Re:Hmmm.... that's a nice quote... but....
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Globalization
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I dont think you understand what was originaly meant by that saying "by the sword". Its not a literaly sense that you are living right next to a sword or have a sword right by you. What was meant by living by the sword is like saying "following the rules by the book". Its like someone who uses a sword for everything, from not just defense and offense but also to end descrepencies, it has the general meaning rather then specific. Living by the gun would probably be what was done by cowboys (and cowgirls) in the old west, not by common people who keep a gun in their house in case of an emergency. Living by the sword is probably what samarai and knights could be considered to be doing, not common people who may practice as a hobby. "Live by the sword, die by the sword", simply means if you go around using a sword to solve all your problems, you will die with it (its not really to do with defense, its more general then that).
But to get back to what he was saying by violence begettes violence, is that for example, if person A kills person Bs brother, then person B being very emotional and angry (whether their brother was the one who caused it or not) will kill person A, person As father in turn will get angry and emotional and kill person B, and it continues on and on and on as a family/tribal fued, or take that up a notch to the national level and you have a continuous war between people who dont know a diffrent life style. If you look at what its about, its about a virus infecting these peoples minds, the virus is the death of a friend or family member, one person kills someone elses family member and they basicly infect the people in their family with this virus.
But he is not refering to self defense or offense so much, but he is refering to the cycles of *revenge* rather then justice. An eye for an eye leaves the world blind (so to speak).
> They need rebuilt not to make them anti-Islamic or to make them capitalist, but rather to make them a place where the women are not oppressed and where reasonless fundamentalism doesn't reign and where terrorists are made unwelcome. That is why we must dismantle their government and their terrorist networks and seek to bag bin Laden.
The problem I am seeing here, is that a number of afgans support the taliban, even more so now that they are being bombed. Sure they more then likely lack enough education to make a proper decision in the manner but that fact is going to remain and fixing it will take time, it could take a generation of people, and installed governments in the past times we have dont it have failed, the only time it seemed to work is in Japan and Germany after world war 2, but every other country that america has tried to install governments (or help rebels take over a government and replace with their own form) in has turned corrupt and has caused rebels to attack them. Especially in central-south america.
> This is probably one of the few wars in history where anyone has TRIED to distinguish between civilian and military targets.
Their has been a number of times where they claim to be trying. Since we are not the military generals we dont know for sure if they do it on purpose at all or if they are accidental, but it almost doesnt matter (on purpose or not) because innocent people will die (and have died), no amount of effort will prevent that, only reduce it, but you have to wonder where the morals lie in that, is the amount of people make the diffrence? If so, there is a lot of things that kill more people in america then terrorists. If what makes a bigger diffrence is that they were killed by people from another country whom dont like us, then this is not about the number of people its about pride and revenge. And yet a third way to think about it, is the means of death, the way those people died in a horrible way, versus someone who passes out (and away) because their lungs cant take anymore smoking, but car accidents also kill a lot of people in america, and even drunk driving accidents are higher. I'm not trying to say that we shouldnt be bombing and attacking the Taliban and Al Qaeda, I'm saying we should not try to lay it off as moral or ethical, we are laying out some evil because of their evil. And yes, evil is destruction (dictionary defintion), and we are set out for destruction, so we are set out to do some evil our selves. The Taliban/Osama Bin Laden have a virus in their minds about destruction, and they have spread it to many of us here, and so we shall continue to spread it, there is no way to control a mass of people to prevent over reaction and to take control of a situation, instead we have no choice but the allowance of a lashing out.
> I don't know about you... but when a man declares me his enemy without ever meeting me just based on his assumptions about me, and is willing to kill me for that, I'm more than willing to see him prevented (permanently) from doing harm to me or others like me.
And I would hope vice versa as well, if you declare someone your enemy without ever meeting them just based on assumptions about them and you are willing to have them killed for that, I'd hope you then be more then willing to prevent yourself from doing harm to them.
Re:anthrax--careful, John
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Globalization
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> The date at the top is in the format "9/11/01". Only Americans write dates this way (everyone else writes "11/9/01"). Someone who lived here for a while would know we do that, but wouldn't they be more inclined to write "September 11, 2001" or some variation to avoid confusion? Why would they bother to do it our way?
I am an american and I like writing it 2001/09/11 (or 2001.09.11) myself when I can because in a computer that gets ordered year first month second and date last. Not that this is against your arguement:), which I agree seems it is less likely Al Qaeda.
Re:Contrast: The Economist
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Globalization
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Economist take into account *ideal* and *theoretical* perspectives on what would work, but they still dont take into account that corporations are going to be the biggest influence on the global economy and they have the least interest in helping distribute wealth to poorer countries rather then extracting as much cheap labor as they can from poorer countries so that they can extract wealth from the richer countries as they can.
But that said, in the long run globalisation will prove to be a good thing, but in the short term it will lead to several problems and hickups in the economy and hurt the economy in several ways before it becomes a stable thing. Japan as you may recall had a hiccup in its economy some years ago, and that was caused by removing laws that restrict global trade. Part of the problem is that opening trade puts you at the mercy of others, and it will work best when all major contributors open their trade and economy to the world, if one country refuses to do this they hurt the other countries by not buying products from them but selling products to them, then what they are ending up doing is taking wealth but not giving any back. Now that is what the WTO and world courts are for, so that countries can sue each other for doing this, but this does not apply to corporations, only countries. International corporations are formless and live in countries as opposed to being one and are not as limited as governments are in their trade. This is and has always been a problem, and that is the liability that corporations have, but this changes with time and with trial (that is when someone goes after a corporation and sets precedence in global law).
Again, economists are the idealists (not so much practicality or detail in ideas some of the times), and those against globalisation tend to be the cynics. I tend to think it will work if its done right, and time eventually sculpts things to work right (evolution and/or revolution sees to that), not that there shouldnt be concern, the concern is in the details. As I believe it was Ralph Nader had said, we want globalisation our way, not the way international corporations want it.
I think you missed part of their point, Osama Bin Laden is not the only person in Afganistan, Palestine, Pakastan, or Iraq, and so being not the only person whom hates the US for what we have done. Part of the problem is that other people in the mid-east dont like us and so support groups like the Taliban, just like we supported Osama Bin Laden (and several members of the taliban) because we didnt like the communist. Our government is now using force and threat of force to get support on our side, and its not working, look at Pakistan and the protests and the take over of the airbase by activists, Pakistan leadership may support the US but a lot of the people dont. And they dont necesarily have the same views as Osama Bin Laden or the Taliban, except that they dont like the US.
Is AMD or intel attacking hardcore overclocking websites because they are afriad they will be held liable if someone gets hurt? Of course not. Show me a legal case where such a thing occured.
> It's possible, of course, but what goes against it is all the evidence of countries with weak IP laws (e.g. Russia, China), which tend to have very weak industries in IP-related fields (e.g. software).
