No...Copyright was introduced to give incentive to businesses and authors/artists to invest in and create works. The incentive being they would be better able to make $$$$$ from their works instead of having them pirated away.
What do mean "no"? Your statement agrees with my point. Copyright provided a financial incentive to create and distribute, and the purpose of that incentive was to increase the number of works delivered to the public.
Allowing these new modifications to enjoy patent protection for their 17-20 year lifespan is a good thing, it rewards the work needed to create them. However, since these modifications have to compete against the classic version, their value is little compared to the value of a medcine that cures a previously uncurable disease. Still, at least the value is greater than zero.
The problem is that the drug companies have been making minor modifications to old drugs, patenting it, and then using that new patent to prevent others from producing the old unmodified drug, because the old drug which other people are producing is substantially similar to their newly patented version - and patents allow you to prevent others from producing anything substantially similar. In effect, they are doing it to extend the original patent, not to introduce any new and innovative versions of the old drug.
The only people who would benefit are those who wish to make a buck or two off of someone else's work. I have no tears for them.
When a taxi driver makes money with his taxi, s/he is making a quick buck off someone else's work - the work of those who designed and built the car. When a restaurant owner makes money, s/he is making money off of the work of the people who built the restaurant and the furniture and cooking utensils. When an singer has a concert, s/he is making a quick buck off the people who did the work of making the speakers, microphone and electronics.
Sure, the people and companies who build the cars, buildings and furniture, and speakers are paid for it. But they aren't continuously paid for it over and over again until years after death. After about 30-40 years, the creators of the copyrighted work have been paid more than well enough for what they did (and if they didn't make much money in the first 40 years, they aren't going to make anything after that time either). From that point on they should have no further claim to it, just as the builder of the car can't keep collecting money from their cars forever.
"What a strange way to go about it. If it wasn't for copyright creative works would always be in the public domain."
The point is that copyright was introduced because it was thought that without copyright, creative content would either be kept private by the creators and not distributed to the public at all, or just would not be created. So the original goal of copyright was to increase the number of works that made it into the public domain, by giving the creators a financial incentive to create and distribute.
Modern copyright law however, has been perverted into something that exists solely for the profit of corporations.
You can legally make a backup copy of a book. You can scan its contents and put it on a CD-ROM. You can photocopy every page. You can even type in all the text into a word processor. As long as you keep the copy for yourself.
It's just that it's usually too time-consuming and expensive to be worth making a backup copy of a book.
But just because I have freedom of speech doesn't mean that I can do malicious things with my speech and expect no consequences.
And what is so malicious about writing software that converts Adobe's encrypted formats into another format that can be read aloud by text-reading software for the blind?
Police in various areas will stop you to check your papers if you're black. I take it you're white (so am I, actually)
I am black.
When they stop blacks, they aren't asking for a national ID. National ID or lack of one doesn't make a damn difference if the police want to be like Nazis.
The passport and Social Security cards are national IDs. But we don't have people walking or driving down the street being stopped and questioned to verify possession of either of them.
For some strange reason, people in America assume that the mere existence of a national ID means that police will have the right to stop people on a whim to check if they have an ID. That is ridiculous. I've worked abroad, and known people who've worked abroad where the country had a national ID and nothing of that sort happened. The ID is for the purpose of identification, not for some Nazi "your paperz pleez" verification. It is something used only when you would logically have to identify yourself anyway regardless of whether a national ID exists. If the government wants to become like Nazis the lack of a national ID system isn't going to stop them.
I only had to show it two times in the nearly three years I was there: when accepting a job, and applying for a driver's license. In all those cases I would logically have had to identify myself in some other way if a national ID didn't exist. It is a fallacy to say that the lack of a national ID allows you to keep your anonymity. When you show other forms of ID or use a credit card, they know who you are. Lack of a widely implemented national ID system only makes it easier to do identity theft, easier for illegal aliens to fake legal status, and does nothing to preserve your anonymity.
