Have you ever wondered why there are so few books in the 100 pages or less category, and the behemoth books like Robert Jordan's WOT series tend to hit best sellers?
Well, I think the answer is that you can read a short book in a single sitting at the bookstore. I suspect that the publishing industry has always had a problem trying to find formats for works that can generate the revenues to cover the cost of the work. Many of the books in stores would have been better if they were in a shorter format. The format is determine by what creates an actual monetary transfer.
Well, I also thought Defacement Day could be a good income opportunity. Web Admins could charge something like a hundred bucks then put whatever marks a hacker wants on the site. It would be a good way for cashed strapped sites to make a few bucks. The hacker could brag. If you play the game right, the might get some free publicity.
The only real problem I see is that I don't know if I would trust that the hacker I am dealing with gave me a legit credit card (it is really easy to steal credit card numbers at the local restaurant). Oh well, too many good ideas fall apart when you get down the the actual exchange of cash.
Yep, my mind's gone south. It actually never worked that well. It gets close to associating the right sounds with a concept, but never actually the right words.
Slashdot may have informed a bunch of hackers about Defacement day, they are also informing a large number sysadmins who will check their weekend back ups and prepare for a Sunday in the office.
Of course, the smart thing to do is to deface your own web site, then you can take the weekend off 'cause the hackers will think you've already been tagged.
IANAL: The fact that we have to have a legal super class interpret the law is the biggest indication that the whole thing is a scam. (Truth be known, the lawyers have only a good guess about what the judge and jury will rule).
This article is interesting because the lawyer super class has appointed itself the position of determining what is and and is not science. Scientific arguments don't go through a peer to peer review, they go through a legal review.
The self appointed super class that judges science has the worst history for backward thinking than just about any group. They brought us the flat earth rejection of Galileo and Copernicus, and the Scopes Monkey trial.
Science depends on peer review. Rather than having a judge review science for a case, it should be judged by an independent panel of scientists (hmmm, it would employ scientists...its good to keep them off the streets.)
Rule by law is a good thing...rule by lawyers is a bad thing. The fact that reasonable people have a hard time discussing issues is a good indication that we are in the latter situation.
Looking at the history, you will find a great deal of garbage science cluttering both the lab and court rooms. We can find a large number of examples of smart people making bad decisions based on garbage science. Look at the large number of people who've fallen for Freud.
What it does do instead is take a lot of credible science out of the courtroom and force jurors to decide on feeling rather than scientific findings.
I believe that most jurors are trying to make their decisions based on facts...not just emotions...meaning that they are highly susceptible to garbage science.
Jurors and lawyers neither have the time nor the skill to determine what is and what is not sound science. Jurors will make decisions based on whether or not the argument sounds scientfic. They also make decisions based on the credentials of the speaker. Jurors do not have the resources or skill to put each argument through their own independent review. Such reviews need to take place outside the court.
Science should not be locked out of the court by over-zealous judges who are motivated by emotion.
The problem I see is that the decision to include or exclude science in a case is being made by the judge presiding over the case. Since dismissing the arguments at the base of the case effectively determines the winner and loser, it is putting too much power in the hands of the judge.
There should be a process for dismissing bad science...however, it should be through an independent peer review board of scientists, not by a judge who is more likely to be swayed by motives other than the foundations of the science.
Well, my goal is to be perceived as a database programming guru. I already store XML in the data...but you bring up a good question: Exactly how do you change the color of the scroll bar...
I mean, if some young buck has a database that changes the color of the scroll bar, I know I am toast. Are there any good acronyms involved in the field of SBCT (ScollBar Changing Technologies)?
I agree that Hormel has been generous in allowing use of their name for unsolicited email.
When Hormel loses the battle, and every variation of the word spam can be registered by others as a trademark, then Hormel will be held up as yet another example of why companies should not be generous with use of their trademarks, and why they have to be aggressive in suing over property rights issues.
Personally, I hope Hormel wins and that spamArrest will have to come up with a different name for their product. But is it more likely to be yet another example of how nice companies lose.
the piece is being carried by just about everyone.
