Would this be theoretically possible? I.e. design a Napster client which acts as an opennap server [proxy], and then devotes 1% of its available bandwidth to forwarding requests from opennap to Napster. Since only searches need to be forwarded, just a few clued-up T1 Napster subscribers could give opennap the facility to offer any file which is on Napster.
If 90% of Napster's clients come from Joe and Jill Schmoe using AOL, [...] than Napster has a pretty good racket going.
Not neccessarily. What they need to hold onto is the people who make songs available. If most stuff is being served up by a well-informed 5% of their users, and that 5% was to switch to opennap, then they'd be sunk. Buggered if I know whether that'll happen, though.
I guess you colud eventually have a really fast browser which can only handle perfect strict XHTML/CSS, and then translate everything else into that using plug-ins.
None of the arguments relate to technology at all. Abolishing copyright was tried before the internet existed, during the French revolution. The result was a distaster -- all publishing ceased except for pornography and cheap scandal sheets. To convince me that the results would be different today, I'd have to see an argument that relates to changes in technology.
I think it does mention near-zero-cost reproduction in the article, which is maybe an important point (in those days, you had to be pretty big to run a printing press).
I don't think the differences between today and 1789 are just technological, though. There's stuff like universal literacy, and the fact that the economy is getting more information-based, which also matter (and like you say, aren't mentioned in the article).
Arxiv.org has already shown they're capable of replacing traditional scientific journals completely in some scientific subfields, e.g. string theory.
The point of economics is so you, the human individual, can work and receive credit for your your work if others find it useful, and use that credit to trade for the works of others you find useful yourself.
Ok.
Intellectual property (patent and copyright) law is the only means of providing credit to the creators of new useful items so that they can obtain these neccessary to life items.
The creators of these new and useful items must receive some credit for their efforts or they will not be able to continue to produce them.
I disagree. Creativity existed before copyright. Creativity would exist without copyright. Throughout history, people have profited from their creativity without using copyright. Today, various businesses profit from writing open-source software without making use of their legal ability to stop others using that software.
Copyright causes some incentives to innovate. It destroys other incentives to innovate (because it limits my desire to build on someone else's good idea). I don't think that removing copyright would have an overall negative effect on innovation. Sure, the marketplace would be different, but creators could still benefit from their ideas, just in different ways from before.
your use of my Intellectual Property in selling it DOES exclude my use in selling it.
Sure, but you have to stop somewhere. Your free use of the air stops me (making use of my air by selling it to you). You are saying that my use of a program stops you (using your copy by selling it to me). If the difference is that you think you have a moral right to exclude me from using a pattern of bits, then that is a *moral* argument based upon beliefs you have. That's fine, but don't confuse it with an economic argument, based upon what maximises the success of the economy overall.
So the removal of the idea of copyright removes protection for the Little Guy.
If the "Little Guy" is actually a guy as big as Netscape was, then today's copyright system could help that guy sometimes. But for a much littler guy - say a company of 5 or 6 people - it is too expensive to fight the legal battles neccessary, so today's copyright is essentially no protection. Meanwhile, such VeryLittle guys get sued for infringing copyrights of big companies.
The way the economy seems to be going, VeryLittle companies may become more and more important as the primary innovative force in the market. For them, today's copyright system is no protection and in fact a significant burden. Until legal proceedings become cheap (sometime after hell freezes over), it will remain that way.
maybe copyrights by corporations could only be held for a shorter peroid of time than by an individual
The problem with this sort of thing is that big legal departments will find ways round things. E.g. let employees hold their own copyright over stuff they create at work, on the condition that they grant an exclusive license to the corporation. Or another such trick. Big firms are more agile than legislators and easily squeeze through loopholes like that.
Property is the basis of the free market, of any market, in fact.
I disagree; you can have trade which is purely a swap of services. A lot of business-to-business trade is essentially of this form. You only need a concept of property to deal in physical goods which have scarcity (i.e. cannot be duplicated for nothing), like food or computer hardware.
the patent system [...] worksperfectly well in the UK and Europe
Here in the UK is the place where BT has its patent on hyperlinks, isn't it?
not just abolish it because it has teething troubles.
