A movie DVD is nothing but a digital copy of the original film. Does a blank DVD has the same value as a movie DVD?
It has MORE value, if you already have another copy of that movie.
Of course not,
Of course wrong.
the movie DVD is more valuable because of the digital copy of the movie contained on it.
It's valuable because it GRANTS ACCESS to the digital copy of the movie contained on it, yes. Access is valuable. Copies are not. Which is more valuable, a blank DVD, or a movie DVD that's region-coded to a region you don't have a player for?
The value of that movie to you is constant whether you get it on DVD, iTunes or TPB. Only the delivery mechanism has changed. Either they're all worth something, or they're all worth nothing; you can't have it both ways.
Correct. They are all worth something if you want access to the work, and they are worth nothing if you don't want access to the work.
That last bit is important because:
You don't require additional access to the work if you already have access to it.
In other words, having access to one copy is the same as having access to an infinite number of copies. It's the access that has value, not the copies. You can create and destroy the copies at will without creating or losing any value whatsoever, as long as you still have access to the data. If copies give you additional access to the work, i.e. backups, different formats, etc., then they seem to have value, but saying that "copies only have value if they ensure access to the work" is really just the same thing as saying "access has value and copies do not".
DRM is a different issue, and it sucks.
It is not a different issue at all, and yes it does suck. It sucks because it assumes the same thing that you do, which is that digital copies can be made to have value. They can't, so DRM can really only try to control access -- but since it's trying to both deny and grant access to the same party simultaneously, it inevitably either fails or denies access to a legitimate owner (or, more likely than not, both).
If you print up a trillion dollars worth of perfect copies of money, are you now a trillionaire? Of course not. It is just paper.
If you distribute that trillion dollars worth of perfect fakes to a hundred million people, have you done any harm? Hell yes. All money just became worth a whole lot less. The people who legitimately own the money supply (ie all of us) have been harmed.
1. You've made perfect copies of a physical object, so those copies have a discrete value. 2. The copies represent an even greater value -- that is to say, each copy GRANTS ACCESS to a specific unit of real value. If you falsely get access to something valuable, that hurts the people who have legitimate access to that value.
Does illegally copying a song reduce access to everyone else who has a legitimate copy? No. They can still listen all the way to the end of their own copies, anytime they like.
(Unless they have a DRM'd copy, then they might not be able to access the content they legally own a copy of).
If digital copies have no value, why do so many people want them (to the point that they are willing to break the law to get them)?
They don't. They want access to the content. Here's the problem: giving someone a copy gives them access to the content. But since the copy has no value, the person with access can create infinite copies at will. In fact, they have to make and destroy multiple copies every time they want to access the content.
This is why there is no technical solution for DRM: you have to grant access to make copies, and deny access to make copies, to the same party simultaneously This works perfectly with physical copies, since one person having access to that copy automatically means someone else doesn't, and there is an inherent cost to making more physical copies. Not so with digital copies.
Even if, science-fictionally-hypothetically here, you could get it to work, it wouldn't make the copies valuable; it would just allow you to conveniently monetize access to the work, sort of the way a theater does.
Your point that digital copies have zero value is demonstrably 100% false.
You are 100% wrong. They have no intrinsic value at all. Period. All value assigned to them is based on crude modifications to laws designed for physical objects. Creating them is valuable, and accessing them is valuable, but copying them is not valuable. You cannot make them valuable by saying so over and over.
Value is determined by the desirability of something, not its cost to produce. Is a gold nugget found in a stream while fishing any less valuable than one that was mined at great expense?
So, you were in Econ 101, and the professor was talking about the relationship between "supply and demand", and, what... you woke up during "and"?!
DIGITAL FILES ARE NOT PHYSICAL OBJECTS. THEY DO NOT BEHAVE THE WAY PHYSICAL OBJECTS BEHAVE. Is a gold nugget that you created by waving your magic wand at it worth anything? If everyone has a magic wand, the answer is "no." If everyone can create gold nuggets with a wave of a magic wand, gold nuggets become worthless. You cannot sell them at any price under that condition.
Infinite supply always drives price down to infinitely small, unless demand is also infinite.
But the physical medium is hardly worth anything to begin with. So where's the value? In the combination of content on the medium? Shouldn't that same combination also have value on a magnetic disk?
The only consistent answer is that a copy of information has no value on its own, and that the real value lies in access to the content, a notion merrily encapsulated in the idea of licensing.
Yes! Also, even more merrily encapsulated in the idea of sponsorship
Not having created something yet is the ultimate access restriction.
I think the point is more along the lines of copies of an already purchased game should be worth as much as the copied currency.
I disagree. There is no technical way to make a digital copy worth anything, and the laws required to make people behave as if it were worth something are utterly destructive to freedom. Case in point, every single law we have passed or tried to pass to make digital copies worth something.