But again, we have always done better because we were capitalist. Copyrights are not capitalist in their nature, they are more closer to communism/socialism. Russia and China are obviously communism, and dont have respect for IP but also have records of not promoting things like freedom of speach and private industry, and even controled information more so then our government. As a matter of a fact, Russia was sitting on a huge amount of IP, that didnt flurish (in a good way) until the end of the USSR, the Sokho SU-37 is the top flanker and most manuverable jet in our current times, using vector thrust technology that our own industrys thought impossible and didnt waste money researching it, and instead now is paying to get a hold of that technology (I heard some anouncement reguarding Lockheed some time ago). Its just when government gets more and more involved in our private industries that can hamper competition and at the same time reduce inovation. Copyrights are much the same thing, they are the government getting involved and even interfering in the IP industry. If we have a strong industry its because of freedom, capitalism is about less government regulation and interference in competition. Most of us today are sitting on a lot of valuable information today that we could sale copies of to others and make money but we dont because of law, so instead some people rather give it away for free (as if the information is worthless) on the internet and that is not healthy in my opinion, not healthy in any environment whether that environment is copyright or its capitalist oposite.
I dont necesarly think its bad that we are currently in the midst of copyrights. Now and in the past may not have be good times to get rid of copyrights, but reduction should be considered in the future (as oposed to the current considerations of more control). Just thinking that most governments started off with no freedoms for the people it ruled, but I would hope that such freedom does not have to come about through revolution, and simply progress as evolution.
> Without IP laws, it's doubtful Microsoft would exist at all,
I would go farther and say if they did exist they would not be the same company they are today, and that is something we would probably both agree on. If microsoft were to try to do what they do today they would more then likely not exist.
> and the state of the industry would probably be significantly less advanced as well, with hardware firms (which would probably also provide the software) focussing on obfuscating their meagre innovations as much as possible, to keep them from their competitors for as long as possible.
Well that is a possibility for several reasons (some which you dont list) but a possibility I hold to be the least likely. If it were the case people would have diffrent values and diffrent strategies, if you apply the strategies of today to such a situation then yeah it would more likely be what you describe, but you can only do that in theory (apply what you know today on what could have been), it is more likely as I said, that people would have diffrent business models and diffrent strategies, that doesnt necesarily mean obfiscation as that could very well be a waste of time and resources and no business could withstand that in the end. So more likely businesses would have some other strategy, maybe even similar to open source. Competition would be fierce (if your competitors could duplicate what you are doing then you need to come up with something inovative) and brand loyalty as well, but also there would be more parallel in standards as there will be less deviation and where there is deviation it could be easily found and fixed or added to another. So anyway dont assume that there is no alternatives to IP laws that would work the same or better. And dont forget, Microsoft didnt create DOS, Adobe didnt create Photoshop or GoLive, Macromedia didnt create flash, etc. Inovations and creation come from individuals either at universities or hobbiests who want to make money from their own research, which they do for interest, recognition, and potential to make money, corporations are probably best at refining.
> I think the author of this article called Microsoft a 'natural monopoly' because he's heard economists use the term, and, although he doesn't know what it means, most people reading his article won't either, so it will improve his credibility with them, because they'll be deceived into believing he knows more about economics than they do.
That does sound like the most likely scenerio, although I would like to know what economist call an "unnatural monopoly"....hmmm...
> Blah blah blah. You've wandered off into some obscure and pedantic discussion of semantics and avoided the issue I raise. The point is that it's difficult to make creative works available for appraisal without making them available for distribution.
No, you did not say *appraisal* the last time, you said "the market", I assumed you meant selling the product.
But none the less I see now what you are saying, but life is about trust (there is no real way around it). Just like anything, you fly on an airplane trusting the airlines to have a good pilot. Sure its illegal to break into someones house and rob them, but just because the government makes it illegal, do we leave our front doors opened or even unlocked? And do you realize that a number of movies released on the internet, are released from video appraisals (screenings), where does copyright work there? The only safe guard in place is that those screenings are poor quality, and the theatre is high quality. An appraiser may for example also be a distributor who has a good reputation with the author for paying a lot for their work, so the author may in fact trust the distributor with a (low quality where possible) appraisal of their work, the distributor after all is the one who must sale the work to other distributors. If a distributor screws the author by releasing it early, the author can then never do business with them again, and the money could in fact go to distributors who kept their trust and develope a reputation with the author. So there is various ways appraisals can be done that will keep the value of the information in tact and reduce risks.
> I should point out that you are confusing information with creative works. They are not the same thing at all.
But they are handled much in the same way under copyrights. What I describe is not fixed or decidely perfect, it is just an idea as is copyright an idea. Both of which will more then likely have their benefits and their failings, but it should be aparent copyrights (as we know them today) are not going to make it, they will either be gone or more likely altered severly.
> Let me address your claim. The main problem is that it creates a tragedy-of-commons issue in that there is a disincentive for anyone to pay for development of creative works.
How so, more then now? Adobe didnt make Photoshop or GoLive, Macromedia didnt make flash, Microsoft didnt make Dos. Corporations tend to be better at taking something developed by someone else and improving it or duplicating it. A lot of technology comes from the university levels rather then the corporate. Most people interested in science develope things on their own in hopes of making a lot of money but end up selling their work to interested corporations. I know several universities that offer very flexible licenses on technologies that even provide source code to them. Someone who developes a technology and wants to create a company to sell it, finds its hard to get investment because most people want to have microsoft in their portfolios, so this leaves them with little choice except to be flexible about selling off their work to a corporation and possibly get a job showing them how it works and integrating it in their systems. Several corporations are notorious for not spending money developing and researching rather they spend time refining (crude oil). This is not to say nothing new or creative comes out of corporations, its just most of it is taken from other sources, and independant researchs. Even the medical corporations get paid by the government to do R&D, they dont try to actually do it with their own money.
> When works are released, there's a disincentive to release them without draconian copy-protection measures.
That is true with or with out copyrights, although the degree of which can be argued to be higher with out copyrights. Actually you will see stronger incentive to release software as services, that the software does not exist on the users computers but exists on a server owned by the company and the user rents server time to do their work. But this itself is a disincentive to consumers to rent software time rather then buy software.
> One of the problems with arguments for alternative systems to copyright is that the people who make them assume everyone will be altruistic. It never occurs to them that the correct assumption to make is that people will act in their own best interests.
True but the one I describe does not have this problem, it is entirely based on peoples self interest. Copyrights and donation based ideas have this problem. Consumers have 2 possible interests to get something early or to get something cheap, the ones who want something early pay more, the ones who want something cheap will wait until the price comes down or they find someone willing to sell cheaper. The Author has 2 interests, gain a reputation (increases user demand for their) and get as much money as they can from their work (the distribors bid on who gets to distribut the authors work first). The Distributor has 2 interests, gain a reputation with the consumers for having what they need, and gain a reputation with the author by paying a good price for the works. You may notice that this is almost exactly how it is today, in this generalized version of it, and that is true, the difference to take notice of is that Distribors compete more, there can not be any organization of distributors as is the case with the RIAA and MPAA. The distibutors gain the most from copyrights and can unify and not compete with each other but rather work together to fix the prices (by controling vendors) and they have done it in the past and were slapped in the hand for raising prices, and also they can work together to lobby for legislation which benefits them some more. Another thing is the authors also compete more (its not to much diffrent) but at the same time distributors have to compete for the reptuatable authors, rather then the authors compete for a distributor.
> Another problem is the issue of building a reputation. This obviously raises barriers to market entry, because it is much harder for the public to appraise a product. The ability of customers to make informed buying decisions is obstructed.
