I'm of the position that information does not need to be free, but people need to be free. Copyright in its traditional use prevents people from buying modifying (improving) and reselling information. Copyrights and patents, force people to reinvent the wheel to reduce costs (which itself takes time but may cost less to do). If people are having to redo the same thing over and over again, that takes time away, that scientist spend a lot of time trying to work around patents and copyrights instead of working with them, they also have to spend time making sure they are not accidently bumping into someone elses patent (in cases where there is patent land mines), so patents and copyrights both cause a lot of extra work and slows things down either way. You are free to argue over which would be slowed down the most, but then we are talking more about effeciency and idealism (might as well be debating between microkernels versus monolithickernels).
A large amount of money in the medical industry is spent on marketing, not just on TV but they also pay doctors to recommend their medicine over their competitors (sort of what microsoft does to PC makers with incentives), not all the money is spent on R&D, and as a matter of a fact, I've heard that the government actually pays (in tax money) the medical industry to develope medicines, which the medical industry spends its own earnings on marketing again, not that much on research.
Finaly it is more likely that such an industry would rather research and develope remedies to symptoms of a problem, rather then cures. In any market (and even in foriegn politics) you have to look at the interests of an entity. The interests of the medical industry in particular is to not cure problems, if they cure all our problems we would have no more need for them, instead their interest are in developing things that we have to take over and over again, so that we become dependant upon them, basicly another drug company, rather then sell addicting drugs like cigarettes or alcohol they are selling medicine to reduce symptoms of problems, an even more unethical part of their interest would be to interfere with the health of everyone, either developing new kinds of colds or fevers or flus, or getting our government to allow more and more polution of our environment so that people get ill and they provide the cure for the illness. And dont get me wrong I am not some paranoid psycho saying they are doing this, I'm just saying there *is danger* in letting organizations grow big like this from secret information, especially keeping in mind about how cigarette companys had been trying to fool people for years and have claimed several hundreds of millions of lives (probably more then that). I dont like anti-trust laws or laws that are used to fight big organizations, I prefer if those organizations never grew as big as they did in the first place, and the biggest reason we see them grow big in this day in age is IP law.
Your idea doesnt work, and the internet age mixed with "Napster-ish" programs, demonstraights it doesnt work. It doesnt work because copyrights are not ethical. While I dont agree with the previous poster in the limited view that information needs to be given away for free, I also dont agree that the creator should dictate how that information is used once the creator hands it out to someone else.
Its obvious other people should not tell us what to do with information *we* possess, whether its someone who thinks the information should be free, or its someone who thinks the creator has the right to tell us what to do. That just does not work and its going to fail. No one should force you to give up information you dont want to, and no one should force you to keep secret information you dont want to, both positions are just unethical. Just as its unethical to torture someone to release information, and its unethical to prevent freedom of speech, reverse engineering, modifications, and improvements to software is like constructive criticism and should be protected but they are not, no one can take *any* copyright work and improve it and show to the world that it can be done better (notice I stress *any* because GPL software does allow this). So copyrights conflict with the first amendment and the foundy fathers knew this, and the only reason they adopted copyrights was not to give creators rights over freedom of speech (which is what you are suggesting), but to stimulate an information market through government regulation. But it does not have to work that way, maybe it was good in the past, but today and in the future things are changing, and its not going to work anymore, and if given the choice between the first amendment and copyrights I almost guaratee most people in the US will choose the first amendment over copyrights.
Its by legal definition "stealing", but outside of law its not "stealing". That is its stealing based upon how information property is defined by law (not nature), and IP law defines information property as being the property of the creator for a period of time, rather then naturally the property of the possesser. File and information sharing is ethical and moral, its just not legal, and illegal does not equal unethical or immoral. To the contrary IP law is legal stealing of information distribution rights (which is covered by the first amendment), this is out right control of an information market.
> I think that there are pretty much enough of the zealots who go "GNU LINUX RMS RULEZ!!".
Its kind of strange, I see more anti-"RMS zealots", then I see "RMS zealots", as a matter of a fact, I dont think I have ever seen an "RMS zealot" in all my time on slashdot or other programming or otherwise forumn, but I always hear about them. It must be one of those things, where they are secretly hiding some where, or they post anonymously and you have to dig real deep to find them, there is probably a whole colony of them somewhere, probably deep underground with nomes, espeically if there is enough of them to vote in RMS. hmmm.
> It's almost always better to give information away freely than it is to keep it hidden.
But those are not the only 2 options, there is also selling information. 1) dont share it 2) share it for a price 3) share it for free.
Obviously it can not be an unreasonable price, but doing it for free can have a negative effect.
> Sure, it will hurt those companies if their patents are violated, but then how many lives would it save?
I personly dont agree with patents or copyrights, as they are applied today. It should be that once you give away or sell information to someone that it be freely distributed after that. This way the most money you will make will be on first sale basis of information.
> The code could be as free as you like, without the need to protect it from companies that would otherwise hoarde it.
The GPL does not prevent information hoarding, it just makes it harder. The GPL simply requires that source code be distributed with the binaries, and by default no restrictions on modification distributions (that is someone can modify and redistribute their modified version of GPL software). A company can still hoarde custom or modified GPL software, but they can not prevent their employees who have access or who have developed this code from distributing it. This is why some companies are afraid of GPL, their employees can take code and run with it or distribute it on the internet, and the company would have no control of that, or an NDA would conflict with it. So basicly it makes hoarding harder.
In particular what I like about the GPL is it allows any one to sell that information if they want. It does not require that you give the software away for free, merely that the source code is included for the benefits of open source.
> In my opinion, placing an artificial scarcity on the music in this manner is immoral. It keeps people from doing what is in their best interest, namely sharing information, enjoying it, and quite possibly learning from it.
Not to forget making money in redistributing it. Resulting in the developement of an information market place, where people can buy sell and trade information with each other, to which the authors of such information become the center of it all, and will recieve bids from distributors who believe they can make a lot of money distributing their information.
