I don't see why we should care that the RIAA is whining about piracy. People are getting shafted by the music business, both the artists that usually get paid nothing for their efforts and consumers that have to pay way too much for crappy music.
OK, I'll accept that the law is the law and that the RIAA has the right to exploit the law however they want. However, the march of technology means that people can distribute music and make copies for a cost that is orders of magnitude lower than what the record companies want to charge. Why is it that I have to shut up and deal with a law that is not to my advantage, but the RIAA doesn't have to deal with the fact that technology is finally putting pressure on their unacceptable business practices?
Let the RIAA deal with the existing laws and technology just like we consumers are supposed to. I don't think the RIAA's current business model can survive without changes to the law, but that is no reason to change the law. I have never used file sharing (and what little copying I have done is legal in Canada), but I am glad that large numbers of people are. Without some sort of pressure on the RIAA, they are never going to lower prices or improve their product. I consider file sharing to be civil disobedience; it is breaking the law in order to protest the unacceptable practices of the RIAA.
As you have pointed out, the technology exists that would make it much easier to buy obscure books that you want. Your idea of printing books is a good one; the extra cost of printing individual copies is probably not significant for $100 reference books, but may too much for $10 paperback novels. This would also seem like a good service to solve the problem that reading on a computer screen is not pleasant; stores could offer to download and print non-copyrighted works from the Internet as well.
I think print-on-demand would work even better for CDs. The cost of a CD-R blank is negligible, and a CD can be burned in a few minutes. There is no excuse for any CD to be out of print. I really don't understand why I must pay more to get copies of obscure music that no one but me likes; shouldn't music that nobody wants cost less than popular music?
It is a great source of frustration that these companies could be using technology to lower prices, offer more variety, and make more money by expanding the market by offering all their back catalog of out-of-print material. Instead, the copyright owners are aggressively enforcing existing laws and trying to get new ones passed to preserve their current business model in the face of technology. How can we convince these companies that they will make more money by selling us what we want than by trying to force us to buy what they offer?
Actually, I think this situation is a fault with our current economic system. There is a fundamental asymmetry between companies that decide what to sell and customers that decide what to buy. As a consumer, I can only choose not to buy something that is offered, there is no way for me to force a company to manufacture or sell something I want to buy.
What I think has been happening is that companies have been exploiting this advantage shamelessly. Take your video store example. Someone who walks into a video store wants to rent something, if all there is a stack of 100 copies of Bad Boys 2, they are going to rent that movie if there is a remote chance they will like it. Eventually, they might come to believe that the limited selection is all that exists, and happily accept the situation. The same thing is repeated in all sorts of stores now; only the most popular items are stocked, which most people are happy with, and the rest just make do.
I don't know how, but somehow technology and the internet will improve this situation. With the cheap worldwide communications that the Web provides, it should be easier to sell goods that appeal to very small audiences, not harder.
This could suggest an answer to the dilemma of becoming a professional Science Fiction author. Yes, there is no magazine market left to allow budding authors to learn their craft; but maybe another method is available. Perhaps writers will have to build their reputation and hone their craft by writing for free and distributing their work via the internet. Once an author has established a reputation this way, then publishers might be more willing to give them a contract. This system is not as good for the author, who must do much more work before earning any money; but things change, and everyone has to adjust to new realities.
Well, our opinions differ a little, I think. I assume, from your statement that Americans or Europeans (or Canadians, like me:-) are not disadvantaged by higher labour costs with open source, that you believe most open source development will be done for free. I don't believe that, I think there will always be professional programmers; but they will soon all be working on open source software.
The difficult part of programming is the design portion; it requires knowledge of the business as well as programming knowledge. I don't think the designing part can ever be completely outsourced to people unfamiliar with the business, so open source or not, there will be some jobs for Western programmers, whatever happens.
I firmly believe that programming jobs are not going to disappear, any unemployment caused by the current outsourcing fad will eventually come back. A whole lot of farming jobs disappeared as agricultural technology improved, and all those farming jobs eventually got replaced with other jobs, to everyone's advantage. I don't think the need for custom software is ever going to go away. People who can think logically and abstractly are in short supply, and I'm sure there will always be some sort of work for them.
The problem is waiting through these stupid management fads; waiting until it sinks in that programmers are no more interchangeable than managers are, and laying off programmers destroys huge amounts of supposedly valuable intellectual property. Once enough managers stop listening to the FUD being spread by companies like SCO, they will inevitably see that open source is the cheapest and best way to develop an application. It will take a while longer, but managers will eventually give up their dreams of earning money by just selling pure IP, and will instead concentrate on offering support services or selling goods that use open source software. When that happens, they'll see the waste inherent in a system where people develop similar software in secret and uselessly duplicate effort.
Let's hope that this case makes it to trial. It will take a court case to determine if the GPL is valid, and who is responsible if illegal IP makes its way into open source code.