Note that I don't agree with a system that makes mere non-possession of the ID a crime, or allows any form of law enforcement to check for the existence of the ID on a whim. I do see it being useful for situations where you would need other ways of identifying yourself if no national ID system existed, as it would be simpler to check if somebody else was faking your identity - which is not so easy now if somebody else in another state if pretending to be you. And it would be easier to catch fakes if there was a single, machine readable standard. It probably wouldn't do much to prevent terrorism though.
According to this news article, Marvel not only made a profit, but they attributed it to the success of Spider-Man and have enjoyed rising stock prices over the past few months.
While I generally agree with what you are saying, the fact that you need a thousand words to explain it is part of the problem why TiVo will not last long with a subscription-based business model. I am also a TiVo owner, and I see the value in paying for the service, but Jane and Joe Sixpack do not. Yet those are the folks who will have to be convinced if TiVo is to gain enough viewers to become profitable.
Whenever I show or tell anybody about my TiVo, and they ask about how much it costs, they always express disgust when I mention the service fee, and then it takes several more minutes to explain why it is worth it, and they usually still don't accept or understand. It also disgusted me when I first looked into buying TiVo. If something brings out an initial reaction of disgust, and you need hundreds of words to explain it to people, it is not going to sell very well.
They should have gone directly to the satellite and cable providers, who would have helped to bury the service costs within their own fees, or would have created the perception that people are paying for "a better box" - a cable box that can record - rather than paying for a "service" that is perceived as something that should be free.
Comparing it with the early stages of cable TV isn't a good analogy either, because cable TV came along as a way to offer more channels than were available over the air, and that was something extra that people were willing to pay for. They didn't go around offering people the same channels that they already got - they offered stuff like MTV, The Movie Channel, and HBO, which people could not get free with an antenna. With TiVo however, people just don't believe that they should be paying for what is perceived as a glorified TV guide (even though you and I know it is much more than that) which they already can get for "free" via DirecTV, GuidePlus or the Internet. Cable TV also took over a decade to become commonplace, and TiVo does not have the luxury of waiting that long.
TiVo's best chance is to remain as invisible as possible to the consumer when it comes to the costs, while continuing to work with the manufacturers and satellite/cable providers to license their technology into the boxes.
ReplayTV's model is to sell the device not the subscription. Which of the two (TiVo or ReplayTV) is doing better?
Replay had many other problems unrelated to how they get revenues from viewers, which would have doomed them anyway. Some were technical - such as the inability to record anything manually by time and channel (which has since been corrected). Others were financial and managerial; ReplayTV couldn't stage a successful IPO because they waited until the tech bubble started to burst, but TiVo had their IPO when the Dow and Nasdaq were skyrocketing, and ended up with hundreds of millions of dollars, most of which they have burned through by now.
"Most bands are commercial failures, too, so the few successful acts have to be priced high enough to cover the money lost on the others."
And maybe if CDs were priced at $5 or $6 they wouldn't have so many bands that fail commercially. With CDs priced at $18, people are only going to buy albums from the few bands who they really like, thereby resulting in only a small percentage of successful bands.
Within the set of artists whose songs are bought, the average number of songs sold per artist will probably go down if individual songs could be purchased inexpensively, but people would be more likely to buy from a larger set of artists if they could get exactly the songs they want. There are dozens of artists who made one song I liked, but I didn't buy their album because that was the only song I liked -- whereas I would have bought most or all the songs if they could be purchased at will for a buck each.
Under the current system, the majority of artists who have a song that I actually like will get zero dollars from me because I'm not going to pay for 16 songs only to get one that is worth listening to.
The article only said that the US election system is among the worst when it comes to reflecting the will of the people, not that it is the worst system of government overall. The tendency of the US election system to not reflect of the will of the people is mitigated by the Constitution and the balance of powers with the House/Senate/President, so that disaster is staved off even when the politicians in power aren't exactly what people want.
