The brief answer to your point is that Capitalism isn't what you claim it is. Maximum property is not the rule in capitalism, rather, law has evolved in order to recognise that property is not absolute, for example that one, or a collection of people, can attain ownership over land through use, and lack of enforcement. This recognises that the principle of capitalism is a codification of natural behaviour, rather than being an abstract system based upon the absolute value of property.
Look closer, and you find that the deeper principle of capitalism as codified by common law (that is the natural evolution of law according to the rule of precident, rather than industry lobbies), is far closer to a principle of maximum freedom, than the application of an axiomatic set of rules.
Additional to this, it is worth noting why "fair use" rights exist in law: real value, and freedom is won, in particular by creating derivative works. The restriction of rights that is property can create an incentive, but also creates restrictions, that impede the creation of derivative works in particular. The creation of "intellectual property" clearly has costs and gains to freedom, and in particular to the creative freedom that is the root of the creation of wealth, with is a far vaster concept than money (in truth, the real wealth will be more than the money wealth, for that "imbalance" is what causes the trade to be made in the first place). Inventment selects ideas to build on; it is our creativity that causes them to be. To undermine creativity so as to provide "an incentive" is to get things back-to-front.
Personal use is just the tip of the iceburg. Furthermore, you don't get that companies simply don't want to provide fair use. It gets in the way of the greater plan to deny the user as much property as possible, so as to extract more of the value that would otherwise accrue to the customer by eg. having the file in several formats, or playable after a licence runs out. If fair use can be undermined by DRM "so much the better!"
I agree that we already have limited rights of ownership, but the principle that underlies law and practice should still be that of maximum freedom, that is: allowing the right degree of property and enforcement, so that positive freedom (incentive) and negative freedom (lack of obstruction) are in balance. As long as there remains profit in production, negative freedom is worth having. What's more, it's not worth trading freedom so as to ensure the security of the creation of wealth beyond a certain point. Besides, as you must be well aware, the connection between the abuse of freedom through copyright infringement, and the loss of income ot artists is tenuous. It might affect the income flowing to music companies, though, but there are evolving far more efficient distribution mechanisms, that can give the artists more 'cake' in absolute terms, even though the whole cake is smaller. Think of the savings in eliminating wasteful administration!
No. The real issue is that of maintaining old business methods and practices. One that will keep certain sectors of industry in business, rather than protecting the creative output that is the economic purpose of these companies. The entire argument about "capitalism" and "communism" is a smokescreen for a far more old-fashioned and tradition argument: the special pleading of outdated industries against forces that threaten to displace then, which require convenient restrictions of freedom.
If you're right, it's still not hypocritical if you're a utilitarian.
Stallman's actions suggest just such an attitude. To use to law to guarantee freedom is the historical purpose of it. Would you say that the police are hypocrites because they use force so as to achieve freedom (at least in theory)?
No. Stallman et. al. are opposed to proprietry software, closed off from all. So I suppose that you are right.
The charge of hypocracy is bizzarre though. If you're seeking to maximise freedom, it's no contradiction to act in opposition to those who would limit it. In fact, with such a goal, it would appear to be necessary.
Maximising the freedom of the next user or developer would be a different goal, and if they stated that that way their goal, they would be hypocrites. But that is not their goal. Their goal is that the software, the source, and its derivatives (note: not the developers per se) remains free, so that freedom across the community is maximised.
If I may ask an impertinent question: what's your stake in this? Are you an advertiser with google? Run your own online business? None of my business I accept, but I'm curious as to how you came to this view of the matter.
Nah, I just read the article. I do have a special interest as a customer, of course, so I'd like to see firms costs competed away: that way, there's more profit to be converted to cheaper goods through competition for my business between firms:o)
In one sense I don't mind too much: advertising isn't a social good when you can easily search, but I don't want to pay more for my purchases because of it!
The trouble with differential charging is that the customer has already reached the store when you tell them. Other stores may gain if the customer cottons on, but you won't, much. Instead, you will gain from other stores who do likewise. This information comes at a cost: you could have told them about your products instead. A classic prisoners' dilemma. Trouble is: it's a multi-party one, so setting up co-operation is nigh impossible.
I don't think that there's a government solution either. And perhaps it's not a real problem. Perhaps the answer will ultimately to have the best store and website, and that's it. Search engines can extract rent while it's there...
