If a MMORPG publisher finds out you bought gold or items from them, they can ban your account.
As they could easily ban your account even if they didn't discover any TOS violation (they have no obligation to let you play), I fail to see how that changes anything.
Sure, but the whole point is that you can't access the keys the "trusted" mainboard manufacturers encode into the hardware. You can program the emulator with any key you want, but it won't be one of the "trusted" keys. The keys are stored and used entirely within a single IC; the only way to extract one would be, in theory, to examine the IC directly (with an STM, for example), or somehow gain access to the master copy held by the manufacturer (and risk violating trade-secret laws).
IMHO this raises interesting legal issues, since it would tend to allow holders of one form of monopoly monopoly (copyright) to influence market shares in another industry (computer hardware). With TC the priviledged holders of media monopolies would be free to determine which hardware manufacturers succeed and which ones fail. Might not the RIAA/MPAA find themselves on the receiving end of an antitrust suit as a result of this cross-industry influence? (I don't support antitrust regulations myself, but I'm not the one they have to worry about.)
I'm not a lawyer either, but I see no reason why their use should be illegal. The way they're using the ® symbol, IMHO, couldn't be reasonably confused as meaning "registered trademark". (What would the "trademark" be in this context?) On the contrary, it bears a remarkable resemblance to the larger version of their logo at the top of the page. Also, there exist much older commerical and private interpretations of the "circle R" symbol which have not been found to conflict with "registered trademark" to the best of my knowledge.
And anyone who puts a ® at the end of an entire article as if it was a copyright symbol isn't qualified to copyright or register as a trademark anything.
I believe they're using the "®" as a logo ("R" for "Register") rather than attempting to indicate a registered trademark.
You don't understand what's being discussed. As a "domainer" you didn't buy the lot to later sell it to McDonalds, you bought the lot so McDonalds can't. You put billboards up, instead. That's even less useful than McDonalds.
It may be less "useful" (however you define that; it's purely subjective), but if this was occurring I.R.L. it could only mean that billboards were apparently in higher demand than new McDonald's franchises. Perhaps high-ranking advertising sites are actually in higher demand than regular websites? (This only seems like a problem if you assume that advertising equates with mind control, which I do not. Otherwise advertising is only in worthwhile demand when it serves to inform potential buyers about a product that they can reasonably expect to benefit from, facilitating productive exchange.)
No, you're a real-estate speculator not a business man. Businessmen create and run businesses, generate employment for others, service their customers and stimulate the economy. Real-estate speculators, currency traders, domain squatters, ticket scalpers and people who sell PS3s on eBay are just ignorant jerks who are gaming the system to enrich themselves while providing no useful service.
All the roles you describe (including "business man") have one thing in common: arbitrage ("buy low, sell high"). Without arbitrage there would be no economy; arbitrage is the process by which prices are determined and shortages and surpluses eliminated; it transfers resources from the production of less-demanded goods to the production of more-demanded ones. Speculators of all sorts participate in this essential economic function.
An example: A real-estate speculator buys a piece of property because it feels there is (or soon will be) a more urgent use for it (anticipates profit). The buyer accepts the arrangement because the price paid exceeds the buyer's reserve price; the speculator pays that price because it believes the property will be more productive in another use. While the property is in the speculator's possession it remains protected from alterations that would diminish its usefulness for the more urgent production. The original owner might have built a house on it, for example, when there are already plenty of available houses and a shortage of commercial space (or visa-versa); that construction would have been a malinvestment of the property, and a difficult one to remedy for quite some time -- probably decades in this instance. In time, provided the speculator was correct, the property will be resold to a new owner at a higher price, which the buyer would only pay if the value of the property in its new use was correspondingly higher than its value in the original use. (Those who remain speculators tend to choose correctly most of the time.) Again both parties agree to the exchange because they both profit from it; neither is taking advantage of the other or of anyone else. All else remaining equal, overall wealth (for everyone) is higher as a result of the speculator's actions, as the property is now allocated to a more productive use.
Exactly the same process and outcome applies to each of the other kinds of speculative investors; the only differences are in the commodities exchanged. The owner of a business, for example, deals in time and labour as well as raw materials, work space, overhead, etc., but the principles remain the same.
Ford shouldn't be allowed to run ads for Chevy cars that make them look bad, for example.
Why not?
Because society is better served by requiring companies to be truthful in their advertising. For example, not making false claims, and not pretending the message comes from company X when it's really from company Y.
You didn't answer the question. Why shouldn't Ford be allowed to run ads for Chevy cars that make them look bad? There is no implication here that the ads were falsified or made to appear as though they'd come from Chevy instead of Ford. Why can't Ford run a completely truthful ad in its own name that happens to make Chevy look bad?
Would the US constitution allow the government to form a body which could effectively dictate prices to a company without the company getting any say in the matter? Would anyone in america actually vote for a government that did such things or would they get labelled as communists long before they came into office?
It is something I've thought about though. A musician could have a website with a few of their songs on there, and say "if you like these, then please send me some money. I'll use the money to write and record more songs, which will be released on a Creative Commons license"
As an amateur musician myself, this is something I've thought about doing...
