"No, a successful musical recording generates revenue because lots people buy copies of it."
Without copyright law, people and other record companies would make their own copies of albums, leaving little or no revenue to the original artist. The revenue goes to the artist because copyright law forces it. If house painters had similar laws to benefit them, they could "generate revenue because lots of people buy" the privileges of residing in and selling the houses the painters painted.
But there's a key difference: The paint job doesn't generate revenue on an ongoing basis, the way a successful musical recording does.
That's a circular argument. A successful musical recording generates revenue only because the government forces that revenue stream via copyright law. If the law forced the residents of a house to pay royalties every year for the benefit of enjoying the paint job, and royalties when the house is sold, the paint job also would "generate revenue on an ongoing basis".
Currently the burden of proof is on the USPTO to show that something is obvious, rather than being on the applicant to show that it is nonobvious. Shift the burden to the applicant, and that will go a long way to solving the patent mess.
When a patent is being applied for, the applicant is claiming that they invented something that others would be unlikely to figure out independently. Making such an assertion should require strong evidence and persuasive arguments to go with it.
Obviousness will always be a grey area, but for everything to be considered nonobvious by default is ridiculous.
I would go as far as saying that patents should be restricted to those things that are obviously nonobvious. If there is doubt as to its obviousness, don't grant the patent. It is better for 10 well-deserving patent applications to get rejected than for one undeserving one to get approved. Those with rejected patents can still produce whatever they developed without the patent; but when an undeserving patent is granted it prevents everybody else from producing the covered items, without requiring the grantee to produce it themselves.
"Would it really be so bad to have the government run with a more business like model? The current administration has blown away all hope of a balanced budget, would it be so bad if the government actually made a profit?"
Businesses aren't democracies, they're dictatorships or oligarchies. And unlike regular businesses, government has the power to increase their revenue by force (taxation). Trust me, you won't want government as a whole run as a business.
However, having some services within the government run as a business can and does work. The US Postal Service, for example, is run practically as if it was a private business, with its funding coming from what customers pay, and sometimes they actually do make a profit.
"How about instead of H1-Bs, we fast-track green cards for people with needed skills, or is that not enough like indentured servitude?"
Business want indentured servitude. They don't want people who will be free to leave the company easily. So a fast-track green card to replace H1B, or a fully portable H1B visa program (i.e. work anywhere you want for the duration of the visa without requiring the new employer to sponsor anything) will not happen as long as politicians are in bed with big business.
'the free market actually scares corporations away from cartelization as long as someone else can bounce in and affect the market. We're talking about 5 corporations versus 3 billion individuals, any of whom can get together and say "we can do it better."'
The "as long as someone else can bounce in and affect the market" is a very big IF in a free market. New entrants will usually find that it is more profitable to join the cartel where they can sell at the high uncompetitive prices, rather than fight the cartel. Otherwise there wouldn't be a cartel -- the individual members would have separated or declined to join it.
"3) Take the power away from the banks that control everything. It's simple to do, and has been done before, for instance by Abraham Lincoln, and by Andrew Jackson. Our constitution gives congress the power to print money. Let Congress print the money, not a private bank! The Federal Reserve is not a part of the US government, but is a private company owned by private (unspecified) entities. When our government needs money, it borrows it from the Fed and in turn gives the Fed an IOU (in the form of a US Bond). The Fed prints money and gives it to the US Govt for the bond. What?!?! Yeah, that's right, that's how the Fed makes loans, it just prints some more money. And what happens when the Fed prints money? Two things, the government has to pay them back, with interest, because it's a loan. And second, there's more money in the system so inflation occurs which makes your money less valuable and so you have to pay more for the stuff you need and so basically you're paying a hidden tax. And who benefits from it all? These asshole private bankers! Crap! And you and I get shafted. The amazing thing is that this whole problem can be removed without causing any kind of crash by the US govt simply printing its own money and paying back the debt to the Fed using this new US Treasury money."
Are you nuts? In countries where the politicians control the money, the government simply prints money whenever they want money to spend on their pork, and inflation is rampant.
What the US needs to do is close the loophole that allows the Fed to print money when the government borrows from it, not have Congress take full control over the money supply.
