Capitalism's worst flaw is that it externalizes its problems. The environment is an all but too well-known example of this. Why properly dispose of waste products when you can dump them in international waters? Even if you are caught the fines amount to less than the proper disposal would have cost! This is happening even in the US' version of capitalism!
This is not an attribute of the market itself, but of the legal structure in which it exists. Many free-market advocates are fans of strict liability which would internalize those externalities. The process is not hard -- just remove the tragedy of the commons incentives through privitization.
Oh, so I should be happy with a volvo when my neighbor can use the cost offset of not buying enviro-friendly products to go buy a porsche? Great solution there! You might convince me of that, but not the 300 million other people who live on this slab of earth we call the United States.
If the externalized costs of resource wasting are internalized within the market, then there *is* no cost offset by buying non-enviro-friendly products. In fact, they would become more expensive relative to the value placed on the potentially wasted resources.
I think you mean the consumer. And no, because people follow the path of least resistance. The problem is not convincing the individual - with enough education that is possible. It is convincing society at large, people who are more than willing to ignore truths to have material and personal gain. It's a big, anonymous system out there - who's gonna complain if I buy styrofoam cups instead of wax ones? Nobody. Zero social incentive. Plenty of monentary incentive though.
You're half-right. It's a *systemic* change that is required. Not because of anonymity, but because of liability and accountability. No other mechanism devised by man has yet provided as effective a means of resource allocation than the market. But it is defined by the legal structure in which it exists. And as long as we have the US Department of the Interior allocating rather than individuals and corporations with vested interest in the property, we'll have more of the same.
Right now, there are very strong indications that the environmentalists are losing the war against capitalism. I rather doubt this book will change the balance much. To use your own dialect: the free market has spoken.
They are fighting the wrong battle. To the extent that the market is the problem, it is also the solution, by allowing the internalizing of those externalities.
I reaffirm my position that capitalism and environmentalism are at odds with each other fundamentally. You can't reconcile them and still claim to be a member of both.
Perhaps, but only because the defenders and detractors of each don't understand the argument.
That's like saying that, because I listen to a particular band on the radio, they get money from it. No, they only get money if I'm inspired enough by what I hear to actually go out and buy the album.
Not exactly. Firms such as ASCAP and BMA collect royalty payments on behalf of composers, performers and publishers from radio stations, skating rinks, bars, restaurants, and just about any place you can think of that plays music in a commericial setting. Even telephone hold music has a royalty basis.
You'd be surprised how much they collect, too. And that's just here in the US.
ASCAP operates under a congressional anti-trust consent decree, sharply limiting their rates and litigation powers.
By the way, Katz is a total putz. I can't possibly imagine why anyone would give him any authority here.
See The Calculus of Consent by James Buchanan (no relation to Pat) and Gordon Tullock, for which the authors won a Nobel Prize.
You're right that it's not 'corruption.' It's an inevitable consequence of representative democracy. That doesn't make it any better. In fact, it probably makes it worse.
The purpose of Constitutional limitations on the power of Congress is to avoid exactly this situation. The key discovery on Buchanan and Tullock's part is that the process of takings by special interests is not simply unfortunate -- it is inevitable by the nature of legislative processes.
"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." -- P. J. O'Rourke
While I'm not a huge fan of copyrights, there is nothing about them per se that couldn't be accomplished with contractual licensing. *Patents* are necessarily government granted, *trademark protection* is a derivative of fraud, but must be granted by govt. *Copyright* could be established in any system of strict contractual liability.
Mind you, this would prevent utterly the copyright of something like MLK's "I have a dream." However, it would protect any kind of standard media publishing.
Ponder this standard for copyrights: copyrights can only be upheld when their application *can* be established by contractual licensing. Ex: "By purchasing this book, the buyer assumes the responsibility for preventing unauthorized reproduction of this work for commercial benefit." You don't want to take responsibility, don't buy the book.
Attorneys' fees and court costs are paid by the non-prevailing *attorney.* Lawyers accept or refuse cases with the knowledge of the risk-hedge necessary to avoid they prevailing party's fees.
Malpractice firms would extend insurance into "non-prevalence coverage," and "meta-lawyers" would pre-evaluate cases before filing.
Model it on Underwriters Laboratories, and let insurance companies manage all the risk. It's what they do best.
Fight corporate megaliths with better-incented corporate megaliths.