I partly covered the possibilties above, but I dont disagree with you that much. A large portion of what people do is buy things on reputation, this is why we have 'name brands' rather then a lot of generic products. In certain niche markets, like computer hardware, admittedly they tend to be a more savy group, that likes to read reviews before purchasing something, but the choice has always been to wait, to wait for someone else to try it, or in some cases listen to a piece of the music or listen to a lower quality version of it. Everythign has its diffrent ways of being reviewed, and every one has its risks, like even though radio stations play music for free and people are 'free' to record music from a radio station despite law, its still lower quality and those who really want to listen to it in better quality will likely purchase the higher quality version. For books and movies its always been testimonial or clips and advertisment, which is not bad. Again when an information product is released it will likely sell for a high price, leaving only a few people to get a hold of it these few people will likely review the product and put up reviews, and the reviews will have to be objective because they have to compete with other distributors, if they lie, and you bought the music you could review it and inform others as many websites today allow you to do.
> Anyone is free to write their own software using their own model. Surely, there exists some part of the software market where no monopoly exists (actually, there exist several). So if these other models work so well, there's nothing stopping someone using them.
When I say monopoly, I refer to copyright monopoly, information monopoly. So what I mean to say is that people would rather give (copyrighted) information away rather then sell it.
> It's moving in that direction, because there isn't a vocal, well organised lobby who has raised compelling moral counter-arguments. This is one of the problems with these slashmonkeys who just scream "free free free". They drown out all the good arguments. I agree that there are a lot of legitimate objections one can make to laws that have been passed, and laws that are being lobbied for.
I agree, there are to many people who see it as either, free donation or copyright, but fail to analyze or purposely dont want to recognize other market potentials, these people do more harm then good.
> Some people would like to make well-informed purchase decisions, instead of buying on faith alone.
That is what I am refering to in terms of reputation. "Well-informed" means you get your information from someone about a purchase decision, you would not just listen to anyone about a purchase decision, you would find someone with a good reputation for truth instead of bias. But in the context of what I was saying if someone sells a book online, and when you buy that book and several hundred people want to buy a copy from you, then the next time the person has a book for sell, you will remember their last book did well and speculate on how well the next book will do. This is how other markets work, almost like stock markets, where they use statistics and market analysis to figure out how well a company is going to do based a lot on past record.
> but I don't see how a different model would help the problem. Actually, a model where people had to buy on reputation and faith alone would tend to make the market more conservative.
But that is how people are now. The thing is though, people who want to gain a good reputation will give their work away for free, this will allow people to experiment and try new things, and if they like it, it will loosen them up to buying their next album or book. And it doesnt necesarily have to be free completely, it could be a internet music station, that experiments and finds new music they like, they then take this music and play it on their station (putting their reputation on the line that their listeners will like it), and at off times get paid through advertisements. This way the listener is likely to find music they like, listening to a music station that has a good reputation to them, and finds a band they like and would like higher quality playback so they buy it from any one who happens to have it.
> That looks like a false dichotomy, but maybe it isn't. I'd argue that the record companies are looking for a way to work with it.
I'd hope so, but I'm sure idealy they would love to find the nuclear-bomb against it.
> Umm, I for one would not want to pay a large corp. for the privilege of using software I helped to create, and watch the money go to them. Exactly what would I be paying for?
I can see where you are coming from but there is an equilibrium. For example you may depend on some software, and if you help the company better design their software for your needs, then you benefit your self. But that depends on if they are listening to your needs and ideas. I've tried that with microsoft several times, but microsoft does not have a tendancy to listen to its customers or even politely respond, rather they usually dont respond at all, even when you are telling them about a security hole in their software.
> Perhaps I misunderstand, as this would work in a corporate environment, where staff helped out, but surely not for a commercial product?
Not really, in this case you would need a pretty great and diverse staff that feels comfortable with communicating with each other rather then the typical competitive corporate environment (typical in large businesses).
> I think open-source is great and all, but if your programmers are all coding away, and the code is released freely
Ah, there in lies part of the problem, open-source does not necesarily mean "released freely". Even the GPL does not require that the software be given away for free, merely that it include its source code. I would expect that as OSS starts to out due the quality of commercial software that they start charging for the initial distribution releases in order to make money for the programmers, as well as technical support. But once its been distributed to a point that eventually it will find itself on the net downloadable for free. The competition could rerelease lickety-split, but your competition would also have to pay for the software in that way they help fund you, I would also expect initial releases to be expensive, and falling in price as its distributed, your competition would have to buy at a high price and sell at a lower price making it more difficult as you have the initial release and they are just mimicing, but if your competition has a legitamately good product they would make a lot of money and you can charge more for initial releases.
What I dont get is why he calls it a "natural monopoly". There is nothing natural about it, its based upon information property (IP), and the way IP is defined in laws is not natural at all. With out copyrights and/or patents microsoft would be a lot smaller, people would have already reversed engineered and made a competing product that is open source.
> Once their work hits "the market", it is worthless without copyrights, because "hitting the market" would mean that the work could freely be redistributed. And this is the problem.
No, its worthless with copyrights. We see 'worthyness' from 2 diffrent perspectives. You see it in how much 'worth' the author has in it. I see it as multidimensional worth, how much worth to society, how much worth in money to everyone not just the author. With copyrights, once you buy information, it doesnt mean you can sell that information to someone else, there by making that information worthless except in its use, not only that but the information would have even higher worth because once you buy information you could easily sell copies to other people. This means the originator of such information could still make a lot of money if they build up a good enough reputation and there is a large enough market demand for this information.
So there is nothing that says the information will be distributed freely... Why would someone give away information if they could sell it themselves?
> This is absurd. The market might want something for nothing, but it can't, and should not get it.
If that was true, then they would not pay for it all, and they would be less likely to get it. If something has any real value, people would not expect to get something for nothing.
> The author should be able to choose whatever pricing scheme they desire, and the market should decide whether or not the pricing scheme is acceptable. This is the way free markets work.
No, that is the way fixed and controled markets work. The author should only have such a decision on a first sale basis!!! That is when the author first decides to sell their work, they should have a minimal bidding price, if no one wants to buy it then the author will likely lower their price. On the other hand, if they have a good minimal price, bidding would increase the final price the market is willing to pay for it. And the author does not have to sell to one person or group either, they could easily sell and upload to several of the top bidders at once making money from their bids. Then its up to those who paid for it to try to make their money back by reselling it to others and those others as well. Until any one can get a hold of that information for the price they can pay.
> Other possibilities exist perhaps, but until other possibilities demonstrate themselves to be viable business models, they deserve to be ignored.
Again as I said in another post, monopolies kill the other possibilities, and that is why people rather give information away for free rather then sell information to other people.
If there is still things you dont understand about this particular possibility I described in here, let it be said.
> If there is indeed a better way of doing things, just go ahead and do it, and it will replace copyrights, because it is a more efficient system.
If only it were that simple and generalized. I dont need to say it, but it is coming, you can see change is coming. There is little doubt there. You can see it in the way the RIAA and MPAA are becoming ever so more active in the public eye what was once private.
The problems are in the details, how long before it becomes accepted, how hard of a fight will come to get it to come. Good things are ment to happen, yes, but the more someone tries to stop them from happening the more it hurts them. But how far will those who support copyrights go? How much freedom must be taken to "ensure they recieve money for their work"?
> IOW, if things like the "street performer protocol" are so damn good, they shouldn't require destruction of the copyright system.
I never cared for the "street performer protocol", or the donation system that is just wrong. I believe in the "reputation protocol" (I suppose it could be called), where as an artist gains a reputation, they become more valuable, all their words and other information becomes more valuable (the source becomes valuable), and will sell well. This will increase speculation that the source will do well, and there will be many distributors bidding to sell their next great work, or to get an interview with them or some other media coverage of them for their fans.
