TLDs _may_ be a useful identifier, but pretty much everybody has to buy most all of the others or sue people to protect their internet name.
Granted the conventions are routinely flouted, and that those able to enforce them show little inclination to do so. Is that really an argument for making the system easier to abuse?
That's like trying to reduce crime in a high crime area by removing all the locks,
Nope a Straw man is an initial or hypothesis that is open to challenge.
Many would disagree. All the sources I've seen describe a straw man as misrepresenting your opponents position to one that is easier to refute, and then basing your argument upon that misrepresentation.
So for instance, if I said "We have an ethical duty to house asylum seekers" and you said "Nick wants to let anyone into the country without checks or controls, bit this will lead to them stealing out jobs", then that would be a straw man.
There are plenty of online resources describing the Straw Man fallacy: here's a few of them:
Yep, and the home office over here have just started an ad campaign to reduce crime.
The idea is that you shouldn't use a mobile phone or an MP3 playing in public lest it be stolen.
I was just reflecting this evening on my way home that it's not much of a generalisation from that to the idea that the best way to avoid being robbed is not to own stuff.
Looks like it's an idea whose time has come.
Copyrght is a mechanism that can be exploited. Stallman's contribution was to find a way to exploit it to the benefit of software enthusiasts, rather than to their detriment as more commonly the case. Time has since shown his approach to be useful in other areas. Respect is due.
However the fact that such applications exist does not demonstrate that copyright is benign, anymore than the abuses of the RIAA (for example) are sufficent to demonstrate the malignity of the mechanism.
What is required to evaluate the benefit to society overall of copyright, and to reform or remove it if it is fond necessary. I'm not yet convinced that copyright is irredeemably broken, but it'll take more than the example of the GPL to persuade me that it works well in its current form.
Re:Backed By Microsoft Shill
on
The Demise of IP?
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· Score: 3, Informative
Nice trick: imply that your opposition is Evil/mean/cruel/selfish/etc by restating their position with inflamatory language, then attack their position based on that language that you used to restate it.
I believe the phrase you're looking for is "Straw Man".
Re:So standard electrical plugs destroyed capitali
on
The Demise of IP?
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· Score: 1
I was unaware Germany didn't "pop back up" after WWII because of this. Could you provide a reference?
Well, I suppose it depends on what you define as recovery. Certainly I'd like to see the criteria the GP uses here.
But I'm even more interested in how he managed to gauge the extent of that recovery in that parallel universe in which german patents were honoured by the US. Assuming he's not just making stuff up at random, that is.
But there's also something bigger going on. It points to a perfect storm that can't be good for those who depend on intellectual property, or IP, to prosper.
Just like locks can't be good for those who depend on theft to prosper. This is infantile.
"Here we have a true conflict between the notion of intellectual property and the notion of sovereignty, and I'd say that 100 percent of the time in a democracy, sovereignty trumps intellectual property."
This sounds positively pre-Boston Tea Party to me.
What do you think folks? It it that she doesn't understand the distinction between sovereignty (a government's supremacy of authority within it's own territory) and monarchy (being ruled by a hereditary sovereign), or is she deliberately trying to conflate the two in order to confuse the issue? In either case I'd have expected better from CNet.
It reflects the currently fashionable idea that confiscatory government policy...
Reflects how, exactly? No one is confisating anyone's property here, intellectual or otherwise, so how can it reflect this allegedly fashionable idea?
Lies and distortions designed to spread FUD. If that's the best argument against...
Regarding your subject line - do you have any historical examples of this, or is it more like an article of faith?
That's not a dig; this is something I'd like to be true. However, experience tells me that those times when I want to believe something are the times when I most need to check to facts.
I suppose the problem is going to be that all cartels fall in time, and in every case the role played by the market is going to be open to debate.
Anyway, I'm curious as to whether you cite any examples.
With eBooks, the format changed. Who wants to read a book online instead of in paper format. The eBook was given a stab and failed. Is it surprising? Not really.
Alternatively, is it surprising that people balked at paying paper prices for a download that could only be read in a single location and that wouldn't survived their next inevitable re-install of Windows?
You can blame the format change if you like. Certainly it was a factor, and I'm sure the publishing houses agree with you. But the only people making a profit from e-books that I know of are Baen - and they provide free downloads without any DRM.
