Trade secrets are fundamental to business. No one should be forced to give up their trade secrets just because others can't compete. Personally, I think it's a bad busniess practice to not tell independent mechanics enough info about the computer system to diagnose and solve probles, since it gives your customers less choice, and therefore, less incentive to buy your car. However, a specific car manufacturer does not have a monopoly on cars, and there is no just reason for the govt. to force a business to give up its trade secrets, if it chooses not to do so. I don't have a right to demand from anyone (non-monopoly in US) that they tell me how their product works, and if laws are passed that give me this power, it a blow to individual rights. If you believe a law that forces car manufacturers to give up their secrets on computer control is just, should should review your ideology, because you certainly don't believe in individual rights, or at least that not everyone has the same individual rights, if you grant yourself this power.
" I can, however, use another program to read the text files that I've created with Notepad, use my extremely simple math formulae on another, competing calculator program ( heck, I can even port that sucker over to Linux with little trouble ), or set my new taskbar clock to the same time by using the system time, like I always have, but I cannot use that DRM enable.wmp file with just any media player: thus, no lock-in and another troll bites the dust. And another one's gone, and another one's gone..."
Anyone can license windows media technology for their own player, if they choose to make a competing player that's compatible. WMP does not lock you in. If yourr favorite player doesn't support windows media, complain to to the creators, not the govt. if you really believe in freedom.
"Is P2P any different (except for the fact that the industry being replaced has much more money and political sway than ever before)?"
Just because Hollywood got started by violating Edison's patent rights does not mean a) that this was the only way something like Hollywood would have started, and b) that because their business began by defrauding Edision, you have the right to infringe on their rights.
" apple can tout this bigtime with real effective results (pixar movie$)"
Which makes one wonder if Jobs is making the right decision for Pixar, or simply using Pixar to promote Apple even though a Linux/x86 solution is possibly better, and probably more cost effective. Jobs needs to make decisions for Pixar that are best for Pixar, not Apple.
"Of course, when artists start getting payment from legal users that presume compensation for when the devices are used for piracy, they're more or less waiving their moral claim to any damages for piracy since they've already been paid for that."
Not really. It depends how the law is written. For instance, in Canada you can't share music online under the assumption that the people downloading it will pay for it with their cdr tax.
Once again a post appears which completely misleads/.ers. This time, despite the long post, the poster failed to mention that the reason for the vote discrepancies is that workers gave voters the wrong codes, and therefore, people were voting in the wrong precincts. Most likely, the 1st precinct on the list got vote from other precint voters, resulting in a larger than %100 turnout. Simple case of garbage in-garbageout. There was no machine cracking or even machine errors that anyone has mentioned.
I think you misunderstood the book, or have oversimplified it. He was conditioned to feel ill when thinking about pychotic behavior using drugs. However, one of the movies used to condition him used Beethoven's 9th, which he then became ill when hearing. The govt. removed the conditioning because it was determined that the rights of this pychopath were violated since he could no longer enjoy Beethoven.
"So now would be a good time to start thinking about how we persuade governments that market in software may eventually need to be regulated, just as the market in electricity, water and food is, and that that regulation may well include a statutory duty to disclose source code and allow it to be used elsewhere."
So you're telling me that MS is more like Stalin, and yet your conclusion is to employ socialist regulation as a solution to get to a more "capitalist" solution. There is a serious flaw in your analogy. The flaw is that you assume everyone is forced to use MS. Actually, people have choices, such as Linux, MacOS, BSD and a variety of proprietary systems. Regulation is not about freedom. The proposed regulations forces OSS on the public, which is a violation of individual rights. But then again, people have been in favor of violating Bill Gates' rights for years now, so this attitude doesn't surprise me.
If Linux truly is blameless, than MS is just wasting it's money, since SCO will lose anyway. On the other hand, if SCO is right, they should get their day in court, and not presecuting for lack of money would make IBM any more innocent.
