"Since that is the very point of free (libre) software, there was no benefit to this project being GPL'd."
Not really, like the parent said the marketing value of the project being GPL is pretty much what's made Nessus popular at all. Without it, it simply isnt that compelling compared to other proprietary products. The license change in itself lowers trust in the product, and for paranoid security geeks it may very well be interpreted as yet another bait'n'switch like pgp or ssh.
The smart move would have been to plan transition to GPLv3 instead, which will probably close the holes they worry about.
Of course, if money's on the table and the plan is to get aquired (at which point the product will probably go down the drain like usual), that might not be an option.
Face it, today a fully professional recording can be made for less than what a used car costs.
The _reason_ that music costs so much is those hundreds of people who add nothing of value for the consumer. That's exactly what monopoly power like transferrable copyright leads to. It creates an artificial deficiency in the free market where waste can accumulate and suddenly even makes sense, simply because there's no competetive pressure.
"explicitly followed by a suggestion"
Here's my suggestion; let the music industry compete on the free market like everyone else. Invalidate exclusive contracting of monopoly rights like copyright so they have to compete on offering the best value to the consumer and artist.
Actually, there are _very_ effective noise cancellation solutions.
They're called 'walls', and come in a variety of efficiency levels.
However, they're probably not 'hip' enough for todays corporate interior designers, and they may not be patentable, which makes this solution a more desireable one for the interested parties.
I think _economists_ need to rally about the fact that intellectual monopoly law inherently is a form of taxation and subsidy, with all the economic damage that causes to the free market (ranging from slower economy to slower adoption of (supposedly) improved technology).
Any increase or extention of copyright or patent rights is effectively comparable to raising VAT or similar taxation and giving the money to corporate interests. With the difference, of course, that there's little democratic control or accountability.
Actually, I think it's more likely you'll get scapegoated for some crime instead. With a one-in-a-million chance of random DNA matches and a database of 300 million people you'll get 300 people for every sample to pick a suitable suspect from (not to mention the far better chances for suitable matches in homogenous populations).
It's even better than random arrests in the area, because the DNA 'proves' you were there.
Great stuff for DA's with a political career and a high profile case.
The thing you're talking about is cheap pc's with a pc. Just centralize your storage and use a standard install for the terminals and you're done.
Schwartz is wrong as usual. Mobile phones or other thin clients dont stand a chance against commodity PC's, simply because they're as expensive as PC's, usually have per-timeunit connection costs and are dependent on far more expensive infrastructure. That whole segment of industry is also mired in intellectual monopoly issues which will keep prices up and make it uncompetetive with PC's for the foreseeable future.
Commodity PC's can simply do everything (if you want them to) that a thin-client/server system can do, and they can do it cheaper. They can also do some things that a thin-client/server system cannot do. As such, the niches where Schwartz can make a sale for his theory are limited.
"But there's lots of products that aren't commodities, and their reason for being so isn't always that they're protected by intellectual property."
The reason is always some form of competetive failure, either natural or artificial.
In the case of intellectual monopolies there is no natural scarcity, so the only reason for the products not obeying commodity economics is artificial restrictions.
"Trademarks make sense here."
Exactly how do they benefit the economy at large? By creating higher costs? By diverting money into advertizing? Where is the gain in the wealth of nations? Would society be richer if the money spent financing the coke/pepsi wars had been spent elsewhere and 'cola' was standardized and commoditized?
Artificial restrictions in the economy only make 'sense' if they actually lead to a benefit for society as a whole. I'm not saying trademarks are without purpose, but like all IP you need to analyze their purpose and results beyond the surface.
In their economic effects the restrictions are not much different from taxes; they create artificially higher prices, comparable with VAT or product taxes, with the difference that the extra money extracted from the consumer goes to a private interest, theoretically to create a benefit of some form of general economic good. With these market interference laws, focus is often on that theoretical good, rather than the negative aspects that taxes create, like slower economy, higher costs in general, diversion of money from production of desired goods, lower adoption rate of the taxed goods in question, increased legal costs, etc.