Looks to me like we have some serious copyright violations going on with this article. I hope the Wall Street Journal wipes the floor with that crappy in scanned article put up by Corbis and distributed to tens of thousands of slashdotters without giving the venerable WSJ a chance to earn ad revenues for their hard work.
I tend to be a database snob, but just about any language that access the database gets its main power from the database. I personally have never seen much difference between accessing a database with Java, C++, PHP, PL/SQL, Visual Basic. Almost all of the programs are dependent on how well you design the database and the code pretty much follows from the relations with in the data.
Java, of course, is the best language because it was developed with an overall higher level of coolness. It has like this oneness with the world thing going on. C++ goes faster. Visual Basic and PHP are easier for beginnning programmers. Still, ti seems to me that relations within the data are the key to database integration happiness.
People have been using the term "best practices" in IT for as long as I can remember.
Don't talk about "Best Practices", talk about the real issues: Security, Reliability, Robustness.
Let's see: Security. The biggest issue in security is generally the people...how they define passwords, what things they let go through firewalls, what things they should and shouldn't do. The security expert cannot completely make a network safe...they must define a best practices and go from there.
Reliability: I may be totally off base, but it seems to me that consistency is a factor in reliability. Assuring that things are written in a consistent manner generally involves defining best practices. I have seen many programs fail because a coder used inconsistent naming conventions.
Likewise Robustness seems to follow from having defined best practices.
When I think of all the little hack attacks, code red viruses and other odd blips showing up in server logs. When I think of the large number of login failures on LANs, and other security alerts that get raised on a daily basis, I cannot help but feel that this is an overkill.
A good security worker will be treating a lot of false readings as possible security concerns. Despite all the audit trails, a thief looking for a backdoor just might find one that leaves an uncertain trail or possible no trail (for example someone might make a copy of a back up tape, or sniff the LAN.).
Being conservative, I cannot help but think that everyday there is something that "might" be a security breach. If the data is in a company, the data just might have been compromised. To follow the law, companies would have to send out a letter everyday saying, "your data exists; therefore it may have been compromised."
As for actual theft of credit card numbers. I've seen more of it happening at cash registers than in IT departments, but security is a matter of thinking what might happen, not what should or did happen.
From Article:
A criminal prosecuted under Pennsylvania's identity theft statute would have to steal more than $100,000 to get a minimum one-year prison term. A felony drug conviction for 2 grams of heroin or cocaine--worth about $200, according to the report--would result in the same minimum.
But, to be frank, I think the legal community is looking at the wrong end of the equation. The credit card laws and credit card companies tend to make the merchant the villian when the system is doing very little to stop the actual criminal.
The Courts say: "You stole $90,000...well shame on you...the merchant will now have to refund the money to the credit card company. Shame on you, see how much you just cost a merchant? you should feel really bad now."
Until the UN is the supreme ruler of the earth and adjoining planets, I guess all laws will be national.
As for US motives, with lower long distance rates, there has been an increase in companies outsourcing cold calling telemarketing to India, etc.. These companies, of course, have been draining the tax base used to support the US industrial military complex.
I think it is pretty much safe to assume that the reason behind the database is US protectionism...not concern for the consumer.
I recall that there are exemptions for certain types of research. For example, the BLS has phone surveys on employment research.
However, a blanket exclusion of "market research" would pretty much nullify the entire program since marketers would just make every call a "research call."
"Have you every wanted to make a million dollars with no effort?"
"Have you ever heard the magic three letters 'MLM'?"
There could be options like "exclude amazon datafeed" etc.
Unfortunately, a lot of good sites with good information have integrated amazon into their programs...meaning that if you exclude the datafeed, you would exclude a lot of good sites.
I still think you should go for the patent, if you give it sufficiently ambiguous wording you might be able to use it as a defensive patent, or claim that it applies to some unknown whatever that gets invented in the future.
I find it best just to file a large number of sufficiently ambiguous patents, then I can just hang around, see what gets popular then claim my vague wording means that--saves mental effort.
They've been doing this from the start with an open associate program. People have been able to link to Amazon.com books and get a commission since the 90s.