This entire issue also brings into light the control of the corporate world over the government, and not just the US government it seems. If I remember correctly, from the US Constitution, Rights are based on priority, those who have a higher priority take precedence.
Neither the US Constitution, nor the Bill of Rights attempts to place rights in any kind of a hierarchy. Rights-based legal constructs are founded on the idea that rights are non-conflicting. That is, it is unnecessary for some rights to "trump" others because rights themselves are never in conflict.
That order would be
God
There is no mention of God or any specific religious entity in the US Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
The Citizen.
Citizens (or more accurately, individuals) are the only entities recognized to have rights as such.
The government
Governments do not have rights. They have powers. The idea is that, in a democratic republic, the government derives its powers from the consent and rights of its citizens. That is, the government is supposed to act as a proxy for the exercise of the rights of individuals. (Note: it does *NOT* work this way in practice!)
Only the federal government is strictly governed by the Constitution. State and local governments are prohibited by Supreme Court precedent from enacting laws which restrict an individuals federal rights as defined by the Constitution, but other than that and some light stuff about interstate tarriffs, the Constitution doesn't apply to state or local governmental issues. Your state has its own Constitution.
Corporations.
Corporations are not mentioned in the US Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
The concept of a corporation is that it is a short-form method to describe the exact contractual rights of a group of individuals. If no movie studio in Hollywood were a corporation, they'd still make as much of a stink. The MPAA's legal ground is the copyright protection of the individual artists, writers and performers who participated in DVD production. You may not like that, but it isn't about the fact that its a corporation. It's about the fact that copyright exists at all.
How is it that a 'person(s)' in control of a corporate entity can use its weight for their own vendettas?
Because corporate managers can act as consumers as well.
But really, is he? Valenti is a buffoon, yes, but *he* believes he is acting in the best investment interests of the MPAA members. He believes that the issue *is* piracy, and it is the testimony of technology experts that must convince the court that the claim is mistaken.
Anyway, thats just my take on the issue, it doesn't make any sense to me. To me, something like that doesn't only seem illegal, its immoral.
Well, childish and ignorant, at least. Nevertheless, even stupid evil villans have rights.
What happened? I thought we had to right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happyness? If I can't watch a DVD I purchased on my computer because of an immoral corporate entity, my right to Pursuit of Happyness has been repressed!
You have a right to *pursuit* of happiness. That does not mean that anyone else must provide it for you.
Its no-one elses duty to make sure I'm happy, so you can't force them to 'make' a DVD player for Linux for example, but they should NOT be able to stop you.
They aren't stopping anyone from making a DVD player. They want to stop some people from making a *useful* DVD player, in the sense that they want to prevent buyers from being able to access the encrypted information. But, from their perspective, this is simply protection of their own intellectual property. They sell it under the expectation that access to the information will be restricted to authorized methods.
Here's the rub: the crypto will be considered a trade secret by the court. A trade secret must be safeguarded by reasonable measures. However, as the developers of deCSS know all too well, the safeguard was not reasonable for its purpose. In fact, it was totally ridiculous for its purpose! It accomplished nothing to prevent the mass reproduction of DVDs.
So, the court must decide whether the *accomplished* purpose of the crypto is within the legitimate intellectual property controls interests of the copyright holders. If the technical community presents the case effectively, (and I think the EFF can do that) then the court should rule against the MPAA.
You know... the funny part is the "boycott Hollywood" response. What for? The artists and copyright holders don't understand the issue, so they'll just feel alienated. It's no different than deciding not to listen to music because ASCAP is enforcing copyright laws regarding MP3s.
DVD *IS* the superior format for viewing movies today. If you *want* to see Terminator 2, there's no point in relegating yourself to watching the commericial-ridden hack on TNT because you think Valenti is a jerk.
*Actually* it was intiated based on big pushes by the Notes user community. Lotus/Iris (and Iris isn't "the dev. half of Lotus," btw -- Iris has about 400 people and they write *nothing* but Notes/Domino. What they are is a wholly owned subsidiary.) operates several discussions where the developers and marketers get direct feedback from both end users and the Notes Business Partner community. It was the business partners and end-users (meaning developers and administrators of Domino, in this case) who begged, cajoled and screamed for a Linux port.
I was one of those beggars and screamers 2 years ago when Iris didn't take Linux seriously. I remember a particularly amusing point when one of the Iris developers responded "but what Linux variant would we write for?" and nine out of ten responses shouted "RED HAT!" Guess we called that one pretty well, eh?