> This is a simple reality of the way markets work.
Yes but not the way laws work. Laws dont necesarily deal in reality or practicality, that is something you need to understand.
> IMO, we've observed attempts at different models, and they have been unsuccesful, because they simply don't provide financial incentives.
Well like most everything else in the world, if the government started building and selling vehicles the automotive industry would be up in arms unable to compete. Just as a lot of smaller software developers go up in arms every time microsoft releases a new version of windows with a lot of features built into it. These are monopolies they already provide other services so they can subsidize and use that extra money to eliminated competition by either lowering prices or even giving it away (market flooding) or out market their competition (manipulating public mind).
As long as the government provides information monopolies (backed by the government of course), there is less competition in that industry. There is freedom to create, but no freedom to make money off your creations publicly unless you limit your creations based upon what is already created. There is buying of information, and selling or giving away information is totaly out of the hands of the buyer, and up to the author.
Laws prevent or control markets that is the reality of the situation, and no manner of rationality need be involved. But things change, there is a sleeping giant that is starting to wake up, it was seen in napster and is seen in gnutella. And it doesnt matter if you are for or against it, its coming, and you either work with it or go up in arms against it.
Why do you assume that with out copyrights, information can not be sold?
Scarcity exists in information, but only in the sense that an author has not released their work yet, once their work hits the market, it should be up to the market how much to pay for it, not up to the author, who would rather squeeze money out of the rich rather then let the market decide.
Who is to say that once we purchase information that we can not sell the copies of that information to others and make money from it? No one can, because its an idea, just as its an idea that copyright works, but is it more then just an idea, does it really work? We will never know because we are stuck with this system, but we will still have people like you who would take an idea and claim it fact and ignore the other possibilties as if they didnt exist simply because of your preferences.
Most people dont care, or have reason to care (that is changing). Its the zealots who scream "theft theft theft", its only "theft" because of the way law defines information as property, not because of any rationality in the matter. But the idea was not of that to rationalize the realities of information, it is to rationalize a particular kind of monopoly market, as oposed to a free market. And who says information has to be 'free', who is to say that we ourselves can not resell copies of information and how is that bad? Its a diffrent way of doing things but has never (in theory or otherwise) been proven to be worst then copyrights, neither has it been provent to be better mind you, but there is no way to tell, and only one set of people believe they know the answer, and its people like you, who accept an idea as a fact.
I agree in that you dont make money by getting your user base to void their warranties, but you do save money. On the other hand, some one tinkering with it and screws it up, may buy a replacement, or pay sony to fix it or for parts.
I dont agree in you side stepping his point, which was about why not tell them to just remove the offending software, it seems they pulled a stretch by making the other software on his site for hackers seem questionable.
And whats with all the agression? 'deviant'? 'terrorist'? 'commie'? I can see sony thinking of them as deviants, even some of the more crazy ones thinking of it as terrorism in the sense that they are the ones being terrorised, but commie??? Sony is communist, they have certain monopolies and privilages bestowed upon them via copyrights and patents, communism as termed from the USSR is a monopoly, not associated with freedom loving people (keyword *freedom*).
The correct context is "piracy" not "theft" or "stealing". 'Stealing' is done by those who download it with out payment, 'piracy' is distributing with out permission.
Who ever said copyright was fair? Copyright is a compromise, its not a matter of fairness. Its a compromise between diffrent ideologies, (which simply means, they have never been proven in any testing or experiments and compared to each other to see which one works in real world environments beyond their idea environments).
During its debates in early america, the decision was between a communist/socialist or a anarchist/capitalist approach to information. Copyrights are social engineering in order to control the behavior of what was by its nature a free market. That is people could share trade buy sell or even keep it to them selves, what ever they felt would benefit them. But laws give precedence to the needs of certain people, and by that the need may not be what the majority feels necesary fair or right, but as it is now and it was then, most people dont understand the value of information and even when they themselves buy it, they give it away for free to others. This lack of understanding or caring leaves law makers the ability to enact strict laws that may become impractical as time pass, as we have seen in the dawn of this century. But this aparently only leaves lawmakers with one recourse, more laws, but so to does this mean more anarchist. And yes as government grows and steps on feet so does the number of those it sets against it, in some studies its shown to be proportional and its not necesarily a bad thing, especially when those in the government are polarized for interests that are typically against the many.
What I find more strange is the brick stairs they show it climbing... its obvious its not really made of bricks (fake bricks), because the top bricks dont match the side bricks, the bricks almost look CG (but I wouldnt go so far as to say that it is) if anything it looks as though they are coverd with something that was designed to look like bricks... but why fake-brick stairs?
Wouldnt that mean people would end up using words like "idiot" instead of hiding them by a nicer word?
Like if I tried to find a word that would replace "idiot" with out being offensive, wouldnt that mean since microsoft blocks it, that I would end up using the word "idiot"!!!
But why do you? To get aside the initial concepts, it could be defined into 2 seperate ideas, those that share files are "pirating" files and those that download files are "stealing" files. That is the word stealing is defined as *taking* with out permission (not *giving away* with out permission).
Now "piracy" (file sharing) aside, lets focus on the "stealing" (file downloading with out permission) aspect that I assume you refer to. In the real world aspect information is property of the holder (a CD or DVD, or even a rock with letters carved into it, or the person holding the CD or DVD which holds the information), that is because the holder can destroy the information, can alter the information, and can give that information away, so in the natural world "stealing" is if someone forcefully takes information from the holder with out the permission of the holder. That is natural stealing of information, above nature is law, and law redefines who owns information, in this case the information ownership is defined not necesary by the originator but by the legal holder of a copyright or patent. The law attempts to give these property rights to the originator but there is no guaratee that is the case, in some cases though an idea may originate from 2 diffrent sources but only the first source to ask the government for property rights is given the property (Bell beating Grey for example). Now the property rights holder by law is given control over whom may own a copy of their property (not necesarily how many copies an individual may have by fair rights). So as long as government defines information as property of the first to apply for legal control over it (with a few other exceptions), then its can be considered "stealing" in the legal sense, but never in the moral or ethical sense. In the natural world its immoral and unethical to tell the information holder to not share or take that information they hold, that is no diffrent then controlling freedom of speech, preventing people from speaking of wrongs because the law and government gives them the right to attack others for telling secrets, or attack people for not wanting to tell secrets. Like in child abuse, where a child is made to be afraid to tell of the abuse.
And its not as if there was no other ways for people to make money from information. There is a lot of ways and in this modern time with the internet, the ways are endless and locking down information to one form of distribution is senseless abuse by those who are afraid of the future, afraid of change, because the change no longer makes them the center of attention and the money (like the RIAA and the studios).
What I find interesting, is how for example that Dinosaur movie from disney (pixar I believe) that came out some time ago, the theme of it was about working together to scare off the nasty dinosaurs but the leader was trying to do the survival of the fittest thing where you dont help the weak, etc. That gave me the idea that some people at Disney were not necesarily all polarized to the same view about copyrights. At least in that I could see gnutella as working together. It wasnt as clear a message but for some reason I had the feeling it was not pro-disney propoganda and quite to the contrary. I guess their lawyers are starting to write their stories.