The idea of product datafeeds isn't really that new either. You will find the hotel industry allowing datafeeds and other low level integration.
Amazon is giving better quality lower level access to data than many others. But are not as many leagues ahead as the Business Week article seems to indicate.
I guess I should mention the annoying thing. The people playing this amazon datafeed game are creating millions upon millions of web pages with different terms optimized for the search engines. The general result is a marked increase in the number of webpages to index, and a decrease in the quality of search engine results.
You hit another nail on the head. There are a lot of copyrights on materials that have no real viable commercial value (you won't resell the work if you try to reprint it), but the copyright owner might be holding on to the right for some type of political power, or to simply prevent others from making derivative works, etc..
I agree completely that getting the works in large open databases is good.
In some ways, I think the copyright laws should stop being viewed as static rules, but be designed as a process that ultimately ends up with the work in large public databases.
The first phase of the process has the objective of getting money into the hands of the artists to cover production. The last phase makes it so we can query and cite large collections of works.
The trick is design the process so that the database does not end up being a toe to toe competitor with the author's sellable work. This is very hard to do in a system that only has two states: total monolopy and total public access.
There probably should be steps between absolute monopoly of the work by the author and total public access.
The process might even consider rights separately, for example, the right to reprint a work in book form might be different than database search rights. Movie rights are big money. They might be considered separately as well.
To keep things uniform, the copyright office could even have set prices or limits on some actions. For example, pulling a MP3 from library for a single listen might cost a nickel.
The 50 year rule is moving in the right direction. It starts to recognize the different attributes of different works...ie some are no longer commercially viable.
The key to the ammendment is the word "commercially viable." The works that people want to get their hands on, of course, are the commercially viable ones. Most of the rest is white noise.
There are a few cases where party x knows how to make a work of party y commercially viable again. The problem is that party y will cry foul when party x performs his magic.
Downloading a facsimile of a work is really not a replacement for the work it's self.
I've read books online. It's like totally different when you read facsimiles of words and not the words themselves.
But, we were talking about comics. Well, I happen to prefer reading comics on the net, but everything else you say is true. It is great for the artist when people scan in and post their works.
Think of how much free bandwidth and free labor the comic artists gets when a member of the community scans in the comic book and posts the scanned copies on the Internet?
If you do this at the university, it doesn't cost a cent. I mean, the school here has like a cajillion kilowatts of bandwidth and IT IS ALL FREE!!!! And if you have a red token you can get a free lunch between scanning sessions.
Letting the community distribute the works pretty much saves the artists all that hassle of having a business and collecting money. Freeing the artist from business let them concentrate on the art.
Art for art. I mean look at that Van Gogh dude. He had no business, and his stuff is worth millions.
Comics are a collectible,
I know. This is like the thing people forget. Some of those old comic books go for hundreds of bucks. Think of all of the money that the artist get from these sales when the books are collectible?
I mean, like that is a point most people miss. Think of all the money a comic book artist gets when their old comics are collectibles?
I will repeat this a third time to be clear: How much money does the artist make when a collector sells an old comic book on ebay for a thousand bucks?
And artists complain all the time! can you believe it?
See!!!! Scanning in and posting the works for artist does all sort of wonderful thing for the artist. It frees them from business. I know there is a lot of negative energy saying unauthorized copies devalue what the artist has to sell. But, elinminating the economic value of what they sell gives them free publicity so that they can sell more of it, or something like that. I mean, it works out in the end... Okay, just just say that the artist does sell fewer works. Well, that increases the odds that the few that sell become collectibles, and we know that collectibles are big bucks for artists! It's like, whoa, dude.
In the meantime, she's promoting a plan in the United States dubbed the Intellectual Property User Fee (IPUF), suggesting that a small fee could be added to ISP (Internet service provider) subscriptions to pay artists and content companies, for example
What a complete piece of flem! Not only does KaZaA infest computers with spyware, the sleezebag company is lobbying to impose a tax on all internet users to pay for their theft.
Personally, I can see no reason why people who do not partake in file sharing and are very concientious of others intellectual rights should end up having to pay the price for KaZaA's actions.
Isn't it interesting how people who are theives at heart tend to so quickly look to taxing others.