Anyway, IBM has done a lot to encourage the development of the Linux port. The biggest thing they've done is fund the QA effort. Iris produces Notes versions *in part* based on their ability to find funding for the testing of the platform. It's one of the reasons they've dropped SCO and Netware servers in the past. I believe it was IBM who finally ponied up the testing dollars necessary for Lotus to ship a Linux port.
I've had a Domino R4.6 server, which was later updated to each rev of R5 that's been released, running POP3 without any problems. That's on NT4, mind you -- and it just don't get any flakier than that. The box is an old Dell PowerEdge -- PPro200 with 128MB RAM. It's *completely* underpowered, yet has run securely as a Domino server for POP3, HTTP and SMTP, along with serving native Notes clients, for over a year.
I restart it once every three months just for good measure.
4.5.2 is a *way* old version. There have been some 15 revs since then.
R5 has an integrated JavaScript IDE, by the way. And if you don't like it, you can add inline JavaScript to any page, highlight it, and flag it as JavaScript just as easily as bold-facing text in MS Word.
The developers at Iris Associates (the internal Lotus engineering group responsible for writing Notes) publically deny the prospect of a native Linux client. Lotus is wise to do this, since the strategic direction is to phase out the native client for any but design work.
Though I agree wholeheartedly with most of iarchitect's analysis of the Notes R4.6 UI, it should be pointed out that:
1) the *entire* user interface was revisited in Notes R5, leading to a tremendous number of changes. The Notes client looks radically different. The Notes community has had mixed reviews of the new interface, but on net, they've been positive.
2) if they're using Linux clients, the interface will be browser-based, anyway. So criticisms of the client UI are mostly irrelevant -- or at least, only apply to developers rather than end-users.
I've got extensive experience with Notes/Domino, dating back to V2 (OS/2 servers on IPX networks.... [shudder]).
The feedback coming from the Linux beta has been very positive for Lotus. The server is proving wonderfully flexible. You should be forewarned, though, that they have no plans at the moment for a Linux client. Win32, Mac and 4+ browsers only.
Check out Iris Associates' (the Domino engineering group) Linux beta discussion at http://www.notes.net
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This is not an attribute of the market itself, but of the legal structure in which it exists. Many free-market advocates are fans of strict liability which would internalize those externalities. The process is not hard -- just remove the tragedy of the commons incentives through privitization.
Oh, so I should be happy with a volvo when my neighbor can use the cost offset of not buying enviro-friendly products to go buy a porsche? Great solution there! You might convince me of that, but not the 300 million other people who live on this slab of earth we call the United States.
If the externalized costs of resource wasting are internalized within the market, then there *is* no cost offset by buying non-enviro-friendly products. In fact, they would become more expensive relative to the value placed on the potentially wasted resources.
I think you mean the consumer. And no, because people follow the path of least resistance. The problem is not convincing the individual - with enough education that is possible. It is convincing society at large, people who are more than willing to ignore truths to have material and personal gain. It's a big, anonymous system out there - who's gonna complain if I buy styrofoam cups instead of wax ones? Nobody. Zero social incentive. Plenty of monentary incentive though.
You're half-right. It's a *systemic* change that is required. Not because of anonymity, but because of liability and accountability. No other mechanism devised by man has yet provided as effective a means of resource allocation than the market. But it is defined by the legal structure in which it exists. And as long as we have the US Department of the Interior allocating rather than individuals and corporations with vested interest in the property, we'll have more of the same.
Right now, there are very strong indications that the environmentalists are losing the war against capitalism. I rather doubt this book will change the balance much. To use your own dialect: the free market has spoken.
They are fighting the wrong battle. To the extent that the market is the problem, it is also the solution, by allowing the internalizing of those externalities.
I reaffirm my position that capitalism and environmentalism are at odds with each other fundamentally. You can't reconcile them and still claim to be a member of both.
Perhaps, but only because the defenders and detractors of each don't understand the argument.
see http://environmental.networkroom.com/
Not exactly. Firms such as ASCAP and BMA collect royalty payments on behalf of composers, performers and publishers from radio stations, skating rinks, bars, restaurants, and just about any place you can think of that plays music in a commericial setting. Even telephone hold music has a royalty basis.
You'd be surprised how much they collect, too. And that's just here in the US.