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I dont think you understand what was originaly meant by that saying "by the sword". Its not a literaly sense that you are living right next to a sword or have a sword right by you. What was meant by living by the sword is like saying "following the rules by the book". Its like someone who uses a sword for everything, from not just defense and offense but also to end descrepencies, it has the general meaning rather then specific. Living by the gun would probably be what was done by cowboys (and cowgirls) in the old west, not by common people who keep a gun in their house in case of an emergency. Living by the sword is probably what samarai and knights could be considered to be doing, not common people who may practice as a hobby. "Live by the sword, die by the sword", simply means if you go around using a sword to solve all your problems, you will die with it (its not really to do with defense, its more general then that).
But to get back to what he was saying by violence begettes violence, is that for example, if person A kills person Bs brother, then person B being very emotional and angry (whether their brother was the one who caused it or not) will kill person A, person As father in turn will get angry and emotional and kill person B, and it continues on and on and on as a family/tribal fued, or take that up a notch to the national level and you have a continuous war between people who dont know a diffrent life style. If you look at what its about, its about a virus infecting these peoples minds, the virus is the death of a friend or family member, one person kills someone elses family member and they basicly infect the people in their family with this virus.
But he is not refering to self defense or offense so much, but he is refering to the cycles of *revenge* rather then justice. An eye for an eye leaves the world blind (so to speak).
> They need rebuilt not to make them anti-Islamic or to make them capitalist, but rather to make them a place where the women are not oppressed and where reasonless fundamentalism doesn't reign and where terrorists are made unwelcome. That is why we must dismantle their government and their terrorist networks and seek to bag bin Laden.
The problem I am seeing here, is that a number of afgans support the taliban, even more so now that they are being bombed. Sure they more then likely lack enough education to make a proper decision in the manner but that fact is going to remain and fixing it will take time, it could take a generation of people, and installed governments in the past times we have dont it have failed, the only time it seemed to work is in Japan and Germany after world war 2, but every other country that america has tried to install governments (or help rebels take over a government and replace with their own form) in has turned corrupt and has caused rebels to attack them. Especially in central-south america.
> This is probably one of the few wars in history where anyone has TRIED to distinguish between civilian and military targets.
Their has been a number of times where they claim to be trying. Since we are not the military generals we dont know for sure if they do it on purpose at all or if they are accidental, but it almost doesnt matter (on purpose or not) because innocent people will die (and have died), no amount of effort will prevent that, only reduce it, but you have to wonder where the morals lie in that, is the amount of people make the diffrence? If so, there is a lot of things that kill more people in america then terrorists. If what makes a bigger diffrence is that they were killed by people from another country whom dont like us, then this is not about the number of people its about pride and revenge. And yet a third way to think about it, is the means of death, the way those people died in a horrible way, versus someone who passes out (and away) because their lungs cant take anymore smoking, but car accidents also kill a lot of people in america, and even drunk driving accidents are higher. I'm not trying to say that we shouldnt be bombing and attacking the Taliban and Al Qaeda, I'm saying we should not try to lay it off as moral or ethical, we are laying out some evil because of their evil. And yes, evil is destruction (dictionary defintion), and we are set out for destruction, so we are set out to do some evil our selves. The Taliban/Osama Bin Laden have a virus in their minds about destruction, and they have spread it to many of us here, and so we shall continue to spread it, there is no way to control a mass of people to prevent over reaction and to take control of a situation, instead we have no choice but the allowance of a lashing out.
> I don't know about you... but when a man declares me his enemy without ever meeting me just based on his assumptions about me, and is willing to kill me for that, I'm more than willing to see him prevented (permanently) from doing harm to me or others like me.
And I would hope vice versa as well, if you declare someone your enemy without ever meeting them just based on assumptions about them and you are willing to have them killed for that, I'd hope you then be more then willing to prevent yourself from doing harm to them.
> The date at the top is in the format "9/11/01". Only Americans write dates this way (everyone else writes "11/9/01"). Someone who lived here for a while would know we do that, but wouldn't they be more inclined to write "September 11, 2001" or some variation to avoid confusion? Why would they bother to do it our way?
:), which I agree seems it is less likely Al Qaeda.
I am an american and I like writing it 2001/09/11 (or 2001.09.11) myself when I can because in a computer that gets ordered year first month second and date last. Not that this is against your arguement
Economist take into account *ideal* and *theoretical* perspectives on what would work, but they still dont take into account that corporations are going to be the biggest influence on the global economy and they have the least interest in helping distribute wealth to poorer countries rather then extracting as much cheap labor as they can from poorer countries so that they can extract wealth from the richer countries as they can.
But that said, in the long run globalisation will prove to be a good thing, but in the short term it will lead to several problems and hickups in the economy and hurt the economy in several ways before it becomes a stable thing. Japan as you may recall had a hiccup in its economy some years ago, and that was caused by removing laws that restrict global trade. Part of the problem is that opening trade puts you at the mercy of others, and it will work best when all major contributors open their trade and economy to the world, if one country refuses to do this they hurt the other countries by not buying products from them but selling products to them, then what they are ending up doing is taking wealth but not giving any back. Now that is what the WTO and world courts are for, so that countries can sue each other for doing this, but this does not apply to corporations, only countries. International corporations are formless and live in countries as opposed to being one and are not as limited as governments are in their trade. This is and has always been a problem, and that is the liability that corporations have, but this changes with time and with trial (that is when someone goes after a corporation and sets precedence in global law).
Again, economists are the idealists (not so much practicality or detail in ideas some of the times), and those against globalisation tend to be the cynics. I tend to think it will work if its done right, and time eventually sculpts things to work right (evolution and/or revolution sees to that), not that there shouldnt be concern, the concern is in the details. As I believe it was Ralph Nader had said, we want globalisation our way, not the way international corporations want it.
I think you missed part of their point, Osama Bin Laden is not the only person in Afganistan, Palestine, Pakastan, or Iraq, and so being not the only person whom hates the US for what we have done. Part of the problem is that other people in the mid-east dont like us and so support groups like the Taliban, just like we supported Osama Bin Laden (and several members of the taliban) because we didnt like the communist. Our government is now using force and threat of force to get support on our side, and its not working, look at Pakistan and the protests and the take over of the airbase by activists, Pakistan leadership may support the US but a lot of the people dont. And they dont necesarily have the same views as Osama Bin Laden or the Taliban, except that they dont like the US.
But who said sony is, would, or should promote this? Not me, and as far as I can tell no one in this thread directly said they should be.
Is AMD or intel attacking hardcore overclocking websites because they are afriad they will be held liable if someone gets hurt? Of course not. Show me a legal case where such a thing occured.
> It's possible, of course, but what goes against it is all the evidence of countries with weak IP laws (e.g. Russia, China), which tend to have very weak industries in IP-related fields (e.g. software).
But again, we have always done better because we were capitalist. Copyrights are not capitalist in their nature, they are more closer to communism/socialism. Russia and China are obviously communism, and dont have respect for IP but also have records of not promoting things like freedom of speach and private industry, and even controled information more so then our government. As a matter of a fact, Russia was sitting on a huge amount of IP, that didnt flurish (in a good way) until the end of the USSR, the Sokho SU-37 is the top flanker and most manuverable jet in our current times, using vector thrust technology that our own industrys thought impossible and didnt waste money researching it, and instead now is paying to get a hold of that technology (I heard some anouncement reguarding Lockheed some time ago). Its just when government gets more and more involved in our private industries that can hamper competition and at the same time reduce inovation. Copyrights are much the same thing, they are the government getting involved and even interfering in the IP industry. If we have a strong industry its because of freedom, capitalism is about less government regulation and interference in competition. Most of us today are sitting on a lot of valuable information today that we could sale copies of to others and make money but we dont because of law, so instead some people rather give it away for free (as if the information is worthless) on the internet and that is not healthy in my opinion, not healthy in any environment whether that environment is copyright or its capitalist oposite.