There are dozens of variations on this example: "The GPL prevents my work from being taken and exploited." That statement, constantly heard in the halls of GPL advocacy, implies that the software is the moral property of the author, who can morally control its use once it leaves his hands.
Actually, I think that that is the entire spirit of copyright.
You were saying that GPL advocates were opposed to copyright: the right to restrict what subsequent owners can do with the work, if they wish to redistribute it, but they are in favour of precisely that.
Simply, it creates property unnecessarily. Property is a restriction of freedom, and DRM creates new forms of property, ie. further restrictions of freedom.
I'm not saying that "all property is theft", or anything like that. Rather, property is a compromise between incentive and freedom that makes society and economy flow naturally.
DRM is a block to the natural flow of society, in that it prevents much fair use. General property is in line with how people naturally order themselves, but DRM harms much of the "borrowing" that naturally occurs in culture. So there is real harm, not just a theoretical "blow to freedom".
Freedom means not only to know the law in advance, so that one can make rational choices, but also that laws are aligned with decisions that most people would naturally make: a man of goodwill should not find themselves in contravention of the law, typically.
This isn't a matter of law, I know, but of technology. However, the licence explicitally neuters the clause in the DMCA which prevents programmers still further down the line from reverse engineering, and this is what the GPL V3 is trying to address. See this post, correcting my own.
Back to the point. Although DRM isn't law per se, its threatened ubiquity makes a licence to tackle this a proportionate response. This would aid consumers to decide which kind of utility they wanted to use. To make a law banning DRM might be disproportionate, but this meets DRM on the level. Instead of being a hardware hack, it's a legal one. This is important now that hardware hacks are now illegal.
Me personally, I would much rather see a license that promoted the development of a DRM that protected a user's legal rights then to see this garbage about barring the whole branch of development.
The GPL version 2 is still there if you wish to use it! Remove the bolding in the clause "either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version", if you wish to allow other coders (transitively) to extend your software so as to implement DRM.
Personally, I'd wish to code under GPL version 3: I seek a freer world, and DRM is harmful to that end. Anyway, although the licence limits what the DRM can be used to achieve, it does not bar the development of DRM.
If you think that the only effect of the licence will be to bar development in DRM under this licence, I think that you're being naïve. DRM will be used to restrict user and programmer rights so that in due course, what you can do with your machine will be vastly curtailed. The extra clauses hostile to DRM really could change history in the favour of both future users, and programmers.
Americans have access to all literature, except books about Communism, because we think it is evil.
Isn't that freedom?
Only joking:p
Not really, because it is the programmer who specifies, not the state, and the role of the GPL is to maximise freedom overall, not hand it all to the next programmer.
I checked your garden tools query, by the way. What struck me was the number of links down the side. All the space on my browser was used, and if I reloaded, some of the links changed. From that I infer that there are more potential advertisers than there are slots to advertise. Additionally, the fact some of the bigger names, like Bosch for instance, didn't get swapped out suggests some people are paying a premium for guaranteed exposure.
If so, then Google are just doing the old supply-and-demand thing. There is a limited amount of room to display results on their search pages, and they are charging what the market will bear. If they were conspiring to create an artificial shortage, I'd be concerned. It seems though that (short of turning their site into a banner farm) they're selling as much of this stuff as they can.
They charge advertising sites per click-through, or maybe even per instance. This is where they can extract their monopoly. You're looking at the wrong market: it's the one between advertisers and google (say) that counts. To the company, the customer is the product that the search engine is providing.
Google, and any other search engine with a faithful body of users, can extract maximal value for each potential customer from the company. For the company trying to reach a section of the population, they need to strike a deal with the one search engine that that section of the population is using.
If prices are high, it's because deep pockets are willing to pay the extra to force the little guys off the list. And that's always going to be a problem.
Like I said, you're looking at the wrong market. Certainly this will happen. The degree of exposure is a red herring. It's the fee for every click-through that is where the search engine wields excessive market power.
Restrictions on DRM are interesting, for there will be some who will want to extend the penetration of free software with an emaphasis upon programming freedom (of future programmers), and others who support the goal of general freedom.
Linus may stick with GPL version 2 for the simple reason that he may wish to equip Linux to be able to implement hardware-based DRM. Linus is pragmatic in the straightforward sense: many Linux users will want access to DRMed material... Hence version 2, not version 3.
Stallman is pragmatic in a more esoteric sense: the GPL version 2 has been increadibly successful. He is pitching the GPL version 3 to maximise freedom, and this blow against DRM will do exactly that. True, free software will have less penetration as a result, but the world will be a freer place for the compromise not being taken.