I totally agree, there is several options that are available unfortunetly these options may make money for the author, but the *distributors* will be unable to become monopolies as copyrights currently guaratee them. With out copyrights distributors have to compete with each other in order to distribute an authors work, the author has more choices and can even have distributors bidding to be the first distributors of their work, rather then authors competing with each other to get a distributor to distribute their work (the distributor deciding whether the public will like them or not). In the case of no copyrights anyone who wants to be, can be a distributor of information and can participate in an information market, of buying and selling information, much like the stock market where they estimate whether something will do well in short and long term or not, the information market will be based upon a authors past reputation. Organizations like the RIAA have the most to fear if they are unprepared for this change, as this replaces centralized distributors with decentralized distributors.
> he bottom line is that there's more than ethical problems with these new services.
The only ethical problems are the ones you describe about taking bandwidth and clogging networks, which I agree is very bad. If people had to pay for files they download and the bandwidth used, via something similar to mojonation mixed with local caching like freenet, all on a network for buying and selling information to each other, then you would either see one or both of either increase in network performance as the network recieves money for its usage, or less usage as people would use the network for important things they need, rather then things they desire. But you can bet copyright proponents would be against anyone making money off of information trade, except a small minority of people, which the creator/author of the information would be lucky to be one of.
The point is the word "take" can be used under a context where it does not require someone else to lose possession. In hollywood they refer to filming a sequence as a "take". There is several other uses of the word "take" that does not mean that someone else loses possession of.
> I have never seen a dictionary where copy has the same definition of steal or pirate.
That may be true and actually both the definitions of "take" and "steal" are more broadly defined (I just chose the definition that best fits the discussion), but my reference is here...
http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=s te al
I'd like to see alternative definitions that may contradict what I have said. I'm not pro-copyrights, but as I said they can by law define it as stealing, but I think its important that morally amd ethically we realize its not stealing and piracy, just because things are made into laws does not mean they are moral or ethical, or a naturally right. And further more the fact that its being defined as stealing, is also immoral and unethical (as I stated previously).
Copyrights suck the value out of information property like music. When someone buys music for example, they cant resell copys of it, so under copyrights the value of it is a lot less. Instead you have cartels like the RIAA and the studios who control the pricing of music, who control the value of music, and control who gets access to what music. And they do this for both the consumers and the musicians, they control the contracts with the musicians so they can give them as less money as they can, they control the prices that vendors charge for CDs (at one point they were slapped in the hand for charging to high a price from their price fixing practices).
Who says it has to be freely distributed? Dont forget copyright law *also* prevents you from selling copies with out the copyright owners permission.
An author could in fact have distributors bidding to sell their work on a P2P like distibution network, (that is if that author has a proven record to sell well). Just like the stock market, or any other *real* market, someone has to speculate about whether something will sell well if at all, then buy and sell to see how much they make, if the author has a proven track record and a good enough fan base, then distributors will bid to be the first distributors (on the P2P network). They will then resell their copies to other distributors (fyi I refer distribution servers as distributors), normal people who want to buy music can give their computer a price they are willing to pay for music, the higher the price they are willing to pay the sooner they will get it (if they pay a high enough price its possible for them to make their money back and even make a profit off of reselling copys), the lower the price the longer it takes to get it or the quality is a bit lower or is mixed in with advertisement. Authors who are just starting off will have to give away their work at first to reviewers and internet radio stations to get attention. The whole point is that a P2P system could literarly be built to sell information (almost like mojonation, except with out the ineffeciencies mojonation uses to hide information), this will create an real information market, and distributors will be competing, cartels like the RIAA would be afraid of this because they cant control whos music gets distributed and how much people pay for music, the market controls this and the market is composed of competing distributors of which anyone with a server and bandwidth can buy and sell information products and make money. Only 2 things stand in the way of this, 1) copyrights, 2) technology. Its even a sort of chicken and egg syndrome, what should come first, the information market, or the technology to drive the market. No technology is available that can accomidate it yet, most technology focuses on distributing freely, versus getting paid for distribution. The information market could be developed, like I said its not so diffrent then today, RIAA and the studios could invest their money in such a network, by creating servers and the technology with in their own infrastructure and then later open it up to the public (it would give them an advantage against new distributors who enter the market), but the way the RIAA seems anti-technology, its very doubtful they would do such a thing.
Legally it is "stealing", and its not that the law changed the meaning of the word "stealing", its that they changed the meaning of the word "property" as it applies to information. Naturally information is my property if its on my property (on my mind, on my hard disk, on a CD I own, etc). But since law defines information property as belonging to its creator whether the creator has it or not (which is not logical), then the word "stealing" can be applied.
stealing - To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
take - To get into one's possession by force, skill, or artifice.
if you note that the word "take" simply covers how it comes into possession, not whether someone loses possession of it because of your possession. Like for example "to take in the scenery", doesnt mean you literarly take the scenery, but you examine it with your eyes and your brain in memory.
But again, the copyright law redefines what is information property. And so in legalese its "stealing", but morally or ethicly its not "stealing". Quite frankly morally and ethicly its the copyright owner who is stealing from the rest of us, because the rest of us could be making money, buying and selling information to each other (being distributors), instead copyrights guarantee that *distributors* and their cartels will become the focus of the market while artists and their fans will be left out in the cold by a cruel market place that only caters to distributors.
The future is going to have to be, selling music online through P2P with out copyrights, that is the most probable future of all information distribution, whether that information be music books, 3d-printable toys, etc. It will work much the same as it does today, except there will not be the RIAA cartel controlling prices, and prices will be based upon what you can afford that is controled by your P2P agent/client software. If you dont want to spend that much money on information it will take longer till you recieve that information, and by the time you recieve it you may have to watch/listen to advertising (if your price you want to pay is free or really cheap). This way even poor people could still get the information. The artists/author/musician will make money off of the top bidders from the distributors. The distributors will estimate how much they will make from the artists work based upon previous sales of their work, much like how the stock market works, where people guess at whether a stock is going to rise or drop. This way it is a true capitalist information market.