Rich American parents are notorious for spoiling their kids with expensive gifts, and $600 is nothing for them. Some will buy their teenage kids a $40000 BMW as a gift for passing their driving test. The parking lots of rich and upper-middle class suburban high schools are packed with student-driven cars that the teachers could never afford.
Freakonomics logic applies here. It's all about the incentives.
Banks have far stronger incentives to ensure the ATMs work right, and you have more recourse if something goes wrong. If you lose money because of a faulty ATM transaction, you have enough time to follow up and recover it. Whereas with a voting machine, there are tight deadlines for calling the results, and once the results are officially announced it's too late. If something goes wrong and the bank loses money via the ATM, the banks eats the cost, which gives them an incentive to ensure it does not give out too much money.
On the other hand, an electronic vote machine maker has much weaker incentives to do it right. It is actually against their interest to produce a paper trail, because that could expose the inaccuracy of the vote counts and reduce their future sales. In addition, the political leanings of the management or engineers give them an incentive to deliberately do it wrong.
The only way to give proper incentives to do it right is to (1) require a paper trail that can be recounted by humans and (2) manually count the votes from a random sample of machines, with the randomness based on a physical process like flipping coins after the polls are closed (2) order a manual recount of everything if the manual count of the sample differs from the machines by a specified margin, and (3) the supplier of the voting machines does not get paid if a manual recount is triggered.
Ultimately though, electronic voting is a solution looking for a problem. There is no need for it; other countries have shown that pure manual counting gets things done efficiently and accurately, as long as there are representatives from all major parties involved so they can watch each other. That the US is much bigger than those other countries is irrelevant; it is only required for states to report their results, and each state is not much bigger than those countries that run their elections nationally. In addition, the bigger the population of voters is the more counters you can get.
If they can't reliably tie the tax to who actually uses what the tax is providing, they should just increase the income taxes or VAT by whatever percent or fraction of a percent is required and use that money for the state-supported stations.
To do it with a tax on devices means you're going to (1) distort the market for those devices (2) unfairly charge people who don't watch or listen to the stations (3) fail to charge people who find ways to get around it (4) intrude into people's privacy to know what devices they have and (5) expend lots of money on enforcement.
If you're going to be unfair about it anyway, just build it into the regular taxes and be done with it.
The market won't let this succeed, but it is possible they could get a law passed to require this or some other similar scheme in all new DVD players and discs.
The tag provides a convenient decoy mechanism for the terrorists. Drop/hide the tag somewhere or give it to somebody else, and the authorities tracking the RFIDs will think they're in one particular place when they're really somewhere else.
Again, the pirated copy has more functionality and actually will play on any sufficiently powerful computer, while the legitimately purchased copy is hobbled. They're actually driving people to piracy who originally didn't plan to go that route.
For it to have a significant effect on Scheff's business, enough people would have to (1) see the site (2) actually believe it and (3) decide not to business with Scheff because of it.
I think you're overestimating the effect of XYZsucks.com type of web sites.
Juries often give outrageous awards way out of proportion to the offense committed, then the judge injects some sanity and reduces it to a more reasonable amount.
If the $11 million is the final figure accepted by the judge, the judge should be de-frocked. One woman, who isn't a well-known public figure, talking smack on the internet isn't going to do nearly as much as $11 million or even $1 million of damage.
If a groupthink system is going to produce very good results, the most important part is that the individuals must not know what the others are thinking or have thought, except perhaps a central mediator or coordinator. Otherwise, people get influenced either by charismatic/intimidating individuals in the group, or the "follow the herd" mentality kicks in once they know a large percentage of the group is thinking in a certain direction. The individuals must work independently or at most in pairs, then some sort of human + computer combination finds a way to piece together the separate results.
Free market profit-maximizing forces would lead the telecoms to artificially slow down the traffic from web sites that don't pay up, in order to get them to start paying.
The power supply might be 350-500W, but actual usage is usually less than 150W.
Of course, that's still a lot higher than a CD or DVD player. But those don't give you easy access to a hard drive with thousands of MP3s, among the other things that a PC can do. If all you're doing is playing CDs and DVDs, then by all means just get a regular DVD player.
