I have news for you too - declaring that it's illegal to kill people won't magically stop knives and bullets either. The law doesn't stop it happening, it simply says "We don't want this to happen, and you won't like the consequences if you do it."
The difference of course being that one deals with denying the scientific properties of the universe (or in the specific case of information, of its relationship with minds and sentience) in hopes of making profit on ignorance of others, and the other with stopping apes from murdering each other.
"Freely" has too much garbage associated with it. Let's just say that now it's possible to distribute information created by you and not suffer a financial penalty.
That of course assumes (what a surprise!), that you have any right whatsoever to "profit" -- and I love how you used the words "financial penalty" to describe it, a sure sign of a mindset of greed, as all the money you did not manage to con out of others is always a "loss" to a con-man -- on transmission of information by others between themselves. That is you assume, that because you happened to acquire some information, that means that you have now a right to impose your rules of transmission of the knowledge they acquire on everyone else, including various totalitarian measures to enforce your will (as everyone's natural ability to freely communicate is most undesirable in your scheme), because otherwise you will not make money. That is, everyone else's freedom to communicate is supposed to be subservient to your greed. Am I missing something?
That's incorrect, because there is also value in scarcity (being the only person with the score of the 1812 Overture, for example).
Then as soon as you transmit it to another person, the "scarcity" diminishes. Information simply does not behave in the same way as physical objects and thus is not subject to mercantile trade. When you have a rare physical object, it does not become less rare when you show it to someone!
But it is precisely the case with information. If you were to apply your own logic of "scarcity" to information (which is a stretch in the first place as information exists independently of observers) then the first transmission wound be worth much more then the second, the third far less then the first etc.
Look up the later years of Charles Dickens for reference - the guy died in poverty, ironically due to lack of US copyright laws.
Charles Dickens was a Briton living in Victorian England, incidentally a place ruled by supreme greed and with next to no social conscience (you would have loved it, assuming you were born a noble). And he did not die in "poverty", although he never acquired great wealth as he spent most of his earnings and time fighting people like you. What an irony for you to bring him into this.
That's incorrect, and shows you don't know the content of the GPL or its history. Under your scenario, everything becomes public domain. But PD already exists, so the GPL is superfluous by your argument.
No it is not, at present, as it prevents attempts to "sell" the resulting binary code without disclosing its source. That problem simply does not exist in absence of copyright as no profit can be made on such compiled code. So while distribution of binary data would be possible, the lack of any economic incentives to do so, coupled with no prohibitions on reverse engineering, would tilt the playing field towards openness and cooperation.
The GPL was conceived as a reaction to a printer manufacturer who closed the source of their driver, when RMS wanted to be able to fix bugs himself and couldn't. RMS's idea in setting up the GPL was that items produced under the GPL could *not* be hidden.
See above.
Unless you fancy setting up a new law that you *must* release to the world all information you ever create, then your argument fails here. I could take PD software, modify it slightly, and sell it as my o
As long as you cannot derive that information for yourself or from another source,
Which I always can (given enough labour) as all information in the universe is equivalent, in accordance with information theory, to a series of integer numbers. Granted, most of the time the odds are overwhelmingly against me but the history (and everyday life) is peppered with examples of just such independent discovery. In essence what you have is a specific, selected number, and I always do have a chance of discovering that value on my own.
I can either not give you the information, give you the information, or I can sell you the information and profit.
That is you are talking about transmitting it to me (a process involving copying, encoding, decoding and other processing). Note that information can have a number of states, which are relative to an observer, like being "known" and "unkown". But that information exists always, regardless of its relative state to me or you, independently of the universe, as it is fully abstract. So what it is that you are "selling" me is a service of transmitting the information to me (i.e. revealing it to me). But once the transmission occured, I am now naturally capable of re-transmitting it further in a myriad of forms. Also you do still posess the "original" set. A sale, in a mercantile or capitalist system, would require scarcity and uniqueness of that information, i.e. you would have to no longer retain it as there would be only one unique copy available which would have to change hands. But because information exists outside of us, in an abstract, immutable realm of numbers, this does not happen. Even if you erase it from your mind, it will still exist, merely de-coupled from any physical medium.
In case you didn't realise, humanity is in the buisness of survival, individual survival is paramount to us all (except for people who really, really need to see a psyciatrist). The ultimate raison d'être relies upon each of us knowing what keeps us alive - our technology skills for earning a living for most of us here.
Completely irrelevant. The current societal stupidity (i.e. causing a massive overpoplulation leading to "survival race") has no impact whatsoever on the properties of information. Should the whole human race disappear tommorow, the rules governing information would still be the same and unaffected.
My employer knows he cannot get the information I hold in my head without paying me, information that keeps his buisness running, and thus keeps him alive.
He is paying you for your labour, efficiency and quality of which is affected by your knowledge. Neither him nor you own that knowledge. You for example have acquired it from the society at large, all the way from the likes of Ancient Greeks and Phoenicians. You use an alphabet invented in Rome and numerals invented by long-gone Arab mathemeticians. Have you paid anyone for that?
Paychecks come in handy for keeping me alive - how about you?
Again, irrelevant. The fact that you managed to make yourself dependant on the operation of an elaborate scam is not my fault, nor my concern.
You can't even live off the land anymore without having information about crops, hunting, seasons, shelter construction, water purification, etc
Vast majority of which was discovered somewhere around 2000BC. Yet I sense a desire on your part to charge someone for it.
Who's going to tell you that stuff for free anymore (not counting family relations that actually still have that knowledge)?
To avoid having greedmongers locking up the body of knowledge of humanity is precisely the point of abolishing copyright and other perverted "intellectual property" ideas, as these are the very tools which those who wish to control and lock away all our ancestral knowledge are depending on. You are arguing against your own premise.
So you get the information from someone selling it. Whether
I would be interested in your thoughts on this article I've written on the subject, if you're so inclined.
It is very well written. Particularly I liked the line about the mathematicians not getting paid for use of formulas. Very astute. Thomas Jefferson is a great ally in this and I love that quote, although I ususally include the part about information being like the light of tapers, for I am a sap for old-style oratory flourish.