I know which impressed me the most.
If noone purchases downloadable movies, of course they will go away. Is it likely that no one will buy a downloadable movie? Not realistically.
Is it likely that enough people will download these movies under the terms offered by NBC to make the business economically viable? Well, that all depends on the terms offered, doesn't it? As you say, there will probably be several models tried, and I doubt that they first attempt will be successful. I'm not disputing the success of downloaded
movies in the long term, after all.
Incidentally, "purchase" seems a rather odd word, given your stated position. You meant "rent", I take it?
I am suggesting that a lack of concern to the segment of the market opposed to renting DVD's might indicate a willingness to ignore the segment of the market opposed to downloading time-limited movies to focus on those who are supportive of such an arrangement.
Fair enough. Now that you've stopped overusing everyone and all I don't particularly disagree with you on this point.
Certainly NBC isn't going to listen to the segment not willing to spend their money, over the segment that is willing to spend their money, if it is the best way to provide movie downloads.
I expect that's some folk thought when they sunk money into a heavily DRM encumbered e-book launch a few years back. They only listened to the paying customers, I'm sure. The trouble was that in many cases, they were lucky if those customers reached four digits.
So it's possible to withhold your custom and still send a message. If enough people feel the same way content providers will get the message in due course.
Mention that to Amazon.com and others
Sure - Amazon make money, so it's a fair bet that NBC will too. But it's still far from a sure thing. We have a different market demographic, and the market itself is changing. Consumers are more aware of the potential for credit card fraud, and large enterprises seem to get hacked and lose their credit card details almost weekly at the moment. NBC may turn out to be unlucky in their timing.
The important point is that we live in a Complex universe and we can't even enumerate all the relevant factors, let alone predict how they will play out.
huh? I'm picturing a long string. See my last paragraph for a rebuttal to this.
My bad. I meant DRM.
What exactly the choices will be for downloading movies, the market will decide. That is certain.
And on that, at least, we can agree. I'm looking forward to finding out.
I take it you are suggesting that the success of blockbuster implies that NBC's download scheme will be similarly successful? Certainly, that wasn't what you said
In any case, all Blockbuster's success proves is that many people find video and DVD rental convenient. Just because it works in meatspace doesn't mean that it will online. People may still find it more convenient to rent the physical media; they may have concerns about the security of their credit card details; they may feel the content is overpriced for an operation that needs no shelf space and that has their production costs already met; hell, they may even object to the idea of tethered downloads.
And lacking an operational crystal ball, that's all any can say on the matter with any certainty.
I don't know of a better engine. I didn't mean to imply that I did.
Fair enough. I'm doing a lot of research at the moment and I sometimes need to find information in areas I never thought of before. I'm always looking for another good engine:)
Well, clearly not everyone. There seems no shortage of dissenting opionion in fact,
...an expiration date will keep people from paying for a movie online..
Well, some people, anyway. "All generalisations are false (including this one)".
anymore then people will stop renting movies from Blockbuster because they have to return the DVD.
Of course, the people who would be deterred by a rental model, probably don't rent movies from blockbuster in the first place, so the blockbuster comparison doesn't really offer much support for your case.
There'll be millions of people who will pay for a movie that expires.
According to you - the truth of the matter remains to be seen, doesn't it?
And NBC doesn't care about you, so there.
Not only unconvincing, but also charmless. Wonderful.
Nobody actually said anything about "punishing". "Controlling", even passively, is more what I had in mind. And this control has to be a neutral third-party, not necessarily a government entity
mmm... but unless you have a remedy that can be applied equally in all cases, then you still have the effect of penalising one company, or possibly one sector of industry. Call in it passive control is a bit like say "it's for your own good" or "this hurts me much more than it does you".
Of course, if all you want is to encourage students to keep on studying the effect of search engines, then I think you already have have you want.
it's about people being aware of the power that search engines have in the new economy
"New economy?" This isn't going to turn into one of those "my business sucks, so it must be Google's fault" discussions, is it? Personally, if someone's business is so marginal that it lives or dies by its position in Google's search results, then I think that person need a better business idea.