I've often thought that would be a good idea. As a suggestion, though, you might want to include some additional information on that site, in particular how much money you've taken in so far, some details on how it's been spent, and possibly a weekly or monthly goal. I think people are generally more likely to donate when they know their money will be well-used. It's too bad there aren't any easy ways of setting up recurring payments (to the best of my knowledge), since people generally have an easier time agreeing to a e.g. fixed amount per month, payed automatically, than they would have for a series of individually-authorized payments. Subscription services have a definite advantage in this area.
Granted, people in Idaho don't care about Chicago's toll roads until they have to pay more for a loaf of bread that had to travel through Chicago to get to their local store. And yes, since many companies like UPS has enormous hubs in Chicago, everything that passes through them gets more expensive. This means that the people in Hawaii are paying for Chicago's toll roads twice: Once because UPS pays local taxes for those roads and again when their trucks pay the toll to get from Midway Airport to the UPS hub.
The whole point of charging a toll is that the construction and maintenance of the road come out of the tolls, not taxes. UPS would pay either local taxes or tolls, not both at once. How, exactly, would customers of UPS paying twice as much? It seems to me that they would only be paying for the actual cost of UPS's use of the roads. That might be a bit more than they're paying now as there would be no subsidy from non-users, but it's certainly no more than they ought to be paying.
The spammers' profit is the other investors' loss. As TFA says, a spammer can make on average 5.79% by buying before the spam is sent and dumping on the rise; while those who buy on receiving the spam on average lose 5.5%. So people quite definitely are hurt, aside from all the chaos caused by the billions of spams.
Quite true, but the only investors losing here are the ones that chose to invest in the stock while it remains overvalued -- not exactly a smart move. An investor's job is to evaluate resources, including stocks, and determine whether they are currently overvalued or undervalued. If they choose correctly they can make a profit as a side effect of bringing the resources' prices in line with their real values; if they choose incorrectly they take a loss instead. The investors losing from schemes like this are losing either because they knowingly chose to invest in a obvious fad, or because they failed to do sufficient research in the long-term value of the stock before investing. Either way the system is working exactly as it ought to be.
Well, if you're talking reality, the algorithm would be nowhere near as simple as removing bits. That's just the dumbed-down explanation for the media.
It is certainly possible that they're really using a more advanced form of watermark; there are a few that would be much more difficult to remove. However, the summary stated that "the encoding process does strip out a unique series of bits from the file," which I would interpret as meaning a system not unlike the one we were discussing.
That's five different sets of seven bits, with three bits missing in each. That's well over n-1. Can you reconstruct the original now?
They wouldn't have to reconstruct the original, just eliminate any unique missing bits that could be used to identify the source of the copy.
Looking at the boundary cases, I can see three possibilities: (a) they remove all nearly all of the potential missing pieces; (b) they leave nearly all of the potential missing pieces; or (c) they leave and remove nearly equal numbers of potential missing pieces. For (a) and (b) the watermark can be easily removed (recovering the original) by comparing two or three copies, since the pieces are unlikely to overlap. For (c) it would be much harder to recover the original, but the watermark itself could still be destroyed by selecting pieces at random from multiple sources. The watermark would still exist, in a sense, but would no longer refer to any particular user.
Given a random selection of source copies I would expect a "two out of three" voting rule to eliminate identifying information for any of the three patterns. In your example, for instance, such an algorithm would recover all but pieces 3 and 6 from the first three patterns, with a 1/3 chance (each) of getting the right data for pieces 3 and 6 (1/9 for both). If you could identify the owner from a single piece (unlikely) you would have an 8/9 chance of identifying one or both owners. If you require two pieces from the same owner your odds drop to 1/9; any more than that and correct identification becomes impossible.
No, the point of copyright as it touches this matter is to enjoin people from profiting inappropriately from the intellectual work of others, or diluting the profits to an original creator. . ..
Not according to the United States constitution, the only basis by which Congress can possibly claim any authority to grant copyright monopolies in the first place.
So the only substantial change has been that it's now a lot easier to distribute information, and a lot easier to store it[.]
I can send a movie file to hundreds of people with easily purchased consumer equipment. By my earlier arguments this is a good thing - "distribution of information is generally desirable". It's also a bad thing [because] "giving creators control of their creation is generally desirable".
I think the most fundamental change is actually that your second axiom ("giving creators control of their creation is generally desirable") is falling out of favor among the general populace. Before copying became so easy the split was basically artists vs. corporations; for what little good it actually did, people could identify with the artists better than their publishers, and thus supported giving the "creators" control. The alternative, after all, was to give that control to the corporations instead. (This backfired, since the artists don't actually hold the copyrights, but the corporations managed to employ some very effective PR up until recently.) Now that wide-spread personal copying and distribution are practical, however, the lines have been redrawn: the division is more like distribution corporations (and a few independent artists no one's heard of) vs. us, with predictable consequences for the popularity of copyright monopolies.