"The point here is that if not for the money from Microsoft, SCO wouldn't be able to sue anyone. Besides, why did you think Microsoft gave SCO the money? Just to be nice?"
So you think it's right that someone doesn't get their day in court because they don't have enough money? If SCO is right, they should win in court. If they're wrong, they should lose.
Let's face it. Kazaa's busniess model is to make money on advertizing. No music file sharing means no clients, which means no revenue for Kazaa. They make money from illegal file sharing. They can't afford to have illegal file sharing stop.
It doesn't matter whether or not the govt. makes local phone carriers share their networks. VoIP is the future anyway, and their is competition since this can be done over cable, wireless, or twisted pair. Making local carriers share their networks isn't real competition anyway. It's just another form of regualtion where the phone company is forced to give competitors bandwidth at a regulated rate, which doesn't change things much from forcing the phone company to give you service at a regulated rate.
So a maker of one encyclopedia can have a copyright over the collection of human knowledge? Boy, i am starting to have some 1984 style ideas where the one and only legal vendor of facts decides what is true and what is not...."
No. Only their interpretation of human knowledge. Anyone else can have an encyclopedia as well, as long as they get the data independently.
" What about databases of one? I know it's completely academic, but still...... and yes, I am aware of the irony regarding the usage of the U.S. Army's slogan (An Army of One!)."
You'd need to prove that someone else stole your database, as opposed to arriving at it independently. As the plaintiff, you have the burden of proof.
"(Think phone-number databases) and goes directly against the idea that nobody can own a fact."
This is not a law that allows someone to have exclusive ownership of a fact. It simply means that you can't steal someone elses database and sell it as your own. Therefore, two competing companies can each have phone books with the same data in them. However, I can't take company A's phone book, copy the white pages, and then start my own company selling with a new yellow pages that ive accumulated for revenue. It takes work to create a specific set of data, and no one should be able to just copy that exact database without your permission. If they independently arrive at the same database, however, that is ok, and the law in question does not consider this wrong.
"So they get around price fixing charges by all producing different (but functionally identical) components and over charging for them. Seems like the price fixing laws need to be fixed."
Companies shouldn't be punished for poor consumer choices. A customer who buys an ink jet printer should know that ink cartridges are expensive. There is an option to buy a laser printer, which has a higher initial price, but longer lasting cartridges. Quit micro-legislating businesses. Instead, get consumers to make more informed choices. It's not the govt.'s job to spoon feed consumers.
"First of all, the AIFF audio in a CD is a lossy format. You can't sample music at any bitrate and expect to retain all of the information. A 44kHz 16 bit sampled song (the format used by CD audio)only retains the frequencies below 22kHz, due to Nyquist sampling issues. You also get some aliasing of the music which produces artifacts."
With proper filtering and a good oversampling a/d, you get much better digital recordings than analog. Analog tends to have high noise and poor dynamic range compared to digital.
" How a monthly subscribtion eventually filters down to the artists? It seems such a system would make it hard to do the "for each time a user listens to X's song they get hit with a bat by the RIAA" analysis."
The first question you should ask is how do the record labels get paid. Is it based on the songs you listen to? Is it a fixed amount, or a fixed rate per song? Or do they pay a flat fee to each label to provide a particular song?
Microsoft does not do anything that it doesn't think will produce revenue. All those "free" programs that you speek of are certainly paid for, you just don't see it on the reciept when you bought the OS. Perhaps a lesson in accounting would help here."
