So we agree that governments are inherently influencing the markets with respect to goods covered by copyright or patents?
We are agreed that books, music, plays, paintings, dances, etc, were produced before the creators were offered any copyright protections are we not?
We are agreed that things like the wheel, the stirrup, candles, stoves, etc were invented before the inventors were offered patent protections are we not?
I ask again since, if we want to have more than a shouting match or wit filled back at you session, it may help to find the basic things we agree on and try to build from there.
To be clear, there are three things there that we can agree or disagree on. Do we agree on all some or none. If not all, why do we not agree on the ones we do not agree on?
You are missing the point. We are not talking about MS being found a monopoly.
The point is, I have a monopoly on my writings. No one else can legally make copies or do anything else with them that the copyright law prohibits. I have the government granted monopoly on that. There is not free market in my works.
That is the law as we have it today. Good ot bad or some of each. That is what we have.
Red flags should go up if you see someone whose business depends on these government granted monopolies complaing of government regulation of their businesses and championing the free market. They are playing fast and loose with the truth.
I wasn't trying to answer your question. I don't think you tried to answer the first person or decide to take the position that there can be free markets in goods protected by copyrights or patents.
So we agree that governments are inherently influencing the markets with respect to goods covered by copyright or patents?
Now, as to your question and Microsoft's motivation. They may not have any. Someone else might though.
We are agreed that books, music, plays, paintings, dances, etc, were produced before the creators were offered any copyright protections are we not?
We are agreed that things like the wheel, the stirrup, candles, stoves, etc were invented before the inventors were offered patent protections are we not?
(If I made a mistake in any particular, do you dispute the general because of my ignorance?)
"So in your ideal world here, what would be the incentive for Microsoft to create Windows in this case?"
His point is one I have been making lately as well. You cannot talk about free markets in goods that are protected by copyrights or patents. They are BY DEFINITION monopoly goods.
It is another matter/debate as to whether this is an overall benefit to society, but there is no free market in those goods.
Would you care to make the case that there is indeed a free market in the goods in question? That in fact, no one has a monopoly on those goods?
The corps lobby congress with their nice, easily-organized, centralized money (as opposed to the public's horribly-organized, decentralized money) and get corporations declared "living people."
Doesn't sound to difficult to me."
You are getting too far ahead. Would they want to? Would it actually have a negative impact on stockholders? On board members? On corporate officers? Would it have a positive impact for the public at large?
Anyone have any thoughts?
"Be glad life is unfair, otherwise we'd deserve all this."
Do you wonder if we do deserve all this and life is unfair anyway?
"Firstly, at this point in time, everything you make that is copyrightable is copyrighted automatically by the law. You are not in fact choosing to do it for a particular reason."
Yes, but I am not talking of my works which I place no notice on, but rather those works I place a notice on. These days, ti is GPL and CC BY-SA for me. Check:
"Secondly, I think you're confusing something. If you are creating works without any expectation of getting anything at all in return, then you appear to not be encouraged to create those works by the availability of copyright, and therefore shouldn't get a copyright since it is superfluous."
You are missing what motivates me with respect to copyright and also trying to reduce all motivations to economic ones. I think you are mistaken as to what motivates me. Perhaps it is that way with you, I cannot read your mind, but I have some inkling of my own.
"To be honest, I'm dubious. Your posts in this thread are copyrighted. Would you not post on/. if you had to register them in order to protect them? I don't think so. I think that you post here because you enjoy the debate, and the copyright status of the posts is irrelevant."
With the example you chose, which is my posting on slashdot, you are more than likely right. But you chose a wrong example. Check this link:
I wrote a novel in November 2004 as part of a contest. If I sort out some issues with my lawyer with respect to short quotes from songs of the era sprinkled here and there in the novel, I intend to publish it under some Creative Commons or similar license.
After all that work, I would not put it in the public domain, but would be happy to release as CC BY-SA. I will be quite happy, even if I do not receive a dime as a result of sales. This brings up a key issue with reguards to motivation. That is that we have a continumm from demotivation to total absence of motivation to motivation. You are speaking like there is only motivation and the absence of motivation.
