In that case, editorial groups can select papers they consider particularly interesting. Such groups may end up being similar to the current major journals, but they would not hinder access to scientific results
And how does that get paid for? Isn't that just pushing the same subscription money around a little differently? Sure, you could access the material for free, but there's so much of it that you can't make heads or tails of it. So you end up paying for editorial oversight, and we're right back where we started.
Also note that open archives without editorial oversight like arXiv are already being gamed for advantage.
If the taxpayers fund small business loans, do the products sold by those businesses belong to me as well? How come I don't get free corn from all the farm subsidies my taxes go to fund?
As far as open-access publishing goes, recent studies show that high-volume journals with minimal editorial oversight are nicely profitable. The problem comes when you want either a specialized journal or a high-quality journal that rejects most of what's submitted (think Nature or Science). Since open access journals only take in revenue for accepted articles, they're under pressure to publish more material and reject less, thus lowering overall quality. So the business model only works for particular types of science publishing.
In the long run, there's room for both models, and it's unlikely that one will fail and be replaced by the other. Each has its own strengths.
If the results of research funded by the public do indeed belong to the public, why should universities and researchers be allowed to patent products coming from that same research. The universities where I've worked rely heavily on their patent portfolios for funding, as do many professors. I wonder how many scientists are willing to give up intellectual property rights from the fruits of their research?
My iPhone is set to automatically join trusted wireless networks whenever possible. If I stray into an area that has a wireless network with the same name as one I've legally joined before (ie "linksys"), then the phone will automatically join it, breaking the law and sending me to PMITA prison.
After you've scrolled down a web page and the address window has moved off the scren, tap the top bar where you see the time, battery and signal strength and this will automatically return you to the top of the web page and the address window.
Didn't mean to imply anything by the use of the word "hacks", it has a long an honorable history to those who tinker. As you note, the wrinkle is indeed whether the goal of Apple's new firmare is to do damage to a person's property, and I've yet to see any evidence provided that shows this was the goal. I agree that having unlocked phones available is better for Apple, I'd argue both in the short term and in the long term.
Is Apple deliberately bricking the phones, deliberately disabling the hacks, or are they just updating their own product the way they best see fit, which coincidentally mucks up phones that have been hacked? I've seen a lot of rhetoric assuming Apple is doing this on purpose for nefarious business reasons, but not much evidence to support it (would love to see some if anyone can provide it).
Does Apple have an obligation to keep your phone working after you've hacked it and violated your warranty? Should they make sure their updates don't affect any third party hacks? Is that even possible?
I'm not trying to defend Apple's increasingly annoying tactics here, but am curious as to how much effort people think Apple should put into preserving third party hacks?
Let's see, the RAZR came out priced at $800, $499 with a 2 year Cingular contract. It sold well over 10 million in its first year at those prices. Given that it's basically a stone-age device in comparison to the Jesus Phone, 10 million sales should be a walk in the park for Apple.
Full story on how onerous the license agreement is can be found here. An excerpt:
"For example, we shall (and you agree we are permitted) to transmit and arrange for automatic installation of any and all updates, modifications, and/or even full re-installations of the Software to address security, digital rights management, interoperability, and/or performance issues.....
The Software also includes automated features that collect information that uniquely allows the Software to automatically identify your computer and your system, the version of the Software in use and to manage some or all of the digital rights associated with Content. These features may be remotely activated in order to update security components used by the Software, including, without limitation, portions of the Windows Media Player associated with your use of Urge. These updates, modifications, re-installations and other modifications to the Software can occur periodically or when necessary and without any notice to you....
We may use your Personal Information to tailor your experience on Urge, review your content libraries and files to better understand your preferences and make recommendations, to display Content, Promotions, information or offers we think may be of interest to you...
he Software is also capable of monitoring itself to detect tampering or other security-related activities and has the ability to automatically transmit and communicate information about attempted tampering and other security incidents. "
Note that according to this story, using Microsoft Defender's own definitions for Spyware, URGE is considered Spyware.
"The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason."
Originally published in the San Francisco Examiner, later reprinted in "Generation of Swine".
Here's an article on the many distortions that have occured to this quote via the intarweb.
--- The book publishers not only want you to read their books, they also want you reading their latest books, and the ones by their famous authors---
I'm not sure why you'd think that. For the famous authors, they're going to get better terms in their contracts with publishers than unknowns, which means less profit available for the publishers. I guess perhaps there's some economy of scale involved (large print run means lower costs per book means more profit).