Correct, so maybe we shouldn't be supporting the world's current population.
True, but at least that would keep human populations within the carrying capacity of their local environment, instead of destroying that environment to prop them up artificially.
I hadn't realized you were anti-human as well as antisocial. You are clearly arguing for the deaths of billions of human beings here. I hope you don't expect anyone to take you seriously after that.
Correct. But what you fail to realize is that capital investments are mythical- they aren't real. There aren't enough resources to support that level of population even WITH capital investments- we're spending millions of years worth of oil, for instance, with no realistic way to replace it.
It sounds like you lack an understanding of fundamental economics -- not surprising, really, since economics are derived from the rules of organized society, which you also appear to reject. Capital investments certainly aren't "mythical". Any time someone expends current resources to improve future productivity they are making a capital investment. All tools, down to the most primitive axe blade, are capital investments. Even you must agree that tools are both real and necessary for existance as a human being; they are a part of who we are as a species.
As for the oil, I believe you are mistaken as to the amount of oil actually consumed, a common misconception. A significant amount of the waste oil we produce can be (and is) reprocessed and reused; there is more oil left than the extremists would have you believe. Furthermore, it isn't like oil is our only option; it just happens to be the cheapest (most easily acquired) source of energy (etc.) we have available at the moment. As the supply dwindles over the next few centuries the price of oil will increase; consequently the other options will gradually become more attractive compared to oil, and our use of oil will fall accordingly. We're not going to suddenly "run out" of oil.
Human ingenuity is not infinite in abundance. It is limited by both time and scarcity of individual experiences (incidently one of the reasons for division of labour). As such human ingenuity readily commands a non-zero price.
Thank you for admiting that the economy really is a zero sum game.
I neither admitted nor implied any such thing. The economy is not a zero-sum game, precised because of what I said. Because experiences differ from one individual to another we have the social division of labor: no two people have exactly the same efficiency at producing a given commodity or service. In the absence of something forcing people to emphasize their less efficient abilities the minimum level of efficiency possible is the one where everyone produces only for themselves, without any division of labor. Any less efficient arrangement would drive people back to this state. On the other hand, efficient division of labor serves to increase the total amount that can be produced, by allocating production of specific goods to those most suited to that production. Ergo, as a result of division of labor the economy is not zero-sum: the total productive capacity is not constant.
The raw materials (land in the economic sense) are zero-sum, but that is not what is meant by saying that the economy is or is not "zero-sum". Similarly, money (but not wealth) is zero-sum, assuming a fixed, finite money supply. This doesn't matter nearly as much as you might think, as the value of a given amount of money varies depending on supply and demand; the value of the monetary unit varies according to the total (non-zero-sum) "amount" of wealth in the economy.
Hmmm.... I'll have to think about it. Your idea is interesting, and seems to have merit.
Thanks. I'm sure there remains significant room for improvement, and no doubt any major advancements in communications technology would necessitate certain updates to the rules, but I think it's at least as good as what we have now (but without the FCC). That's enough to begin with, I think.
I'm still suspicious that entrenched broadcasters would refuse to change regardless of whether it's cheaper for them in the long run or not. I think they are more interested in control of the spectrum than efficiently using it. Whether or not small broadcasters could sneak into the cracks and displace them from beneath is an interesting question.
I agree that this is a definite risk; while I believe it makes financial sense for broadcasters to use the spectrum efficiently in most cases, there is always the possibility that--rightly or wrongly--one or more broadcasters may consider it too costly to give up control over parts of their traditional channel to a potential competitor. Still, I think there are probably enough non-interfering channels to go around, particularly if common-sense factors are taken into account (such as not counting unnecessary, non-communication, transmissions as "prior use" any more than one would typically count obvious and otherwise pointless pollution toward homesteading of land).
Except that a blinking LED is functionally indistinguishable from a broadcast antenna anyway. The only difference is that the light from a broadcast antenna goes through most solid materials, and that really isn't that important of a difference.
I personally think that is a rather important difference, as it greatly affects the relative effectiveness of broadcast antennas and blinking LEDs as communication channels. Other than that, you are correct that the mechanics are essentially equivalent.
So, I don't understand why broadcast antennae need to be regulated differently from blinking LEDs. Given current technology a receiver that could distinguish between 5 or 6 different broadcasters in the same frequency range isn't that hard. And your scheme disincents the creation of receivers that are capable of doing this.
First, I don't see where you're getting the idea that I would "regulate" a communication channel employing LEDs any different from one employing a broadcast antenna. All the basic components are the same: a transmitter, a receiver, and the potential for interference. Interference with a preexisting LED communication channel would be dealt with in the same manner as interference with preexisting radio communication channel. The carrier doesn't even have to be electromagnetic: a channel employing ultrasound, for example, would follow the same general rules.
Second, I don't see how (a) permitting use of radio transmitters freely given non-interference with existing equipment; and (b) treating interference with existing communications channels as equivalent to trespass against the existing users of those channels; can possibly create any serious disincentives against the creation of more discriminating receivers. Remember that the standard we are discussing does not deal specifically with frequencies, but rather communication channels. One would be perfectly free to transmit on an frequency already in use, provided you could be sure that your transmission would not interfere with existing communications. One way to accomplish this would be to create more discriminating receivers, which would allow you to transmit at much lower power, thus eliminating any noticible interference while retaining a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio.