I don't think he did miss the point. A digital bit-for-bit copy of a movie has almost the same value as the original dvd/bluray/stream.
Yeah, "zero".
If you make a million copies of a movie you bought for a dollar, are you now a millionaire?
Of course you aren't. One copy is worth the same as a million copies.
There's only one number in mathematics that retains the same value no matter what you multiply it by.
That's the fundamental issue, now: creation of the work is still valuable, and access to the work is still valuable, but copies are no longer valuable at all. Guess which of those three things copyright gives exclusive privelege to?
Remember, they're not selling creation (except on Kickstarter), or access (except at the movie theater). Most of what they're selling is COPIES. Absolutely worthless copies. Which people only actually buy for three reasons:
1) They want to fund creation and understand that buying copies is the only way to do that under the current stupid business model. or 2) They're worried about getting caught doing something illegal or 3) They're not very bright.
The point of this campaign is to point out the total lack of value that digial copies have. People who don't get this won't get it, but it's still irrevocably true. Digital copies cost nothing to make and you lose nothing when you destroy them. Xeroxed money is actually worth MORE, since it costs something to make and you lose something when you destroy it.
Some people (like you) will argue until the day is done that copyright infringement is not theft. You will not be convinced otherwise.
Some people (like me) will argue until the day is done that copyright infringement is theft. They (I) will not be convinced otherwise.
One of those people has logic, fact, legal precident, and thousands of years of history on their side. The other has appeal to emotion and stubborn denial.
I'm just sayin'.
At a high level, it's the exact same issue - someone says "I've produced this intellectual property..."
See, there's the problem. At a high level, nonsense jargon like "intellectual property" has no place in the discussion.
Copyright doesn't produce property; it grants exclusive right to profit from copies of a work. This runs into a giant fucking obstacle when suddenly any given copy isn't worth anything on its own anymore. Suddenly, you have the exclusive right to sell ice to Inuit, and no amount of twisting language around is going to change that.
THAT is the "high level" problem that needs to be addressed first. You have to understand this basic mechanical fact before even beginning to discuss the topic of copyright.
All copyright is supposed to do is to help prevent fraud (i.e. claiming someone else's work as your own), and to encourage people to create new works. We need to find a new way to do that second thing, because the "sell copies" model is irrevocably broken.
"...I want other people to do this or not do that with it", and someone else says "too bad, I'm going to do what I want. Deal with it".
Wanting to control what other people do with ideas you publish is a common desire but also goes entirely against the fundamental laws of memetics. It's also not what copyright was ever intended for, nor can ever succeed at without absolute totalitarianism.
If you don't want people to replicate and mutate your ideas, DON'T EXPOSE THEM TO A GIGANTIC MUTATING REPLICATION ENGINE. Keep them private.
Such religious prohibition combined with severe social stigma may have mostly worked during the 1950s, among the Puritans, and during the Victorian Era,
This 1000-mile long passenger-safe rail gun which has to be vacuum-sealed with one-way vents will be cheaper than conventional rockets in the long run?
No, silly, it's a 1000-mile long passenger-safe coil gun which has to be vacuum-sealed with one-way vents will be cheaper than conventional rockets in the long run!
The 0.08 thing is just the magic number they need to convict you. I can't imagine there are too many borderline cases. Most probably fall under either: - just a bad driver, no alcohol - totally and obviously drunk, not even close to 0.08
That number has been continually dropping since the introduction of DUI laws. That indicates that law enforcement feels there have been enough borderline cases affecting their bottom line that it was worth changing the laws more than once to keep the gravy flowing.
There is not (and probably will never be) any evidence either way on the hypothesis of a "watchmaker" who set the universe in motion and then left it alone, but that's not the God people pray to, either.
What? Yes it is. Every sixty-two million years, it runs down, and he has to wind it back up again.
All that interactive business written about in the Bible is just troubleshooting, which He had to do rather a lot of after installing the new feature set.
Slashdot Mirror
A movie DVD is nothing but a digital copy of the original film. Does a blank DVD has the same value as a movie DVD?
It has MORE value, if you already have another copy of that movie.
Of course not,
Of course wrong.
the movie DVD is more valuable because of the digital copy of the movie contained on it.
It's valuable because it GRANTS ACCESS to the digital copy of the movie contained on it, yes. Access is valuable. Copies are not. Which is more valuable, a blank DVD, or a movie DVD that's region-coded to a region you don't have a player for?
The value of that movie to you is constant whether you get it on DVD, iTunes or TPB. Only the delivery mechanism has changed. Either they're all worth something, or they're all worth nothing; you can't have it both ways.
Correct. They are all worth something if you want access to the work, and they are worth nothing if you don't want access to the work.
That last bit is important because:
You don't require additional access to the work if you already have access to it.
