Protection is not needed for innovation. The incentive for the lone genius to spend his efforts inventing a great new thing from scratch may be diminished. But innovation works better when it is incremental. Evolution is smarter than the genius inventor. Recipes are like inventions, but they tend to be protected through trade secret and offered as a service. There is more variety and widespread examples of excellence in cooking than you would expect if your worries about the need for protection to foster innovation were true. There is definitely no shortage of cookbooks. There is no shortage of restaurants, grocery stores, and amateur cooks.
Cooking is not the only example. FOSS is another obvious example. Home decorating and home improvement seem to be flourishing without DRM. Of all things, legal contracts can be copied, but there is no shortage of lawyers you can pay a tidy sum to tailor a contract for your use. Science itself has developed quite well with a publish to get credit type of system.
I suggest that without DRM there is more innovation, more variety, more excellence, more follow on industries, and a larger economic pie to be shared by more people. All this, and there are still the rock star chefs, architects, lawyers, interior designers, and scientists.
"The question they ask of the guy in the dock is, what is the probability that an innocent man would match this DNA? And the answer is, of course, about one in a million," says Pike, looking around the table and pausing for drama. "The question they should ask is, given the match, what is the probability that he is innocent? And the answer is, about one-third."
I just found this article at http://www.innocenceproject.org/dnanews/index.php. The Innocence Project usually uses DNA to prove someone is innocent. Here is an example where an innocent man was convicted because of DNA:
Compiled by Peter J. McQuillan
Forensic Contretemps
Brian Kelly was the first person in Scotland to be successfully prosecuted solely on the basis of DNA evidence. The facts were uncomplicated: A woman was raped at night in her Ayrshire home in 1987 by a burglar. In July of that year Kelly, a police officer who lived nearby, voluntarily gave a DNA sample to investigators believing this would eliminate him from the inquiry. Thereafter, the lab reported a match and Kelly was charged with the rape. The victim was unable to identify him as the rapist even though she knew him as a police officer. Kelly nonetheless was convicted in 1989 and sentenced to prison for six years. His parole was delayed until 1993 because he refused to admit his guilt. The Scotsman (Nov 23, 2003) recently disclosed that the conviction may be quashed early this year because two separate studies have concluded that cross contamination of the evidence may have produced a false-positive result. The Texas Department of Public Safety operates 13 regional crime labs, all of which are nationally accredited. A review by the Houston Chronicle (Oct 26, 2003) of recent audits of seven of these labs found that one failed to adequately decontaminate lab space. Another had improper evidence storage and lacked a back-up power supply. "When power fluctuates during amplification of extracted DNA, the evidence could be destroyed." An inspector noted that dozens of evidence cuttings at one DNA lab were not properly stored. A DPS scientist explained away the deficiencies by saying that a 100 percent compliance rate is an unreasonable expectation. "You can go into any lab, any day of the week and find some things that need correction." Last year, according to the Bucks County Courier Times (Oct 14, 2003), errors were uncovered in four cases worked by one scientist at the Pennsylvania State Police Crime Lab. In one case she failed to detect a semen stain on an article of clothing assigned to her for analysis. Last June she was given six months of remedial training, at the end of which she resigned. PSP officials sent letters to prosecutors in 27 counties whose cases were handled by her, notifying them of the potential for error. Some 615 cases were scheduled for retesting. In the neighboring state of New Jersey, five police officers were recently convicted in federal court for a civil rights violation involving the death of a prisoner in their custody. Introduced at trial was a bloodstained concrete chip that was pried from a sidewalk two weeks after the victim was arrested. Witnesses said the five officers beat the victim at that location. A FBI Crime Lab scientist testified that she matched his blood to the sidewalk stain. The defendants were awaiting sentences when FBI officials disclosed that the scientist had just admitted skipping a quality control step in DNA tests in their case and 102 others. She did not perform the routine check for contamination because she wanted her casework "to run smoothly." The prosecuto
Here is my suggestion for improvement. Make a color coded viewing mode which has a different background color depending on
how long ago that part of the page had been added
and how many unique visitors have seen the new part of the page. Call the mode "peer review" or "credibility rating" Red might mean just added, so beware!
Maybe the parameters could be saved in your personal preferences.
If I were to drive my pickup truck up and down the streets of my city, all the while shouting out the window that I want the homeowners to put valuable stuff in my truck bed, am I committing a crime? What if at one home, there is a robot that greets me with "How may I help you?". So, I ask the robot for valuable stuff, and it loads up my truck bed? Was this a crime? At the next house, a robot asks me a riddle, and when I answer correctly, this robot also loads my truck bed with great stuff. Was that a crime? Three streets down from here, is a really fancy and clever robot that hears my plea for stuff, and it packages some great stuff up and mails it to my home. Is this a crime? When I get home, now that I know there are fancy robots out there, I make it a habit to ask for stuff out loud, and as if by magic, clever robots send me stuff. Every now and again, I get a letter with a riddle in it, and when I figure the answer, I say it out loud, and a clever robot sends me stuff in the mail. None of this sounds like a crime to me. Perhaps the people in this city should stop buying clever robots, or at least try a little harder to get these robots to listen and obey a smaller list of people.
The language we use to describe something new is more important than what we actually describe. Our culture will assimilate the new through analogy to something old. But, if you step outside the box you can see that a different analogy would lead to different expectations.
As we computerize and automate our world, it would be better if security is improved rather than a never ending flow of new laws to patch over our faulty analogy.
-Peter
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I just read the GFDL I doubt he has to provide a link to download the book if the full source is available on the cd. I can't find the ad you are complaining about, but it sounds like he has forked it by changing the title. He is offering support and money back which are liabilities that create real costs for him. He is not hiding the truth about the book from the actual buyers. He is providing a transparent copy with license and history. I think he may be following the letter of the law.
-Peter
This post is copyrighted. You may not store it in your memory. You may not tell its contents to others. You may not adopt these ideas as your own. You may not learn from them. Isn't intelectual property fun!
Putting a price on something creates value for it. How many links for free things have you skipped over because you don't have time right now. This person has used his editorial skill to pick _your_ book out of the mass of information overload that is the net. He has put his reputation on the line to say it has value and is worth reading. Much of commerce is just packaging and researching. Very little of our economy is actual manufacturing. Why pay $500 for that bicycle when you could pay $400 to the company the seller bought it from. Maybe you don't know where to buy it for $400. Is it immoral for the seller not to tell you? His knowledge is his value added. I believe more people will see and read your book because of this ebay seller than would without him. Price is the information that tells you there is a market there. When you see a large profit being made, that is the signal the market sends that others should be selling too. Don't discourage him, encourage others, or join the fray yourself. It astonishes me how many people on slashdot complain when they see small scale entrepreneurs try to make money off open source when at the same time they worship the likes of Red Hat. I think maybe your ego is bruised since he has not named you personally. As long as the source is included on the cdr's along with the license that tells the buyer his freedom, I'd be happy.
I may be dense, but I went to your website, and it wasn't immediately obvious to me how to download your book. It looks to me like he is offering a valuable service.
-Peter
This post is copyrighted. You may not store it in your memory. You may not tell its contents to others. You may not adopt these ideas as your own. You may not learn from them. Isn't intelectual property fun!
Dumb laws breed disrespect for the LAW. The hole they dig is deeper and wider all the time. Copyright is automatic and nearly endless while Patent protection requires novelty and expressions of genius to be granted. This is greatly out of balance. If you believe generic drugs are a good thing for our society, then how can you believe that Copyrights of nearly unlimited terms are anything but bad for society. If we were to extend Patent terms to the same lengths that Copyrights have already been extended, then nearly everyone would seek ways around such laws. This is what is happening with Copyright.
How important was the amount of money you had available to mount your defence? Was there a sliding curve where more money increased your chances of getting off? Which, do you believe, has a stronger corelation to being convicted, being guilty or not having enough money?
Was the prosecution and police made up of idealists that want to clean up the world, or by opportunists that would commit worse illegal acts than yours if they knew they wouldn't get caught and it benefits them in some way?
Was the evidence circumstantial? Or, did they see your fingers on the keyboard?
-Gearspring;-)
Gearspring didn't write these questions, I figured out how to use his account without his knowledge.
Slashdot Mirror
Protection is not needed for innovation. The incentive for the lone genius to spend his efforts inventing a great new thing from scratch may be diminished. But innovation works better when it is incremental. Evolution is smarter than the genius inventor. Recipes are like inventions, but they tend to be protected through trade secret and offered as a service. There is more variety and widespread examples of excellence in cooking than you would expect if your worries about the need for protection to foster innovation were true. There is definitely no shortage of cookbooks. There is no shortage of restaurants, grocery stores, and amateur cooks.
Cooking is not the only example. FOSS is another obvious example. Home decorating and home improvement seem to be flourishing without DRM. Of all things, legal contracts can be copied, but there is no shortage of lawyers you can pay a tidy sum to tailor a contract for your use. Science itself has developed quite well with a publish to get credit type of system.
I suggest that without DRM there is more innovation, more variety, more excellence, more follow on industries, and a larger economic pie to be shared by more people. All this, and there are still the rock star chefs, architects, lawyers, interior designers, and scientists.
From an article in wired magazine quoting a Nature article which I don't want to pay $30 for access too.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.09/penn_pr.ht ml
I just found this article at http://www.innocenceproject.org/dnanews/index.php.
The Innocence Project usually uses DNA to prove someone is innocent. Here is an example where an innocent man was convicted because of DNA:
background color depending on
how long ago that part of the page had been added
and how many unique visitors have seen the new part of the page.
Call the mode "peer review" or "credibility rating"
Red might mean just added, so beware!
Maybe the parameters could be saved in your personal preferences.
If I were to drive my pickup truck up and down the
streets of my city, all the while shouting out the
window that I want the homeowners to put valuable
stuff in my truck bed, am I committing a crime?
What if at one home, there is a robot that greets
me with "How may I help you?". So, I ask the robot
for valuable stuff, and it loads up my truck bed?
Was this a crime? At the next house, a robot asks
me a riddle, and when I answer correctly, this robot
also loads my truck bed with great stuff. Was that
a crime? Three streets down from here, is a really
fancy and clever robot that hears my plea for stuff,
and it packages some great stuff up and
mails it to my home. Is this a crime? When I get
home, now that I know there are fancy robots out
there, I make it a habit to ask for stuff out
loud, and as if by magic, clever robots send me
stuff. Every now and again, I get a letter with
a riddle in it, and when I figure the answer, I
say it out loud, and a clever robot sends me
stuff in the mail. None of this sounds like
a crime to me. Perhaps the people in this city
should stop buying clever robots, or at least
try a little harder to get these robots to listen
and obey a smaller list of people.
The language we use to describe something new
is more important than what we actually describe.
Our culture will assimilate the new through
analogy to something old. But, if you step
outside the box you can see that a different
analogy would lead to different expectations.
As we computerize and automate our world, it
would be better if security is improved rather
than a never ending flow of new laws to patch
over our faulty analogy.
-Peter
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I just read the GFDL I doubt he has to provide a link to download the book if the full source is available on the cd. I can't find the ad you are complaining about, but it sounds like he has forked it by changing the title. He is offering support and money back which are liabilities that create real costs for him. He is not hiding the truth about the book from the actual buyers. He is providing a transparent copy with license and history. I think he may be following the letter of the law.
-Peter
This post is copyrighted. You may not store it in your memory. You may not tell its contents to others. You may not adopt these ideas as your own. You may not learn from them. Isn't intelectual property fun!
Putting a price on something creates value for it. How many links for free things have you skipped over because you don't have time right now. This person has used his editorial skill to pick _your_ book out of the mass of information overload that is the net. He has put his reputation on the line to say it has value and is worth reading. Much of commerce is just packaging and researching. Very little of our economy is actual manufacturing. Why pay $500 for that bicycle when you could pay $400 to the company the seller bought it from. Maybe you don't know where to buy it for $400. Is it immoral for the seller not to tell you? His knowledge is his value added. I believe more people will see and read your book because of this ebay seller than would without him. Price is the information that tells you there is a market there. When you see a large profit being made, that is the signal the market sends that others should be selling too. Don't discourage him, encourage others, or join the fray yourself.
It astonishes me how many people on slashdot complain when they see small scale entrepreneurs try to make money off open source when at the same time they worship the likes of Red Hat. I think maybe your ego is bruised since he has not named you personally. As long as the source is included on the cdr's along with the license that tells the buyer his freedom, I'd be happy.
I may be dense, but I went to your website, and it wasn't immediately obvious to me how to download your book. It looks to me like he is offering a valuable service.
-Peter
This post is copyrighted. You may not store it in your memory. You may not tell its contents to others. You may not adopt these ideas as your own. You may not learn from them. Isn't intelectual property fun!
Dumb laws breed disrespect for the LAW. The hole they dig is deeper and wider all the time. Copyright is automatic and nearly endless while Patent protection requires novelty and expressions of genius to be granted. This is greatly out of balance. If you believe generic drugs are a good thing for our society, then how can you believe that Copyrights of nearly unlimited terms are anything but bad for society. If we were to extend Patent terms to the same lengths that Copyrights have already been extended, then nearly everyone would seek ways around such laws. This is what is happening with Copyright.
How important was the amount of money you had
;-)
available to mount your defence? Was there a
sliding curve where more money increased your
chances of getting off? Which, do you believe,
has a stronger corelation to being convicted,
being guilty or not having enough money?
Was the prosecution and police made up of idealists
that want to clean up the world, or by opportunists
that would commit worse illegal acts than yours if
they knew they wouldn't get caught and it benefits
them in some way?
Was the evidence circumstantial? Or, did they
see your fingers on the keyboard?
-Gearspring
Gearspring didn't write these questions, I figured
out how to use his account without his knowledge.