However, maintaining status quo and being complacent is not the right way to go. We should always be thinking of ways to improve the system and reduce the imperfections, not sitting back with the smug feeling that it is better than everything else and has lasted over 200 years. The complacency engendered by past success is what causes a powerful company that was good enough to stay in business for a century to go kaput (remember Woolworth?). The complacency created by past victories is what causes a World champion to get defeated by a no-name opponent (remember Tyson vs. Buster Douglas?).
And that same complacency is what can eventually cause a nation as great as the USA to topple - which is something that might have actually just begun to happen, with the economy in the toilet and freedoms being eroded in the name of protecting corporations and fighting terrorism, and wealthy individuals and corporations being increasingly able to usurp the will of the people by purchasing laws.
The states which give 100% of the Electoral College votes to one candidate regardless of the voting distribution within the state are a bigger part of the problem, more so than the lack of a runoff system.
With all but two states using the winner-take-all system, the candidates have an incentive to give increased focus to the 'swing states' and less to the 'safe states' and the states where they can't win anyway. It creates a situation where the candidate has little reason to pay attention to the interests of certain states, and the voters in those states are discouraged from voting.
For example, Democrats have a sharply reduced incentive to go to the polls in Republican-dominated Texas, where they have no realistic chance anytime soon of stopping Texas from giving all its Electoral votes to the Republican presidential candidate. (Of course, some will say that the Texas Republicans also have a decreased incentive to vote because they feel they're going to win anyway, but I'd think that the 'lose anyway' folks -- i.e the Texas Democrats -- would be much more discouraged from voting than the 'win anyway' crowd.) And what's the incentive for Bush to do anything for Democrat-dominated Massachusetts, where he can't win a single Electoral College vote anyway?
If the Electoral votes were on a different basis, such as that used by Nebraska and Maine, or a proportional system based on the voting within the state, voters would have a greater chance of actually influencing the outcome of the election. And candidates would have more incentive to pay attention to the interests of a broader base of states, as they'll realize that it still is important to attract extra voters even in states that are predominantly for or against them.
If taxes are merely a payment for government "services" and not protection money, then the rich are paying much more money for the same (or often less) services as the poor man.
Actually, the argument can be made that the rich benefit more from government services than the working poor. If a man wants to make just enough money to survive, he can do that in almost any country in the world regardless of what services the government provides.
But if a man wants to become and remain a multimillionaire, in almost all cases he will depend on a government that provides an adequate transportation infrastructure for the workers of his company to travel to work and distribute the products, a sufficiently educated population from which to employ workers, and a justice system to protect his and the company's property as well as to enforce laws and agreements which are important to business -- such as copyright law, contract law, and international trade treaties.
No, point 3 is still correct. Depriving of profit is not the same thing as stealing. However, there are different ways of depriving profit, some of which are ethical and legal, others which are not.
It is perfectly legal and ethical to deprive McDonalds of profit by deciding to cook my own food, or even to publish a full page newspaper spread listing the fat and cholesterol content of their burgers. But depriving them by threatening their customers would not be legal. One method is right, one method is wrong, but neither is "stealing".
Yes. Companies spent billions of dollars fixing systems to make them Y2K compliant. Of course, that may not be so terrible for you if you were one of the programmers making $100/hr to fix those systems; but from a broader economic perspective, those billions hurt the economy because that money could have instead been invested in more positively productive activities instead of being spent just to fix existing systems.
"yes, because i can always use more government regulation. i need the government to regulate my bowel movements. that way, i can be sure the quality is better."
The corporate entity that writes the EULA in the first place is doing so with the hope or expectation that the government will enforce compliance with the EULA. So if the government officially declares EULAs in general, or EULAs containing types of certain conditions, to be illegal or unenforceable, that would mean less government regulation, not more.
First of all, not all third world countries are nearly completely devoid of electricity and food and proper roads. Many such countries do have the basics in place, but are just lacking the technology that can boost them to the next level.