"What you're arguing is that every product should use "economy pricing"."
Not quite. They can use any relevant form of pricing, most are compatible with competition (captive and bundling excepted) but they should use it without the support of artificial competetive restrictions. Competition is the fundamental foundation of the growth of wealth since Adam Smith came up with the idea of capitalism. Competition leads to improved and cheaper production, leads to more goods cheaper, leads to higher wealth for society as a whole. That's why we're not all plowing the fields anymore. That's why the western more free economies outperformed the communist countries in the end. And quite likely the increased economic damage caused by the diversion of resources to non-wealth creating by IP restrictions is a significant part of why the western economies have difficulty competing with less IP enforcing economies.
"In summary, pricing does not match production costs."
Oh, I'm not saying it does. I'm saying that in a competetive market prices fall to approach production cost, over time. Like you point out, there are many pricing strategies, but over time they all tend to fall towards production costs.
For example, the actual production costs for a 'luxury hotel room' (including everything from furniture to service is, of course, vastly different from a 'cheap coffin hotel', even tho the actual base product might have similarities. However, in a free market, if the premium pricing luxury hotel generates enough profit, or is inefficient enough to allow the same valued service cheaper, there will be more players entering the market, and the price will fall (still retaining its premium) towards the production costs for upholding such a premium product (thus creating falling prices where more people can afford the premium product, thus creating more wealth)
In the monopoly protected industries there is no such competetive pressure at all. They can charge what the market can bear, as it is illegal to sell equivalent products. Where the free market player has to consider both the consumer and the competition, the monopoly player needs only consider the consumer. Unlike the premium hotel they need not worry about someone else undercutting them by providing the same premium value for lower price and adapt. Thus, instead of falling as efficiency increases and production costs fall, prices for the protected products constantly rise to eat any increase in disposable consumer income.
Thus the monopolies become antithetical to the growth of wealth in their very nature.
"As the price of reproduction drops, the price of the item should drop correspondingly. At least that's how the economic theory goes."
That's how the economic theory goes in a free market. Do not confuse the intellectual monopoly industries with free markets.
For a monopoly market, the price does not drop. It rises to follow slightly below the pricing point at which consumers can no longer afford the product. When production costs fall, great, more profit or money to spend on marketing. When people purchase more, for example, due to marketing or rising disposable incomes, raise prices until sales slow again. Use new money for profit or marketing. Rinse. Repeat.
As long as intellectual monopoly laws interfere in the free market their prices will simply never drop. That's simply an unavoidable economic consequence of these legal constructs.
"The only place where RFID cards are convenient is for rapid transit fare control."
Nah, they're also very convenient for assassins or terrorists who want to create ID-triggered explosive devices. Just imagine how practical when you can leave a device, and a few weeks later when the victim walks by, there goes the boom.
Any remote ID that doesnt require the owners active cooperation is a security risk.
True, I was using the more common terms such things are usually hidden behind. But like you say, those posts hide everything from lobbying to ski-resort trips for doctors.
"So, the whole thing really seems like a big corporate well fair racket, whereby companies have been essentially gifted valuable IP by the American tax-payers."
All IP is per definition corporate welfare. It can be compared to temporary taxation rights, given as a subsidy for otherwise unprofitable industries.
Of course, as far as welfare programs go, this one is neither under democratic control, nor do we get a receipt for taxes paid. Not even a small label like '95% of the price of this product is monopoly taxation, of which 15% is development costs'.
"... is actually a fundamental problem built into all IP law:"
Actually, the even more fundamental problem is the assumption that a monopoly is an appropriate means to grant a return on investment.
The IP monopolies have many consequences; they have the same effect as taxes on specific products, slowing the economy, they create a disincentive for the adoption of newer technology, the create a disincentive to combine and join different research, they create a strong risk and roi based incentive to waste money on marketing instead of R&D, thus increasing economic waste in society and diverting money from wealth creating activities. They increase costs for the consumers, making the citizens globally less competetive, they increase costs for companies, making them globally less competetive, they increase costs for the state, making it less competetive, etc.