Of course, the whole point of P2P is to push the cost of your entertainment on othe others.
So, demanding that others pay a direct tax is really not a stretch.
Since most politicians are theives at heart, it might pass.
There is nothing about the NetFlix model that requires a company to be big. I had been thinking that it would be a good model for smaller companies with content to deliver or libraries.
The big draw back for most companies is the items they have to deliver weigh a fair amount, and don't have regular size or weight...creating packing and shipping problems.
The only really unique thing about Netflix is that DVDs are uniform in size and small enough not to incur high postal fees. DVDs being small has nothing to do with any effort on the part of NetFlix.
There is a distinction between basic and limited resources.
When the government is providing a basic resource, there should be an effort to spread the resource evenly. When you have a limited resource, it is better for the government to get the best price for the resource.
For example, the permit to run a concession in National Parks often goes to the highest bidder. This gives the park more money for infrastructure improvements.
Russia sold seats on its space missions to millionaires. It turned out to be both a good way to raise funds for the program and it raised publicity.
Of course, I should note that we already auction off public education: the government gives scholarships to the best students. Isn't this horribly unfair? Many of the students who got Cs in biology probably would be good doctors, yet we only let the top students in to medical school. UNFAIR! UNFAIR! UNFAIR! UNFAIR! The top public colleges only accept the top students. UNFAIR!
But, guess what? There is not a one size fits all policy that fits all areas of government activity. When the government has a scarce resource, it should and does define what social objectives it wants to achieve in distributing the goods. Often that goal should be to get as much cash as possible...to use on other things or lower taxes.
I hope the bidding price on the auction is extremely high and that the money went to something worthwhile...like providing free linux boxes to schools.
Well, this is just clear evidence that we have to STOP the horrilbe scorge of HOME TAPING!!!!
No, it is just clear that "home copying" is more than home copying. Giving away a few thousand bootlegged CDs in college is a great way to buy friendship. You might be able to get a couple girls in the sack. The people making these thousands upon thousands of copies of music aren't simply benign.
The person starting this particular thread was questioning the 2.3 billion download a month figure. The figure is probably low. It just measures P2P downloads. You need to add to that disk to disk and transfers on local networks. There are probably several hundred billion "unauthorized" copies of songs sitting in various places.
Generally, you have to measure things before you make decisions. The music industry doesn't have to fudge data to get big numbers.
The big numbers pretty much demand addressing.
Personally, I look at this technology that lets us quickly make millions of copies of things and see a great deal of opportunity. The cost is so low that I can see us moving into a world of massive above ground databases filled with every song, movie, tv show or newsclip ever recorded, and download them for pennies.
The two things the big numbers tell me is that home copying isn't home copying. Rather than trying to find ways to curb people, I think the market needs to find ways to use technologies to distribute the music above ground at a fraction of the cost that companies charge for CDs.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you ever wondered why there are so few books in the 100 pages or less category, and the behemoth books like Robert Jordan's WOT series tend to hit best sellers?
Well, I think the answer is that you can read a short book in a single sitting at the bookstore. I suspect that the publishing industry has always had a problem trying to find formats for works that can generate the revenues to cover the cost of the work. Many of the books in stores would have been better if they were in a shorter format. The format is determine by what creates an actual monetary transfer.
Well, I also thought Defacement Day could be a good income opportunity. Web Admins could charge something like a hundred bucks then put whatever marks a hacker wants on the site. It would be a good way for cashed strapped sites to make a few bucks. The hacker could brag. If you play the game right, the might get some free publicity.
The only real problem I see is that I don't know if I would trust that the hacker I am dealing with gave me a legit credit card (it is really easy to steal credit card numbers at the local restaurant). Oh well, too many good ideas fall apart when you get down the the actual exchange of cash.
Yep, my mind's gone south. It actually never worked that well. It gets close to associating the right sounds with a concept, but never actually the right words.
Slashdot may have informed a bunch of hackers about Defacement day, they are also informing a large number sysadmins who will check their weekend back ups and prepare for a Sunday in the office.
Of course, the smart thing to do is to deface your own web site, then you can take the weekend off 'cause the hackers will think you've already been tagged.
IANAL: The fact that we have to have a legal super class interpret the law is the biggest indication that the whole thing is a scam. (Truth be known, the lawyers have only a good guess about what the judge and jury will rule).
This article is interesting because the lawyer super class has appointed itself the position of determining what is and and is not science. Scientific arguments don't go through a peer to peer review, they go through a legal review.
The self appointed super class that judges science has the worst history for backward thinking than just about any group. They brought us the flat earth rejection of Galileo and Copernicus, and the Scopes Monkey trial.
Science depends on peer review. Rather than having a judge review science for a case, it should be judged by an independent panel of scientists (hmmm, it would employ scientists...its good to keep them off the streets.)
Rule by law is a good thing...rule by lawyers is a bad thing. The fact that reasonable people have a hard time discussing issues is a good indication that we are in the latter situation.
Looking at the history, you will find a great deal of garbage science cluttering both the lab and court rooms. We can find a large number of examples of smart people making bad decisions based on garbage science. Look at the large number of people who've fallen for Freud.
I believe that most jurors are trying to make their decisions based on facts...not just emotions...meaning that they are highly susceptible to garbage science.
Jurors and lawyers neither have the time nor the skill to determine what is and what is not sound science. Jurors will make decisions based on whether or not the argument sounds scientfic. They also make decisions based on the credentials of the speaker. Jurors do not have the resources or skill to put each argument through their own independent review. Such reviews need to take place outside the court.
The problem I see is that the decision to include or exclude science in a case is being made by the judge presiding over the case. Since dismissing the arguments at the base of the case effectively determines the winner and loser, it is putting too much power in the hands of the judge.
There should be a process for dismissing bad science...however, it should be through an independent peer review board of scientists, not by a judge who is more likely to be swayed by motives other than the foundations of the science.
Well, my goal is to be perceived as a database programming guru. I already store XML in the data...but you bring up a good question: Exactly how do you change the color of the scroll bar...
I mean, if some young buck has a database that changes the color of the scroll bar, I know I am toast. Are there any good acronyms involved in the field of SBCT (ScollBar Changing Technologies)?
I agree that Hormel has been generous in allowing use of their name for unsolicited email.
When Hormel loses the battle, and every variation of the word spam can be registered by others as a trademark, then Hormel will be held up as yet another example of why companies should not be generous with use of their trademarks, and why they have to be aggressive in suing over property rights issues.
Personally, I hope Hormel wins and that spamArrest will have to come up with a different name for their product. But is it more likely to be yet another example of how nice companies lose.
Take it to court!!!! I say.
I tend to be a database snob, but just about any language that access the database gets its main power from the database. I personally have never seen much difference between accessing a database with Java, C++, PHP, PL/SQL, Visual Basic. Almost all of the programs are dependent on how well you design the database and the code pretty much follows from the relations with in the data.
Java, of course, is the best language because it was developed with an overall higher level of coolness. It has like this oneness with the world thing going on. C++ goes faster. Visual Basic and PHP are easier for beginnning programmers. Still, ti seems to me that relations within the data are the key to database integration happiness.
Reliability: I may be totally off base, but it seems to me that consistency is a factor in reliability. Assuring that things are written in a consistent manner generally involves defining best practices. I have seen many programs fail because a coder used inconsistent naming conventions.
Likewise Robustness seems to follow from having defined best practices.
A good security worker will be treating a lot of false readings as possible security concerns. Despite all the audit trails, a thief looking for a backdoor just might find one that leaves an uncertain trail or possible no trail (for example someone might make a copy of a back up tape, or sniff the LAN.).
Being conservative, I cannot help but think that everyday there is something that "might" be a security breach. If the data is in a company, the data just might have been compromised. To follow the law, companies would have to send out a letter everyday saying, "your data exists; therefore it may have been compromised."
As for actual theft of credit card numbers. I've seen more of it happening at cash registers than in IT departments, but security is a matter of thinking what might happen, not what should or did happen.
But, to be frank, I think the legal community is looking at the wrong end of the equation. The credit card laws and credit card companies tend to make the merchant the villian when the system is doing very little to stop the actual criminal.
The Courts say: "You stole $90,000...well shame on you...the merchant will now have to refund the money to the credit card company. Shame on you, see how much you just cost a merchant? you should feel really bad now."
Until the UN is the supreme ruler of the earth and adjoining planets, I guess all laws will be national.
As for US motives, with lower long distance rates, there has been an increase in companies outsourcing cold calling telemarketing to India, etc.. These companies, of course, have been draining the tax base used to support the US industrial military complex.
I think it is pretty much safe to assume that the reason behind the database is US protectionism...not concern for the consumer.
I recall that there are exemptions for certain types of research. For example, the BLS has phone surveys on employment research.
However, a blanket exclusion of "market research" would pretty much nullify the entire program since marketers would just make every call a "research call."
"Have you every wanted to make a million dollars with no effort?"
"Have you ever heard the magic three letters 'MLM'?"
Unfortunately, a lot of good sites with good information have integrated amazon into their programs...meaning that if you exclude the datafeed, you would exclude a lot of good sites.
I still think you should go for the patent, if you give it sufficiently ambiguous wording you might be able to use it as a defensive patent, or claim that it applies to some unknown whatever that gets invented in the future.
I find it best just to file a large number of sufficiently ambiguous patents, then I can just hang around, see what gets popular then claim my vague wording means that--saves mental effort.
They've been doing this from the start with an open associate program. People have been able to link to Amazon.com books and get a commission since the 90s.
The idea of product datafeeds isn't really that new either. You will find the hotel industry allowing datafeeds and other low level integration.
Amazon is giving better quality lower level access to data than many others. But are not as many leagues ahead as the Business Week article seems to indicate.
I guess I should mention the annoying thing. The people playing this amazon datafeed game are creating millions upon millions of web pages with different terms optimized for the search engines. The general result is a marked increase in the number of webpages to index, and a decrease in the quality of search engine results.
You hit another nail on the head. There are a lot of copyrights on materials that have no real viable commercial value (you won't resell the work if you try to reprint it), but the copyright owner might be holding on to the right for some type of political power, or to simply prevent others from making derivative works, etc..
I agree completely that getting the works in large open databases is good.
In some ways, I think the copyright laws should stop being viewed as static rules, but be designed as a process that ultimately ends up with the work in large public databases.
The first phase of the process has the objective of getting money into the hands of the artists to cover production. The last phase makes it so we can query and cite large collections of works.
The trick is design the process so that the database does not end up being a toe to toe competitor with the author's sellable work. This is very hard to do in a system that only has two states: total monolopy and total public access.
There probably should be steps between absolute monopoly of the work by the author and total public access.
The process might even consider rights separately, for example, the right to reprint a work in book form might be different than database search rights. Movie rights are big money. They might be considered separately as well.
To keep things uniform, the copyright office could even have set prices or limits on some actions. For example, pulling a MP3 from library for a single listen might cost a nickel.
The 50 year rule is moving in the right direction. It starts to recognize the different attributes of different works...ie some are no longer commercially viable.
The key to the ammendment is the word "commercially viable." The works that people want to get their hands on, of course, are the commercially viable ones. Most of the rest is white noise.
There are a few cases where party x knows how to make a work of party y commercially viable again. The problem is that party y will cry foul when party x performs his magic.
This is a good step forward.
I've read books online. It's like totally different when you read facsimiles of words and not the words themselves.
But, we were talking about comics. Well, I happen to prefer reading comics on the net, but everything else you say is true. It is great for the artist when people scan in and post their works.
Think of how much free bandwidth and free labor the comic artists gets when a member of the community scans in the comic book and posts the scanned copies on the Internet?
If you do this at the university, it doesn't cost a cent. I mean, the school here has like a cajillion kilowatts of bandwidth and IT IS ALL FREE!!!! And if you have a red token you can get a free lunch between scanning sessions.
Letting the community distribute the works pretty much saves the artists all that hassle of having a business and collecting money. Freeing the artist from business let them concentrate on the art.
Art for art. I mean look at that Van Gogh dude. He had no business, and his stuff is worth millions.