I don't think that's the point. A patent allows you to stop me using an idea which you thought of. Maybe I never knew about your idea and I thought of it completely independently. Still you get to stop me using the idea for 20 years. In IT, it's not often you can put your hand on your heart and say, "I believe nobody else would have thought of this idea for 20 years if I hadn't." That's not teething troubles, that's a broken system which is completely unsuited for the pace of modern technology.
Since when did copyright enter within the boundaries of nerds (unless said nerds are "leet hax0rs" who want to steal music and movies).
Simple: copyright (so it is being argued) creates monopolies; I would argue that this has been particularly true in the software industry, where different products must interoperate with each other to be useful (so by having market power in one area, you can leverage it into another). Monopolies are less likely to pay attention to what you want than businesses in a competitive market. So consumers, particularly non-average ones like nerds, lose out.
Think about it. How often has it been the case that the Best software program has not been the one which won out? I think it's lots; you may disagree. But it's obviously a question dear to many of our hearts, and a question directly affected by copyright, so I think copyright matters to nerds.
Dunno, but since the purpose of floppies is interoperability, for some circumstances that could be as useless as me formatting a floppy ext2. Sure, I agree floppies *should* be legacy.
the entire GUI can be controlled from the keyboard, if necessary.
While not quite true on Windows, this is true for xfree: press Ctrl+Shift+Numlock and use the numpad keys to navigate. Then you can even do things like freehand area selection on the GIMP without a mouse.
I guess you probably meant keystrokes for menus etc in Windows, though. GNOME+icewm passes this test too (without having to use the numpad pseudomouse).
we are waitng for diesels to come into service, but we have been promised 2050 at the earliest
Any of our trains scheduled to arrive by 2050 is unlikely to be seen before at least 2230, at least not in one piece. Wait for the apology (if they bother): "we are sorry for the slight delay to your journey... this is because we are unable to locate the driver." They really say that quite often!
I've always loved the idea of these things, though I imagine [living in Britian] that i'll never get to see one;o( I know it's a little naive, but is anyone else suprised that this is happening in China? I know they've got a space program etc etc but I have a real problem thinging of it as a high tech nation.
Remember that it has the second largest economy in the world (after the US). And the government is not democratically accountable to the people, so it has much more freedom to spend on big projects. (Witness the big projects which Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore have commissioned in the past).
I don't see how this affects the average GPL-whining slashdotter.
I don't know exactly what you mean by that phrase. But many people want to see an operating system + major applications available under intercompatible, open-source licenses. It is clear that Czech users are not getting something which is a step towards this, at least not just yet. This is "news for nerds, stuff that matters". Many of us consider license issues to matter.
Slashdot Mirror
His computer may not be powerful enough to run W2K, though. Also it costs a bomb, and some colleges will check whether you're pirating software.
Lynx says "Alert!: Unable to access document.".
So they could sell music to the masses, and indemnity to servers. Neat.
Agreed - aren't they the most-hit non-search-engine site in Europe or something? I bet slashdot could get BBC'd more easily.
Would this be theoretically possible? I.e. design a Napster client which acts as an opennap server [proxy], and then devotes 1% of its available bandwidth to forwarding requests from opennap to Napster. Since only searches need to be forwarded, just a few clued-up T1 Napster subscribers could give opennap the facility to offer any file which is on Napster.
Not neccessarily. What they need to hold onto is the people who make songs available. If most stuff is being served up by a well-informed 5% of their users, and that 5% was to switch to opennap, then they'd be sunk. Buggered if I know whether that'll happen, though.
I guess you colud eventually have a really fast browser which can only handle perfect strict XHTML/CSS, and then translate everything else into that using plug-ins.
I think it does mention near-zero-cost reproduction in the article, which is maybe an important point (in those days, you had to be pretty big to run a printing press).
I don't think the differences between today and 1789 are just technological, though. There's stuff like universal literacy, and the fact that the economy is getting more information-based, which also matter (and like you say, aren't mentioned in the article).
Cool, I never heard of them before - interesting!
I disagree. Creativity existed before copyright. Creativity would exist without copyright. Throughout history, people have profited from their creativity without using copyright. Today, various businesses profit from writing open-source software without making use of their legal ability to stop others using that software.
Copyright causes some incentives to innovate. It destroys other incentives to innovate (because it limits my desire to build on someone else's good idea). I don't think that removing copyright would have an overall negative effect on innovation. Sure, the marketplace would be different, but creators could still benefit from their ideas, just in different ways from before.