I dont necesarly think its bad that we are currently in the midst of copyrights. Now and in the past may not have be good times to get rid of copyrights, but reduction should be considered in the future (as oposed to the current considerations of more control). Just thinking that most governments started off with no freedoms for the people it ruled, but I would hope that such freedom does not have to come about through revolution, and simply progress as evolution.
> Without IP laws, it's doubtful Microsoft would exist at all,
I would go farther and say if they did exist they would not be the same company they are today, and that is something we would probably both agree on. If microsoft were to try to do what they do today they would more then likely not exist.
> and the state of the industry would probably be significantly less advanced as well, with hardware firms (which would probably also provide the software) focussing on obfuscating their meagre innovations as much as possible, to keep them from their competitors for as long as possible.
Well that is a possibility for several reasons (some which you dont list) but a possibility I hold to be the least likely. If it were the case people would have diffrent values and diffrent strategies, if you apply the strategies of today to such a situation then yeah it would more likely be what you describe, but you can only do that in theory (apply what you know today on what could have been), it is more likely as I said, that people would have diffrent business models and diffrent strategies, that doesnt necesarily mean obfiscation as that could very well be a waste of time and resources and no business could withstand that in the end. So more likely businesses would have some other strategy, maybe even similar to open source. Competition would be fierce (if your competitors could duplicate what you are doing then you need to come up with something inovative) and brand loyalty as well, but also there would be more parallel in standards as there will be less deviation and where there is deviation it could be easily found and fixed or added to another. So anyway dont assume that there is no alternatives to IP laws that would work the same or better. And dont forget, Microsoft didnt create DOS, Adobe didnt create Photoshop or GoLive, Macromedia didnt create flash, etc. Inovations and creation come from individuals either at universities or hobbiests who want to make money from their own research, which they do for interest, recognition, and potential to make money, corporations are probably best at refining.
> I think the author of this article called Microsoft a 'natural monopoly' because he's heard economists use the term, and, although he doesn't know what it means, most people reading his article won't either, so it will improve his credibility with them, because they'll be deceived into believing he knows more about economics than they do.
That does sound like the most likely scenerio, although I would like to know what economist call an "unnatural monopoly"....hmmm...
> Blah blah blah. You've wandered off into some obscure and pedantic discussion of semantics and avoided the issue I raise. The point is that it's difficult to make creative works available for appraisal without making them available for distribution.
No, you did not say *appraisal* the last time, you said "the market", I assumed you meant selling the product.
But none the less I see now what you are saying, but life is about trust (there is no real way around it). Just like anything, you fly on an airplane trusting the airlines to have a good pilot. Sure its illegal to break into someones house and rob them, but just because the government makes it illegal, do we leave our front doors opened or even unlocked? And do you realize that a number of movies released on the internet, are released from video appraisals (screenings), where does copyright work there? The only safe guard in place is that those screenings are poor quality, and the theatre is high quality. An appraiser may for example also be a distributor who has a good reputation with the author for paying a lot for their work, so the author may in fact trust the distributor with a (low quality where possible) appraisal of their work, the distributor after all is the one who must sale the work to other distributors. If a distributor screws the author by releasing it early, the author can then never do business with them again, and the money could in fact go to distributors who kept their trust and develope a reputation with the author. So there is various ways appraisals can be done that will keep the value of the information in tact and reduce risks.
> I should point out that you are confusing information with creative works. They are not the same thing at all.
But they are handled much in the same way under copyrights. What I describe is not fixed or decidely perfect, it is just an idea as is copyright an idea. Both of which will more then likely have their benefits and their failings, but it should be aparent copyrights (as we know them today) are not going to make it, they will either be gone or more likely altered severly.
> Let me address your claim. The main problem is that it creates a tragedy-of-commons issue in that there is a disincentive for anyone to pay for development of creative works.
How so, more then now? Adobe didnt make Photoshop or GoLive, Macromedia didnt make flash, Microsoft didnt make Dos. Corporations tend to be better at taking something developed by someone else and improving it or duplicating it. A lot of technology comes from the university levels rather then the corporate. Most people interested in science develope things on their own in hopes of making a lot of money but end up selling their work to interested corporations. I know several universities that offer very flexible licenses on technologies that even provide source code to them. Someone who developes a technology and wants to create a company to sell it, finds its hard to get investment because most people want to have microsoft in their portfolios, so this leaves them with little choice except to be flexible about selling off their work to a corporation and possibly get a job showing them how it works and integrating it in their systems. Several corporations are notorious for not spending money developing and researching rather they spend time refining (crude oil). This is not to say nothing new or creative comes out of corporations, its just most of it is taken from other sources, and independant researchs. Even the medical corporations get paid by the government to do R&D, they dont try to actually do it with their own money.
> When works are released, there's a disincentive to release them without draconian copy-protection measures.
That is true with or with out copyrights, although the degree of which can be argued to be higher with out copyrights. Actually you will see stronger incentive to release software as services, that the software does not exist on the users computers but exists on a server owned by the company and the user rents server time to do their work. But this itself is a disincentive to consumers to rent software time rather then buy software.
> One of the problems with arguments for alternative systems to copyright is that the people who make them assume everyone will be altruistic. It never occurs to them that the correct assumption to make is that people will act in their own best interests.
True but the one I describe does not have this problem, it is entirely based on peoples self interest. Copyrights and donation based ideas have this problem. Consumers have 2 possible interests to get something early or to get something cheap, the ones who want something early pay more, the ones who want something cheap will wait until the price comes down or they find someone willing to sell cheaper. The Author has 2 interests, gain a reputation (increases user demand for their) and get as much money as they can from their work (the distribors bid on who gets to distribut the authors work first). The Distributor has 2 interests, gain a reputation with the consumers for having what they need, and gain a reputation with the author by paying a good price for the works. You may notice that this is almost exactly how it is today, in this generalized version of it, and that is true, the difference to take notice of is that Distribors compete more, there can not be any organization of distributors as is the case with the RIAA and MPAA. The distibutors gain the most from copyrights and can unify and not compete with each other but rather work together to fix the prices (by controling vendors) and they have done it in the past and were slapped in the hand for raising prices, and also they can work together to lobby for legislation which benefits them some more. Another thing is the authors also compete more (its not to much diffrent) but at the same time distributors have to compete for the reptuatable authors, rather then the authors compete for a distributor.
> Another problem is the issue of building a reputation. This obviously raises barriers to market entry, because it is much harder for the public to appraise a product. The ability of customers to make informed buying decisions is obstructed.