I was apriori familiar with much of what you wrote about so it came as no surprise, and I believe you touched on most of the major points of the issue and I am in a complete agreement with your interpretation. From my experience however, and that is in no way a criticism of your article, merely a point about tactics, I found that focusing on one particular aspect of this fiasco, i.e. the theoretical properties of information itself, and following them to their absurd conclusions vs. the greed induced laws, is the most effective course. I have tried a comprehensive approach like yours in the past, but it tends to lead to quickly spreading debate involving things such as morality, economic systems etc. Not that I would not follow it where it leads, and I nearly always do on Slashdot, but one can get quickly bogged down (and which is frequently the purpose of proponents of IP) in such inceasingly unrelated arguments. Nailing these bastards concisely, clearly and undeniably, leaving them no room to wiggle, on one clearly defined battleground, seems to be a more immediately productive strategy for me. But of course one can pursue that same tactics from a variety of angles, by focusing on the artificial scarcity element if you have strong economic theory background or the barriers now crippling science if you are a scientist, invoking the examples of the academia of old and the fact that most of our today scientific knowledge came about as a result of free sharing of data between scientists. And so on.
Certainly it can be "bought" and "sold". Suppose I'm engaged in industrial (or other) espionage, I'd be very likely to say "I can tell you what your competitors are doing, if you pay me $20K for that information". I can give you as many other examples as you like. Hence "bought" and "sold".
An illusion. You are paying for a transmission (one of the few activities possible with information) to you, not for the information itself.
"Owned" is a more difficult issue, as it implies sole possession.
Try impossible as it also implies scarcity and a whole lot of other things.
Which is where copyright comes in, imposing an arbitrary rule to create the concept of ownership.
I have news for you, declaring gravity illegal will not make you float.
It doesn't stop people gaining access to the information, it just imposes penalties against those who violate that rule.
Which "violations", due to being written by greed mongers instead of scientists, are impossible to ascertain my any means other than subjective, arbitrary and anti-scientific ones. You might as well get witch doctors and shamans involved.
In rather the same way, arbitrary national borders don't stop people crossing them without completing the required formalities, but they do impose penalties if you cross them without it.
Except that arbitrary national borders follow the long established rules which govern physical private property, i.e. land in this case.
However, the result was *less* freedom of expression. Since you couldn't do anything once the information had escaped, the result was that books and music were carefully controlled to ensure no-one else could share it. For example, sheet music for all the classical music we know today was simply not available.
That is because the apex of the technology then was the Gutenberg press. Today it would result in a near impossibility to distribute and to hide things simultenously. Open Source development would suffer changes, as essentially all software would become public domain. That means that companies could modify and then distribute Linux but since there is no way for them to "sell" software (as all software would be immediately freely copyable), this would be counter-productive in most cases. Only true art and Open Source, collaborative efforts would likely survive this process. Would there be secret-sauce solutions based on secrecy? Certainly, as they are now, everywhere. As it is one of fundamental properties of information to remain "unknown" or "secret" to one party.
Copyright OTOH allows people to share information freely and still gain value from it.
No it does not. 90-years past author's death? Perpetual copyright for corporations? What are you talking about?
Now any number of people can get the sheet music to the 1812 Overture and study it or make derived works - the flipside is that they have to pay a small amount for doing so.
I see now. Your definition of "freely" was written, strike that, purchased from Bill Gates.
In fact, it's in the author's interest to make it available, because they can then get paid.
They get also paid under patronage system. Also, you are confusing the services of duplication and distribution and an act of creation.
But open-source only works through copyright.
GPL was written as a defense against copyright and anti-reverse-engineering laws. Remove those and no GPL will be needed.
Also note that contrary to your assertion, there is no requirement for works to be in the public domain in order for other art to be created - "The Incredibles" and other Pixar films can still take the piss out of comics, cartoons and other films, without those other films being out of copyright. The only thing they can't do is directly imitate other works - but that would not be creating new art, and so we don't have any loss.
Which would be difficult to then pass onto a 3rd person, without writing it out yourself, unlike a digital copy
Oration? Story telling?
I accept the point that there is no way to prevent copying, without actually preventing users from being able to run software of their choice, but I'm really really really bored with the technolibertarian stance that the whole world needs to adjust to do what technology ALLOWS - there are plenty of things that technology can do, from weaponry to spying, that we want to restrict our governments and companies from being able to do - but when it comes to our own usage, we want to live in the land of do-as-you-please.
This is not a "technolibertarian" stance (and in fact I could be more accurately described as a "socialist" then a libertarian). It is merely a scientific stance. That is if you are going to claim that Witches are the foremost crime problem and then proceed to set up laws, complete with regulations of how to go about burning them on the stake, we would be in the same realm where the copyright debate is. The premise of copyright contradicts both science and logic (and that is in addition to violating free-market principles and contribution-reward schemes of capitalism). So unless you consider logic and science both dispensable and superfluous in the face of greed, the debate is not about technology uses but about fundamental principles governing the society. The technology aspect, which confuses you so badly, is merely a catalyst which exposed deep faults within the law and the whole present approach to this problem.
I'd also add that every proposed alternative compensation scheme I've seen has flaws - either putting funding into the hands of gatekeepers (tax subsidised artists) or flat-fee systems which will require users to give up privacy, or gibberish like 'making money from T-shirts and live sales'. Yep, that will work for books.
No system is flawless but few contradict science and logic as the present one does. A system I advocate is a combination of private and public patronage for arts and academia, direct donations, traditional admission fees at performances and corporate sponsorship. While not perfect, it produces art which is immediately in the public domain, it encourages art as opposed to commerce (which art is not) and allows artists to build immediately on other artists' work. And it does not need to go head to head with science and logic to operate (never you mind common decency). No need for totalitarian police states neither, although some would consider this a major flaw.
Personally, I think a system that lets people buy and sell information at a price of the seller's choice (a la Landau's 'Xanadu') is the goal we should be aiming for - cutting out the distribution middle men as far as possible, which would reduce costs drastically - but still allowing economic value. Unfortunately, I don't think it will happen, because a significant number of people will always consider that a threat to their liberty.