While I am quite happy to share my work for no monetary reward, I find it demotivating to think others will make a derivative of my work and copyright it all rights reserved and not pay me. I am cool with them copylefting a derivative and not paying me. Perhaps this will remove the need to be dubious.
"Given that the system I describe is more or less how we did things from 1710-1977 and that we had a pretty thriving public domain, and that the number of copyrightable works didn't seem to shoot up upon the effective date of the 1976 Act, or the 1989 amendments, I think that those expansions of the law were not really justified."
I can easily agree that the expansions of the law were not justified. However, if one of the acts/amendments you cite was the one that made all works automatically copyrighted once comitted to a fixed medium, you are seriously mistaken in your claim that the number of copyrighted works did not shoot up (I realise you said copyrightable works, if there is a fine point to the difference, please enlighten.) I take it you meant works where the copyright was registered did not shoot up in number.
"One year statutory bar to filing, probably from publication, where that's significantly expanded from what it means now (e.g. inclusive of public performance). Five year terms from pu
Google define seems to back up your understanding, I have most often heard it used where it also means something you can draw an unwarranted/extra large amount of cash from.
Some of those Google links do seem to refer to large profits being produced by a cash cow and hence my point would still stand in those cases.
The schools found themselves with a monopoly position with respect to phones on campus and thus milked the students for large sums of money.
Those Google links seem to often refer to customer loyalty when in this case it was more of a monopoly situation. So was it wrong to call it a cash cow?
Quite funny that someone chose to moderate this overated, when the only rating was by virtue of my being a logged in user. Someone afraid of others seeing the ideas in the post?
"No, it wouldn't. Remember, the only thing a copyright is really good for is economic exploitation of a work."
I think this is fundamentally wrong. I copyright my work these days, not to economically exploit it, but to prevent others from doing so if they are unwilling to share follow on works. Right now, I let them exploit them as is, but the situation is going from bad to worsed and I am thinking about the issues.
Since we want to promote the public domain, I can assure you that, seeing how attitudes to copyright and the laws controlling copyright are going, I for one, would publish way less if registration were a requirement and thus the public domain would suffer. (Assuming the things I publish have any value. At least one person seems to think so: http://www.archive.org/audio/audio-details-db.php? collection=opensource_audio&collectionid=dragirl&P HPSESSID=03439fb06f0a89e32325cab807bd6d80
as seen in the review at that url.)
You are proposing that my works should have to be available as public domain to those who would make derivatives and exploit them while withholding access to the derivatives from me. Unless I pay and oficially register my works. This would get expensive for me. I think what you are suggesting may effectively kill GPL programs and the publish early, publish often methods of development. Could you speculate on this thought.
"In order to stimuate the first one of those goals, we 'spend' the immediate satisfaction of the second two. Not fully, but partially, and only for a span of time."
Ah, only for a span of time. And the current copyright powerhouses are doing a great (dastardly) job of having that span be elastic and ever stretching. I might be more inclined to agree with you if it were indeed "only for a span of time" and that span was short and fixed.
It is those people who are doing everything in their power to prevent their works from entering the public domain that I do not wish to have making use of my works as public domain without rewarding me financially.
On the sports field of battle, some teams bring size and power, some bring speed and finesse. You may have an interesting game. I think my proposal may give individual authors a better chance in the game. The current copyright powerhouses bring wealth and a hugh pool of locked up works that they can access freely but the little guys can't. We would bring our numbers and prolific output thus creating out own pool that would be easy (and free) for us to use but that would be more difficutl and costly for them to use. None the less it would be fair, since why whould they expect to use our work without payment when they do not expect for thier work to be used in the same way?
"You're basically saying that where someone creates a derivative work of the kind discussed above, that they should effectively not be able to copyright it; if people can reproduce it, distribute it, prepare derivatives from it, etc. then it's effectively in the public domain."
Yes, and no. First off, that is the current situation for everyone under the laws that currently exist. So yes, some people would choose not to make derivatives as they would not want to share alike. But please note, they could still contact the author (like they can now) and seek an alternate license. Others would go right ahead and create their derivatives and share alike. Please note that everyone could freely distribute (and profit from) verbatim copies. This is better than what exists now.
No, it is not effectively in the public domain. If I put a CC BY-SA on a novel and say that you can ignore the BY part, the work is not in the public domain.