The larger the part of the economy that consists of monopoly powered industries, the more apparent the damage will become, leading to exactly the kind of consequences one can expect from the history of other monopoly-heavy economies.
"If you spent $5 billion developing and testing a new drug"
The vast majority of the pharm money is not spent on R&D. It's wasted on marketing, administration and inefficient production.
"But their product strategy is simple reality, owing to the very simple fact that copying is easier than innovating."
The very simple fact is that once you have a monopoly, marketing, lobbying and litigating is easier than either copying or innovating.
The very simple fact is that we're not getting even 20% efficiency out of the monopoly money we're paying.
The very simple fact is that we'd get more than five times as much R&D done for the same money we're spending today if we simply got rid of the patents, paid for the R&D outright and let generic producers run a competetive industry instead.
"9/11 didn't just kill people---it killed an ideal, and terribly wounded a once-great nation."
The attacks just killed people and destroyed a few buildings. Not particularly many people even, barely half of the number are killed in traffic the average month.
The administration, the elected representatives of the people and the media killed the ideal and terribly wounded the nation.
Assign blame where it belongs. Not even the strongest efforts of terrorists can ever put a dent in the sheer mass and momentum of a civilized country. Only with the active cooperation of the leadership and media can they obtain enough leverage to affect anything. Unfortunately both politicians and reporters are quick to cash in on rare and spectacular events, particularly when innocent people die.
Both, actually. I remember running across a design for a coupled stirling where the output from the power generation cycle was coupled directly to a second stirling running refrigeration.
Use solar concentrators on the heat side to create the differential to drive the engine, and off you go...
"Get more people on board and raise the application fees."
It's even easier than that. Just start actually enforcing the rules and reject 99% of the applications instead.
I'll bet the application rate drops until only those applications with some merit are submitted.
With the current situation it's simply more profitable to file 25 junk patent applications, get a third of them approved and start suing than it is to research something worthwhile.
It's the ability of intellectual monopolies to engage in monopoly pricing that creates that situation. Any company will always charge what the market will bear for their products. When there is competition, prices will fall until they approach production costs and continue falling as production improves, but when there is a monopoly they will always rise until they charge at the price point where people will do entirely without instead.
That means the price of, for example, music or medicines will never fall. They will instead increase as consumer capital becomes available, and they are able to appropriate a larger slice of that disposable income.
Of course we cant have a market. If the IP industries were forced to actually experience some form of competition they'd go the way of the Soviet state factories. And who the hell would pay for the ad campaigns, launch parties and coke habits then?
Intellectual monopoly rights should not exist. They damage the economy and hinder the creation of wealth for society, and as such they should not be tolerated any more than vandalism as a method to generate turnover.
"you're bashing capitalism and we all know the alternatives don't work so get with the program."
Anti-competetive practices are what dont work, and there is no difference between Soviet style state-owned monopolies and privately owned monopolies.
Competition leading to ever increased efficiency is what generates growth of wealth. Wether the competing entities are owned privately or collectively is irrelevant.
"maybe, just maybe, in the entire world, there are a handful software ideas each year that are worthy of a patent"
Frankly, I dont think so. Calling ideas 'worthy' of patents is like saying they're 'worthy' of being nationalized into a state protected monopoly and buried in red tape for twenty years. They may be important and worthy of reward, but that's not quite the same thing.
Patents are simply a completely inappropriate method of encouraging innovation. They stifle competition and deter adoption of (sometimes) new technology, thus damaging the economy and social wealth as a whole.
Slashdot Mirror
"Since that is the very point of free (libre) software, there was no benefit to this project being GPL'd."