By the way, I find it awful that I have to say something like that. What kind of legal system do we have if you can't know if you are breaking the law until you are convicted of breaking it? Companies are taking far to many liberties with this uncertainty to scare people into giving up their rights, or to pay more money than they have to. I think we need a legal principle that the first time a lawsuit in an untested area is threatened, no settlements are allowed, the case must proceed to trial; then maybe companies like SCO couldn't play their little lawyer games any more.
I'd love to see an actual law that described fair-use rights, so we could judge whether a DRM system infringes them. Unfortunately, I agree with your Hades estimate of the chances of that happening. I can't think of the last law that was passed that favoured consumers rather than companies (or rich people). I suppose it makes sense; if a law doubles the amount of money that CEOs make, that raises the average income and we are all better off.
I think the CEOs of software companies are hoping the software business will become just like the music business, where the creators and consumers get shafted and all the profits go to the middleman.
Fortunately, I don't think the software industry will necessarily go that way. Software is valuable to its creator in and of itself; it doesn't need to be sold to create value (although it can be sold to create additional value). A CD is of less use to a musician; it must be sold before the creator gets much value from it. This difference will ensure that there will always be open source software.
There is another factor at play in this as well. A lot of companies that create proprietary software are outsourcing their development to India and other cheap countries. Pretty soon, the only development done in the U.S. will be open source. We should support American programmers, and use only open source software! In fact, if open source software were in wider use, there would be more demand for American programmers. With open source, there is plenty of generic code lying around and all that has to be done is customization for a particular business need. Outsourcing is really only good for the mechanical programming tasks, which are already done for you with open source development.
SCO also seems to have missed a little irony here as well. The infringer was working for a company; he wasn't a commie hacker working on open source in the basement of his parent's house. This code was "developed" under the watchful eye of responsible capitalists, yet copyright infringement happened anyway. I wonder what copyright infringements there might be in SGI's (or even SCO's) proprietary code, and why SCO doesn't seem too worried about that.
Are genre books selling at all? In other words, is this a bigger problem than Science Fiction?
Just a few years ago I could sometimes find Science Fiction books in Costco; but I haven't seen one there for the last couple of years. I would have said the same about Wal-Mart, but I just bought a new Orson Scott Card paperback the other day; the exception that proves the rule, I guess.
It seems that Society is now geared to supply millions of copies of the latest fad, and nothing else. Technology has made it possible to produce much more variety at the same cost; but companies have instead used it wring every bit of profit out of the latest big thing. Bigger stores don't stock more variety any more; they just stock more copies of the same thing (and put smaller stores out of business). Movies now seem to drive the whole system. Movies lead to video games, novelizations, limited-edition prints, cereal box prizes, you name it. Since movie sci-fi tends to be pathetic, so are the tie-ins. Where is the market for anything but the latest and greatest?
I agree with your point that there doesn't seem to be any room in S.F. for anything but the reliable moneymakers; but I think you are wrong that it is a problem for S.F. only. Bookstores are adding coffee shops and giftware, not more bookshelves; record stores are stocking less and less, but their stores sure look pretty. Variety is out, quantity is in, and pity anyone whose tastes are not completely mainstream. I think the whole sorry publishing business is going to have to fail before things get better. After the current system fails, maybe technology (cheap reproduction and distribution) can be harnessed to improve the lives of writers and readers instead of the middleman.
Hey, isn't there a Science Fiction story in this? New technology gets exploited by those currently in power, until plucky underdogs overturn the system and distribute the benefits to everyone. I'd love to read that sort of escapist fiction:-)
You have a good point, but I don't think it will be possible to off-load "keepers". I'm betting that you will soon have to pay money any time you record any movie or TV show. Time shifting is a "fair-use" of material, so this device has a legal use and might survive the introduction of DRM; but devices that make a permanent copy are much less likely to survive.
It is possible to imagine a DRM system that would allow people to make a copy for their own use. This system could somehow encode the disk so that only the person that made the copy can play it. I don't think we will see such a system because it is more expensive than a simpler scheme that simply prevents you from making a copy unless you pay. Copyright holders are serious about preventing piracy, and I think it is much more likely that they will introduce a system that makes you pay for every copy than one that lets you exercise your legal "fair-use" rights. And forget about government legislation to protect fair-use; every copyright change so far has favoured copyright holders at the expense of the general public.
You are of course correct that I didn't address your main point; that copyright holders have every right to prosecute people for breaking the law. I agree with you on that point.
The point I was arguing is that the existence widespread illegal copying does not necessarily justify more stringent laws or even lawsuits. Record companies are arguing that they need more powers to find and stop file-sharers; and that without changes to the law, the entire music industry will die off.
I thing pursuing and prosecuting file sharers is the wrong thing for music companies to do. I firmly believe that file sharing does not in fact cost the record companies money, but instead acts as valuable promotional material for artists that don't get played on MTV or the radio. Record companies are legally entitled to prosecute music sharers, but they are stupid to do so. Yes, it is wrong that file-sharers are breaking the law; but if file sharing is not costing the record companies any money, then the money spent on lawsuits is simply wasted and will be passed on to consumers through even higher CD costs!
