulfillment of as many consumers demand as possible while still being able to produce the product with a slight profit. With a monopoly right, pricing and revenue is maximized at a point where a whole lot of consumers cannot afford the product/will value it less than alternative products, even when it still could be produced with profit at a lower price, thus negating the whole point of a free market economy.
"but had your brother purchased said items the artist (and the rest of the chain from shop keepers to recording labels/studios/etc) would have got a share of the monies"
Then again, if we scrapped the monopoly copyright and instituted an IP sales tax on those actually profiting from the sales (say, 50%-75% of the price in stores or on the net) with the proceeds going directly to the artists and composers, then the artists and composers would have gotten a much bigger share of the monies, and the whole chain in between would remain competetive.
Doubtful. The IP debate and IP issues are not clear-cut left/right issues, but rather libertarian/free market vs. authoritarian/state intervention issues.
If you're concerned with feeding and housing a family, consider this: intellectual 'property' has a macroeconomic effect comparable to taxation of the economy. It encourages waste by creating protected sectors and decreases the competetiveness of the economy as a whole.
Take a care to look at not only the 'income' part of the equation, but also the 'expenses'. IP isnt free; the costs of the system are merely better hidden, but the money paying for it comes from the participants in the economy nonetheless.
Slashdot Mirror
"If a manufacturer creates hardware that limits a person's ability to modify the software that runs on it"
Then he can do that. With his own code. Not with mine.
"then let the market forces apply pressure"
Not being free to use other peoples GPLv3 licensed code is market pressure.
Quid pro quo. It really aint that hard to grasp. If you want the freedom, then you have to pass that freedom on.
"Why fix it then?"
It is getting broken. The current actions of certain companies to use the freedom of GPL code without passing on that same freedom to recepients of that code, through the use of, for example, DRM hardware detecting and preventing modification of the code, essentially is an example of 'broken'.
Anyone vaguely familiar with the history of the FSF and RMS can recall one of the origin stories of the FSF, involving RMS recieving a buggy printer driver he wasnt allowed to fix due to its proprietary nature and closed source. Had he recieved the source, but then the printer had refused to use the updated drivers, nobody can reasonably come to any other conclusion than that DRM restrictions on the running of GPL code would be just as disallowed in GPL v2.
The changes are exactly in line with the FSF reasoning, like it or not, and a natural evolution of the GPL to cope with new issues. Anyone more concerned with the freedom of those wanting to restrict others has a perfectly good selection of BSD type licenses to use. For those deliberatly and knowingly placing code under GPL these updates come as no surprise, and are not at all unwelcome.
You dont have to wonder. The classic would be the LZW patent, patented by both Unisys and IBM. And that was in the 80's...
"the invention had to be previously publically known or disclosed."
Yes, and this is intentional. The patent system was arguably intended to encourage disclosure in a time when we had nothing like the communications infrastructure we have today and science and innovation were not as collaborative with as rapid turnover as today. Therefore, the first-to-file system actively discourages sitting on inventions for years without disclosing them, essentially forcing a publish or patent situation.
Of course, at that time, such things were matters of years or even decades, and research and innovation was far more centralized and a far smaller community, creating a situation where the system could actually provide a benefit through increasing disclosure rate and communication.
These days with the foundation of knowledge needed for furthering innovation is available anywhere where there's a computer, an internet connection and a problem, the innovations can be published anywhere from a blog in rural India to a fishing village in Norway, and idea turnover rate is in the range of hours or days, the previous 'disclosure' system has become redundant and is now hindering, rather than furthering, the evolution of ideas.
"go start a manufacturing business that produces in America"
The indirect taxation effects of US IP legislation on American workers is part of why it's too expensive to produce in the US.
"as it means we aren't getting shafted so badly anymore."
Actually, it just means the Chinese will get shafted as badly as Americans. The economic impact of intellectual property is comparable to communist-era state factories; one protected business form has just been replaced with another, both are more or less equivalent drains of inefficiency on the economy as a whole.
Protect companies from competition and they will quickly cease to be competetive.
And please. Dont kid yourself that the actual production of intellectual monopoly material wont be moved to lower cost countries. At which point the US will really get screwed every way and backwards, unless the US politicians imagine they'll be able to extricate themselves from the IP nightmare they've built at that point.
"The real choice is obvious."
Yes. The citizens needs to kick them both out, scrap all first-past-post systems and get proportional representation.
Any two party system is one party away from a dictatorship.