Not a threat liberty, but a threat to logic. Information cannot be "bought", "sold" nor "owned". It simply lacks the necessary attributes to allow for such a treatment. You can only transmit it. This illogical, science-contradicting notion, of being able to "own" information is what lies at the root of this whole fiasco.
The difference is that in one case you share it with one person while in the other you share it with fscking millions. Is that so hard to understand ?
No difference at all from the point of view of information theory and transition from one case to the other is seamless.
Uh, no. Companies will eventually come up with some working public-key based DRM system. Media will only be playable on machines which follow the rules. Sure you still have the analog hole, but it kind of sucks for movies and doesn't work for apps. (emphasis mine)
All public key schemes involve public encryption keys and private decryption ones. So, no luck there as one has to store one unique set of decryption keys on each digital device and thus transmit uniquely encrypted streams to each and every one (and one crack renders the whole scheme moot). And the other question of course is whose rules. The only way anyone has been able to come up so far is a system whereby all computing equipment is completely controlled by a conglomerate of "rights holders". Do enlighten me if you know of any other. In short, the only practical way anyone has been come up so far involves a total lockdown of all computing equipment and in essence transferring control of it to the "rights holders".
You have a point but fidelity does seem to have relevance in this debate. In the 80s when dual tape decks came out, copying of tapes was common and the law looked the other way basically because each copy degenerated the copy so there was still the incentive for people to purchase a copy from the artist.
Of course, fidelity, being one if the parameters of the process has input into all considerations. However, because information in general is governed by rules very inconvenient to various greedy people, fidelity is not alone in this consideration. For example, it is posible to have an increase in amount of sampling data and its fidelity, after it has originally decreased. Imagine a skilled musician listening to a bad tape and then replaying and recording what he heard in high quality. I think the cornerstone point of the debate is that the present system designed to promote arts and to financially renumerate artists is a relic of times where the understanding of the processes invovled was non-existant and when the apex of information technology involved hand-operated Gutenberg press. What I call for is a close re-examination of the very principles behind these laws to hopefully arrive at much more just, logical and egalitarian system.
Furthermore, what really spurs me on is the realisation that the long-term logical implications of the present system are truly horrific and will, if unopposed, lead to various new forms of totalitarian societies.
Right, because information is like air. You just breath it in. No work is required to create air or information. The analogy is so flawed as not only to be useless, but actually is very misleading.
Actually it is very much so. All information, in accordance with the Shannon's information theory can be represented in numerical form. That is all information, no matter of what kind, is essentially one of the many of infinite number of integer numbers. It exists always, independent of the universe. All that the creative process does is to select one of these numbers as "relevant" to our current state of society and that of our minds. That process of "search" or "selection" can indeed be time and labour consuming as there is an infinite number of such numbers. However, like the parent poster indicated, the numbers themselves are not a scarce resource. Furthermore, the same information can be (and in fact continuously is) discovered (i.e. the applicable numbers selected) by all people all the time independently. It happens when we learn to walk, read, count etc. It can happen by empirical discovery or by transmission from others or combination of both. The point remains, that information is a unique thing, which does behave much like air when viewed from the perspective the parent poster presented.
Event? You are confusing seprarate concepts. Memory is of the information which was transmitted as the result of the event's occurence.
Your argument ignores simple distinctions fundamental to property law.
And the law ignores the information theory and logic. Tell me which takes precedence, science and logic or make-believe rules set up by various greed mongers and their politicians?
Seriously, do you tell yourself this every night in order to justify stealing?
You've assumed, as you have been conditioned to do, that I am in any way in need of the "products" of the modern enterntainment industry. In fact I do not even own a TV. Furthermore, you used the word "steal" in respect to information, again as you have been conditioned to do, without putting any thought whatsoever into what you are saying. I came to this debate from the direction of computer and information science as well as political economics, not from the perspective of a file sharer. I look at these matters from a perspective of logic and phillosophy, because such pursuits intellectually stimulate me. That is my enterntainment. Far more worthy to me then the latest cladly dressed teenager shaking her butt on TV. In fact I am seriously considering starting a foundation/think-tank where I could combine forces with others like me, with the purpose of initiating a legal challenge to the copyright system here in Canada, based on these phillosophical and theoretical premises.
Yeah, so your memory of the book isn't actually a copy, is it?
It is a low fidelity copy. Think a poor recording of a concert on a gummed up tape recorder. Is it still a copy or do you need a 44kHz sampling frequency digital recorder for it to be a "copy"?
Actually, I didn't propose anything. I merely gave an answer to a technical question.
I took the wording of your "I could use DRM to give you a time-limited copy." as a proposal of a possible "solution" and so I elaborated on its consequences.
Creating artificial scarcity is more or less the economic equal of wholesale destruction of wealth and property.
Yes indeed, you picked up on yet another facet of this travesty. I was focusing mainly on the theoretical properties of information for I found them to be most easily deployed to devastate any pretense of logic in the so called "intellectual property" scheme. But you are very right, of course, that the artificial scarcity is the main aspect of this whole charade from the economic, free-market point of view.
The monopoly systems of copyright and patents are grotesque abberations, not the common standard.
Not so. You have an idea of the information in the book. You have excerpts of the information in the book. But, you do not have the information in the book. Rather you only have a small subset of the information in the book consisting of the information that is relevent to you that you have retained. Also, the information you have retained will degrade with time without use and refresh.
Proof: Write down the entire contents of a book you read one year ago, verbatum. Go read a book then write down all the information in the book, verbatum. I am will to bet good money you can do neither, without a copy of the book to referrence.
You are merely arguing about the degree of fidelity with which people's brains can retain the data and the durability of the medium. Which does not alter my basic premise in any way. One can easily write large portions of the original text minutes after reading it. Is it a violation then? How about 10 minutes later? 5 hours? 5 months? What about writing a new text which retains all the characters and plot lines from the original, which most people can remember for a long time? What about a savant who can remember verbatim hundreds of pages of text?
