It's no more difficult to download a free copy of something and burn it to DVD than it is to purchase it online. Most people think about future consequence, but you don't seem to be able to see beyond the next 5 min. In 10 years there will be enough bandwidth and availability of equipment for my proposed means of obtaining the public domain movies. Hell if slashdot had their way, I wouldn't need to rent movies anywhere either. Just download illegal copies and burn them to dvd since slashdot is against every means of enforcing copyright violations.
Always be wary of phrases such as "promotes the public interest". What this usually means is someone is surrendering his individual rights for "the good of the public", i.e. a socialistic mentality. In this case it is the copyright holder who is asked to sacrafice his individual rights for the good of the community. Why shouldn't copyrights last forever? I can will my house and my business to my children, but you would force me to give up that right as an individual, "for the public good". Call me selfish or greedy all you want. As Ayn Rand pointed out, these can be very good qualities. If I write a book that stands the test of time, I should be able to profit from it throughout my lifetime, and should be able to choose who profits from it after I'm dead. The public doesn't have the right to just take it from me. Why even bother creating something of worth if it will simply be stolen from you "in the public interest". Better to just keep it for yourself and not publish it.
What's with the slavery analogy. It's terrible attempt at evoking an emotion rather than a rational response. Slavery is wrong because it violates a person's rights by extracting productive work from a person without his consent to any terms to compensate for the labor. In the same way, by copying my work without my consent, you have taken my labor for free without my consent. Therefore, you have in essence made me your slave. Thus your argument has backfired, if you assume slavery is wrong, which I do, as well as most rational people.
ok. One MS marketing type probably spent about half a day on it. That's probably about the extent of their concern regarding Apple. Remember, they invested millions in Apple to keep them alive. They're more worried about the govt. than Apple.
You've completely missed the point. When author writes something, it's his property. It's not the public's property just because it's easy for them to copy it illegally. Copyrights should never expire. I should have the right to will my book to my children the way I can will my house or business. What did the public ever do to deserve to get my original work for free? You shouldn't need to keep writing more books just because of some arbitrary deadline set by the govt. If you write something that's valuable enough that people want it throughout your lifetime, you deserve to profit from that value. One basic premise of human existance is that work must be done for humans to survive. Why should we make a great author work in a factory, rather than pursuing other things he'd rather do, including writing more books, simply because the govt. decides he can't profit from his work for more than some arbitrary amount of time. People deserve the freedom to trade with others without the threat of theft (copyright enfringement) of their work.
"Why, through Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, and modern operating-system features like separate accounts for each user and easy access to the Internet, of course. Maybe somebody should email Microsoft and let them know that the Mac has had all of these things for years now" Too bad they didn't have preemptive multitasking, memory management, or memory protection before MacOS X, which is when I was forced to use Macs. Switching to Windows was a no-brainer back then. Now with MacOS X, however, Apple is back in the game.
Thank you for pointing out why we have copyright laws. You want to make a profit selling someone elses work, and use that profit to fight to destroy legislation protecting copyrighted work, so you can continue destroying individual rights. Thankfully, if the copyright expires on micky mouse shorts, you won't be able to make a penny. The value of the work will quickly approach zero at that point. Why bother paying you for a public domain work when I can get it off of Kazaa for free legally.
Yeah, and theft and murder are basic moral human rights too. Not so. There is no such thing as 100% freedom. You do NOT have the freedom to infringe on the rights of others. This includes infringing on the right of a person to own his intellectual property, as well as physical property.
There is no collective. There are only individuals. Sure, ideas are built on a foundation of other ideas. That's why patents expire. Patents are created to allow a person to profit from his idea. If you create something, there is no danger of anyone discovering it until you tell someone, or sell a product based on it. Greed is a great motivator, an should be considered a good quality, when channeled into productive efforts. There is no obligation to share knowledge without setting a price. The day that happens, I propose innovators go on strike. They may need to anyway because their ideas won't be worth a nickel if the govt. forces them to share them for free.
People seem to forget that companies are owned by people. What's the difference if the company is one person, 10 people, or 10000 shareholders. They're still people with rights.
If you were an author trying to make a living through writing, and you found out you can't publish anymore because no one buys books anymore, since it is easier to steal them, your perspective would change. I think you send a bad message to your students. They will see that there is no point in becoming an author, musician, or scientist, because your ideas will simply be plundered, and you will be left penniless (in your ideal world). Information wants to be free is a bs statement. More accurately, consumers want information to be free. Producers of information want it to have some value.
