The problem is that with today's technology, recorded music has far less value than live music, because the real cost of making a copy of a recording is nearly zero.
Copyright is ultimately a priviledge, not an inherent right like freedom of speech or physical property rights. It is a contract between society in general and the artists, one which few now alive ever formally agreed to and which fewer and fewer people feel was ever truly justified. If it weren't for these artificial legal restrictions on duplication, the price-point for recorded music would be so low that it wouldn't be practical to charge for a single song, or even a single album. This would not be then end of music, however. The demand for music -- new music in particular -- is not going anywhere soon.
One way for artists to raise capital is similar to the model used by movie producers even now: sell advance tickets.
Movies make most of their money in the first few weeks; they often pay for themselves in the opening weekend. Purchasing advance tickets is very similar to pre-ordering a book or CD, and offering pre-orders is a great way to ensure sufficient initial sales to cover the costs of production (including opportunity costs) while splitting the cost over a large enough group to make the prices reasonable. True, some people might choose to wait until the music becomes available on a P2P network, or get it from their friends. Some might simply choose not to listen to the music at all. It is never possible to guarantee the size of a market until the sales are confirmed. It isn't even possible to estimate the potential size of the market without taking prices into account, because people who would buy something at one price (free, for example) will often decide it's not worth the cost at a higher price. That doesn't stop other industries from turning a profit.
The keys to any business are building a loyal customer base, maintaining high standards of quality and reliability, and recognizing that profit can only occur when both parties agree on the exchange. DRM accomplishes none of these. It's rarely profitable for either side to try to dictate terms.
The problem is that with today's technology, recorded music has far less value than live music, because the real cost of making a copy of a recording is nearly zero.
Copyright is ultimately a priviledge, not an inherent right like freedom of speech or physical property rights. It is a contract between society in general and the artists, one which few now alive ever formally agreed to and which fewer and fewer people feel was ever truly justified. If it weren't for these artificial legal restrictions on duplication, the price-point for recorded music would be so low that it wouldn't be practical to charge for a single song, or even a single album. This would not be then end of music, however. The demand for music -- new music in particular -- is not going anywhere soon.
One way for artists to raise capital is similar to the model used by movie producers even now: sell advance tickets.
Movies make most of their money in the first few weeks; they often pay for themselves in the opening weekend. Purchasing advance tickets is very similar to pre-ordering a book or CD, and offering pre-orders is a great way to ensure sufficient initial sales to cover the costs of production (including opportunity costs) while splitting the cost over a large enough group to make the prices reasonable. True, some people might choose to wait until the music becomes available on a P2P network, or get it from their friends. Some might simply choose not to listen to the music at all. It is never possible to guarantee the size of a market until the sales are confirmed. It isn't even possible to estimate the potential size of the market without taking prices into account, because people who would buy something at one price (free, for example) will often decide it's not worth the cost at a higher price. That doesn't stop other industries from turning a profit.
The keys to any business are building a loyal customer base, maintaining high standards of quality and reliability, and recognizing that profit can only occur when both parties agree on the exchange. DRM accomplishes none of these. It's rarely profitable for either side to try to dictate terms.
An important point in your example is that the road was initially built with public funds, and only later turned over to a private group. In other words, the group that ended up administering the road probably didn't have the same level of investment in the road that a fully private venture would require. They also did not have the same need to build up trust amongst their customer base. Any private group intending to develop a transportation network would have to raise capital for the venture, capital that would be hard to raise unless they could demonstrate a workable business plan beforehand.
Mixed public/private ventures often combine the worst parts of both.
The lesson of Open Source products is that there is no great need for large permanent distribution networks, nor for large marketing campaigns.
IMHO, I think that the lesson of Open Source programs is that software is greatly misunderstood. People have a habit of describing software as an engineering project, or an appliance, but in reality software is more like a how-to or do-it-yourself book stripped of all the unnecessary human-language guilding. It's a list of instructions, the most basic incarnation of an algorithm expressed in some physical arrangement of matter. The software exists independently of the computer itself, whose only advantages are its consistency and speed in carrying out algorithms. As such, software should lie fully outside the rightful domain of copyright law. If anything, software should be covered under patent law, which was designed for the express purpose of covering algorithms (processes) -- not that I believe that patents do anything to encourage advances in technology, their sole justification for existance.
The main objection that the telcos seem to have about municipal Wi-Fi projects is that the city pays for them out of the city's taxes, part of which come from the telcos themselves. In other words, the city government has the potential to force their own competition to help put themselves out of business by financing the development of the Wi-Fi infrastructure. It's not an intractable problem, but it is a fairly serious one. If the Wi-Fi network was developed by a private organization (for-profit or non-profit) without any assistance from city taxes the telcos would have no grounds on which to complain about unfair competition.
Of course, the telcos received huge tax-driven subsidies themselves when they started out, so perhaps the system isn't as unfair as they would like everyone to believe...
Are you talking about "worse" in terms of some hand-waving "efficiency" perspective, or are you talking about "worse" from the consumer service perspective? Because in my experience, at least, State-owned monopolies typically have a charter guaranteeing minimum levels of service for *all* customers, whereas private monopolies do not. I would expect a State monopoly to deliver better products, customer service and value for money than a private monopoly.
Yes, socialism sounds very good in theory, but in practice it nearly always end up hurting those it was designed to benefit. A state-controlled monopoly can never be as responsive to market conditions as a private monopoly, and is never subject to the free-market dynamics that hold private monopolies in check.
