And why should these models be practised to the exclusion of copyright ? Why not allow all models, and let the best one (apparently copyright, if we're to believe the markets result), stand ?
Copyright is in conflict with fundamental human nature (the desire to share) as demonstrated through Napster and the Internet in general. It worked okay when "publishers" were all large identifiable corporations. We all violated (making tapes for our friends) but it was small-scale and nobody cared. Now anyone can be a publisher so you have to crank up the police state to watch us all.
In this case, all of the models you raise are freeloader friendly, so the conflict is that it is not in the individuals interest to pay for a work thhat they could get for free anyway, but it is in societies interest.
Guess what, life is freeloader friendly. Freeloaders can tape videos from their friends, download music from napster, borrow books, scrounge for food in garbage cans. Don't worry about the freeloaders. The important question is whether there is a critical mass of people who will pay their way. I think there is.
When I like a book or movie, I want to interact on a deeper level with the creator. Giving a cash donation is one way I do that. (e.g. I *do* register shareware) Going to a concert is another way. Joining a mailing list, perhaps with a subscription is another way. Buying t-shirts. Perhaps live chats with the creator would be yet another way. Even a recluse can use the street performer protocol and I think that people will relish the opportunity to contribute to the next book. (if the first one was good)
Even those who download gigabytes of music without any sense of guilt are typically not even going to bother listening to it all. They aren't taking money out of anyone's pockets. When they find music they really like they will go to concerts and if there were smaller, cheaper ways of expressing their gratitude (e.g. street performer) they would probably do that too. There are two kinds of music, background music and music that means something to you. Luckily your background music is the music that means something to ME.
If someonme provides you with a service, whether that service is building you a bridge, or writing you a book, and you use that service, then yes, you owe them something.
That is bullshit from the start. I go to countries where I have never paid taxes and drive over bridges without paying anything. I'm a freeloader. So fucking what. I watch sporting events out of my window. I watch pay per view sporting events at my friend's house. So what. I have even DRIVEN to the proximity of airshows to watch them for free. As long as there are a sufficient number of people sponsoring a particular thing there is no need to worry about freeloaders. We are all freeloaders in some aspects of our lives and valuable contributors in other aspects.
I have no problem with those who don't want to consume art, and don't want to pay for it. These people would have no problem with copyright, since they will not be motivated to use what they don't pay for. It's the freeloading slashdot hypocrites that bug me.
I can afford to pay for art and don't mind doing so. I have downloaded at most fifty songs from Napster-alikes an in the same time have bought fifty CDs. I typically use Napster-alikes when I can't find what I want in the stores.
But I won't pay with my freedom to use Turing-complete computers, or my freedom to make backup copies of my CDs, or to share a favorite song with a friend. Insofar as there is no clear boundary between "fair use" and "illegal distribution", I would rather obliterate the concept of illegal distribution than the concept of fair use.
I'd also really like to download and archve some old television shows before they retreat to some TV company's basement archive to be never seen again. And if they choose not to distribute them for several years, I might like to set up a website that does so. I do not feel the slightest bit guilty about that. They don't want to take my money and I want to keep the art (okay, entertainment) alive.
Thrive on their paycheck from Wal-Mart while they work nights for years to produce valueless works of great literature? Nobody can seriously expect someone else to do that.
You are the one who said they are valueless, not me. I said that they have to extract the value in different ways. There are literally dozens of options. I've listed several including the street performer protocol, grants, sponsorships, donations, merchandise, related performances, related consulting, limited edition speciality print runs (pay 50cents more and know you are helping your favourite author)... The important thing to understand is that it is in society's best interest to fund creative work which is why society has always done so, whether copyright was the law or not. That will never change. We're talking about creative works. THINK ABOUT THEIR FUNDING CREATIVELY!
Some of these will cover some authors, some other authors. Some authors may not fit into these other business models at all. But then some authors do not fit into the copyrighted book business model at all either. It's not exactly unheard of for an author to find they can't get published or they can and sell their rights to a publishing house that doesn't promote their book. These authors will publish based on other revenue streams (other jobs, family, etc.) just as many do today. It is just silly to presume that these other jobs will be low-paying, as if a person who has the capability to create great art is going to be completely talent-less otherwise.
