I think we have different underlying assumptions here. From your response, I deduce that you believe that a lack of copyright enforcement would inevitably result in significant harm to society. I also deduce that you believe that most people agree with this belief "deep down inside", whether or not their actions demonstrate such a belief. Furthermore, I deduce that you believe that most people "know" (believe) that "they would not have one-tenth of the current selection if everybody infringed"; in other words, that they are in agreement with your first assumption. I submit that these three axioms are insufficiently supported by the available evidence.
The question of whether copyright enforcement, or the lack thereof, causes significant harm to society is still unclear. Certainly many respectable individuals have expressed their support for both points of view, often with very principled, objective arguments. However, it is not my intention to provide a final solution this particular question. I merely submit that it is far from clear that copyright infringement has caused, is causing, or will cause any significant harm to society.
As for the individuals in question, I submit that it is impossible to know exactly what anyone believes "deep down inside". The actions of the "file-sharers" imply that they do not believe (possibly in ignorance) that their copyright infringement will hurt them (individually) as much as they benefit from it. If they do believe that "they would not have one-tenth of the current selection if everybody infringed", then they do not worry overmuch about it. (IMHO we have more than enough "selection" right now; I would not mind trading some of that excess "selection" for some additional freedom myself.[1]) If this lack of believe or worry is the result of ignorance, then it is the supporters of copyright who must convince them otherwise. If copyright's supporters cannot convince the majority of the population that copyright is worth the cost (through non-coercive means), then (IMHO) they deserve to lose their protected status. For a minority group (like the RIAA/MPAA) to use the law to force a larger group to comply with their demands, when the larger group chooses not to comply willingly, is (again IMHO) a major cop-out on the part of the minority group, and a serious abuse of the powers of government.
----
[1] It is interesting to note here that the average person could probably spend his or her entire life consuming nothing but the music and movies already produced, even if no new music or movies were produced from this point on. I'm not saying that this would be a good thing (every society ought to develop and improve on its past work), but there is also no reason that society must continuously encourage the production of new works of art and literature. If we did away with copyright entirely for a while, and discovered that the naysayers' fears were justified, then we could always reinstate it once we'd learned from our error. On the other hand, we might just find out that those fears weren't justified.
I agree that most of the people using these sites couldn't care less about the principles underlying the "free culture" and/or "info anarchism" movements. Nearly all of them probably want nothing more than to get a better deal (i.e. free) on popular music and movies. For all I know, the people running the site may share those priorities.
It doesn't matter.
The very fact that they see nothing fundamentally wrong with using these sites to download music and movies demonstrates that they are in agreement with those movements, and do not believe that access to information ought to be regulated by copyright. Their personal motivations, whether principled or pragmatic, are entirely irrelevant. The popularity of "file-sharing", however motivated, proves that most people do not believe that the copyright system is in their best interest. That the RI/MPAA have succeeded in overruling the general population on this matter demonstrates their own tenacity and political influence, as well as the general corruptability of our government.
As for the GPL, is has been pointed out numerous times, here and elsewhere, that the GPL exists purely in response to copyright. The GPL exists because purely public domain software could be integrated into a copyrighted derivative work; if the resulting software could not itself be copyrighted, then there would be no need for the GPL. There are a number of anti-copyright articles listed on the FSF's own site, on their Philosophy page, so I don't think that they would mind the GP's link.
Any license listed on the Open Source Initiative's Licenses page is certified to adhere to the Open Source Definition, and the very first item on that list is Free Redistribution. Thus, knowing that the MPL is an OSI-certified Open Source license, you can be sure that it allows you to redistribute MPL software without ever having to read the MPL itself.
Furthermore, Firefox is dual-licensed (GPL/MPL). Since you (probably) know that the GPL allows redistribution, you don't actually need to know whether the MPL allows it or not, since you could simply redistribute it under the GPL's terms instead.
Loan the CD out all you want. Make all the copies you want for your own personal use. But every time you give that song away to someone else, you inhibit their ability to recover their investment.
Minor dispute: Giving someone my recording of a song (you can't actually "give" the song itself) is only copyright infringement if I happen to keep a copy for myself in the process. You may not like people getting used CDs from others (since it makes it unnecessary to order new copies of the CDs), but that doesn't make it illegal, immoral, or unethical to do so.
Primary dispute: The value in an artist's work (whether musical, visual, literary,...) is in the release (initial publication) of the art itself. Up to the point at which the art is released the producer has complete control. Someone else might create and publish something similar (possibly even identical), but only the producer can choose whether or not to release what he/she created. At the point of release, the work has been expended, the costs have all been paid, and it is up to the producer to find a buyer. If he/she invested wisely, and created something that others value in excess of your costs, then he/she will make a profit from his/her work. If the producer invested badly then he/she will lose money. There is no guarantee that a producer will make back his/her costs; that is an investment risk inherent in any production.
Similarly, once the terms have been agreed upon, and the work has been released, the creator ought to forfeit any rights to control the use or distribution of the work, just as any other producer would. It is up to the producers to ensure that their investments earn a suitable profit; that responsibility cannot belong to anyone else, much less to society as a whole. If the investments do not earn a profit, that is the fault of the investors (the creators/producers), who did not accurately predict the marketability of the work, or (as is typically the case here) who chose a business model unsuitable for the realities of the market (the impossibility of controlling the distribution of data).
Lastly, the value of a good (such as a book or CD) depends not only on its immediate value to the buyer, but also in the rights which accompany that good. Those rights typically include direct use, resale, rent, transformation, reverse-engineering, etc. When you strip away these rights, you reduce the value of the item you're selling. Someone who might be willing to buy a CD (with the right to make copies) for e.g $500, knowing that the demand for the CD will lead to a profit in its distribution, would hardly be willing to pay the same for CD suitable only for personal use.
Copyright, and patents, and their accompanying technological restrictions (DRM), do not create value; they can only serve to create artificial scarcity by controlling distribution. As any economist would tell you, limiting distribution inevitably leads to a poorer society. That, and not a desire for "free stuff", is why I oppose the concept of "intellectual property".
Many players will accept ".oga" for Ogg audio files, and ".ogv" for Ogg video files. Similarly, the ".wma" and ".wmv" extensions, or ".m4a" and ".m4v", are also commonly supported.