I see two ways this could go. I fear that record companies will keep pushing for new laws that make it cheaper to prosecute file sharers; or will find a way to transfer the costs of copyright enforcement to someone else (e.g. through requiring everyone to go out and buy DRM hardware). If the cost of copyright enforcement is reduced to zero, then it doesn't matter if stopping file sharing increases revenue or not, and record companies will have no incentive to improve their product.
What I don't expect is that the record companies will actually try to compete. In the 20 years that CDs have been available, the price of the hardware has gone down by a factor of 10, but the software is still the same price. Movie software has gone down in price; VHS tapes originally cost $50 or more to buy, but now cost more like $10. Laserdiscs used to cost more than $40, but DVDs can be had for less than $20 (and are higher quality than either tapes or laserdiscs, to boot). Movies are selling very well. Unlike the movie companies, record companies have done very little to improve the quality of what they sell, and certainly have not lowered prices. Record companies blame technology for their problems, when the real cause of their problems is economic; CDs just aren't worth what they cost any more.
I really like music. I own more than a thousand CDs and a stereo system that cost me more than 10 thousand dollars. I used to buy more than 100 CDs a year, but now I buy a few used CDs a year. I was a very good customer that has stopped buying CDs, and not because I am downloading; I just refuse to buy over-priced CDs any more. If the RIAA were smart, they would be trying to win back former customers like me by increasing quality and lowering prices. Instead they have chosen to attempt to eliminate file-sharers; who are probably more likely to stop listening to music altogether (or to listen to free broadcasts on the TV or radio) than to buy CDs.
I think they are just clarifying that Canadian copyright law doesn't necessarily make all file sharing legal; probably only file sharing of material that they own the copyright to, or that are in the public domain is legal.
Some people might miss the distinction and think all file sharing is legal in Canada, and it probably isn't.
The record companies have exploited their monopoly over music distribution and production to offer contracts that completely favour the record companies at the expense of the artists.
If there were some competition in the music business, rather than a cozy oligarchy, and therefore some difference between the contracts, I'd agree with your "don't sign the contract" assessment. But the way the system has worked out, musicians are pretty much guaranteed to be screwed, and I think something must be done to even-out the current system that gives all the bargaining power (and benefits) to the record companies.
"Give me cheap stuff" and "give me new and improved" are what consumers are supposed to say. Record companies are not responding to these requests, but are instead assuming (like you) that people are only doing this to avoid spending anything, and are just a bunch of thieves that can only be stopped using all the technology and laws that can be thrown at them.
I say we should level the playing field. Both consumers and copyright holders can live with the current laws. You're sick of the whining file-sharers; I'm sick of the whining record companies. If record companies can't find a way to make money with the current laws, tough. I'm not willing to buy music under the current system; and since there was music before the current copyright laws, I'm betting there will be whatever happens.
The problem is that the record companies are trying to change (and have already changed) the laws to give them additional advantages over consumers. Copyright extension was a pure gift for copyright holders at the direct expense of everyone else.
Their justification for this is that evil file-traders are costing them money. What if that isn't true? Why should we give the record companies any more legal powers than they already have just because they claim they need them or because they are technically possible? Maybe the record companies should stop trying to change the world to maintain their profits and instead concentrate on their business, producing CDs that are worth buying.
As a CD consumer, all I ever hear is how sacred Copyrights are and that I must accept every decision made by copyright holders. I want the record companies to be told the same thing: stop whining and find a way to make money within the existing laws. I'd also add that if they are trying to push crippled copy-protected "CD player compatible" discs, they'd better seriously discount the price to compensate for the decrease in utility.
I've got a message for politicians as well: do something for once to benefit consumers rather than only businesses. Next time you give away a copyright extension, get something in return; like a rule that a work must be in print or else the copyright expires; or require that companies provide instructions for how to permanently defeat any encryption after copyrights on the work expires. Maybe even clearly legislate what our fair-use rights are. Politicians are supposed to work for all of us equally, not just people that hire lobbyists.
I think the current price of CDs is too high and I refuse to buy copy-protected CDs; so I have exercised my only input as a consumer and I have stopped buying CDs. It is that simple for me, that's all I can legally do to influence the record companies.
The situation is not so simple for the record companies however. Record companies are making less profit, and without proving it, are claiming that file sharing is the cause of this. They are using their unproven assertions to get laws passed (like the DCMA) that reduce my rights and enhance theirs. They don't have to find a way to conform to the current laws; they can get them changed.
The record companies can apparently get the laws changed to favour them (like the copyright extension act); and consumers are just supposed to accept that record companies have more power over government. Well, I think consumers are using the tools at their disposal, technology and sheer numbers, to make up for the lack of power over the government. Legally or not, file-sharing people are sending a message to the record companies that the current system for distributing music sucks. I think the record companies are deluding themselves if they think they can use the law to maintain the current system where artists and consumers get screwed and the middleman gets all the profits.
Personally, I have never downloaded music, but I really don't care if other people do. If the record companies are right and they are driven out of business by file sharing, I won't shed any tears. I'm not buying music now, so it doesn't matter to me if the record companies go out of business.