But as far as new books versus back catalog, I don't really see much difference (and I work for a publisher). Each copy of any book sold means more profit, so either is good, no real differentiation between the two streams of money rolling in where one is preferred to the other.
Perhaps a better argument would be that the publishers don't want you to know about competing books. They figure they're doing a good job promoting their book on subject X, and without Google you might not find out about the other 10 books on the subject, and go ahead and buy their inferior book.
But those are all minor points when compared with the big one--Google will make billions of dollars off of this project, and the publishers and other various copyright holders want a cut. I personally think Google is within their fair use rights and doesn't owe them squat, but we'll have to wait and see what a court says.
---I think you are speaking without sufficient knowledge---
Really? Well, as an editor with a major publishing firm, and as an author of a textbook, this is a subject to which I've paid a great deal of attention. Let's take a look at your statements:
---Google is agreeing to compensate the publishers (based on a "percentage of profits", as you put it)---
No, they are not. Google is not offering compensation for the inclusion of material. Google is not offering the copyright holders any percentage of ad sale revenue.
---and is also agreeing to allow authors and publishers to opt out.---
Yes, and this is exactly the problem that the publishers are suing over. They feel it should be strictly opt in. Which is ironic, because (in the case of the Author's Guild), participation in their lawsuit is stricly opt out. Since search engines all function on an opt out basis, any ruling that says that opt in is required would affect them as well.
---The last discussion I read about it even said that Google was offering to exclude advertising from this project so that they would not be making any direct profits.---
There are two projects involved here, Google Library, and Google Print. Google Library will be done in conjunction with university libraries and will not feature ads. Google Print will feature ads.
---The people who are most upset by the coming changes are the ones who stand to lose the most, which is clearly the publishers in this case. They have an existing business model which has worked quite well, to the tune of billions of dollars.---
Clearly you do not understand the motivation behind these lawsuits. Take a look at this set of links, showing a nice balance of arguments on both sides, from people within the publishing industry. You'll note that every single one of them, including those arguing against Google, admit that the issue comes down to the use of content without compensation, not some fear that this will harm book sales. This is not about messing with the business model, this is about wanting a piece of the action, a cut of the money Google stands to make from ad sales. They all know that this service means higher book sales, but that's not enough for them.
--- If it was at all possible, they would like to stop the clock at the moment of maximum cash flow.---
If that was the case, they would have stopped things years and years ago, as book sales continue to plummet.
---I think you're completely missing the boat here. When someone puts something on the Web, they have agreed to try to make it visible, and Google is serving their interests by making it more visible.---
When I wrote and published my book, I have agreed to try to make it visible, and Google is serving my interests by making it more visible. There's this weird notion floating around that authors don't want their books to be found, don't want their content to be read, but website authors do want these things. If that's the case, why write the book in the first place if you're trying to keep the content hidden and secret?
IANAL, but I don't see any difference between a set of copyrighted text that's on the web and a set of copyrighted text that's printed on a page. Both are sets of copyrighted text that fall under the same restrictions and limitation imposed by copyright laws. If you can scan, index and cache one, you can scan, index, and cache the other (and vice versa if Google loses this suit). Search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo! are all opt out--you have to tell the search engines you don't want to be a part of their content, just like you have to opt out from Google Print.
Let's be clear here--this issue is not about allowing access to text online, or fears that it will hurt booksales--every publisher out there knows this will mean more booksales. It's about control of content, and the fact that Google will profit from using that content without compensating the copyright holders. If Google offered the publishers a percentage of profits, all this controversy would disappear in a second. The question that's being asked here, is how far does copyright extend, and is this fair use, not will this irreperably harm the book publishing industry (which it clearly won't).
What you missed here is that Google intends to make a lot of money from selling ads on the pages where the search results are shown. The publishers see this as someone else taking their intellectual property and using it to make a profit, without asking their permission, and more importantly, without offering them a share of the profits. This is not about fears of people downloading books or not buying the books because they can get a 3 sentence answer from Google (anyone whose question can be answered in 3 sentences wasn't going to buy the book anyway). It's clear that even the publishers involved in the lawsuits realize that this service would result in higher booksales.
It's a question of how far fair use rights extend. Fair use does not prohibit you from making a profit from exercising your rights (the NY Times Review of Books can excerpt content in a review and profit from selling ads on that page). The publishers argue that Google's use of their material goes beyond fair use, particularly because they're copying the entire work and not just an excerpt.