Disclaimer: I don't care to venture a guess at this point whether the design in question is actually an improvement over existing motor designs (though I am sure that it isn't more than 100% efficient like the article claimed).
However, I am curious as to where you observed them using a quadratic relationship between magnetic field strength and applied force. Is it the diagrams on Page 2 of their description? If so, the relationship they are using there is actually linear. The reason that four "units of force" are applied (as opposed to the two units without using the coils) is that the field strength from the coils matches the field strength of the permanent magnets, and thus doubles the overall field strength in the "circuit". Up to this point, I think their theory is reasonable (though I'm hardly expert in this topic).
The claimed advantage of their design is based on the concept (true or false I cannot say) that a coil in the "circuit" can act as a switch, redirecting the magnetic flux from the farther permanent magnet through the opposite armature, and thus complementing the combined field strength of the coils with the combined field strength of the permanent magnets (which must be equal for optimal efficiency). This seems simple enough, but it would be nice if some neutral expert observer could confirm whether or not it conflicts with any known physical laws. Of course, even if all of the theory checks out, that doesn't necessarily mean that they will be able to construct more efficient rotary electric motors with it. It might have other applications, though, particularly in the area of linear actuators (which are closer to their test apparatus in the first place).
Building software is only unfeasable due to the sheer number of software producers. If the margins remain as they are, that problem will rectify itself over time. There is an oversupply of software producers because the demand for new software has dropped, as should be expected in a maturing industry predicated on selling "solutions"; eventually all the useful solutions are common-place, and the demand for new ones decreases. There will always remain a non-zero minimum demand, created by first-time customers, unique cases, ports from legacy systems, and the rare "killer app", but there was never any possibility that the software-creation industry would remain as big as is was when computing first became ubiquitous -- when all software was new software and we were still exploring the limits of the new technology.
As for the long-term feasability of "bad" monopolies, anyone interested should have a look at Chapter 10 of Man, Economy, & State by Murray N. Rothbard. To summarize: "bad" (unnatural, anti-competitive) monopolies have several fundamental disadvantages, in that they they have finite resources, unmeasurable costs (no competition to compare to), and a coveted position in the market (resulting in continuous non-revenue-generating expenses to "beat down" the competition). An unnatural monopoly can never sustain itself in the long run in a free market; it will eventually run out of resources if it tries. In the meantime, the ever-present fringe competition acts as a catalyst, forcing the monopoly to meet (or influence) the market's demands rather than risk losing the market to the competition. Either way, consumers benefit.
To address your telecom "case study": the telcos weren't actually operating in a free market, having been subsidized through government taxes, but now that they're (mostly) deregulated and unsubsidized they're facing significant competition on several fronts. For example, even before regulations forced the telcos to share their lines (which we should never have given them in the first place), cable companies were offering residential Internet connections with the capacity to replace phone lines entirely. Currently the telcos and the cable companies are facing competition in some areas from ISPs with WiFi/WiMAX equiptment. Their post-subsidy monopoly was never stable to begin with; it's just going to take some time to deplete the subsidies we gave them.
The rootkit installed itself before you accepted the EULA, and, though inert initially, could be activated later by their auto-upgrade system simply by inserting a CD with the same software (including the original disc). You could consistently reject their offer of a rootkit and still end up with one on your system.
In any event, while I would agree that outlawing "rootkits" completely would be a bad idea, they could at least require clear and specific authorization, rather than just some obscure legal text buried in an EULA that no one plans to read anyway.
Why stop at corporations? When it comes to commerce (Internet or otherwise), most individuals meet that description in practice (some more than others, of course), however much they might protest it publically.
My apologies, then. I probably overreacted. I just wanted to respond to the second sentence, "It's a promise to pay you back later (promissory note)", but I certainly agree that counterfeiting isn't normally at all related to "IP" laws -- although some of our private-sector currencies (like the Liberty Dollar) do rely on e.g. copyrighted images or trademarks to provide a legal disincentive for counterfeiters, since formal counterfeiting laws only cover government currency. I think it would still be illegal, though, even without the "IP", since passing off a known counterfeit as real currency would probably be considered a form of fraud (IANAL, though).
U.S. currency hasn't been accompanied by a promise to pay for decades now. U.S. dollar bills used to be considered equivalent to, and were exchangeable for, U.S. dollar coins (still defined by law as a certain weight of refined gold), but the only thing you can get for your FRNs (federal reserve notes) today is different denominations of FRNs. They're just bits of paper now, with no promises or backing, purchased at cost (3-5 cents per bill regardless of denomination) by mostly-private, mostly-foreign-owned corporations (the Federal Reserve Banks) in exchange for government bonds issued for the face-value of the bills. The bonds themselves have significant value, because they're backed by nothing more or less than the government's proven ability to tax future generations into effective slavery to pay them off.
To summarize: FRNs are themselves worthless. They are sold to Federal Reserve Banks, which are mostly owned by foreign investors, for 3-5 cents each. The FRBs then sell the bills (which are themselves worth very little) back to the government in exchange for their face-value, plus interest, in government bonds, which have significant market value and place the U.S. government, and therefore its citizens, at the mercy of the the domestic and foreign recipients of the bonds.
Should those investors ever decide to stop renewing the bonds, we will soon find that there is not enough U.S. currency in the entire world to repay the loans with the requisite interest. Even taxing 100%, the government couldn't raise enough money to pay back the debts they have incurred. The only way to honor the debt would be to print massive amounts of currency, resulting in extreme levels of inflation and probably the end of the U.S. economy as we know it.
The solution? Don't do business with companies like that.
If they don't provide a way to access the information without following links in (possibly forged) e-mails, then they definately don't have your best interests in mind. In a pinch, you can look up their customer-service number, call them, and get them to read you the legitimate URL over the phone. At least that way you know (to some extent) that the person giving you the URL is someone with access to the company's phone system.
IANAL and this does not even remotely resemble legal advice.
However, if you think about it, the entire Internet works by forwarding packets from one system through any number of intermediaries before they reach their final destination. Should the ISP be responsible? The higher-tier providers whose networks forwarded the data? The ISP of the web host? If you have more than one Internet connection, and forward packets from one link to the other, can you be held responsible for the legality of the forwarded data? That is essentially no different than what e.g. Tor does. The only difference is that one side of the connection is a VPN rather than a physical link. To consider every intermediary responsible for the data transferred by others would completely destroy the Internet as we know it.