I don't think it is entirely true that music sucks any more than it always has; the real problem is that the music that gets promoted sucks. Radio plays only top 40; the only variety is what decade top 40 music comes from. Music videos are a similar waste of time.
I used to find CDs to buy through hard work. I regularly checked record stores for stuff I might like, and bought stuff when it was a good deal. Unfortunately, record stores are stocking fewer titles and prices increased to the point where I almost never found anything worth the price; so I stopped even looking.
If enough record companies lower their prices, I might just start making the effort to shop for CDs again. That is, of course, as long as the CDs aren't copy-protected; which I refuse to buy.
Maybe the extra freedom is worth paying a higher price for lower quality; but different people will make different decisions.
The average computer costs much more than a stand-alone DVD player, and has worse video quality and much worse sound quality. I'll accept that DVD players are not as useful as computers, but a DVD player is cheap enough that I'm willing to own one just to play DVDs. I suspect this Sony box is in the same category; it can't do much, but it is cheaper than the equivalent computer, and just might be worth paying for.
I am a bit more worried about DRM than you are. An unfortunate property that keeps Capitalism from being a perfect economic system is that companies get to decide what they will offer for sale and consumers can only choose among the alternative that are offered. If companies decide they will no longer sell software that works without DRM, you will have a mighty hard time buying new software. I also wouldn't be too sure that you'll be able to keep you existing software either; Microsoft just has to slip DRM in with its next security update, leaving you with a choice between Hackers owning your machine or Microsoft.
Now Open Source software can still work with or without DRM; but Open Source is not going to work for all types of software. In addition, people buy computers to do something with them, if open formats are replaced with DRM-enabled ones; a non-DRM O/S is not going to be able to do much.
I have a personal rule that I will never buy a copy-protected CD, an electronic device that can be "updated" automatically without my permission, or a device with DRM. We'll see if those rules have any affect on what companies offer for sale; I have already bought a DVD player despite its DRM system.
You sure could. I have always been baffled by the fact that more Americans don't come to Canada to buy stuff; my American inlaws always find lots of cheap stuff to buy. I have been comparing U.S. and Canadian prices for CDs and DVDs for the last 10 years, and Canadian prices have always been substantially lower. All I tend to buy in the U.S. is stuff I can't get in Canada; anything else is too expensive.
It depends how you are trying to use this box. If it is a true VCR replacement, it has to replace the tapes too. How many tapes does the average person have? I have about 60 hours of Simpsons episodes on tape, and about 20 tapes total. One of these boxes could let me get rid of those tapes and probably never buy another one.
Don't think of this box as a VCR with a big non-removable cassette; think of it as a video jukebox. Hard drive capacity is pretty cheap, and I'd rather have too much capacity since these things are probably not upgradeable when you fill the disk.
Now, having said that, I understand this model deletes shows after 31 days; so never mind, the capacity is useless:-)
I don't think the problem with Microsoft programs is necessarily a software problem; I think it is a management problem.
I'm sure the programmers at Microsoft are well aware of the bugs in their code and could fix them, given time; but programmers have very little input into how they allocate their time. The bugs in Microsoft's programs don't seem to have any affect on sales, so why would Microsoft management put any effort into fixing these programs? Management usually only responds to bugs that affect sales, as could be seen in the Y2K case. I was reading Y2K warnings in 1995, but managers didn't do anything about it until they were forced to sign documents that guaranteed there were no Y2K bugs. If bugs actually affected Microsoft's sales or profits, you would see a lot less of them.
There was a Y2K problem. I spent an afternoon in 1997 fixing the one bug we had in our software.
We couldn't fix the only serious problem we had; a batch of industrial PCs that we shipped to our customers before 1995 wouldn't work properly after the leap day of 2000. That is why you think there was no Y2K problem; most of the problems were minor and could be "fixed" by setting an incorrect date. Computers fail for many reasons, and most Y2K bugs were solved the same way as Windows bugs are solved; users and programmers found work-arounds.
I really object to your characterization of programmers and designers as incompetent. I'll bet programmers are writing code right now that will fail during the non leap year of 2100; and you (or your preserved head in a jar:-) will be complaining that incompetent programmers didn't check for this when they wrote the code. Testing for events that are not going to occur for years or decades is usually not high on the list. As you've seen from the lack of a disaster, our software development techniques are good enough to cope with easily anticipated bugs.
It is very annoying. I'd say half the complaints I read about Linux are that it is much harder to install than Windows. Well, of course it is harder to install Linux than to have Windows preinstalled for you! I upgraded my PC to Windows XP and it took me a week to find and update enough of the drivers to get it working (not that everything works); Windows isn't that easy to install.
I have no idea why HP thinks it is acceptable to claim they are selling a Linux machine; would Windows customers be expected to install the O/S from a CD and search the net for drivers? What would customers say about the ease-of-use of Windows if this were the norm?