Let's say the book becomes a big hit around the world. Would a big movie house take advantage of my license and make a big budget movie without paying me as would be their right? If they did, the movie would have to be share alike. You think they are going to do that? I think they would seek a different license.
"Registration wouldn't be difficult: fill out a form, mail off a few copies to the Library of Congress, and pay a small fee, chiefly to accomodate the costs associated with keeping it on file."
It would still cost money which would unduly bite the little guy and give the big boys free access to the works of the little guys without giving the little guys reciprocal access to the works of the big boys.
What if unmarked works defaulted to something like Creative Commons BY-SA Without the BY part and to GPL for programs?
How would this be a bigger burden to society except to those who would take work they did not create and create a derivative and lock up the derivative.
With my proposal, people could make free use of unmarked works, even to the point of making money from them, they would just be prevented from locking up derivatives/etc.
If you respond to the first question, am I missing something in the following thoughts?
That way, all unmarked works would be protected by a share alike license. If you wanted more or less protection, you would need to so indicate. This might be a nice balance of default rights for the public and authors.
"Here in France we have a simple solution to this. When you are paid a dividend you get a tax credit with it that is the amount of taxes already paid on that dividend.
So a company that paid no taxes would be unable to give tax credits with its dividends, so the people receiving those dividends would pay more taxes."
Hadn't thought of this idea before, but it may be a winner. How do they try to game the system in France? Can it be gamed?
"You can sure tell when Republican's have complete control of things, because it is TOTALLY sweet to be a wealthy shareholder and it totally sucks to work for a living. The amazing thing is millions of working people who are being totally screwed by the Republicans, economicly, keep voting for them anyway. Republicans have some true genius, because they can sucker working people in to voting against their own economic interest by using wedge issues and scare tactics like terrorism, gay marriage, abortion, religion, etc."
I am going to choose not to argue with this at this juncture. Do you think the Democrats are squeeky clean in all of this?
If yes, I will let things stand except to say that I think they favour the rich just as much while claiming to be against the rich and leading the poorer to believe the middle and upper middle are the rich and passing laws to hit them while still leaving the loopholes for the rich.
If no, we can proceed. How can we do something about this sad state of affairs?
The double taxation is wrong, especially since it can in fact be a long chain of multiple taxation, but how can we get rid of the wrong while still collecting the proper tax?
You can either have no tax on dividends, or exempt corporations from all income tax and tax the dividends, payroll, etc., where people actually get the income? Can this be done in an effective manner? You have already pointed out that corporations have an uncanny way of paying less (no?) tax than one would think from their actual incomes.
I think we would be well served in thinking of ways to reign in corporations.
One idea I would like to kick around is that only people could own shares in corporations. Other corporations would be specifically prohibited from owning shares. Perhaps voting shares would do the job. Could we get the same (if any) benefits while allowing corporations to own non-voting shares in other corporations?
"The problem is that it's really hard for people to understand the price of custom work. They see that something can be bought from a company for $40 and somehow assume that an exact match for them from you will cost $40."
Sure, so ask them to round up a million of their closest friends who want the same thing and they can all get a copy for $40 each. No problem. You will even throw in free upgrades for the first two years.
The doctor said I had some sort of new bug but I told him it was a feature. (dR)
I used to do a lot more free than I do now. Still do some or get dinner but mostly $95 per hour. (And often a discount for family on top of that. It is more and more depending on what sort of discounts I get in return.)
I have been toying with the idea of a MUCH smaller amount or even more free support for those family members who will move off of windows to linux.
It is way too old having to clean the same machine of spyware and viruses over and over.
"Congratulations. You are officially part of the most annoying segment of computer users on the face of the earth. "Free or I won't use it damnit!" is your mating call."
Thanks, I don't mind it when someone who doesn't understand what I am saying, or purposely mis-represents what I am saying tries to insult me.
I will gladly pay for Free Software, but, long term, I don't want to use Non-Free Software, even if you are willing to PAY ME to use it.
One might think after all these years people might have caught on to the whole libre versus gratis bit, but who knows.
"What this is like is calling information and asking for the number to Kroger and being connected to Safeway instead, or whatever company was paying the most to get the RBOC to connect people to their grocery store instead of Kroger."
You say it is like this, but what about the case makes it like this? Did Louis Vuitton not show up "IN THE SEARCH RESULTS" and the competitors show up there instead?
Or, to be closer to your anology, dit the Louis Vuitton summary show up and the link look like their link - see my top search result -
[Louis vuitton : luxury shopping, leather luggage, french fashion... - [ Translate this page ] Louis vuitton, luxury gift, french fashion, handbag and accessories, leather luggage. All about louis vuitton cup.... Louis Vuitton.... www.vuitton.com/ - 42k - Cached - Similar pages]
but when the link is clicked on, it take you to another web site? If google did that, I agree it is wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll try again:
So we agree that governments are inherently influencing the markets with respect to goods covered by copyright or patents?
We are agreed that books, music, plays, paintings, dances, etc, were produced before the creators were offered any copyright protections are we not?
We are agreed that things like the wheel, the stirrup, candles, stoves, etc were invented before the inventors were offered patent protections are we not?
I ask again since, if we want to have more than a shouting match or wit filled back at you session, it may help to find the basic things we agree on and try to build from there.
To be clear, there are three things there that we can agree or disagree on. Do we agree on all some or none. If not all, why do we not agree on the ones we do not agree on?
all the best,
drew
You are missing the point. We are not talking about MS being found a monopoly.
The point is, I have a monopoly on my writings. No one else can legally make copies or do anything else with them that the copyright law prohibits. I have the government granted monopoly on that. There is not free market in my works.
That is the law as we have it today. Good ot bad or some of each. That is what we have.
Red flags should go up if you see someone whose business depends on these government granted monopolies complaing of government regulation of their businesses and championing the free market. They are playing fast and loose with the truth.
I wasn't trying to answer your question. I don't think you tried to answer the first person or decide to take the position that there can be free markets in goods protected by copyrights or patents.
So we agree that governments are inherently influencing the markets with respect to goods covered by copyright or patents?
Now, as to your question and Microsoft's motivation. They may not have any. Someone else might though.
We are agreed that books, music, plays, paintings, dances, etc, were produced before the creators were offered any copyright protections are we not?
We are agreed that things like the wheel, the stirrup, candles, stoves, etc were invented before the inventors were offered patent protections are we not?
(If I made a mistake in any particular, do you dispute the general because of my ignorance?)
Motivation is a very complex issue.
all the best,
drew
"So in your ideal world here, what would be the incentive for Microsoft to create Windows in this case?"
His point is one I have been making lately as well. You cannot talk about free markets in goods that are protected by copyrights or patents. They are BY DEFINITION monopoly goods.
It is another matter/debate as to whether this is an overall benefit to society, but there is no free market in those goods.
Would you care to make the case that there is indeed a free market in the goods in question? That in fact, no one has a monopoly on those goods?
all the best,
drew
"There's a word for it. Stupid."
So, was it smart people or stupid people who thought democracy might be a good idea?
Caution, there may be a trap somewhere in that question.
drew
"And now what happens?
The corps lobby congress with their nice, easily-organized, centralized money (as opposed to the public's horribly-organized, decentralized money) and get corporations declared "living people."
Doesn't sound to difficult to me."
You are getting too far ahead. Would they want to? Would it actually have a negative impact on stockholders? On board members? On corporate officers? Would it have a positive impact for the public at large?
Anyone have any thoughts?
"Be glad life is unfair, otherwise we'd deserve all this."
Do you wonder if we do deserve all this and life is unfair anyway?
New law proposal to discuss:
Only living people can own voting shares in corporations. Other corporations can only own non-voting shares.
And now what happens?
all the best,
drew
"Firstly, at this point in time, everything you make that is copyrightable is copyrighted automatically by the law. You are not in fact choosing to do it for a particular reason."
/. if you had to register them in order to protect them? I don't think so. I think that you post here because you enjoy the debate, and the copyright status of the posts is irrelevant."
Yes, but I am not talking of my works which I place no notice on, but rather those works I place a notice on. These days, ti is GPL and CC BY-SA for me. Check:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A %22drew%20Roberts%22
http://zotz.openphoto.net/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/zbcw/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/nanoppix/
http://security.royans.net/projects/dydns/
"Secondly, I think you're confusing something. If you are creating works without any expectation of getting anything at all in return, then you appear to not be encouraged to create those works by the availability of copyright, and therefore shouldn't get a copyright since it is superfluous."