But it is clearly the case that the most popular authors will easily be able to turn popularity into cash. If you think that Rowling can't turn 5.5 million readers into a couple of million dollars, you are crazy. She could make millions just using the street performer protocol. And then there is merchandise. Now the question is how far this business model extends down to "ordinary" authors. It probably depends on how loyal their fans are and how desperate they are for the next book. It depends on whether their fans are rich. It depends on whether the book lends itself to sponsorship (think "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance"). It depends on whether governments get involved giving grants, as they already do for many artistic products. It depends on whether their readers want to declare their allegiance with merchandise. etc. etc. There is no doubt that some writers both of quality and of crap will thrive. I would give Alice Munro much more than she gets when I buy her book if it ensured I'd get another Munro book in the future.
I can't say with authority whether the number of full-time authors out there would remain the same or drop. But let's be clear that we are talking only about the loss of authors with few readers and/or readers who are not willing to pony up to support the author. Does society owe this minority a living? Does society owe anyone a job doing what they want? If their books aren't popular enough that their fans want to contribute money towards the next book then would they have done well under the copyright system anyhow?
Great authors eat because they have to eat. With no income, they have no food.
Who said they would have no income? There are a variety of ways they could get income that may or may not be directly related to their writing.
Why is this ALWAYS an argument? What are these people supposed to do for a paycheck? Work at the Arco Station on the corner?
You're pretty unimaginative. First, they could actually have day jobs. Robert Burns was a farmer and excise collector. Who knows what Lewis Carroll's day job was? Second, they could use strategies like the street performer protocol or individual or corporate grants. Third, there are a variety of ways to turn intellectual works into "performances" which can be paid for: plays, interviews, signings, etc.
From one of your posts in another thread
Ok, tell you what. You go spend two years of full-time days (and nights and weekends) to write a novel and then give it all away. You have
absolutely no idea how much work is involved in writing or developing "cool stuff."
Actually, I did write a book and I did take about a year (not two) off of work for it (across several editions). If there was no copyright law I would have approached it very differently but I still would likely have done it. First, I would have seen it as a calling card, not something that would make me money directly. Second, I would have taken longer to do it, working on nights and weekends. Third, I would wait until the area of technology (it was a tech book) calmed down rather than expecting people to buy multiple editions as technology changed.
Overall, I would have radically changed my business model for the project. And in the end, that's my point. There is no one true business model for writing books or making widgets or anything else. The way the market works is to find ways to connect people who want something with those who can provide something. If a particular way of making that connection is blocked (copyright) then other ways will be found. That's why we had creativity before there was copyright and will have creativity after copyright disappears.
If there are authors who absolutely refuse to change their business model to adjust to changes in technology and society, then that is their problem, not society's. There will be other authors who will choose to adjust and they will thrive.
You are missing the point: Shakespeare's work was widely available to commoners. Why would they complain that rich people were paying most of the bills???
Yes, the poor 'groundlings' could watch his shows, but they did not provide the bulk of revenue required to support him.
So they got to watch great and entertaining art and someone else paid for it. Sounds like a rough situation!
And further, much of his revenue came from live shows. How is one supposed to use that with a medium that does not lend itself to live performance? Such as books or articles.
I've already mentioned the Street Performer Protocol. Authors can also go on signing and speaking tours. They can get individual or corporate sponsors ("Absolut Richler"). Articles can be advertisment sponsored as they are today. After all, timeliness is important...if the Atlantic Monthly publishes things a month after Harper's, people will by the quicker magazine, not because of its copyrights but because of its timeliness. Authors of interesting books could be paid to do television interviews. (timeliness again) Authors of technical books could turn their fame into consulting gigs. Books can be made into plays and movies and those can charge performance fees. The author would get a cut as a consultant and contributor to the performance.
I can't guarantee that this combination of suggestions will cover every single existing author but it isn't society's responsibility to ensure that every business model from one century continues to apply in the next century. Human beings used to do calculations that computers do today. Now they do something else.