Copyrights are just plain wrong, in the past and at present they may or may not have been a good thing to do, but in the future they will only decay (as no one uses them) or get worse (stricter then previously like DMCA, etc). I dont see people giving up their freedom of speech, or to allow the government to control our minds (allow the government to erase experiences that are copyrighted), so I can only imagine it decaying.
> nobody put a gun to the artists' heads and made them sign a deal with any particular record company, yet they have absolutely no say in the matter when it comes to people downloading their stuff for free
Right, but its okay if they can put a gun to our heads and prevent everyone from distributing information in a market. Information that once we have in our possession we own it, it becomes our information. If its in my mind, my mind can erase/forget it, or can play it back as much as it wants, I can even say/sing it out loud if I wanted because I own it, they may have created it, but once the creation leaves the womb and placed in the minds of others, they no longer directly control its destiny and must put a gun to our heads to prevent it from being distributed.
From that perspective though, those musicians you describe (like any market place) set the standards. That is the record companies will likely choose someone of less talent if they appear to be dumb about business or dont have a lawyer. They are like child molesters, they are more likely to go after children because they are helpless rather then an adult who can fight back. But just as world trade means workers in america are going to have to compete against someone in another country getting paid 2 cents, that musicians will have to compete against musicians with no business sense to do the math (helpless musicians), because they will make more money off of them. Add to that the fact that record companies do control who ends up on CDs or MTV and who does not, then you see that the majority of the musicians are at the whims of the record labels, especially if they want to be a "star".
Re:Blech. Most of them are pretty bad.
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Java IDEs?
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If I were to build one from the ground up, slim and componentized would be my keywords. I'd like to be able to use diffrent compilers, diffrent editors, diffrent project managers, etc etc, all communicating across a network or on a local computer. This way any editor that implements this protocol can interoperate with any project manager. By componetizing it this way, I can edit source code with out having to start the entire IDE (that is an anoyance in IDEs like netBeans and VisualStudio). So I want an environment that is not so integrated that it is all in one program, but an environment that integrates seperate applications to work better together, allowing these applications to communicate with each other with out having to be the same program.
The PC industry flourished with open standards, and where standards were closed (BIOS) they went past it by having reverse engineering and a lawyer inbetween to make sure no copyright information was shared, allowing third parties to create their own IBM compatible systems.
It may be a good punishment (letting the punishment fit the crime) by allowing people to reverse engineer windows to create competitive products (currently reverse engineering is only legal in very narrow circumstances of interoperability but even then there is no guaratee that someone could try to sue the crap out of you, or that laws like the DMCA wont allow corporations to come after you).
A market can only correct itself if the law lets it. Preventing reverse engineering under certain circumstances can do just that. Reverse engineering allows competition and competition (and information) is the natural force of balance in capitalist markets. Copyrights are a form of government regulation/social engineering, that one would expect from a communist/socialist government, not from a capitalist one, with out which businesses like Microsoft would not be as big as they are, and consumers would have a lot more choices, as well as developers being able to create hybrids, the market (and community) would be in more control of the products then an entity like a corporation.
I agree. I'm still waiting for the time when all GUIs are reconfigurable and even extentable to work the way the user wants them to work. Stuff like GLADE in combination with libGLADE is pretty cool and a step in the right direction IMHO, as people can use GLADE to come up with their own flavor of an interface. Its still kind of shallow because you can not access deeper program interfaces/objects, and I dont think there is any efforts in GTK+ GLADE or any related libraries to promote that kind of developement. I've also always have been advocating Runtime Developement Environments, so you can develope/alter software while it is running, but that would only be possible in a VM environment.
Divide the list between products and companies/organizations and it may clarify it a little more. For some reason some companies think they make a good product that gives them a license to be a bad company.
Re:Hmmm.... that's a nice quote... but....
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Globalization
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> I understand the dangers inherent in a cycle of violence. However, in our societies we define the murder of an individual as a very serious offense (perhaps even capital). How can the murder of 1000 people be less serious? Must we not pursue it with the maximum vigor possible?
It doesnt make sense though if that maximum vigor requires the death of more people.
> In the first case, I don't care who I kill. The more the better. In the second, I try NOT to kill non-combatants. Sure, if they end up dead that is a bad thing and their relatives won't see it any way but that way.
As our goverment and even Timothy McVeigh put it, its collateral damage. No amount of effort will ever have zero "collateral damage", so it is to be acceptable part of "war".
> I cannot abide a logic that suggest we do nothing because in selecting a particular course of action we may have a small number of very unfortunate side effects.
And as far as I have seen no one is suggesting we do nothing, even the anti-war demonstrators are not saying we should do nothing. War and pacificism are not the only choices (although some would like you to believe it), and the way we proceed to war is not the only way to do it. Right now we proceed as a vigilante with a group of other vigilantes (coalition), that is not the only way to bring the terrorists to justice, but we act unilaterally in this case because we can push around other countries rather then do what ever american in our country has to do to persue justice by looking toward the law and order. But bush being a texan thinking he is a cowboy on a bounty hunt rather go unilateraly with his posse. But at the same time, the world is not civilized and looking to law and order only applies as a means for civilized people to act.
> And that is basically saying that those 6K people who died don't matter because the fact we may kill a few hundred innocents in the pursuit of a longer term good has detered us from acting.
It sounds like the only way you think their deaths will matter is by justifying their deaths. If we kill innocent people, even if its just one innocent person, we justify the deaths of all innocent people, we send a message that the death of innocents requires the death of other innocents.
> We have to try VERY hard not to kill those not involved, though identifying the "involved" in the Afghan situation is a little dicey.
Agreed, a lot of afganistans and those in pakastan think that our government is wrong and support the taliban. And as bush laid clear, "you either are with us, or with the terrorists", to match the *single* binary neuron in his brain.
> But for the good of that region, it must be liberated (and I do use that word deliberately, because you cannot call the Taliban government anything short of monstrous in terms of the way it treats dissidents, those of other faiths, and women). And rebuilt.
