But the degree to which a EULA is binding is a question that can only be answered by the courts -- not MS, or the end user.
They've found contracts void for various reasons before, and they'll do so again. Already there are rumblings about how EULAs might not be contracts at all.
There are limits to the right of contract, after all.
Okay, to put it another way, does Stephen King come to your house to make sure you don't have pirated copies of his books?
Regarding 'software should be free,' I don't agree that there should be a total lack of copyright, but the value of an _ideal_ copyright scheme does not legitimize all copyright schemes.
Well, if we're going to try that, let's avoid Latin and start with Esperanto, or Lobjan, or Klingon or something which at least starts out with fewer irregulars.
Oh, it's been done before. In China, there are several different languages spoken. In order to facilitate communication, a written language was developed that was totally independent of any of the spoken tongues, and thus could be used by any of them.
I.e. whereas in English each glyph corresponds to a particular sound, in written Chinese, each glyph corresponds to a particular word (or word-part) and that word can be pronounced in any way you like; it doesn't matter.
Because China was the dominant civilization in East Asia for much of history, when Japan adopted a written language, they used the Chinese glyphs. However, because they did not have an internal language barrier, two alphabets also were developed. Japanese can be written with the alphabets (kana) or the glyphs (kanji) as a result. A basic knowledge of spoken Japanese is needed for the former, none for the latter.
Unfortunately, the downside to this is that there tend to be a lot of glyphs developed if each stands rather alone. I expect that it would be a lot better to use a small number of them like alphabet letters, but not to have any corresponding pronounciation. Even then, it's still going to be somewhat annoying to learn, because you cannot leverage a knowledge of oral language in order to facilitate learning a written one. (e.g. no, 'hooked on phonics')
Jobs sold all but one share of his Apple stock when he got 'exiled' by Sculley, and left the company. He dumped some of that money into two things: 1) NeXT, which was mostly financed by others anyway (Canon and Ross Perot) and 2) Pixar, which he bought from Industrial Light and Magic.
NeXT never turned a profit, and the investors were never able to get their money back -- $400 million -- until Apple bought it.
Pixar made a fortune, perhaps because Jobs does not take a very active role in the company, and that's how Steve broke the billion mark.
More recently, Steve got more Apple stock when he came back, and sold it all off again.
The Woz has a decent amount of money, certainly more than I have, but between his giving away stock to Apple employees who were shafted on the IPO, and his divorce, he really hasn't got as much as you'd think. Certainly not compared to billionare Steve Jobs.
Woz is young enough still that he likely will spend it all; so here's hoping his new company goes well.
Who said there's no copyright protection in the US? I said that there's no copyright protection afforded by the Constitution, and that there is no copyright protection without the affirmative passage of law by Congress in accordance with the Constitution.
Viz., there is no copyright law that is universal that we should expect Taiwan to be held to; that each country crafts its own laws for its own people's own best interests. The US is no different -- the substance of our laws may be the same, but the origins are no different.
Claiming otherwise is as foolish as claiming that there is a correct side of the road to drive on, and that local custom can be wrong.
I find it difficult to believe that you think that the Constitution _isn't_ the last word on how the US government runs. Wasn't that rather the point. (it'll likely be a while before we see an amendment concerning copyrights)
Treaties cannot override the Constitution, for it is what grants and governs the authority to enter into treaties. Laws passed by Congress in furtherence of treaties cannot override the Constitution, for it is what grants and governs their lawmaking ability.
You called nothing. Perhaps you'd like to try again?
As it happens, I'm an artist myself, and although at the moment I'm back at school, I've supported myself as an artist for years.
Please, point to the bit where I said that copyright was a bad idea. You won't find it.
I think it's a perfectly good idea -- when it's done right. Artists should be able to have the opportunity (there's no guarantee one's work won't flop) to support themselves.
BUT, carried to extremes, copyright monopolies harm society's interests in being able to freely access and use works. They harm other author's interests in being able to modify works. (e.g. Disney's movies based on other people's fairy tales) They harm the efforts of preservationists to keep pieces of our culture from being lost permanently.
These same ordinary people have an interest as well in seeing there be a broad diversity of works. It is in everyone's interest to afford _some_ protection to authors.
Some.