You are missing what motivates me with respect to copyright and also trying to reduce all motivations to economic ones. I think you are mistaken as to what motivates me. Perhaps it is that way with you, I cannot read your mind, but I have some inkling of my own.
"To be honest, I'm dubious. Your posts in this thread are copyrighted. Would you not post on
With the example you chose, which is my posting on slashdot, you are more than likely right. But you chose a wrong example. Check this link:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/userinfo.php?uid=47354
I wrote a novel in November 2004 as part of a contest. If I sort out some issues with my lawyer with respect to short quotes from songs of the era sprinkled here and there in the novel, I intend to publish it under some Creative Commons or similar license.
After all that work, I would not put it in the public domain, but would be happy to release as CC BY-SA. I will be quite happy, even if I do not receive a dime as a result of sales. This brings up a key issue with reguards to motivation. That is that we have a continumm from demotivation to total absence of motivation to motivation. You are speaking like there is only motivation and the absence of motivation.
While I am quite happy to share my work for no monetary reward, I find it demotivating to think others will make a derivative of my work and copyright it all rights reserved and not pay me. I am cool with them copylefting a derivative and not paying me. Perhaps this will remove the need to be dubious.
"Given that the system I describe is more or less how we did things from 1710-1977 and that we had a pretty thriving public domain, and that the number of copyrightable works didn't seem to shoot up upon the effective date of the 1976 Act, or the 1989 amendments, I think that those expansions of the law were not really justified."
I can easily agree that the expansions of the law were not justified. However, if one of the acts/amendments you cite was the one that made all works automatically copyrighted once comitted to a fixed medium, you are seriously mistaken in your claim that the number of copyrighted works did not shoot up (I realise you said copyrightable works, if there is a fine point to the difference, please enlighten.) I take it you meant works where the copyright was registered did not shoot up in number.
"One year statutory bar to filing, probably from publication, where that's significantly expanded from what it means now (e.g. inclusive of public performance). Five year terms from pu
You know, it seems you may be right there, but if so, I think it was also misused by the person in the article.
s h+cow&btnG=Google+Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3A+ca
Google define seems to back up your understanding, I have most often heard it used where it also means something you can draw an unwarranted/extra large amount of cash from.
Some of those Google links do seem to refer to large profits being produced by a cash cow and hence my point would still stand in those cases.
The schools found themselves with a monopoly position with respect to phones on campus and thus milked the students for large sums of money.
Those Google links seem to often refer to customer loyalty when in this case it was more of a monopoly situation. So was it wrong to call it a cash cow?
all the best,
drew
'"Six or seven years ago, telephones on campus were a cash cow," said Glenn Gaslin of Morrisville State College in New York.'
And here we see a basic problem. Trying to earn more than a fair return because you have monopoly power in a certain situation.
They should never have been a cash cow in the first place, just a service provided to students with a modest rate of return.
all the best,
drew
Quite funny that someone chose to moderate this overated, when the only rating was by virtue of my being a logged in user. Someone afraid of others seeing the ideas in the post?
all the best,
drew
"No, it wouldn't. Remember, the only thing a copyright is really good for is economic exploitation of a work."
I think this is fundamentally wrong. I copyright my work these days, not to economically exploit it, but to prevent others from doing so if they are unwilling to share follow on works. Right now, I let them exploit them as is, but the situation is going from bad to worsed and I am thinking about the issues.
Since we want to promote the public domain, I can assure you that, seeing how attitudes to copyright and the laws controlling copyright are going, I for one, would publish way less if registration were a requirement and thus the public domain would suffer. (Assuming the things I publish have any value. At least one person seems to think so: http://www.archive.org/audio/audio-details-db.php? collection=opensource_audio&collectionid=dragirl&P HPSESSID=03439fb06f0a89e32325cab807bd6d80
as seen in the review at that url.)
You are proposing that my works should have to be available as public domain to those who would make derivatives and exploit them while withholding access to the derivatives from me. Unless I pay and oficially register my works. This would get expensive for me. I think what you are suggesting may effectively kill GPL programs and the publish early, publish often methods of development. Could you speculate on this thought.