Not really, like the parent said the marketing value of the project being GPL is pretty much what's made Nessus popular at all. Without it, it simply isnt that compelling compared to other proprietary products. The license change in itself lowers trust in the product, and for paranoid security geeks it may very well be interpreted as yet another bait'n'switch like pgp or ssh.
The smart move would have been to plan transition to GPLv3 instead, which will probably close the holes they worry about.
Of course, if money's on the table and the plan is to get aquired (at which point the product will probably go down the drain like usual), that might not be an option.
"hundreds of other people besides the band"
Poor them, lets give them money for nothing.
Face it, today a fully professional recording can be made for less than what a used car costs.
The _reason_ that music costs so much is those hundreds of people who add nothing of value for the consumer. That's exactly what monopoly power like transferrable copyright leads to. It creates an artificial deficiency in the free market where waste can accumulate and suddenly even makes sense, simply because there's no competetive pressure.
"explicitly followed by a suggestion"
Here's my suggestion; let the music industry compete on the free market like everyone else. Invalidate exclusive contracting of monopoly rights like copyright so they have to compete on offering the best value to the consumer and artist.
Actually, there are _very_ effective noise cancellation solutions.
They're called 'walls', and come in a variety of efficiency levels.
However, they're probably not 'hip' enough for todays corporate interior designers, and they may not be patentable, which makes this solution a more desireable one for the interested parties.
I think _economists_ need to rally about the fact that intellectual monopoly law inherently is a form of taxation and subsidy, with all the economic damage that causes to the free market (ranging from slower economy to slower adoption of (supposedly) improved technology).
Any increase or extention of copyright or patent rights is effectively comparable to raising VAT or similar taxation and giving the money to corporate interests. With the difference, of course, that there's little democratic control or accountability.
Actually, I think it's more likely you'll get scapegoated for some crime instead. With a one-in-a-million chance of random DNA matches and a database of 300 million people you'll get 300 people for every sample to pick a suitable suspect from (not to mention the far better chances for suitable matches in homogenous populations).
It's even better than random arrests in the area, because the DNA 'proves' you were there.
Great stuff for DA's with a political career and a high profile case.
The thing you're talking about is cheap pc's with a pc. Just centralize your storage and use a standard install for the terminals and you're done.
Schwartz is wrong as usual. Mobile phones or other thin clients dont stand a chance against commodity PC's, simply because they're as expensive as PC's, usually have per-timeunit connection costs and are dependent on far more expensive infrastructure. That whole segment of industry is also mired in intellectual monopoly issues which will keep prices up and make it uncompetetive with PC's for the foreseeable future.
Commodity PC's can simply do everything (if you want them to) that a thin-client/server system can do, and they can do it cheaper. They can also do some things that a thin-client/server system cannot do. As such, the niches where Schwartz can make a sale for his theory are limited.
"But there's lots of products that aren't commodities, and their reason for being so isn't always that they're protected by intellectual property."
The reason is always some form of competetive failure, either natural or artificial.
In the case of intellectual monopolies there is no natural scarcity, so the only reason for the products not obeying commodity economics is artificial restrictions.
"Trademarks make sense here."
Exactly how do they benefit the economy at large? By creating higher costs? By diverting money into advertizing? Where is the gain in the wealth of nations? Would society be richer if the money spent financing the coke/pepsi wars had been spent elsewhere and 'cola' was standardized and commoditized?
Artificial restrictions in the economy only make 'sense' if they actually lead to a benefit for society as a whole. I'm not saying trademarks are without purpose, but like all IP you need to analyze their purpose and results beyond the surface.
In their economic effects the restrictions are not much different from taxes; they create artificially higher prices, comparable with VAT or product taxes, with the difference that the extra money extracted from the consumer goes to a private interest, theoretically to create a benefit of some form of general economic good. With these market interference laws, focus is often on that theoretical good, rather than the negative aspects that taxes create, like slower economy, higher costs in general, diversion of money from production of desired goods, lower adoption rate of the taxed goods in question, increased legal costs, etc.
"What you're arguing is that every product should use "economy pricing"."