I would argue that a "privatised" monopoly is the only logical end result of a market *without* State intervention and regulation.
On this topic, I recommend taking a course in basic free-market economics. It is true that in some cases, when conditions are favorable, a free market can turn into a monopoly. Usually this is in cases where one party has a significant advantage which its competitors cannot overcome, such as an existing natural monopoly (e.g. location), and/or there is significant inefficiency in having more than one supplier in the same market. However, private monopolies continue to experience economic pressure, because if the prices are too high, or the services are lacking, then conditions become favorable for a more responsive competitor to enter the market. A free-market monopoly can only remain a monopoly so long as it remains reasonably responsive to its customers.
[A]ny competitor entering a monopolised market will have a seriously higher barrier to entry. There's a vast difference between creating a monopolised market from nothing and bumping a monopolised market leader off their perch.
I agree that competing against an established monopoly can be much more difficult than starting a market where none previously existed. However, the difficulty is mostly due to the fact that the monopoly is successfully meeting the needs of its customers. If those customers were truly unhappy with the monopoly's services, then the barriers to entry would be significantly lower. There are some cases where poor historical decisions (such as allowing telcos to own the communications network itself, which is a natural monopoly) can limit the effectiveness of the free market in this situation, but these are nearly always due to the meddlesome influence of the State and not the workings of the free market itself. In such cases, regulation may be necessary to bring the system back into balance, but that does not change the fact that the imbalance was created by the State in the first place.
State-granted monopolies are not subject to the same free-market forces that influence private monopolies. Where a state-granted monopoly exists, there is no possibity for competition, even though a private solution might better serve the market.
Private monopolies, on the other hand, can only exist without State assistance when a monopolistic solution is the most efficient way to serve the market, because otherwise additional private solutions would naturally be developed and there would no longer be a monopoly. When a monopoly is developed through thoroughly private means, there is nothing preventing another from doing the same and thus breaking the monopoly.
It's possible to link to a specific version of any given Wikipedia article. You don't have to link to the "live" view. Try the "Cite this article" link on the left-hand side; you will be presented with a series of formated citations (APA, MLA, Chicago...) containing the URL of the specific version of the article which you were viewing. For example:
For the most part, that's what VoIP providers do. However, there are some issues with this system, the one of which is that some areas have more than one local phone number associated with the 911 service, usually based on the local schedule of the PSAP personnel. For example, 911 might connect to one number during the day and another at night. Normally, 911 calls are routed at the local switch, and so these rules can be programmed on a case-by-case basic, but with VoIP it's difficult to compile a complete list of PSAP numbers and the routing rules that they correspond to.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, however, the issue here is the current address of the caller is not readily available to VoIP providers. For example, a VoIP customer could sign up in one area, providing an address for 911 service. Later that customer could move to a new area with a completely different 911 service. As far as the VoIP provider is concerned, nothing has changed. The customer can still make calls normally. However, if the customer tries to call 911, the call would be routed to the wrong call center.
Or you could legally use the free trial they offer to create the image, and then use the VMware Player application once the trial runs out. I'm well aware that you can find the serial numbers online, but why invite trouble when there is an easy alternative?
The simplest (but probably not cheapest) way to avoid problems like this under Windows would be to aquire a copy of VMware, create a virtual machine with two drives, and install Windows into the VM. The first virtual drive should be a "snapshot" drive (C:), the second is a normal drive and holds any data you want to work with. Immediately after installing Windows, commit the snapshot. After that, every time the VM is restarted the contents of C: will be reset to their original state, eliminating viruses, rootkits, spyware, etc. One significant drawback of this approach, however, is that VMware does not perform any hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, so e.g. games will not work properly within the VM. Other than graphics, the speed difference between the VM and the underlying hardware is fairly small.
But for there to be a demand, people must have heard the music.. for that to happen it must have been distributed in a listenable format to people who are now able to pass it on for free; even if it's not the highest quality. If it generates demand for live shows - great.. unless the artist isn't in a position to perform (back to an earlier point).
I can agree to differ on most of the points, as you suggested, but I think I must point out one or two small issues with this countpoint.
An established artist does not necessarily need to advertise the specific new music that they will be performing. The artist's past performances, along with the promise of a new song or two, would probably be enough to generate demand even if no recordings of the new songs had yet been released.
Also, I would expect that most artists with permanent disabilities of one kind or another are still perfectly capable of holding a concert, or other form of live performance, despite their disability. In fact, a disability of some kind can be a form of asset as a performer, as most people are rather enchanted with the idea of a hero who carries on despite the obstacles blocking his/he way. If they're capable of making a recording, they're probably capable of doing exactly the same thing in front of a live audience. Temporary disabilities or illnesses, on the other hand, are a risk in any line of work, though perhaps more common among performers, and would generally covered by some form of health insurance specific to performers.
Given the wealth of symbolic imagery in the Bible (not that it's all symbolic), I would say that it would be hard to imagine that God the Father could possibly be incapable of speaking symbolically, at least in the manner in which we understand symbolism. It is possible that what we interpret as symbolism is simply our lack of understanding; perhaps we make a distinction between symbolism and reality where no such distinction really exists. There have been cultures (the Celts, for example) that did not see such a rigid separation between the world around them and the symbols within it, perferring to view the world around them as having a sort of dual nature, simultaneously literal and symbolic.