Tivo didn't invent big fast hard drives and processors. Once the hardware that THEY DIDN'T EVENT became available, the TiVo concept was obvious.
The *implementation* required millions of dollars and was not obvious, but EchoStar's implementation is considerably different... not the same code, not the same hardware in the box as Tivo.
"Outside of school grounds, you can be as disrespectful and undiciplined as you want."
It becomes a school issue that undermines the environment of discipline and respect within the school grounds, if that disrespect is directed towards school officials (regardless of where it is done).
"And even on school grounds, you do NOT lose your rights to freedom of speech, and cannot be compelled to stop critizing school officials."
Freedom of speech does not guarantee that you will face zero consequences for what you say, it just means the government can't lock you up or fine you. Disrespect or threaten your boss, in or outside of the office, and you'll be fired. Disrespect your coach or or off the field/court, and you won't play in the next game or two. Disrespect teachers or other school officials, you should get suspended or otherwise penalized within the boundaries of the school system... but not locked up.
"If you want to criticize the government, just make sure they don't find out."
Criticism != disrespect != threat. And remember we're talking about children within a school, not adults within the larger society. The school needs to have the right to disallow a kid from entering the premises (i.e. suspension).
Suppose I was sitting in the mall talking smack about a teacher. And the teacher (unbeknownst to me) is standing a couple yards behind me and overhears it. Should I be suspended? Yes! Why? Because otherwise it sends the message that the school tolerates disrespect of teachers.
Schools have to maintain an environment of respect and discipline, otherwise they can't teach effectively. If they find out about you saying or writing something to undermine that, regardless of wheree you did it, they not only should but they HAVE TO suspend or otherwise punish those who said or did it. If you want to talk smack about teachers and the principal, just make sure they don't find out.
This is a school implenting discipline, not locking up the kid in jail. The school should definitely have a right to suspend him. Otherwise they have no power to implement discipline.
Back in the day if I ever told a teacher at my high school to suck a donkey's balls, I would have been suspended immediately. A death threat (even if only displayed in own home) is worse than that.
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"No, a successful musical recording generates revenue because lots people buy copies of it."
Without copyright law, people and other record companies would make their own copies of albums, leaving little or no revenue to the original artist. The revenue goes to the artist because copyright law forces it. If house painters had similar laws to benefit them, they could "generate revenue because lots of people buy" the privileges of residing in and selling the houses the painters painted.
But there's a key difference: The paint job doesn't generate revenue on an ongoing basis, the way a successful musical recording does.
That's a circular argument. A successful musical recording generates revenue only because the government forces that revenue stream via copyright law. If the law forced the residents of a house to pay royalties every year for the benefit of enjoying the paint job, and royalties when the house is sold, the paint job also would "generate revenue on an ongoing basis".
Currently the burden of proof is on the USPTO to show that something is obvious, rather than being on the applicant to show that it is nonobvious. Shift the burden to the applicant, and that will go a long way to solving the patent mess.
When a patent is being applied for, the applicant is claiming that they invented something that others would be unlikely to figure out independently. Making such an assertion should require strong evidence and persuasive arguments to go with it.
Obviousness will always be a grey area, but for everything to be considered nonobvious by default is ridiculous.
I would go as far as saying that patents should be restricted to those things that are obviously nonobvious. If there is doubt as to its obviousness, don't grant the patent. It is better for 10 well-deserving patent applications to get rejected than for one undeserving one to get approved. Those with rejected patents can still produce whatever they developed without the patent; but when an undeserving patent is granted it prevents everybody else from producing the covered items, without requiring the grantee to produce it themselves.
Even if the language was copyrighted or patented, it would have expired already. The court should tell them to STFU.
"Would it really be so bad to have the government run with a more business like model? The current administration has blown away all hope of a balanced budget, would it be so bad if the government actually made a profit?"
Businesses aren't democracies, they're dictatorships or oligarchies. And unlike regular businesses, government has the power to increase their revenue by force (taxation). Trust me, you won't want government as a whole run as a business.
However, having some services within the government run as a business can and does work. The US Postal Service, for example, is run practically as if it was a private business, with its funding coming from what customers pay, and sometimes they actually do make a profit.
"How about instead of H1-Bs, we fast-track green cards for people with needed skills, or is that not enough like indentured servitude?"