It will be up to a court to weigh the many factors involved and come up with a ruling. The obvious question is, if Google loses the lawsuits, what then happens to web search engines that spider and cache copyrighted text without the author's explicit permission? Will they be held to the same standard, and will plain old Google, Yahoo!, MSN Search and their ilk become "opt in" only search engines?
I've been waiting a lot longer than 10 months for a PowerBook that was a significant improvement over the 1st Gen TiBook I currently use. The mere speedbumps along the way haven't been that impressive (oooh, backlit keyboard, that's worth $2500 to me!).
Whatever happened to the low power G5 chips IBM keeps swearing that they have?
---Well, they are in the middle of a massive shift to intel x86 based processors. That might have something to do with it.---
If that's the case, then why upgrade the iMac now, the Mini a few weeks ago, the Xserve last month, and the iBook in July? None of these feature x86 processors yet, and they seem to have managed to increase performance for them.
And whatever happened to those dual core and low power G5 chips that IBM claimed to have?
Okay, the new iPods and such are nice, and you should understand that I'm a bit biased, as I'm typing this on a 500 Mhz TiBook that desperately needs replacing:
Where are the upgraded PowerBooks and PowerMacs? We seem to get a new iPod model every two weeks, but no new PowerBooks for over 10 months?
Paying 99 cents per song is a great deal in some cases. I use the iTMS to pick up tracks off of soundtrack albums and compilations, when I only want one or two songs. $0.99 for the one good song is a much better deal than $18.99 for that same song plus a bunch of other garbage. Same deal for re-releases of albums that I already own, where they add in bonus tracks (see recent reissues of Elvis Costello lp's or Sonic Youth's "Goo"). And then there are those Greatest Hits albums where they add one new song. 99 cents to get that song without buying all the other songs you already own is just dandy.
If Apple opened their OS to commodity PC's how long do you think it would take for MS to drop Office for the Mac? This would essentially kill the market, leaving Apple with a slow drift into bankruptcy.
Slashdot Mirror
In that case, editorial groups can select papers they consider particularly interesting. Such groups may end up being similar to the current major journals, but they would not hinder access to scientific results
And how does that get paid for? Isn't that just pushing the same subscription money around a little differently? Sure, you could access the material for free, but there's so much of it that you can't make heads or tails of it. So you end up paying for editorial oversight, and we're right back where we started.
Also note that open archives without editorial oversight like arXiv are already being gamed for advantage.
So by that reasoning, shouldn't we just consider the cost of subscribing to journals to be yet another user tax?
If the taxpayers fund small business loans, do the products sold by those businesses belong to me as well? How come I don't get free corn from all the farm subsidies my taxes go to fund?
As far as open-access publishing goes, recent studies show that high-volume journals with minimal editorial oversight are nicely profitable. The problem comes when you want either a specialized journal or a high-quality journal that rejects most of what's submitted (think Nature or Science). Since open access journals only take in revenue for accepted articles, they're under pressure to publish more material and reject less, thus lowering overall quality. So the business model only works for particular types of science publishing.
In the long run, there's room for both models, and it's unlikely that one will fail and be replaced by the other. Each has its own strengths.
If the results of research funded by the public do indeed belong to the public, why should universities and researchers be allowed to patent products coming from that same research. The universities where I've worked rely heavily on their patent portfolios for funding, as do many professors. I wonder how many scientists are willing to give up intellectual property rights from the fruits of their research?
My iPhone is set to automatically join trusted wireless networks whenever possible. If I stray into an area that has a wireless network with the same name as one I've legally joined before (ie "linksys"), then the phone will automatically join it, breaking the law and sending me to PMITA prison.
After you've scrolled down a web page and the address window has moved off the scren, tap the top bar where you see the time, battery and signal strength and this will automatically return you to the top of the web page and the address window.
Didn't mean to imply anything by the use of the word "hacks", it has a long an honorable history to those who tinker. As you note, the wrinkle is indeed whether the goal of Apple's new firmare is to do damage to a person's property, and I've yet to see any evidence provided that shows this was the goal. I agree that having unlocked phones available is better for Apple, I'd argue both in the short term and in the long term.
Is Apple deliberately bricking the phones, deliberately disabling the hacks, or are they just updating their own product the way they best see fit, which coincidentally mucks up phones that have been hacked? I've seen a lot of rhetoric assuming Apple is doing this on purpose for nefarious business reasons, but not much evidence to support it (would love to see some if anyone can provide it).
Does Apple have an obligation to keep your phone working after you've hacked it and violated your warranty? Should they make sure their updates don't affect any third party hacks? Is that even possible?
I'm not trying to defend Apple's increasingly annoying tactics here, but am curious as to how much effort people think Apple should put into preserving third party hacks?
Wow, that's going to come as quite a shock to the folks over at Tor. They'll have to wonder why they've been paying him royalties.
Let's see, the RAZR came out priced at $800, $499 with a 2 year Cingular contract. It sold well over 10 million in its first year at those prices. Given that it's basically a stone-age device in comparison to the Jesus Phone, 10 million sales should be a walk in the park for Apple.
Good point. Given that MS is expected to lose $50 per Zune player sold, there won't be any profits to speak of for a very long time.
Full story on how onerous the license agreement is can be found here. An excerpt:
"For example, we shall (and you agree we are permitted) to transmit and arrange for automatic installation of any and all updates, modifications, and/or even full re-installations of the Software to address security, digital rights management, interoperability, and/or performance issues.....
The Software also includes automated features that collect information that uniquely allows the Software to automatically identify your computer and your system, the version of the Software in use and to manage some or all of the digital rights associated with Content. These features may be remotely activated in order to update security components used by the Software, including, without limitation, portions of the Windows Media Player associated with your use of Urge. These updates, modifications, re-installations and other modifications to the Software can occur periodically or when necessary and without any notice to you....
We may use your Personal Information to tailor your experience on Urge, review your content libraries and files to better understand your preferences and make recommendations, to display Content, Promotions, information or offers we think may be of interest to you...
he Software is also capable of monitoring itself to detect tampering or other security-related activities and has the ability to automatically transmit and communicate information about attempted tampering and other security incidents. "
Note that according to this story, using Microsoft Defender's own definitions for Spyware, URGE is considered Spyware.
Close but not quite. The actual quote is:
"The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason."
Originally published in the San Francisco Examiner, later reprinted in "Generation of Swine".
Here's an article on the many distortions that have occured to this quote via the intarweb.
--- The book publishers not only want you to read their books, they also want you reading their latest books, and the ones by their famous authors---
I'm not sure why you'd think that. For the famous authors, they're going to get better terms in their contracts with publishers than unknowns, which means less profit available for the publishers. I guess perhaps there's some economy of scale involved (large print run means lower costs per book means more profit).
But as far as new books versus back catalog, I don't really see much difference (and I work for a publisher). Each copy of any book sold means more profit, so either is good, no real differentiation between the two streams of money rolling in where one is preferred to the other.
Perhaps a better argument would be that the publishers don't want you to know about competing books. They figure they're doing a good job promoting their book on subject X, and without Google you might not find out about the other 10 books on the subject, and go ahead and buy their inferior book.
But those are all minor points when compared with the big one--Google will make billions of dollars off of this project, and the publishers and other various copyright holders want a cut. I personally think Google is within their fair use rights and doesn't owe them squat, but we'll have to wait and see what a court says.
---I think you are speaking without sufficient knowledge---
Really? Well, as an editor with a major publishing firm, and as an author of a textbook, this is a subject to which I've paid a great deal of attention. Let's take a look at your statements:
---Google is agreeing to compensate the publishers (based on a "percentage of profits", as you put it)---
No, they are not. Google is not offering compensation for the inclusion of material. Google is not offering the copyright holders any percentage of ad sale revenue.
---and is also agreeing to allow authors and publishers to opt out.---
Yes, and this is exactly the problem that the publishers are suing over. They feel it should be strictly opt in. Which is ironic, because (in the case of the Author's Guild), participation in their lawsuit is stricly opt out. Since search engines all function on an opt out basis, any ruling that says that opt in is required would affect them as well.
---The last discussion I read about it even said that Google was offering to exclude advertising from this project so that they would not be making any direct profits.---
There are two projects involved here, Google Library, and Google Print. Google Library will be done in conjunction with university libraries and will not feature ads. Google Print will feature ads.
---The people who are most upset by the coming changes are the ones who stand to lose the most, which is clearly the publishers in this case. They have an existing business model which has worked quite well, to the tune of billions of dollars.---
Clearly you do not understand the motivation behind these lawsuits. Take a look at this set of links, showing a nice balance of arguments on both sides, from people within the publishing industry. You'll note that every single one of them, including those arguing against Google, admit that the issue comes down to the use of content without compensation, not some fear that this will harm book sales. This is not about messing with the business model, this is about wanting a piece of the action, a cut of the money Google stands to make from ad sales. They all know that this service means higher book sales, but that's not enough for them.
--- If it was at all possible, they would like to stop the clock at the moment of maximum cash flow.---
If that was the case, they would have stopped things years and years ago, as book sales continue to plummet.
---I think you're completely missing the boat here. When someone puts something on the Web, they have agreed to try to make it visible, and Google is serving their interests by making it more visible.---
When I wrote and published my book, I have agreed to try to make it visible, and Google is serving my interests by making it more visible. There's this weird notion floating around that authors don't want their books to be found, don't want their content to be read, but website authors do want these things. If that's the case, why write the book in the first place if you're trying to keep the content hidden and secret?
IANAL, but I don't see any difference between a set of copyrighted text that's on the web and a set of copyrighted text that's printed on a page. Both are sets of copyrighted text that fall under the same restrictions and limitation imposed by copyright laws. If you can scan, index and cache one, you can scan, index, and cache the other (and vice versa if Google loses this suit). Search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo! are all opt out--you have to tell the search engines you don't want to be a part of their content, just like you have to opt out from Google Print.
Let's be clear here--this issue is not about allowing access to text online, or fears that it will hurt booksales--every publisher out there knows this will mean more booksales. It's about control of content, and the fact that Google will profit from using that content without compensating the copyright holders. If Google offered the publishers a percentage of profits, all this controversy would disappear in a second. The question that's being asked here, is how far does copyright extend, and is this fair use, not will this irreperably harm the book publishing industry (which it clearly won't).
What you missed here is that Google intends to make a lot of money from selling ads on the pages where the search results are shown. The publishers see this as someone else taking their intellectual property and using it to make a profit, without asking their permission, and more importantly, without offering them a share of the profits. This is not about fears of people downloading books or not buying the books because they can get a 3 sentence answer from Google (anyone whose question can be answered in 3 sentences wasn't going to buy the book anyway). It's clear that even the publishers involved in the lawsuits realize that this service would result in higher booksales.
It's a question of how far fair use rights extend. Fair use does not prohibit you from making a profit from exercising your rights (the NY Times Review of Books can excerpt content in a review and profit from selling ads on that page). The publishers argue that Google's use of their material goes beyond fair use, particularly because they're copying the entire work and not just an excerpt.
It will be up to a court to weigh the many factors involved and come up with a ruling. The obvious question is, if Google loses the lawsuits, what then happens to web search engines that spider and cache copyrighted text without the author's explicit permission? Will they be held to the same standard, and will plain old Google, Yahoo!, MSN Search and their ilk become "opt in" only search engines?
IBM announced that they existed after Apple announced the Intel switch. Why would IBM go public with such a huge lie?
3 .html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050708-507
A remote control and a built in camera don't strike me as that big of a deal.
And neither will do much for me on the road in the iMac form factor.
I've been waiting a lot longer than 10 months for a PowerBook that was a significant improvement over the 1st Gen TiBook I currently use. The mere speedbumps along the way haven't been that impressive (oooh, backlit keyboard, that's worth $2500 to me!).
Whatever happened to the low power G5 chips IBM keeps swearing that they have?
---Well, they are in the middle of a massive shift to intel x86 based processors. That might have something to do with it.---
If that's the case, then why upgrade the iMac now, the Mini a few weeks ago, the Xserve last month, and the iBook in July? None of these feature x86 processors yet, and they seem to have managed to increase performance for them.
And whatever happened to those dual core and low power G5 chips that IBM claimed to have?
At least according to Apple's page:
Holds up to 150 hours of video.
Video capacity is based on 4 minutes per H.264 750-Kbps video combined with 128-Kbps audio.
Okay, the new iPods and such are nice, and you should understand that I'm a bit biased, as I'm typing this on a 500 Mhz TiBook that desperately needs replacing:
Where are the upgraded PowerBooks and PowerMacs? We seem to get a new iPod model every two weeks, but no new PowerBooks for over 10 months?
Grrrrrrr!
Paying 99 cents per song is a great deal in some cases. I use the iTMS to pick up tracks off of soundtrack albums and compilations, when I only want one or two songs. $0.99 for the one good song is a much better deal than $18.99 for that same song plus a bunch of other garbage. Same deal for re-releases of albums that I already own, where they add in bonus tracks (see recent reissues of Elvis Costello lp's or Sonic Youth's "Goo"). And then there are those Greatest Hits albums where they add one new song. 99 cents to get that song without buying all the other songs you already own is just dandy.
If Apple opened their OS to commodity PC's how long do you think it would take for MS to drop Office for the Mac? This would essentially kill the market, leaving Apple with a slow drift into bankruptcy.