Most of the confusion surrounding "taking the Bible literally" comes from people who take one or two sentences out of context, ignore the intentions of the author and the conventions of the original language, and treat what they've read as instructions directed at themselves. Most of the Bible is historical in nature, not instructional. The main things to focus on when reading a historical account are what the main characters did, and what the consequences were. Ignoring either one will lead to misinterpretations.
The organization really should add their certificate to the accepted list of certificates in their standard system image. That way their employees wouldn't be forced to endure the constant interruptions generated by their self-signed certificate. However, for an in-house site, it's probably overkill to buy an e-commerce SSL certificate from e.g. Verisign, which can cost hundreds of dollars per year to maintain.
Of course it's literal. In other words, Christ literally said "I am the door". He may, of course, have been speaking metaphorically at the time, as He often did. That doesn't mean that the text isn't a literal account.
Since this is becoming a rather long thread, I'm going to try to limit this to the more basic points on which we appear to disagree: (1) distribution; and (2) derivative works & control over use. I'll also try to explain my reasoning regarding my last point, "The artists have a right to charge for their own work, but not for the work of others".
(1) Distribution. You assert that artists cannot make money selling access to their music without copyright, since the price of the copy would quickly fall to zero. It is true that the artist would be unable to profit in perpetuity from any given recorded performance, because the recordings would eventually become commonplace. At first, though, there is a rather large demand for the new music. The artist can take advantage of this demand to make a reasonable amount of money right away, by holding concerts and/or limited-access performances. It would be foolish to make any high-quality recordings at this point, since that would saturate the market early on and take away the advantage. Once the initial demand has worn off, perhaps, the artist might release one or more "official" recordings, which may find their way on to an online network of some sort, but at this point the artist has already been compensated for the effort of creating the first song, and has probably already moved on to the next one.
(2) Derivative Works. There have been court cases declaring that three notes is enough similarity to constitute infringement. Other cases have declared that works the artist thought were original were actually "subconsciouly infringing" on songs the artist had heard as a child. By these definitions, it is probable that there is no longer any possibility of creating a song that doesn't infringe on someone else's copyright. If all copyrighted songs were registered, then one could check for infringement ahead of time, but even that is not longer possible, since the registration requirement no longer holds. Also, the issue of credit is a sticky one, even with copyright. Should attribution be a legal requirement? Perhaps. Some even advocate that artists have the exclusive right to control all use of their work, even use that would otherwise be permitted under "fair use". For example, various companies have tried to use EULA's to keep their customers from publishing poor reviews of their products. It is certainly possible that some group that an artist is opposed to might use the artist's work in a way opposed to the artist's beliefs. However, this works both ways. The artist is free to speak out against any group to which he/she/it is opposed.
(3) "The artists have a right to charge for their own work, but not for the work of others". The work I was referring to here was not the work of creating the song, but rather the work of distributing it. This is probably one of the most inefficient parts of the current system, since the artificial monopoly of the recording labels over the music itself gives them an additional monopoly over the distribution of the music. By now, distribution of digital content has become extremely cheap. With the Internet, sending the necessary instructions to recreate a near-perfect-fidelity copy of any song to almost anywhere in the world can be done in a matter of minutes for less than one cent in additional costs. However, the copyright system, whether right or wrong, lets the labels monopolize the means of distribution and take in huge profits for doing something that should be nearly cost-free with today's technology, at the expense of both the customers and the artists.
He created a product while retailed for a price that several thousand people wanted to buy.
Who should get the money from that, if not the creator? If you're advocating that he should give it away for free, then can you explain what everyone in the world did to deserve his product for free?
I'm not saying that he should give away his work for free. In the absence of a legally-binding agreement, no one is obligated to do anything for anyone. He's quite within his rights to keep his ideas to himself, or to sell access to them to whomever he wishes, at any price they are willing to pay.
What I'm asking is what gives him the right to forcibly prevent other people from freely copying and/or building on the products that they've purchased. That is the heart of copyrights (and patents). Copyrights (and patents) are negative priviledges, not positive ones: they take the right to use certain ideas, processes or behaviors away from everyone else, so that only those to whom the priviledges are awarded can use them freely. Copyrights are the worse of the two, since patents at least allow for non-infringing derivative works, but both copyrights and patents hold back innovation and cultural development, while simultaneously distorting the workings of the free market by tying together otherwise unrelated services: performances, recording, publication/duplication, distribution, and advertising.
If you read the parent, you will see that it was indicating that nobody who creates any music should be paid for so doing. They would have to make all their money from touring. And music (not entertainment) is different, precisely because it doesn't require personal appearances. They are optional.
It's true that music, books, and other forms of recorded ideas do not require the artist to be personally present in order for them to be enjoyed. It's also true that they are by their very nature in effectively infinite supply, because they can be copied at little or no cost. In a free market, the prices of the copies would approach their marginal cost, which is effectively zero. Effectively, anyone who already has a copy can become a local distributor, at least until the market for the recording is saturated. Original performances, however, retain their value, because they are in limited supply. The copies, on the other hand, have nothing to do with the original creator. The artists have a right to charge for their own work, but not for the work of others.
So what, exactly, did he do to deserve all that pay? That way you describe the situation sounds rather like winning a lottery: a huge payoff for the lucky few, minimal effort required to enter. A decent work ethic, or the common sense not throw away the future of one's family on a risky dream, would be a far better inheritance than the unearned income from someone else's lucky break. Also, the problems you attribute to touring apply equally well to any other business requiring personal appearances; why should the business of entertainment be any different?