From a moral angle, this clause allows programmers to restrict how the fruit of their skills is to be exploited, which is naturally within their right, as long as copyright is recognised in law.
But there are lots of other channels for advertising. Banner ads, review sites, social networking... if you have a reasonably compelling product there are lots of ways to get the word out. Of course, there's no garuantee that that your business will succeed even so, but that's the nature of a startup.
The internet isn't a small town. Hopefully, yes, the word would get out in other ways. However, search-engine ads appear at the most appropriate time: when people have (more or less) decided to buy, or are at least interested in buying.
If I do a search for garden tools UK, I don't see many review sites, at least not on the first page. The ads down the side will include the lesser known who are trying to enter the market.
Maybe this pressure on advertisers is a good thing, since advertising is information distortion.
I see. And have Google been punishing advertisers for such activities?
I don't know, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility. They withdraw Google ads from websites without saying why, often unjustly: the owner's fallen on the wrong side of a cheat-detecting algorithm.
Also when you say "price differentiate", what do you have in mind? A banner campaign with "10% discount for 'Yahoo!' referrers" sounds more like a tactic to put pressure on them, rather than an objetive in its own right. So assuming you don't just want to hurt them financially, what do you want do with all that leverage? What concessions would you demand?
Actually, I do want to hurt overpricing search-engines financially through price-competition. The consumer will win in the end.
Shops who use this tactic would have to remember IP addresses, as canny shoppers would simply delete their cookies, and come back later. I'd search using TOR, but enough wouldn't so that it would be worthwhile.
I'm still not clear what it is that you utimately want Google to do.
mmmm... I got the bus into work this morning. That bus line has a near monopoly over the supply of its passengers to the advertiser as well. The trouble here is that the narrower the circumstances which are required in order to make the "monopoly" term credible, the less force the accusation has. My local greengrocer has a near monopoly over the sale of turnips to people who happen to be in his shop. So what?
So those same people would see the same ads elsewhere, several times over. This is not true for your average internet boutique.
What is it you want of Google?
I suppose that what I really want is for stores to price-differentiate so as to account for the advertising prices, and to let their customers know that they're doing this.
I want Google et. al. not to punish them for this.
Yeah, I see what you're saying. You're comparing Google to MS by virtue of the dominance of each in their market sector. However, and this is important, the distinction lies in how that dominance is maintained. Microsoft maintain their position by ruthlessly crushing all competitors. Google maintain theirs by Google arrived at thier current position by doing their job well.
I was Wrong about Google being a monopoly, but it doesn't materially affect my argument. Each search engine has a near-monopoly over the supply of its users to the advertiser. You can't easily reach the same user by advertising through another search engine.
In which case, your problem isn't so much with google as with market forces. Best of luck, if so.
Or rather the lack of them. The user will pay, as advertising costs will be incorporated into the products. If manufactorers compensate by having discounts for those who search on cheaper-to-advertise engines, then perhaps the circle can be broken, as long as word gets around. The engines may not stand for it though.
Having the best site, and the best value-for-money product could win it though: you don't have to pay for ads. However, those who do will gain greater exposure, and this means that they'll be more linked to, hence greater first-hand exposure.
It's that people have a favourite search engine, and do not care very much what advertisers are being charged.
For each search engine, that search engine has a near-monopoly over access to its users for the purpose of advertising.
If it were a matter of consumer rights, then yes, that would be resolvable by switching engines. What can the advertiser do to get the consumer to switch?
It's still true that the customers are competing in a different market from the firms, though, and will typically only use one search engine, so that companies need to pay monopoly prices for access to each slice of the available market...
A particular search engine destroys rents. If you could advertise with a site other than &@@&!£ and get some decent payback, you could get search engines to compete for your business.
Ultimately, this rent-stripping gets in the way of price competition, as there is less rent to be delivered to the consumer in time. That is, &@@&!£'s near-monopoly is costing the customer money.
I was just letting the parent (and others) know that the answer to his question was in the article.
Notifying/blocking redirects and disabling pings are both worthwhile for many (possibly most) of us! This pinging might even work in the favour of ping-blockers, as it's easy to block unredirected traffic. Maybe unpinged traffic will also be blocked.
Wasn't going to happen anyway. A black hole's attaction is proportional to its mass, and since its event horizon radius (our co-ordinates) is likely to be pretty small, it's not going to bump into a lot so as to swallow it.