In the countries that do lack the food and basic infrastructure, there is still much benefit to be gained with software and technology... not in immediately trying to equip the masses with computers and software skills, but by providing software that is *used* to develop the basic infrastructure. For example, a database application that keeps track of food distribution. Engineering applications to help them build roads and bridges and lay electric wire. Web sites that accept donations. There are many custom applications that would be incredibly useful for those situations, most of which will never be developed because of the cost and the distance... unless there are volunteers around the world willing to develop them remotely.
In America, how am I supposed to know that a particular phone number is cellular or not? It's not as if they are restricted to a particular area code, or you have to dial a special prefix to reach cellphone numbers (as it is in some other countries). If the phone is based in my city, I can just dial 7 digits as if it were next door. In some circumstances I am not in a position to ask what type of phone it is prior to calling the person. Then it's only weeks after making the call that I find out, after getting hit with a high phone bill for the airtime charges.
This is just another way to rip off consumers by having them run up charges on their phone bill without knowing it until after the fact.
Are people really so stupid that they're going to stop going to school just because you stop forcing them to go?... Are workers so stupid that they'll stay at jobs that pay 'unfair' wages when there are better paying ones out there within their reach?
Both of those things are exactly what happens in other countries where the government does not want to or cannot afford to educate the masses, or does not implement minimally adequate labor laws. They happen not because the people are stupid, but because there is little choice to do otherwise. That is why there is massive illiteracy in countries that fail to provide education for a large percentage of their population, and that is why over a billion people in the world work full time for less than a dollar a day. Most people can't or won't send their children to private school if there is no public education, and most people in those countries can't leave for another job because there are so few jobs that exist that pay better. And when you're barely surviving on a dollar or two a day, working 14 hours a day, increasing your education level is not something you have the time or resources to do.
The combination of widespread uneducation and grossly inadequate labor laws promotes an environment where the preferred direction for entrepeneurs is to set up companies that profit on the basis of having huge masses of people slaving away for very little money. Skilled high-paying jobs are extremely scarce, because it is generally easier and less risky to set up businesses that use large numbers of low-skilled, low-paid workers. Innovation and automation mostly go out the window because it is cheaper and easier to jack up production when necessary by making them work longer hours with little or no extra pay, and the cheap labor reduces the incentive for automated and innovative solutions.
You would do yourself some good if you actually took some time to learn about the world outside of your own rich country.
If two chess players play perfectly, then the game will always result in a tie.
Not necessarily so. Both players do not start out on exactly equal standing, because white moves first and the king/queen positions are mirror images of the other player's setup. Currently there is no definite proof that either side has an advantage. But with perfect play, it may turn out that one particular color will always win if both play perfectly.
Still, that refers only to an individual game. With a multi-game matchup of an even number of games, and players alternating between black and white, either all games will draw or the same color will win all games, thus leaving the overall result as a draw.
Certainly property owners today work to purchase land, and therefore are entitled to it forever. Shouldn't the same rights be given to an author to keep his work forever. Why does the public feel they have the right to a persons work. Sounds like socialism to me.
You seem to forget that copyright itself tells people what they cannot do with their own property. Because of copyright, I cannot use a computer which is my property and put certain patterns of bits and bytes onto a blank CD which is also my property.
Similarly, because of copyright I am legally restricted from using my fingers and my keyboard and my printer to produce certain sets of words and sentences on my paper. Why do you feel authors should have the right to control other people's computers, disks, tapes, printers, pens, and voices forever?
If you write a book, you and your heirs can keep ownership of that book itself forever; but why do you think you have the right to forever control what people do with their own fingers and keyboards after they have bought and read a copy of the book? Sounds like a dictatorship to me.
What I would like to know is, how is it anyone elses business what the owners of a company pays their CEOs or other people?
If you're a shareholder, directly through actual shares in the company or indirectly through mutual funds and retirement accounts, what they pay the CEOs is your damn business.