Its to bad that countries have to have terrorists present in their borders before we start thinking about helping them, and in that case we dont help them we "rebuild" them. These terrorists are there because we supported them originally when they went against communism, the time they were there they recieved support from their people and polarized the people to their view of the world. Even a number of the women over there believe that is the way they are supposed to live (just as a number of republican/conservative women think they should not have abortion as a choice because of their religion). Getting rid of the taliban doesnt magicly make them into liberal people, rebuilding their country as far as I can tell only involves aid and throughing up a monarchy government, I dont know about you but I have not heard anything else, the only education I have heard about (in any media) is some christian missionaries who want to bring more people into their faith. But in the end we are not doing this because the Taliban is bad to its people, and that is something you have to remember, we support governments that are bad to its people, we support Saudi Arabia for example. We are doing this to combat terrorism, to get the suspect Osama Bin Laden.
> Japan and Germany are the scale we're talking here. This is not a weekend project. This is generational. But look at how successful we were in Japan and Germany. They are now among the most democratic and to a large extent non-aggressive nations in the civilized world. They have benefitted from the reconstruction and the increased education and economic opportunity, which have strengthened the cause of freedom and social justice.
Yes that is true, and I believe that would be the right path, and I am not against doing that, but I never heard any one in an official position in government suggest this is what is going to happen to afganistan, and generalized terminology like "rebuilt" is not that same as saying "marshall plan" (that rebuilt germany and japan). Its easy to assume that because we are in a modern time that people would do the right thing, but that is not the case.
> This is a nasty little adult situation - no white knights, no cavalry to the rescue. The only way to get out of this with any redemption is by winning the military fight quickly, carefully, and getting to work saving the millions of innocents with a vengeance. And rebuilding something that can eventually join the international community as a worthwhile member. That's what we've got to do and it will be the Devil's own bit of work to accomplish.
I agree, and if only it were that simple and justified. And devil would fit in here. We use a bit of evil to kill evil. We are not being good sameritans trying to change the world for better, instead waiting till the world starts to decay and when it rots and gets disgusting enough that it starts to hurt our society then we go and do something about it. We are not being and really have never been the good guys (like you say no white knights) in the world community, and we are not being good guys now. We have always done things for self interest and/or greed, while that does not make us the bad guys, I tire of people making us sound like good guys when they wish to justify the actions of our government. Life is hell, and we are all devils doing what makes us feel good, civilized society tries to sculpt things so doing what feels good doesnt cause as many conflicts. My enjoyment comes from being in the middle of it all to see who wins out in the end, I've never said I am against war or against killing of innocent people, just want to point out how evil it is at its core, the evil likes to adorn good (evil comes from with in), the good dont like to adorn evil (if we were good inside there would be no evil).
> But we don't seem to have too many good options, now do we?
Nope we had good options in the beginning but we didnt care for them, and that is why every thing is bad.
> Dialogue Enhancer - enhances the center channel on DVD audio tracks where there is no center channel present. This allows you to hear dialogue clearly, even at night, without upsetting your neighbors. (ha, quite useful in Japan..)
I dont know, I tend to work late hours (real late), and I am always screwing around with audio (mostly TV audio) so I can hear the TV with out bothering my family (who work during the day). I only wish I had something similar for TV, especially when the channel makes commericals louder.
Not only that but most console based companies make money from software sales. Sounds like a good plan, if they save cost in consoles they will make money in software.
Its not really a culture is the issue. I'm rather neutral on the whole thing myself, there is a lot of good that gets done by turning a bunch o superstitious animals, into sophisticated and educated free thinking people, but at the same they are trying to turn us into a bunch of cows and lambs (consumers). So the culture that corporations put on us is not as good as it may seem. Humans have natural instincts and desires, that big media likes to use to get people to use their products. You can see it on the commercials on TV, they use idols, and they make things seem like a cool product or a 'scene' where a bunch of "cool" people like to drink soda, or eat chips, or drink beer even, as if to fit in to this group or scene you have to do these things, kids and teens tend to be the ones to worry about fitting in and the oposite sex the most, so they try to use that kind of thing as much as possible, but they dont say it in words and that makes this more subliminal in that people and even kids and teens are pretty smart and will know a fake thing when they spot it, so they dont make it obvious, they dont directly say its cool to use their product, they imply it instead by the actions they portray of people who use their products.
But if all we want is unity, we could easily force kids to wear school uniforms, and in high school require them to wear a school uniform that is the same in all countries over the globe. The problem is, not everyone wants to fit in, some people are backwards to their own instincts and desires, if they want something they do something oposite of what they want, these are the people who are hurt and try to get attention to it, even if that attention is in a bad way.
I agree with all these except for one thing... governments are not created equal, and so every government (not just the US government), play roles not just in labor laws but in many cases factories (corporations paying governments is not just in america). The other part is where do you draw the line between anarchy and freedom? Someone can own guns and then use those guns to threaten people (or hold them as slaves causing problems in the competitive labor market), so you need government to protect the people, but then that means the government also has guns and can use them to threaten people. I'm not saying your wrong, just that what you want is good but extrememly complicated and the easiest paths are always the wrong ones. I personly think the biggest thing to look at is balance of power, and to limit property ownership will definetly help (we should not be allowed to own slaves or for some rich person or corpriation to own the entire planet as property), the problem property ownership is that after a certain size it requires mass coersion to protect it, it requires several people to go against several people, the small property owners should recieve the most protection, that would definetly reduce the abilities of corporations to own a lot of property (and the governments of the word as their security guards, while every one else is renting from the corporation), today they attempt to do this by taxation, but no one would ever do such a thing for slave labor (tax people/corporations who use slave labor) as a means of reducing it, people would not agree to such a thing because all it means is the government is endorsing slave labor and making money from it.
[quote]Would you really stop large corporations? Would you really want to deny people in the 3rd world a chance to move ahead far more quickly than America ever did? [/quote]
If you really think they are going to move ahead far more quickly then america eve did, that sounds like an opertunity you should take... so go work for those factories and then you can tell us whether or not you move ahead far more quickly then america ever did.