Where it makes sense for our society as a whole, not where it only stands to fatten the wallets of artists (or worse yet, cause harm w/o even any benefit to an artist b/c their work flopped).
It is up to the people and governments of EVERY country to determine for themselves where that balance lies. A nation with few artists stands to gain little by affording them great protections. The US used to be one of these countries. Do you dare claim that one country should be subjugated to the law of another country unless the first has shown a willingness to do so!
For such a triviality as copyright! That would be mad.
If Taiwan _WANTS_ to develop copyright law, that is its business. If it insists that authors seeking copyright protections comply with their laws or forgoe those protections, that is its business. As Taiwan is not a Berne Convention signatory AFAIK, is has placed upon itself NO obligation to respect foreign copyrights as though they were its own. This works both ways -- we need not respect theirs. Nothing compels us to do so.
I can't imagine how you think that attempting to circumvent the legitimate Taiwanese government in order to impose laws that the natives do not want is in any way just or fair. You advocate a violation of soverignty, because you don't like someone's internal practices.
This kind of thing led to centuries of war before, when attacks on soverignty were undertaken for religious reasons. Took the Treaty of Westphalia for people to recognize that countries can do within their own borders as they like. Don't throw this away.
Well one, you're over a hundred years too late. Antitrust laws are on the books, and generally work pretty well.
Companies are indeed forced to lower prices, even on luxury goods. (among other regulations) This is particularly true when they have engaged in anticompetitive practices in order to control a market without concern for typical market forces.
If you don't like complying with the laws of a democratic society, you can of course attempt to change them (just like everyone else does), suck it up like a man, leave, or be an outlaw.
You appear to be opting to leave (the marketplace) at least. But do you really think _EVERYONE_ will do so? I'm not talking about regulating prices to the point where profit is impossible, only where it is acceptable to the public. A truly efficient capitalist will take any opportunity to profit he can get.
Uh huh. Perhaps you need to read the Constitution of the United States of America to see what protection is afforded to parties for creation. The answer: NONE.
UNLESS Congress chooses to utilize its power to so create such protection, and then only within certain limits set by the Constitution, as interpreted by the Judiciary. Congress merely can pass such laws -- it doesn't _have_ to. In the absence of such laws, where would you claim copyright protections to eminate from?
This is what I mean by artists not being entitled to copyright protection. Were they, it wouldn't take an enumerated power of Congress and actual passage of law by that body to do it. (and even then, the criteria used is based upon the progress of the arts -- not an automatic entitlement)
Similarly, the Berne Convention does not impose copyright law on any non-signatory; how could it? It's a treaty! Furthermore, it doesn't establish any international copyright law so much as it requires signatories to grant a copyright to works copyrighted elsewhere. Even then, within certain bounds.
And frankly, the US's lovely utilitarian copyright system could care less about the efforts of individuals that create content -- it cares about the social benefit of said content.
Ah, but why not vote with your vote, and pass a law mandating that the price be reduced?
That _is_ the sort of thing you'd expect in a democratic society, is it not? Major music publishers have been frequently accused of illegal price fixing -- but if we adopted your view, they could do as they please, and antitrust laws a thing of the past.
It's hardly theft. And it's not a loophole. The MPAA et al are not entitled to any amount of copyright protection whatsoever merely as a consequence of having created some work. Not even in the US.
There has to be a law affording them protection, in order for them to have any.
Firstly, even in the US, there doesn't _have_ to be a law doing so at all. Congress could give up the whole idea tomorrow, repeal copyright laws, and it'd be one big free for all... domestically. (foreign countries would still have their copyrights, presumably; copyrights are not international, though there are mutual recognition agreements in many instances)
It's much the same elsewhere -- England was the first country to have such laws, that was ~1700. Took until the 20th century for them to propagate in most countries. Why? Because no one cared about them, and if it isn't illegal, what's wrong with it?
Secondly, US copyright law has, IIRC, been limited to only books and maps (films would've been fair game, music was), only for American authors (foreigners would be screwed), and only for 14 years (a fraction of the modern span).
Isn't this just as arbitrary? Couldn't it be claimed that this is "stealing" by someone as unknowledgeable as yourself?
Taiwan should pass laws that the Taiwanese _want_. It is that simple. Don't like it; don't go to Taiwan.