None of this changes the fundamental fact that the information contained in the paper/ink medium has entered neural-cell medium and large portions of thereof can be retained and reused. Ergo low fidelity, but very useable copy has been made.
Common sense tells you what is copying and what is sharing. Look, if you copy a homework problem from your college roommate, is that the same thing as looking at his homework, having an "aha" moment and then doing the problem yourself? Or, a step away, having your roommate explain how he solved the problem? To me, one case is copying and the other two are sharing.
They are both cases of "sharing" or "copying" (i.e. transmission of information). Our language simply does not deal well with the underlying processes for it was developed for dealing with physical objects and actions of people, not abstract theoretical things such as information. When we say "copy" we usually mean "to transmit a block of information with as little loss as possible". When we say "share" we mean this in a less strict manner as in "transmitt in any degree of fidelity". There are many words which we use to describe the underlying process, poorly and in most cases inaccurately. They are however all instances of the same process simply varying in conditions and methods of processing of that information.
We intuitively know what is copying and what is sharing. When we start bandying about definitions, that's when I start thinking that we're trying to rationalize behavior that is either wrong or illegal. I guess that it's like the old saying that it's not wrong unless I get caught.
See above. Our "intuition" is based on our simian brains evolved to deal with bannanas in the jungle. To deal with properties of information, like those of quantum phenomena, we need to make a serious effort to separate ourselves from our built-in macroscopic, physical world biases.
While you have my book, I cant lend it to anyone else and I cant read it myself. I can make 10,000 copies of an electronic version with little to no effort and give them to 10,000 people who can do the same, ad infinitum. And I would still have my copy, as pristine as it ever was. Theres the difference.
The difference is that one is coupled to an archaic medium of paper and ink and the other in the modern format of magnetic fields on revolving platters or puffs of electrons in wires. The fundamental properties of both are however identical. Both are information. For example I could simply convert the book you lent me, via scanning and OCR to about 100 kilo bytes of text and transmit away. They are both identical, except for their medium.
The physical properties of the books, vinyl records and CDs have been used to confuse people about the nature of these things quite effectively. The fact remains that the information has no properties which would allow it to be "sold" or "bought" and can only be shared (i.e. transmitted) or otherwise processed during that transmission.
Except you can't sell your mangled copy, and the owner of the book can still sell the book.
Sure you can, if you write from memory a new book, with whatever mangled data you have. That is why copyright applies to "derrived work".
That is the real issue.
The real issue is that due to being under the spell of their incessent propaganda, you have done what all of these swindlers of "intellectual property" always try to induce: to try to deny the properties of information and talk about "selling" it, as a part of a system for rewarding artists. Information cannot be sold, it lacks the fundamental characteristics for it to be so. Also, the two are completely different and separate. There are many possible methods to reward artists, which do not involve the concept of "copyright" or "intelectual property". Patronage is one of them.
I could use DRM to give you a time-limited copy. Assuming the hardware and OS support DRM.
So you propose to do away with the fig leaf of the supposed purpose of copyright, "to grant artists a limited monopoly on their works in order to increase the body of art and knowledge of humanity"? Because you know, copyright was supposed to aid (monetarily) the artists in exchange for a set time limit after which the work enters public domain, for all to enjoy. Instead what you propose is feudal lordships of information and knowledge, each with a vault of data, sending self-destruct DRM enforced scraps to whomever is able to pay, and making sure that all future generations pay those feudal dynasties for the same information over and over and over, forever. This is the essential implication of your suggestion.
We don't live in a digital world, we live in a practical world - think practically.
In both cases the thing being "shared" is information. The difference is that in the case of the book, the information is coupled with a physical object and thus causes the confusion in the form of some people's physical-world-coupled simian brains being unable to realize what it is they are sharing. Any "practical" measures to restrict sharing of information (which is what this is all about) will and must lead to totalitarian measures in regards to digital communication equipment i.e. computers and internet. It is not only "practical" but the only way.
Microsoft has had dozens, if not hundreds, of competitors over the last 30 years. You're going to need to be a bit more specific, because I'm sure as hell not going to list them all.
You might as well list them all, as none of them has had a chance of a snowball in hell of winning that battle, regardless of how superior their products were at the time or even when they gave them away for free. That alone indicates that the market situation involving Microsoft is abnormal. Next thing you will tell me that it is all right because Microsoft "team" is who you are rooting for, and you think this whole thing is a gigiantic football game. If you do, don't bother replying.
Ie: good business acumen on behalf of Microsoft. Another textbook example of capitalism.
Stupidity on the part of one market player handing you money on a platter for nothing is "capitalism"? And that differs from a feudal lord making you a knight because you are a good drinking buddy how exactly? Do elaborate.
Completely irrelevant, as it applies to _all_ computer related products.
Err, what?! PCs under the guidance of Microsoft are singular in being backwards in all of their aspects of operation. What other products you are talking about? You mean there were mass produced hybrid cars with superior safety features in 1960s which then, due to some idiot taking over the auto industry, were replaced with gas-guzzling road-boats with no seat belts and only now, 50 years later, the hybrids are coming back? (although their engines are now cranking 400 times more rpms - which is then promptly wasted on their 500 times greater mass). Because this is precisely the state of affairs in PC computing.
Which are also done by everyone else. Again, not relevant because it's common - nay, *standard* - behaviour.
Then the system is irretrievably fucked beyond repair and Marx was right after all. Is that what you are saying? Or are you suggesting that if thieves, thugs, crooks, embezzlers and swindlers run the show, the thing to do is to become one? Do clarify.
There has never been any shortage of information.
In general, no. However in the specific case of an average consumer, education, work schedule, and myriad of other factors prevent him/her from acquiring it, without exorbitant efforts. And thus render his/her purchasing decisions in case of exceedingly complex products like computers severely impaired. Next thing you will tell me that its the consumer's fault, after all everyone should have been a software and hardware engineer at the least to make informed choices, right?
Whatever you think of Bill Gates, I don't think this statement is fair. He's one of the top wealthy philanthropists alive today, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given billions of dollars to improve medical and economic conditions around the world.