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No...Copyright was introduced to give incentive to businesses and authors/artists to invest in and create works. The incentive being they would be better able to make $$$$$ from their works instead of having them pirated away.
What do mean "no"? Your statement agrees with my point. Copyright provided a financial incentive to create and distribute, and the purpose of that incentive was to increase the number of works delivered to the public.
Allowing these new modifications to enjoy patent protection for their 17-20 year lifespan is a good thing, it rewards the work needed to create them. However, since these modifications have to compete against the classic version, their value is little compared to the value of a medcine that cures a previously uncurable disease. Still, at least the value is greater than zero.
The problem is that the drug companies have been making minor modifications to old drugs, patenting it, and then using that new patent to prevent others from producing the old unmodified drug, because the old drug which other people are producing is substantially similar to their newly patented version - and patents allow you to prevent others from producing anything substantially similar. In effect, they are doing it to extend the original patent, not to introduce any new and innovative versions of the old drug.
The only people who would benefit are those who wish to make a buck or two off of someone else's work. I have no tears for them.
When a taxi driver makes money with his taxi, s/he is making a quick buck off someone else's work - the work of those who designed and built the car. When a restaurant owner makes money, s/he is making money off of the work of the people who built the restaurant and the furniture and cooking utensils. When an singer has a concert, s/he is making a quick buck off the people who did the work of making the speakers, microphone and electronics.
Sure, the people and companies who build the cars, buildings and furniture, and speakers are paid for it. But they aren't continuously paid for it over and over again until years after death. After about 30-40 years, the creators of the copyrighted work have been paid more than well enough for what they did (and if they didn't make much money in the first 40 years, they aren't going to make anything after that time either). From that point on they should have no further claim to it, just as the builder of the car can't keep collecting money from their cars forever.
"What a strange way to go about it. If it wasn't for copyright creative works would always be in the public domain."
The point is that copyright was introduced because it was thought that without copyright, creative content would either be kept private by the creators and not distributed to the public at all, or just would not be created. So the original goal of copyright was to increase the number of works that made it into the public domain, by giving the creators a financial incentive to create and distribute.
Modern copyright law however, has been perverted into something that exists solely for the profit of corporations.
You can legally make a backup copy of a book. You can scan its contents and put it on a CD-ROM. You can photocopy every page. You can even type in all the text into a word processor. As long as you keep the copy for yourself.
It's just that it's usually too time-consuming and expensive to be worth making a backup copy of a book.
But just because I have freedom of speech doesn't mean that I can do malicious things with my speech and expect no consequences.
And what is so malicious about writing software that converts Adobe's encrypted formats into another format that can be read aloud by text-reading software for the blind?
Police in various areas will stop you to check your papers if you're black. I take it you're white (so am I, actually)
I am black.
When they stop blacks, they aren't asking for a national ID. National ID or lack of one doesn't make a damn difference if the police want to be like Nazis.
The passport and Social Security cards are national IDs. But we don't have people walking or driving down the street being stopped and questioned to verify possession of either of them.
For some strange reason, people in America assume that the mere existence of a national ID means that police will have the right to stop people on a whim to check if they have an ID. That is ridiculous. I've worked abroad, and known people who've worked abroad where the country had a national ID and nothing of that sort happened. The ID is for the purpose of identification, not for some Nazi "your paperz pleez" verification. It is something used only when you would logically have to identify yourself anyway regardless of whether a national ID exists. If the government wants to become like Nazis the lack of a national ID system isn't going to stop them.
I only had to show it two times in the nearly three years I was there: when accepting a job, and applying for a driver's license. In all those cases I would logically have had to identify myself in some other way if a national ID didn't exist. It is a fallacy to say that the lack of a national ID allows you to keep your anonymity. When you show other forms of ID or use a credit card, they know who you are. Lack of a widely implemented national ID system only makes it easier to do identity theft, easier for illegal aliens to fake legal status, and does nothing to preserve your anonymity.