Yes, MS doesn't produce anything that is free as in beer, but they do license some techonogy that is in effect an open standard if you're willing to pay the fee, such as WMA
It seems like the author and the recipient both missed the point of OSS. It's not to make software free as in beer, but to make software open so that anybody can understand how it works and work on it himself if he wants. The author does realize the implication, however. The implication is that OSS is free as in beer. You can't charge for something when you're giving away the source code unless you make it difficult to compile, and even then, someone else can compile it and distribute it for free as in beer. People make money supporting OSS, not by developing it. So what's the solution if you want to make money writing code; open standards. In the harware arena, there is real competition for any particular part. Why? Because the parts are designed to conform to a known standard, and are thus somewhat interchanable in designing the whole product. Open standards have never been the case until recently, however, in the software field. html is the first instance that comes to mind of an open standard in software. With open standards, people can develop competing products that are interoperable, so users have a choice. Users having a choice seems to me more important than users having access to source, which they rarely, if ever look at. Open source is fine if you want to give away your work, or hope people will donate money to support your work (OSDL), but if you want choice in software, but don't mind if you can't see the source code, push for open standards
"It is pretty clear that an idea is not something that someone can "own", because it doesn't exist in space and time. Property laws were developed because there is only a limited amount of material objects in the universe, but everyone can "own" ideas without "taking" anything from anybody else. In fact, it is better to spread good ideas around, for the same reason that it is better to live in a good neighborhood than a bad one."
It's attitudes like this that threaten to destroy live-saving drug development. If you've invested billions in developing a new drug and getting FDA approval, and then a competitor simply reverse-engineers it, they have taken something from you. You'll think twice about spending the billion dollars next time. As it is, the US is the dominates the drug development market because they are one of the few countries left that actually supports drug patents without regulating prices. The rest of the world thinks the immediate needs of people outweigh the rights of companies to free market, and the effect is obvious. No research money for drug development because the risk is too great for the paltry reward in a country that regulates prices.
What if I don't want to participate in this system? It would be a violation of my copyright to force me to participate. Why can't I choose how much I get per download? How do they decide how much of the $5/person I get? iTunes, new Napster, etc. are moving in the right direction to legally obtain music online. The EFF proposal is an attack on freedom of the copyright holder. How would the EFF like it if someone paid $5 a month to violate the GPL without legal ramifications?
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Trade secrets are fundamental to business. No one should be forced to give up their trade secrets just because others can't compete. Personally, I think it's a bad busniess practice to not tell independent mechanics enough info about the computer system to diagnose and solve probles, since it gives your customers less choice, and therefore, less incentive to buy your car. However, a specific car manufacturer does not have a monopoly on cars, and there is no just reason for the govt. to force a business to give up its trade secrets, if it chooses not to do so. I don't have a right to demand from anyone (non-monopoly in US) that they tell me how their product works, and if laws are passed that give me this power, it a blow to individual rights. If you believe a law that forces car manufacturers to give up their secrets on computer control is just, should should review your ideology, because you certainly don't believe in individual rights, or at least that not everyone has the same individual rights, if you grant yourself this power.
" I can, however, use another program to read the text files that I've created with Notepad, use my extremely simple math formulae on another, competing calculator program ( heck, I can even port that sucker over to Linux with little trouble ), or set my new taskbar clock to the same time by using the system time, like I always have, but I cannot use that DRM enable .wmp file with just any media player: thus, no lock-in and another troll bites the dust.
And another one's gone, and another one's gone..."
Anyone can license windows media technology for their own player, if they choose to make a competing player that's compatible. WMP does not lock you in. If yourr favorite player doesn't support windows media, complain to to the creators, not the govt. if you really believe in freedom.
" MicroSoft makes an OS to make money, Linux is designed to be an effective OS"
Why do you assume making money and making an effective OS are mutually exclusive?
"Is P2P any different (except for the fact that the industry being replaced has much more money and political sway than ever before)?"
Just because Hollywood got started by violating Edison's patent rights does not mean a) that this was the only way something like Hollywood would have started, and b) that because their business began by defrauding Edision, you have the right to infringe on their rights.
Legal music downloads may be available in Europe as early as 2nd quarter 2004, according to this 2 month old article.
" apple can tout this bigtime with real effective results (pixar movie$)"
Which makes one wonder if Jobs is making the right decision for Pixar, or simply using Pixar to promote Apple even though a Linux/x86 solution is possibly better, and probably more cost effective. Jobs needs to make decisions for Pixar that are best for Pixar, not Apple.