Business want indentured servitude. They don't want people who will be free to leave the company easily. So a fast-track green card to replace H1B, or a fully portable H1B visa program (i.e. work anywhere you want for the duration of the visa without requiring the new employer to sponsor anything) will not happen as long as politicians are in bed with big business.
'the free market actually scares corporations away from cartelization as long as someone else can bounce in and affect the market. We're talking about 5 corporations versus 3 billion individuals, any of whom can get together and say "we can do it better."'
The "as long as someone else can bounce in and affect the market" is a very big IF in a free market. New entrants will usually find that it is more profitable to join the cartel where they can sell at the high uncompetitive prices, rather than fight the cartel. Otherwise there wouldn't be a cartel -- the individual members would have separated or declined to join it.
"3) Take the power away from the banks that control everything. It's simple to do, and has been done before, for instance by Abraham Lincoln, and by Andrew Jackson. Our constitution gives congress the power to print money. Let Congress print the money, not a private bank! The Federal Reserve is not a part of the US government, but is a private company owned by private (unspecified) entities. When our government needs money, it borrows it from the Fed and in turn gives the Fed an IOU (in the form of a US Bond). The Fed prints money and gives it to the US Govt for the bond. What?!?! Yeah, that's right, that's how the Fed makes loans, it just prints some more money. And what happens when the Fed prints money? Two things, the government has to pay them back, with interest, because it's a loan. And second, there's more money in the system so inflation occurs which makes your money less valuable and so you have to pay more for the stuff you need and so basically you're paying a hidden tax. And who benefits from it all? These asshole private bankers! Crap! And you and I get shafted. The amazing thing is that this whole problem can be removed without causing any kind of crash by the US govt simply printing its own money and paying back the debt to the Fed using this new US Treasury money."
Are you nuts? In countries where the politicians control the money, the government simply prints money whenever they want money to spend on their pork, and inflation is rampant.
What the US needs to do is close the loophole that allows the Fed to print money when the government borrows from it, not have Congress take full control over the money supply.
Rich American parents are notorious for spoiling their kids with expensive gifts, and $600 is nothing for them. Some will buy their teenage kids a $40000 BMW as a gift for passing their driving test. The parking lots of rich and upper-middle class suburban high schools are packed with student-driven cars that the teachers could never afford.
Freakonomics logic applies here. It's all about the incentives.
Banks have far stronger incentives to ensure the ATMs work right, and you have more recourse if something goes wrong. If you lose money because of a faulty ATM transaction, you have enough time to follow up and recover it. Whereas with a voting machine, there are tight deadlines for calling the results, and once the results are officially announced it's too late. If something goes wrong and the bank loses money via the ATM, the banks eats the cost, which gives them an incentive to ensure it does not give out too much money.
On the other hand, an electronic vote machine maker has much weaker incentives to do it right. It is actually against their interest to produce a paper trail, because that could expose the inaccuracy of the vote counts and reduce their future sales. In addition, the political leanings of the management or engineers give them an incentive to deliberately do it wrong.
The only way to give proper incentives to do it right is to (1) require a paper trail that can be recounted by humans and (2) manually count the votes from a random sample of machines, with the randomness based on a physical process like flipping coins after the polls are closed (2) order a manual recount of everything if the manual count of the sample differs from the machines by a specified margin, and (3) the supplier of the voting machines does not get paid if a manual recount is triggered.
Ultimately though, electronic voting is a solution looking for a problem. There is no need for it; other countries have shown that pure manual counting gets things done efficiently and accurately, as long as there are representatives from all major parties involved so they can watch each other. That the US is much bigger than those other countries is irrelevant; it is only required for states to report their results, and each state is not much bigger than those countries that run their elections nationally. In addition, the bigger the population of voters is the more counters you can get.
If they can't reliably tie the tax to who actually uses what the tax is providing, they should just increase the income taxes or VAT by whatever percent or fraction of a percent is required and use that money for the state-supported stations.
To do it with a tax on devices means you're going to (1) distort the market for those devices (2) unfairly charge people who don't watch or listen to the stations (3) fail to charge people who find ways to get around it (4) intrude into people's privacy to know what devices they have and (5) expend lots of money on enforcement.