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I'm of the position that information does not need to be free, but people need to be free. Copyright in its traditional use prevents people from buying modifying (improving) and reselling information. Copyrights and patents, force people to reinvent the wheel to reduce costs (which itself takes time but may cost less to do). If people are having to redo the same thing over and over again, that takes time away, that scientist spend a lot of time trying to work around patents and copyrights instead of working with them, they also have to spend time making sure they are not accidently bumping into someone elses patent (in cases where there is patent land mines), so patents and copyrights both cause a lot of extra work and slows things down either way. You are free to argue over which would be slowed down the most, but then we are talking more about effeciency and idealism (might as well be debating between microkernels versus monolithickernels).
A large amount of money in the medical industry is spent on marketing, not just on TV but they also pay doctors to recommend their medicine over their competitors (sort of what microsoft does to PC makers with incentives), not all the money is spent on R&D, and as a matter of a fact, I've heard that the government actually pays (in tax money) the medical industry to develope medicines, which the medical industry spends its own earnings on marketing again, not that much on research.
Finaly it is more likely that such an industry would rather research and develope remedies to symptoms of a problem, rather then cures. In any market (and even in foriegn politics) you have to look at the interests of an entity. The interests of the medical industry in particular is to not cure problems, if they cure all our problems we would have no more need for them, instead their interest are in developing things that we have to take over and over again, so that we become dependant upon them, basicly another drug company, rather then sell addicting drugs like cigarettes or alcohol they are selling medicine to reduce symptoms of problems, an even more unethical part of their interest would be to interfere with the health of everyone, either developing new kinds of colds or fevers or flus, or getting our government to allow more and more polution of our environment so that people get ill and they provide the cure for the illness. And dont get me wrong I am not some paranoid psycho saying they are doing this, I'm just saying there *is danger* in letting organizations grow big like this from secret information, especially keeping in mind about how cigarette companys had been trying to fool people for years and have claimed several hundreds of millions of lives (probably more then that). I dont like anti-trust laws or laws that are used to fight big organizations, I prefer if those organizations never grew as big as they did in the first place, and the biggest reason we see them grow big in this day in age is IP law.
Your idea doesnt work, and the internet age mixed with "Napster-ish" programs, demonstraights it doesnt work. It doesnt work because copyrights are not ethical. While I dont agree with the previous poster in the limited view that information needs to be given away for free, I also dont agree that the creator should dictate how that information is used once the creator hands it out to someone else.
Its obvious other people should not tell us what to do with information *we* possess, whether its someone who thinks the information should be free, or its someone who thinks the creator has the right to tell us what to do. That just does not work and its going to fail. No one should force you to give up information you dont want to, and no one should force you to keep secret information you dont want to, both positions are just unethical. Just as its unethical to torture someone to release information, and its unethical to prevent freedom of speech, reverse engineering, modifications, and improvements to software is like constructive criticism and should be protected but they are not, no one can take *any* copyright work and improve it and show to the world that it can be done better (notice I stress *any* because GPL software does allow this). So copyrights conflict with the first amendment and the foundy fathers knew this, and the only reason they adopted copyrights was not to give creators rights over freedom of speech (which is what you are suggesting), but to stimulate an information market through government regulation. But it does not have to work that way, maybe it was good in the past, but today and in the future things are changing, and its not going to work anymore, and if given the choice between the first amendment and copyrights I almost guaratee most people in the US will choose the first amendment over copyrights.
Its by legal definition "stealing", but outside of law its not "stealing". That is its stealing based upon how information property is defined by law (not nature), and IP law defines information property as being the property of the creator for a period of time, rather then naturally the property of the possesser. File and information sharing is ethical and moral, its just not legal, and illegal does not equal unethical or immoral. To the contrary IP law is legal stealing of information distribution rights (which is covered by the first amendment), this is out right control of an information market.
> I think that there are pretty much enough of the zealots who go "GNU LINUX RMS RULEZ!!".
Its kind of strange, I see more anti-"RMS zealots", then I see "RMS zealots", as a matter of a fact, I dont think I have ever seen an "RMS zealot" in all my time on slashdot or other programming or otherwise forumn, but I always hear about them. It must be one of those things, where they are secretly hiding some where, or they post anonymously and you have to dig real deep to find them, there is probably a whole colony of them somewhere, probably deep underground with nomes, espeically if there is enough of them to vote in RMS. hmmm.
I dont recall commies being so freedom loving... hmm...
> It's almost always better to give information away freely than it is to keep it hidden.
But those are not the only 2 options, there is also selling information. 1) dont share it 2) share it for a price 3) share it for free.
Obviously it can not be an unreasonable price, but doing it for free can have a negative effect.
> Sure, it will hurt those companies if their patents are violated, but then how many lives would it save?
I personly dont agree with patents or copyrights, as they are applied today. It should be that once you give away or sell information to someone that it be freely distributed after that. This way the most money you will make will be on first sale basis of information.
> The code could be as free as you like, without the need to protect it from companies that would otherwise hoarde it.
The GPL does not prevent information hoarding, it just makes it harder. The GPL simply requires that source code be distributed with the binaries, and by default no restrictions on modification distributions (that is someone can modify and redistribute their modified version of GPL software). A company can still hoarde custom or modified GPL software, but they can not prevent their employees who have access or who have developed this code from distributing it. This is why some companies are afraid of GPL, their employees can take code and run with it or distribute it on the internet, and the company would have no control of that, or an NDA would conflict with it. So basicly it makes hoarding harder.
In particular what I like about the GPL is it allows any one to sell that information if they want. It does not require that you give the software away for free, merely that the source code is included for the benefits of open source.
> In my opinion, placing an artificial scarcity on the music in this manner is immoral. It keeps people from doing what is in their best interest, namely sharing information, enjoying it, and quite possibly learning from it.
Not to forget making money in redistributing it. Resulting in the developement of an information market place, where people can buy sell and trade information with each other, to which the authors of such information become the center of it all, and will recieve bids from distributors who believe they can make a lot of money distributing their information.