"Of course, when artists start getting payment from legal users that presume compensation for when the devices are used for piracy, they're more or less waiving their moral claim to any damages for piracy since they've already been paid for that." Not really. It depends how the law is written. For instance, in Canada you can't share music online under the assumption that the people downloading it will pay for it with their cdr tax.
Once again a post appears which completely misleads /.ers. This time, despite the long post, the poster failed to mention that the reason for the vote discrepancies is that workers gave voters the wrong codes, and therefore, people were voting in the wrong precincts. Most likely, the 1st precinct on the list got vote from other precint voters, resulting in a larger than %100 turnout. Simple case of garbage in-garbageout. There was no machine cracking or even machine errors that anyone has mentioned.
I think you misunderstood the book, or have oversimplified it. He was conditioned to feel ill when thinking about pychotic behavior using drugs. However, one of the movies used to condition him used Beethoven's 9th, which he then became ill when hearing. The govt. removed the conditioning because it was determined that the rights of this pychopath were violated since he could no longer enjoy Beethoven.
"So now would be a good time to start thinking about how we persuade governments that market in software may eventually need to be regulated, just as the market in electricity, water and food is, and that that regulation may well include a statutory duty to disclose source code and allow it to be used elsewhere."
So you're telling me that MS is more like Stalin, and yet your conclusion is to employ socialist regulation as a solution to get to a more "capitalist" solution. There is a serious flaw in your analogy. The flaw is that you assume everyone is forced to use MS. Actually, people have choices, such as Linux, MacOS, BSD and a variety of proprietary systems. Regulation is not about freedom. The proposed regulations forces OSS on the public, which is a violation of individual rights. But then again, people have been in favor of violating Bill Gates' rights for years now, so this attitude doesn't surprise me.
If Linux truly is blameless, than MS is just wasting it's money, since SCO will lose anyway. On the other hand, if SCO is right, they should get their day in court, and not presecuting for lack of money would make IBM any more innocent.
"The point here is that if not for the money from Microsoft, SCO wouldn't be able to sue anyone. Besides, why did you think Microsoft gave SCO the money? Just to be nice?" So you think it's right that someone doesn't get their day in court because they don't have enough money? If SCO is right, they should win in court. If they're wrong, they should lose.
Let's face it. Kazaa's busniess model is to make money on advertizing. No music file sharing means no clients, which means no revenue for Kazaa. They make money from illegal file sharing. They can't afford to have illegal file sharing stop.
It doesn't matter whether or not the govt. makes local phone carriers share their networks. VoIP is the future anyway, and their is competition since this can be done over cable, wireless, or twisted pair. Making local carriers share their networks isn't real competition anyway. It's just another form of regualtion where the phone company is forced to give competitors bandwidth at a regulated rate, which doesn't change things much from forcing the phone company to give you service at a regulated rate.
" Is't an encyclopedia a database of facts?
So a maker of one encyclopedia can have a copyright over the collection of human knowledge? Boy, i am starting to have some 1984 style ideas where the one and only legal vendor of facts decides what is true and what is not...."
No. Only their interpretation of human knowledge. Anyone else can have an encyclopedia as well, as long as they get the data independently.
" What about databases of one? I know it's completely academic, but still... ... and yes, I am aware of the irony regarding the usage of the U.S. Army's slogan (An Army of One!)."
You'd need to prove that someone else stole your database, as opposed to arriving at it independently. As the plaintiff, you have the burden of proof.
"(Think phone-number databases) and goes directly against the idea that nobody can own a fact." This is not a law that allows someone to have exclusive ownership of a fact. It simply means that you can't steal someone elses database and sell it as your own. Therefore, two competing companies can each have phone books with the same data in them. However, I can't take company A's phone book, copy the white pages, and then start my own company selling with a new yellow pages that ive accumulated for revenue. It takes work to create a specific set of data, and no one should be able to just copy that exact database without your permission. If they independently arrive at the same database, however, that is ok, and the law in question does not consider this wrong.