If you're going to be unfair about it anyway, just build it into the regular taxes and be done with it.
The market won't let this succeed, but it is possible they could get a law passed to require this or some other similar scheme in all new DVD players and discs.
If they only log the site and not the full URL, how do they know the supposed "visit" of a given web site wasn't from an involuntary pop-up?
The tag provides a convenient decoy mechanism for the terrorists. Drop/hide the tag somewhere or give it to somebody else, and the authorities tracking the RFIDs will think they're in one particular place when they're really somewhere else.
It was the goatse guy farting.
Again, the pirated copy has more functionality and actually will play on any sufficiently powerful computer, while the legitimately purchased copy is hobbled. They're actually driving people to piracy who originally didn't plan to go that route.
For it to have a significant effect on Scheff's business, enough people would have to (1) see the site (2) actually believe it and (3) decide not to business with Scheff because of it.
I think you're overestimating the effect of XYZsucks.com type of web sites.
Juries often give outrageous awards way out of proportion to the offense committed, then the judge injects some sanity and reduces it to a more reasonable amount.
If the $11 million is the final figure accepted by the judge, the judge should be de-frocked. One woman, who isn't a well-known public figure, talking smack on the internet isn't going to do nearly as much as $11 million or even $1 million of damage.
If a groupthink system is going to produce very good results, the most important part is that the individuals must not know what the others are thinking or have thought, except perhaps a central mediator or coordinator. Otherwise, people get influenced either by charismatic/intimidating individuals in the group, or the "follow the herd" mentality kicks in once they know a large percentage of the group is thinking in a certain direction. The individuals must work independently or at most in pairs, then some sort of human + computer combination finds a way to piece together the separate results.
Free market profit-maximizing forces would lead the telecoms to artificially slow down the traffic from web sites that don't pay up, in order to get them to start paying.
The power supply might be 350-500W, but actual usage is usually less than 150W.
Of course, that's still a lot higher than a CD or DVD player. But those don't give you easy access to a hard drive with thousands of MP3s, among the other things that a PC can do. If all you're doing is playing CDs and DVDs, then by all means just get a regular DVD player.
Tivo didn't invent big fast hard drives and processors. Once the hardware that THEY DIDN'T EVENT became available, the TiVo concept was obvious.
... not the same code, not the same hardware in the box as Tivo.
The *implementation* required millions of dollars and was not obvious, but EchoStar's implementation is considerably different
"Outside of school grounds, you can be as disrespectful and undiciplined as you want."
... but not locked up.
It becomes a school issue that undermines the environment of discipline and respect within the school grounds, if that disrespect is directed towards school officials (regardless of where it is done).
"And even on school grounds, you do NOT lose your rights to freedom of speech, and cannot be compelled to stop critizing school officials."
Freedom of speech does not guarantee that you will face zero consequences for what you say, it just means the government can't lock you up or fine you. Disrespect or threaten your boss, in or outside of the office, and you'll be fired. Disrespect your coach or or off the field/court, and you won't play in the next game or two. Disrespect teachers or other school officials, you should get suspended or otherwise penalized within the boundaries of the school system
"If you want to criticize the government, just make sure they don't find out."
Criticism != disrespect != threat. And remember we're talking about children within a school, not adults within the larger society. The school needs to have the right to disallow a kid from entering the premises (i.e. suspension).
Suppose I was sitting in the mall talking smack about a teacher. And the teacher (unbeknownst to me) is standing a couple yards behind me and overhears it. Should I be suspended? Yes! Why? Because otherwise it sends the message that the school tolerates disrespect of teachers.
Schools have to maintain an environment of respect and discipline, otherwise they can't teach effectively. If they find out about you saying or writing something to undermine that, regardless of wheree you did it, they not only should but they HAVE TO suspend or otherwise punish those who said or did it. If you want to talk smack about teachers and the principal, just make sure they don't find out.
This is a school implenting discipline, not locking up the kid in jail. The school should definitely have a right to suspend him. Otherwise they have no power to implement discipline.
Back in the day if I ever told a teacher at my high school to suck a donkey's balls, I would have been suspended immediately. A death threat (even if only displayed in own home) is worse than that.