Hey, I didn't say that I had the best solution to a currently non-existent problem, or that solving this non-existent problem is more important than "punishing" others who have abused of their power
The problem isn't non-existent, it's just that it isn't yet a problem in Google's case. There are plenty of cases where it is a problem. This isn't so much a poor solution as a grevious and potentially harmful misdirection of effort.
To put it another way: you cited the potential to manipulate public opinion as your driving concern. As such, I'd expect any proposed remedy to address that specific problem and to do so across the board. Your apparent unwillingness to do so and your determined focus on Google makes your concern seem more like a pretext for picking on Google.
I couldn't afford CompuServe, way back when, but I remember the early web from the days when it was possible to have read it all. I don't think any informal group of techies could manage all that information these days - and your non-tech wouldn't have a hope.
The day that google figures out how to evaluate site content instead of using indirect and gamable measures of site popularity will be a wonderful day
I'm sure they're just as eager to bring about this day as you are to see it happen.
So, what do you use that you find so superior? I use Google, Citeseer and Wikipedia primarily, but outside of a few specialised areas, I find Google's results quite adequate for most purposes. All the same, if you have a better engine, I know I'd be keen try it out
Big companies can pay more for advertising, so if you bury them in the listings they pay to appear at the top of the adverts. It's good solid business sense.
So... what's your point?
It's also not Egalitarian because Egalitarianism assumes all people are equal, so company of 100,000 employees is 10,000 more important than a company of 10 employees.
Except corporations are legal entities in their own right (hell, some courts even grant them human rights!) and therefore only count as one, and not as the sum of theiur employees. That's always assuming you want to analyse the matter from the corporate perspective. Personally, I don't think is the most useful approach.
Think in terms of people who want to find the web pages best suited to their requirements (as opposed to the narrow range of pages the cartels want to push) and you'll find those individuals have much freer access to the information they seek. Similarly, consider the individuals who publish the web pages and who have a greater chance of having their pages read when people search using Google. I think you'll find Google an egalitarian influence from both those perspectives,
It's more like positive discrimination, you discriminate against big companies for your own benefit and pretend its for some greater moral purpose.
Bizzarre. Weren't you earlier defending the right of a company to run it's own business as best suits its business model? Or does that only apply when other corporations can pay money to distort the listings to their own gain? Anyway, it's like the corporate shills are always saying: they're free to set up their own engine and take their advertising revenue elsewhere.
I'm just bothered by the fact that we should rely on Google's reputation to make sure that they won't do something stupid/illegal. In business, good faith just doesn't cut it anymore,
We let Microsoft weild far more power when that particular corporation has a track record of corporate misbehaviour.
If we decide that good faith isn't good enough, how about start with those who have sinned in the past, rather than by punishing the innocent? Just a thought.
Incidentally, am I the only one who sees all sorts of potential for government mischief in search engine regulation.
...checks and controls should exist in any industry/service/medium that has the power to shape people's opinion.
Except obviously not, say Fox News (who recently went to court to defend their right to tell deliberate lies in their "news" programs) or any of the politically controlled media cartels, because of free speech and first amendment issues. So in effect, you're proposing regulating a corporation that has yet to do wrong, while far more potent opinion shapers (many of whom have a considerable track record for this sort of thing) are let off scott free.
If we're going to have checks and balances, we should start with the sinners. We can punish the saints later.
So, even if the answer to the question is "mmm... yes" today, it doesn't mean it has (or will) stay like that forever.
By the same token, the fact that you are (I presume) a law abiding and well mannered member of society doesn't mean you won't suddenly be seduced by the Dark Side and become a serial killer. Should we all view you with fear and distrust based upon your possible future actions, or should we treat you as your actions to date warrant?
Why then is everyone so keen to condemn google for crimes that remain hypothetical? I know Microsoft has an axe to grind here; I just can't see why so many otherwise intelligent people are so keen to propagate the meme.
Most web newbies would form their impressions of the web from their ISP's portal site. That would give a lot of power to corps like AOL, who for a long time tried to persuade their subscribers that there was no web outside of AOL hosted content.
There might still be blogs and social networking sites, but the take up would be slowed since fewer people wold have heard of them, and both might have failed to ignite into the movement we see today.