Heck, the current US senates leading party has the direct support of no more than 17% of eligible voters. Ex-dictator parties in recently democratic states often get support in those ranges.
Proportional representation has its problems, but at least the ruling coalitions tend to represent a far higher percentage of the voter base. And it's a lot harder to buy half a dozen parties than it is to buy two.
The actual problem is fundamentally tied to the monopoly control aspects of intellectual property. There were numerous solutions accomplishing the same thing before iTunes, but as the RIAA corps wanted to keep control, they weren't acceptable to them.
Amazing how the DOJ has the gall to point to this issue as an example of regulation hindering innovation; strict IP legislation has already held innovation in the field back for the last decade, and the US has been a prime example.
Imagine the applications possible without monopoly based IP... you could have a vast library with all human culture available at the touch of a button. You could navigate through genres, performers, creators, country and culture of origin, you could mix and create and derive and enrich the culture to your hearts content. (Oh, and without the money drains of the RIAA/MPAA corps, we could pay even more creative talent for the same resources we spend today).
"it is that way and it must be that way"
There is no inherent need for the copyright incentive to be possible to sign away, any more than social security or any other transfer system can be.
It would be perfectly possible to remove the exclusive aspect of copyright, allow the record companies to publish whatever they want to their hearts desire and simply levy a tax off their sales, giving the artists 50-80% of the proceedings, effectively bypassing the entire contract aspect and ensuring most of the money the consumers spend on such material actually goes to the production of more such material, rather than marketing and lawsuits.
CDs and music in general are subject to monopoly rights, and thus have no actual competition. Prices on them will rise to absorb any economic elbow room available, and even worse, the cost structure will adjust to the revenue, essentially negating the entire purpose of a free market economy.
Memory on the other hand is interchangable with other memory, thus subject to a much more fierce competition, which drives prices down.
"Not if you appreciate the higher resolution video."
Considering the limits of human visual acuity is in the range of 0.5-1 mm at 1 meters distance, which is in the same range as ordinary dvd on a 32 inch tv at a meters distance, the actual ability to appreciate the higher resolution video is strictly limited to people standing very close to very large screens. And people with cybernetic eye upgrades.
Test it yourself, create a checkerboard dithered image of black and white pixels in the 1mm range on your monitor, move away from it, and see how far away you get before it basically turns grey. And that's with a high-contrast still picture.
"(Some people do.)"
Yes. Well. Considering the survey a year or two ago where almost all consumers with HD sets really enjoyed the higher resolution, despite not even half of them actually having tuned to the HD channels, I'm not sure actual HD is necessary for the appreciation.
"(though sometimes difficult to measure)"
Even worse, the best kinds of inventions can easily have a negative economic impact as measured by GDP, as they often simplify or make production of things more efficient, thus resulting in fewer jobs and lowering prices on those goods. Take a look at something like Linux, consider the implications and impact on the measured economy, and notice the jarring discrepancy between the measurement and the actual increase in (unmeasured) wealth.
Of course, that only further points out the absurdity and failure of current GDP calculations, and the failure of intellectual 'property' system as incentive to account for and support the most economically beneficial innovations.
The articles may have a price for the first user, but as copyright has lapsed on them since long, either google or wikipedia or someone else can easily create a 'republish' plugin automatically posting such content to a collaborative site.
"The online currency is as scarce as the online makes wish it to be"
And they make no guarantees that they will keep it at a particular level, so there you go. With real currencies you tend to have some guarantee of stability enforced through the central banks monetary policy.
"Same with goverment mandated monopolies, patents, regulations, etc."
Dont get me started on those... the 'real' economy is by no means free from other imaginary value or labyrinthine scams.
"But well, you can buy anything in the game (or "world")"
Whose scarcity is just as fictional and can alter in value (as in time needed to obtain the particular good) instantly. The actual 'cost' and scarcity limit of producing the goods in question is a database update; the hoops needed to jump through to obtain the good are artificial, and without a free market creating the product at cost there is no fundamental capital needed to produce the good.
"Do you trust the coin in the virtual world to be stable"
"You can't trade goods from one world to another."
Essentially the same state as with the monopoly game. The hotels, houses and monopoly money are no more or less real than the MMORPG versions. The scale just makes the illusion more compelling.
And coincidentally, also pretty much the reason why you should be very careful with investing in the currency of countries lacking trade and monetary guarantees.
"they make GOOD experiments though"
Without a doubt. While buying 'property' in virtal worlds may less sane than investing in Soviet rubles a few decades ago, that doesnt really detract from their value as economic simulations.