It's not as simple as "Hey, you don't like it? Move!" You're basically suggesting that people give up their history and property in order to spare ~$3,000 of THEIR OWN money per person (taxes) trying to fix a problem.
Actually, if they want to spend $3,000 of their own money on the project, I don't think anyone here would object to that. However, what they're really doing is spending ~$1.2e6 of their community' money, taken by force from their neighbours through taxation. Those who want to give $3,000 to the project can do so of their own free will; they have no right to force those opposed to the project to cover the costs.
In the case of OpenOffice, it would probably be better to save a journal of recent changes, rather than continuously updating and re-compressing the XML. The journal could be folded into the main document when OpenOffice exits, or recovered automatically when OO opens an unmerged document. It takes a significant amount of CPU time to save a large document, mainly due to the compression. There may be other programs running which could make better use of the CPU, not to mention that saving usually locks the document for a second or two, which would be very irritating for the user if it happened every second or so.
I like your well-written response, but this isn't true all of the time. Consider the individual go goes out and purchases a descrambler for their cable connection. Or the person who uncaps their modem. Or the person who drops off their trash in a dumpster belonging to a commercial entity of some kind. Neither of these involve persuasion, or another individual.
Thanks for the considerate reply. It's nice to hear fron someone with reasonable criticism.
I must point out that none of the examples that you gave are limited to actual theft of service. In the cable example, the cable company enters into a contract to provide their signal in exchange for payment and the customer's promise to only use approved equipment. It's in the "terms of service" agreement. The cable company is under no obligation to provide signals that are not listed in the contract, and the customer is under no obligations beyond those in the contract either. If the customer did not agree to the terms, the cable company would not connect their equipment to the cable network, which is their property and is subject to trespass laws should anyone get the idea to tap into the signal him/herself. The modem example is similar. I would be interested in any cases where putting trash into a dumpster on another's property was considered theft of service, since that clearly falls under the category of trespass. There's no need to cover it with a second law. Furthermore, none of these examples involve any extra cost on the part of the person providing the service, and thus the only losses are potential, not actual, sales. Only actual losses count as damages.
Consumers spend their money on what they can see and what they can have now, not what someone might produce at some point in the future. I don't see how it could work otherwise. Entertainment is no different - the end result is still a product, but the nature of its existence makes it very easy to circumvent normal market dynamics.
If customers are not willing to pay for things that haven't yet been released, then how do stadiums manage to sell tickets for sports games and concerts? The evidence would suggest that people are indeed willing to invest in entertainment on a speculative basis, as long as the performers are well-known or well-recommended. Perhaps authors should try selling tickets in advance for their book releases, with ticket-holders getting the first copies?
Even if the VM author doesn't know the hardware's keys, couldn't the emulator include platform-specific workarounds? At some point, the software has to trust that the hardware is working in the documented fashion. When the hardware is capable of changing or ignoring the code in memory at will, how will the software be able to detect it? Any comparison in the code can be reversed. Any branch can be redirected. If system-specific private keys are generated, then it may be impossible to authenticate to an outside system, but one can always fool the local system into thinking the authentication was successful. The biggest risk is probably that the hardware will contain a proprietary shared key hard-coded into the logic, without which the software cannot be decoded, but shared keys are notoriously easy to break due to the sheer number of copies. Also, the software must be decoded in order to execute, so unless the encryption hardware is integrated into the processor itself, someone could use a logic analyser on the system bus to decode the real instructions.
Of course, by then everyone who cares will be using Linux anyway, so the VM probably won't be necessary.
Theft of service, for example, doesn't deprive anyone of anything - it merely provides the thief with something that wasn't paid for. Either way, it's still theft.
Not to be pedantic or anything, but theft of service only occurs when one person persuades another to perform some service on his/her behalf with the understanding that the person performing the services will be paid for their efforts. It is considered a theft of labour, which is considered a form of personal property. In all cases, there is a contract, verbal agreement, or other positive evidence that both parties agreed in advance that the service had a specific value to both the buyer and the seller. Thus, the fraudulent buyer is indeed depriving the seller of something of value -- his/her labour.
In contrast, when copyright infringement takes place, the labour has already occurred. The infringer has not tricked the author into performing any service. The author chose to perform the labour of his or her own accord, without any promise of payment. The infringer has, in fact, not entered into any agreement at all with the author directly, and yet the author mistakenly believes he or she has the right to control the infringer's actions for his or her own financial benefit. It's a basic economic principle, really: if you want to receive something of value for your labour, you have to find someone willing to pay for it ahead of time. You can't just do the work and then expect anyone who benefits to pay you whatever you ask. There has to be an agreement in place beforehand. For example, if I knew you wanted your lawn mowed, and just came over and did it for you without asking, and then gave you a bill for $5,000 for the service, you'd probably laugh in my face (or sue me for trespassing). You would certainly be under no obligation to pay me for my labour, because there is no agreement in place between us.
Our government made an agreement with authors and inventors, granting them exclusive powers over the actions of other citizens with regard to physical and digital representations of specific ideas. It's an agreement that a large fraction of this country's citizens do not agree with, and have no intention of abiding by. Since the authority of the goverment is derived from the will of its citizens, the government does not have the authority to force its citizens to abide by any agreement opposed by a large fraction (and possibly a majority) of its population. The government has two options at its disposal: end the agreement, or abuse its power outside of its rightful authority by continuing to make agreements on its citizens' behalf against their will. It is a sign of how far our goverment has strayed from its origins that the latter is even seriously considered.