And whatever the economic model, some people will write just because they want to write. Nobody pays me to post to Slashdot. Nobody pays you. Nobody pays the article submitters. Human beings need to create. If you leave them alone, they will create cool stuff. They don't need government help.
Has anyone thought clearly what the lapse of copyright law would do to authorship?
Nothing. Great authors write because they have to write. Robert Burns died a poor farmer. Shakespeare certainly did not make as much (inflation-adjusted) money as Tom Clancy does today. Even many hacks write just for the fun of it. Consider the popularity of blogs. Who is paying these people to write their opinions? Who is paying YOU to write on slashdot? It is completely natural for human beings to want to create stuff. Getting rich from doing it is a side benefit.
Just as people still play soccer in countries where there is no professional soccer league, people will still write because writing is fun and cathartic and generally important.
Furthermore, for millenia we've found ways to pay for the development of art. Homer didn't need copyright. We found ways to fund artists before there was copyright and we will after copyright goes away. One high-tech solution is the Street Performer Protocol.
Am I the only young person who notices that the only people who express their dissent at stupid things in this world today are old?
It's simple. Baby boomers have all of the power because of demographics. They can speak out because they are powerful. Even when they were young they were powerful because there were so many of them compared to other generations. Today's young people can speak out but nobody cares. Politicians are trying to win the boomer vote. Marketers want the boomer dollar, etc.
The scary thing is that I didn't get your joke for about a minute. "fork...it means to create a new clone. How is that related to cannibalism?" I'm losing the ability to speak layman English!
Why should I trust unfiltered and unverified statements that propagate from the bottom up?
Because in the end all information comes from the bottom regardless. When the Washington Post wants to write about programming languages they call some analyst or researcher at the university. I could read that guy's blog directly and cut out the obfuscating middle man. (and I know for a fact that reporters often confuse things more than clarify them) Or if I don't have time, I can read slashdot which will point to the guy's site when he has something particularly interesting to say.
There are documented cases of the bloggers getting it right when the journalists got it wrong. We're at the beginning of the phenomenon so we don't know how far it will go yet.
Unfiltered statements and opinions do not represent journalism.
I don't want a filter on statements and opinions. A filter on the sheer volume of content is useful, and that's what (e.g. Slashdot) provides. But a filter on what was said? "I'll just leave that out because I don't think it is relevant." I think that the reader should be the judge of what is relevant to a story, not the journalist.
You don't get it. The difference between a new site and a blog is that news is organized and corporate and blogs are disorganized, distributed and run by individuals or small groups. When people say blogs will replace journalism, they mean that people will get their news not through a top-down combination of editorial and a filter over Reuters, but through a bottom up propogation of news from the people who witnessed it to the people who are interested in it.
Maybe that will happen, maybe it won't. Some journalists have a more open mind than you do.
Software libre is not about this. Yeah, RMS rants about how it would be nice if copyrights did not exist, but I don't think he would want to be in such a world.
So you're saying that you know what RMS wants better than RMS does???
However, it bothers me that you seem to think that the civilians on the ground in Afghanistan are supporters of the Taliban, or Osama bin Laden.
I re-read the post you are responding to and it said nothing remotely like that. What are you talking about?
Therefore, when you say that the US is doing its "utmost to avoid civilian casualties", I fail to see why America should be canonized [dictionary.com] for this.
He didn't say they should be canonized. He said that they should not be equated with terrorists. Are you replying to text in the post that is marked with an invisible tag?
It makes sense to avoid shooting your own allies, but I guess Americans don't get that [cbc.ca].
I'm a Canadian too. Way to use the deaths of honorable men to score cheap shots against an American that you seem not even to have a legitimate disagreement with. Its a new low for Slashdot. (but only for today)
I don't want to defend the RIAA but comparing these guys to a label is apples and oranges. Presumably in most or at least many cases, the label pays the studio costs and marketing costs. Think of how many $2.64 CDs an artist will have to sell to make the cost of the studio time, any hired musicians, marketing materials etc. The artists cannot even be breaking even unless they record in their homes using SoundBlasters.
A a large software package is the result of hundreds, if not thousands of coders. If a company cannot own that copywrite, who gets control? The company president? What if he or she dies?