I dont get the desire to treat wireless networks like an extension of the local wired ones. Treat the wireless like you treat any other insecure transport network; ie, firewalled away and with inwards access granted only via VPN tunnels, and you dont have to care about which wireless encryption gets broken by whom and who tries to spoof what.
As IP licensing fees are pretty much comparable to actual outright taxes on the economy, it's time to get them reported as such and accounted for, just like VAT or any other product tax.
Once the actual cost of the IP systems is accounted for in state budgets instead of hidden away, it would be far easier to get a rational discussion about the cost and benefits of the systems.
"Except these online currencies end up being worth real money, do they not?"
No. There is no actual scarcity and no central bank backing the currency, nor any financial controls. The same applies to any items and other 'valuables' in those games; any particular scarcity of any particular item is purely artificial and can be instantly changed at the whim of the company (or any less than honest admin or someone exploiting the game).
The lack of scarcity based value of course doesnt mean you cant pay to avoid actually playing the game (altho anyone actually paying to not play the game should seriously consider not playing the game for free and doing something else instead).
"So it could, arguably, be more like stealing the chips from a poker game."
Casinos back the chips. Most MMORPG's do not back their currencies.
"you either need a new TV or new Eyes"
Unfortunately, the medical profession hasnt gotten that far at non-human eye upgrades.
Human eyes just simply arent very good at appreciating high resolutions on moving pictures. The highest resolution is only available for a few degrees in the middle, and even at best it can barely resolve a bit better than the millimeter range at a meters distance. Try it out, make a chessboard dithered black/white field of one mm pixels on your monitor, and sit a meter from it. Personally, I can see that it's actually pixels for about an inch in the middle, and the rest simply turns grey (interestingly enough, moving away slowly, the pixelization remains for a few seconds before the brain 'forgets' that it was all pixels and just fills in with grey).
So, yes, you can easily tell the difference between HD and SD on a still picture if you're standing up close to a large TV. But on a 32 inch TV, even 720 pixels wide approaches the limits of human visual acuity at a meters distance. Move away to the usual distance people are sitting at, unpause the picture, and you need to be Superman to appreciate HD.
Or, well, maybe not. I recall reading about some HD research that had gone through consumer satisfaction and most really appreciated the much better picture. Of course, not even half of them had actually tuned to the HD channels, so...
"Representational multiparty systems are much more prone to political extremism"
Common claim, but easily disproven. Extremist parties do not gain more power than they are given in the parliament; the majority can always vote down any extremist ideas. Usually coalitions form between the non-extremist parties in such cases, or the governing party works on a jumping majority instead.
"As such, it tends to pull the parties toward the political center,"
On which issue? There isnt 'a' political center, there are _many_ political centers. Take a look at the US party system; the parties themselves support many extremist views on many issues. There are many economy republicans who'd vote for a non-religious non-interventionist political agenda, but as it is they're offered no choice and have to take the extremist view on certain issues to get their agenda on the economy. In a proportional system, parties tend to divide themselves over the various axis and offer palatable choices for most people, eventually resulting in a representative majority on more issues.
"The US, close to a dictatorship?"
In a one party system you can vote for one policy. In a two party system you get two. That's not a lot of choice.
And yes, primaries are better than nothing, but not that much different from party-internal elective systems in PR democracies. And as party hierarchies tend to become rigid and party policy enforced, internal elections are no substitute for the higher independence of separate affiliation.
"There are MORE than 2 sides to every issue."
Unless the US converts to a proportional representation system it's highly unlikely that more nuanced politics will develop.
Any two party system is just barely one party away from a dictatorship. And it shows.
'No one is arguing "that it's unnecessary to protect the works of content creators."'
Actually, there are a whole bunch of us who do. Monopoly protection is inherently damaging to the economy, hinders the creation of wealth, art and knowledge, and slows down the progress of the arts and science.
That's an entirely separate issue from the possible usefulness and desireability of creating further economic incentives for content creation beyond what the free market can provide; it simply means that with efficiency levels at fractions of spent resources, it's become obvious that a monopoly is among the absolutely worst ways to create an economic incentive for a particular activity. We'd get more value for the actual money spent (as in creators supported per dollar cost to the economy) if we simply paid for the production outright with such a bad economic construct as taxes, and without all those negative effects.
"and make it cheap enough that no one cares."
With monopoly rights that's not going to work. Revenue maximization for a monopoly simply isnt created that way; when you have no competition, you raise prices until a certain number of consumers simply must do without, at which point you have the highest revenue. As piracy is more or less the only competition, that means the less piracy the higher the price you can set, which creates the imperative to prevent piracy while maintaining the goal of raising price.