(Besides which the word you're looking for is 'infringement,' not 'theft' or 'stealing.' There are specific meanings attached to each, and they're not interchangable. Go read some legal decisions on copyright some time and come back when you know enough to meaningfully participate in the discussion, kid.)
I am not, repeat NOT, advocating a non-capitalistic economic model here. Swear to God.
What I am doing is advocating utilitarianism; the philosophy upon which modern property rights of all types are founded.
Imagine that we have two people:
Alice, an author, and
Robert, a reader.
Aside from her desire to achieve fame and artistic satisfaction, what Alice really wants is money. There are two ways in which she can get the most money possible:
1) By putting in the least amount of effort into her book that confers the maximum amount of return.
2) By monopolizing the reward from the book. This is inclusive of making sure that no one can leech off of your stuff.
Correlary 1a) Alice's efficiency may increase substantially if she does no writing at all, and sells an existing book. (or uses the story, and touches it up here and there) Disney does this.
Robert may like Alice's writing, and want to support her especially. But really what Robert wants is to read. He's like Burgess Meredith. There are two ways in which he can satiate his desire:
1) By having absolute freedom with regards to accessing and using books. This does include not having to pay for them -- I could get a lot more books if they were free.
2) By having an effectively infinite amount of reading material so that availability is not an issue, and subject matter is diverse.
The problem is that neither one of these groups is ever going to be completely satisfied.
If _each_ author is like Alice, they are not only hostile to readers (who are merely sources of money) but hostile to each other, because of 1a.
Authors must accept that their individual interests will never be maximized if they group together, because it is highly inefficient for them to have to come up with books that in no way resemble any other books. And making sure that no one else's books resemble yours is their 2nd goal.
Already we see that authors are going to have to make compromises in order to work together to promote their interests. This is utilitarianism at work:
If Alice maximized her own interests, it would harm Andrew (another author), because Alice has an incentive to leech off of Andrew, but since Alice's interests govern, he cannot leech off of her. Andrew prefers that the roles be reversed.
This conflict between Alice and Andrew results in both either leeching off each other 100% (possibly resulting in nothing being published because each is waiting for the other) or each accepting a compromise that is not wholly satisfactory to either party, but not wholly unsatisfactory either. Ideally, the compromise point will be at the optimum spot where neither can get any happier without the other getting sadder.
Note also that because authors have a natural inclination to recycle, they may lose their audience of readers, who are more interested in originality. (actually this is not quite true: readers are interested in diversity, which is largely originality, but also variations on the original works... a Borges-style library is a little much, however)
A similiar dilemma exists for readers with respect to authors. If readers want to maximize their first goal, the number of authors that write will drop to zero. (again assuming a simplified reality in which people only write for money -- far from as it really is) This results in a minimization of their second goal, to have lots of books.
If readers maximize having lots of books, this likely is not only very difficult for authors (who will not enjoy coming into conflict with one another, or spending a lot of money developing truly original books) but therefore must very greatly reward authors... which is measured in terms of a minimization of readers' first goal.
The utilitarian goal is compromise between each party's own goals, and between each party.
In order to satisfy readers, they must accept that they will suffer a little bit in order to satisfy authors. In order to satisfy authors, they must suffer a little bit, in order to suffer other authors and readers.
And note _VERY_ well that authors are virtually always readers -- authorial 1a laziness is coextensive with reader 1 free use. They are exactly the same thing, because one free use is republishing.
So here's the correlary to this proposal of compromise. Which isn't really a proposal, this is how it all works for real.
That if Alice is favored at Robert's expense, more so than Robert is favored over Alice -- i.e. if they are not at the optimal point where the mutual satisfaction of both cannot be increased -- then the system in imbalance and needs correction.
Bringing this back to the original point, licenses may very well be favoring authorial goal 2 more than readers are prepared to maka partial sacrifice of reader goal 1.
If so, readers have an incentive to disrespect author's right to license their works, up to and including making it illegal. The reason being that there is no benefit for readers in allowing authors to screw them over that way.
Do you see where I'm coming from now? Do you agree that the actions of competing self-interested parties (which is quite capitalistic) must lead to mutual compromise?
However, it's not a great efficiency saver -- now you have to pay to get stuff from the ground to the platform, and given that the cable length is about 22-44 THOUSAND kilometers, a few tens of thousands of feet ain't much.