I partly covered the possibilties above, but I dont disagree with you that much. A large portion of what people do is buy things on reputation, this is why we have 'name brands' rather then a lot of generic products. In certain niche markets, like computer hardware, admittedly they tend to be a more savy group, that likes to read reviews before purchasing something, but the choice has always been to wait, to wait for someone else to try it, or in some cases listen to a piece of the music or listen to a lower quality version of it. Everythign has its diffrent ways of being reviewed, and every one has its risks, like even though radio stations play music for free and people are 'free' to record music from a radio station despite law, its still lower quality and those who really want to listen to it in better quality will likely purchase the higher quality version. For books and movies its always been testimonial or clips and advertisment, which is not bad. Again when an information product is released it will likely sell for a high price, leaving only a few people to get a hold of it these few people will likely review the product and put up reviews, and the reviews will have to be objective because they have to compete with other distributors, if they lie, and you bought the music you could review it and inform others as many websites today allow you to do.
> Anyone is free to write their own software using their own model. Surely, there exists some part of the software market where no monopoly exists (actually, there exist several). So if these other models work so well, there's nothing stopping someone using them.
When I say monopoly, I refer to copyright monopoly, information monopoly. So what I mean to say is that people would rather give (copyrighted) information away rather then sell it.
> It's moving in that direction, because there isn't a vocal, well organised lobby who has raised compelling moral counter-arguments. This is one of the problems with these slashmonkeys who just scream "free free free". They drown out all the good arguments. I agree that there are a lot of legitimate objections one can make to laws that have been passed, and laws that are being lobbied for.
I agree, there are to many people who see it as either, free donation or copyright, but fail to analyze or purposely dont want to recognize other market potentials, these people do more harm then good.
> Some people would like to make well-informed purchase decisions, instead of buying on faith alone.
That is what I am refering to in terms of reputation. "Well-informed" means you get your information from someone about a purchase decision, you would not just listen to anyone about a purchase decision, you would find someone with a good reputation for truth instead of bias. But in the context of what I was saying if someone sells a book online, and when you buy that book and several hundred people want to buy a copy from you, then the next time the person has a book for sell, you will remember their last book did well and speculate on how well the next book will do. This is how other markets work, almost like stock markets, where they use statistics and market analysis to figure out how well a company is going to do based a lot on past record.
> but I don't see how a different model would help the problem. Actually, a model where people had to buy on reputation and faith alone would tend to make the market more conservative.
But that is how people are now. The thing is though, people who want to gain a good reputation will give their work away for free, this will allow people to experiment and try new things, and if they like it, it will loosen them up to buying their next album or book. And it doesnt necesarily have to be free completely, it could be a internet music station, that experiments and finds new music they like, they then take this music and play it on their station (putting their reputation on the line that their listeners will like it), and at off times get paid through advertisements. This way the listener is likely to find music they like, listening to a music station that has a good reputation to them, and finds a band they like and would like higher quality playback so they buy it from any one who happens to have it.
> That looks like a false dichotomy, but maybe it isn't. I'd argue that the record companies are looking for a way to work with it.
I'd hope so, but I'm sure idealy they would love to find the nuclear-bomb against it.
> Umm, I for one would not want to pay a large corp. for the privilege of using software I helped to create, and watch the money go to them. Exactly what would I be paying for?
I can see where you are coming from but there is an equilibrium. For example you may depend on some software, and if you help the company better design their software for your needs, then you benefit your self. But that depends on if they are listening to your needs and ideas. I've tried that with microsoft several times, but microsoft does not have a tendancy to listen to its customers or even politely respond, rather they usually dont respond at all, even when you are telling them about a security hole in their software.
> Perhaps I misunderstand, as this would work in a corporate environment, where staff helped out, but surely not for a commercial product?
Not really, in this case you would need a pretty great and diverse staff that feels comfortable with communicating with each other rather then the typical competitive corporate environment (typical in large businesses).
> I think open-source is great and all, but if your programmers are all coding away, and the code is released freely
Ah, there in lies part of the problem, open-source does not necesarily mean "released freely". Even the GPL does not require that the software be given away for free, merely that it include its source code. I would expect that as OSS starts to out due the quality of commercial software that they start charging for the initial distribution releases in order to make money for the programmers, as well as technical support. But once its been distributed to a point that eventually it will find itself on the net downloadable for free. The competition could rerelease lickety-split, but your competition would also have to pay for the software in that way they help fund you, I would also expect initial releases to be expensive, and falling in price as its distributed, your competition would have to buy at a high price and sell at a lower price making it more difficult as you have the initial release and they are just mimicing, but if your competition has a legitamately good product they would make a lot of money and you can charge more for initial releases.
What I dont get is why he calls it a "natural monopoly". There is nothing natural about it, its based upon information property (IP), and the way IP is defined in laws is not natural at all. With out copyrights and/or patents microsoft would be a lot smaller, people would have already reversed engineered and made a competing product that is open source.
> Once their work hits "the market", it is worthless without copyrights, because "hitting the market" would mean that the work could freely be redistributed. And this is the problem.
No, its worthless with copyrights. We see 'worthyness' from 2 diffrent perspectives. You see it in how much 'worth' the author has in it. I see it as multidimensional worth, how much worth to society, how much worth in money to everyone not just the author. With copyrights, once you buy information, it doesnt mean you can sell that information to someone else, there by making that information worthless except in its use, not only that but the information would have even higher worth because once you buy information you could easily sell copies to other people. This means the originator of such information could still make a lot of money if they build up a good enough reputation and there is a large enough market demand for this information.
So there is nothing that says the information will be distributed freely... Why would someone give away information if they could sell it themselves?
> This is absurd. The market might want something for nothing, but it can't, and should not get it.
If that was true, then they would not pay for it all, and they would be less likely to get it. If something has any real value, people would not expect to get something for nothing.
> The author should be able to choose whatever pricing scheme they desire, and the market should decide whether or not the pricing scheme is acceptable. This is the way free markets work.
No, that is the way fixed and controled markets work. The author should only have such a decision on a first sale basis!!! That is when the author first decides to sell their work, they should have a minimal bidding price, if no one wants to buy it then the author will likely lower their price. On the other hand, if they have a good minimal price, bidding would increase the final price the market is willing to pay for it. And the author does not have to sell to one person or group either, they could easily sell and upload to several of the top bidders at once making money from their bids. Then its up to those who paid for it to try to make their money back by reselling it to others and those others as well. Until any one can get a hold of that information for the price they can pay.
> Other possibilities exist perhaps, but until other possibilities demonstrate themselves to be viable business models, they deserve to be ignored.
Again as I said in another post, monopolies kill the other possibilities, and that is why people rather give information away for free rather then sell information to other people.
If there is still things you dont understand about this particular possibility I described in here, let it be said.
> If there is indeed a better way of doing things, just go ahead and do it, and it will replace copyrights, because it is a more efficient system.
If only it were that simple and generalized. I dont need to say it, but it is coming, you can see change is coming. There is little doubt there. You can see it in the way the RIAA and MPAA are becoming ever so more active in the public eye what was once private.
The problems are in the details, how long before it becomes accepted, how hard of a fight will come to get it to come. Good things are ment to happen, yes, but the more someone tries to stop them from happening the more it hurts them. But how far will those who support copyrights go? How much freedom must be taken to "ensure they recieve money for their work"?
> IOW, if things like the "street performer protocol" are so damn good, they shouldn't require destruction of the copyright system.
I never cared for the "street performer protocol", or the donation system that is just wrong. I believe in the "reputation protocol" (I suppose it could be called), where as an artist gains a reputation, they become more valuable, all their words and other information becomes more valuable (the source becomes valuable), and will sell well. This will increase speculation that the source will do well, and there will be many distributors bidding to sell their next great work, or to get an interview with them or some other media coverage of them for their fans.