Note that I don't agree with a system that makes mere non-possession of the ID a crime, or allows any form of law enforcement to check for the existence of the ID on a whim. I do see it being useful for situations where you would need other ways of identifying yourself if no national ID system existed, as it would be simpler to check if somebody else was faking your identity - which is not so easy now if somebody else in another state if pretending to be you. And it would be easier to catch fakes if there was a single, machine readable standard. It probably wouldn't do much to prevent terrorism though.
According to this news article, Marvel not only made a profit, but they attributed it to the success of Spider-Man and have enjoyed rising stock prices over the past few months.
While I generally agree with what you are saying, the fact that you need a thousand words to explain it is part of the problem why TiVo will not last long with a subscription-based business model. I am also a TiVo owner, and I see the value in paying for the service, but Jane and Joe Sixpack do not. Yet those are the folks who will have to be convinced if TiVo is to gain enough viewers to become profitable.
Whenever I show or tell anybody about my TiVo, and they ask about how much it costs, they always express disgust when I mention the service fee, and then it takes several more minutes to explain why it is worth it, and they usually still don't accept or understand. It also disgusted me when I first looked into buying TiVo. If something brings out an initial reaction of disgust, and you need hundreds of words to explain it to people, it is not going to sell very well.
They should have gone directly to the satellite and cable providers, who would have helped to bury the service costs within their own fees, or would have created the perception that people are paying for "a better box" - a cable box that can record - rather than paying for a "service" that is perceived as something that should be free.
Comparing it with the early stages of cable TV isn't a good analogy either, because cable TV came along as a way to offer more channels than were available over the air, and that was something extra that people were willing to pay for. They didn't go around offering people the same channels that they already got - they offered stuff like MTV, The Movie Channel, and HBO, which people could not get free with an antenna. With TiVo however, people just don't believe that they should be paying for what is perceived as a glorified TV guide (even though you and I know it is much more than that) which they already can get for "free" via DirecTV, GuidePlus or the Internet. Cable TV also took over a decade to become commonplace, and TiVo does not have the luxury of waiting that long.
TiVo's best chance is to remain as invisible as possible to the consumer when it comes to the costs, while continuing to work with the manufacturers and satellite/cable providers to license their technology into the boxes.
ReplayTV's model is to sell the device not the subscription. Which of the two (TiVo or ReplayTV) is doing better?
Replay had many other problems unrelated to how they get revenues from viewers, which would have doomed them anyway. Some were technical - such as the inability to record anything manually by time and channel (which has since been corrected). Others were financial and managerial; ReplayTV couldn't stage a successful IPO because they waited until the tech bubble started to burst, but TiVo had their IPO when the Dow and Nasdaq were skyrocketing, and ended up with hundreds of millions of dollars, most of which they have burned through by now.
"Most bands are commercial failures, too, so the few successful acts have to be priced high enough to cover the money lost on the others."
And maybe if CDs were priced at $5 or $6 they wouldn't have so many bands that fail commercially. With CDs priced at $18, people are only going to buy albums from the few bands who they really like, thereby resulting in only a small percentage of successful bands.
Within the set of artists whose songs are bought, the average number of songs sold per artist will probably go down if individual songs could be purchased inexpensively, but people would be more likely to buy from a larger set of artists if they could get exactly the songs they want. There are dozens of artists who made one song I liked, but I didn't buy their album because that was the only song I liked -- whereas I would have bought most or all the songs if they could be purchased at will for a buck each.
Under the current system, the majority of artists who have a song that I actually like will get zero dollars from me because I'm not going to pay for 16 songs only to get one that is worth listening to.
The article only said that the US election system is among the worst when it comes to reflecting the will of the people, not that it is the worst system of government overall. The tendency of the US election system to not reflect of the will of the people is mitigated by the Constitution and the balance of powers with the House/Senate/President, so that disaster is staved off even when the politicians in power aren't exactly what people want.