As for the cable itself, it has to be built in space, and it is slowly lowered down. It likely stays pretty stable, given the overall mass of the thing up in space.
Now see, this is far more interesting to me... The basic idea behind the Tivo is nice, but it doesn't quite do enough, and it's not quite easy enough to use.
Do you have any information about your custom system?
Their ability to set licensing terms can be, and should be, regulated by government so that said licensing (if there's any at all) is strictly so as to achieve the maximum public benefit.
Given that businesses won't bother if their benefit is below a certain point there is a balance to be met, true. But the system as a whole has to still maximize public benefit by being at the point where there is the most freedom of use by the public and the most development of the codec et al simultaneously.
As it stands, we're nowhere near that point, and moving farther away from it all the time. Allowing the licensors carte blanche is not helping the public good.
Imagine that a law is passed to the effect that people are not allowed to own personal or real property, they must lease it from certain governmentally-approved businesses.
On the one hand, this is just a business regulation. On the other hand it is an assault on your personal and deeply ingrained freedoms. (e.g. how do you exercise freedom of speech if all property owners ban you for doing so, and prohibit certain things? Must you stand in the ocean? Will that be free forever?)
This is harmful to society's interests in affording people the opportunity to exercise any means of communication they desire so as to express themselves (free speech is not free if, e.g. it must only be spoken, not written). It is harmful to our interests in freely using, accessing, altering, preserving and disseminating elements of our culture.
I consider it to be quite harmful. Business is not an excuse, in fact it is NEVER an excuse. The proper excuse for such a proposal is that we have more to gain than we will lose. Viz, that more things will be produced and preserved and available w/ the restrictions than without. But this isn't necessarily the case, and it definately is not ALWAYS the case, and frankly societal interests come first.
Hell, you think economic models can support themselves? Hah! Again, they're only tolerated insofar as the people expected to respect them benefit... where they don't, they have no incentive to support them.
Patents aren't like copyrights... yet.
If there's little that prevents Congress from having insanely long copyright terms, there's just as little preventing the same with patent terms.
In a supposedly free world, I could sell bread made out of sawdust and chalk.
We don't live in such a world, and it's probably for the best. This is not a made-up example; this is _exactly_ the kind of thing that used to go on before governmental regulation of food manufacture and sales. People bought it anyway, in no small part because 1) it is not in the interests of sellers to have informed customers, witness the bitter fights about labeling organic food, 2) they had little choice.
The sole purpose behind our economic and regulatory policy is to maximize public good. After all -- why should the public put up with it if it is intended to harm them! We don't live in a perfect world, and so we must tolerate _some_ evils. But this is purely for pragmatic reasons. We still seek the optimal point at which there are the least evils and the greatest goods.
This looks like a damn lot of evil, and very little good, in comparison to a more open alternative. Thus, why even bother allowing the evil alternative where the comparison is so clear?
Don't be so naive as to imagine that the default -- the Hobbsean jungle in which everyone is perfectly free to do as they like, but where their lives are nasty, brutish and short -- is desirable in all cases.
(though if it were, n.b. that copyright laws are ALSO not the default)
That's not good enough. This is so actively hostile to users, why should it even be allowed to exist? It needn't. An aggressive response would be far superior, I think, to a passive one.
Copyrights do NOT have to be defended in order to be protected. Similarly, patents to NOT have to be defended in order to be protected.
Trademarks must be defended, however.
And trade secrets cannot become public (some exceptions apply) or else they are unprotected.
The closest thing to what you're thinking of with regards to copyright is an estoppel theory. I.e., if Sony encouraged Aibopet to infringe, then sued, essentially having lured him into it in bad faith. This virtually never happens, but if it did, Sony would've shot themselves in the foot.
So remember: copyrights and patents need not be defended.
Well, she also did Kiki from "Majo no Takkyuubin" which makes for a really weird image.
Although I must confess, we had problems with Dilando. Because 'I' is a gender neutral pronoun in English, we were having the hardest time figuring out what his gender was. Finally we picked up on his regular use of 'watashi' and he took his shirt off, which settled the matter.;)
Slashdot Mirror
But the degree to which a EULA is binding is a question that can only be answered by the courts -- not MS, or the end user.
They've found contracts void for various reasons before, and they'll do so again. Already there are rumblings about how EULAs might not be contracts at all.