In other words, having access to one copy is the same as having access to an infinite number of copies. It's the access that has value, not the copies. You can create and destroy the copies at will without creating or losing any value whatsoever, as long as you still have access to the data. If copies give you additional access to the work, i.e. backups, different formats, etc., then they seem to have value, but saying that "copies only have value if they ensure access to the work" is really just the same thing as saying "access has value and copies do not".
DRM is a different issue, and it sucks.
It is not a different issue at all, and yes it does suck. It sucks because it assumes the same thing that you do, which is that digital copies can be made to have value. They can't, so DRM can really only try to control access -- but since it's trying to both deny and grant access to the same party simultaneously, it inevitably either fails or denies access to a legitimate owner (or, more likely than not, both).
If you print up a trillion dollars worth of perfect copies of money, are you now a trillionaire? Of course not. It is just paper.
If you distribute that trillion dollars worth of perfect fakes to a hundred million people, have you done any harm? Hell yes. All money just became worth a whole lot less. The people who legitimately own the money supply (ie all of us) have been harmed.
1. You've made perfect copies of a physical object, so those copies have a discrete value.
2. The copies represent an even greater value -- that is to say, each copy GRANTS ACCESS to a specific unit of real value. If you falsely get access to something valuable, that hurts the people who have legitimate access to that value.
Does illegally copying a song reduce access to everyone else who has a legitimate copy? No. They can still listen all the way to the end of their own copies, anytime they like.
(Unless they have a DRM'd copy, then they might not be able to access the content they legally own a copy of).
If digital copies have no value, why do so many people want them (to the point that they are willing to break the law to get them)?
They don't. They want access to the content. Here's the problem: giving someone a copy gives them access to the content. But since the copy has no value, the person with access can create infinite copies at will. In fact, they have to make and destroy multiple copies every time they want to access the content.
This is why there is no technical solution for DRM: you have to grant access to make copies, and deny access to make copies, to the same party simultaneously This works perfectly with physical copies, since one person having access to that copy automatically means someone else doesn't, and there is an inherent cost to making more physical copies. Not so with digital copies.
Even if, science-fictionally-hypothetically here, you could get it to work, it wouldn't make the copies valuable; it would just allow you to conveniently monetize access to the work, sort of the way a theater does.
Your point that digital copies have zero value is demonstrably 100% false.
You are 100% wrong. They have no intrinsic value at all. Period. All value assigned to them is based on crude modifications to laws designed for physical objects.
Creating them is valuable, and accessing them is valuable, but copying them is not valuable. You cannot make them valuable by saying so over and over.
Value is determined by the desirability of something, not its cost to produce. Is a gold nugget found in a stream while fishing any less valuable than one that was mined at great expense?
So, you were in Econ 101, and the professor was talking about the relationship between "supply and demand", and, what... you woke up during "and"?!
DIGITAL FILES ARE NOT PHYSICAL OBJECTS. THEY DO NOT BEHAVE THE WAY PHYSICAL OBJECTS BEHAVE. Is a gold nugget that you created by waving your magic wand at it worth anything? If everyone has a magic wand, the answer is "no." If everyone can create gold nuggets with a wave of a magic wand, gold nuggets become worthless. You cannot sell them at any price under that condition.
Infinite supply always drives price down to infinitely small, unless demand is also infinite.
But the physical medium is hardly worth anything to begin with. So where's the value? In the combination of content on the medium? Shouldn't that same combination also have value on a magnetic disk?
The only consistent answer is that a copy of information has no value on its own, and that the real value lies in access to the content, a notion merrily encapsulated in the idea of licensing.
Yes! Also, even more merrily encapsulated in the idea of sponsorship
Not having created something yet is the ultimate access restriction.
I think the point is more along the lines of copies of an already purchased game should be worth as much as the copied currency.
I disagree. There is no technical way to make a digital copy worth anything, and the laws required to make people behave as if it were worth something are utterly destructive to freedom. Case in point, every single law we have passed or tried to pass to make digital copies worth something.
It can even be argued that a copy is even more valuable than the original, because it's easier to use on whatever device I prefer due to lack of DRM.
Really? So if you delete the digital copy, you actually lose more value than if you destroy the original?
What if you make a hundred digital copies, and then delete them? OH MY GOD, you've just lost, like, thousands of dollars!
Nowhere more appropriate I can think of to post this again.
A digital copy of a music file still has inherent value to the recipient.
No, it doesn't. access to the file has value to the recipient, but the copy itself has no inherent value whatsoever.
I don't think he did miss the point. A digital bit-for-bit copy of a movie has almost the same value as the original dvd/bluray/stream.
Yeah, "zero".
If you make a million copies of a movie you bought for a dollar, are you now a millionaire?
Of course you aren't. One copy is worth the same as a million copies.
There's only one number in mathematics that retains the same value no matter what you multiply it by.
That's the fundamental issue, now: creation of the work is still valuable, and access to the work is still valuable, but copies are no longer valuable at all. Guess which of those three things copyright gives exclusive privelege to?
Remember, they're not selling creation (except on Kickstarter), or access (except at the movie theater). Most of what they're selling is COPIES. Absolutely worthless copies. Which people only actually buy for three reasons:
1) They want to fund creation and understand that buying copies is the only way to do that under the current stupid business model.
or
2) They're worried about getting caught doing something illegal
or
3) They're not very bright.
The point of this campaign is to point out the total lack of value that digial copies have. People who don't get this won't get it, but it's still irrevocably true. Digital copies cost nothing to make and you lose nothing when you destroy them. Xeroxed money is actually worth MORE, since it costs something to make and you lose something when you destroy it.
I've found small Welsh village names are easy to remember
Sez you.
It depends on what ownership is being claimed on.
Some people (like you) will argue until the day is done that copyright infringement is not theft. You will not be convinced otherwise.
Some people (like me) will argue until the day is done that copyright infringement is theft. They (I) will not be convinced otherwise.
One of those people has logic, fact, legal precident, and thousands of years of history on their side. The other has appeal to emotion and stubborn denial.
I'm just sayin'.
At a high level, it's the exact same issue - someone says "I've produced this intellectual property..."
See, there's the problem. At a high level, nonsense jargon like "intellectual property" has no place in the discussion.
Copyright doesn't produce property; it grants exclusive right to profit from copies of a work. This runs into a giant fucking obstacle when suddenly any given copy isn't worth anything on its own anymore. Suddenly, you have the exclusive right to sell ice to Inuit, and no amount of twisting language around is going to change that.
THAT is the "high level" problem that needs to be addressed first. You have to understand this basic mechanical fact before even beginning to discuss the topic of copyright.
All copyright is supposed to do is to help prevent fraud (i.e. claiming someone else's work as your own), and to encourage people to create new works. We need to find a new way to do that second thing, because the "sell copies" model is irrevocably broken.
"...I want other people to do this or not do that with it", and someone else says "too bad, I'm going to do what I want. Deal with it".
Wanting to control what other people do with ideas you publish is a common desire but also goes entirely against the fundamental laws of memetics.
It's also not what copyright was ever intended for, nor can ever succeed at without absolute totalitarianism.
If you don't want people to replicate and mutate your ideas, DON'T EXPOSE THEM TO A GIGANTIC MUTATING REPLICATION ENGINE. Keep them private.
Why not use that money to ship the excess to people in need, earning a lot of good will in the process?
Where would the money to bribe the warlords and/or corrupt government officials come from? That's going to be way higher than transportation costs.
Such religious prohibition combined with severe social stigma may have mostly worked during the 1950s, among the Puritans, and during the Victorian Era,
Spoiler: It didn't.
It's probably a lot more efficient than using photoelectric cells to produce hydrogen, though.
It's a temporary ceasefire. Learn to read
If a ceasefire isn't temporary, it's a "truce".
This 1000-mile long passenger-safe rail gun which has to be vacuum-sealed with one-way vents will be cheaper than conventional rockets in the long run?
No, silly, it's a 1000-mile long passenger-safe coil gun which has to be vacuum-sealed with one-way vents will be cheaper than conventional rockets in the long run!
umm where do i go and buy a plasma window?
Here.
nothing this thing is made of can be made by modern materials...
Everything in this thing can be made by modern materials, that's the whole point of it.
The 0.08 thing is just the magic number they need to convict you. I can't imagine there are too many borderline cases. Most probably fall under either:
- just a bad driver, no alcohol
- totally and obviously drunk, not even close to 0.08
That number has been continually dropping since the introduction of DUI laws. That indicates that law enforcement feels there have been enough borderline cases affecting their bottom line that it was worth changing the laws more than once to keep the gravy flowing.
You cannot seriously consider Rolling Stone a source of anything more than dopehead diatribes.
Matt Taibbi. Your argument is invalid.
Was Sabu working for the FBI when Anonymous took down all those child porn sites in October...?
I know. I also think there is a show for the other side. meaning, A show about what's happening on earth when the moon is blasted away.
They're doing a new Thundarr the Barbarian??!! *gleeeeeeeeeeeee*
There is not (and probably will never be) any evidence either way on the hypothesis of a "watchmaker" who set the universe in motion and then left it alone, but that's not the God people pray to, either.
What? Yes it is. Every sixty-two million years, it runs down, and he has to wind it back up again.
All that interactive business written about in the Bible is just troubleshooting, which He had to do rather a lot of after installing the new feature set.
collecting and using that energy.
Actualy they did: you collect it simply by running the drive, and then you use it to kill everything around you when you arrive.
The same way a SWAT team is a tool.
... only, armed with this technology, they'd be a STFU team.
When farming was established, that left humans with free time.
Wait, what?!