I totally agree, there is several options that are available unfortunetly these options may make money for the author, but the *distributors* will be unable to become monopolies as copyrights currently guaratee them. With out copyrights distributors have to compete with each other in order to distribute an authors work, the author has more choices and can even have distributors bidding to be the first distributors of their work, rather then authors competing with each other to get a distributor to distribute their work (the distributor deciding whether the public will like them or not). In the case of no copyrights anyone who wants to be, can be a distributor of information and can participate in an information market, of buying and selling information, much like the stock market where they estimate whether something will do well in short and long term or not, the information market will be based upon a authors past reputation. Organizations like the RIAA have the most to fear if they are unprepared for this change, as this replaces centralized distributors with decentralized distributors.
> he bottom line is that there's more than ethical problems with these new services.
The only ethical problems are the ones you describe about taking bandwidth and clogging networks, which I agree is very bad. If people had to pay for files they download and the bandwidth used, via something similar to mojonation mixed with local caching like freenet, all on a network for buying and selling information to each other, then you would either see one or both of either increase in network performance as the network recieves money for its usage, or less usage as people would use the network for important things they need, rather then things they desire. But you can bet copyright proponents would be against anyone making money off of information trade, except a small minority of people, which the creator/author of the information would be lucky to be one of.
> The key word is take IN the scenery.
s te al
The point is the word "take" can be used under a context where it does not require someone else to lose possession. In hollywood they refer to filming a sequence as a "take". There is several other uses of the word "take" that does not mean that someone else loses possession of.
> I have never seen a dictionary where copy has the same definition of steal or pirate.
That may be true and actually both the definitions of "take" and "steal" are more broadly defined (I just chose the definition that best fits the discussion), but my reference is here...
http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=
I'd like to see alternative definitions that may contradict what I have said. I'm not pro-copyrights, but as I said they can by law define it as stealing, but I think its important that morally amd ethically we realize its not stealing and piracy, just because things are made into laws does not mean they are moral or ethical, or a naturally right. And further more the fact that its being defined as stealing, is also immoral and unethical (as I stated previously).
Copyrights suck the value out of information property like music. When someone buys music for example, they cant resell copys of it, so under copyrights the value of it is a lot less. Instead you have cartels like the RIAA and the studios who control the pricing of music, who control the value of music, and control who gets access to what music. And they do this for both the consumers and the musicians, they control the contracts with the musicians so they can give them as less money as they can, they control the prices that vendors charge for CDs (at one point they were slapped in the hand for charging to high a price from their price fixing practices).
Who says it has to be freely distributed? Dont forget copyright law *also* prevents you from selling copies with out the copyright owners permission.
An author could in fact have distributors bidding to sell their work on a P2P like distibution network, (that is if that author has a proven record to sell well). Just like the stock market, or any other *real* market, someone has to speculate about whether something will sell well if at all, then buy and sell to see how much they make, if the author has a proven track record and a good enough fan base, then distributors will bid to be the first distributors (on the P2P network). They will then resell their copies to other distributors (fyi I refer distribution servers as distributors), normal people who want to buy music can give their computer a price they are willing to pay for music, the higher the price they are willing to pay the sooner they will get it (if they pay a high enough price its possible for them to make their money back and even make a profit off of reselling copys), the lower the price the longer it takes to get it or the quality is a bit lower or is mixed in with advertisement. Authors who are just starting off will have to give away their work at first to reviewers and internet radio stations to get attention. The whole point is that a P2P system could literarly be built to sell information (almost like mojonation, except with out the ineffeciencies mojonation uses to hide information), this will create an real information market, and distributors will be competing, cartels like the RIAA would be afraid of this because they cant control whos music gets distributed and how much people pay for music, the market controls this and the market is composed of competing distributors of which anyone with a server and bandwidth can buy and sell information products and make money. Only 2 things stand in the way of this, 1) copyrights, 2) technology. Its even a sort of chicken and egg syndrome, what should come first, the information market, or the technology to drive the market. No technology is available that can accomidate it yet, most technology focuses on distributing freely, versus getting paid for distribution. The information market could be developed, like I said its not so diffrent then today, RIAA and the studios could invest their money in such a network, by creating servers and the technology with in their own infrastructure and then later open it up to the public (it would give them an advantage against new distributors who enter the market), but the way the RIAA seems anti-technology, its very doubtful they would do such a thing.
Legally it is "stealing", and its not that the law changed the meaning of the word "stealing", its that they changed the meaning of the word "property" as it applies to information. Naturally information is my property if its on my property (on my mind, on my hard disk, on a CD I own, etc). But since law defines information property as belonging to its creator whether the creator has it or not (which is not logical), then the word "stealing" can be applied.
stealing - To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
take - To get into one's possession by force, skill, or artifice.
if you note that the word "take" simply covers how it comes into possession, not whether someone loses possession of it because of your possession. Like for example "to take in the scenery", doesnt mean you literarly take the scenery, but you examine it with your eyes and your brain in memory.
But again, the copyright law redefines what is information property. And so in legalese its "stealing", but morally or ethicly its not "stealing". Quite frankly morally and ethicly its the copyright owner who is stealing from the rest of us, because the rest of us could be making money, buying and selling information to each other (being distributors), instead copyrights guarantee that *distributors* and their cartels will become the focus of the market while artists and their fans will be left out in the cold by a cruel market place that only caters to distributors.
The future is going to have to be, selling music online through P2P with out copyrights, that is the most probable future of all information distribution, whether that information be music books, 3d-printable toys, etc. It will work much the same as it does today, except there will not be the RIAA cartel controlling prices, and prices will be based upon what you can afford that is controled by your P2P agent/client software. If you dont want to spend that much money on information it will take longer till you recieve that information, and by the time you recieve it you may have to watch/listen to advertising (if your price you want to pay is free or really cheap). This way even poor people could still get the information. The artists/author/musician will make money off of the top bidders from the distributors. The distributors will estimate how much they will make from the artists work based upon previous sales of their work, much like how the stock market works, where people guess at whether a stock is going to rise or drop. This way it is a true capitalist information market.