Just guessing: when you write a function or module, you would own it forever. You could give a permanent license to your employer to use it. Of course if the licensing terms of sufficiently skewed towards the employer, they will effectively "own" it anyhow.
Current "digital movies", as projected in theatres, provide a vastly superior image to DVD, and require approximately 70-100 gigabytes of storage space.
Every new technology claims to have a "vastly superior image". But when you get the thing home most of us duffers can't tell the difference. They can put out data with 100 times faster bitrate but if it can be compressed down to standard MPEG sizes without me notice the difference then it is as copyable as standard MPEGs.
mod_python has the annoying attribute of requiring the whole python installation to be compiled as single threaded which means some modules don't work (urllib for instance - so you have to roll your own url en/decoder).
I am very surprised to hear that urllib has problems on a single-threaded interpreter. In fact I am somewhat doubtful that that is true!
I doubt that offshoring will not help in the long run. Let's say you cut the costs in half. That's still a bunch of money you are paying out that does not result directly in new profits. Management will always begrudge that money and they will start to squeeze the offshore techs the same way they did the Western ones. The customer's needs should be better aligned with the business's. It is the misalignment that screws up tech support.
I don't recall a "basic human right" being the right to modify code without releasing it. Surely this is more free than the GNU licence, which enables a company to use and modify GPL code as much as they want, and profit from it, without releasing the modifications, as long as they are only using the code internally.
So I decide to hack plan-9 on my PERSONAL laptop to investigate some security techniques that I may want to patent. I have to submit these hacks to the Plan-9 guys even if I decide to abandon the project or move it to Linux.
In fact, I like this term, if I put it in a licence it would stop people even trying to make money off of my software by using their heavy marketing machine (which I might not have). If I'm not selling my work for profit, you're certainly not going to!
Why not? Isn't the goal of releasing open source software to get it into as many hands as possible? Do you think that Linus is offended that Red Hat has taken Linux into the business world by selling them copies?
Does my licence to use GPL-licensed software end if I break the terms of the GPL? It certainly should! I don't want anyone using my GPL-licensed software if they're not following the terms of the GPL.
No. The GPL is not a EULA. It is a *redistribution license*. The GPL *never* prevents someone from using software and it isn't even clear whether such a provision would be legal in practice. Using stuff is a basic human right. Redistributing stuff is restricted by copyright law.
Errr, "contributors shall have". That's any contributor. Not just Lucent. Which is exactly what the GPL provides, no?
No, the GPL gives no special rights to contributors. Anyhow, Lucent and other BigCo's are likely to always be the only contributors. You could contribute a patch without becoming a "contributor" if you sign over your rights to it. This is, of course, what their lawyers will require!
If you don't know much about the GPL or really understand the issue why did you feel the need to do a point-by-point rebuttal?
Tolerance in itself has no values, its the things you choose to tolerate that do.
No, it is more subtle than that. If we followed your logic then there is no value in tolerating Hinduism, only value IN Hinduism. So we should decide whether to tolerate it based on its intrinsic value. And we should determine its intrinsic value...how? Through a rational comparison to other religions and belief systems? That's not going to work! We need to work from a point of view where tolerance is the default mode and intolerance is only triggered by some form of injustice or harm. That's what people mean when they say: "tolerance is good."
Now if this had been DIGITAL, ie it was a DVB card hooked up to cable or satelight (even better if it was a premium pay service) and was directly pulling and recording the digital stream. I might be interested, but this is just capturing TV and then using a computer to process it to mpeg.
Prices have just dropped on TV tuner cards. Just in time for them to go obsolite.
I think that it is naive to think that digital content providers will soon provide digital feeds that can easily be captured by computers. They will do as much as possible to make that illegal and difficult because they do not want perfect digital copies (or feeds!) going onto the Internet.
Slashdot Mirror
And why should these models be practised to the exclusion of copyright ? Why not allow all models, and let the best one (apparently copyright, if we're to believe the markets result), stand ?
Copyright is in conflict with fundamental human nature (the desire to share) as demonstrated through Napster and the Internet in general. It worked okay when "publishers" were all large identifiable corporations. We all violated (making tapes for our friends) but it was small-scale and nobody cared. Now anyone can be a publisher so you have to crank up the police state to watch us all.
