Most likely there would be more movies, and they would be better because it is likely that more than one movie house would want to make a Spidy Show, and competition is a Good Thing. Right?
Wrong.
The money men back off when they see duplicate projects.
The production companies can't deliver the pricey blockbuster the audience expects. There will be a disastrous split in the box office take and an inevitable dilution of the franchise. Everybody loses.
My daddy had a hit song on the radio, so I deserve to never work a day in my life!
You are Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire. You own a mansion and a yacht. Your estate will pass to your children without question.
It is "real" property, after all.
You are Ulysses S. Grant, L. Frank Baum, H.P. Lovecraft.
You have nothing to secure the future of your family but the product of your mind and talent as a writer.
Which the geek degrees that on your death should go into the public domain. The geek, you will learn, is libertarian only when it is convenient.
You surrender to poverty and pain. You do not write the memoirs, the children's fantasies, the adult horror stories, that would have become post-mortem classics.
It's because many in the slashdot crowd believe in standing on the shoulder's of giants to make their own works. (which can't be done with the current copyright).
No matter how thin you slice it, it is still bologna.
You can produce all the - original - works that are in you to make.
J.K. Rowling took that route and became a billionaire in under ten years.
What you cannot produce - or distribute - is the unlicensed copy or derivative work. You don't get to "borrow" Mickey Mouse. You do get to create your own "Mighty Mouse" or "Tom and Jerry."
In a world of infinite possibilites, the Geek writes fan fiction.
Brad Bird,The Simpsons, The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille.
If copyright was like anything it is today, Disney would have unlikely made some of his greatest works, especially since some of them pushed him to near bankruptcy and would have therefore been unable to pay the necessary licensing fees.
MGM paid $50,000 for the rights to Gone With The Wind.
That was top dollar - and damn good publicity. MGM faced no real competition.
Production costs for Snow White were about $1.5 million.
Disney sought out stories he believed were ripe for animation. That would appeal to his audience. Bambi, Dumbo, 101 Dalmatians... None of these were in the public domain.
99%+ of book titles won't be sold 15 years after their release. So there's no financial incentive for their authors to protect them.
There are other motives than financial.
The Lord of the Rings represents a lifetime of work and study. The same could be said of the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft.
I have no interest in "copyright reform" that protects the intellectual property of the rich - but throws the creative work of the poor into the "public domain." For the convenience of the Geek.
That makes the original an artifact for MoMA and the Library of Congress. The digital restoration on Disney DVD: $15 Vintage Mickey
The expiration of copyright gives you the right to produce derivatives based on the characters and story of Steamboat Willie - and only Steamboat Willie.
If you want the Mouse of The Sorcerer's Apprentice,* you will have to wait a little longer.
[*Fantasia (1940) Three-strip Technicolor. Fantasound Three-channel stereo. Do you see a pattern forming here? The expiration of copyright doesn't guarantee the survival of primary sources or the money and resources needed to restore them.]
This is $100 less than an HP Pavilion with 1 GB RAM and 120 GB HDD sold for last month -- and this is only the run-up to the Back-To-School and Christmas shopping seasons.
The $2000 Top-of-the-Line Vista Ultimate Laptop at Walmart:
HP 17" Pavilion Laptop PC w/ Intel Core 2 Duo Processor 2 GB Ram, 240 GB HDD, HD-DVD Player/Multilayer DVD Burner, WiFi and Bluetooth, NVIDIA DX10 GeForce 8600 GS graphics w 256 MB RAM, up to 1 GB shared. Did I mention that the HP comes with an 8-cell Lion battery, integrated webcam, 1000 Gb Ethernet, a fingerprint reader and a remote control?
Have you read any history?
i>Some better examples:
(1) The Reconstruction Congress forcing the ratification of the 14th Amendment as a condition for readmitting the Confederacy to the Union. This eventually gave the federal government final say over whether just about anything the states did was Constitutional.
The 14th Amendment binds the state governments in much the same way as the first ten Amendments binds the federal government.
It exists because of the inevitable abuses in state power in a society in which every aspect of life is shaped and corrupted by institutions that reinforce racial superiority, chattel slavery and peonage.
Texas and Florida can no longer execute children. The Muslim is free to built a mosque in Tennessee. The fly-trap rural township in Georgia does not get more votes in the state legislature than the whole of metropolitan Atlanta.
Would you believe that the Supreme Court determined that a man growing wheat for his own family's consumption could be prevented from doing so because that consumption, taken together with others doing the same thing, would overall reduce the national demand for wheat? You should, because it not only happened, it's still good law.
Would you believe...
In 1934 lower courts had begun overturning major parts of the New Deal program. Potentially the most serious threat came from rulings invalidating the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), which used the same broad power to levy taxes for the general welfare as the basis for its program of agricultural price supports and controls. Lower courts ruled this unconstitutional and the Supreme Court followed in January 1936, ruling that ". ..a statutory plan to regulate and control agricultural production, [is] a matter beyond the powers delegated to the federal government. .." There was a silver lining in the cloud, however, because the same opinion ultimately sided with Hamilton on the larger question of a strict or a flexible interpretation of the general welfare clause by holding that: " . ..the power of Congress to authorize expenditure of public moneys for public purposes is not limited by the direct grants of legislative power found in the Constitution."
The AAA was an attempt to rescue farmers from the collapse of the farm economy that happened with the coming of the Depression. It sought to control agricultural production in order to stabilize prices and restore farming to profitability.The 1937 Supreme Court Rulings on the Social Security Act
3) Abraham Lincoln unilaterally suspended habeas corpus on United States soil as applied to United States citizens.
While the Confederate Congress - in its usual paralysis over state's rights - did nothing until 1864. Lincoln had at least a clear sense that the Executive in wartime must act decisively.
Whereas, The Constitution of the Confederate States o America provides..that "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it;" and whereas, the power of suspending the privilege...is vested solely in the Congress, which is the exclusive judge of the necessity of such suspension; and whereas, in the opinion of the Congress, the public safety requires the suspension of said writ in the existing case of the invasion of these States by the armies of the United States; and whereas, the President has asked for the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus...
Or rather Dell is getting a kickback from microsoft that is paying for the upgrade.
Promotions generate traffic and sales. Sales pay the bills. The customer snaps up the upgrade and springs for a new printer as part of the deal. It's Retail 101, boy, and it works.
Last time I checked you could disagree with the EULA, send the Vista disk back to M$ and get your money back and then install ubuntu. Why not do that?
Forget Microsoft's EULA and read your sales contract with Dell and Dell's bill of sale.
If the OEM Vista install is there in writing [and it will be] you won't be getting any refund from Microsoft - and don't bother calling Dell about technical support or service under warranty.
According to Microsoft, you'll have to shell out $99.99 for Vista Home Basic.
Good god.
How many times does this lesson have to be pounded into the head of the Geek?
OEM pricing is not the same as retail list.
The OEM price to HP and Dell is not the OEM price to your neighborhood custom builder.
if you price two machines with identical hardware specs, and you don't come out at least a little cheaper without Vista, you are getting RIPPED OFF, plain and simple. This holds true whether the two machines are base models or fully-upgraded-to-the-gills gaming rigs. If they're identical hardware-wise, they should be significantly cheaper without Vista.
The consumer market loves a bargain, real or imagined.
Something the Sumerian trader understood perfectly well thousands of years before Woolworth opened his first Five and Dime.
Dell advertises its Vista promotions through direct mail, four-color adds in the metro papers, the Home Shopping Network, etc., etc.
The free upgrade boosts off-season sales, clears slow-moving inventory, generates a return far out of proportion to the nominal cost of the upgrade hardware.
Dell uses the Windows PC to drive after-market sales of media players, cameras, printers, HDTV...
the reasons why are familiar enough with a little thought: familiarity, entrenchment... not exactly something that really required deep thinking. The heavy thinking lies in how to change those two factors.
Color me unconvinced.
It strikes me as both interesting and significant that the middle class in China is as comfortable with Windows as the middle class in the states.
That Windows remains the OS of the marketplace and Linux the OS of the Cathedral.
I mean we all want these kinds of titles - we are growing up but dammit as much as I love nintendo I want my games to grow up with me.
When you do grow up, you may discover that the real "adult" game play is to be found in Planescape:Torment while Manhunt 2 remains adolescent high-tech "torture porn."
The characterization of computers without pre-loaded software as "naked" and mandating that software be bundled with PCs by the retailer is nothing more than an attempt to create a barrier-to-entry into the market.
The "naked" PC is a barrier to sales in all but the most technically sophisticated of markets.
The "naked" PC is to the Geek what thoughts of Playboy are to the teen at three A.M. The un-compromised fantasy without any immediate prospect or obligation of fulfillment.
The install never barfs, the GIMP is a champion performer like Photoshop.
Ease of copying coupled with an interface that really didn't require much in the way of brainpower was what gave Windows its boost.
But there comes a point, I think, where you have to stop reciting the old excuses.
Where the street price for the Windows OS is the same as the price for a "fully loaded" Linux distro and Windows remains the OS of choice - it is not a Troll to ask "Why?"
Microcoft has purchased a small stake in one of China's largest TV makers and signed an agreement with Shanghai Media Group, the country's second largest media company.
A flood of low-budget porn is made for HD DVD. (Only high-budget stuff can use Blu-ray.)
Let me put this kindly and simply - suggest - that the Geek over-estimates porn as a force in the HD market and underestimates Disney, family entertainment.
I think a few bucks is a reasonable price when they don't have to print, press, package, or distribute anything). If you could download a HD movie in a few minutes for a few bucks and store it as long as you want it, why wouldn't you? I would.
The 50 GB Blu-ray disk is available today.
The 100 GB disk - the 200 GB disk - is not that far down the road.
The production and distribution costs would remain more or less the same if you could stamp 1000 GB into a single plastic disk.
You'll be paying more than a few bucks for downloads on that scale and a media server to store them. While that disk - properly cared for - might well still be playable 25 to 50 years from now.
Chronicles of Narnia
Con Air
Deja Vu
Flightplan
Ghost In The Shell
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
Kill Bill
Lost
Pirates of the Caribbean
Sin City
Slashdot Mirror
Wrong.
The money men back off when they see duplicate projects.
The production companies can't deliver the pricey blockbuster the audience expects. There will be a disastrous split in the box office take and an inevitable dilution of the franchise. Everybody loses.
You are Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire. You own a mansion and a yacht. Your estate will pass to your children without question.
It is "real" property, after all.
You are Ulysses S. Grant, L. Frank Baum, H.P. Lovecraft.
You have nothing to secure the future of your family but the product of your mind and talent as a writer.
Which the geek degrees that on your death should go into the public domain. The geek, you will learn, is libertarian only when it is convenient.
You surrender to poverty and pain. You do not write the memoirs, the children's fantasies, the adult horror stories, that would have become post-mortem classics.
No matter how thin you slice it, it is still bologna.
You can produce all the - original - works that are in you to make.
J.K. Rowling took that route and became a billionaire in under ten years.
What you cannot produce - or distribute - is the unlicensed copy or derivative work. You don't get to "borrow" Mickey Mouse. You do get to create your own "Mighty Mouse" or "Tom and Jerry."
In a world of infinite possibilites, the Geek writes fan fiction.
Brad Bird,The Simpsons, The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille.
MGM paid $50,000 for the rights to Gone With The Wind.
That was top dollar - and damn good publicity. MGM faced no real competition.
Production costs for Snow White were about $1.5 million.
Disney sought out stories he believed were ripe for animation. That would appeal to his audience. Bambi, Dumbo, 101 Dalmatians... None of these were in the public domain.
There are other motives than financial.
The Lord of the Rings represents a lifetime of work and study. The same could be said of the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft.
I have no interest in "copyright reform" that protects the intellectual property of the rich - but throws the creative work of the poor into the "public domain." For the convenience of the Geek.
a footnote: The rights to Peter Pan are under a unique - perpetual - copyright in the U.K. The European copyright on Peter Pan expires this year, 2023 in the U.S. Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity: Peter Pan Copyright
Steamboat Willie (1928) is eight minutes of silent-era sight gags with a thin narrative thread.
Nitrate stock. Synchronized Cinephone sound-on-disk.
That makes the original an artifact for MoMA and the Library of Congress.
The digital restoration on Disney DVD: $15 Vintage Mickey
The expiration of copyright gives you the right to produce derivatives based on the characters and story of Steamboat Willie - and only Steamboat Willie.
If you want the Mouse of The Sorcerer's Apprentice,* you will have to wait a little longer.
[*Fantasia (1940) Three-strip Technicolor. Fantasound Three-channel stereo.
Do you see a pattern forming here? The expiration of copyright doesn't guarantee the survival of primary sources or the money and resources needed to restore them.]
What makes you think that?
The brand-name Vista Premium laptop at Walmart.com starts at $700:
Acer Aspire 5610 15.4" Widescreen Laptop PC w/ Pentium Dual-Core Processor 2 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, integrated Acer WiFi, integrated Intel graphics and sound.
This is $100 less than an HP Pavilion with 1 GB RAM and 120 GB HDD sold for last month -- and this is only the run-up to the Back-To-School and Christmas shopping seasons.
The $2000 Top-of-the-Line Vista Ultimate Laptop at Walmart:
HP 17" Pavilion Laptop PC w/ Intel Core 2 Duo Processor 2 GB Ram, 240 GB HDD, HD-DVD Player/Multilayer DVD Burner, WiFi and Bluetooth, NVIDIA DX10 GeForce 8600 GS graphics w 256 MB RAM, up to 1 GB shared. Did I mention that the HP comes with an 8-cell Lion battery, integrated webcam, 1000 Gb Ethernet, a fingerprint reader and a remote control?
The Acer Vista Basic laptop clusters with others at $450-$500:
Celeron M, 512 MB RAM, 80 GB HDD, DVD reader/CD burner.
Not so very different - and in some ways better - in specs and pricing from the entry-level XP laptop it replaces.
Vista systems with specs like these do not suck. Period. End of story. Neither are they over-priced for Walmart's middle-class market.
i>Some better examples:
(1) The Reconstruction Congress forcing the ratification of the 14th Amendment as a condition for readmitting the Confederacy to the Union. This eventually gave the federal government final say over whether just about anything the states did was Constitutional.
The 14th Amendment binds the state governments in much the same way as the first ten Amendments binds the federal government.
It exists because of the inevitable abuses in state power in a society in which every aspect of life is shaped and corrupted by institutions that reinforce racial superiority, chattel slavery and peonage.
Texas and Florida can no longer execute children. The Muslim is free to built a mosque in Tennessee. The fly-trap rural township in Georgia does not get more votes in the state legislature than the whole of metropolitan Atlanta.
Would you believe that the Supreme Court determined that a man growing wheat for his own family's consumption could be prevented from doing so because that consumption, taken together with others doing the same thing, would overall reduce the national demand for wheat? You should, because it not only happened, it's still good law.
Would you believe...
In 1934 lower courts had begun overturning major parts of the New Deal program. Potentially the most serious threat came from rulings invalidating the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), which used the same broad power to levy taxes for the general welfare as the basis for its program of agricultural price supports and controls. Lower courts ruled this unconstitutional and the Supreme Court followed in January 1936, ruling that ". . .a statutory plan to regulate and control agricultural production, [is] a matter beyond the powers delegated to the federal government. . ." There was a silver lining in the cloud, however, because the same opinion ultimately sided with Hamilton on the larger question of a strict or a flexible interpretation of the general welfare clause by holding that: " . . .the power of Congress to authorize expenditure of public moneys for public purposes is not limited by the direct grants of legislative power found in the Constitution."
The AAA was an attempt to rescue farmers from the collapse of the farm economy that happened with the coming of the Depression. It sought to control agricultural production in order to stabilize prices and restore farming to profitability. The 1937 Supreme Court Rulings on the Social Security Act
3) Abraham Lincoln unilaterally suspended habeas corpus on United States soil as applied to United States citizens.
While the Confederate Congress - in its usual paralysis over state's rights - did nothing until 1864. Lincoln had at least a clear sense that the Executive in wartime must act decisively.
Whereas, The Constitution of the Confederate States o America provides..that "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it;" and whereas, the power of suspending the privilege...is vested solely in the Congress, which is the exclusive judge of the necessity of such suspension; and whereas, in the opinion of the Congress, the public safety requires the suspension of said writ in the existing case of the invasion of these States by the armies of the United States; and whereas, the President has asked for the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus...
Confederate States of America. Congress. Senate. Senate Bill, No. 119: Secret: A Bill to Suspend the Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus in Certain Cases.