Copyrights are just plain wrong, in the past and at present they may or may not have been a good thing to do, but in the future they will only decay (as no one uses them) or get worse (stricter then previously like DMCA, etc). I dont see people giving up their freedom of speech, or to allow the government to control our minds (allow the government to erase experiences that are copyrighted), so I can only imagine it decaying.
> nobody put a gun to the artists' heads and made them sign a deal with any particular record company, yet they have absolutely no say in the matter when it comes to people downloading their stuff for free
Right, but its okay if they can put a gun to our heads and prevent everyone from distributing information in a market. Information that once we have in our possession we own it, it becomes our information. If its in my mind, my mind can erase/forget it, or can play it back as much as it wants, I can even say/sing it out loud if I wanted because I own it, they may have created it, but once the creation leaves the womb and placed in the minds of others, they no longer directly control its destiny and must put a gun to our heads to prevent it from being distributed.
From that perspective though, those musicians you describe (like any market place) set the standards. That is the record companies will likely choose someone of less talent if they appear to be dumb about business or dont have a lawyer. They are like child molesters, they are more likely to go after children because they are helpless rather then an adult who can fight back. But just as world trade means workers in america are going to have to compete against someone in another country getting paid 2 cents, that musicians will have to compete against musicians with no business sense to do the math (helpless musicians), because they will make more money off of them. Add to that the fact that record companies do control who ends up on CDs or MTV and who does not, then you see that the majority of the musicians are at the whims of the record labels, especially if they want to be a "star".
If I were to build one from the ground up, slim and componentized would be my keywords. I'd like to be able to use diffrent compilers, diffrent editors, diffrent project managers, etc etc, all communicating across a network or on a local computer. This way any editor that implements this protocol can interoperate with any project manager. By componetizing it this way, I can edit source code with out having to start the entire IDE (that is an anoyance in IDEs like netBeans and VisualStudio). So I want an environment that is not so integrated that it is all in one program, but an environment that integrates seperate applications to work better together, allowing these applications to communicate with each other with out having to be the same program.
The PC industry flourished with open standards, and where standards were closed (BIOS) they went past it by having reverse engineering and a lawyer inbetween to make sure no copyright information was shared, allowing third parties to create their own IBM compatible systems.
It may be a good punishment (letting the punishment fit the crime) by allowing people to reverse engineer windows to create competitive products (currently reverse engineering is only legal in very narrow circumstances of interoperability but even then there is no guaratee that someone could try to sue the crap out of you, or that laws like the DMCA wont allow corporations to come after you).
A market can only correct itself if the law lets it. Preventing reverse engineering under certain circumstances can do just that. Reverse engineering allows competition and competition (and information) is the natural force of balance in capitalist markets. Copyrights are a form of government regulation/social engineering, that one would expect from a communist/socialist government, not from a capitalist one, with out which businesses like Microsoft would not be as big as they are, and consumers would have a lot more choices, as well as developers being able to create hybrids, the market (and community) would be in more control of the products then an entity like a corporation.
I agree. I'm still waiting for the time when all GUIs are reconfigurable and even extentable to work the way the user wants them to work. Stuff like GLADE in combination with libGLADE is pretty cool and a step in the right direction IMHO, as people can use GLADE to come up with their own flavor of an interface. Its still kind of shallow because you can not access deeper program interfaces/objects, and I dont think there is any efforts in GTK+ GLADE or any related libraries to promote that kind of developement. I've also always have been advocating Runtime Developement Environments, so you can develope/alter software while it is running, but that would only be possible in a VM environment.
Divide the list between products and companies/organizations and it may clarify it a little more. For some reason some companies think they make a good product that gives them a license to be a bad company.
> I understand the dangers inherent in a cycle of violence. However, in our societies we define the murder of an individual as a very serious offense (perhaps even capital). How can the murder of 1000 people be less serious? Must we not pursue it with the maximum vigor possible?
It doesnt make sense though if that maximum vigor requires the death of more people.
> In the first case, I don't care who I kill. The more the better. In the second, I try NOT to kill non-combatants. Sure, if they end up dead that is a bad thing and their relatives won't see it any way but that way.
As our goverment and even Timothy McVeigh put it, its collateral damage. No amount of effort will ever have zero "collateral damage", so it is to be acceptable part of "war".
> I cannot abide a logic that suggest we do nothing because in selecting a particular course of action we may have a small number of very unfortunate side effects.
And as far as I have seen no one is suggesting we do nothing, even the anti-war demonstrators are not saying we should do nothing. War and pacificism are not the only choices (although some would like you to believe it), and the way we proceed to war is not the only way to do it. Right now we proceed as a vigilante with a group of other vigilantes (coalition), that is not the only way to bring the terrorists to justice, but we act unilaterally in this case because we can push around other countries rather then do what ever american in our country has to do to persue justice by looking toward the law and order. But bush being a texan thinking he is a cowboy on a bounty hunt rather go unilateraly with his posse. But at the same time, the world is not civilized and looking to law and order only applies as a means for civilized people to act.
> And that is basically saying that those 6K people who died don't matter because the fact we may kill a few hundred innocents in the pursuit of a longer term good has detered us from acting.
It sounds like the only way you think their deaths will matter is by justifying their deaths. If we kill innocent people, even if its just one innocent person, we justify the deaths of all innocent people, we send a message that the death of innocents requires the death of other innocents.
> We have to try VERY hard not to kill those not involved, though identifying the "involved" in the Afghan situation is a little dicey.
Agreed, a lot of afganistans and those in pakastan think that our government is wrong and support the taliban. And as bush laid clear, "you either are with us, or with the terrorists", to match the *single* binary neuron in his brain.
> But for the good of that region, it must be liberated (and I do use that word deliberately, because you cannot call the Taliban government anything short of monstrous in terms of the way it treats dissidents, those of other faiths, and women). And rebuilt.