However, maintaining status quo and being complacent is not the right way to go. We should always be thinking of ways to improve the system and reduce the imperfections, not sitting back with the smug feeling that it is better than everything else and has lasted over 200 years. The complacency engendered by past success is what causes a powerful company that was good enough to stay in business for a century to go kaput (remember Woolworth?). The complacency created by past victories is what causes a World champion to get defeated by a no-name opponent (remember Tyson vs. Buster Douglas?).
And that same complacency is what can eventually cause a nation as great as the USA to topple - which is something that might have actually just begun to happen, with the economy in the toilet and freedoms being eroded in the name of protecting corporations and fighting terrorism, and wealthy individuals and corporations being increasingly able to usurp the will of the people by purchasing laws.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
The states which give 100% of the Electoral College votes to one candidate regardless of the voting distribution within the state are a bigger part of the problem, more so than the lack of a runoff system.
With all but two states using the winner-take-all system, the candidates have an incentive to give increased focus to the 'swing states' and less to the 'safe states' and the states where they can't win anyway. It creates a situation where the candidate has little reason to pay attention to the interests of certain states, and the voters in those states are discouraged from voting.
For example, Democrats have a sharply reduced incentive to go to the polls in Republican-dominated Texas, where they have no realistic chance anytime soon of stopping Texas from giving all its Electoral votes to the Republican presidential candidate. (Of course, some will say that the Texas Republicans also have a decreased incentive to vote because they feel they're going to win anyway, but I'd think that the 'lose anyway' folks -- i.e the Texas Democrats -- would be much more discouraged from voting than the 'win anyway' crowd.) And what's the incentive for Bush to do anything for Democrat-dominated Massachusetts, where he can't win a single Electoral College vote anyway?
If the Electoral votes were on a different basis, such as that used by Nebraska and Maine, or a proportional system based on the voting within the state, voters would have a greater chance of actually influencing the outcome of the election. And candidates would have more incentive to pay attention to the interests of a broader base of states, as they'll realize that it still is important to attract extra voters even in states that are predominantly for or against them.
If taxes are merely a payment for government "services" and not protection money, then the rich are paying much more money for the same (or often less) services as the poor man.
Actually, the argument can be made that the rich benefit more from government services than the working poor. If a man wants to make just enough money to survive, he can do that in almost any country in the world regardless of what services the government provides.
But if a man wants to become and remain a multimillionaire, in almost all cases he will depend on a government that provides an adequate transportation infrastructure for the workers of his company to travel to work and distribute the products, a sufficiently educated population from which to employ workers, and a justice system to protect his and the company's property as well as to enforce laws and agreements which are important to business -- such as copyright law, contract law, and international trade treaties.
No, point 3 is still correct. Depriving of profit is not the same thing as stealing. However, there are different ways of depriving profit, some of which are ethical and legal, others which are not.
It is perfectly legal and ethical to deprive McDonalds of profit by deciding to cook my own food, or even to publish a full page newspaper spread listing the fat and cholesterol content of their burgers. But depriving them by threatening their customers would not be legal. One method is right, one method is wrong, but neither is "stealing".
Yes. Companies spent billions of dollars fixing systems to make them Y2K compliant. Of course, that may not be so terrible for you if you were one of the programmers making $100/hr to fix those systems; but from a broader economic perspective, those billions hurt the economy because that money could have instead been invested in more positively productive activities instead of being spent just to fix existing systems.
"yes, because i can always use more government regulation. i need the government to regulate my bowel movements. that way, i can be sure the quality is better."
The corporate entity that writes the EULA in the first place is doing so with the hope or expectation that the government will enforce compliance with the EULA. So if the government officially declares EULAs in general, or EULAs containing types of certain conditions, to be illegal or unenforceable, that would mean less government regulation, not more.
First of all, not all third world countries are nearly completely devoid of electricity and food and proper roads. Many such countries do have the basics in place, but are just lacking the technology that can boost them to the next level.