Not quite. They can use any relevant form of pricing, most are compatible with competition (captive and bundling excepted) but they should use it without the support of artificial competetive restrictions. Competition is the fundamental foundation of the growth of wealth since Adam Smith came up with the idea of capitalism. Competition leads to improved and cheaper production, leads to more goods cheaper, leads to higher wealth for society as a whole. That's why we're not all plowing the fields anymore. That's why the western more free economies outperformed the communist countries in the end. And quite likely the increased economic damage caused by the diversion of resources to non-wealth creating by IP restrictions is a significant part of why the western economies have difficulty competing with less IP enforcing economies.
"In summary, pricing does not match production costs."
Oh, I'm not saying it does. I'm saying that in a competetive market prices fall to approach production cost, over time. Like you point out, there are many pricing strategies, but over time they all tend to fall towards production costs.
For example, the actual production costs for a 'luxury hotel room' (including everything from furniture to service is, of course, vastly different from a 'cheap coffin hotel', even tho the actual base product might have similarities. However, in a free market, if the premium pricing luxury hotel generates enough profit, or is inefficient enough to allow the same valued service cheaper, there will be more players entering the market, and the price will fall (still retaining its premium) towards the production costs for upholding such a premium product (thus creating falling prices where more people can afford the premium product, thus creating more wealth)
In the monopoly protected industries there is no such competetive pressure at all. They can charge what the market can bear, as it is illegal to sell equivalent products. Where the free market player has to consider both the consumer and the competition, the monopoly player needs only consider the consumer. Unlike the premium hotel they need not worry about someone else undercutting them by providing the same premium value for lower price and adapt. Thus, instead of falling as efficiency increases and production costs fall, prices for the protected products constantly rise to eat any increase in disposable consumer income.
Thus the monopolies become antithetical to the growth of wealth in their very nature.
"As the price of reproduction drops, the price of the item should drop correspondingly. At least that's how the economic theory goes."
That's how the economic theory goes in a free market. Do not confuse the intellectual monopoly industries with free markets.
For a monopoly market, the price does not drop. It rises to follow slightly below the pricing point at which consumers can no longer afford the product. When production costs fall, great, more profit or money to spend on marketing. When people purchase more, for example, due to marketing or rising disposable incomes, raise prices until sales slow again. Use new money for profit or marketing. Rinse. Repeat.
As long as intellectual monopoly laws interfere in the free market their prices will simply never drop. That's simply an unavoidable economic consequence of these legal constructs.
"The only place where RFID cards are convenient is for rapid transit fare control."
Nah, they're also very convenient for assassins or terrorists who want to create ID-triggered explosive devices. Just imagine how practical when you can leave a device, and a few weeks later when the victim walks by, there goes the boom.
Any remote ID that doesnt require the owners active cooperation is a security risk.
I expect tinfoil wallets to become commonplace.
True, I was using the more common terms such things are usually hidden behind. But like you say, those posts hide everything from lobbying to ski-resort trips for doctors.
"So, the whole thing really seems like a big corporate well fair racket, whereby companies have been essentially gifted valuable IP by the American tax-payers."
All IP is per definition corporate welfare. It can be compared to temporary taxation rights, given as a subsidy for otherwise unprofitable industries.
Of course, as far as welfare programs go, this one is neither under democratic control, nor do we get a receipt for taxes paid. Not even a small label like '95% of the price of this product is monopoly taxation, of which 15% is development costs'.
"... is actually a fundamental problem built into all IP law:"
Actually, the even more fundamental problem is the assumption that a monopoly is an appropriate means to grant a return on investment.
The IP monopolies have many consequences; they have the same effect as taxes on specific products, slowing the economy, they create a disincentive for the adoption of newer technology, the create a disincentive to combine and join different research, they create a strong risk and roi based incentive to waste money on marketing instead of R&D, thus increasing economic waste in society and diverting money from wealth creating activities. They increase costs for the consumers, making the citizens globally less competetive, they increase costs for companies, making them globally less competetive, they increase costs for the state, making it less competetive, etc.