On the other hand, you might have a hard time convincing the court that you weren't the originator of the packets in question, particularly if your contract with your ISP disallows connection-sharing (which could, I suppose, be defined to include linking a VPN to the public Internet).
[I]'m talking about the fundamental fact that if you copy a creation of someone else's without that person's consent, you are depriving them of something--whether it be money that they could've made from the copy or merely the right to determine what is done with their creation. [I] may be wrong, but [I] find it hard to belive that anyone would argue that people creating things shouldn't have any say in what is done with them.
I would certainly agree that you'd be depriving them of something. By posting this, I'm depriving you of an (at the moment) undisputed comment, for example. There are all sorts of things you can deprive someone of, and most of them are perfectly legal. The law is only concerned with them being deprived of something that they have a legal right to. I don't know of any laws granting anyone a legal right to my money -- my property -- until and unless I choose to give it to them (possibly in exchange for something else). There is no legal right to what one "could have made" from a sale. If you steal an object from a store, they won't charge you with depriving them of a potential future sale, they'll charge you with depriving them of their property. The value of the potential sale only comes in when determining damages (and only them is original property can't be returned).
Under the laws governing theft, copyright infringement could not be prosecuted, since no property was taken. The owner of the first copy still has that copy, and that copy is the only actual property in question. The law provides no guarantees of future value, and any possible reduction in the value of the copy due to an increase in supply (the existance of more copies, for example) does not imply the occurrance of an illegal act.
Copyright law, therefore, can only be justified by appeal to either the idea of a social contract (as copyright is defined in the U.S. Constitution) to create artificial (not inherent) rights in hopes of encouraging the arts and sciences, or in terms of some inherent right to control of one's creations, as you suggested. The former justification is currently on rather dubious grounds, as many people are beginning to doubt whether copyrights and patents benefit society enough to justify themselves. The latter is generally assumed to end once the work has been published (shared); typically, up to that point the creator can exercise complete control, but once the idea is "out in the open" anyone is free to use it. This is the equivalent of having no laws governing the distribution of ideas (or embodiments thereof), unless you want to make a distinction between intentional and unintentional sharing, which places it in a completely different category from copyright, which can only truly exist in the form of a legal code.
Thanks, I didn't know about that before. I guess we really are worse off than I thought.
On a related note, why does it seem that every time somebody figures out some new way of making everyone's lives better (like radio), things that are perfectly acceptable at first (like building/using any kind of radio receiver you wanted to) eventually become illegal, until in the end only a fraction of the discovery's promise remains? It's rather depressing. Maybe one day we'll wake up and discover that there's nothing left to discover, nothing left to create, nothing at all left to do but pay our meaningless taxes and go back to sleep...
OK, I think that's more than enough nihilism for one evening.:-)
There are two major problems with current VR technology. The first is head-tracking latency, and the second is focus.
Even the best head-tracking systems take an unacceptable amount of time to relay the motion to the computer, render the scene from the new position, and display the resulting images on the LCDs in the glasses. Most people have difficulty adjusting to this, and many experience very unpleasant side effects. Furthermore, even with a full VR setup, you still have the problem that what you're seeing doesn't match reality. You have to remember not to e.g. walk around the virtual environment, or you'll risk running into something, or falling, or.... The liability for this is probably a major issue.
As for the glasses themselves, they don't provide all the normal clues for three-dimensional perception. In a decent system, you'll have one flat screen for each eye, with a fixed focal plane set at a comfortable distance. Clever software can use that to give you an apparent 3-D image. However, normally your eyes would make use of things like focal distance, depth-of-field, peripheral vision, your sense of balance, etc. When using VR equiptment, these senses tend to atophy and become disconnected to the point where recovering from the effects of the VR glasses themselves can be quite a challenge for a frequent user.
Of course, many of these problem would be less significant for "augmented reality" displays with purely two-dimensional overlays, but they still need to be considered. Failure to overcome these problems, and not fashion, is the primary reason for the conspicuous lack of omnipresent VR technology today.
The only question of any real importance is "Did the government create this monopoly?"
Why is that even relevant? Antitrust laws weren't created because of government-formed monopolies. They were formed because of the robber barons.
As I recall, while the term "robber baron[1]" is intended to be pejorative, there is no conclusive evidence that the actions of such individuals, where otherwise legal, caused temporary or lasting harm to the economies in which they worked. In fact, some have claimed "that the robber barons were essential to the transformation of the United States into a world power, due to their significant investments in industry, infrastructure, and education."[1] They may indeed have put their own gain first and foremost, but that is, in fact, the entire underlying assumption of the free market system, and it is well known that free market systems are based on the principle that both parties benefit directly from any voluntary trade. Furthermore, it can be shown from simple logical deduction that not only do both of the parties involved benefit, but their mutual increase in wealth benefits every other member of that economy as well due to the small (yet significant) increase in the total wealth of the society resulting from every trade.
Granted, some of the actions of these so-called "robber barons" were indeed illegal, immoral, unethical, etc. However, there are already laws to cover those cases, where such laws are reasonable, and we don't need additional "antitrust" laws to cover acts that are already condemned.
The most laisez-faire market in the world, so far as I know, is (or was) Hong Kong. And it had some real whoppers of monopolies. I think your claim holds no water at all. Not every free market is a commodities market. Some goods are by their very nature restricted to certain locations in time, space, and relationship to other goods. The market is, in mathematical parlance, a local optimization mechanism. There are often local optima in which it gets caught, preventing it from escaping and finding the global optimum without some external force to help out.
I looked around for evidence of economic trouble resulting from monopolies in Hong Kong. I didn't find anything. There was one reference to a policy conclusion that basically said "Everyone else has antitrust regulations, so we need some too." There were lots of references to Hong Kong's economy, but none of the articles even hinted at any evidence of actual damage from their (very real) monopolies and oligopolies. As you pointed out yourself, if you define it loosly enough, any company can be considered a monopoly. But why fight something that isn't causing any damage? The assumption behind the free market isn't competition itself, but rather the freedom to compete. Sometime a company actually does well enough, or the available resources are constrained enough, to justify a nontrivial "natural monopoly". In these cases, forcibly creating competition would decrease the efficiency of the system. On the surface, prices may appear to be lower, but if you factor in the costs of attracting and keeping competition in the market you'll probably find that the total prices have increased instead.