Slashdot Mirror
Look closer, and you find that the deeper principle of capitalism as codified by common law (that is the natural evolution of law according to the rule of precident, rather than industry lobbies), is far closer to a principle of maximum freedom, than the application of an axiomatic set of rules.
Additional to this, it is worth noting why "fair use" rights exist in law: real value, and freedom is won, in particular by creating derivative works. The restriction of rights that is property can create an incentive, but also creates restrictions, that impede the creation of derivative works in particular. The creation of "intellectual property" clearly has costs and gains to freedom, and in particular to the creative freedom that is the root of the creation of wealth, with is a far vaster concept than money (in truth, the real wealth will be more than the money wealth, for that "imbalance" is what causes the trade to be made in the first place). Inventment selects ideas to build on; it is our creativity that causes them to be. To undermine creativity so as to provide "an incentive" is to get things back-to-front.
Personal use is just the tip of the iceburg. Furthermore, you don't get that companies simply don't want to provide fair use. It gets in the way of the greater plan to deny the user as much property as possible, so as to extract more of the value that would otherwise accrue to the customer by eg. having the file in several formats, or playable after a licence runs out. If fair use can be undermined by DRM "so much the better!"
I agree that we already have limited rights of ownership, but the principle that underlies law and practice should still be that of maximum freedom, that is: allowing the right degree of property and enforcement, so that positive freedom (incentive) and negative freedom (lack of obstruction) are in balance. As long as there remains profit in production, negative freedom is worth having. What's more, it's not worth trading freedom so as to ensure the security of the creation of wealth beyond a certain point. Besides, as you must be well aware, the connection between the abuse of freedom through copyright infringement, and the loss of income ot artists is tenuous. It might affect the income flowing to music companies, though, but there are evolving far more efficient distribution mechanisms, that can give the artists more 'cake' in absolute terms, even though the whole cake is smaller. Think of the savings in eliminating wasteful administration!
No. The real issue is that of maintaining old business methods and practices. One that will keep certain sectors of industry in business, rather than protecting the creative output that is the economic purpose of these companies. The entire argument about "capitalism" and "communism" is a smokescreen for a far more old-fashioned and tradition argument: the special pleading of outdated industries against forces that threaten to displace then, which require convenient restrictions of freedom.
[nt]
Stallman's actions suggest just such an attitude. To use to law to guarantee freedom is the historical purpose of it. Would you say that the police are hypocrites because they use force so as to achieve freedom (at least in theory)?
No. Stallman et. al. are opposed to proprietry software, closed off from all. So I suppose that you are right.
The charge of hypocracy is bizzarre though. If you're seeking to maximise freedom, it's no contradiction to act in opposition to those who would limit it. In fact, with such a goal, it would appear to be necessary.
Maximising the freedom of the next user or developer would be a different goal, and if they stated that that way their goal, they would be hypocrites. But that is not their goal. Their goal is that the software, the source, and its derivatives (note: not the developers per se) remains free, so that freedom across the community is maximised.
Nah, I just read the article. I do have a special interest as a customer, of course, so I'd like to see firms costs competed away: that way, there's more profit to be converted to cheaper goods through competition for my business between firms :o)
In one sense I don't mind too much: advertising isn't a social good when you can easily search, but I don't want to pay more for my purchases because of it!
The trouble with differential charging is that the customer has already reached the store when you tell them. Other stores may gain if the customer cottons on, but you won't, much. Instead, you will gain from other stores who do likewise. This information comes at a cost: you could have told them about your products instead. A classic prisoners' dilemma. Trouble is: it's a multi-party one, so setting up co-operation is nigh impossible.
I don't think that there's a government solution either. And perhaps it's not a real problem. Perhaps the answer will ultimately to have the best store and website, and that's it. Search engines can extract rent while it's there...
DRM creates partial forms of property. Ownership of limited rights, rather than a wholesale copy of the media itself.
I can't fix any errors that I've made so far...
You were saying that GPL advocates were opposed to copyright: the right to restrict what subsequent owners can do with the work, if they wish to redistribute it, but they are in favour of precisely that.
I'm not saying that "all property is theft", or anything like that. Rather, property is a compromise between incentive and freedom that makes society and economy flow naturally.
DRM is a block to the natural flow of society, in that it prevents much fair use. General property is in line with how people naturally order themselves, but DRM harms much of the "borrowing" that naturally occurs in culture. So there is real harm, not just a theoretical "blow to freedom".