Which would probably mean that if you wanted something outside of the main ISP channels, you'd be reduced to digging through the spam on USENET to find it.
Google as an egalitarian influence on the web? I think it's a bit of a no-brainer, personally.
Offhand, the fact that the way they added this feature automatically struck a lot of people and unduly intrusive, as indicated by the dissatisfaction being voiced here.
If they had faith that the service really added value, from the user perspective that is, then they could have just advertised the bots and had users subscribe to them in droves.
The fact that this service is free may well mean AOL feels little incentive to respond to user complaints. However this hardly removes the right of said users to complain, especially if AOL suddenly change the operational parameters of the service.
Certainly, as pointed out elsewhere, complaints provide AOL with a useful source of feedback to gauge public response to initiatives such as this. Since AOL have had past periods of haemorrhaging subscribers you might even suppose they would welcome this feedback.
Furthermore, raising the issue in an open forum like this one provides a valuable public service, since it helps potential subscribers to AOL and as well as potential users of AOL messaging to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of such a move.
Slashdot Mirror
Granted the conventions are routinely flouted, and that those able to enforce them show little inclination to do so. Is that really an argument for making the system easier to abuse?
That's like trying to reduce crime in a high crime area by removing all the locks,
Many would disagree. All the sources I've seen describe a straw man as misrepresenting your opponents position to one that is easier to refute, and then basing your argument upon that misrepresentation.
So for instance, if I said "We have an ethical duty to house asylum seekers" and you said "Nick wants to let anyone into the country without checks or controls, bit this will lead to them stealing out jobs", then that would be a straw man.
There are plenty of online resources describing the Straw Man fallacy: here's a few of them:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lilyth/strawman.htm l h tml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
http://www.drury.edu/ess/Logic/Informal/Strawman.
*ahem* ...and furthermore, since my vote counts more than his, I want all of TubeSteak's baksheesh too. Right now. Don't think I won't do it.
I was just reflecting this evening on my way home that it's not much of a generalisation from that to the idea that the best way to avoid being robbed is not to own stuff. Looks like it's an idea whose time has come.
Let's hope it goes away just as quickly.
However the fact that such applications exist does not demonstrate that copyright is benign, anymore than the abuses of the RIAA (for example) are sufficent to demonstrate the malignity of the mechanism.
What is required to evaluate the benefit to society overall of copyright, and to reform or remove it if it is fond necessary. I'm not yet convinced that copyright is irredeemably broken, but it'll take more than the example of the GPL to persuade me that it works well in its current form.
I believe the phrase you're looking for is "Straw Man".
Well, I suppose it depends on what you define as recovery. Certainly I'd like to see the criteria the GP uses here.
But I'm even more interested in how he managed to gauge the extent of that recovery in that parallel universe in which german patents were honoured by the US. Assuming he's not just making stuff up at random, that is.
But there's also something bigger going on. It points to a perfect storm that can't be good for those who depend on intellectual property, or IP, to prosper.
Just like locks can't be good for those who depend on theft to prosper. This is infantile.
"Here we have a true conflict between the notion of intellectual property and the notion of sovereignty, and I'd say that 100 percent of the time in a democracy, sovereignty trumps intellectual property."
This sounds positively pre-Boston Tea Party to me.
What do you think folks? It it that she doesn't understand the distinction between sovereignty (a government's supremacy of authority within it's own territory) and monarchy (being ruled by a hereditary sovereign), or is she deliberately trying to conflate the two in order to confuse the issue? In either case I'd have expected better from CNet.
It reflects the currently fashionable idea that confiscatory government policy...
Reflects how, exactly? No one is confisating anyone's property here, intellectual or otherwise, so how can it reflect this allegedly fashionable idea?
Lies and distortions designed to spread FUD. If that's the best argument against...
I demand my unfair share, right now or I'm going back to voting ethically and intelligently.
I suppose the problem is going to be that all cartels fall in time, and in every case the role played by the market is going to be open to debate.
Anyway, I'm curious as to whether you cite any examples.
These problems are solvable :)
Alternatively, is it surprising that people balked at paying paper prices for a download that could only be read in a single location and that wouldn't survived their next inevitable re-install of Windows?