Existing broadcasters would also have an incentive to upgrade their equipment. True, they could keep transmitting using the same technology they started with and no one could interfere, as they were there first; I believe that is the way it should be and would not wish to force them to change. However, they would have to consider the opportunity cost of such inefficiency. No doubt others in their area would desire access to the frequency bands that would be freed up if they chose to switch. Having established ownership of the communication channel, the original owner could rent--or sell--the freed portions of their channel to one or more of the other stations, potentially earning them a significant profit considering that an increase in efficiency would not interfere with their previous transmissions. It would be like selling a plot of homesteaded, but presently unused, land, in that the only real consideration is to ensure that one gets the best possible price (thus earning the highest profit from the sale and ensuring that the land/spectrum is put to its most urgent use.)
I don't think that ownership of a color is a reasonable thing.
Which, of course, is why I did not propose owning the EM frequency itself, but rather a channel of communications employing such a frequency -- a combination of frequency band, protocol, and receiver location. This criteria is broadly similar to how the FCC assigns FM radio station priviledges, except that it employs receiver location and protocol (including the required S/N ratio) in place of transmitter location and power. I believe that my choice of cr
Start treating spectrum as property and open up a range of spectrum that ordinary TV receivers can receive that is completely unregulated by the FCC at all.
There, fixed that for you. If the spectrum is property then the FCC shouldn't be regulating it. Conversely, if the FCC isn't regulating broadcasts then then the spectrum must be treated as a form of property by the courts when dealing with interference between competing signals.
As for how property rights in spectrum should be handled, I would humbly suggest that as radio is a communications medium it ought to be treated as something jointly owned by the broadcaster and the receiver, with interference measured at the receiver. In other words: you can transmit on any frequency band you want as long as it doesn't interfere with anyone's ability to receive a preexisting broadcast at a given location with their existing equipment. If you're a broadcaster (prior claim) and someone starts "talking over you" such that your listeners can't hear you clearly then you have a reasonable claim against the person causing the interference; the same goes for any of your disgruntled listeners who can no longer hear what you were saying (which may not be all of them, depending on the interference).
The problem with any sort of state run industry is that it tends to murder off private competition. State run monopolies always have two advantages over any private corporation. State run monopolies can easier push through legislation to make it harder to compete with them, and state run monopolies can always make up for inefficiency, poor planning, and higher operational costs with tax money.
I agree, and I wouldn't want a municipal government acting as an ISP. On the other hand, in my opinion the best source for the "last-mile" communications infrastructure is the same entity responsible for providing the roads and other fixed infrastructure; in most cases that is the city government, although it could just as easily be a private organization. (In many regards city governments, unlike state and federal governments, tend to resembly co-ops or private companies with the citizens as shareholders. The major differences relate to the form of income (taxes instead of rents) and eminent domain.)
Ideally I would like to see something like the UTOPIA project in Utah, where the cities provide (and own) a fast fiber-based communications infrastructure and lease it out to individuals and companies on a non-discriminatory basis. (Important: this must be funded locally, preferably through the lease fees, and especially not with state or federal taxes.) The city itself does not provide Internet access; instead, individuals can subscribe to any ISP connected to the municipal network and access the Internet using that ISP as a gateway. The system eliminates the ISP's natural monopoly by separating the infrastructure from actual Internet connectivity, something that (IMHO) should have been done from the beginning. Besides reinstating competition among ISPs it also allows "non-Internet" data services, such as VoIP and IPTV, to be offered simultaneously over the same network; these can be offered over the Internet itself, of course, but are generally more efficient when routed over the faster municipal network. People can even offer their own services--community web sites, game servers, IPTV stations, etc.--over the local network at far better speeds than they would get through any ISP.
So how's that different than the current setup with insurance? Your premiums and copays subsidize others who can't pay just as well, except you replace governmental inefficiencies with corporate inefficiencies and graft.
There are several important differences between tax-funded universal health care and private insurance:
Liberty/Choice. As important as it may be to have insurance when something happens, it's not mandantory. You can choose not to pay for it. You would be risking the prospect of either not having access to such expensive procedures at all or paying for them with significant long-term debt, but it would still be your choice. Taxes, on the other hand, are not something you choose; they are simply taken, and you are lucky if you get anything at all in return.
Risk aggregation. Insurance companies set premiums based on their assessment of class-based risk. This takes into consideration both behavioral factors and biological ones. Tax-funded programs typically do not take risk into account, charging either a flat fee or some function of income; as a consequence such programs tend to subsidize risk-taking behavior, and thus drive up the average cost of health care. The counteraction of said subsidy through behavioral regulation further impacts civil liberties. (This addresses your question regarding insurance subsidizing those unable to pay; the important part is that each person pays for their own risks, not necessarily their own costs. Doing things this way reduces uncertainty without changing the average individual cost for each risk class.)