There are limits to the right of contract, after all.
Okay, to put it another way, does Stephen King come to your house to make sure you don't have pirated copies of his books?
Regarding 'software should be free,' I don't agree that there should be a total lack of copyright, but the value of an _ideal_ copyright scheme does not legitimize all copyright schemes.
Well, if we're going to try that, let's avoid Latin and start with Esperanto, or Lobjan, or Klingon or something which at least starts out with fewer irregulars.
Oh, it's been done before. In China, there are several different languages spoken. In order to facilitate communication, a written language was developed that was totally independent of any of the spoken tongues, and thus could be used by any of them.
I.e. whereas in English each glyph corresponds to a particular sound, in written Chinese, each glyph corresponds to a particular word (or word-part) and that word can be pronounced in any way you like; it doesn't matter.
Because China was the dominant civilization in East Asia for much of history, when Japan adopted a written language, they used the Chinese glyphs. However, because they did not have an internal language barrier, two alphabets also were developed. Japanese can be written with the alphabets (kana) or the glyphs (kanji) as a result. A basic knowledge of spoken Japanese is needed for the former, none for the latter.
Unfortunately, the downside to this is that there tend to be a lot of glyphs developed if each stands rather alone. I expect that it would be a lot better to use a small number of them like alphabet letters, but not to have any corresponding pronounciation. Even then, it's still going to be somewhat annoying to learn, because you cannot leverage a knowledge of oral language in order to facilitate learning a written one. (e.g. no, 'hooked on phonics')
Jobs sold all but one share of his Apple stock when he got 'exiled' by Sculley, and left the company. He dumped some of that money into two things: 1) NeXT, which was mostly financed by others anyway (Canon and Ross Perot) and 2) Pixar, which he bought from Industrial Light and Magic.
NeXT never turned a profit, and the investors were never able to get their money back -- $400 million -- until Apple bought it.
Pixar made a fortune, perhaps because Jobs does not take a very active role in the company, and that's how Steve broke the billion mark.
More recently, Steve got more Apple stock when he came back, and sold it all off again.
Where did you get that impression from?
The Woz has a decent amount of money, certainly more than I have, but between his giving away stock to Apple employees who were shafted on the IPO, and his divorce, he really hasn't got as much as you'd think. Certainly not compared to billionare Steve Jobs.
Woz is young enough still that he likely will spend it all; so here's hoping his new company goes well.
Who said there's no copyright protection in the US? I said that there's no copyright protection afforded by the Constitution, and that there is no copyright protection without the affirmative passage of law by Congress in accordance with the Constitution.
Viz., there is no copyright law that is universal that we should expect Taiwan to be held to; that each country crafts its own laws for its own people's own best interests. The US is no different -- the substance of our laws may be the same, but the origins are no different.
Claiming otherwise is as foolish as claiming that there is a correct side of the road to drive on, and that local custom can be wrong.
I find it difficult to believe that you think that the Constitution _isn't_ the last word on how the US government runs. Wasn't that rather the point. (it'll likely be a while before we see an amendment concerning copyrights)
Treaties cannot override the Constitution, for it is what grants and governs the authority to enter into treaties. Laws passed by Congress in furtherence of treaties cannot override the Constitution, for it is what grants and governs their lawmaking ability.
You called nothing. Perhaps you'd like to try again?
Heh.
As it happens, I'm an artist myself, and although at the moment I'm back at school, I've supported myself as an artist for years.
Please, point to the bit where I said that copyright was a bad idea. You won't find it.
I think it's a perfectly good idea -- when it's done right. Artists should be able to have the opportunity (there's no guarantee one's work won't flop) to support themselves.
BUT, carried to extremes, copyright monopolies harm society's interests in being able to freely access and use works. They harm other author's interests in being able to modify works. (e.g. Disney's movies based on other people's fairy tales) They harm the efforts of preservationists to keep pieces of our culture from being lost permanently.
These same ordinary people have an interest as well in seeing there be a broad diversity of works. It is in everyone's interest to afford _some_ protection to authors.
Some.
Where it makes sense for our society as a whole, not where it only stands to fatten the wallets of artists (or worse yet, cause harm w/o even any benefit to an artist b/c their work flopped).