The whole issue is a natural result of monopoly rights; no matter how much we wish it wouldnt be an issue, that the industry would lower prices to solve their sales problems, that the artists and composers would get paid more, etc, it simply isnt going to happen as long as the incentive remains a monopoly right. The economic incentive _is_ to raise prices, pay the artists and composers as little as possible, maintain control of channels, limit consumer choice, etc.
As the problem is inherent to the construct, it simply isnt possible to resolve within the current framework.
Which is why I will restate; it is _necessary_ that we stop protecting IP and start paying content creators instead.
"Make it illegal for any more than 10-20% of sale value to go to middle men."
Another model would be to allow any copying, but put a sales tax of, say, 50-80% of any end price to consumer, with the proceeds going directly to the artists and composers of the particular work generating the revenue. That way anyone could run on-demand cd presses, sell mix CD's, set up an online music store, or come up with pretty much any distribution and marketing model conceivable, while the artists and creators would get paid much more than today. Heck, such a model could support pretty much any media form, ranging from books to live performances to broadcasting.
"If you break copyright for one you break copyright for all."
So, I lose my ability to enforce the freedom of my code in exchange for everything else actually gaining that freedom?
Sounds like a fair deal to me.
Yes, your argument has been dealt with many times before. While the GPL depends on copyright to disable the restrictions created by copyright, without copyright it would essentially be unnecessary.
"you are saying it's ok for Microsoft to borrow pieces of Linux code"
Without copyright, we would have had a merge between the codebases long since; there'd have been no problem running applications written for either API, and the sharing would have gone both ways. Microsoft would have been unable to remain a coercive monopoly, as anyone they tried to coerce could have forked the code. They would have had to remain competetive and offer value above their competition, and would probably have been a far better company shipping a far better product for a far lower price.
Provided the sharing and removal of copyright goes both ways, I really dont see the problem. Which is the exact situation the GPL creates.
"Just because it is easy to copy music it doesn't make it right to do so."
Just because it's easy to copy music it doesnt make it wrong to do so.
If I buy a chair and then make one just like it, it's in no way wrong. If I had a chair-copying machine, and started churning out copies, it still wouldnt be wrong. Yet you somehow appear to believe that ease of duplication should merit legal prevention of such duplication?
"but someone's lost something."
Yes, the economy as a whole constantly loses because of intellectual property. The money that brother isnt spending on buying protected material is spent on other things. If he would have had to buy the material he wouldnt have been able to spend money on those other things. This in turn would mean less wealth was created within the economy as a whole (the other stuff _or_ the ip, as opposed to the other stuff _and_ the ip), leading to an actual loss to the economy.
This problem is squarely tied to monopoly pricing. In a competetive market, the price falls towards cost of production, leading to a maximization of available wealth, and a fulfillment of as many consumers demand as possible while still being able to produce the product with a slight profit. With a monopoly right, pricing and revenue is maximized at a point where a whole lot of consumers cannot afford the product/will value it less than alternative products, even when it still could be produced with profit at a lower price, thus negating the whole point of a free market economy.
"but had your brother purchased said items the artist (and the rest of the chain from shop keepers to recording labels/studios/etc) would have got a share of the monies"
Then again, if we scrapped the monopoly copyright and instituted an IP sales tax on those actually profiting from the sales (say, 50%-75% of the price in stores or on the net) with the proceeds going directly to the artists and composers, then the artists and composers would have gotten a much bigger share of the monies, and the whole chain in between would remain competetive.
"Libertarians aren't worried about whether we get screwed over in the process"
Of course, state enforcement of copyright and patents are inherently incompatible with a consistent libertarian point of view.
"Anyhow, I'll side with RMS on this one."
Same here. If there are legal issues hampering the adoption and development of free software we need to get the laws rewritten.
"he might have somewhat different views."
Doubtful. The IP debate and IP issues are not clear-cut left/right issues, but rather libertarian/free market vs. authoritarian/state intervention issues.
If you're concerned with feeding and housing a family, consider this: intellectual 'property' has a macroeconomic effect comparable to taxation of the economy. It encourages waste by creating protected sectors and decreases the competetiveness of the economy as a whole.
Take a care to look at not only the 'income' part of the equation, but also the 'expenses'. IP isnt free; the costs of the system are merely better hidden, but the money paying for it comes from the participants in the economy nonetheless.