Competition. Related to point one above: insurance companies must compete with other insurance providers and with the possibility of self-insurance and co-op initiatives; this drives them to find innovative ways to minimize their premiums, including working with healthcare providers and customers to lower the average cost of healthcare. Governments have no such pressure from competition, being by definition aggressive monopolies. They will instead set the taxes just low enough to avoid protests. Whether the difference goes toward "better" healthcare or lines the politicians' pockets is of little actual relevance here; either way, the individual cost of healthcare will be higher than what the citizens would have chosen for themselves.
It is true that certain biological risk factors are not a matter of individual choice, and while I do not think that it is "society's" responsibility to make life "fair" (probably an impossible task), I do believe that there are ways to even the odds somewhat without aggression. One idea, for example, would be something like "pregnancy insurance", in which the parent(s) agree to pay a fixed amount over time and adhere to certain standards of behavior during the pregnancy in exchange for insurance against specific kinds of birth defects. Since the insurance is being granted against a future class-based risk there would be no problem with pre-existing conditions. The parent's risk of passing on a genetic defect would, however, be a factor in determining the premiums, in accordance with the higher risk of long-term medical costs; they would have to take that into consideration when making their choice, just as they must now.
As a side note, one should take into consideration that in the U.S. the insurance companies are both heavily regulated and strongly protected from the consequences of their own actions, particularly regarding their contracts with those they insure. Neither aspect makes for an efficient insurance system.
In practice that means it wouldn't be cost-effective to go anywhere else (and pay twice).
Tell that to people in Canada (among other places), where there is a private healthcare sector.
Perhaps I should have qualified my assertion somewhat: the private system cannot be cost-effective for the subsidized products, but it may be cost-effective in offering different products (higher quality, shorter wait, etc.) than those subsidized through the public system, as is the case in Canada and elsewhere. It is misleading to talk of "healthcare" as if it were one indivisible product; the public system offers some products, and the private system offers others. The private system cannot compete with the public system in the subsidized areas because it cannot do what the public sector does: force everyone to pay for its products whether they are wanted or not.
Only half of the law is in the legislation; the other half is in how the courts decide in precedent setting cases.
Oddly enough, it's usually the legislation half that doesn't make sense. The courts are usually reasonable when they can be (aren't constrained by the legislation). Perhaps that's because the courts are actually trying to mediate between two real entities, whereas the legislature is more concerned with its own PR (both toward the public and toward its sponsors) in the average/worst case, and quite distantly removed from the details of the problem in the best case.
At one point we (actually Britain) had a legal system built entirely on precedence, with no legislation at all. That system was called the "common law", and it actually worked rather well up until it was subverted by the monarchy of the time. The system wasn't perfect, of course, but most of the reasonable laws we follow today have precedence in common law, whereas most of the poor ones do not; you don't get prescriptive edicts like the DMCA from a common-law system. I've often wondered why the founder of the U.S. didn't go back to that system; they went through a fair degree of effort to exorcise most of the other trapping of monarchial rule (titles, nobility, patents in the general sense), why not the legislature as well?
Slashdot Mirror
As they could easily ban your account even if they didn't discover any TOS violation (they have no obligation to let you play), I fail to see how that changes anything.
Sure, but the whole point is that you can't access the keys the "trusted" mainboard manufacturers encode into the hardware. You can program the emulator with any key you want, but it won't be one of the "trusted" keys. The keys are stored and used entirely within a single IC; the only way to extract one would be, in theory, to examine the IC directly (with an STM, for example), or somehow gain access to the master copy held by the manufacturer (and risk violating trade-secret laws).
IMHO this raises interesting legal issues, since it would tend to allow holders of one form of monopoly monopoly (copyright) to influence market shares in another industry (computer hardware). With TC the priviledged holders of media monopolies would be free to determine which hardware manufacturers succeed and which ones fail. Might not the RIAA/MPAA find themselves on the receiving end of an antitrust suit as a result of this cross-industry influence? (I don't support antitrust regulations myself, but I'm not the one they have to worry about.)
I'm not a lawyer either, but I see no reason why their use should be illegal. The way they're using the ® symbol, IMHO, couldn't be reasonably confused as meaning "registered trademark". (What would the "trademark" be in this context?) On the contrary, it bears a remarkable resemblance to the larger version of their logo at the top of the page. Also, there exist much older commerical and private interpretations of the "circle R" symbol which have not been found to conflict with "registered trademark" to the best of my knowledge.
I believe they're using the "®" as a logo ("R" for "Register") rather than attempting to indicate a registered trademark.
It may be less "useful" (however you define that; it's purely subjective), but if this was occurring I.R.L. it could only mean that billboards were apparently in higher demand than new McDonald's franchises. Perhaps high-ranking advertising sites are actually in higher demand than regular websites? (This only seems like a problem if you assume that advertising equates with mind control, which I do not. Otherwise advertising is only in worthwhile demand when it serves to inform potential buyers about a product that they can reasonably expect to benefit from, facilitating productive exchange.)