In my opinion, people who think that the market has one pretty commodities-style global optimum are the same ones who took Econ 101 and then thought they knew it all and never bothered to take Econ 201.
And I think that anyone arrogant enough to think that they can "fix" the outcome of the market (which is nothing more or less than the result of collective decision-making by all six billion inhabitants of this planet) is a danger to society. Since neither of us is all that likely to live up to the other's stereotypes, could we please put a
Here in the States, we typically call that "ethical behavior" on the part of the hospital, not a fundamental right. Rights generally don't include externalities, cases where someone else is forced to pay for your benefits. Also, property rights tend to be more fundamental to society than health care "rights"; your "free" health care won't mean anything if your economy can't support the necessary taxation, and productive economies are not sustainable when private property rights are not recognized (see "Communism"). In a system primary made up of government programs funded through taxation, though, property rights would be completely meaningless, since no one can truly be said to own any property that can be taken away from them on the government's whim. Communism is basically the ultimate aim of the welfare state -- 100% taxation, all services provided through universal social programs rather than private enterprise; perfect equality for all citizens. Incidently, it's never worked out all that well in the past; do you really think it would tend to work any better for a single industry than it did for entire economies?
The level of medical security you appreciate so much could be provided with a simple insurance system, or a (voluntary) trust fund chartered to pay up front (as a charity-based loan) for those whose savings and/or insurance won't cover the hospital's costs; there's no need to resort to taxation when private solutions exist. That's essentially what we do in the States, and despite the occasional exaggerated horror story, U.S. hospitals generally don't make people wait when time is an issue, just as I'm sure your "free" medical care isn't as poor as some people have reported it to be.
I agree. That's why I personally consider government grants of exclusive control over otherwise abundant resources (patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, etc., in decreasing order of relevance) to constitute coercive intervention leading (in part) to the creation of inefficient local monopolies. That's why I added the "maybe" note next to Microsoft. (I would have said "yes", but I didn't want to detract from my original point by bringing up the "IP" debate as well.) Patents are probably the worst form, since they cover independent discoveries as well as direct copying, but all of them contribute in their own ways. For example, software copyrights, in addition to creating artificial scarcity, contribute to the difficulty of producing interoperable software programs through restrictions on reverse-engineering. Extra protection for company trade secrets (beyond the boundaries of contract law) produce much the same effect.
On the other hand, trademarks, I think, are typically misunderstood. The one suffering the most injury from confusingly similar trademarks is the customer, not the business or individual owning the mark. Using another's mark should be considered false advertising (since you're not actually selling them the product typically known by that name), not a violation of some "right" to the mark. If the customers agree that a competitor makes better used of the mark, or that the marks aren't similar enough to be misleading, why should the courts force them to choose another?
So the malicious intruder copies a few hundred files from your legal collection to his/her USB stick for later uploading. It's not that much more difficult than grabbing an individual file, after all.
There is no right to free health care. There is the right to choose who you will seek health care from, or a government program which forces you to pay for the services of a specific health care provider whether you want that provider or not. Either way, you're paying for it; it's not "free". I'll leave it up to you to decide whether "free health care" counts as a right or not.
I'm not intentionally being confrontational; it just bothers me when people think of wellfare programs as a "free lunch". The hospitals aren't charities; someone still has to pay the bills, and in a welfare state that someone is the taxpayer.
I definitely agree as to the frustration with the time scale. Probably part of the problem is that, relative the the speed of market changes, our level of technology has increased at an amazing pace. The market -- people in general -- have not been able to keep up with all the changes. It's so tempting to just force people to change more quickly, but I think that such an approach would cause significant damage in the long run. In particular, once people give up control to a "ruling council", however wise and well-intentioned the members of that council might be, they rarely get it back. I don't want to surrender the working of the market to so-called experts only to be unable to take back control once society has overcome the newness of modern technology. We'll adapt eventually on our own, and I think we'll be stronger as a society for having perservered through our problems rather than letting Big Brother "make everything right".
Gizmo appears to have most of Skype's features (direct VoIP, inbound and outbound POTS calls, IMs, conferencing, call recording) as well as a slick UI and support for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. It may not have encrypted connections (I'm not sure), but it does have the advantage of interoperating with other SIP and Asterisk networks (it uses SIP internally), so you can call e.g. Free World Dialup subscribers from the Gizmo interface, and visa-versa. Outbound calls appear to be cheaper, as well: 1 cents/minute to the continental USA and Canada, 3-5 cents to the UK, France, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, and a number of other countries. Somolia, Iraq, Papua New Guinea, Antarctica, and Palestine were the only countries I recognized with rates over $1.00/minute. The highest rate I saw was $2.50/minute to Diego Garcia in Asia, and that was only for landline calls; calls to mobile phones were less expensive.
Disclaimer: I only found this earlier program today (I started looking when I saw the story), so I haven't had a chance to evaluate the quality of the program in operation. Perhaps someone else could comment on that point?
That link I posted before covered most of the major ways in which a company might try to maintain its position in the market. The eventual conclusion is that all the common "monopolistic" techniques are bad for business, and aren't sustainable in the long term, whereas the pressure from upstart competitors remains as long as the monopoly exists. Eventually their reserves wear down until they can't afford to fight any more.
To take Microsoft for example: very few people would still consider them a monopoly. Sure, they're still a huge company, with billions of dollars in reserve cash and investments in every market having anything to do with computers. By all accounts, they're going to be around for a very long time yet. However, they're facing serious competition right now on several fronts. They're not the only option any more in operating systems, office suites, server platforms -- in fact, I don't think there's a single area in which they aren't facing some kind of competition. Some of that may be because of their "punishment" by the DoJ, and the EU courts, but for the most part those judgements didn't cause any real financial harm to them as a company. Mostly, I think it just took some time for the market to become fed up with their policies and begin to look into alternatives. Those alternatives may or may not win out in the long run, but they are forcing Microsoft to rethink some if its policies in a way that benefits everyone.