> This is a simple reality of the way markets work.
Yes but not the way laws work. Laws dont necesarily deal in reality or practicality, that is something you need to understand.
> IMO, we've observed attempts at different models, and they have been unsuccesful, because they simply don't provide financial incentives.
Well like most everything else in the world, if the government started building and selling vehicles the automotive industry would be up in arms unable to compete. Just as a lot of smaller software developers go up in arms every time microsoft releases a new version of windows with a lot of features built into it. These are monopolies they already provide other services so they can subsidize and use that extra money to eliminated competition by either lowering prices or even giving it away (market flooding) or out market their competition (manipulating public mind).
As long as the government provides information monopolies (backed by the government of course), there is less competition in that industry. There is freedom to create, but no freedom to make money off your creations publicly unless you limit your creations based upon what is already created. There is buying of information, and selling or giving away information is totaly out of the hands of the buyer, and up to the author.
Laws prevent or control markets that is the reality of the situation, and no manner of rationality need be involved. But things change, there is a sleeping giant that is starting to wake up, it was seen in napster and is seen in gnutella. And it doesnt matter if you are for or against it, its coming, and you either work with it or go up in arms against it.
Why do you assume that with out copyrights, information can not be sold?
Scarcity exists in information, but only in the sense that an author has not released their work yet, once their work hits the market, it should be up to the market how much to pay for it, not up to the author, who would rather squeeze money out of the rich rather then let the market decide.
Who is to say that once we purchase information that we can not sell the copies of that information to others and make money from it? No one can, because its an idea, just as its an idea that copyright works, but is it more then just an idea, does it really work? We will never know because we are stuck with this system, but we will still have people like you who would take an idea and claim it fact and ignore the other possibilties as if they didnt exist simply because of your preferences.
Most people dont care, or have reason to care (that is changing). Its the zealots who scream "theft theft theft", its only "theft" because of the way law defines information as property, not because of any rationality in the matter. But the idea was not of that to rationalize the realities of information, it is to rationalize a particular kind of monopoly market, as oposed to a free market. And who says information has to be 'free', who is to say that we ourselves can not resell copies of information and how is that bad? Its a diffrent way of doing things but has never (in theory or otherwise) been proven to be worst then copyrights, neither has it been provent to be better mind you, but there is no way to tell, and only one set of people believe they know the answer, and its people like you, who accept an idea as a fact.
RTFP... he was saying that, that is 'all' they should have done (if you RTFA you would know they did more).
I agree in that you dont make money by getting your user base to void their warranties, but you do save money. On the other hand, some one tinkering with it and screws it up, may buy a replacement, or pay sony to fix it or for parts.
I dont agree in you side stepping his point, which was about why not tell them to just remove the offending software, it seems they pulled a stretch by making the other software on his site for hackers seem questionable.
And whats with all the agression? 'deviant'? 'terrorist'? 'commie'? I can see sony thinking of them as deviants, even some of the more crazy ones thinking of it as terrorism in the sense that they are the ones being terrorised, but commie??? Sony is communist, they have certain monopolies and privilages bestowed upon them via copyrights and patents, communism as termed from the USSR is a monopoly, not associated with freedom loving people (keyword *freedom*).
Hmmm... maybe its best you take that agression out playing a video game on your playstation2 and leave decent conversation to the rest of us.
> only with him stealing theirs.
The correct context is "piracy" not "theft" or "stealing". 'Stealing' is done by those who download it with out payment, 'piracy' is distributing with out permission.
Who ever said copyright was fair? Copyright is a compromise, its not a matter of fairness. Its a compromise between diffrent ideologies, (which simply means, they have never been proven in any testing or experiments and compared to each other to see which one works in real world environments beyond their idea environments).
During its debates in early america, the decision was between a communist/socialist or a anarchist/capitalist approach to information. Copyrights are social engineering in order to control the behavior of what was by its nature a free market. That is people could share trade buy sell or even keep it to them selves, what ever they felt would benefit them. But laws give precedence to the needs of certain people, and by that the need may not be what the majority feels necesary fair or right, but as it is now and it was then, most people dont understand the value of information and even when they themselves buy it, they give it away for free to others. This lack of understanding or caring leaves law makers the ability to enact strict laws that may become impractical as time pass, as we have seen in the dawn of this century. But this aparently only leaves lawmakers with one recourse, more laws, but so to does this mean more anarchist. And yes as government grows and steps on feet so does the number of those it sets against it, in some studies its shown to be proportional and its not necesarily a bad thing, especially when those in the government are polarized for interests that are typically against the many.
What I find more strange is the brick stairs they show it climbing... its obvious its not really made of bricks (fake bricks), because the top bricks dont match the side bricks, the bricks almost look CG (but I wouldnt go so far as to say that it is) if anything it looks as though they are coverd with something that was designed to look like bricks... but why fake-brick stairs?
Wouldnt that mean people would end up using words like "idiot" instead of hiding them by a nicer word?
Like if I tried to find a word that would replace "idiot" with out being offensive, wouldnt that mean since microsoft blocks it, that I would end up using the word "idiot"!!!
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But why do you? To get aside the initial concepts, it could be defined into 2 seperate ideas, those that share files are "pirating" files and those that download files are "stealing" files. That is the word stealing is defined as *taking* with out permission (not *giving away* with out permission).
Now "piracy" (file sharing) aside, lets focus on the "stealing" (file downloading with out permission) aspect that I assume you refer to. In the real world aspect information is property of the holder (a CD or DVD, or even a rock with letters carved into it, or the person holding the CD or DVD which holds the information), that is because the holder can destroy the information, can alter the information, and can give that information away, so in the natural world "stealing" is if someone forcefully takes information from the holder with out the permission of the holder. That is natural stealing of information, above nature is law, and law redefines who owns information, in this case the information ownership is defined not necesary by the originator but by the legal holder of a copyright or patent. The law attempts to give these property rights to the originator but there is no guaratee that is the case, in some cases though an idea may originate from 2 diffrent sources but only the first source to ask the government for property rights is given the property (Bell beating Grey for example). Now the property rights holder by law is given control over whom may own a copy of their property (not necesarily how many copies an individual may have by fair rights). So as long as government defines information as property of the first to apply for legal control over it (with a few other exceptions), then its can be considered "stealing" in the legal sense, but never in the moral or ethical sense. In the natural world its immoral and unethical to tell the information holder to not share or take that information they hold, that is no diffrent then controlling freedom of speech, preventing people from speaking of wrongs because the law and government gives them the right to attack others for telling secrets, or attack people for not wanting to tell secrets. Like in child abuse, where a child is made to be afraid to tell of the abuse.
And its not as if there was no other ways for people to make money from information. There is a lot of ways and in this modern time with the internet, the ways are endless and locking down information to one form of distribution is senseless abuse by those who are afraid of the future, afraid of change, because the change no longer makes them the center of attention and the money (like the RIAA and the studios).
What I find interesting, is how for example that Dinosaur movie from disney (pixar I believe) that came out some time ago, the theme of it was about working together to scare off the nasty dinosaurs but the leader was trying to do the survival of the fittest thing where you dont help the weak, etc. That gave me the idea that some people at Disney were not necesarily all polarized to the same view about copyrights. At least in that I could see gnutella as working together. It wasnt as clear a message but for some reason I had the feeling it was not pro-disney propoganda and quite to the contrary. I guess their lawyers are starting to write their stories.