All the roles you describe (including "business man") have one thing in common: arbitrage ("buy low, sell high"). Without arbitrage there would be no economy; arbitrage is the process by which prices are determined and shortages and surpluses eliminated; it transfers resources from the production of less-demanded goods to the production of more-demanded ones. Speculators of all sorts participate in this essential economic function.
An example: A real-estate speculator buys a piece of property because it feels there is (or soon will be) a more urgent use for it (anticipates profit). The buyer accepts the arrangement because the price paid exceeds the buyer's reserve price; the speculator pays that price because it believes the property will be more productive in another use. While the property is in the speculator's possession it remains protected from alterations that would diminish its usefulness for the more urgent production. The original owner might have built a house on it, for example, when there are already plenty of available houses and a shortage of commercial space (or visa-versa); that construction would have been a malinvestment of the property, and a difficult one to remedy for quite some time -- probably decades in this instance. In time, provided the speculator was correct, the property will be resold to a new owner at a higher price, which the buyer would only pay if the value of the property in its new use was correspondingly higher than its value in the original use. (Those who remain speculators tend to choose correctly most of the time.) Again both parties agree to the exchange because they both profit from it; neither is taking advantage of the other or of anyone else. All else remaining equal, overall wealth (for everyone) is higher as a result of the speculator's actions, as the property is now allocated to a more productive use.
Exactly the same process and outcome applies to each of the other kinds of speculative investors; the only differences are in the commodities exchanged. The owner of a business, for example, deals in time and labour as well as raw materials, work space, overhead, etc., but the principles remain the same.
You didn't answer the question. Why shouldn't Ford be allowed to run ads for Chevy cars that make them look bad? There is no implication here that the ads were falsified or made to appear as though they'd come from Chevy instead of Ford. Why can't Ford run a completely truthful ad in its own name that happens to make Chevy look bad?
I should certainly hope not.
Why not?
I've often thought that would be a good idea. As a suggestion, though, you might want to include some additional information on that site, in particular how much money you've taken in so far, some details on how it's been spent, and possibly a weekly or monthly goal. I think people are generally more likely to donate when they know their money will be well-used. It's too bad there aren't any easy ways of setting up recurring payments (to the best of my knowledge), since people generally have an easier time agreeing to a e.g. fixed amount per month, payed automatically, than they would have for a series of individually-authorized payments. Subscription services have a definite advantage in this area.
The whole point of charging a toll is that the construction and maintenance of the road come out of the tolls, not taxes. UPS would pay either local taxes or tolls, not both at once. How, exactly, would customers of UPS paying twice as much? It seems to me that they would only be paying for the actual cost of UPS's use of the roads. That might be a bit more than they're paying now as there would be no subsidy from non-users, but it's certainly no more than they ought to be paying.
IMHO, these statements are contradictory. The spammer's "constructive contribution" is to "clean out" the nonintelligent investors.
Quite true, but the only investors losing here are the ones that chose to invest in the stock while it remains overvalued -- not exactly a smart move. An investor's job is to evaluate resources, including stocks, and determine whether they are currently overvalued or undervalued. If they choose correctly they can make a profit as a side effect of bringing the resources' prices in line with their real values; if they choose incorrectly they take a loss instead. The investors losing from schemes like this are losing either because they knowingly chose to invest in a obvious fad, or because they failed to do sufficient research in the long-term value of the stock before investing. Either way the system is working exactly as it ought to be.
It is certainly possible that they're really using a more advanced form of watermark; there are a few that would be much more difficult to remove. However, the summary stated that "the encoding process does strip out a unique series of bits from the file," which I would interpret as meaning a system not unlike the one we were discussing.
They wouldn't have to reconstruct the original, just eliminate any unique missing bits that could be used to identify the source of the copy.
Looking at the boundary cases, I can see three possibilities: (a) they remove all nearly all of the potential missing pieces; (b) they leave nearly all of the potential missing pieces; or (c) they leave and remove nearly equal numbers of potential missing pieces. For (a) and (b) the watermark can be easily removed (recovering the original) by comparing two or three copies, since the pieces are unlikely to overlap. For (c) it would be much harder to recover the original, but the watermark itself could still be destroyed by selecting pieces at random from multiple sources. The watermark would still exist, in a sense, but would no longer refer to any particular user.
Given a random selection of source copies I would expect a "two out of three" voting rule to eliminate identifying information for any of the three patterns. In your example, for instance, such an algorithm would recover all but pieces 3 and 6 from the first three patterns, with a 1/3 chance (each) of getting the right data for pieces 3 and 6 (1/9 for both). If you could identify the owner from a single piece (unlikely) you would have an 8/9 chance of identifying one or both owners. If you require two pieces from the same owner your odds drop to 1/9; any more than that and correct identification becomes impossible.
Not according to the United States constitution, the only basis by which Congress can possibly claim any authority to grant copyright monopolies in the first place.