In this case, all of the models you raise are freeloader friendly, so the conflict is that it is not in the individuals interest to pay for a work thhat they could get for free anyway, but it is in societies interest.
Guess what, life is freeloader friendly. Freeloaders can tape videos from their friends, download music from napster, borrow books, scrounge for food in garbage cans. Don't worry about the freeloaders. The important question is whether there is a critical mass of people who will pay their way. I think there is.
When I like a book or movie, I want to interact on a deeper level with the creator. Giving a cash donation is one way I do that. (e.g. I *do* register shareware) Going to a concert is another way. Joining a mailing list, perhaps with a subscription is another way. Buying t-shirts. Perhaps live chats with the creator would be yet another way. Even a recluse can use the street performer protocol and I think that people will relish the opportunity to contribute to the next book. (if the first one was good)
Even those who download gigabytes of music without any sense of guilt are typically not even going to bother listening to it all. They aren't taking money out of anyone's pockets. When they find music they really like they will go to concerts and if there were smaller, cheaper ways of expressing their gratitude (e.g. street performer) they would probably do that too. There are two kinds of music, background music and music that means something to you. Luckily your background music is the music that means something to ME.
If someonme provides you with a service, whether that service is building you a bridge, or writing you a book, and you use that service, then yes, you owe them something.
That is bullshit from the start. I go to countries where I have never paid taxes and drive over bridges without paying anything. I'm a freeloader. So fucking what. I watch sporting events out of my window. I watch pay per view sporting events at my friend's house. So what. I have even DRIVEN to the proximity of airshows to watch them for free. As long as there are a sufficient number of people sponsoring a particular thing there is no need to worry about freeloaders. We are all freeloaders in some aspects of our lives and valuable contributors in other aspects.
I have no problem with those who don't want to consume art, and don't want to pay for it. These people would have no problem with copyright, since they will not be motivated to use what they don't pay for. It's the freeloading slashdot hypocrites that bug me.
I can afford to pay for art and don't mind doing so. I have downloaded at most fifty songs from Napster-alikes an in the same time have bought fifty CDs. I typically use Napster-alikes when I can't find what I want in the stores.
But I won't pay with my freedom to use Turing-complete computers, or my freedom to make backup copies of my CDs, or to share a favorite song with a friend. Insofar as there is no clear boundary between "fair use" and "illegal distribution", I would rather obliterate the concept of illegal distribution than the concept of fair use.
I'd also really like to download and archve some old television shows before they retreat to some TV company's basement archive to be never seen again. And if they choose not to distribute them for several years, I might like to set up a website that does so. I do not feel the slightest bit guilty about that. They don't want to take my money and I want to keep the art (okay, entertainment) alive.
Thrive on their paycheck from Wal-Mart while they work nights for years to produce valueless works of great literature? Nobody can seriously expect someone else to do that.
You are the one who said they are valueless, not me. I said that they have to extract the value in different ways. There are literally dozens of options. I've listed several including the street performer protocol, grants, sponsorships, donations, merchandise, related performances, related consulting, limited edition speciality print runs (pay 50cents more and know you are helping your favourite author)... The important thing to understand is that it is in society's best interest to fund creative work which is why society has always done so, whether copyright was the law or not. That will never change. We're talking about creative works. THINK ABOUT THEIR FUNDING CREATIVELY!
Some of these will cover some authors, some other authors. Some authors may not fit into these other business models at all. But then some authors do not fit into the copyrighted book business model at all either. It's not exactly unheard of for an author to find they can't get published or they can and sell their rights to a publishing house that doesn't promote their book. These authors will publish based on other revenue streams (other jobs, family, etc.) just as many do today. It is just silly to presume that these other jobs will be low-paying, as if a person who has the capability to create great art is going to be completely talent-less otherwise.