Its to bad that countries have to have terrorists present in their borders before we start thinking about helping them, and in that case we dont help them we "rebuild" them. These terrorists are there because we supported them originally when they went against communism, the time they were there they recieved support from their people and polarized the people to their view of the world. Even a number of the women over there believe that is the way they are supposed to live (just as a number of republican/conservative women think they should not have abortion as a choice because of their religion). Getting rid of the taliban doesnt magicly make them into liberal people, rebuilding their country as far as I can tell only involves aid and throughing up a monarchy government, I dont know about you but I have not heard anything else, the only education I have heard about (in any media) is some christian missionaries who want to bring more people into their faith. But in the end we are not doing this because the Taliban is bad to its people, and that is something you have to remember, we support governments that are bad to its people, we support Saudi Arabia for example. We are doing this to combat terrorism, to get the suspect Osama Bin Laden.
> Japan and Germany are the scale we're talking here. This is not a weekend project. This is generational. But look at how successful we were in Japan and Germany. They are now among the most democratic and to a large extent non-aggressive nations in the civilized world. They have benefitted from the reconstruction and the increased education and economic opportunity, which have strengthened the cause of freedom and social justice.
Yes that is true, and I believe that would be the right path, and I am not against doing that, but I never heard any one in an official position in government suggest this is what is going to happen to afganistan, and generalized terminology like "rebuilt" is not that same as saying "marshall plan" (that rebuilt germany and japan). Its easy to assume that because we are in a modern time that people would do the right thing, but that is not the case.
> This is a nasty little adult situation - no white knights, no cavalry to the rescue. The only way to get out of this with any redemption is by winning the military fight quickly, carefully, and getting to work saving the millions of innocents with a vengeance. And rebuilding something that can eventually join the international community as a worthwhile member. That's what we've got to do and it will be the Devil's own bit of work to accomplish.
I agree, and if only it were that simple and justified. And devil would fit in here. We use a bit of evil to kill evil. We are not being good sameritans trying to change the world for better, instead waiting till the world starts to decay and when it rots and gets disgusting enough that it starts to hurt our society then we go and do something about it. We are not being and really have never been the good guys (like you say no white knights) in the world community, and we are not being good guys now. We have always done things for self interest and/or greed, while that does not make us the bad guys, I tire of people making us sound like good guys when they wish to justify the actions of our government. Life is hell, and we are all devils doing what makes us feel good, civilized society tries to sculpt things so doing what feels good doesnt cause as many conflicts. My enjoyment comes from being in the middle of it all to see who wins out in the end, I've never said I am against war or against killing of innocent people, just want to point out how evil it is at its core, the evil likes to adorn good (evil comes from with in), the good dont like to adorn evil (if we were good inside there would be no evil).
> But we don't seem to have too many good options, now do we?
Nope we had good options in the beginning but we didnt care for them, and that is why every thing is bad.
> Dialogue Enhancer - enhances the center channel on DVD audio tracks where there is no center channel present. This allows you to hear dialogue clearly, even at night, without upsetting your neighbors. (ha, quite useful in Japan..)
I dont know, I tend to work late hours (real late), and I am always screwing around with audio (mostly TV audio) so I can hear the TV with out bothering my family (who work during the day). I only wish I had something similar for TV, especially when the channel makes commericals louder.
Not only that but most console based companies make money from software sales. Sounds like a good plan, if they save cost in consoles they will make money in software.
Its not really a culture is the issue. I'm rather neutral on the whole thing myself, there is a lot of good that gets done by turning a bunch o superstitious animals, into sophisticated and educated free thinking people, but at the same they are trying to turn us into a bunch of cows and lambs (consumers). So the culture that corporations put on us is not as good as it may seem. Humans have natural instincts and desires, that big media likes to use to get people to use their products. You can see it on the commercials on TV, they use idols, and they make things seem like a cool product or a 'scene' where a bunch of "cool" people like to drink soda, or eat chips, or drink beer even, as if to fit in to this group or scene you have to do these things, kids and teens tend to be the ones to worry about fitting in and the oposite sex the most, so they try to use that kind of thing as much as possible, but they dont say it in words and that makes this more subliminal in that people and even kids and teens are pretty smart and will know a fake thing when they spot it, so they dont make it obvious, they dont directly say its cool to use their product, they imply it instead by the actions they portray of people who use their products.
But if all we want is unity, we could easily force kids to wear school uniforms, and in high school require them to wear a school uniform that is the same in all countries over the globe. The problem is, not everyone wants to fit in, some people are backwards to their own instincts and desires, if they want something they do something oposite of what they want, these are the people who are hurt and try to get attention to it, even if that attention is in a bad way.
I agree with all these except for one thing... governments are not created equal, and so every government (not just the US government), play roles not just in labor laws but in many cases factories (corporations paying governments is not just in america). The other part is where do you draw the line between anarchy and freedom? Someone can own guns and then use those guns to threaten people (or hold them as slaves causing problems in the competitive labor market), so you need government to protect the people, but then that means the government also has guns and can use them to threaten people. I'm not saying your wrong, just that what you want is good but extrememly complicated and the easiest paths are always the wrong ones. I personly think the biggest thing to look at is balance of power, and to limit property ownership will definetly help (we should not be allowed to own slaves or for some rich person or corpriation to own the entire planet as property), the problem property ownership is that after a certain size it requires mass coersion to protect it, it requires several people to go against several people, the small property owners should recieve the most protection, that would definetly reduce the abilities of corporations to own a lot of property (and the governments of the word as their security guards, while every one else is renting from the corporation), today they attempt to do this by taxation, but no one would ever do such a thing for slave labor (tax people/corporations who use slave labor) as a means of reducing it, people would not agree to such a thing because all it means is the government is endorsing slave labor and making money from it.
[quote]Would you really stop large corporations? Would you really want to deny people in the 3rd world a chance to move ahead far more quickly than America ever did? [/quote]
If you really think they are going to move ahead far more quickly then america eve did, that sounds like an opertunity you should take... so go work for those factories and then you can tell us whether or not you move ahead far more quickly then america ever did.