I think the most fundamental change is actually that your second axiom ("giving creators control of their creation is generally desirable") is falling out of favor among the general populace. Before copying became so easy the split was basically artists vs. corporations; for what little good it actually did, people could identify with the artists better than their publishers, and thus supported giving the "creators" control. The alternative, after all, was to give that control to the corporations instead. (This backfired, since the artists don't actually hold the copyrights, but the corporations managed to employ some very effective PR up until recently.) Now that wide-spread personal copying and distribution are practical, however, the lines have been redrawn: the division is more like distribution corporations (and a few independent artists no one's heard of) vs. us, with predictable consequences for the popularity of copyright monopolies.
I hadn't realized you were anti-human as well as antisocial. You are clearly arguing for the deaths of billions of human beings here. I hope you don't expect anyone to take you seriously after that.
It sounds like you lack an understanding of fundamental economics -- not surprising, really, since economics are derived from the rules of organized society, which you also appear to reject. Capital investments certainly aren't "mythical". Any time someone expends current resources to improve future productivity they are making a capital investment. All tools, down to the most primitive axe blade, are capital investments. Even you must agree that tools are both real and necessary for existance as a human being; they are a part of who we are as a species.
As for the oil, I believe you are mistaken as to the amount of oil actually consumed, a common misconception. A significant amount of the waste oil we produce can be (and is) reprocessed and reused; there is more oil left than the extremists would have you believe. Furthermore, it isn't like oil is our only option; it just happens to be the cheapest (most easily acquired) source of energy (etc.) we have available at the moment. As the supply dwindles over the next few centuries the price of oil will increase; consequently the other options will gradually become more attractive compared to oil, and our use of oil will fall accordingly. We're not going to suddenly "run out" of oil.
I neither admitted nor implied any such thing. The economy is not a zero-sum game, precised because of what I said. Because experiences differ from one individual to another we have the social division of labor: no two people have exactly the same efficiency at producing a given commodity or service. In the absence of something forcing people to emphasize their less efficient abilities the minimum level of efficiency possible is the one where everyone produces only for themselves, without any division of labor. Any less efficient arrangement would drive people back to this state. On the other hand, efficient division of labor serves to increase the total amount that can be produced, by allocating production of specific goods to those most suited to that production. Ergo, as a result of division of labor the economy is not zero-sum: the total productive capacity is not constant.
The raw materials (land in the economic sense) are zero-sum, but that is not what is meant by saying that the economy is or is not "zero-sum". Similarly, money (but not wealth) is zero-sum, assuming a fixed, finite money supply. This doesn't matter nearly as much as you might think, as the value of a given amount of money varies depending on supply and demand; the value of the monetary unit varies according to the total (non-zero-sum) "amount" of wealth in the economy.
Thanks. I'm sure there remains significant room for improvement, and no doubt any major advancements in communications technology would necessitate certain updates to the rules, but I think it's at least as good as what we have now (but without the FCC). That's enough to begin with, I think.
I agree that this is a definite risk; while I believe it makes financial sense for broadcasters to use the spectrum efficiently in most cases, there is always the possibility that--rightly or wrongly--one or more broadcasters may consider it too costly to give up control over parts of their traditional channel to a potential competitor. Still, I think there are probably enough non-interfering channels to go around, particularly if common-sense factors are taken into account (such as not counting unnecessary, non-communication, transmissions as "prior use" any more than one would typically count obvious and otherwise pointless pollution toward homesteading of land).
I personally think that is a rather important difference, as it greatly affects the relative effectiveness of broadcast antennas and blinking LEDs as communication channels. Other than that, you are correct that the mechanics are essentially equivalent.
First, I don't see where you're getting the idea that I would "regulate" a communication channel employing LEDs any different from one employing a broadcast antenna. All the basic components are the same: a transmitter, a receiver, and the potential for interference. Interference with a preexisting LED communication channel would be dealt with in the same manner as interference with preexisting radio communication channel. The carrier doesn't even have to be electromagnetic: a channel employing ultrasound, for example, would follow the same general rules.
Second, I don't see how (a) permitting use of radio transmitters freely given non-interference with existing equipment; and (b) treating interference with existing communications channels as equivalent to trespass against the existing users of those channels; can possibly create any serious disincentives against the creation of more discriminating receivers. Remember that the standard we are discussing does not deal specifically with frequencies, but rather communication channels. One would be perfectly free to transmit on an frequency already in use, provided you could be sure that your transmission would not interfere with existing communications. One way to accomplish this would be to create more discriminating receivers, which would allow you to transmit at much lower power, thus eliminating any noticible interference while retaining a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio.
Existing broadcasters would also have an incentive to upgrade their equipment. True, they could keep transmitting using the same technology they started with and no one could interfere, as they were there first; I believe that is the way it should be and would not wish to force them to change. However, they would have to consider the opportunity cost of such inefficiency. No doubt others in their area would desire access to the frequency bands that would be freed up if they chose to switch. Having established ownership of the communication channel, the original owner could rent--or sell--the freed portions of their channel to one or more of the other stations, potentially earning them a significant profit considering that an increase in efficiency would not interfere with their previous transmissions. It would be like selling a plot of homesteaded, but presently unused, land, in that the only real consideration is to ensure that one gets the best possible price (thus earning the highest profit from the sale and ensuring that the land/spectrum is put to its most urgent use.)