... not in immediately trying to equip the masses with computers and software skills, but by providing software that is *used* to develop the basic infrastructure. For example, a database application that keeps track of food distribution. Engineering applications to help them build roads and bridges and lay electric wire. Web sites that accept donations. There are many custom applications that would be incredibly useful for those situations, most of which will never be developed because of the cost and the distance ... unless there are volunteers around the world willing to develop them remotely.
In the countries that do lack the food and basic infrastructure, there is still much benefit to be gained with software and technology
In America, how am I supposed to know that a particular phone number is cellular or not? It's not as if they are restricted to a particular area code, or you have to dial a special prefix to reach cellphone numbers (as it is in some other countries). If the phone is based in my city, I can just dial 7 digits as if it were next door. In some circumstances I am not in a position to ask what type of phone it is prior to calling the person. Then it's only weeks after making the call that I find out, after getting hit with a high phone bill for the airtime charges.
This is just another way to rip off consumers by having them run up charges on their phone bill without knowing it until after the fact.
Are people really so stupid that they're going to stop going to school just because you stop forcing them to go? ... Are workers so stupid that they'll stay at jobs that pay 'unfair' wages when there are better paying ones out there within their reach?
Both of those things are exactly what happens in other countries where the government does not want to or cannot afford to educate the masses, or does not implement minimally adequate labor laws. They happen not because the people are stupid, but because there is little choice to do otherwise. That is why there is massive illiteracy in countries that fail to provide education for a large percentage of their population, and that is why over a billion people in the world work full time for less than a dollar a day. Most people can't or won't send their children to private school if there is no public education, and most people in those countries can't leave for another job because there are so few jobs that exist that pay better. And when you're barely surviving on a dollar or two a day, working 14 hours a day, increasing your education level is not something you have the time or resources to do.
The combination of widespread uneducation and grossly inadequate labor laws promotes an environment where the preferred direction for entrepeneurs is to set up companies that profit on the basis of having huge masses of people slaving away for very little money. Skilled high-paying jobs are extremely scarce, because it is generally easier and less risky to set up businesses that use large numbers of low-skilled, low-paid workers. Innovation and automation mostly go out the window because it is cheaper and easier to jack up production when necessary by making them work longer hours with little or no extra pay, and the cheap labor reduces the incentive for automated and innovative solutions.
You would do yourself some good if you actually took some time to learn about the world outside of your own rich country.
If two chess players play perfectly, then the game will always result in a tie.
Not necessarily so. Both players do not start out on exactly equal standing, because white moves first and the king/queen positions are mirror images of the other player's setup. Currently there is no definite proof that either side has an advantage. But with perfect play, it may turn out that one particular color will always win if both play perfectly.
Still, that refers only to an individual game. With a multi-game matchup of an even number of games, and players alternating between black and white, either all games will draw or the same color will win all games, thus leaving the overall result as a draw.
Certainly property owners today work to purchase land, and therefore are entitled to it forever. Shouldn't the same rights be given to an author to keep his work forever. Why does the public feel they have the right to a persons work. Sounds like socialism to me.
You seem to forget that copyright itself tells people what they cannot do with their own property. Because of copyright, I cannot use a computer which is my property and put certain patterns of bits and bytes onto a blank CD which is also my property.
Similarly, because of copyright I am legally restricted from using my fingers and my keyboard and my printer to produce certain sets of words and sentences on my paper. Why do you feel authors should have the right to control other people's computers, disks, tapes, printers, pens, and voices forever?
If you write a book, you and your heirs can keep ownership of that book itself forever; but why do you think you have the right to forever control what people do with their own fingers and keyboards after they have bought and read a copy of the book? Sounds like a dictatorship to me.
What I would like to know is, how is it anyone elses business what the owners of a company pays their CEOs or other people?
If you're a shareholder, directly through actual shares in the company or indirectly through mutual funds and retirement accounts, what they pay the CEOs is your damn business.