But it is clearly the case that the most popular authors will easily be able to turn popularity into cash. If you think that Rowling can't turn 5.5 million readers into a couple of million dollars, you are crazy. She could make millions just using the street performer protocol. And then there is merchandise. Now the question is how far this business model extends down to "ordinary" authors. It probably depends on how loyal their fans are and how desperate they are for the next book. It depends on whether their fans are rich. It depends on whether the book lends itself to sponsorship (think "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance"). It depends on whether governments get involved giving grants, as they already do for many artistic products. It depends on whether their readers want to declare their allegiance with merchandise. etc. etc. There is no doubt that some writers both of quality and of crap will thrive. I would give Alice Munro much more than she gets when I buy her book if it ensured I'd get another Munro book in the future.
I can't say with authority whether the number of full-time authors out there would remain the same or drop. But let's be clear that we are talking only about the loss of authors with few readers and/or readers who are not willing to pony up to support the author. Does society owe this minority a living? Does society owe anyone a job doing what they want? If their books aren't popular enough that their fans want to contribute money towards the next book then would they have done well under the copyright system anyhow?
Great authors eat because they have to eat. With no income, they have no food.
Who said they would have no income? There are a variety of ways they could get income that may or may not be directly related to their writing.
Why is this ALWAYS an argument? What are these people supposed to do for a paycheck? Work at the Arco Station on the corner?
You're pretty unimaginative. First, they could actually have day jobs. Robert Burns was a farmer and excise collector. Who knows what Lewis Carroll's day job was? Second, they could use strategies like the street performer protocol or individual or corporate grants. Third, there are a variety of ways to turn intellectual works into "performances" which can be paid for: plays, interviews, signings, etc.
From one of your posts in another thread
Ok, tell you what. You go spend two years of full-time days (and nights and weekends) to write a novel and then give it all away. You have
absolutely no idea how much work is involved in writing or developing "cool stuff."
Actually, I did write a book and I did take about a year (not two) off of work for it (across several editions). If there was no copyright law I would have approached it very differently but I still would likely have done it. First, I would have seen it as a calling card, not something that would make me money directly. Second, I would have taken longer to do it, working on nights and weekends. Third, I would wait until the area of technology (it was a tech book) calmed down rather than expecting people to buy multiple editions as technology changed.
Overall, I would have radically changed my business model for the project. And in the end, that's my point. There is no one true business model for writing books or making widgets or anything else. The way the market works is to find ways to connect people who want something with those who can provide something. If a particular way of making that connection is blocked (copyright) then other ways will be found. That's why we had creativity before there was copyright and will have creativity after copyright disappears.
If there are authors who absolutely refuse to change their business model to adjust to changes in technology and society, then that is their problem, not society's. There will be other authors who will choose to adjust and they will thrive.
You are missing the point: Shakespeare's work was widely available to commoners. Why would they complain that rich people were paying most of the bills???
Yes, the poor 'groundlings' could watch his shows, but they did not provide the bulk of revenue required to support him.
So they got to watch great and entertaining art and someone else paid for it. Sounds like a rough situation!
And further, much of his revenue came from live shows. How is one supposed to use that with a medium that does not lend itself to live performance? Such as books or articles.
I've already mentioned the Street Performer Protocol. Authors can also go on signing and speaking tours. They can get individual or corporate sponsors ("Absolut Richler"). Articles can be advertisment sponsored as they are today. After all, timeliness is important...if the Atlantic Monthly publishes things a month after Harper's, people will by the quicker magazine, not because of its copyrights but because of its timeliness. Authors of interesting books could be paid to do television interviews. (timeliness again) Authors of technical books could turn their fame into consulting gigs. Books can be made into plays and movies and those can charge performance fees. The author would get a cut as a consultant and contributor to the performance.
I can't guarantee that this combination of suggestions will cover every single existing author but it isn't society's responsibility to ensure that every business model from one century continues to apply in the next century. Human beings used to do calculations that computers do today. Now they do something else.
And whatever the economic model, some people will write just because they want to write. Nobody pays me to post to Slashdot. Nobody pays you. Nobody pays the article submitters. Human beings need to create. If you leave them alone, they will create cool stuff. They don't need government help.
Has anyone thought clearly what the lapse of copyright law would do to authorship?