You can blame the format change if you like. Certainly it was a factor, and I'm sure the publishing houses agree with you. But the only people making a profit from e-books that I know of are Baen - and they provide free downloads without any DRM. I know which impressed me the most.
If noone purchases downloadable movies, of course they will go away. Is it likely that no one will buy a downloadable movie? Not realistically.
Is it likely that enough people will download these movies under the terms offered by NBC to make the business economically viable? Well, that all depends on the terms offered, doesn't it? As you say, there will probably be several models tried, and I doubt that they first attempt will be successful. I'm not disputing the success of downloaded movies in the long term, after all.
Incidentally, "purchase" seems a rather odd word, given your stated position. You meant "rent", I take it?
Actually, I think he's on the verge on becomming a valuable resource. You just have to invert his value judgements.
For instance: if Dvorak likes the 360 then it must be awful.
It's all very spatilomantic, I suppose, but it works for me...
Fair enough. Now that you've stopped overusing everyone and all I don't particularly disagree with you on this point.
Certainly NBC isn't going to listen to the segment not willing to spend their money, over the segment that is willing to spend their money, if it is the best way to provide movie downloads.
I expect that's some folk thought when they sunk money into a heavily DRM encumbered e-book launch a few years back. They only listened to the paying customers, I'm sure. The trouble was that in many cases, they were lucky if those customers reached four digits.
So it's possible to withhold your custom and still send a message. If enough people feel the same way content providers will get the message in due course.
Mention that to Amazon.com and others
Sure - Amazon make money, so it's a fair bet that NBC will too. But it's still far from a sure thing. We have a different market demographic, and the market itself is changing. Consumers are more aware of the potential for credit card fraud, and large enterprises seem to get hacked and lose their credit card details almost weekly at the moment. NBC may turn out to be unlucky in their timing.
The important point is that we live in a Complex universe and we can't even enumerate all the relevant factors, let alone predict how they will play out.
huh? I'm picturing a long string. See my last paragraph for a rebuttal to this.
My bad. I meant DRM.
What exactly the choices will be for downloading movies, the market will decide. That is certain.
And on that, at least, we can agree. I'm looking forward to finding out.
In any case, all Blockbuster's success proves is that many people find video and DVD rental convenient. Just because it works in meatspace doesn't mean that it will online. People may still find it more convenient to rent the physical media; they may have concerns about the security of their credit card details; they may feel the content is overpriced for an operation that needs no shelf space and that has their production costs already met; hell, they may even object to the idea of tethered downloads.
And lacking an operational crystal ball, that's all any can say on the matter with any certainty.
Fair enough. I'm doing a lot of research at the moment and I sometimes need to find information in areas I never thought of before. I'm always looking for another good engine :)
Well, clearly not everyone. There seems no shortage of dissenting opionion in fact,
Well, some people, anyway. "All generalisations are false (including this one)".
anymore then people will stop renting movies from Blockbuster because they have to return the DVD.
Of course, the people who would be deterred by a rental model, probably don't rent movies from blockbuster in the first place, so the blockbuster comparison doesn't really offer much support for your case.
There'll be millions of people who will pay for a movie that expires.
According to you - the truth of the matter remains to be seen, doesn't it?
And NBC doesn't care about you, so there.
Not only unconvincing, but also charmless. Wonderful.
mmm... but unless you have a remedy that can be applied equally in all cases, then you still have the effect of penalising one company, or possibly one sector of industry. Call in it passive control is a bit like say "it's for your own good" or "this hurts me much more than it does you".
Of course, if all you want is to encourage students to keep on studying the effect of search engines, then I think you already have have you want.
it's about people being aware of the power that search engines have in the new economy
"New economy?" This isn't going to turn into one of those "my business sucks, so it must be Google's fault" discussions, is it? Personally, if someone's business is so marginal that it lives or dies by its position in Google's search results, then I think that person need a better business idea.
Hey, I didn't say that I had the best solution to a currently non-existent problem, or that solving this non-existent problem is more important than "punishing" others who have abused of their power
The problem isn't non-existent, it's just that it isn't yet a problem in Google's case. There are plenty of cases where it is a problem. This isn't so much a poor solution as a grevious and potentially harmful misdirection of effort.