Sigh, the propaganda seems to be working. This is Bill of today (noticeably after he married Melinda) working on his "cuddly and fuzzy" image, not Bill of the 1980s and 1990s. Apparently she managed to impart some conscience into him, although not entirely successfully, as his "charity" is used in highly questionable ways, is involved in massive lobbying efforts which incidentally help Microsoft's causes, its grants are frequently tied to concessions of governments in favour of multi-decade commitments to all-Microsoft infrastructure and some massively significant tax breaks were involved in all of these activities.
This trajectory is eerily reminiscant of that of Carnegie, Mellon and Rockefeller, all vicious, brutal thugs, swindlers, thieves and crooks, who in their later days, after looting and stealing fortunes so massive that they impacted the finances of the nation, turned "phillantropes". Which did not absolve them in any way from the guilt for their earlier actions.
Somebody almost cried "Hitler." Keep it up and Moore's law will come into full effect.
I think you meant Goodwin's law and it was you who called Adolph into it. Goodwin's law would not be applicable here anyways as the conversation was about "dictators" and things "dictatorial". Since Adolph, Duce, Stalin and many others were in fact dictators, bringing him in would only be natural. Do brush up on these things before firing these widly off-target salvos.
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The difference of course being that one deals with denying the scientific properties of the universe (or in the specific case of information, of its relationship with minds and sentience) in hopes of making profit on ignorance of others, and the other with stopping apes from murdering each other.
"Freely" has too much garbage associated with it. Let's just say that now it's possible to distribute information created by you and not suffer a financial penalty.
That of course assumes (what a surprise!), that you have any right whatsoever to "profit" -- and I love how you used the words "financial penalty" to describe it, a sure sign of a mindset of greed, as all the money you did not manage to con out of others is always a "loss" to a con-man -- on transmission of information by others between themselves. That is you assume, that because you happened to acquire some information, that means that you have now a right to impose your rules of transmission of the knowledge they acquire on everyone else, including various totalitarian measures to enforce your will (as everyone's natural ability to freely communicate is most undesirable in your scheme), because otherwise you will not make money. That is, everyone else's freedom to communicate is supposed to be subservient to your greed. Am I missing something?
That's incorrect, because there is also value in scarcity (being the only person with the score of the 1812 Overture, for example).
Then as soon as you transmit it to another person, the "scarcity" diminishes. Information simply does not behave in the same way as physical objects and thus is not subject to mercantile trade. When you have a rare physical object, it does not become less rare when you show it to someone!
But it is precisely the case with information. If you were to apply your own logic of "scarcity" to information (which is a stretch in the first place as information exists independently of observers) then the first transmission wound be worth much more then the second, the third far less then the first etc.
Look up the later years of Charles Dickens for reference - the guy died in poverty, ironically due to lack of US copyright laws.
Charles Dickens was a Briton living in Victorian England, incidentally a place ruled by supreme greed and with next to no social conscience (you would have loved it, assuming you were born a noble). And he did not die in "poverty", although he never acquired great wealth as he spent most of his earnings and time fighting people like you. What an irony for you to bring him into this.
That's incorrect, and shows you don't know the content of the GPL or its history. Under your scenario, everything becomes public domain. But PD already exists, so the GPL is superfluous by your argument.
No it is not, at present, as it prevents attempts to "sell" the resulting binary code without disclosing its source. That problem simply does not exist in absence of copyright as no profit can be made on such compiled code. So while distribution of binary data would be possible, the lack of any economic incentives to do so, coupled with no prohibitions on reverse engineering, would tilt the playing field towards openness and cooperation.
The GPL was conceived as a reaction to a printer manufacturer who closed the source of their driver, when RMS wanted to be able to fix bugs himself and couldn't. RMS's idea in setting up the GPL was that items produced under the GPL could *not* be hidden.
See above.
Unless you fancy setting up a new law that you *must* release to the world all information you ever create, then your argument fails here. I could take PD software, modify it slightly, and sell it as my o
Which I always can (given enough labour) as all information in the universe is equivalent, in accordance with information theory, to a series of integer numbers. Granted, most of the time the odds are overwhelmingly against me but the history (and everyday life) is peppered with examples of just such independent discovery. In essence what you have is a specific, selected number, and I always do have a chance of discovering that value on my own.
I can either not give you the information, give you the information, or I can sell you the information and profit.
That is you are talking about transmitting it to me (a process involving copying, encoding, decoding and other processing). Note that information can have a number of states, which are relative to an observer, like being "known" and "unkown". But that information exists always, regardless of its relative state to me or you, independently of the universe, as it is fully abstract. So what it is that you are "selling" me is a service of transmitting the information to me (i.e. revealing it to me). But once the transmission occured, I am now naturally capable of re-transmitting it further in a myriad of forms. Also you do still posess the "original" set. A sale, in a mercantile or capitalist system, would require scarcity and uniqueness of that information, i.e. you would have to no longer retain it as there would be only one unique copy available which would have to change hands. But because information exists outside of us, in an abstract, immutable realm of numbers, this does not happen. Even if you erase it from your mind, it will still exist, merely de-coupled from any physical medium.
In case you didn't realise, humanity is in the buisness of survival, individual survival is paramount to us all (except for people who really, really need to see a psyciatrist). The ultimate raison d'être relies upon each of us knowing what keeps us alive - our technology skills for earning a living for most of us here.
Completely irrelevant. The current societal stupidity (i.e. causing a massive overpoplulation leading to "survival race") has no impact whatsoever on the properties of information. Should the whole human race disappear tommorow, the rules governing information would still be the same and unaffected.
My employer knows he cannot get the information I hold in my head without paying me, information that keeps his buisness running, and thus keeps him alive.
He is paying you for your labour, efficiency and quality of which is affected by your knowledge. Neither him nor you own that knowledge. You for example have acquired it from the society at large, all the way from the likes of Ancient Greeks and Phoenicians. You use an alphabet invented in Rome and numerals invented by long-gone Arab mathemeticians. Have you paid anyone for that?