"So they get around price fixing charges by all producing different (but functionally identical) components and over charging for them. Seems like the price fixing laws need to be fixed."
Companies shouldn't be punished for poor consumer choices. A customer who buys an ink jet printer should know that ink cartridges are expensive. There is an option to buy a laser printer, which has a higher initial price, but longer lasting cartridges. Quit micro-legislating businesses. Instead, get consumers to make more informed choices. It's not the govt.'s job to spoon feed consumers.
"First of all, the AIFF audio in a CD is a lossy format. You can't sample music at any bitrate and expect to retain all of the information. A 44kHz 16 bit sampled song (the format used by CD audio)only retains the frequencies below 22kHz, due to Nyquist sampling issues. You also get some aliasing of the music which produces artifacts."
With proper filtering and a good oversampling a/d, you get much better digital recordings than analog. Analog tends to have high noise and poor dynamic range compared to digital.
" How a monthly subscribtion eventually filters down to the artists? It seems such a system would make it hard to do the "for each time a user listens to X's song they get hit with a bat by the RIAA" analysis."
The first question you should ask is how do the record labels get paid. Is it based on the songs you listen to? Is it a fixed amount, or a fixed rate per song? Or do they pay a flat fee to each label to provide a particular song?
No mechanical random number generator is perfectly uniform.
"Bull Shit.
Microsoft does not do anything that it doesn't think will produce revenue. All those "free" programs that you speek of are certainly paid for, you just don't see it on the reciept when you bought the OS. Perhaps a lesson in accounting would help here."
Yes, MS doesn't produce anything that is free as in beer, but they do license some techonogy that is in effect an open standard if you're willing to pay the fee, such as WMA
It seems like the author and the recipient both missed the point of OSS. It's not to make software free as in beer, but to make software open so that anybody can understand how it works and work on it himself if he wants. The author does realize the implication, however. The implication is that OSS is free as in beer. You can't charge for something when you're giving away the source code unless you make it difficult to compile, and even then, someone else can compile it and distribute it for free as in beer. People make money supporting OSS, not by developing it. So what's the solution if you want to make money writing code; open standards. In the harware arena, there is real competition for any particular part. Why? Because the parts are designed to conform to a known standard, and are thus somewhat interchanable in designing the whole product. Open standards have never been the case until recently, however, in the software field. html is the first instance that comes to mind of an open standard in software. With open standards, people can develop competing products that are interoperable, so users have a choice. Users having a choice seems to me more important than users having access to source, which they rarely, if ever look at. Open source is fine if you want to give away your work, or hope people will donate money to support your work (OSDL), but if you want choice in software, but don't mind if you can't see the source code, push for open standards
"It is pretty clear that an idea is not something that someone can "own", because it doesn't exist in space and time. Property laws were developed because there is only a limited amount of material objects in the universe, but everyone can "own" ideas without "taking" anything from anybody else. In fact, it is better to spread good ideas around, for the same reason that it is better to live in a good neighborhood than a bad one."
It's attitudes like this that threaten to destroy live-saving drug development. If you've invested billions in developing a new drug and getting FDA approval, and then a competitor simply reverse-engineers it, they have taken something from you. You'll think twice about spending the billion dollars next time. As it is, the US is the dominates the drug development market because they are one of the few countries left that actually supports drug patents without regulating prices. The rest of the world thinks the immediate needs of people outweigh the rights of companies to free market, and the effect is obvious. No research money for drug development because the risk is too great for the paltry reward in a country that regulates prices.
What if I don't want to participate in this system? It would be a violation of my copyright to force me to participate. Why can't I choose how much I get per download? How do they decide how much of the $5/person I get? iTunes, new Napster, etc. are moving in the right direction to legally obtain music online. The EFF proposal is an attack on freedom of the copyright holder. How would the EFF like it if someone paid $5 a month to violate the GPL without legal ramifications?