It is up to the people and governments of EVERY country to determine for themselves where that balance lies. A nation with few artists stands to gain little by affording them great protections. The US used to be one of these countries. Do you dare claim that one country should be subjugated to the law of another country unless the first has shown a willingness to do so!
For such a triviality as copyright! That would be mad.
If Taiwan _WANTS_ to develop copyright law, that is its business. If it insists that authors seeking copyright protections comply with their laws or forgoe those protections, that is its business. As Taiwan is not a Berne Convention signatory AFAIK, is has placed upon itself NO obligation to respect foreign copyrights as though they were its own. This works both ways -- we need not respect theirs. Nothing compels us to do so.
I can't imagine how you think that attempting to circumvent the legitimate Taiwanese government in order to impose laws that the natives do not want is in any way just or fair. You advocate a violation of soverignty, because you don't like someone's internal practices.
This kind of thing led to centuries of war before, when attacks on soverignty were undertaken for religious reasons. Took the Treaty of Westphalia for people to recognize that countries can do within their own borders as they like. Don't throw this away.
Well one, you're over a hundred years too late. Antitrust laws are on the books, and generally work pretty well.
Companies are indeed forced to lower prices, even on luxury goods. (among other regulations) This is particularly true when they have engaged in anticompetitive practices in order to control a market without concern for typical market forces.
If you don't like complying with the laws of a democratic society, you can of course attempt to change them (just like everyone else does), suck it up like a man, leave, or be an outlaw.
You appear to be opting to leave (the marketplace) at least. But do you really think _EVERYONE_ will do so? I'm not talking about regulating prices to the point where profit is impossible, only where it is acceptable to the public. A truly efficient capitalist will take any opportunity to profit he can get.
You just sound greedy.
Uh huh. Perhaps you need to read the Constitution of the United States of America to see what protection is afforded to parties for creation. The answer: NONE.
UNLESS Congress chooses to utilize its power to so create such protection, and then only within certain limits set by the Constitution, as interpreted by the Judiciary. Congress merely can pass such laws -- it doesn't _have_ to. In the absence of such laws, where would you claim copyright protections to eminate from?
This is what I mean by artists not being entitled to copyright protection. Were they, it wouldn't take an enumerated power of Congress and actual passage of law by that body to do it. (and even then, the criteria used is based upon the progress of the arts -- not an automatic entitlement)
Similarly, the Berne Convention does not impose copyright law on any non-signatory; how could it? It's a treaty! Furthermore, it doesn't establish any international copyright law so much as it requires signatories to grant a copyright to works copyrighted elsewhere. Even then, within certain bounds.
And frankly, the US's lovely utilitarian copyright system could care less about the efforts of individuals that create content -- it cares about the social benefit of said content.
Ah, but why not vote with your vote, and pass a law mandating that the price be reduced?
That _is_ the sort of thing you'd expect in a democratic society, is it not? Major music publishers have been frequently accused of illegal price fixing -- but if we adopted your view, they could do as they please, and antitrust laws a thing of the past.
Glad I don't live in your fantasy world.
It's hardly theft. And it's not a loophole. The MPAA et al are not entitled to any amount of copyright protection whatsoever merely as a consequence of having created some work. Not even in the US.
There has to be a law affording them protection, in order for them to have any.
Firstly, even in the US, there doesn't _have_ to be a law doing so at all. Congress could give up the whole idea tomorrow, repeal copyright laws, and it'd be one big free for all... domestically. (foreign countries would still have their copyrights, presumably; copyrights are not international, though there are mutual recognition agreements in many instances)
It's much the same elsewhere -- England was the first country to have such laws, that was ~1700. Took until the 20th century for them to propagate in most countries. Why? Because no one cared about them, and if it isn't illegal, what's wrong with it?
Secondly, US copyright law has, IIRC, been limited to only books and maps (films would've been fair game, music was), only for American authors (foreigners would be screwed), and only for 14 years (a fraction of the modern span).
Isn't this just as arbitrary? Couldn't it be claimed that this is "stealing" by someone as unknowledgeable as yourself?
Taiwan should pass laws that the Taiwanese _want_. It is that simple. Don't like it; don't go to Taiwan.
(Besides which the word you're looking for is 'infringement,' not 'theft' or 'stealing.' There are specific meanings attached to each, and they're not interchangable. Go read some legal decisions on copyright some time and come back when you know enough to meaningfully participate in the discussion, kid.)