Paychecks come in handy for keeping me alive - how about you?
Again, irrelevant. The fact that you managed to make yourself dependant on the operation of an elaborate scam is not my fault, nor my concern.
You can't even live off the land anymore without having information about crops, hunting, seasons, shelter construction, water purification, etc
Vast majority of which was discovered somewhere around 2000BC. Yet I sense a desire on your part to charge someone for it.
Who's going to tell you that stuff for free anymore (not counting family relations that actually still have that knowledge)?
To avoid having greedmongers locking up the body of knowledge of humanity is precisely the point of abolishing copyright and other perverted "intellectual property" ideas, as these are the very tools which those who wish to control and lock away all our ancestral knowledge are depending on. You are arguing against your own premise.
So you get the information from someone selling it. Whether
It is very well written. Particularly I liked the line about the mathematicians not getting paid for use of formulas. Very astute. Thomas Jefferson is a great ally in this and I love that quote, although I ususally include the part about information being like the light of tapers, for I am a sap for old-style oratory flourish.
I was apriori familiar with much of what you wrote about so it came as no surprise, and I believe you touched on most of the major points of the issue and I am in a complete agreement with your interpretation. From my experience however, and that is in no way a criticism of your article, merely a point about tactics, I found that focusing on one particular aspect of this fiasco, i.e. the theoretical properties of information itself, and following them to their absurd conclusions vs. the greed induced laws, is the most effective course. I have tried a comprehensive approach like yours in the past, but it tends to lead to quickly spreading debate involving things such as morality, economic systems etc. Not that I would not follow it where it leads, and I nearly always do on Slashdot, but one can get quickly bogged down (and which is frequently the purpose of proponents of IP) in such inceasingly unrelated arguments. Nailing these bastards concisely, clearly and undeniably, leaving them no room to wiggle, on one clearly defined battleground, seems to be a more immediately productive strategy for me. But of course one can pursue that same tactics from a variety of angles, by focusing on the artificial scarcity element if you have strong economic theory background or the barriers now crippling science if you are a scientist, invoking the examples of the academia of old and the fact that most of our today scientific knowledge came about as a result of free sharing of data between scientists. And so on.
An illusion. You are paying for a transmission (one of the few activities possible with information) to you, not for the information itself.
"Owned" is a more difficult issue, as it implies sole possession.
Try impossible as it also implies scarcity and a whole lot of other things.
Which is where copyright comes in, imposing an arbitrary rule to create the concept of ownership.
I have news for you, declaring gravity illegal will not make you float.
It doesn't stop people gaining access to the information, it just imposes penalties against those who violate that rule.
Which "violations", due to being written by greed mongers instead of scientists, are impossible to ascertain my any means other than subjective, arbitrary and anti-scientific ones. You might as well get witch doctors and shamans involved.
In rather the same way, arbitrary national borders don't stop people crossing them without completing the required formalities, but they do impose penalties if you cross them without it.
Except that arbitrary national borders follow the long established rules which govern physical private property, i.e. land in this case.
However, the result was *less* freedom of expression. Since you couldn't do anything once the information had escaped, the result was that books and music were carefully controlled to ensure no-one else could share it. For example, sheet music for all the classical music we know today was simply not available.
That is because the apex of the technology then was the Gutenberg press. Today it would result in a near impossibility to distribute and to hide things simultenously. Open Source development would suffer changes, as essentially all software would become public domain. That means that companies could modify and then distribute Linux but since there is no way for them to "sell" software (as all software would be immediately freely copyable), this would be counter-productive in most cases. Only true art and Open Source, collaborative efforts would likely survive this process. Would there be secret-sauce solutions based on secrecy? Certainly, as they are now, everywhere. As it is one of fundamental properties of information to remain "unknown" or "secret" to one party.
Copyright OTOH allows people to share information freely and still gain value from it.
No it does not. 90-years past author's death? Perpetual copyright for corporations? What are you talking about?
Now any number of people can get the sheet music to the 1812 Overture and study it or make derived works - the flipside is that they have to pay a small amount for doing so.
I see now. Your definition of "freely" was written, strike that, purchased from Bill Gates.
In fact, it's in the author's interest to make it available, because they can then get paid.
They get also paid under patronage system. Also, you are confusing the services of duplication and distribution and an act of creation.
But open-source only works through copyright.
GPL was written as a defense against copyright and anti-reverse-engineering laws. Remove those and no GPL will be needed.
Also note that contrary to your assertion, there is no requirement for works to be in the public domain in order for other art to be created - "The Incredibles" and other Pixar films can still take the piss out of comics, cartoons and other films, without those other films being out of copyright. The only thing they can't do is directly imitate other works - but that would not be creating new art, and so we don't have any loss.
Yes we do, all of that requires expense
Oration? Story telling?
I accept the point that there is no way to prevent copying, without actually preventing users from being able to run software of their choice, but I'm really really really bored with the technolibertarian stance that the whole world needs to adjust to do what technology ALLOWS - there are plenty of things that technology can do, from weaponry to spying, that we want to restrict our governments and companies from being able to do - but when it comes to our own usage, we want to live in the land of do-as-you-please.
This is not a "technolibertarian" stance (and in fact I could be more accurately described as a "socialist" then a libertarian). It is merely a scientific stance. That is if you are going to claim that Witches are the foremost crime problem and then proceed to set up laws, complete with regulations of how to go about burning them on the stake, we would be in the same realm where the copyright debate is. The premise of copyright contradicts both science and logic (and that is in addition to violating free-market principles and contribution-reward schemes of capitalism). So unless you consider logic and science both dispensable and superfluous in the face of greed, the debate is not about technology uses but about fundamental principles governing the society. The technology aspect, which confuses you so badly, is merely a catalyst which exposed deep faults within the law and the whole present approach to this problem.
I'd also add that every proposed alternative compensation scheme I've seen has flaws - either putting funding into the hands of gatekeepers (tax subsidised artists) or flat-fee systems which will require users to give up privacy, or gibberish like 'making money from T-shirts and live sales'. Yep, that will work for books.