I know. This is like the thing people forget. Some of those old comic books go for hundreds of bucks. Think of all of the money that the artist get from these sales when the books are collectible?
I mean, like that is a point most people miss. Think of all the money a comic book artist gets when their old comics are collectibles?
I will repeat this a third time to be clear: How much money does the artist make when a collector sells an old comic book on ebay for a thousand bucks?
And artists complain all the time! can you believe it?
See!!!! Scanning in and posting the works for artist does all sort of wonderful thing for the artist. It frees them from business. I know there is a lot of negative energy saying unauthorized copies devalue what the artist has to sell. But, elinminating the economic value of what they sell gives them free publicity so that they can sell more of it, or something like that. I mean, it works out in the end ... Okay, just just say that the artist does sell fewer works. Well, that increases the odds that the few that sell become collectibles, and we know that collectibles are big bucks for artists! It's like, whoa, dude.
What a complete piece of flem! Not only does KaZaA infest computers with spyware, the sleezebag company is lobbying to impose a tax on all internet users to pay for their theft.
Personally, I can see no reason why people who do not partake in file sharing and are very concientious of others intellectual rights should end up having to pay the price for KaZaA's actions.
Isn't it interesting how people who are theives at heart tend to so quickly look to taxing others.
Of course, the whole point of P2P is to push the cost of your entertainment on othe others. So, demanding that others pay a direct tax is really not a stretch.
Since most politicians are theives at heart, it might pass.
There is nothing about the NetFlix model that requires a company to be big. I had been thinking that it would be a good model for smaller companies with content to deliver or libraries.
The big draw back for most companies is the items they have to deliver weigh a fair amount, and don't have regular size or weight...creating packing and shipping problems.
The only really unique thing about Netflix is that DVDs are uniform in size and small enough not to incur high postal fees. DVDs being small has nothing to do with any effort on the part of NetFlix.
There is a distinction between basic and limited resources.
When the government is providing a basic resource, there should be an effort to spread the resource evenly. When you have a limited resource, it is better for the government to get the best price for the resource.
For example, the permit to run a concession in National Parks often goes to the highest bidder. This gives the park more money for infrastructure improvements.
Russia sold seats on its space missions to millionaires. It turned out to be both a good way to raise funds for the program and it raised publicity.
Of course, I should note that we already auction off public education: the government gives scholarships to the best students. Isn't this horribly unfair? Many of the students who got Cs in biology probably would be good doctors, yet we only let the top students in to medical school. UNFAIR! UNFAIR! UNFAIR! UNFAIR! The top public colleges only accept the top students. UNFAIR!
But, guess what? There is not a one size fits all policy that fits all areas of government activity. When the government has a scarce resource, it should and does define what social objectives it wants to achieve in distributing the goods. Often that goal should be to get as much cash as possible...to use on other things or lower taxes.
I hope the bidding price on the auction is extremely high and that the money went to something worthwhile...like providing free linux boxes to schools.
Well, this is just clear evidence that we have to STOP the horrilbe scorge of HOME TAPING!!!!
No, it is just clear that "home copying" is more than home copying. Giving away a few thousand bootlegged CDs in college is a great way to buy friendship. You might be able to get a couple girls in the sack. The people making these thousands upon thousands of copies of music aren't simply benign.
The person starting this particular thread was questioning the 2.3 billion download a month figure. The figure is probably low. It just measures P2P downloads. You need to add to that disk to disk and transfers on local networks. There are probably several hundred billion "unauthorized" copies of songs sitting in various places.
Generally, you have to measure things before you make decisions. The music industry doesn't have to fudge data to get big numbers.
The big numbers pretty much demand addressing.
Personally, I look at this technology that lets us quickly make millions of copies of things and see a great deal of opportunity. The cost is so low that I can see us moving into a world of massive above ground databases filled with every song, movie, tv show or newsclip ever recorded, and download them for pennies.
The two things the big numbers tell me is that home copying isn't home copying. Rather than trying to find ways to curb people, I think the market needs to find ways to use technologies to distribute the music above ground at a fraction of the cost that companies charge for CDs.