Actually, that's backward. In public-key encryption, only the owner knows the private key. They can send the public key to anyone they wish, or post it on a message board somewhere--the public key isn't sensitive information. The public key is used to encrypt information sent to the owner. Once encrypted, only the owner of the private key can decrypt it. Typically, a public-key system is used to securely transfer a shared key, because shared-key encryption is typically a lot less CPU-intensive, but the principle is still the same. A typical session goes something like this:
(1) Client opens connection to server (2) Server sends its public key to client (4) Client generates session key and encrypts with server's public key (5) Client sends encrypted session key to server (6) Server and client communicate using session key for encryption
The only data transferred in cleartext is the server's public key, which is not sensitive information. The shared session key is never transmitted in cleartext, so even someone listening in couldn't decrypt the traffic passing through the connection. The primary danger is a "man in the middle" attack, in which the listener pretends to be the original server to the client and the client to the original server. By sending his own public key to the client he can trick the client into encrypting the data for the attacker and not for the original server. That's why a typical encryption certificate comes signed by the issuing authority and limited to a single domain, which is checked by the SSL library whenever a connection is established.
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The problem is that with today's technology, recorded music has far less value than live music, because the real cost of making a copy of a recording is nearly zero.
Copyright is ultimately a priviledge, not an inherent right like freedom of speech or physical property rights. It is a contract between society in general and the artists, one which few now alive ever formally agreed to and which fewer and fewer people feel was ever truly justified. If it weren't for these artificial legal restrictions on duplication, the price-point for recorded music would be so low that it wouldn't be practical to charge for a single song, or even a single album. This would not be then end of music, however. The demand for music -- new music in particular -- is not going anywhere soon.
One way for artists to raise capital is similar to the model used by movie producers even now: sell advance tickets.
Movies make most of their money in the first few weeks; they often pay for themselves in the opening weekend. Purchasing advance tickets is very similar to pre-ordering a book or CD, and offering pre-orders is a great way to ensure sufficient initial sales to cover the costs of production (including opportunity costs) while splitting the cost over a large enough group to make the prices reasonable. True, some people might choose to wait until the music becomes available on a P2P network, or get it from their friends. Some might simply choose not to listen to the music at all. It is never possible to guarantee the size of a market until the sales are confirmed. It isn't even possible to estimate the potential size of the market without taking prices into account, because people who would buy something at one price (free, for example) will often decide it's not worth the cost at a higher price. That doesn't stop other industries from turning a profit.
The keys to any business are building a loyal customer base, maintaining high standards of quality and reliability, and recognizing that profit can only occur when both parties agree on the exchange. DRM accomplishes none of these. It's rarely profitable for either side to try to dictate terms.
The problem is that with today's technology, recorded music has far less value than live music, because the real cost of making a copy of a recording is nearly zero. Copyright is ultimately a priviledge, not an inherent right like freedom of speech or physical property rights. It is a contract between society in general and the artists, one which few now alive ever formally agreed to and which fewer and fewer people feel was ever truly justified. If it weren't for these artificial legal restrictions on duplication, the price-point for recorded music would be so low that it wouldn't be practical to charge for a single song, or even a single album. This would not be then end of music, however. The demand for music -- new music in particular -- is not going anywhere soon. One way for artists to raise capital is similar to the model used by movie producers even now: sell advance tickets. Movies make most of their money in the first few weeks; they often pay for themselves in the opening weekend. Purchasing advance tickets is very similar to pre-ordering a book or CD, and offering pre-orders is a great way to ensure sufficient initial sales to cover the costs of production (including opportunity costs) while splitting the cost over a large enough group to make the prices reasonable. True, some people might choose to wait until the music becomes available on a P2P network, or get it from their friends. Some might simply choose not to listen to the music at all. It is never possible to guarantee the size of a market until the sales are confirmed. It isn't even possible to estimate the potential size of the market without taking prices into account, because people who would buy something at one price (free, for example) will often decide it's not worth the cost at a higher price. That doesn't stop other industries from turning a profit. The keys to any business are building a loyal customer base, maintaining high standards of quality and reliability, and recognizing that profit can only occur when both parties agree on the exchange. DRM accomplishes none of these. It's rarely profitable for either side to try to dictate terms.
An important point in your example is that the road was initially built with public funds, and only later turned over to a private group. In other words, the group that ended up administering the road probably didn't have the same level of investment in the road that a fully private venture would require. They also did not have the same need to build up trust amongst their customer base. Any private group intending to develop a transportation network would have to raise capital for the venture, capital that would be hard to raise unless they could demonstrate a workable business plan beforehand.
Mixed public/private ventures often combine the worst parts of both.
IMHO, I think that the lesson of Open Source programs is that software is greatly misunderstood. People have a habit of describing software as an engineering project, or an appliance, but in reality software is more like a how-to or do-it-yourself book stripped of all the unnecessary human-language guilding. It's a list of instructions, the most basic incarnation of an algorithm expressed in some physical arrangement of matter. The software exists independently of the computer itself, whose only advantages are its consistency and speed in carrying out algorithms. As such, software should lie fully outside the rightful domain of copyright law. If anything, software should be covered under patent law, which was designed for the express purpose of covering algorithms (processes) -- not that I believe that patents do anything to encourage advances in technology, their sole justification for existance.
The main objection that the telcos seem to have about municipal Wi-Fi projects is that the city pays for them out of the city's taxes, part of which come from the telcos themselves. In other words, the city government has the potential to force their own competition to help put themselves out of business by financing the development of the Wi-Fi infrastructure. It's not an intractable problem, but it is a fairly serious one. If the Wi-Fi network was developed by a private organization (for-profit or non-profit) without any assistance from city taxes the telcos would have no grounds on which to complain about unfair competition.