"In order to stimuate the first one of those goals, we 'spend' the immediate satisfaction of the second two. Not fully, but partially, and only for a span of time."
Ah, only for a span of time. And the current copyright powerhouses are doing a great (dastardly) job of having that span be elastic and ever stretching. I might be more inclined to agree with you if it were indeed "only for a span of time" and that span was short and fixed.
It is those people who are doing everything in their power to prevent their works from entering the public domain that I do not wish to have making use of my works as public domain without rewarding me financially.
On the sports field of battle, some teams bring size and power, some bring speed and finesse. You may have an interesting game. I think my proposal may give individual authors a better chance in the game. The current copyright powerhouses bring wealth and a hugh pool of locked up works that they can access freely but the little guys can't. We would bring our numbers and prolific output thus creating out own pool that would be easy (and free) for us to use but that would be more difficutl and costly for them to use. None the less it would be fair, since why whould they expect to use our work without payment when they do not expect for thier work to be used in the same way?
"You're basically saying that where someone creates a derivative work of the kind discussed above, that they should effectively not be able to copyright it; if people can reproduce it, distribute it, prepare derivatives from it, etc. then it's effectively in the public domain."
Yes, and no. First off, that is the current situation for everyone under the laws that currently exist. So yes, some people would choose not to make derivatives as they would not want to share alike. But please note, they could still contact the author (like they can now) and seek an alternate license. Others would go right ahead and create their derivatives and share alike. Please note that everyone could freely distribute (and profit from) verbatim copies. This is better than what exists now.
No, it is not effectively in the public domain. If I put a CC BY-SA on a novel and say that you can ignore the BY part, the work is not in the public domain.
Let's say the book becomes a big hit around the world. Would a big movie house take advantage of my license and make a big budget movie without paying me as would be their right? If they did, the movie would have to be share alike. You think they are going to do that? I think they would seek a different license.
"Registration wouldn't be difficult: fill out a form, mail off a few copies to the Library of Congress, and pay a small fee, chiefly to accomodate the costs associated with keeping it on file."
It would still cost money which would unduly bite the little guy and give the big boys free access to the works of the little guys without giving the little guys reciprocal access to the works of the big boys.
What if unmarked works defaulted to something like Creative Commons BY-SA Without the BY part and to GPL for programs?
How would this be a bigger burden to society except to those who would take work they did not create and create a derivative and lock up the derivative.
With my proposal, people could make free use of unmarked works, even to the point of making money from them, they would just be prevented from locking up derivatives/etc.
If you respond to the first question, am I missing something in the following thoughts?
all the best,
drew
"Arguably, yes.
i gh t_Term_Reform/Default
I think we ought to require people to formally register for copyrights, as opposed to granting them automatically and indiscriminately."
I am not sure I agree with formally register, but at least place a formal notice on the work.
What if unmarked works defaulted to something like Creative Commons BY-SA Without the BY part and to GPL for programs.
Please check this url:
http://www.infoanarchy.org/wiki/index.php/Copyr
That way, all unmarked works would be protected by a share alike license. If you wanted more or less protection, you would need to so indicate. This might be a nice balance of default rights for the public and authors.
all the best,
drew
What about if you take a picture of a tree in my yard?
What if I have "sculpted" the tree to look like a building or a person?
What about if you take a picture of my dog in my yard?
What if my dog is a poodle with a sculpted cut?
What about if you take a picture of my house?
What if my house has a murtal painted on it?
I really want to know answers to these and similar questions.
all the best,
drew
"Here in France we have a simple solution to this. When you are paid a dividend you get a tax credit with it that is the amount of taxes already paid on that dividend.
So a company that paid no taxes would be unable to give tax credits with its dividends, so the people receiving those dividends would pay more taxes."
Hadn't thought of this idea before, but it may be a winner. How do they try to game the system in France? Can it be gamed?
drew
"You can sure tell when Republican's have complete control of things, because it is TOTALLY sweet to be a wealthy shareholder and it totally sucks to work for a living. The amazing thing is millions of working people who are being totally screwed by the Republicans, economicly, keep voting for them anyway. Republicans have some true genius, because they can sucker working people in to voting against their own economic interest by using wedge issues and scare tactics like terrorism, gay marriage, abortion, religion, etc."