My apologies; I really wasn't trying to be confrontational. I just wanted to correct the common misconception -- if not yours, then possibly another readers' -- that monopolies have some kind of advantage over other organizations in a free market. People often make the claim that a free market encourages monopolies through lack of regulation, when in reality the only persistent, harmful monopolies are the ones created by such regulation in the first place.
Incidently, I don't think I've ever been modded down for posting about Austrian economics. I have managed to attract a few of the more exteme members of the opposition from time to time, though. One person even finished with this gem:
You have now left the State of Misguided Libertarians and entered the Land of the Ludicrous.
Be sure to check in with the Ministry of Funny Walks before wandering too far.
Slashdot Mirror
I think we have different underlying assumptions here. From your response, I deduce that you believe that a lack of copyright enforcement would inevitably result in significant harm to society. I also deduce that you believe that most people agree with this belief "deep down inside", whether or not their actions demonstrate such a belief. Furthermore, I deduce that you believe that most people "know" (believe) that "they would not have one-tenth of the current selection if everybody infringed"; in other words, that they are in agreement with your first assumption. I submit that these three axioms are insufficiently supported by the available evidence.
The question of whether copyright enforcement, or the lack thereof, causes significant harm to society is still unclear. Certainly many respectable individuals have expressed their support for both points of view, often with very principled, objective arguments. However, it is not my intention to provide a final solution this particular question. I merely submit that it is far from clear that copyright infringement has caused, is causing, or will cause any significant harm to society.
As for the individuals in question, I submit that it is impossible to know exactly what anyone believes "deep down inside". The actions of the "file-sharers" imply that they do not believe (possibly in ignorance) that their copyright infringement will hurt them (individually) as much as they benefit from it. If they do believe that "they would not have one-tenth of the current selection if everybody infringed", then they do not worry overmuch about it. (IMHO we have more than enough "selection" right now; I would not mind trading some of that excess "selection" for some additional freedom myself.[1]) If this lack of believe or worry is the result of ignorance, then it is the supporters of copyright who must convince them otherwise. If copyright's supporters cannot convince the majority of the population that copyright is worth the cost (through non-coercive means), then (IMHO) they deserve to lose their protected status. For a minority group (like the RIAA/MPAA) to use the law to force a larger group to comply with their demands, when the larger group chooses not to comply willingly, is (again IMHO) a major cop-out on the part of the minority group, and a serious abuse of the powers of government.
----
[1] It is interesting to note here that the average person could probably spend his or her entire life consuming nothing but the music and movies already produced, even if no new music or movies were produced from this point on. I'm not saying that this would be a good thing (every society ought to develop and improve on its past work), but there is also no reason that society must continuously encourage the production of new works of art and literature. If we did away with copyright entirely for a while, and discovered that the naysayers' fears were justified, then we could always reinstate it once we'd learned from our error. On the other hand, we might just find out that those fears weren't justified.
I agree that most of the people using these sites couldn't care less about the principles underlying the "free culture" and/or "info anarchism" movements. Nearly all of them probably want nothing more than to get a better deal (i.e. free) on popular music and movies. For all I know, the people running the site may share those priorities.
It doesn't matter.
The very fact that they see nothing fundamentally wrong with using these sites to download music and movies demonstrates that they are in agreement with those movements, and do not believe that access to information ought to be regulated by copyright. Their personal motivations, whether principled or pragmatic, are entirely irrelevant. The popularity of "file-sharing", however motivated, proves that most people do not believe that the copyright system is in their best interest. That the RI/MPAA have succeeded in overruling the general population on this matter demonstrates their own tenacity and political influence, as well as the general corruptability of our government.
As for the GPL, is has been pointed out numerous times, here and elsewhere, that the GPL exists purely in response to copyright. The GPL exists because purely public domain software could be integrated into a copyrighted derivative work; if the resulting software could not itself be copyrighted, then there would be no need for the GPL. There are a number of anti-copyright articles listed on the FSF's own site, on their Philosophy page, so I don't think that they would mind the GP's link.
Any license listed on the Open Source Initiative's Licenses page is certified to adhere to the Open Source Definition, and the very first item on that list is Free Redistribution. Thus, knowing that the MPL is an OSI-certified Open Source license, you can be sure that it allows you to redistribute MPL software without ever having to read the MPL itself.
Furthermore, Firefox is dual-licensed (GPL/MPL). Since you (probably) know that the GPL allows redistribution, you don't actually need to know whether the MPL allows it or not, since you could simply redistribute it under the GPL's terms instead.
Disclaimer: IANAL and this is not legal advice.
Minor dispute: Giving someone my recording of a song (you can't actually "give" the song itself) is only copyright infringement if I happen to keep a copy for myself in the process. You may not like people getting used CDs from others (since it makes it unnecessary to order new copies of the CDs), but that doesn't make it illegal, immoral, or unethical to do so.
Primary dispute: The value in an artist's work (whether musical, visual, literary, ...) is in the release (initial publication) of the art itself. Up to the point at which the art is released the producer has complete control. Someone else might create and publish something similar (possibly even identical), but only the producer can choose whether or not to release what he/she created. At the point of release, the work has been expended, the costs have all been paid, and it is up to the producer to find a buyer. If he/she invested wisely, and created something that others value in excess of your costs, then he/she will make a profit from his/her work. If the producer invested badly then he/she will lose money. There is no guarantee that a producer will make back his/her costs; that is an investment risk inherent in any production.
Similarly, once the terms have been agreed upon, and the work has been released, the creator ought to forfeit any rights to control the use or distribution of the work, just as any other producer would. It is up to the producers to ensure that their investments earn a suitable profit; that responsibility cannot belong to anyone else, much less to society as a whole. If the investments do not earn a profit, that is the fault of the investors (the creators/producers), who did not accurately predict the marketability of the work, or (as is typically the case here) who chose a business model unsuitable for the realities of the market (the impossibility of controlling the distribution of data).
Lastly, the value of a good (such as a book or CD) depends not only on its immediate value to the buyer, but also in the rights which accompany that good. Those rights typically include direct use, resale, rent, transformation, reverse-engineering, etc. When you strip away these rights, you reduce the value of the item you're selling. Someone who might be willing to buy a CD (with the right to make copies) for e.g $500, knowing that the demand for the CD will lead to a profit in its distribution, would hardly be willing to pay the same for CD suitable only for personal use.