No system is flawless but few contradict science and logic as the present one does. A system I advocate is a combination of private and public patronage for arts and academia, direct donations, traditional admission fees at performances and corporate sponsorship. While not perfect, it produces art which is immediately in the public domain, it encourages art as opposed to commerce (which art is not) and allows artists to build immediately on other artists' work. And it does not need to go head to head with science and logic to operate (never you mind common decency). No need for totalitarian police states neither, although some would consider this a major flaw.
Personally, I think a system that lets people buy and sell information at a price of the seller's choice (a la Landau's 'Xanadu') is the goal we should be aiming for - cutting out the distribution middle men as far as possible, which would reduce costs drastically - but still allowing economic value. Unfortunately, I don't think it will happen, because a significant number of people will always consider that a threat to their liberty.
Not a threat liberty, but a threat to logic. Information cannot be "bought", "sold" nor "owned". It simply lacks the necessary attributes to allow for such a treatment. You can only transmit it. This illogical, science-contradicting notion, of being able to "own" information is what lies at the root of this whole fiasco.
No difference at all from the point of view of information theory and transition from one case to the other is seamless.
Uh, no. Companies will eventually come up with some working public-key based DRM system. Media will only be playable on machines which follow the rules. Sure you still have the analog hole, but it kind of sucks for movies and doesn't work for apps. (emphasis mine)
All public key schemes involve public encryption keys and private decryption ones. So, no luck there as one has to store one unique set of decryption keys on each digital device and thus transmit uniquely encrypted streams to each and every one (and one crack renders the whole scheme moot). And the other question of course is whose rules. The only way anyone has been able to come up so far is a system whereby all computing equipment is completely controlled by a conglomerate of "rights holders". Do enlighten me if you know of any other. In short, the only practical way anyone has been come up so far involves a total lockdown of all computing equipment and in essence transferring control of it to the "rights holders".
At a danger of troll feeding, I shall inquire: what the heck are you on about?
Of course, fidelity, being one if the parameters of the process has input into all considerations. However, because information in general is governed by rules very inconvenient to various greedy people, fidelity is not alone in this consideration. For example, it is posible to have an increase in amount of sampling data and its fidelity, after it has originally decreased. Imagine a skilled musician listening to a bad tape and then replaying and recording what he heard in high quality. I think the cornerstone point of the debate is that the present system designed to promote arts and to financially renumerate artists is a relic of times where the understanding of the processes invovled was non-existant and when the apex of information technology involved hand-operated Gutenberg press. What I call for is a close re-examination of the very principles behind these laws to hopefully arrive at much more just, logical and egalitarian system.
Furthermore, what really spurs me on is the realisation that the long-term logical implications of the present system are truly horrific and will, if unopposed, lead to various new forms of totalitarian societies.
Actually it is very much so. All information, in accordance with the Shannon's information theory can be represented in numerical form. That is all information, no matter of what kind, is essentially one of the many of infinite number of integer numbers. It exists always, independent of the universe. All that the creative process does is to select one of these numbers as "relevant" to our current state of society and that of our minds. That process of "search" or "selection" can indeed be time and labour consuming as there is an infinite number of such numbers. However, like the parent poster indicated, the numbers themselves are not a scarce resource. Furthermore, the same information can be (and in fact continuously is) discovered (i.e. the applicable numbers selected) by all people all the time independently. It happens when we learn to walk, read, count etc. It can happen by empirical discovery or by transmission from others or combination of both. The point remains, that information is a unique thing, which does behave much like air when viewed from the perspective the parent poster presented.
I for one would like to see it abolished as it tenets contradict directly both logic and science, information theory in particular.
Would you support me if I took a complete copy of something you created, distributed it and took credit for creating it?
Distribution and "taking credit for" are separate issues. One deals with transmission of information and the other with attribution of its source.
Event? You are confusing seprarate concepts. Memory is of the information which was transmitted as the result of the event's occurence.
Your argument ignores simple distinctions fundamental to property law.
And the law ignores the information theory and logic. Tell me which takes precedence, science and logic or make-believe rules set up by various greed mongers and their politicians?
You've assumed, as you have been conditioned to do, that I am in any way in need of the "products" of the modern enterntainment industry. In fact I do not even own a TV. Furthermore, you used the word "steal" in respect to information, again as you have been conditioned to do, without putting any thought whatsoever into what you are saying. I came to this debate from the direction of computer and information science as well as political economics, not from the perspective of a file sharer. I look at these matters from a perspective of logic and phillosophy, because such pursuits intellectually stimulate me. That is my enterntainment. Far more worthy to me then the latest cladly dressed teenager shaking her butt on TV. In fact I am seriously considering starting a foundation/think-tank where I could combine forces with others like me, with the purpose of initiating a legal challenge to the copyright system here in Canada, based on these phillosophical and theoretical premises.
It is a low fidelity copy. Think a poor recording of a concert on a gummed up tape recorder. Is it still a copy or do you need a 44kHz sampling frequency digital recorder for it to be a "copy"?
I took the wording of your "I could use DRM to give you a time-limited copy." as a proposal of a possible "solution" and so I elaborated on its consequences.
Yes indeed, you picked up on yet another facet of this travesty. I was focusing mainly on the theoretical properties of information for I found them to be most easily deployed to devastate any pretense of logic in the so called "intellectual property" scheme. But you are very right, of course, that the artificial scarcity is the main aspect of this whole charade from the economic, free-market point of view.
The monopoly systems of copyright and patents are grotesque abberations, not the common standard.
Right on.
You are merely arguing about the degree of fidelity with which people's brains can retain the data and the durability of the medium. Which does not alter my basic premise in any way. One can easily write large portions of the original text minutes after reading it. Is it a violation then? How about 10 minutes later? 5 hours? 5 months? What about writing a new text which retains all the characters and plot lines from the original, which most people can remember for a long time? What about a savant who can remember verbatim hundreds of pages of text?
None of this changes the fundamental fact that the information contained in the paper/ink medium has entered neural-cell medium and large portions of thereof can be retained and reused. Ergo low fidelity, but very useable copy has been made.