Of course, the telcos received huge tax-driven subsidies themselves when they started out, so perhaps the system isn't as unfair as they would like everyone to believe...
Yes, socialism sounds very good in theory, but in practice it nearly always end up hurting those it was designed to benefit. A state-controlled monopoly can never be as responsive to market conditions as a private monopoly, and is never subject to the free-market dynamics that hold private monopolies in check.
On this topic, I recommend taking a course in basic free-market economics. It is true that in some cases, when conditions are favorable, a free market can turn into a monopoly. Usually this is in cases where one party has a significant advantage which its competitors cannot overcome, such as an existing natural monopoly (e.g. location), and/or there is significant inefficiency in having more than one supplier in the same market. However, private monopolies continue to experience economic pressure, because if the prices are too high, or the services are lacking, then conditions become favorable for a more responsive competitor to enter the market. A free-market monopoly can only remain a monopoly so long as it remains reasonably responsive to its customers.
I agree that competing against an established monopoly can be much more difficult than starting a market where none previously existed. However, the difficulty is mostly due to the fact that the monopoly is successfully meeting the needs of its customers. If those customers were truly unhappy with the monopoly's services, then the barriers to entry would be significantly lower. There are some cases where poor historical decisions (such as allowing telcos to own the communications network itself, which is a natural monopoly) can limit the effectiveness of the free market in this situation, but these are nearly always due to the meddlesome influence of the State and not the workings of the free market itself. In such cases, regulation may be necessary to bring the system back into balance, but that does not change the fact that the imbalance was created by the State in the first place.
State-granted monopolies are not subject to the same free-market forces that influence private monopolies. Where a state-granted monopoly exists, there is no possibity for competition, even though a private solution might better serve the market.
Private monopolies, on the other hand, can only exist without State assistance when a monopolistic solution is the most efficient way to serve the market, because otherwise additional private solutions would naturally be developed and there would no longer be a monopoly. When a monopoly is developed through thoroughly private means, there is nothing preventing another from doing the same and thus breaking the monopoly.
It's possible to link to a specific version of any given Wikipedia article. You don't have to link to the "live" view. Try the "Cite this article" link on the left-hand side; you will be presented with a series of formated citations (APA, MLA, Chicago...) containing the URL of the specific version of the article which you were viewing. For example:
The page even has the BibTeX code for the citation, for academic citations.
For the most part, that's what VoIP providers do. However, there are some issues with this system, the one of which is that some areas have more than one local phone number associated with the 911 service, usually based on the local schedule of the PSAP personnel. For example, 911 might connect to one number during the day and another at night. Normally, 911 calls are routed at the local switch, and so these rules can be programmed on a case-by-case basic, but with VoIP it's difficult to compile a complete list of PSAP numbers and the routing rules that they correspond to.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, however, the issue here is the current address of the caller is not readily available to VoIP providers. For example, a VoIP customer could sign up in one area, providing an address for 911 service. Later that customer could move to a new area with a completely different 911 service. As far as the VoIP provider is concerned, nothing has changed. The customer can still make calls normally. However, if the customer tries to call 911, the call would be routed to the wrong call center.
Or you could legally use the free trial they offer to create the image, and then use the VMware Player application once the trial runs out. I'm well aware that you can find the serial numbers online, but why invite trouble when there is an easy alternative?
The simplest (but probably not cheapest) way to avoid problems like this under Windows would be to aquire a copy of VMware, create a virtual machine with two drives, and install Windows into the VM. The first virtual drive should be a "snapshot" drive (C:), the second is a normal drive and holds any data you want to work with. Immediately after installing Windows, commit the snapshot. After that, every time the VM is restarted the contents of C: will be reset to their original state, eliminating viruses, rootkits, spyware, etc. One significant drawback of this approach, however, is that VMware does not perform any hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, so e.g. games will not work properly within the VM. Other than graphics, the speed difference between the VM and the underlying hardware is fairly small.
I can agree to differ on most of the points, as you suggested, but I think I must point out one or two small issues with this countpoint.
An established artist does not necessarily need to advertise the specific new music that they will be performing. The artist's past performances, along with the promise of a new song or two, would probably be enough to generate demand even if no recordings of the new songs had yet been released.
Also, I would expect that most artists with permanent disabilities of one kind or another are still perfectly capable of holding a concert, or other form of live performance, despite their disability. In fact, a disability of some kind can be a form of asset as a performer, as most people are rather enchanted with the idea of a hero who carries on despite the obstacles blocking his/he way. If they're capable of making a recording, they're probably capable of doing exactly the same thing in front of a live audience. Temporary disabilities or illnesses, on the other hand, are a risk in any line of work, though perhaps more common among performers, and would generally covered by some form of health insurance specific to performers.
Given the wealth of symbolic imagery in the Bible (not that it's all symbolic), I would say that it would be hard to imagine that God the Father could possibly be incapable of speaking symbolically, at least in the manner in which we understand symbolism. It is possible that what we interpret as symbolism is simply our lack of understanding; perhaps we make a distinction between symbolism and reality where no such distinction really exists. There have been cultures (the Celts, for example) that did not see such a rigid separation between the world around them and the symbols within it, perferring to view the world around them as having a sort of dual nature, simultaneously literal and symbolic.
Most of the confusion surrounding "taking the Bible literally" comes from people who take one or two sentences out of context, ignore the intentions of the author and the conventions of the original language, and treat what they've read as instructions directed at themselves. Most of the Bible is historical in nature, not instructional. The main things to focus on when reading a historical account are what the main characters did, and what the consequences were. Ignoring either one will lead to misinterpretations.
The organization really should add their certificate to the accepted list of certificates in their standard system image. That way their employees wouldn't be forced to endure the constant interruptions generated by their self-signed certificate. However, for an in-house site, it's probably overkill to buy an e-commerce SSL certificate from e.g. Verisign, which can cost hundreds of dollars per year to maintain.
Of course it's literal. In other words, Christ literally said "I am the door". He may, of course, have been speaking metaphorically at the time, as He often did. That doesn't mean that the text isn't a literal account.
Since this is becoming a rather long thread, I'm going to try to limit this to the more basic points on which we appear to disagree: (1) distribution; and (2) derivative works & control over use. I'll also try to explain my reasoning regarding my last point, "The artists have a right to charge for their own work, but not for the work of others".
(1) Distribution. You assert that artists cannot make money selling access to their music without copyright, since the price of the copy would quickly fall to zero. It is true that the artist would be unable to profit in perpetuity from any given recorded performance, because the recordings would eventually become commonplace. At first, though, there is a rather large demand for the new music. The artist can take advantage of this demand to make a reasonable amount of money right away, by holding concerts and/or limited-access performances. It would be foolish to make any high-quality recordings at this point, since that would saturate the market early on and take away the advantage. Once the initial demand has worn off, perhaps, the artist might release one or more "official" recordings, which may find their way on to an online network of some sort, but at this point the artist has already been compensated for the effort of creating the first song, and has probably already moved on to the next one.
(2) Derivative Works. There have been court cases declaring that three notes is enough similarity to constitute infringement. Other cases have declared that works the artist thought were original were actually "subconsciouly infringing" on songs the artist had heard as a child. By these definitions, it is probable that there is no longer any possibility of creating a song that doesn't infringe on someone else's copyright. If all copyrighted songs were registered, then one could check for infringement ahead of time, but even that is not longer possible, since the registration requirement no longer holds. Also, the issue of credit is a sticky one, even with copyright. Should attribution be a legal requirement? Perhaps. Some even advocate that artists have the exclusive right to control all use of their work, even use that would otherwise be permitted under "fair use". For example, various companies have tried to use EULA's to keep their customers from publishing poor reviews of their products. It is certainly possible that some group that an artist is opposed to might use the artist's work in a way opposed to the artist's beliefs. However, this works both ways. The artist is free to speak out against any group to which he/she/it is opposed.
(3) "The artists have a right to charge for their own work, but not for the work of others". The work I was referring to here was not the work of creating the song, but rather the work of distributing it. This is probably one of the most inefficient parts of the current system, since the artificial monopoly of the recording labels over the music itself gives them an additional monopoly over the distribution of the music. By now, distribution of digital content has become extremely cheap. With the Internet, sending the necessary instructions to recreate a near-perfect-fidelity copy of any song to almost anywhere in the world can be done in a matter of minutes for less than one cent in additional costs. However, the copyright system, whether right or wrong, lets the labels monopolize the means of distribution and take in huge profits for doing something that should be nearly cost-free with today's technology, at the expense of both the customers and the artists.
I'm not saying that he should give away his work for free. In the absence of a legally-binding agreement, no one is obligated to do anything for anyone. He's quite within his rights to keep his ideas to himself, or to sell access to them to whomever he wishes, at any price they are willing to pay.
What I'm asking is what gives him the right to forcibly prevent other people from freely copying and/or building on the products that they've purchased. That is the heart of copyrights (and patents). Copyrights (and patents) are negative priviledges, not positive ones: they take the right to use certain ideas, processes or behaviors away from everyone else, so that only those to whom the priviledges are awarded can use them freely. Copyrights are the worse of the two, since patents at least allow for non-infringing derivative works, but both copyrights and patents hold back innovation and cultural development, while simultaneously distorting the workings of the free market by tying together otherwise unrelated services: performances, recording, publication/duplication, distribution, and advertising.
It's true that music, books, and other forms of recorded ideas do not require the artist to be personally present in order for them to be enjoyed. It's also true that they are by their very nature in effectively infinite supply, because they can be copied at little or no cost. In a free market, the prices of the copies would approach their marginal cost, which is effectively zero. Effectively, anyone who already has a copy can become a local distributor, at least until the market for the recording is saturated. Original performances, however, retain their value, because they are in limited supply. The copies, on the other hand, have nothing to do with the original creator. The artists have a right to charge for their own work, but not for the work of others.
So what, exactly, did he do to deserve all that pay? That way you describe the situation sounds rather like winning a lottery: a huge payoff for the lucky few, minimal effort required to enter. A decent work ethic, or the common sense not throw away the future of one's family on a risky dream, would be a far better inheritance than the unearned income from someone else's lucky break. Also, the problems you attribute to touring apply equally well to any other business requiring personal appearances; why should the business of entertainment be any different?
Actually, if they want to spend $3,000 of their own money on the project, I don't think anyone here would object to that. However, what they're really doing is spending ~$1.2e6 of their community' money, taken by force from their neighbours through taxation. Those who want to give $3,000 to the project can do so of their own free will; they have no right to force those opposed to the project to cover the costs.
In the case of OpenOffice, it would probably be better to save a journal of recent changes, rather than continuously updating and re-compressing the XML. The journal could be folded into the main document when OpenOffice exits, or recovered automatically when OO opens an unmerged document. It takes a significant amount of CPU time to save a large document, mainly due to the compression. There may be other programs running which could make better use of the CPU, not to mention that saving usually locks the document for a second or two, which would be very irritating for the user if it happened every second or so.
Thanks for the considerate reply. It's nice to hear fron someone with reasonable criticism.
I must point out that none of the examples that you gave are limited to actual theft of service. In the cable example, the cable company enters into a contract to provide their signal in exchange for payment and the customer's promise to only use approved equipment. It's in the "terms of service" agreement. The cable company is under no obligation to provide signals that are not listed in the contract, and the customer is under no obligations beyond those in the contract either. If the customer did not agree to the terms, the cable company would not connect their equipment to the cable network, which is their property and is subject to trespass laws should anyone get the idea to tap into the signal him/herself. The modem example is similar. I would be interested in any cases where putting trash into a dumpster on another's property was considered theft of service, since that clearly falls under the category of trespass. There's no need to cover it with a second law. Furthermore, none of these examples involve any extra cost on the part of the person providing the service, and thus the only losses are potential, not actual, sales. Only actual losses count as damages.
If customers are not willing to pay for things that haven't yet been released, then how do stadiums manage to sell tickets for sports games and concerts? The evidence would suggest that people are indeed willing to invest in entertainment on a speculative basis, as long as the performers are well-known or well-recommended. Perhaps authors should try selling tickets in advance for their book releases, with ticket-holders getting the first copies?
Even if the VM author doesn't know the hardware's keys, couldn't the emulator include platform-specific workarounds? At some point, the software has to trust that the hardware is working in the documented fashion. When the hardware is capable of changing or ignoring the code in memory at will, how will the software be able to detect it? Any comparison in the code can be reversed. Any branch can be redirected. If system-specific private keys are generated, then it may be impossible to authenticate to an outside system, but one can always fool the local system into thinking the authentication was successful. The biggest risk is probably that the hardware will contain a proprietary shared key hard-coded into the logic, without which the software cannot be decoded, but shared keys are notoriously easy to break due to the sheer number of copies. Also, the software must be decoded in order to execute, so unless the encryption hardware is integrated into the processor itself, someone could use a logic analyser on the system bus to decode the real instructions.
Of course, by then everyone who cares will be using Linux anyway, so the VM probably won't be necessary.
Not to be pedantic or anything, but theft of service only occurs when one person persuades another to perform some service on his/her behalf with the understanding that the person performing the services will be paid for their efforts. It is considered a theft of labour, which is considered a form of personal property. In all cases, there is a contract, verbal agreement, or other positive evidence that both parties agreed in advance that the service had a specific value to both the buyer and the seller. Thus, the fraudulent buyer is indeed depriving the seller of something of value -- his/her labour.
In contrast, when copyright infringement takes place, the labour has already occurred. The infringer has not tricked the author into performing any service. The author chose to perform the labour of his or her own accord, without any promise of payment. The infringer has, in fact, not entered into any agreement at all with the author directly, and yet the author mistakenly believes he or she has the right to control the infringer's actions for his or her own financial benefit. It's a basic economic principle, really: if you want to receive something of value for your labour, you have to find someone willing to pay for it ahead of time. You can't just do the work and then expect anyone who benefits to pay you whatever you ask. There has to be an agreement in place beforehand. For example, if I knew you wanted your lawn mowed, and just came over and did it for you without asking, and then gave you a bill for $5,000 for the service, you'd probably laugh in my face (or sue me for trespassing). You would certainly be under no obligation to pay me for my labour, because there is no agreement in place between us.
Our government made an agreement with authors and inventors, granting them exclusive powers over the actions of other citizens with regard to physical and digital representations of specific ideas. It's an agreement that a large fraction of this country's citizens do not agree with, and have no intention of abiding by. Since the authority of the goverment is derived from the will of its citizens, the government does not have the authority to force its citizens to abide by any agreement opposed by a large fraction (and possibly a majority) of its population. The government has two options at its disposal: end the agreement, or abuse its power outside of its rightful authority by continuing to make agreements on its citizens' behalf against their will. It is a sign of how far our goverment has strayed from its origins that the latter is even seriously considered.
In the short term.
Actually, that's backward. In public-key encryption, only the owner knows the private key. They can send the public key to anyone they wish, or post it on a message board somewhere--the public key isn't sensitive information. The public key is used to encrypt information sent to the owner. Once encrypted, only the owner of the private key can decrypt it. Typically, a public-key system is used to securely transfer a shared key, because shared-key encryption is typically a lot less CPU-intensive, but the principle is still the same. A typical session goes something like this:
(1) Client opens connection to server
(2) Server sends its public key to client
(4) Client generates session key and encrypts with server's public key
(5) Client sends encrypted session key to server
(6) Server and client communicate using session key for encryption
The only data transferred in cleartext is the server's public key, which is not sensitive information. The shared session key is never transmitted in cleartext, so even someone listening in couldn't decrypt the traffic passing through the connection. The primary danger is a "man in the middle" attack, in which the listener pretends to be the original server to the client and the client to the original server. By sending his own public key to the client he can trick the client into encrypting the data for the attacker and not for the original server. That's why a typical encryption certificate comes signed by the issuing authority and limited to a single domain, which is checked by the SSL library whenever a connection is established.