Copyright, and patents, and their accompanying technological restrictions (DRM), do not create value; they can only serve to create artificial scarcity by controlling distribution. As any economist would tell you, limiting distribution inevitably leads to a poorer society. That, and not a desire for "free stuff", is why I oppose the concept of "intellectual property".
Many players will accept ".oga" for Ogg audio files, and ".ogv" for Ogg video files. Similarly, the ".wma" and ".wmv" extensions, or ".m4a" and ".m4v", are also commonly supported.
Disclaimer: I don't care to venture a guess at this point whether the design in question is actually an improvement over existing motor designs (though I am sure that it isn't more than 100% efficient like the article claimed).
However, I am curious as to where you observed them using a quadratic relationship between magnetic field strength and applied force. Is it the diagrams on Page 2 of their description? If so, the relationship they are using there is actually linear. The reason that four "units of force" are applied (as opposed to the two units without using the coils) is that the field strength from the coils matches the field strength of the permanent magnets, and thus doubles the overall field strength in the "circuit". Up to this point, I think their theory is reasonable (though I'm hardly expert in this topic).
The claimed advantage of their design is based on the concept (true or false I cannot say) that a coil in the "circuit" can act as a switch, redirecting the magnetic flux from the farther permanent magnet through the opposite armature, and thus complementing the combined field strength of the coils with the combined field strength of the permanent magnets (which must be equal for optimal efficiency). This seems simple enough, but it would be nice if some neutral expert observer could confirm whether or not it conflicts with any known physical laws. Of course, even if all of the theory checks out, that doesn't necessarily mean that they will be able to construct more efficient rotary electric motors with it. It might have other applications, though, particularly in the area of linear actuators (which are closer to their test apparatus in the first place).
Building software is only unfeasable due to the sheer number of software producers. If the margins remain as they are, that problem will rectify itself over time. There is an oversupply of software producers because the demand for new software has dropped, as should be expected in a maturing industry predicated on selling "solutions"; eventually all the useful solutions are common-place, and the demand for new ones decreases. There will always remain a non-zero minimum demand, created by first-time customers, unique cases, ports from legacy systems, and the rare "killer app", but there was never any possibility that the software-creation industry would remain as big as is was when computing first became ubiquitous -- when all software was new software and we were still exploring the limits of the new technology.
As for the long-term feasability of "bad" monopolies, anyone interested should have a look at Chapter 10 of Man, Economy, & State by Murray N. Rothbard. To summarize: "bad" (unnatural, anti-competitive) monopolies have several fundamental disadvantages, in that they they have finite resources, unmeasurable costs (no competition to compare to), and a coveted position in the market (resulting in continuous non-revenue-generating expenses to "beat down" the competition). An unnatural monopoly can never sustain itself in the long run in a free market; it will eventually run out of resources if it tries. In the meantime, the ever-present fringe competition acts as a catalyst, forcing the monopoly to meet (or influence) the market's demands rather than risk losing the market to the competition. Either way, consumers benefit.
To address your telecom "case study": the telcos weren't actually operating in a free market, having been subsidized through government taxes, but now that they're (mostly) deregulated and unsubsidized they're facing significant competition on several fronts. For example, even before regulations forced the telcos to share their lines (which we should never have given them in the first place), cable companies were offering residential Internet connections with the capacity to replace phone lines entirely. Currently the telcos and the cable companies are facing competition in some areas from ISPs with WiFi/WiMAX equiptment. Their post-subsidy monopoly was never stable to begin with; it's just going to take some time to deplete the subsidies we gave them.
The rootkit installed itself before you accepted the EULA, and, though inert initially, could be activated later by their auto-upgrade system simply by inserting a CD with the same software (including the original disc). You could consistently reject their offer of a rootkit and still end up with one on your system.
In any event, while I would agree that outlawing "rootkits" completely would be a bad idea, they could at least require clear and specific authorization, rather than just some obscure legal text buried in an EULA that no one plans to read anyway.
Why stop at corporations? When it comes to commerce (Internet or otherwise), most individuals meet that description in practice (some more than others, of course), however much they might protest it publically.
My apologies, then. I probably overreacted. I just wanted to respond to the second sentence, "It's a promise to pay you back later (promissory note)", but I certainly agree that counterfeiting isn't normally at all related to "IP" laws -- although some of our private-sector currencies (like the Liberty Dollar) do rely on e.g. copyrighted images or trademarks to provide a legal disincentive for counterfeiters, since formal counterfeiting laws only cover government currency. I think it would still be illegal, though, even without the "IP", since passing off a known counterfeit as real currency would probably be considered a form of fraud (IANAL, though).
U.S. currency hasn't been accompanied by a promise to pay for decades now. U.S. dollar bills used to be considered equivalent to, and were exchangeable for, U.S. dollar coins (still defined by law as a certain weight of refined gold), but the only thing you can get for your FRNs (federal reserve notes) today is different denominations of FRNs. They're just bits of paper now, with no promises or backing, purchased at cost (3-5 cents per bill regardless of denomination) by mostly-private, mostly-foreign-owned corporations (the Federal Reserve Banks) in exchange for government bonds issued for the face-value of the bills. The bonds themselves have significant value, because they're backed by nothing more or less than the government's proven ability to tax future generations into effective slavery to pay them off.
To summarize: FRNs are themselves worthless. They are sold to Federal Reserve Banks, which are mostly owned by foreign investors, for 3-5 cents each. The FRBs then sell the bills (which are themselves worth very little) back to the government in exchange for their face-value, plus interest, in government bonds, which have significant market value and place the U.S. government, and therefore its citizens, at the mercy of the the domestic and foreign recipients of the bonds.
Should those investors ever decide to stop renewing the bonds, we will soon find that there is not enough U.S. currency in the entire world to repay the loans with the requisite interest. Even taxing 100%, the government couldn't raise enough money to pay back the debts they have incurred. The only way to honor the debt would be to print massive amounts of currency, resulting in extreme levels of inflation and probably the end of the U.S. economy as we know it.
The solution? Don't do business with companies like that.