Sure, but you have to stop somewhere. Your free use of the air stops me (making use of my air by selling it to you). You are saying that my use of a program stops you (using your copy by selling it to me). If the difference is that you think you have a moral right to exclude me from using a pattern of bits, then that is a *moral* argument based upon beliefs you have. That's fine, but don't confuse it with an economic argument, based upon what maximises the success of the economy overall.
If the "Little Guy" is actually a guy as big as Netscape was, then today's copyright system could help that guy sometimes. But for a much littler guy - say a company of 5 or 6 people - it is too expensive to fight the legal battles neccessary, so today's copyright is essentially no protection. Meanwhile, such VeryLittle guys get sued for infringing copyrights of big companies.
The way the economy seems to be going, VeryLittle companies may become more and more important as the primary innovative force in the market. For them, today's copyright system is no protection and in fact a significant burden. Until legal proceedings become cheap (sometime after hell freezes over), it will remain that way.
The problem with this sort of thing is that big legal departments will find ways round things. E.g. let employees hold their own copyright over stuff they create at work, on the condition that they grant an exclusive license to the corporation. Or another such trick. Big firms are more agile than legislators and easily squeeze through loopholes like that.
I disagree; you can have trade which is purely a swap of services. A lot of business-to-business trade is essentially of this form. You only need a concept of property to deal in physical goods which have scarcity (i.e. cannot be duplicated for nothing), like food or computer hardware.
Here in the UK is the place where BT has its patent on hyperlinks, isn't it?
I don't think that's the point. A patent allows you to stop me using an idea which you thought of. Maybe I never knew about your idea and I thought of it completely independently. Still you get to stop me using the idea for 20 years. In IT, it's not often you can put your hand on your heart and say, "I believe nobody else would have thought of this idea for 20 years if I hadn't." That's not teething troubles, that's a broken system which is completely unsuited for the pace of modern technology.
Simple: copyright (so it is being argued) creates monopolies; I would argue that this has been particularly true in the software industry, where different products must interoperate with each other to be useful (so by having market power in one area, you can leverage it into another). Monopolies are less likely to pay attention to what you want than businesses in a competitive market. So consumers, particularly non-average ones like nerds, lose out.
Think about it. How often has it been the case that the Best software program has not been the one which won out? I think it's lots; you may disagree. But it's obviously a question dear to many of our hearts, and a question directly affected by copyright, so I think copyright matters to nerds.
Dunno, but since the purpose of floppies is interoperability, for some circumstances that could be as useless as me formatting a floppy ext2. Sure, I agree floppies *should* be legacy.
While not quite true on Windows, this is true for xfree: press Ctrl+Shift+Numlock and use the numpad keys to navigate. Then you can even do things like freehand area selection on the GIMP without a mouse.
I guess you probably meant keystrokes for menus etc in Windows, though. GNOME+icewm passes this test too (without having to use the numpad pseudomouse).
Is long filename support not a kludge on FAT(12|16|32), even on NT/W2K? Ok, few people need to use FAT16 or FAT32 but lots still need FAT12.
How do you make a program work like the cd command? I mean a separate process, not the kludges that shells use.
Dunno, but in case anyone's wondering, DLR goes at speeds approaching a staggering 30 mph (50 kph) or so.
Any of our trains scheduled to arrive by 2050 is unlikely to be seen before at least 2230, at least not in one piece. Wait for the apology (if they bother): "we are sorry for the slight delay to your journey
Remember that it has the second largest economy in the world (after the US). And the government is not democratically accountable to the people, so it has much more freedom to spend on big projects. (Witness the big projects which Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore have commissioned in the past).
You have to say 186 miles as well, or lots of people won't know.
I don't know exactly what you mean by that phrase. But many people want to see an operating system + major applications available under intercompatible, open-source licenses. It is clear that Czech users are not getting something which is a step towards this, at least not just yet. This is "news for nerds, stuff that matters". Many of us consider license issues to matter.
The claim against the effectiveness of CCTV was that it didn't reduce crime, it merely moved it to areas that don't have CCTV.
So what happens when some russian mafia gang cracks the computer, copies the database and uses it to trace and kill people they don't like?
Or maybe "NIRD of Undramatic Reels of Dross", where NIRD stands for "NURD of Improbable Reactionary Drama".