To put it another way: you cited the potential to manipulate public opinion as your driving concern. As such, I'd expect any proposed remedy to address that specific problem and to do so across the board. Your apparent unwillingness to do so and your determined focus on Google makes your concern seem more like a pretext for picking on Google.
The day that google figures out how to evaluate site content instead of using indirect and gamable measures of site popularity will be a wonderful day
I'm sure they're just as eager to bring about this day as you are to see it happen.
So, what do you use that you find so superior? I use Google, Citeseer and Wikipedia primarily, but outside of a few specialised areas, I find Google's results quite adequate for most purposes. All the same, if you have a better engine, I know I'd be keen try it out
So... what's your point?
It's also not Egalitarian because Egalitarianism assumes all people are equal, so company of 100,000 employees is 10,000 more important than a company of 10 employees.
Except corporations are legal entities in their own right (hell, some courts even grant them human rights!) and therefore only count as one, and not as the sum of theiur employees. That's always assuming you want to analyse the matter from the corporate perspective. Personally, I don't think is the most useful approach.
Think in terms of people who want to find the web pages best suited to their requirements (as opposed to the narrow range of pages the cartels want to push) and you'll find those individuals have much freer access to the information they seek. Similarly, consider the individuals who publish the web pages and who have a greater chance of having their pages read when people search using Google. I think you'll find Google an egalitarian influence from both those perspectives,
It's more like positive discrimination, you discriminate against big companies for your own benefit and pretend its for some greater moral purpose.
Bizzarre. Weren't you earlier defending the right of a company to run it's own business as best suits its business model? Or does that only apply when other corporations can pay money to distort the listings to their own gain? Anyway, it's like the corporate shills are always saying: they're free to set up their own engine and take their advertising revenue elsewhere.
We let Microsoft weild far more power when that particular corporation has a track record of corporate misbehaviour. If we decide that good faith isn't good enough, how about start with those who have sinned in the past, rather than by punishing the innocent? Just a thought.
Incidentally, am I the only one who sees all sorts of potential for government mischief in search engine regulation.
Except obviously not, say Fox News (who recently went to court to defend their right to tell deliberate lies in their "news" programs) or any of the politically controlled media cartels, because of free speech and first amendment issues. So in effect, you're proposing regulating a corporation that has yet to do wrong, while far more potent opinion shapers (many of whom have a considerable track record for this sort of thing) are let off scott free.
If we're going to have checks and balances, we should start with the sinners. We can punish the saints later.
By the same token, the fact that you are (I presume) a law abiding and well mannered member of society doesn't mean you won't suddenly be seduced by the Dark Side and become a serial killer. Should we all view you with fear and distrust based upon your possible future actions, or should we treat you as your actions to date warrant?
Why then is everyone so keen to condemn google for crimes that remain hypothetical? I know Microsoft has an axe to grind here; I just can't see why so many otherwise intelligent people are so keen to propagate the meme.
Most web newbies would form their impressions of the web from their ISP's portal site. That would give a lot of power to corps like AOL, who for a long time tried to persuade their subscribers that there was no web outside of AOL hosted content.
There might still be blogs and social networking sites, but the take up would be slowed since fewer people wold have heard of them, and both might have failed to ignite into the movement we see today.
Which would probably mean that if you wanted something outside of the main ISP channels, you'd be reduced to digging through the spam on USENET to find it.
Google as an egalitarian influence on the web? I think it's a bit of a no-brainer, personally.
Offhand, the fact that the way they added this feature automatically struck a lot of people and unduly intrusive, as indicated by the dissatisfaction being voiced here.
If they had faith that the service really added value, from the user perspective that is, then they could have just advertised the bots and had users subscribe to them in droves.
The fact that this service is free may well mean AOL feels little incentive to
respond to user complaints. However this hardly removes the right of said users to complain, especially if AOL suddenly change the operational parameters of the service.
Certainly, as pointed out elsewhere, complaints provide AOL with a useful source of feedback to gauge public response to initiatives such as this. Since AOL have had past periods of haemorrhaging subscribers you might even suppose they would welcome this feedback.
Furthermore, raising the issue in an open forum like this one provides a valuable public service, since it helps potential subscribers to AOL and as well as potential users of AOL messaging to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of such a move.