Which, of course, is why I did not propose owning the EM frequency itself, but rather a channel of communications employing such a frequency -- a combination of frequency band, protocol, and receiver location. This criteria is broadly similar to how the FCC assigns FM radio station priviledges, except that it employs receiver location and protocol (including the required S/N ratio) in place of transmitter location and power. I believe that my choice of cr
There, fixed that for you. If the spectrum is property then the FCC shouldn't be regulating it. Conversely, if the FCC isn't regulating broadcasts then then the spectrum must be treated as a form of property by the courts when dealing with interference between competing signals.
As for how property rights in spectrum should be handled, I would humbly suggest that as radio is a communications medium it ought to be treated as something jointly owned by the broadcaster and the receiver, with interference measured at the receiver. In other words: you can transmit on any frequency band you want as long as it doesn't interfere with anyone's ability to receive a preexisting broadcast at a given location with their existing equipment. If you're a broadcaster (prior claim) and someone starts "talking over you" such that your listeners can't hear you clearly then you have a reasonable claim against the person causing the interference; the same goes for any of your disgruntled listeners who can no longer hear what you were saying (which may not be all of them, depending on the interference).
I agree, and I wouldn't want a municipal government acting as an ISP. On the other hand, in my opinion the best source for the "last-mile" communications infrastructure is the same entity responsible for providing the roads and other fixed infrastructure; in most cases that is the city government, although it could just as easily be a private organization. (In many regards city governments, unlike state and federal governments, tend to resembly co-ops or private companies with the citizens as shareholders. The major differences relate to the form of income (taxes instead of rents) and eminent domain.)
Ideally I would like to see something like the UTOPIA project in Utah, where the cities provide (and own) a fast fiber-based communications infrastructure and lease it out to individuals and companies on a non-discriminatory basis. (Important: this must be funded locally, preferably through the lease fees, and especially not with state or federal taxes.) The city itself does not provide Internet access; instead, individuals can subscribe to any ISP connected to the municipal network and access the Internet using that ISP as a gateway. The system eliminates the ISP's natural monopoly by separating the infrastructure from actual Internet connectivity, something that (IMHO) should have been done from the beginning. Besides reinstating competition among ISPs it also allows "non-Internet" data services, such as VoIP and IPTV, to be offered simultaneously over the same network; these can be offered over the Internet itself, of course, but are generally more efficient when routed over the faster municipal network. People can even offer their own services--community web sites, game servers, IPTV stations, etc.--over the local network at far better speeds than they would get through any ISP.
There are several important differences between tax-funded universal health care and private insurance:
It is true that certain biological risk factors are not a matter of individual choice, and while I do not think that it is "society's" responsibility to make life "fair" (probably an impossible task), I do believe that there are ways to even the odds somewhat without aggression. One idea, for example, would be something like "pregnancy insurance", in which the parent(s) agree to pay a fixed amount over time and adhere to certain standards of behavior during the pregnancy in exchange for insurance against specific kinds of birth defects. Since the insurance is being granted against a future class-based risk there would be no problem with pre-existing conditions. The parent's risk of passing on a genetic defect would, however, be a factor in determining the premiums, in accordance with the higher risk of long-term medical costs; they would have to take that into consideration when making their choice, just as they must now.
As a side note, one should take into consideration that in the U.S. the insurance companies are both heavily regulated and strongly protected from the consequences of their own actions, particularly regarding their contracts with those they insure. Neither aspect makes for an efficient insurance system.
Perhaps I should have qualified my assertion somewhat: the private system cannot be cost-effective for the subsidized products, but it may be cost-effective in offering different products (higher quality, shorter wait, etc.) than those subsidized through the public system, as is the case in Canada and elsewhere. It is misleading to talk of "healthcare" as if it were one indivisible product; the public system offers some products, and the private system offers others. The private system cannot compete with the public system in the subsidized areas because it cannot do what the public sector does: force everyone to pay for its products whether they are wanted or not.
Oddly enough, it's usually the legislation half that doesn't make sense. The courts are usually reasonable when they can be (aren't constrained by the legislation). Perhaps that's because the courts are actually trying to mediate between two real entities, whereas the legislature is more concerned with its own PR (both toward the public and toward its sponsors) in the average/worst case, and quite distantly removed from the details of the problem in the best case.
At one point we (actually Britain) had a legal system built entirely on precedence, with no legislation at all. That system was called the "common law", and it actually worked rather well up until it was subverted by the monarchy of the time. The system wasn't perfect, of course, but most of the reasonable laws we follow today have precedence in common law, whereas most of the poor ones do not; you don't get prescriptive edicts like the DMCA from a common-law system. I've often wondered why the founder of the U.S. didn't go back to that system; they went through a fair degree of effort to exorcise most of the other trapping of monarchial rule (titles, nobility, patents in the general sense), why not the legislature as well?