I should've expected this.
I am not, repeat NOT, advocating a non-capitalistic economic model here. Swear to God.
What I am doing is advocating utilitarianism; the philosophy upon which modern property rights of all types are founded.
Imagine that we have two people:
Alice, an author, and
Robert, a reader.
Aside from her desire to achieve fame and artistic satisfaction, what Alice really wants is money. There are two ways in which she can get the most money possible:
1) By putting in the least amount of effort into her book that confers the maximum amount of return.
2) By monopolizing the reward from the book. This is inclusive of making sure that no one can leech off of your stuff.
Correlary 1a) Alice's efficiency may increase substantially if she does no writing at all, and sells an existing book. (or uses the story, and touches it up here and there) Disney does this.
Robert may like Alice's writing, and want to support her especially. But really what Robert wants is to read. He's like Burgess Meredith. There are two ways in which he can satiate his desire:
1) By having absolute freedom with regards to accessing and using books. This does include not having to pay for them -- I could get a lot more books if they were free.
2) By having an effectively infinite amount of reading material so that availability is not an issue, and subject matter is diverse.
The problem is that neither one of these groups is ever going to be completely satisfied.
If _each_ author is like Alice, they are not only hostile to readers (who are merely sources of money) but hostile to each other, because of 1a.
Authors must accept that their individual interests will never be maximized if they group together, because it is highly inefficient for them to have to come up with books that in no way resemble any other books. And making sure that no one else's books resemble yours is their 2nd goal.
Already we see that authors are going to have to make compromises in order to work together to promote their interests. This is utilitarianism at work:
If Alice maximized her own interests, it would harm Andrew (another author), because Alice has an incentive to leech off of Andrew, but since Alice's interests govern, he cannot leech off of her. Andrew prefers that the roles be reversed.
This conflict between Alice and Andrew results in both either leeching off each other 100% (possibly resulting in nothing being published because each is waiting for the other) or each accepting a compromise that is not wholly satisfactory to either party, but not wholly unsatisfactory either. Ideally, the compromise point will be at the optimum spot where neither can get any happier without the other getting sadder.
Note also that because authors have a natural inclination to recycle, they may lose their audience of readers, who are more interested in originality. (actually this is not quite true: readers are interested in diversity, which is largely originality, but also variations on the original works... a Borges-style library is a little much, however)
A similiar dilemma exists for readers with respect to authors. If readers want to maximize their first goal, the number of authors that write will drop to zero. (again assuming a simplified reality in which people only write for money -- far from as it really is) This results in a minimization of their second goal, to have lots of books.
If readers maximize having lots of books, this likely is not only very difficult for authors (who will not enjoy coming into conflict with one another, or spending a lot of money developing truly original books) but therefore must very greatly reward authors... which is measured in terms of a minimization of readers' first goal.
The utilitarian goal is compromise between each party's own goals, and between each party.
In order to satisfy readers, they must accept that they will suffer a little bit in order to satisfy authors. In order to satisfy authors, they must suffer a little bit, in order to suffer other authors and readers.
And note _VERY_ well that authors are virtually always readers -- authorial 1a laziness is coextensive with reader 1 free use. They are exactly the same thing, because one free use is republishing.
So here's the correlary to this proposal of compromise. Which isn't really a proposal, this is how it all works for real.
That if Alice is favored at Robert's expense, more so than Robert is favored over Alice -- i.e. if they are not at the optimal point where the mutual satisfaction of both cannot be increased -- then the system in imbalance and needs correction.
Bringing this back to the original point, licenses may very well be favoring authorial goal 2 more than readers are prepared to maka partial sacrifice of reader goal 1.
If so, readers have an incentive to disrespect author's right to license their works, up to and including making it illegal. The reason being that there is no benefit for readers in allowing authors to screw them over that way.
Do you see where I'm coming from now? Do you agree that the actions of competing self-interested parties (which is quite capitalistic) must lead to mutual compromise?
Yeah, it'd hang at the end of the cable.
However, it's not a great efficiency saver -- now you have to pay to get stuff from the ground to the platform, and given that the cable length is about 22-44 THOUSAND kilometers, a few tens of thousands of feet ain't much.
As for the cable itself, it has to be built in space, and it is slowly lowered down. It likely stays pretty stable, given the overall mass of the thing up in space.
It's pretty easy to figure out what happens. You get some physics grad students, give 'em beer and pizza, and let them work out the math.
"Guess," bah.
Now see, this is far more interesting to me... The basic idea behind the Tivo is nice, but it doesn't quite do enough, and it's not quite easy enough to use.
Do you have any information about your custom system?
Their ability to set licensing terms can be, and should be, regulated by government so that said licensing (if there's any at all) is strictly so as to achieve the maximum public benefit.
Given that businesses won't bother if their benefit is below a certain point there is a balance to be met, true. But the system as a whole has to still maximize public benefit by being at the point where there is the most freedom of use by the public and the most development of the codec et al simultaneously.
As it stands, we're nowhere near that point, and moving farther away from it all the time. Allowing the licensors carte blanche is not helping the public good.
Absolutely it's malevolent.
Imagine that a law is passed to the effect that people are not allowed to own personal or real property, they must lease it from certain governmentally-approved businesses.
On the one hand, this is just a business regulation. On the other hand it is an assault on your personal and deeply ingrained freedoms. (e.g. how do you exercise freedom of speech if all property owners ban you for doing so, and prohibit certain things? Must you stand in the ocean? Will that be free forever?)
This is harmful to society's interests in affording people the opportunity to exercise any means of communication they desire so as to express themselves (free speech is not free if, e.g. it must only be spoken, not written). It is harmful to our interests in freely using, accessing, altering, preserving and disseminating elements of our culture.
I consider it to be quite harmful. Business is not an excuse, in fact it is NEVER an excuse. The proper excuse for such a proposal is that we have more to gain than we will lose. Viz, that more things will be produced and preserved and available w/ the restrictions than without. But this isn't necessarily the case, and it definately is not ALWAYS the case, and frankly societal interests come first.
Hell, you think economic models can support themselves? Hah! Again, they're only tolerated insofar as the people expected to respect them benefit... where they don't, they have no incentive to support them.
Patents aren't like copyrights... yet.
If there's little that prevents Congress from having insanely long copyright terms, there's just as little preventing the same with patent terms.
In a supposedly free world, I could sell bread made out of sawdust and chalk.
We don't live in such a world, and it's probably for the best. This is not a made-up example; this is _exactly_ the kind of thing that used to go on before governmental regulation of food manufacture and sales. People bought it anyway, in no small part because 1) it is not in the interests of sellers to have informed customers, witness the bitter fights about labeling organic food, 2) they had little choice.
The sole purpose behind our economic and regulatory policy is to maximize public good. After all -- why should the public put up with it if it is intended to harm them! We don't live in a perfect world, and so we must tolerate _some_ evils. But this is purely for pragmatic reasons. We still seek the optimal point at which there are the least evils and the greatest goods.
This looks like a damn lot of evil, and very little good, in comparison to a more open alternative. Thus, why even bother allowing the evil alternative where the comparison is so clear?
Don't be so naive as to imagine that the default -- the Hobbsean jungle in which everyone is perfectly free to do as they like, but where their lives are nasty, brutish and short -- is desirable in all cases.
(though if it were, n.b. that copyright laws are ALSO not the default)
That's not good enough. This is so actively hostile to users, why should it even be allowed to exist? It needn't. An aggressive response would be far superior, I think, to a passive one.
Copyrights do NOT have to be defended in order to be protected. Similarly, patents to NOT have to be defended in order to be protected.
Trademarks must be defended, however.
And trade secrets cannot become public (some exceptions apply) or else they are unprotected.
The closest thing to what you're thinking of with regards to copyright is an estoppel theory. I.e., if Sony encouraged Aibopet to infringe, then sued, essentially having lured him into it in bad faith. This virtually never happens, but if it did, Sony would've shot themselves in the foot.
So remember: copyrights and patents need not be defended.
Have you ever tried to _play_ Doom on a NeXT Cube? I have... It runs at something like 0.5 fps.
Well, she also did Kiki from "Majo no Takkyuubin" which makes for a really weird image.
;)
Although I must confess, we had problems with Dilando. Because 'I' is a gender neutral pronoun in English, we were having the hardest time figuring out what his gender was. Finally we picked up on his regular use of 'watashi' and he took his shirt off, which settled the matter.