This got modded up? Yeah, Tolstoy, Goethe, Hemmingway, Steinbeck, Cervantes, etc. just got lucky. Copyrights shouldn't expire during an authors lifetime. How would you like it if the govt. took your business away after 10 years, saying, you've had it long enough, the public gets to make money off of it now. Next thing you know, we're a Communist society. Talk about lack of incentive to do anything. When you don't gain anything for what you produce, you created a sure fire way to ruin production.
The purpose of the US constitution is to protect the rights of individuals. There is no bs about public good in there. These types of philosophies are inherent in communist (individuals second to society) and fascist (indiviuals second to the nation) systems. People's inventions should be protected because it is a form of individual property. This property should be protected from theft in the same way material creations are protected from theft. Otherwise there is no incentive to invest in research/development since the risk is high and without IP protection, there is no reward. Without IP drug research and development would cease in the public sector. Software development for profit would also be severely diminished since tools like p2p would make it necessary for only a few people to buy software and share it. EDA tools currently are licensed for millions a year now because of the small market. If your favorite game makers need to charge this much per copy because they can only sell 5 copies, your favorite game makers are going to go bankrupt. Ayn Rand considers greed an admirable quality. Greed inspires people to become productive individuals. They start companies and employ millions of people. The average person owes his livelyhood to these greedy, and supposedly evil individuals. So I'd think twice about trampling all over these peoples rights.
There's nothing wrong with MS providing a player to play DRM media if that's what the RIAA/MPAA is offering. That doesn't make them the bad guy in this case. Now, if they're playing both sides, they'll allow consumers to copy non DRM material because it sells more copies of Windows AND they'll allow playback of DRM material provided by the RIAA/MPAA because it also sells more copies of Windows. I'd love to download movies from blockbuster some day when the bandwidth is there, but that'll never happen without DRM. But if MS also lets me record and copy non-DRM stuff such as analog TV feeds, cds, my own creations, etc., that's about the best we can ask for from MS or Apple or Linux, etc. The fact that MS is starting to listen to consumers in this area is good news.
If the mods are essentialy bypassing or altering the BIOS, there is precedent for the hardware manufacturer to have a case. For instance, if you try to reverse engineer the bios of a Mac Box and start selling modified BIOS chips to run MacOS with non Apple hardware, Apple will sue you and win. An example is where they refused to by chips from Exponential (who had a bipolar PowerPC), and refused to allow the clone makers at the time to modify the bios to use this PowerPC with their hardware. Exponential subsequently went out of business.
You also could argue that a shoplifter who stole a cd from a store only caused a minimal loss because the cd media costs under a dollar to produce, and he wouldn't have bought it anyway. The arguement that the pirates wouldn't have bought any of the music anyway is very weak and won't hold up in court. As far as speeders costing taxpayers money, it can be argued that your fine for speeding pays that bill, even though I don't think your arguement is statistically significant. SUV drivers who obey the speed limit burn more oil than sports car drivers who break the speed limit.
MS's main goal is to protect their monopoly. If they feel that there is any chance they will be supplanted if they provide copy protection that makes users go to Linux or Apple, they won't do it. Whatever the MPAA/RIAA is throwing their way is pocket change compared to what they're making selling Windows. In the end, they'll pick the route that sells the most copies of Windows. Before their attitude may have been that they need copy protection to avoid losing market share to other systems endorsed by the RIAA/MPAA. Hopefully the consumer voice will continue to be heard.
Palladium hardware won't do anything if no one writes software to use it in ways we don't like. It would be nice to get the advantages of Palladium without the disadvantages. Apparently, MS listens to customers, if the article is correct, so maybe we can get our virus protection and email encryption, without restrictions on fair use, if we vote with our dollars (which is what MS is really interested in).
ok. Same old rant. Lets forget the fact the the article implies the exact opposite. According to the article, when someone actually wants to buy a DVR, the fact that the recorded material cannot be copied makes the buyer look elsewhere. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out he'd prefer a dvr system where he can record favorites onto VCDs etc. MS, whose main goal is to make money, sees this problem, and switches sides, at least for now, to sell more products and expand its comsumer base (at the expense of Tivo, etc.). I think this is encouraging.
Ddin't notice the full story link. I like the part where they say Windows Admins can only handle 10 machines. What the hell do they do all day if they're only managing 10 machines. Reboot them all every hour? I'm sure what really happened is statistically, most the companies using Windows were small, so the comparison wasn't fair to begin with, since they still need 1 sysadmin, even though the number of machines is small. again "There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians."
Given that Linux SysAdmins need to be a lot more knowledgable than Windows SysAdmins, the difference in salaries over 3 years probably closes the price gap. Wasn't it Churchill who said something like "There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians."