ASCAP operates under a congressional anti-trust consent decree, sharply limiting their rates and litigation powers.
By the way, Katz is a total putz. I can't possibly imagine why anyone would give him any authority here.
You're right that it's not 'corruption.' It's an inevitable consequence of representative democracy. That doesn't make it any better. In fact, it probably makes it worse.
The purpose of Constitutional limitations on the power of Congress is to avoid exactly this situation. The key discovery on Buchanan and Tullock's part is that the process of takings by special interests is not simply unfortunate -- it is inevitable by the nature of legislative processes.
"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."
-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."
-- P. J. O'Rourke
While I'm not a huge fan of copyrights, there is nothing about them per se that couldn't be accomplished with contractual licensing. *Patents* are necessarily government granted, *trademark protection* is a derivative of fraud, but must be granted by govt. *Copyright* could be established in any system of strict contractual liability.
Mind you, this would prevent utterly the copyright of something like MLK's "I have a dream." However, it would protect any kind of standard media publishing.
Ponder this standard for copyrights: copyrights can only be upheld when their application *can* be established by contractual licensing. Ex: "By purchasing this book, the buyer assumes the responsibility for preventing unauthorized reproduction of this work for commercial benefit." You don't want to take responsibility, don't buy the book.
Better handling of representation...
Attorneys' fees and court costs are paid by the non-prevailing *attorney.* Lawyers accept or refuse cases with the knowledge of the risk-hedge necessary to avoid they prevailing party's fees.
Malpractice firms would extend insurance into "non-prevalence coverage," and "meta-lawyers" would pre-evaluate cases before filing.
Model it on Underwriters Laboratories, and let insurance companies manage all the risk. It's what they do best.
Fight corporate megaliths with better-incented corporate megaliths.
Neither the US Constitution, nor the Bill of Rights attempts to place rights in any kind of a hierarchy. Rights-based legal constructs are founded on the idea that rights are non-conflicting. That is, it is unnecessary for some rights to "trump" others because rights themselves are never in conflict.
That order would be
God
There is no mention of God or any specific religious entity in the US Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
The Citizen.
Citizens (or more accurately, individuals) are the only entities recognized to have rights as such.
The government
Governments do not have rights. They have powers. The idea is that, in a democratic republic, the government derives its powers from the consent and rights of its citizens. That is, the government is supposed to act as a proxy for the exercise of the rights of individuals. (Note: it does *NOT* work this way in practice!)
Only the federal government is strictly governed by the Constitution. State and local governments are prohibited by Supreme Court precedent from enacting laws which restrict an individuals federal rights as defined by the Constitution, but other than that and some light stuff about interstate tarriffs, the Constitution doesn't apply to state or local governmental issues. Your state has its own Constitution.
Corporations.
Corporations are not mentioned in the US Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
The concept of a corporation is that it is a short-form method to describe the exact contractual rights of a group of individuals. If no movie studio in Hollywood were a corporation, they'd still make as much of a stink. The MPAA's legal ground is the copyright protection of the individual artists, writers and performers who participated in DVD production. You may not like that, but it isn't about the fact that its a corporation. It's about the fact that copyright exists at all.
How is it that a 'person(s)' in control of a corporate entity can use its weight for their own vendettas?
Because corporate managers can act as consumers as well.
But really, is he? Valenti is a buffoon, yes, but *he* believes he is acting in the best investment interests of the MPAA members. He believes that the issue *is* piracy, and it is the testimony of technology experts that must convince the court that the claim is mistaken.
Anyway, thats just my take on the issue, it doesn't make any sense to me. To me, something like that doesn't only seem illegal, its immoral.
Well, childish and ignorant, at least. Nevertheless, even stupid evil villans have rights.
What happened? I thought we had to right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happyness? If I can't watch a DVD I purchased on my computer because of an immoral corporate entity, my right to Pursuit of Happyness has been repressed!
You have a right to *pursuit* of happiness. That does not mean that anyone else must provide it for you.
Its no-one elses duty to make sure I'm happy, so you can't force them to 'make' a DVD player for Linux for example, but they should NOT be able to stop you.
They aren't stopping anyone from making a DVD player. They want to stop some people from making a *useful* DVD player, in the sense that they want to prevent buyers from being able to access the encrypted information. But, from their perspective, this is simply protection of their own intellectual property. They sell it under the expectation that access to the information will be restricted to authorized methods.
Here's the rub: the crypto will be considered a trade secret by the court. A trade secret must be safeguarded by reasonable measures. However, as the developers of deCSS know all too well, the safeguard was not reasonable for its purpose. In fact, it was totally ridiculous for its purpose! It accomplished nothing to prevent the mass reproduction of DVDs.
So, the court must decide whether the *accomplished* purpose of the crypto is within the legitimate intellectual property controls interests of the copyright holders. If the technical community presents the case effectively, (and I think the EFF can do that) then the court should rule against the MPAA.
You know... the funny part is the "boycott Hollywood" response. What for? The artists and copyright holders don't understand the issue, so they'll just feel alienated. It's no different than deciding not to listen to music because ASCAP is enforcing copyright laws regarding MP3s.
DVD *IS* the superior format for viewing movies today. If you *want* to see Terminator 2, there's no point in relegating yourself to watching the commericial-ridden hack on TNT because you think Valenti is a jerk.
Yahoo has a commercial voting link on their home page with the ads in Windows Media Player and Real Player formats.
/.ed? Interesting convergence theory there...)
(I wonder if I'm about to cause Yahoo to get
Much has been said already about Frank Herbert's Dune series, but I'd like to add that he wrote some brilliant work *outside* that series, as well.
The Dosadi Experiment
Whipping Star
The Santaroga Barrier
The Jesus Incident
Eye (a short story collection)
The White Plague
I'd recommend them all. "Eye" is probably the best choice for a 13-year old, but I don't think "The White Plague" is too much.
*Actually* it was intiated based on big pushes by the Notes user community. Lotus/Iris (and Iris isn't "the dev. half of Lotus," btw -- Iris has about 400 people and they write *nothing* but Notes/Domino. What they are is a wholly owned subsidiary.) operates several discussions where the developers and marketers get direct feedback from both end users and the Notes Business Partner community. It was the business partners and end-users (meaning developers and administrators of Domino, in this case) who begged, cajoled and screamed for a Linux port.
I was one of those beggars and screamers 2 years ago when Iris didn't take Linux seriously. I remember a particularly amusing point when one of the Iris developers responded "but what Linux variant would we write for?" and nine out of ten responses shouted "RED HAT!" Guess we called that one pretty well, eh?
Anyway, IBM has done a lot to encourage the development of the Linux port. The biggest thing they've done is fund the QA effort. Iris produces Notes versions *in part* based on their ability to find funding for the testing of the platform. It's one of the reasons they've dropped SCO and Netware servers in the past. I believe it was IBM who finally ponied up the testing dollars necessary for Lotus to ship a Linux port.
I've had a Domino R4.6 server, which was later updated to each rev of R5 that's been released, running POP3 without any problems. That's on NT4, mind you -- and it just don't get any flakier than that. The box is an old Dell PowerEdge -- PPro200 with 128MB RAM. It's *completely* underpowered, yet has run securely as a Domino server for POP3, HTTP and SMTP, along with serving native Notes clients, for over a year.
I restart it once every three months just for good measure.
4.5.2 is a *way* old version. There have been some 15 revs since then.
R5 has an integrated JavaScript IDE, by the way. And if you don't like it, you can add inline JavaScript to any page, highlight it, and flag it as JavaScript just as easily as bold-facing text in MS Word.
The developers at Iris Associates (the internal Lotus engineering group responsible for writing Notes) publically deny the prospect of a native Linux client. Lotus is wise to do this, since the strategic direction is to phase out the native client for any but design work.
Though I agree wholeheartedly with most of iarchitect's analysis of the Notes R4.6 UI, it should be pointed out that:
1) the *entire* user interface was revisited in Notes R5, leading to a tremendous number of changes. The Notes client looks radically different. The Notes community has had mixed reviews of the new interface, but on net, they've been positive.
2) if they're using Linux clients, the interface will be browser-based, anyway. So criticisms of the client UI are mostly irrelevant -- or at least, only apply to developers rather than end-users.
I've got extensive experience with Notes/Domino, dating back to V2 (OS/2 servers on IPX networks.... [shudder]).
The feedback coming from the Linux beta has been very positive for Lotus. The server is proving wonderfully flexible. You should be forewarned, though, that they have no plans at the moment for a Linux client. Win32, Mac and 4+ browsers only.
Check out Iris Associates' (the Domino engineering group) Linux beta discussion at http://www.notes.net