Nothing. Great authors write because they have to write. Robert Burns died a poor farmer. Shakespeare certainly did not make as much (inflation-adjusted) money as Tom Clancy does today. Even many hacks write just for the fun of it. Consider the popularity of blogs. Who is paying these people to write their opinions? Who is paying YOU to write on slashdot? It is completely natural for human beings to want to create stuff. Getting rich from doing it is a side benefit.
Just as people still play soccer in countries where there is no professional soccer league, people will still write because writing is fun and cathartic and generally important.
Furthermore, for millenia we've found ways to pay for the development of art. Homer didn't need copyright. We found ways to fund artists before there was copyright and we will after copyright goes away. One high-tech solution is the Street Performer Protocol.
Am I the only young person who notices that the only people who express their dissent at stupid things in this world today are old?
It's simple. Baby boomers have all of the power because of demographics. They can speak out because they are powerful. Even when they were young they were powerful because there were so many of them compared to other generations. Today's young people can speak out but nobody cares. Politicians are trying to win the boomer vote. Marketers want the boomer dollar, etc.
Oh yeah, Shakespeare's work was "merely the realm of the fabulously wealthy."
Anyhow, it is well known that a group of ordinary people can also serve as patrons.
Copyright is necessary as incentive for the creation of new works.
That's a commonly repeated refrain but people created new works before there was copyright. Shakespeare, Mozart, Homer, etc.
The scary thing is that I didn't get your joke for about a minute. "fork...it means to create a new clone. How is that related to cannibalism?" I'm losing the ability to speak layman English!
Why should I trust unfiltered and unverified statements that propagate from the bottom up?
Because in the end all information comes from the bottom regardless. When the Washington Post wants to write about programming languages they call some analyst or researcher at the university. I could read that guy's blog directly and cut out the obfuscating middle man. (and I know for a fact that reporters often confuse things more than clarify them) Or if I don't have time, I can read slashdot which will point to the guy's site when he has something particularly interesting to say. There are documented cases of the bloggers getting it right when the journalists got it wrong. We're at the beginning of the phenomenon so we don't know how far it will go yet.
Unfiltered statements and opinions do not represent journalism.
I don't want a filter on statements and opinions. A filter on the sheer volume of content is useful, and that's what (e.g. Slashdot) provides. But a filter on what was said? "I'll just leave that out because I don't think it is relevant." I think that the reader should be the judge of what is relevant to a story, not the journalist.You don't get it. The difference between a new site and a blog is that news is organized and corporate and blogs are disorganized, distributed and run by individuals or small groups. When people say blogs will replace journalism, they mean that people will get their news not through a top-down combination of editorial and a filter over Reuters, but through a bottom up propogation of news from the people who witnessed it to the people who are interested in it.
Maybe that will happen, maybe it won't. Some journalists have a more open mind than you do.
Software libre is not about this. Yeah, RMS rants about how it would be nice if copyrights did not exist, but I don't think he would want to be in such a world.
So you're saying that you know what RMS wants better than RMS does???
However, it bothers me that you seem to think that the civilians on the ground in Afghanistan are supporters of the Taliban, or Osama bin Laden.
I re-read the post you are responding to and it said nothing remotely like that. What are you talking about?
Therefore, when you say that the US is doing its "utmost to avoid civilian casualties", I fail to see why America should be canonized [dictionary.com] for this.
He didn't say they should be canonized. He said that they should not be equated with terrorists. Are you replying to text in the post that is marked with an invisible tag?
It makes sense to avoid shooting your own allies, but I guess Americans don't get that [cbc.ca].
I'm a Canadian too. Way to use the deaths of honorable men to score cheap shots against an American that you seem not even to have a legitimate disagreement with. Its a new low for Slashdot. (but only for today)
I don't want to defend the RIAA but comparing these guys to a label is apples and oranges. Presumably in most or at least many cases, the label pays the studio costs and marketing costs. Think of how many $2.64 CDs an artist will have to sell to make the cost of the studio time, any hired musicians, marketing materials etc. The artists cannot even be breaking even unless they record in their homes using SoundBlasters.
A a large software package is the result of hundreds, if not thousands of coders. If a company cannot own that copywrite, who gets control? The company president? What if he or she dies?