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I don't see why we should care that the RIAA is whining about piracy. People are getting shafted by the music business, both the artists that usually get paid nothing for their efforts and consumers that have to pay way too much for crappy music.
OK, I'll accept that the law is the law and that the RIAA has the right to exploit the law however they want. However, the march of technology means that people can distribute music and make copies for a cost that is orders of magnitude lower than what the record companies want to charge. Why is it that I have to shut up and deal with a law that is not to my advantage, but the RIAA doesn't have to deal with the fact that technology is finally putting pressure on their unacceptable business practices?
Let the RIAA deal with the existing laws and technology just like we consumers are supposed to. I don't think the RIAA's current business model can survive without changes to the law, but that is no reason to change the law. I have never used file sharing (and what little copying I have done is legal in Canada), but I am glad that large numbers of people are. Without some sort of pressure on the RIAA, they are never going to lower prices or improve their product. I consider file sharing to be civil disobedience; it is breaking the law in order to protest the unacceptable practices of the RIAA.
Thanks for the link. Actually, fair use is described in section 107.
I'm embarrassed to say that the search phrase "fair use" in google provides the statute as the second result.
As you have pointed out, the technology exists that would make it much easier to buy obscure books that you want. Your idea of printing books is a good one; the extra cost of printing individual copies is probably not significant for $100 reference books, but may too much for $10 paperback novels. This would also seem like a good service to solve the problem that reading on a computer screen is not pleasant; stores could offer to download and print non-copyrighted works from the Internet as well.
I think print-on-demand would work even better for CDs. The cost of a CD-R blank is negligible, and a CD can be burned in a few minutes. There is no excuse for any CD to be out of print. I really don't understand why I must pay more to get copies of obscure music that no one but me likes; shouldn't music that nobody wants cost less than popular music?
It is a great source of frustration that these companies could be using technology to lower prices, offer more variety, and make more money by expanding the market by offering all their back catalog of out-of-print material. Instead, the copyright owners are aggressively enforcing existing laws and trying to get new ones passed to preserve their current business model in the face of technology. How can we convince these companies that they will make more money by selling us what we want than by trying to force us to buy what they offer?
Actually, I think this situation is a fault with our current economic system. There is a fundamental asymmetry between companies that decide what to sell and customers that decide what to buy. As a consumer, I can only choose not to buy something that is offered, there is no way for me to force a company to manufacture or sell something I want to buy.
What I think has been happening is that companies have been exploiting this advantage shamelessly. Take your video store example. Someone who walks into a video store wants to rent something, if all there is a stack of 100 copies of Bad Boys 2, they are going to rent that movie if there is a remote chance they will like it. Eventually, they might come to believe that the limited selection is all that exists, and happily accept the situation. The same thing is repeated in all sorts of stores now; only the most popular items are stocked, which most people are happy with, and the rest just make do.
I don't know how, but somehow technology and the internet will improve this situation. With the cheap worldwide communications that the Web provides, it should be easier to sell goods that appeal to very small audiences, not harder.
This could suggest an answer to the dilemma of becoming a professional Science Fiction author. Yes, there is no magazine market left to allow budding authors to learn their craft; but maybe another method is available. Perhaps writers will have to build their reputation and hone their craft by writing for free and distributing their work via the internet. Once an author has established a reputation this way, then publishers might be more willing to give them a contract. This system is not as good for the author, who must do much more work before earning any money; but things change, and everyone has to adjust to new realities.
Well, our opinions differ a little, I think. I assume, from your statement that Americans or Europeans (or Canadians, like me :-) are not disadvantaged by higher labour costs with open source, that you believe most open source development will be done for free. I don't believe that, I think there will always be professional programmers; but they will soon all be working on open source software.
The difficult part of programming is the design portion; it requires knowledge of the business as well as programming knowledge. I don't think the designing part can ever be completely outsourced to people unfamiliar with the business, so open source or not, there will be some jobs for Western programmers, whatever happens.
I firmly believe that programming jobs are not going to disappear, any unemployment caused by the current outsourcing fad will eventually come back. A whole lot of farming jobs disappeared as agricultural technology improved, and all those farming jobs eventually got replaced with other jobs, to everyone's advantage. I don't think the need for custom software is ever going to go away. People who can think logically and abstractly are in short supply, and I'm sure there will always be some sort of work for them.
The problem is waiting through these stupid management fads; waiting until it sinks in that programmers are no more interchangeable than managers are, and laying off programmers destroys huge amounts of supposedly valuable intellectual property. Once enough managers stop listening to the FUD being spread by companies like SCO, they will inevitably see that open source is the cheapest and best way to develop an application. It will take a while longer, but managers will eventually give up their dreams of earning money by just selling pure IP, and will instead concentrate on offering support services or selling goods that use open source software. When that happens, they'll see the waste inherent in a system where people develop similar software in secret and uselessly duplicate effort.
Let's hope that this case makes it to trial. It will take a court case to determine if the GPL is valid, and who is responsible if illegal IP makes its way into open source code.
By the way, I find it awful that I have to say something like that. What kind of legal system do we have if you can't know if you are breaking the law until you are convicted of breaking it? Companies are taking far to many liberties with this uncertainty to scare people into giving up their rights, or to pay more money than they have to. I think we need a legal principle that the first time a lawsuit in an untested area is threatened, no settlements are allowed, the case must proceed to trial; then maybe companies like SCO couldn't play their little lawyer games any more.
I'd love to see an actual law that described fair-use rights, so we could judge whether a DRM system infringes them. Unfortunately, I agree with your Hades estimate of the chances of that happening. I can't think of the last law that was passed that favoured consumers rather than companies (or rich people). I suppose it makes sense; if a law doubles the amount of money that CEOs make, that raises the average income and we are all better off.
I think the CEOs of software companies are hoping the software business will become just like the music business, where the creators and consumers get shafted and all the profits go to the middleman.
Fortunately, I don't think the software industry will necessarily go that way. Software is valuable to its creator in and of itself; it doesn't need to be sold to create value (although it can be sold to create additional value). A CD is of less use to a musician; it must be sold before the creator gets much value from it. This difference will ensure that there will always be open source software.
There is another factor at play in this as well. A lot of companies that create proprietary software are outsourcing their development to India and other cheap countries. Pretty soon, the only development done in the U.S. will be open source. We should support American programmers, and use only open source software! In fact, if open source software were in wider use, there would be more demand for American programmers. With open source, there is plenty of generic code lying around and all that has to be done is customization for a particular business need. Outsourcing is really only good for the mechanical programming tasks, which are already done for you with open source development.
SCO also seems to have missed a little irony here as well. The infringer was working for a company; he wasn't a commie hacker working on open source in the basement of his parent's house. This code was "developed" under the watchful eye of responsible capitalists, yet copyright infringement happened anyway. I wonder what copyright infringements there might be in SGI's (or even SCO's) proprietary code, and why SCO doesn't seem too worried about that.
Are genre books selling at all? In other words, is this a bigger problem than Science Fiction?
:-)
Just a few years ago I could sometimes find Science Fiction books in Costco; but I haven't seen one there for the last couple of years. I would have said the same about Wal-Mart, but I just bought a new Orson Scott Card paperback the other day; the exception that proves the rule, I guess.
It seems that Society is now geared to supply millions of copies of the latest fad, and nothing else. Technology has made it possible to produce much more variety at the same cost; but companies have instead used it wring every bit of profit out of the latest big thing. Bigger stores don't stock more variety any more; they just stock more copies of the same thing (and put smaller stores out of business). Movies now seem to drive the whole system. Movies lead to video games, novelizations, limited-edition prints, cereal box prizes, you name it. Since movie sci-fi tends to be pathetic, so are the tie-ins. Where is the market for anything but the latest and greatest?
I agree with your point that there doesn't seem to be any room in S.F. for anything but the reliable moneymakers; but I think you are wrong that it is a problem for S.F. only. Bookstores are adding coffee shops and giftware, not more bookshelves; record stores are stocking less and less, but their stores sure look pretty. Variety is out, quantity is in, and pity anyone whose tastes are not completely mainstream. I think the whole sorry publishing business is going to have to fail before things get better. After the current system fails, maybe technology (cheap reproduction and distribution) can be harnessed to improve the lives of writers and readers instead of the middleman.
Hey, isn't there a Science Fiction story in this? New technology gets exploited by those currently in power, until plucky underdogs overturn the system and distribute the benefits to everyone. I'd love to read that sort of escapist fiction
You have a good point, but I don't think it will be possible to off-load "keepers". I'm betting that you will soon have to pay money any time you record any movie or TV show. Time shifting is a "fair-use" of material, so this device has a legal use and might survive the introduction of DRM; but devices that make a permanent copy are much less likely to survive.
It is possible to imagine a DRM system that would allow people to make a copy for their own use. This system could somehow encode the disk so that only the person that made the copy can play it. I don't think we will see such a system because it is more expensive than a simpler scheme that simply prevents you from making a copy unless you pay. Copyright holders are serious about preventing piracy, and I think it is much more likely that they will introduce a system that makes you pay for every copy than one that lets you exercise your legal "fair-use" rights. And forget about government legislation to protect fair-use; every copyright change so far has favoured copyright holders at the expense of the general public.
You are of course correct that I didn't address your main point; that copyright holders have every right to prosecute people for breaking the law. I agree with you on that point.
The point I was arguing is that the existence widespread illegal copying does not necessarily justify more stringent laws or even lawsuits. Record companies are arguing that they need more powers to find and stop file-sharers; and that without changes to the law, the entire music industry will die off.
I thing pursuing and prosecuting file sharers is the wrong thing for music companies to do. I firmly believe that file sharing does not in fact cost the record companies money, but instead acts as valuable promotional material for artists that don't get played on MTV or the radio. Record companies are legally entitled to prosecute music sharers, but they are stupid to do so. Yes, it is wrong that file-sharers are breaking the law; but if file sharing is not costing the record companies any money, then the money spent on lawsuits is simply wasted and will be passed on to consumers through even higher CD costs!
I see two ways this could go. I fear that record companies will keep pushing for new laws that make it cheaper to prosecute file sharers; or will find a way to transfer the costs of copyright enforcement to someone else (e.g. through requiring everyone to go out and buy DRM hardware). If the cost of copyright enforcement is reduced to zero, then it doesn't matter if stopping file sharing increases revenue or not, and record companies will have no incentive to improve their product.
What I don't expect is that the record companies will actually try to compete. In the 20 years that CDs have been available, the price of the hardware has gone down by a factor of 10, but the software is still the same price. Movie software has gone down in price; VHS tapes originally cost $50 or more to buy, but now cost more like $10. Laserdiscs used to cost more than $40, but DVDs can be had for less than $20 (and are higher quality than either tapes or laserdiscs, to boot). Movies are selling very well. Unlike the movie companies, record companies have done very little to improve the quality of what they sell, and certainly have not lowered prices. Record companies blame technology for their problems, when the real cause of their problems is economic; CDs just aren't worth what they cost any more.
I really like music. I own more than a thousand CDs and a stereo system that cost me more than 10 thousand dollars. I used to buy more than 100 CDs a year, but now I buy a few used CDs a year. I was a very good customer that has stopped buying CDs, and not because I am downloading; I just refuse to buy over-priced CDs any more. If the RIAA were smart, they would be trying to win back former customers like me by increasing quality and lowering prices. Instead they have chosen to attempt to eliminate file-sharers; who are probably more likely to stop listening to music altogether (or to listen to free broadcasts on the TV or radio) than to buy CDs.
I think they are just clarifying that Canadian copyright law doesn't necessarily make all file sharing legal; probably only file sharing of material that they own the copyright to, or that are in the public domain is legal.
Some people might miss the distinction and think all file sharing is legal in Canada, and it probably isn't.
The record companies have exploited their monopoly over music distribution and production to offer contracts that completely favour the record companies at the expense of the artists.
If there were some competition in the music business, rather than a cozy oligarchy, and therefore some difference between the contracts, I'd agree with your "don't sign the contract" assessment. But the way the system has worked out, musicians are pretty much guaranteed to be screwed, and I think something must be done to even-out the current system that gives all the bargaining power (and benefits) to the record companies.
"Give me cheap stuff" and "give me new and improved" are what consumers are supposed to say. Record companies are not responding to these requests, but are instead assuming (like you) that people are only doing this to avoid spending anything, and are just a bunch of thieves that can only be stopped using all the technology and laws that can be thrown at them.
I say we should level the playing field. Both consumers and copyright holders can live with the current laws. You're sick of the whining file-sharers; I'm sick of the whining record companies. If record companies can't find a way to make money with the current laws, tough. I'm not willing to buy music under the current system; and since there was music before the current copyright laws, I'm betting there will be whatever happens.
The problem is that the record companies are trying to change (and have already changed) the laws to give them additional advantages over consumers. Copyright extension was a pure gift for copyright holders at the direct expense of everyone else.
Their justification for this is that evil file-traders are costing them money. What if that isn't true? Why should we give the record companies any more legal powers than they already have just because they claim they need them or because they are technically possible? Maybe the record companies should stop trying to change the world to maintain their profits and instead concentrate on their business, producing CDs that are worth buying.
As a CD consumer, all I ever hear is how sacred Copyrights are and that I must accept every decision made by copyright holders. I want the record companies to be told the same thing: stop whining and find a way to make money within the existing laws. I'd also add that if they are trying to push crippled copy-protected "CD player compatible" discs, they'd better seriously discount the price to compensate for the decrease in utility.
I've got a message for politicians as well: do something for once to benefit consumers rather than only businesses. Next time you give away a copyright extension, get something in return; like a rule that a work must be in print or else the copyright expires; or require that companies provide instructions for how to permanently defeat any encryption after copyrights on the work expires. Maybe even clearly legislate what our fair-use rights are. Politicians are supposed to work for all of us equally, not just people that hire lobbyists.
I think the current price of CDs is too high and I refuse to buy copy-protected CDs; so I have exercised my only input as a consumer and I have stopped buying CDs. It is that simple for me, that's all I can legally do to influence the record companies.
The situation is not so simple for the record companies however. Record companies are making less profit, and without proving it, are claiming that file sharing is the cause of this. They are using their unproven assertions to get laws passed (like the DCMA) that reduce my rights and enhance theirs. They don't have to find a way to conform to the current laws; they can get them changed.
The record companies can apparently get the laws changed to favour them (like the copyright extension act); and consumers are just supposed to accept that record companies have more power over government. Well, I think consumers are using the tools at their disposal, technology and sheer numbers, to make up for the lack of power over the government. Legally or not, file-sharing people are sending a message to the record companies that the current system for distributing music sucks. I think the record companies are deluding themselves if they think they can use the law to maintain the current system where artists and consumers get screwed and the middleman gets all the profits.
Personally, I have never downloaded music, but I really don't care if other people do. If the record companies are right and they are driven out of business by file sharing, I won't shed any tears. I'm not buying music now, so it doesn't matter to me if the record companies go out of business.
I don't think it is entirely true that music sucks any more than it always has; the real problem is that the music that gets promoted sucks. Radio plays only top 40; the only variety is what decade top 40 music comes from. Music videos are a similar waste of time.
I used to find CDs to buy through hard work. I regularly checked record stores for stuff I might like, and bought stuff when it was a good deal. Unfortunately, record stores are stocking fewer titles and prices increased to the point where I almost never found anything worth the price; so I stopped even looking.
If enough record companies lower their prices, I might just start making the effort to shop for CDs again. That is, of course, as long as the CDs aren't copy-protected; which I refuse to buy.
Maybe the extra freedom is worth paying a higher price for lower quality; but different people will make different decisions.
The average computer costs much more than a stand-alone DVD player, and has worse video quality and much worse sound quality. I'll accept that DVD players are not as useful as computers, but a DVD player is cheap enough that I'm willing to own one just to play DVDs. I suspect this Sony box is in the same category; it can't do much, but it is cheaper than the equivalent computer, and just might be worth paying for.
I am a bit more worried about DRM than you are. An unfortunate property that keeps Capitalism from being a perfect economic system is that companies get to decide what they will offer for sale and consumers can only choose among the alternative that are offered. If companies decide they will no longer sell software that works without DRM, you will have a mighty hard time buying new software. I also wouldn't be too sure that you'll be able to keep you existing software either; Microsoft just has to slip DRM in with its next security update, leaving you with a choice between Hackers owning your machine or Microsoft.
Now Open Source software can still work with or without DRM; but Open Source is not going to work for all types of software. In addition, people buy computers to do something with them, if open formats are replaced with DRM-enabled ones; a non-DRM O/S is not going to be able to do much.
I have a personal rule that I will never buy a copy-protected CD, an electronic device that can be "updated" automatically without my permission, or a device with DRM. We'll see if those rules have any affect on what companies offer for sale; I have already bought a DVD player despite its DRM system.
You sure could. I have always been baffled by the fact that more Americans don't come to Canada to buy stuff; my American inlaws always find lots of cheap stuff to buy. I have been comparing U.S. and Canadian prices for CDs and DVDs for the last 10 years, and Canadian prices have always been substantially lower. All I tend to buy in the U.S. is stuff I can't get in Canada; anything else is too expensive.
It depends how you are trying to use this box. If it is a true VCR replacement, it has to replace the tapes too. How many tapes does the average person have? I have about 60 hours of Simpsons episodes on tape, and about 20 tapes total. One of these boxes could let me get rid of those tapes and probably never buy another one.
:-)
Don't think of this box as a VCR with a big non-removable cassette; think of it as a video jukebox. Hard drive capacity is pretty cheap, and I'd rather have too much capacity since these things are probably not upgradeable when you fill the disk.
Now, having said that, I understand this model deletes shows after 31 days; so never mind, the capacity is useless
I don't think the problem with Microsoft programs is necessarily a software problem; I think it is a management problem.
I'm sure the programmers at Microsoft are well aware of the bugs in their code and could fix them, given time; but programmers have very little input into how they allocate their time. The bugs in Microsoft's programs don't seem to have any affect on sales, so why would Microsoft management put any effort into fixing these programs? Management usually only responds to bugs that affect sales, as could be seen in the Y2K case. I was reading Y2K warnings in 1995, but managers didn't do anything about it until they were forced to sign documents that guaranteed there were no Y2K bugs. If bugs actually affected Microsoft's sales or profits, you would see a lot less of them.
There was a Y2K problem. I spent an afternoon in 1997 fixing the one bug we had in our software.
:-) will be complaining that incompetent programmers didn't check for this when they wrote the code. Testing for events that are not going to occur for years or decades is usually not high on the list. As you've seen from the lack of a disaster, our software development techniques are good enough to cope with easily anticipated bugs.
We couldn't fix the only serious problem we had; a batch of industrial PCs that we shipped to our customers before 1995 wouldn't work properly after the leap day of 2000. That is why you think there was no Y2K problem; most of the problems were minor and could be "fixed" by setting an incorrect date. Computers fail for many reasons, and most Y2K bugs were solved the same way as Windows bugs are solved; users and programmers found work-arounds.
I really object to your characterization of programmers and designers as incompetent. I'll bet programmers are writing code right now that will fail during the non leap year of 2100; and you (or your preserved head in a jar
It is very annoying. I'd say half the complaints I read about Linux are that it is much harder to install than Windows. Well, of course it is harder to install Linux than to have Windows preinstalled for you! I upgraded my PC to Windows XP and it took me a week to find and update enough of the drivers to get it working (not that everything works); Windows isn't that easy to install.
I have no idea why HP thinks it is acceptable to claim they are selling a Linux machine; would Windows customers be expected to install the O/S from a CD and search the net for drivers? What would customers say about the ease-of-use of Windows if this were the norm?