They are both cases of "sharing" or "copying" (i.e. transmission of information). Our language simply does not deal well with the underlying processes for it was developed for dealing with physical objects and actions of people, not abstract theoretical things such as information. When we say "copy" we usually mean "to transmit a block of information with as little loss as possible". When we say "share" we mean this in a less strict manner as in "transmitt in any degree of fidelity". There are many words which we use to describe the underlying process, poorly and in most cases inaccurately. They are however all instances of the same process simply varying in conditions and methods of processing of that information.
We intuitively know what is copying and what is sharing. When we start bandying about definitions, that's when I start thinking that we're trying to rationalize behavior that is either wrong or illegal. I guess that it's like the old saying that it's not wrong unless I get caught.
See above. Our "intuition" is based on our simian brains evolved to deal with bannanas in the jungle. To deal with properties of information, like those of quantum phenomena, we need to make a serious effort to separate ourselves from our built-in macroscopic, physical world biases.
The difference is that one is coupled to an archaic medium of paper and ink and the other in the modern format of magnetic fields on revolving platters or puffs of electrons in wires. The fundamental properties of both are however identical. Both are information. For example I could simply convert the book you lent me, via scanning and OCR to about 100 kilo bytes of text and transmit away. They are both identical, except for their medium.
The physical properties of the books, vinyl records and CDs have been used to confuse people about the nature of these things quite effectively. The fact remains that the information has no properties which would allow it to be "sold" or "bought" and can only be shared (i.e. transmitted) or otherwise processed during that transmission.
Sure you can, if you write from memory a new book, with whatever mangled data you have. That is why copyright applies to "derrived work".
That is the real issue.
The real issue is that due to being under the spell of their incessent propaganda, you have done what all of these swindlers of "intellectual property" always try to induce: to try to deny the properties of information and talk about "selling" it, as a part of a system for rewarding artists. Information cannot be sold, it lacks the fundamental characteristics for it to be so. Also, the two are completely different and separate. There are many possible methods to reward artists, which do not involve the concept of "copyright" or "intelectual property". Patronage is one of them.
So you propose to do away with the fig leaf of the supposed purpose of copyright, "to grant artists a limited monopoly on their works in order to increase the body of art and knowledge of humanity"? Because you know, copyright was supposed to aid (monetarily) the artists in exchange for a set time limit after which the work enters public domain, for all to enjoy. Instead what you propose is feudal lordships of information and knowledge, each with a vault of data, sending self-destruct DRM enforced scraps to whomever is able to pay, and making sure that all future generations pay those feudal dynasties for the same information over and over and over, forever. This is the essential implication of your suggestion.
In both cases the thing being "shared" is information. The difference is that in the case of the book, the information is coupled with a physical object and thus causes the confusion in the form of some people's physical-world-coupled simian brains being unable to realize what it is they are sharing. Any "practical" measures to restrict sharing of information (which is what this is all about) will and must lead to totalitarian measures in regards to digital communication equipment i.e. computers and internet. It is not only "practical" but the only way.
So is the case with the book. When it is over, you have a copy, albait mangled and compressed, in your brain.
You might as well list them all, as none of them has had a chance of a snowball in hell of winning that battle, regardless of how superior their products were at the time or even when they gave them away for free. That alone indicates that the market situation involving Microsoft is abnormal. Next thing you will tell me that it is all right because Microsoft "team" is who you are rooting for, and you think this whole thing is a gigiantic football game. If you do, don't bother replying.
Ie: good business acumen on behalf of Microsoft. Another textbook example of capitalism.
Stupidity on the part of one market player handing you money on a platter for nothing is "capitalism"? And that differs from a feudal lord making you a knight because you are a good drinking buddy how exactly? Do elaborate.
Completely irrelevant, as it applies to _all_ computer related products.
Err, what?! PCs under the guidance of Microsoft are singular in being backwards in all of their aspects of operation. What other products you are talking about? You mean there were mass produced hybrid cars with superior safety features in 1960s which then, due to some idiot taking over the auto industry, were replaced with gas-guzzling road-boats with no seat belts and only now, 50 years later, the hybrids are coming back? (although their engines are now cranking 400 times more rpms - which is then promptly wasted on their 500 times greater mass). Because this is precisely the state of affairs in PC computing.
Which are also done by everyone else. Again, not relevant because it's common - nay, *standard* - behaviour.
Then the system is irretrievably fucked beyond repair and Marx was right after all. Is that what you are saying? Or are you suggesting that if thieves, thugs, crooks, embezzlers and swindlers run the show, the thing to do is to become one? Do clarify.
There has never been any shortage of information.
In general, no. However in the specific case of an average consumer, education, work schedule, and myriad of other factors prevent him/her from acquiring it, without exorbitant efforts. And thus render his/her purchasing decisions in case of exceedingly complex products like computers severely impaired. Next thing you will tell me that its the consumer's fault, after all everyone should have been a software and hardware engineer at the least to make informed choices, right?
Sigh, the propaganda seems to be working. This is Bill of today (noticeably after he married Melinda) working on his "cuddly and fuzzy" image, not Bill of the 1980s and 1990s. Apparently she managed to impart some conscience into him, although not entirely successfully, as his "charity" is used in highly questionable ways, is involved in massive lobbying efforts which incidentally help Microsoft's causes, its grants are frequently tied to concessions of governments in favour of multi-decade commitments to all-Microsoft infrastructure and some massively significant tax breaks were involved in all of these activities.
This trajectory is eerily reminiscant of that of Carnegie, Mellon and Rockefeller, all vicious, brutal thugs, swindlers, thieves and crooks, who in their later days, after looting and stealing fortunes so massive that they impacted the finances of the nation, turned "phillantropes". Which did not absolve them in any way from the guilt for their earlier actions.
I think you meant Goodwin's law and it was you who called Adolph into it. Goodwin's law would not be applicable here anyways as the conversation was about "dictators" and things "dictatorial". Since Adolph, Duce, Stalin and many others were in fact dictators, bringing him in would only be natural. Do brush up on these things before firing these widly off-target salvos.