If they don't provide a way to access the information without following links in (possibly forged) e-mails, then they definately don't have your best interests in mind. In a pinch, you can look up their customer-service number, call them, and get them to read you the legitimate URL over the phone. At least that way you know (to some extent) that the person giving you the URL is someone with access to the company's phone system.
IANAL and this does not even remotely resemble legal advice.
However, if you think about it, the entire Internet works by forwarding packets from one system through any number of intermediaries before they reach their final destination. Should the ISP be responsible? The higher-tier providers whose networks forwarded the data? The ISP of the web host? If you have more than one Internet connection, and forward packets from one link to the other, can you be held responsible for the legality of the forwarded data? That is essentially no different than what e.g. Tor does. The only difference is that one side of the connection is a VPN rather than a physical link. To consider every intermediary responsible for the data transferred by others would completely destroy the Internet as we know it.
On the other hand, you might have a hard time convincing the court that you weren't the originator of the packets in question, particularly if your contract with your ISP disallows connection-sharing (which could, I suppose, be defined to include linking a VPN to the public Internet).
I would certainly agree that you'd be depriving them of something. By posting this, I'm depriving you of an (at the moment) undisputed comment, for example. There are all sorts of things you can deprive someone of, and most of them are perfectly legal. The law is only concerned with them being deprived of something that they have a legal right to. I don't know of any laws granting anyone a legal right to my money -- my property -- until and unless I choose to give it to them (possibly in exchange for something else). There is no legal right to what one "could have made" from a sale. If you steal an object from a store, they won't charge you with depriving them of a potential future sale, they'll charge you with depriving them of their property. The value of the potential sale only comes in when determining damages (and only them is original property can't be returned).
Under the laws governing theft, copyright infringement could not be prosecuted, since no property was taken. The owner of the first copy still has that copy, and that copy is the only actual property in question. The law provides no guarantees of future value, and any possible reduction in the value of the copy due to an increase in supply (the existance of more copies, for example) does not imply the occurrance of an illegal act.
Copyright law, therefore, can only be justified by appeal to either the idea of a social contract (as copyright is defined in the U.S. Constitution) to create artificial (not inherent) rights in hopes of encouraging the arts and sciences, or in terms of some inherent right to control of one's creations, as you suggested. The former justification is currently on rather dubious grounds, as many people are beginning to doubt whether copyrights and patents benefit society enough to justify themselves. The latter is generally assumed to end once the work has been published (shared); typically, up to that point the creator can exercise complete control, but once the idea is "out in the open" anyone is free to use it. This is the equivalent of having no laws governing the distribution of ideas (or embodiments thereof), unless you want to make a distinction between intentional and unintentional sharing, which places it in a completely different category from copyright, which can only truly exist in the form of a legal code.
Thanks, I didn't know about that before. I guess we really are worse off than I thought.
:-)
On a related note, why does it seem that every time somebody figures out some new way of making everyone's lives better (like radio), things that are perfectly acceptable at first (like building/using any kind of radio receiver you wanted to) eventually become illegal, until in the end only a fraction of the discovery's promise remains? It's rather depressing. Maybe one day we'll wake up and discover that there's nothing left to discover, nothing left to create, nothing at all left to do but pay our meaningless taxes and go back to sleep...
OK, I think that's more than enough nihilism for one evening.
There are two major problems with current VR technology. The first is head-tracking latency, and the second is focus. Even the best head-tracking systems take an unacceptable amount of time to relay the motion to the computer, render the scene from the new position, and display the resulting images on the LCDs in the glasses. Most people have difficulty adjusting to this, and many experience very unpleasant side effects. Furthermore, even with a full VR setup, you still have the problem that what you're seeing doesn't match reality. You have to remember not to e.g. walk around the virtual environment, or you'll risk running into something, or falling, or.... The liability for this is probably a major issue. As for the glasses themselves, they don't provide all the normal clues for three-dimensional perception. In a decent system, you'll have one flat screen for each eye, with a fixed focal plane set at a comfortable distance. Clever software can use that to give you an apparent 3-D image. However, normally your eyes would make use of things like focal distance, depth-of-field, peripheral vision, your sense of balance, etc. When using VR equiptment, these senses tend to atophy and become disconnected to the point where recovering from the effects of the VR glasses themselves can be quite a challenge for a frequent user. Of course, many of these problem would be less significant for "augmented reality" displays with purely two-dimensional overlays, but they still need to be considered. Failure to overcome these problems, and not fashion, is the primary reason for the conspicuous lack of omnipresent VR technology today.
As I recall, while the term "robber baron[1]" is intended to be pejorative, there is no conclusive evidence that the actions of such individuals, where otherwise legal, caused temporary or lasting harm to the economies in which they worked. In fact, some have claimed "that the robber barons were essential to the transformation of the United States into a world power, due to their significant investments in industry, infrastructure, and education."[1] They may indeed have put their own gain first and foremost, but that is, in fact, the entire underlying assumption of the free market system, and it is well known that free market systems are based on the principle that both parties benefit directly from any voluntary trade. Furthermore, it can be shown from simple logical deduction that not only do both of the parties involved benefit, but their mutual increase in wealth benefits every other member of that economy as well due to the small (yet significant) increase in the total wealth of the society resulting from every trade.
Granted, some of the actions of these so-called "robber barons" were indeed illegal, immoral, unethical, etc. However, there are already laws to cover those cases, where such laws are reasonable, and we don't need additional "antitrust" laws to cover acts that are already condemned.
I looked around for evidence of economic trouble resulting from monopolies in Hong Kong. I didn't find anything. There was one reference to a policy conclusion that basically said "Everyone else has antitrust regulations, so we need some too." There were lots of references to Hong Kong's economy, but none of the articles even hinted at any evidence of actual damage from their (very real) monopolies and oligopolies. As you pointed out yourself, if you define it loosly enough, any company can be considered a monopoly. But why fight something that isn't causing any damage? The assumption behind the free market isn't competition itself, but rather the freedom to compete. Sometime a company actually does well enough, or the available resources are constrained enough, to justify a nontrivial "natural monopoly". In these cases, forcibly creating competition would decrease the efficiency of the system. On the surface, prices may appear to be lower, but if you factor in the costs of attracting and keeping competition in the market you'll probably find that the total prices have increased instead.