Just guessing: when you write a function or module, you would own it forever. You could give a permanent license to your employer to use it. Of course if the licensing terms of sufficiently skewed towards the employer, they will effectively "own" it anyhow.
Note that postage is basically a pay-to-play system. Will it discriminate against people accessing the Internet on Pentium 1s?
What I'm interested in is a fast, cheap way to back up my shiny new 100 Gig optical drive.
The article is about DVD-sized optical disks, not optical drives.
Current "digital movies", as projected in theatres, provide a vastly superior image to DVD, and require approximately 70-100 gigabytes of storage space.
Every new technology claims to have a "vastly superior image". But when you get the thing home most of us duffers can't tell the difference. They can put out data with 100 times faster bitrate but if it can be compressed down to standard MPEG sizes without me notice the difference then it is as copyable as standard MPEGs.
Here is my take. And here is Bruce Schneier's..
mod_python has the annoying attribute of requiring the whole python installation to be compiled as single threaded which means some modules don't work (urllib for instance - so you have to roll your own url en/decoder).
I am very surprised to hear that urllib has problems on a single-threaded interpreter. In fact I am somewhat doubtful that that is true!
I doubt that offshoring will not help in the long run. Let's say you cut the costs in half. That's still a bunch of money you are paying out that does not result directly in new profits. Management will always begrudge that money and they will start to squeeze the offshore techs the same way they did the Western ones. The customer's needs should be better aligned with the business's. It is the misalignment that screws up tech support.
I don't recall a "basic human right" being the right to modify code without releasing it. Surely this is more free than the GNU licence, which enables a company to use and modify GPL code as much as they want, and profit from it, without releasing the modifications, as long as they are only using the code internally.
So I decide to hack plan-9 on my PERSONAL laptop to investigate some security techniques that I may want to patent. I have to submit these hacks to the Plan-9 guys even if I decide to abandon the project or move it to Linux.
In fact, I like this term, if I put it in a licence it would stop people even trying to make money off of my software by using their heavy marketing machine (which I might not have). If I'm not selling my work for profit, you're certainly not going to!
Why not? Isn't the goal of releasing open source software to get it into as many hands as possible? Do you think that Linus is offended that Red Hat has taken Linux into the business world by selling them copies?
Does my licence to use GPL-licensed software end if I break the terms of the GPL? It certainly should! I don't want anyone using my GPL-licensed software if they're not following the terms of the GPL.
No. The GPL is not a EULA. It is a *redistribution license*. The GPL *never* prevents someone from using software and it isn't even clear whether such a provision would be legal in practice. Using stuff is a basic human right. Redistributing stuff is restricted by copyright law.
Errr, "contributors shall have". That's any contributor. Not just Lucent. Which is exactly what the GPL provides, no?
No, the GPL gives no special rights to contributors. Anyhow, Lucent and other BigCo's are likely to always be the only contributors. You could contribute a patch without becoming a "contributor" if you sign over your rights to it. This is, of course, what their lawyers will require!
If you don't know much about the GPL or really understand the issue why did you feel the need to do a point-by-point rebuttal?
Tolerance in itself has no values, its the things you choose to tolerate that do.
No, it is more subtle than that. If we followed your logic then there is no value in tolerating Hinduism, only value IN Hinduism. So we should decide whether to tolerate it based on its intrinsic value. And we should determine its intrinsic value...how? Through a rational comparison to other religions and belief systems? That's not going to work! We need to work from a point of view where tolerance is the default mode and intolerance is only triggered by some form of injustice or harm. That's what people mean when they say: "tolerance is good."
Now if this had been DIGITAL, ie it was a DVB card hooked up to cable or satelight (even better if it was a premium pay service) and was directly pulling and recording the digital stream. I might be interested, but this is just capturing TV and then using a computer to process it to mpeg.
Prices have just dropped on TV tuner cards. Just in time for them to go obsolite.
I think that it is naive to think that digital content providers will soon provide digital feeds that can easily be captured by computers. They will do as much as possible to make that illegal and difficult because they do not want perfect digital copies (or feeds!) going onto the Internet.