I am going to choose not to argue with this at this juncture. Do you think the Democrats are squeeky clean in all of this?
If yes, I will let things stand except to say that I think they favour the rich just as much while claiming to be against the rich and leading the poorer to believe the middle and upper middle are the rich and passing laws to hit them while still leaving the loopholes for the rich.
If no, we can proceed. How can we do something about this sad state of affairs?
The double taxation is wrong, especially since it can in fact be a long chain of multiple taxation, but how can we get rid of the wrong while still collecting the proper tax?
You can either have no tax on dividends, or exempt corporations from all income tax and tax the dividends, payroll, etc., where people actually get the income? Can this be done in an effective manner? You have already pointed out that corporations have an uncanny way of paying less (no?) tax than one would think from their actual incomes.
I think we would be well served in thinking of ways to reign in corporations.
One idea I would like to kick around is that only people could own shares in corporations. Other corporations would be specifically prohibited from owning shares. Perhaps voting shares would do the job. Could we get the same (if any) benefits while allowing corporations to own non-voting shares in other corporations?
drew
Just go on thye dole. It is so much more simple. Let someon else pay your bills.
What would the taxman think of your victory garden? Can you pay him in kind?
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet...
Fab Four
"The problem is that it's really hard for people to understand the price of custom work. They see that something can be bought from a company for $40 and somehow assume that an exact match for them from you will cost $40."
Sure, so ask them to round up a million of their closest friends who want the same thing and they can all get a copy for $40 each. No problem. You will even throw in free upgrades for the first two years.
The doctor said I had some sort of new bug but I told him it was a feature. (dR)
Way funny.
Pop in knoppix, boot. sudo knoppix-installer. Answer a few questions. Wait for files to copy over. Reboot. Login.
May have skipped a few steps, it has been a month or more.
If you are not a troll, give it a whirl on a clean new machine and see what you think.
When you are done, su, apt-get update, apt-get upgrade.
Enjoy.
I used to do a lot more free than I do now. Still do some or get dinner but mostly $95 per hour. (And often a discount for family on top of that. It is more and more depending on what sort of discounts I get in return.)
I have been toying with the idea of a MUCH smaller amount or even more free support for those family members who will move off of windows to linux.
It is way too old having to clean the same machine of spyware and viruses over and over.
Since I never look at the right because I know that is where the ads are, I never see them.
How exactly does what you say happens happen in my case?
"Congratulations. You are officially part of the most annoying segment of computer users on the face of the earth. "Free or I won't use it damnit!" is your mating call."
Thanks, I don't mind it when someone who doesn't understand what I am saying, or purposely mis-represents what I am saying tries to insult me.
I will gladly pay for Free Software, but, long term, I don't want to use Non-Free Software, even if you are willing to PAY ME to use it.
One might think after all these years people might have caught on to the whole libre versus gratis bit, but who knows.
Sorry I didn't get back to you on this sooner.
"Thus, everytime someone does a search on Linux the top link will take them to a page extolling Windows..."
If it were the top link, perhaps you would have a point, but it is not the top link, is it?
If you say yes it is, please document the fact.
"What this is like is calling information and asking for the number to Kroger and being connected to Safeway instead, or whatever company was paying the most to get the RBOC to connect people to their grocery store instead of Kroger."
... - [ Translate this page ] ... Louis Vuitton. ...
You say it is like this, but what about the case makes it like this? Did Louis Vuitton not show up "IN THE SEARCH RESULTS" and the competitors show up there instead?
Or, to be closer to your anology, dit the Louis Vuitton summary show up and the link look like their link - see my top search result -
[Louis vuitton : luxury shopping, leather luggage, french fashion
Louis vuitton, luxury gift, french fashion, handbag and accessories, leather
luggage. All about louis vuitton cup.
www.vuitton.com/ - 42k - Cached - Similar pages]
but when the link is clicked on, it take you to another web site? If google did that, I agree it is wrong.
Is that what they did?
"It's more like looking up a company in the yellow pages, and finding competitors' ads right next to it."
Wouldn't it be more like looking up a company in the white pages, and finding competitors' ads right next to it?