The larger the part of the economy that consists of monopoly powered industries, the more apparent the damage will become, leading to exactly the kind of consequences one can expect from the history of other monopoly-heavy economies.
"If you spent $5 billion developing and testing a new drug"
The vast majority of the pharm money is not spent on R&D. It's wasted on marketing, administration and inefficient production.
"But their product strategy is simple reality, owing to the very simple fact that copying is easier than innovating."
The very simple fact is that once you have a monopoly, marketing, lobbying and litigating is easier than either copying or innovating.
The very simple fact is that we're not getting even 20% efficiency out of the monopoly money we're paying.
The very simple fact is that we'd get more than five times as much R&D done for the same money we're spending today if we simply got rid of the patents, paid for the R&D outright and let generic producers run a competetive industry instead.
"9/11 didn't just kill people---it killed an ideal, and terribly wounded a once-great nation."
The attacks just killed people and destroyed a few buildings. Not particularly many people even, barely half of the number are killed in traffic the average month.
The administration, the elected representatives of the people and the media killed the ideal and terribly wounded the nation.
Assign blame where it belongs. Not even the strongest efforts of terrorists can ever put a dent in the sheer mass and momentum of a civilized country. Only with the active cooperation of the leadership and media can they obtain enough leverage to affect anything. Unfortunately both politicians and reporters are quick to cash in on rare and spectacular events, particularly when innocent people die.
Both, actually. I remember running across a design for a coupled stirling where the output from the power generation cycle was coupled directly to a second stirling running refrigeration.
Use solar concentrators on the heat side to create the differential to drive the engine, and off you go...
Instinctively I'd consider the possibility of using a stirling engine before trying this method.
"Perhaps ask them to increase your taxes to help out?"
Ah, but patents themselves are almost exactly like taxation rights.
Except they're owned by private entities and outside of democratic control.
"Get more people on board and raise the application fees."
It's even easier than that. Just start actually enforcing the rules and reject 99% of the applications instead.
I'll bet the application rate drops until only those applications with some merit are submitted.
With the current situation it's simply more profitable to file 25 junk patent applications, get a third of them approved and start suing than it is to research something worthwhile.
Yes, but the guy with the five aces wins anyway.
It's the ability of intellectual monopolies to engage in monopoly pricing that creates that situation. Any company will always charge what the market will bear for their products. When there is competition, prices will fall until they approach production costs and continue falling as production improves, but when there is a monopoly they will always rise until they charge at the price point where people will do entirely without instead.
That means the price of, for example, music or medicines will never fall. They will instead increase as consumer capital becomes available, and they are able to appropriate a larger slice of that disposable income.
Of course we cant have a market. If the IP industries were forced to actually experience some form of competition they'd go the way of the Soviet state factories. And who the hell would pay for the ad campaigns, launch parties and coke habits then?
Intellectual monopoly rights should not exist. They damage the economy and hinder the creation of wealth for society, and as such they should not be tolerated any more than vandalism as a method to generate turnover.
"you're bashing capitalism and we all know the alternatives don't work so get with the program."
Anti-competetive practices are what dont work, and there is no difference between Soviet style state-owned monopolies and privately owned monopolies.
Competition leading to ever increased efficiency is what generates growth of wealth. Wether the competing entities are owned privately or collectively is irrelevant.
"maybe, just maybe, in the entire world, there are a handful software ideas each year that are worthy of a patent"
Frankly, I dont think so. Calling ideas 'worthy' of patents is like saying they're 'worthy' of being nationalized into a state protected monopoly and buried in red tape for twenty years. They may be important and worthy of reward, but that's not quite the same thing.
Patents are simply a completely inappropriate method of encouraging innovation. They stifle competition and deter adoption of (sometimes) new technology, thus damaging the economy and social wealth as a whole.
To create two armies you only need one and a serious difference of opinion inside the chain of command.