Freedom means not only to know the law in advance, so that one can make rational choices, but also that laws are aligned with decisions that most people would naturally make: a man of goodwill should not find themselves in contravention of the law, typically. This isn't a matter of law, I know, but of technology. However, the licence explicitally neuters the clause in the DMCA which prevents programmers still further down the line from reverse engineering, and this is what the GPL V3 is trying to address. See this post, correcting my own.
Back to the point. Although DRM isn't law per se, its threatened ubiquity makes a licence to tackle this a proportionate response. This would aid consumers to decide which kind of utility they wanted to use. To make a law banning DRM might be disproportionate, but this meets DRM on the level. Instead of being a hardware hack, it's a legal one. This is important now that hardware hacks are now illegal.
Personally, I'd wish to code under GPL version 3: I seek a freer world, and DRM is harmful to that end. Anyway, although the licence limits what the DRM can be used to achieve, it does not bar the development of DRM.
If you think that the only effect of the licence will be to bar development in DRM under this licence, I think that you're being naïve. DRM will be used to restrict user and programmer rights so that in due course, what you can do with your machine will be vastly curtailed. The extra clauses hostile to DRM really could change history in the favour of both future users, and programmers.
Only joking :p
Not really, because it is the programmer who specifies, not the state, and the role of the GPL is to maximise freedom overall, not hand it all to the next programmer.
Google, and any other search engine with a faithful body of users, can extract maximal value for each potential customer from the company. For the company trying to reach a section of the population, they need to strike a deal with the one search engine that that section of the population is using.
Like I said, you're looking at the wrong market. Certainly this will happen. The degree of exposure is a red herring. It's the fee for every click-through that is where the search engine wields excessive market power.Linus may stick with GPL version 2 for the simple reason that he may wish to equip Linux to be able to implement hardware-based DRM. Linus is pragmatic in the straightforward sense: many Linux users will want access to DRMed material... Hence version 2, not version 3.
Stallman is pragmatic in a more esoteric sense: the GPL version 2 has been increadibly successful. He is pitching the GPL version 3 to maximise freedom, and this blow against DRM will do exactly that. True, free software will have less penetration as a result, but the world will be a freer place for the compromise not being taken.
From a moral angle, this clause allows programmers to restrict how the fruit of their skills is to be exploited, which is naturally within their right, as long as copyright is recognised in law.
If I do a search for garden tools UK, I don't see many review sites, at least not on the first page. The ads down the side will include the lesser known who are trying to enter the market.
Maybe this pressure on advertisers is a good thing, since advertising is information distortion.
I don't know, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility. They withdraw Google ads from websites without saying why, often unjustly: the owner's fallen on the wrong side of a cheat-detecting algorithm. Actually, I do want to hurt overpricing search-engines financially through price-competition. The consumer will win in the end.Shops who use this tactic would have to remember IP addresses, as canny shoppers would simply delete their cookies, and come back later. I'd search using TOR, but enough wouldn't so that it would be worthwhile.
Have to compete.I want Google et. al. not to punish them for this.
Having the best site, and the best value-for-money product could win it though: you don't have to pay for ads. However, those who do will gain greater exposure, and this means that they'll be more linked to, hence greater first-hand exposure.
Is there a "government solution"? Probably not.
Ps. Matrix reference.
-- No Text --
For each search engine, that search engine has a near-monopoly over access to its users for the purpose of advertising.
If it were a matter of consumer rights, then yes, that would be resolvable by switching engines. What can the advertiser do to get the consumer to switch?
It's still true that the customers are competing in a different market from the firms, though, and will typically only use one search engine, so that companies need to pay monopoly prices for access to each slice of the available market...
Advertisers win on most hits. The potential hit ratio is pretty much predetermined, so there's little meaningful competition between search engines.
Ultimately, this rent-stripping gets in the way of price competition, as there is less rent to be delivered to the consumer in time. That is, &@@&!£'s near-monopoly is costing the customer money.
Notifying/blocking redirects and disabling pings are both worthwhile for many (possibly most) of us! This pinging might even work in the favour of ping-blockers, as it's easy to block unredirected traffic. Maybe unpinged traffic will also be blocked.
Personally, I liked toad3k's idea.
Wasn't going to happen anyway. A black hole's attaction is proportional to its mass, and since its event horizon radius (our co-ordinates) is likely to be pretty small, it's not going to bump into a lot so as to swallow it.