Slashdot Mirror
It's no more difficult to download a free copy of something and burn it to DVD than it is to purchase it online. Most people think about future consequence, but you don't seem to be able to see beyond the next 5 min. In 10 years there will be enough bandwidth and availability of equipment for my proposed means of obtaining the public domain movies. Hell if slashdot had their way, I wouldn't need to rent movies anywhere either. Just download illegal copies and burn them to dvd since slashdot is against every means of enforcing copyright violations.
Always be wary of phrases such as "promotes the public interest". What this usually means is someone is surrendering his individual rights for "the good of the public", i.e. a socialistic mentality. In this case it is the copyright holder who is asked to sacrafice his individual rights for the good of the community. Why shouldn't copyrights last forever? I can will my house and my business to my children, but you would force me to give up that right as an individual, "for the public good". Call me selfish or greedy all you want. As Ayn Rand pointed out, these can be very good qualities. If I write a book that stands the test of time, I should be able to profit from it throughout my lifetime, and should be able to choose who profits from it after I'm dead. The public doesn't have the right to just take it from me. Why even bother creating something of worth if it will simply be stolen from you "in the public interest". Better to just keep it for yourself and not publish it.
What's with the slavery analogy. It's terrible attempt at evoking an emotion rather than a rational response. Slavery is wrong because it violates a person's rights by extracting productive work from a person without his consent to any terms to compensate for the labor. In the same way, by copying my work without my consent, you have taken my labor for free without my consent. Therefore, you have in essence made me your slave. Thus your argument has backfired, if you assume slavery is wrong, which I do, as well as most rational people.
It was a joke (and not a very good one apparently).
ok. One MS marketing type probably spent about half a day on it. That's probably about the extent of their concern regarding Apple. Remember, they invested millions in Apple to keep them alive. They're more worried about the govt. than Apple.
You've completely missed the point. When author writes something, it's his property. It's not the public's property just because it's easy for them to copy it illegally. Copyrights should never expire. I should have the right to will my book to my children the way I can will my house or business. What did the public ever do to deserve to get my original work for free? You shouldn't need to keep writing more books just because of some arbitrary deadline set by the govt. If you write something that's valuable enough that people want it throughout your lifetime, you deserve to profit from that value. One basic premise of human existance is that work must be done for humans to survive. Why should we make a great author work in a factory, rather than pursuing other things he'd rather do, including writing more books, simply because the govt. decides he can't profit from his work for more than some arbitrary amount of time. People deserve the freedom to trade with others without the threat of theft (copyright enfringement) of their work.
"Why, through Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, and modern operating-system features like separate accounts for each user and easy access to the Internet, of course. Maybe somebody should email Microsoft and let them know that the Mac has had all of these things for years now" Too bad they didn't have preemptive multitasking, memory management, or memory protection before MacOS X, which is when I was forced to use Macs. Switching to Windows was a no-brainer back then. Now with MacOS X, however, Apple is back in the game.
Easy access to the internet? If you call editing host, nsswitch.conf, etc. easy, then I guess so.
Thank you for pointing out why we have copyright laws. You want to make a profit selling someone elses work, and use that profit to fight to destroy legislation protecting copyrighted work, so you can continue destroying individual rights. Thankfully, if the copyright expires on micky mouse shorts, you won't be able to make a penny. The value of the work will quickly approach zero at that point. Why bother paying you for a public domain work when I can get it off of Kazaa for free legally.
Yeah, and theft and murder are basic moral human rights too. Not so. There is no such thing as 100% freedom. You do NOT have the freedom to infringe on the rights of others. This includes infringing on the right of a person to own his intellectual property, as well as physical property.
There is no collective. There are only individuals. Sure, ideas are built on a foundation of other ideas. That's why patents expire. Patents are created to allow a person to profit from his idea. If you create something, there is no danger of anyone discovering it until you tell someone, or sell a product based on it. Greed is a great motivator, an should be considered a good quality, when channeled into productive efforts. There is no obligation to share knowledge without setting a price. The day that happens, I propose innovators go on strike. They may need to anyway because their ideas won't be worth a nickel if the govt. forces them to share them for free.
People seem to forget that companies are owned by people. What's the difference if the company is one person, 10 people, or 10000 shareholders. They're still people with rights.
If you were an author trying to make a living through writing, and you found out you can't publish anymore because no one buys books anymore, since it is easier to steal them, your perspective would change. I think you send a bad message to your students. They will see that there is no point in becoming an author, musician, or scientist, because your ideas will simply be plundered, and you will be left penniless (in your ideal world). Information wants to be free is a bs statement. More accurately, consumers want information to be free. Producers of information want it to have some value.
This got modded up? Yeah, Tolstoy, Goethe, Hemmingway, Steinbeck, Cervantes, etc. just got lucky. Copyrights shouldn't expire during an authors lifetime. How would you like it if the govt. took your business away after 10 years, saying, you've had it long enough, the public gets to make money off of it now. Next thing you know, we're a Communist society. Talk about lack of incentive to do anything. When you don't gain anything for what you produce, you created a sure fire way to ruin production.