And I think that anyone arrogant enough to think that they can "fix" the outcome of the market (which is nothing more or less than the result of collective decision-making by all six billion inhabitants of this planet) is a danger to society. Since neither of us is all that likely to live up to the other's stereotypes, could we please put a
Here in the States, we typically call that "ethical behavior" on the part of the hospital, not a fundamental right. Rights generally don't include externalities, cases where someone else is forced to pay for your benefits. Also, property rights tend to be more fundamental to society than health care "rights"; your "free" health care won't mean anything if your economy can't support the necessary taxation, and productive economies are not sustainable when private property rights are not recognized (see "Communism"). In a system primary made up of government programs funded through taxation, though, property rights would be completely meaningless, since no one can truly be said to own any property that can be taken away from them on the government's whim. Communism is basically the ultimate aim of the welfare state -- 100% taxation, all services provided through universal social programs rather than private enterprise; perfect equality for all citizens. Incidently, it's never worked out all that well in the past; do you really think it would tend to work any better for a single industry than it did for entire economies?
The level of medical security you appreciate so much could be provided with a simple insurance system, or a (voluntary) trust fund chartered to pay up front (as a charity-based loan) for those whose savings and/or insurance won't cover the hospital's costs; there's no need to resort to taxation when private solutions exist. That's essentially what we do in the States, and despite the occasional exaggerated horror story, U.S. hospitals generally don't make people wait when time is an issue, just as I'm sure your "free" medical care isn't as poor as some people have reported it to be.
I agree. That's why I personally consider government grants of exclusive control over otherwise abundant resources (patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, etc., in decreasing order of relevance) to constitute coercive intervention leading (in part) to the creation of inefficient local monopolies. That's why I added the "maybe" note next to Microsoft. (I would have said "yes", but I didn't want to detract from my original point by bringing up the "IP" debate as well.) Patents are probably the worst form, since they cover independent discoveries as well as direct copying, but all of them contribute in their own ways. For example, software copyrights, in addition to creating artificial scarcity, contribute to the difficulty of producing interoperable software programs through restrictions on reverse-engineering. Extra protection for company trade secrets (beyond the boundaries of contract law) produce much the same effect.
On the other hand, trademarks, I think, are typically misunderstood. The one suffering the most injury from confusingly similar trademarks is the customer, not the business or individual owning the mark. Using another's mark should be considered false advertising (since you're not actually selling them the product typically known by that name), not a violation of some "right" to the mark. If the customers agree that a competitor makes better used of the mark, or that the marks aren't similar enough to be misleading, why should the courts force them to choose another?
So the malicious intruder copies a few hundred files from your legal collection to his/her USB stick for later uploading. It's not that much more difficult than grabbing an individual file, after all.
There is no right to free health care. There is the right to choose who you will seek health care from, or a government program which forces you to pay for the services of a specific health care provider whether you want that provider or not. Either way, you're paying for it; it's not "free". I'll leave it up to you to decide whether "free health care" counts as a right or not. I'm not intentionally being confrontational; it just bothers me when people think of wellfare programs as a "free lunch". The hospitals aren't charities; someone still has to pay the bills, and in a welfare state that someone is the taxpayer.
I definitely agree as to the frustration with the time scale. Probably part of the problem is that, relative the the speed of market changes, our level of technology has increased at an amazing pace. The market -- people in general -- have not been able to keep up with all the changes. It's so tempting to just force people to change more quickly, but I think that such an approach would cause significant damage in the long run. In particular, once people give up control to a "ruling council", however wise and well-intentioned the members of that council might be, they rarely get it back. I don't want to surrender the working of the market to so-called experts only to be unable to take back control once society has overcome the newness of modern technology. We'll adapt eventually on our own, and I think we'll be stronger as a society for having perservered through our problems rather than letting Big Brother "make everything right".
Gizmo appears to have most of Skype's features (direct VoIP, inbound and outbound POTS calls, IMs, conferencing, call recording) as well as a slick UI and support for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. It may not have encrypted connections (I'm not sure), but it does have the advantage of interoperating with other SIP and Asterisk networks (it uses SIP internally), so you can call e.g. Free World Dialup subscribers from the Gizmo interface, and visa-versa. Outbound calls appear to be cheaper, as well: 1 cents/minute to the continental USA and Canada, 3-5 cents to the UK, France, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, and a number of other countries. Somolia, Iraq, Papua New Guinea, Antarctica, and Palestine were the only countries I recognized with rates over $1.00/minute. The highest rate I saw was $2.50/minute to Diego Garcia in Asia, and that was only for landline calls; calls to mobile phones were less expensive. Disclaimer: I only found this earlier program today (I started looking when I saw the story), so I haven't had a chance to evaluate the quality of the program in operation. Perhaps someone else could comment on that point?
That link I posted before covered most of the major ways in which a company might try to maintain its position in the market. The eventual conclusion is that all the common "monopolistic" techniques are bad for business, and aren't sustainable in the long term, whereas the pressure from upstart competitors remains as long as the monopoly exists. Eventually their reserves wear down until they can't afford to fight any more.
To take Microsoft for example: very few people would still consider them a monopoly. Sure, they're still a huge company, with billions of dollars in reserve cash and investments in every market having anything to do with computers. By all accounts, they're going to be around for a very long time yet. However, they're facing serious competition right now on several fronts. They're not the only option any more in operating systems, office suites, server platforms -- in fact, I don't think there's a single area in which they aren't facing some kind of competition. Some of that may be because of their "punishment" by the DoJ, and the EU courts, but for the most part those judgements didn't cause any real financial harm to them as a company. Mostly, I think it just took some time for the market to become fed up with their policies and begin to look into alternatives. Those alternatives may or may not win out in the long run, but they are forcing Microsoft to rethink some if its policies in a way that benefits everyone.
My apologies; I really wasn't trying to be confrontational. I just wanted to correct the common misconception -- if not yours, then possibly another readers' -- that monopolies have some kind of advantage over other organizations in a free market. People often make the claim that a free market encourages monopolies through lack of regulation, when in reality the only persistent, harmful monopolies are the ones created by such regulation in the first place.
Incidently, I don't think I've ever been modded down for posting about Austrian economics. I have managed to attract a few of the more exteme members of the opposition from time to time, though. One person even finished with this gem:
I got a few laughs out of that one.