Confederate States of America. Congress. House of Representatives House Bill, No. 267: Secret: A Bill to Suspend the Privilege of Writ of Habeas Corpus, in Certain Cases, for a Limited Time.
Promotions generate traffic and sales. Sales pay the bills. The customer snaps up the upgrade and springs for a new printer as part of the deal. It's Retail 101, boy, and it works.
Forget Microsoft's EULA and read your sales contract with Dell and Dell's bill of sale.
If the OEM Vista install is there in writing [and it will be] you won't be getting any refund from Microsoft - and don't bother calling Dell about technical support or service under warranty.
Sales. Lots of sales. Dell's bread and butter.
all rear projection of cell animation. the simplest and most economical solution at the time.
Good god.
How many times does this lesson have to be pounded into the head of the Geek?
OEM pricing is not the same as retail list.
The OEM price to HP and Dell is not the OEM price to your neighborhood custom builder.
if you price two machines with identical hardware specs, and you don't come out at least a little cheaper without Vista, you are getting RIPPED OFF, plain and simple. This holds true whether the two machines are base models or fully-upgraded-to-the-gills gaming rigs. If they're identical hardware-wise, they should be significantly cheaper without Vista.
The consumer market loves a bargain, real or imagined.
Something the Sumerian trader understood perfectly well thousands of years before Woolworth opened his first Five and Dime.
Dell advertises its Vista promotions through direct mail, four-color adds in the metro papers, the Home Shopping Network, etc., etc.
The free upgrade boosts off-season sales, clears slow-moving inventory, generates a return far out of proportion to the nominal cost of the upgrade hardware.
Dell uses the Windows PC to drive after-market sales of media players, cameras, printers, HDTV...
Color me unconvinced.
It strikes me as both interesting and significant that the middle class in China is as comfortable with Windows as the middle class in the states.
That Windows remains the OS of the marketplace and Linux the OS of the Cathedral.
When you do grow up, you may discover that the real "adult" game play is to be found in Planescape:Torment while Manhunt 2 remains adolescent high-tech "torture porn."
The "naked" PC is a barrier to sales in all but the most technically sophisticated of markets.
The "naked" PC is to the Geek what thoughts of Playboy are to the teen at three A.M. The un-compromised fantasy without any immediate prospect or obligation of fulfillment.
The install never barfs, the GIMP is a champion performer like Photoshop.
But there comes a point, I think, where you have to stop reciting the old excuses.
Where the street price for the Windows OS is the same as the price for a "fully loaded" Linux distro and Windows remains the OS of choice - it is not a Troll to ask "Why?"
OEM exports for the Windows PC generates employment and income in China.
To mark its entry into the WTO, Microsoft was the first foreign company admitted into China's software trade association.
Microsoft Research Asia has been based in Beijing since 1998.
Microcoft has purchased a small stake in one of China's largest TV makers and signed an agreement with Shanghai Media Group, the country's second largest media company.
SMG will use Microsoft products across its new-media division, which includes Internet video, IPTV and mobile television. Microsoft Looks for Space in China's Living Room [June 22, 2007]
Microsoft's target is China's emergent middle class, where it is strongly positioned to be successful.
Let me put this kindly and simply - suggest - that the Geek over-estimates porn as a force in the HD market and underestimates Disney, family entertainment.
Laserdisc was first-generation tech.
It entered an American market {1978] where "monitor" quality color TVs and RCA composite video inputs are almost non-existent.
The 50 GB Blu-ray disk is available today.
The 100 GB disk - the 200 GB disk - is not that far down the road.
The production and distribution costs would remain more or less the same if you could stamp 1000 GB into a single plastic disk.
You'll be paying more than a few bucks for downloads on that scale and a media server to store them. While that disk - properly cared for - might well still be playable 25 to 50 years from now.
Blue-ray distribution through Disney/Buena Vista
Pixar
Chronicles of Narnia
Con Air
Deja Vu
Flightplan
Ghost In The Shell
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
Kill Bill
Lost
Pirates of the Caribbean
Sin City
Blu-ray doesn't sell to the "average" consumer, Blu-ray sells to the consumer who already has a substantial investment in HDTV.
Blu-ray Disc Store
But neither of you are the market. Blu-Ray has Disney and A-list titles like The Incredibles. It is content that drives sales, not cracked DRM.