"pursuit of hapiness" in the declaration of independence includes working for economic advantage. That statement in the article has no basis in fact.
More like communist than libertarian. Libertarians believe in the protection of individual rights, including copyright and IP
The purpose of the US constitution is to protect the rights of individuals. There is no bs about public good in there. These types of philosophies are inherent in communist (individuals second to society) and fascist (indiviuals second to the nation) systems. People's inventions should be protected because it is a form of individual property. This property should be protected from theft in the same way material creations are protected from theft. Otherwise there is no incentive to invest in research/development since the risk is high and without IP protection, there is no reward. Without IP drug research and development would cease in the public sector. Software development for profit would also be severely diminished since tools like p2p would make it necessary for only a few people to buy software and share it. EDA tools currently are licensed for millions a year now because of the small market. If your favorite game makers need to charge this much per copy because they can only sell 5 copies, your favorite game makers are going to go bankrupt. Ayn Rand considers greed an admirable quality. Greed inspires people to become productive individuals. They start companies and employ millions of people. The average person owes his livelyhood to these greedy, and supposedly evil individuals. So I'd think twice about trampling all over these peoples rights.
There's nothing wrong with MS providing a player to play DRM media if that's what the RIAA/MPAA is offering. That doesn't make them the bad guy in this case. Now, if they're playing both sides, they'll allow consumers to copy non DRM material because it sells more copies of Windows AND they'll allow playback of DRM material provided by the RIAA/MPAA because it also sells more copies of Windows. I'd love to download movies from blockbuster some day when the bandwidth is there, but that'll never happen without DRM. But if MS also lets me record and copy non-DRM stuff such as analog TV feeds, cds, my own creations, etc., that's about the best we can ask for from MS or Apple or Linux, etc. The fact that MS is starting to listen to consumers in this area is good news.
If the mods are essentialy bypassing or altering the BIOS, there is precedent for the hardware manufacturer to have a case. For instance, if you try to reverse engineer the bios of a Mac Box and start selling modified BIOS chips to run MacOS with non Apple hardware, Apple will sue you and win. An example is where they refused to by chips from Exponential (who had a bipolar PowerPC), and refused to allow the clone makers at the time to modify the bios to use this PowerPC with their hardware. Exponential subsequently went out of business.
You also could argue that a shoplifter who stole a cd from a store only caused a minimal loss because the cd media costs under a dollar to produce, and he wouldn't have bought it anyway. The arguement that the pirates wouldn't have bought any of the music anyway is very weak and won't hold up in court. As far as speeders costing taxpayers money, it can be argued that your fine for speeding pays that bill, even though I don't think your arguement is statistically significant. SUV drivers who obey the speed limit burn more oil than sports car drivers who break the speed limit.
MS's main goal is to protect their monopoly. If they feel that there is any chance they will be supplanted if they provide copy protection that makes users go to Linux or Apple, they won't do it. Whatever the MPAA/RIAA is throwing their way is pocket change compared to what they're making selling Windows. In the end, they'll pick the route that sells the most copies of Windows. Before their attitude may have been that they need copy protection to avoid losing market share to other systems endorsed by the RIAA/MPAA. Hopefully the consumer voice will continue to be heard.
Palladium hardware won't do anything if no one writes software to use it in ways we don't like. It would be nice to get the advantages of Palladium without the disadvantages. Apparently, MS listens to customers, if the article is correct, so maybe we can get our virus protection and email encryption, without restrictions on fair use, if we vote with our dollars (which is what MS is really interested in).
ok. Same old rant. Lets forget the fact the the article implies the exact opposite. According to the article, when someone actually wants to buy a DVR, the fact that the recorded material cannot be copied makes the buyer look elsewhere. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out he'd prefer a dvr system where he can record favorites onto VCDs etc. MS, whose main goal is to make money, sees this problem, and switches sides, at least for now, to sell more products and expand its comsumer base (at the expense of Tivo, etc.). I think this is encouraging.
Ddin't notice the full story link. I like the part where they say Windows Admins can only handle 10 machines. What the hell do they do all day if they're only managing 10 machines. Reboot them all every hour? I'm sure what really happened is statistically, most the companies using Windows were small, so the comparison wasn't fair to begin with, since they still need 1 sysadmin, even though the number of machines is small. again "There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians."
Given that Linux SysAdmins need to be a lot more knowledgable than Windows SysAdmins, the difference in salaries over 3 years probably closes the price gap. Wasn't it Churchill who said something like "There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians."