If I'm missing something here, PLEASE tell me. Well, the main thing you are missing is that this law is intended to create and strengthen monopolies, which, while not beign evil per se, is usually considered harmful to the society.
Information is easily copiable, that's why basing the information economy around the premise that it is not is stupid. Artificially increasing transaction costs and trying to change the information exchange into a zero-sum game is bad, bad, bad!
The fallacy that everyone makes here is the idea that people (companies) are entitled to compensation for something they did in the past. Well, they don't, they are only entitled to what they agree with their customers in a fair contract. In some cases, such as creation of music, art in general, or useful inventions, copyright protection is in order, because without it there is a risk this particular item will not be created. But with facts there is no such risk. Phone directories are compiled, even though they are not protected by law, giant databases of news articles and other publications have been created. In short, there is no shortage of accorately compiled information. We don't need such laws to stimulate database creation. The only reason it was suggested is because the information industry is already well-developed and its members want to prevent new competitors from appearing.
So, the problem with the proposed law is that it is harmful for the society, even though it looks like it's "protecting intellectual property" at first look.
What you say basically proves parent's point that you only need to take into account the marginal costs of making one LCD screen vs. one micro-diode screen, not capex of building the LCD production plants.
Jackson's movies sucks, but he is not the only director. If not for the copyrights, we might have had tens of different movies, plays, ballets, operas and computer games. Just like you have thousands of plays based on Romeo and Juliet and hundreds films.
That even was in the movie. "Three hundred lives of men I've walked this earth and now I have no time." says Gandalf in Rohan stable before mounting on Shadowfax. That's somewhere between 8000 and 20000 years.
Well, I've read the article, I've read half of the discussion at +4, I've read countless articles about the same thing on/. and everywhere else in the past, and it seems that everyone is blind. You want magic bullet, I will give you your f***ing magic bullet.
Software, not hardware! Applications, not OS and office. It is so simple, so obvious, everyone should be ashamed of not thinking/speaking/shouting about it. You can't teach physics with computers, you can't teach them with Windows, you can only teach physics with proper applications.
It is possible to write tons of physics software. Some examples: - real (simplified) applications physicists actually use in their work - Matlab calculations for all kinds of complex exercises - well-written online textbooks, exciting and interesting, interactive and hypertexted, animated and fun - every traditional physics experiement simulated - every traditional physics experiement extended with computer calculations/simulations - off-the-presses news from physics journals, translated and retold so that kids can understand at least some of the ideas
Have you seen any of that? Guess, no... How difficult is it to make that? Not really, takes time and money, but the biggest problems is that everyone is a f***ing idiot.
There are shitloads of materials on the Web already, there is lot of experience people have. The only problem is to take the best practices, make every teacher follow them (or be creative if he is up to that) and give them proper tools.
Honestly, I think that technology should be taught, but not used to teach, at least not up until a certain age. I disagree. You can use tech very successfully to teach.
It's not about the methods, it's not about the standardized tests. It's about the learning. I would say, it's not about form, it's about substance. Most people only care about how something looks, they don't care about the real situation.
You can (and should) use computers to teach kids. In fact, I believe that it is already feasible to produce a school which is 75% automated and is better than 95% of all schools. The trick is to approach teaching as you approach designing a CPU or launching a man to the Moon, or carrying out a terrorist attack. You need to think what you need to do, plan accordingly, execute your plans and constantly monitor your progress, adjusting your actions if necessary. While doing that you should concentrate on your real goals, which in case of education are making kids learn certain things.
If you stop caring about making them learn and start worrying about something else, you will fail.
A few days I've seen Matrix: Revolutions in IMAX - that's probably the highest resolution you can see it in. And although all skin problems are clearly visible (for all actors, especially for Morpheus), that's the choice the directors made. If you don't like that, watch a different movie where directors wanted to show fair-skinned beauties and spend time on that kind of make-up.
examiners aren't paid by the tax payers, the patent office is fully fee funded (by the patent applications and patent extensions). Stupid mistake, sorry. Indeed they are paid by the applicants and even manage to give some money to the government. But the point is still valid - they are paid by the society to do work of questionable merit. There won't be lawsuits if patent protection was not granted, because if there are not patents, you can't infringe on them.
Sure, you are right. But the fact still remains - 200 Ph.D.s are wasting their time (and taxpayer's money), because they are not doing anything productive. I agree that pharma companies need additional incentives currently in the form of patent protection, but I believe that there are better alternatives.
And I would not really feel much pity if all big pharmas go under tomorrow. They are worse then useless, because they waste their (our) resources on goals of secondary importance, while humanity's primary goal, achieving physical immortality is neglected.
And the alternatives might be much better. Compulsory licensing coupled with compulsory investment reimbursement may work better than current patents.
I spend $10 bn to develop a new drug and plan to sell 100 mln packages for $200 each. If you want to join the fun and sell your own improved version, pay me about $50-100 for each package you sell. Let's also limit the total amount of royalty payment and time period.
Just think how much good could these people do to the industry by providing valuable advice to researchers and developers about which venues of research to pursue, what their colleagues are doing, which ideas lead to dead-ends, etc. Instead they waste their time granting and filing patents which no longer seem to benefit the progress of society that much...
Not to mention that the time is worth something to the company as well. An executive worth 50$/hour spending 10 extra hours in the plane costs 500$ in extra salary alone.
You don't seem to understand what I am saying. Here it is in a boiled down form.
Artists don't own the ideas/concepts/information of their art, because ideas belong to everyone. Artists do own a physical representation of art they create.
You don't have to give it away, but you shouldn't prevent others from doing it.
You argue that "the creator of an artwork should be able to do with it as they wish, including controlling access to it". Unfortunately, controlling access to it is impossible without infridging upon the freedom of all other people in the world, which is clearly much worse then the artist losing a few bucks. You can control the access to physical copy all you want, but if you try dictating what I can and cannot download, you step too far.
Most of your concerns/comments can be easily answered, once you understand the two main points above.
Know your history... Or maybe I'm being slightly sarcastic. If so, I don't quite get the point of your sarcasm. Surely, he lived in entirely different time, but there are no reasons to believe that the same institute of art patronage can't work now. Most modern museums and theatres finance themselves through sponsorship, why can't modern cinema use the same system to some extent?
I have to take exception, by the way, with you calling NOLF2 unoriginal crap. Crap is, of course, purely subjective, and you're entitled to that opinion, but that game was groundbreaking in any number of ways (The slick 60's themed presentation, the depth of immersion created by being able to overhear to an entire conversation between two enemies, the humour in said conversations, the simple, but effective vehicles system). Well, the simple fact that other games sold well tells us that the gamers didn't like it. Market is not very good at appreciating art, you see... As for the slick presentation, we already had Max Payne, conversations we had in AvP2 and vehicles in Halo.
Libraries are only a short term lending system. No. Libraries are a proof that paid content can still compete with free. I am not suggesting that companies should pay for your free DVDs, I am just saying they mustn't limit your access to them if someone else provides them. And so nothing prevents them from packaging a better product and selling it at a premium.
And you'd be perfectly happy when your hard earned tax dollars were responsible for the making of another Matrix: Revolutions. I don't think a normal state would promote such films (the US state might). Check out French films, they are quite nice. And if I was French, I would be more than happy to support a film like, say, Winged Migration with my tax euros. Don't forget, Bronenosets Potyomkin was made with tax roubles.
As for independent sponsors - Who? The same people who support Metropolitan Museum. Rich people. Or may be fans of a particular director, who are more than happy to finance his next masterpiece.
Uh, hang on, say what? You're now saying money will be made from people buying DVDs? I thought the DVD was going to be free, or at least, free-minus-production-costs? or that the DivX and, naturally, all the extras would be downloadable for free. I hate when people pick out just parts of the message. First, I mentioned cinemas and they are not going anywhere - people will pay to see the movie on a big screen. As for DVDs, nowhere I said the studio should provide a free copy to everyone, just that they should not stop others from doing that. Those people who want to pay for the DVD would still do that. As for DivX and extras, how many extras can you get on P2P? Not that many, probably not more than a few dozens. So those who want to quickly see a inferior copy of the movie, usually do it for free. Those who want to get a quality product to enjoy, usually buy a DVD.
We all agree here that the story is ridiculous. But it seems to me that the journalists are just adding to that, not making it clearer.
1) What the hell is "Sun media", is it even remotedely similar to "Sun" in the UK? 2) "watching a movie on his laptop of a 10-year-old girl performing fellatio on an adult" - how does this scribbler know about that? Does the police tells this kind of info at press conferences? How do they know the age? I smell bullshit. 3) "Stealing Internet, or War Driving as it is sometimes called, is becoming more and more common among perverts trying to avoid online detection." and "A man... has become the first man in Toronto charged for allegedly stealing an Internet connection." - well, how do they know about all that perverts if they have only busted one? 4) This quill-driver thinks that saying "allegedly" a lot allows him to write any kind of crap... Sadly, it seems to be true. 5) The movie can easily be closed by pressing Alt+F4, takes only about a second. Unless the policeman run to the car and busted the door open, I don't think the cop had a chance to see it playing. I mean, even my parents don't usually manage to catch me watching movies of 10-year-old girls performing fellatio on adults - and they only have to open the door.:) 6) As a side note, I like the department name.;) "Police child exploitation section" - I though those guys were supposed to serve and protect, not to exploit the kids... 7) "They recovered 10 computers and thousands of CDs and floppy disks" - yeah, sure. We have a guy who can break into wireless networks and he still stores images on floppies. Puuuhhlease! Not to mention that even one thousand of CDs is one terabyte of data, which is fucking huge. People who can collect that much child porn, don't usually drive naked, while watching child porn and masturbating. Ergo, the scribbler is probably lying again. 8) "It involves some of the worst child pornography that we've ever seen" and "it's becoming typical of what we're seeing" - that's in the same paragraph. Can't you at least decide whether it is the worst or something you see every day?! 9) "child pornography... including young children and babies". Well, I thought the point of child porn was that it features young children.:-) Is there even a thing such as an old child?
Some of these concernes may be unwarranted, but overall the story reads just like a million or so of stories about scary paedophiles (although I applaud the officer for using the words "like-minded people" instead of "evil paedophile scum").
You are right, it is complete idiocy! The study went as follows: they took "12 words associated with child pornography", like probably lolita, child, preteen, hcpt, kiddie, kidsex, 10yo, 7yo, R@ygold, reelkiddymov, Tarbell and ddoggprn and searched for them. Of course, the files they downloaded contained lots of child porn - it's because they searched for them. In a similar study I can search for 12 words associated with a famous pop-singer (britney, brittany, brittney, britany, britny, briteny, britteny, briney, brittny, brintey, britanny, britiny) and then argue that 60% of KaZaA files are pirated MP3s of Ms Spears, while the remaining 39% are fake photos of Ms Spears in negligee.
You do realise that would mean that being a musician would then no longer be profitable? There would be no full time career musicians, only hobbyists... How much was Bach paid for distribution of his recordings? Did he have another job? Was he able to financially support himself? Thought so.:) If there is demand for quality music, then the society will find ways to support musicians. Many people will still pay for music, even though they can get it for free, simply because the music is valuable to them.
Where it all starts to look distinctly squiffy, however, is movies. The exact same arguments could be levelled at the movie industry, so tell me, when all movies are given away for free, who's going to stump up the money to make one? The state, may be? Or independent sponsors. Or may be filmmakers will be able to finance the movies through sales of various merchandise. Or may be people will still pay for movie tickets, simply because a large screen and a powerful sound system make it worth it. There is no reason to believe movies will not be made. There might be certain negative effect, but I believe it will be offset by a greater access to movies for everyone....Noone Lives Forever 2... I got this one. What a waste for my perfectly good 2 dollars. May be the reason it didn't do so well was that it was unoriginal crap? People chose to pay for other games, how dare they!
You claim that if EVERYONE stopped paying for art, it will disappear. Well, even then some artists will still create, but I was not talking about such extreme scenario. What I was arguing is that everyone should have free access to art, not they they may not pay for it. There are free books in libraries, but people still pay for their own copy. There are free books online, but people still buy paper copies. Same with music and movies - concerts, CDs, movie theatres and DVDs all add value to the barebones product. That's why people continue to shell out their money for art.
But I believe our world would be a little bit better if we allowed EVERYONE to have free access to any piece of art if he/she doesn't feel like paying. This would enrich our society, not impoverish it. Yes, there will be some freeloaders, who until now were paing thousands of dollars for art, but would decide to switch to pirated copies, but I somehow doubt there will be many of them...
It seems as if mergers and acqusitions always have some negative effect on the customer.
The funniest thing is they have negative effect on the companies too!:) Usually the buyer loses a lot and the seller gains a lot. The net result is usually loss. There have been numerous studies and almost every business newspaper/magazine wrote about it at least once in the past decade.
Killing a spammer is not a very good idea, but annoying him definitely is. There are tons of guides to do just that on the Net, if you happen to live close to a spamming company, don't let them live a week without something very annoying happening to their property.:) I am planning to do just that. Not sure what would work better, though, a simple brick thrown to the window or some super-glue in the lock...
The company calling the police was OK. But the judge jailing and finding the guy was not. Postfactum it should have been pretty obvious the guy was not serious.
Check out the Anonymous Remailer FAQ. I wanted to set up a server myself, but sadly, the connection I currently have is not suited for that too well...
5 years in prison for death threats looks too much. Especially since the guy obviously had no intent on actually doing anything harmful. Just shows again how sick the American society is.
Buy Nothing Day is an attempt to further spread the understanding you already have. You might like to check out the site and may be use their help/ideas to promote consumption abstinence.
Correct. But I would suggest that the idea of multiplication is idiocy. Is sharing 2 songs exactly 2 times worse than sharing one? Is sharing 1100 songs exactly 1100 times worse than sharing one? The statutory damage is supposedly intended to teach a lesson, right? If I was in favour of enforcing copyright (which I am not), I would suggest the same statutory damages for each time you are caught. And they should be at the lower end of the interval for non-commercial infridgement. Surely, a fine of 1000$ is enough to teach a 15-year old teenager a lesson, but it is not enough to fuck up his life forever. At the same time, 150000$ find can be used in case of a 25 year old pirate who had 20 CD-Rs at home and an online store to sell pirated software or in case of a company that installed the same copy of Photoshop on 500 computers.
The laws should be sane, otherwise they are worth as much as Gestapo that enforces them.
Slashdot Mirror
If I'm missing something here, PLEASE tell me.
Well, the main thing you are missing is that this law is intended to create and strengthen monopolies, which, while not beign evil per se, is usually considered harmful to the society.
Information is easily copiable, that's why basing the information economy around the premise that it is not is stupid. Artificially increasing transaction costs and trying to change the information exchange into a zero-sum game is bad, bad, bad!
The fallacy that everyone makes here is the idea that people (companies) are entitled to compensation for something they did in the past. Well, they don't, they are only entitled to what they agree with their customers in a fair contract. In some cases, such as creation of music, art in general, or useful inventions, copyright protection is in order, because without it there is a risk this particular item will not be created. But with facts there is no such risk. Phone directories are compiled, even though they are not protected by law, giant databases of news articles and other publications have been created. In short, there is no shortage of accorately compiled information. We don't need such laws to stimulate database creation. The only reason it was suggested is because the information industry is already well-developed and its members want to prevent new competitors from appearing.
So, the problem with the proposed law is that it is harmful for the society, even though it looks like it's "protecting intellectual property" at first look.
What you say basically proves parent's point that you only need to take into account the marginal costs of making one LCD screen vs. one micro-diode screen, not capex of building the LCD production plants.
Jackson's movies sucks, but he is not the only director. If not for the copyrights, we might have had tens of different movies, plays, ballets, operas and computer games. Just like you have thousands of plays based on Romeo and Juliet and hundreds films.
That even was in the movie. "Three hundred lives of men I've walked this earth and now I have no time." says Gandalf in Rohan stable before mounting on Shadowfax. That's somewhere between 8000 and 20000 years.
Well, I've read the article, I've read half of the discussion at +4, I've read countless articles about the same thing on /. and everywhere else in the past, and it seems that everyone is blind. You want magic bullet, I will give you your f***ing magic bullet.
Software, not hardware! Applications, not OS and office. It is so simple, so obvious, everyone should be ashamed of not thinking/speaking/shouting about it. You can't teach physics with computers, you can't teach them with Windows, you can only teach physics with proper applications.
It is possible to write tons of physics software. Some examples:
- real (simplified) applications physicists actually use in their work
- Matlab calculations for all kinds of complex exercises
- well-written online textbooks, exciting and interesting, interactive and hypertexted, animated and fun
- every traditional physics experiement simulated
- every traditional physics experiement extended with computer calculations/simulations
- off-the-presses news from physics journals, translated and retold so that kids can understand at least some of the ideas
Have you seen any of that? Guess, no... How difficult is it to make that? Not really, takes time and money, but the biggest problems is that everyone is a f***ing idiot.
There are shitloads of materials on the Web already, there is lot of experience people have. The only problem is to take the best practices, make every teacher follow them (or be creative if he is up to that) and give them proper tools.
P.S. Pardon my swearing.
Honestly, I think that technology should be taught, but not used to teach, at least not up until a certain age.
I disagree. You can use tech very successfully to teach.
It's not about the methods, it's not about the standardized tests. It's about the learning.
I would say, it's not about form, it's about substance. Most people only care about how something looks, they don't care about the real situation.
You can (and should) use computers to teach kids. In fact, I believe that it is already feasible to produce a school which is 75% automated and is better than 95% of all schools. The trick is to approach teaching as you approach designing a CPU or launching a man to the Moon, or carrying out a terrorist attack. You need to think what you need to do, plan accordingly, execute your plans and constantly monitor your progress, adjusting your actions if necessary. While doing that you should concentrate on your real goals, which in case of education are making kids learn certain things.
If you stop caring about making them learn and start worrying about something else, you will fail.
A few days I've seen Matrix: Revolutions in IMAX - that's probably the highest resolution you can see it in. And although all skin problems are clearly visible (for all actors, especially for Morpheus), that's the choice the directors made. If you don't like that, watch a different movie where directors wanted to show fair-skinned beauties and spend time on that kind of make-up.
examiners aren't paid by the tax payers, the patent office is fully fee funded (by the patent applications and patent extensions).
Stupid mistake, sorry. Indeed they are paid by the applicants and even manage to give some money to the government. But the point is still valid - they are paid by the society to do work of questionable merit. There won't be lawsuits if patent protection was not granted, because if there are not patents, you can't infringe on them.
Sure, you are right. But the fact still remains - 200 Ph.D.s are wasting their time (and taxpayer's money), because they are not doing anything productive. I agree that pharma companies need additional incentives currently in the form of patent protection, but I believe that there are better alternatives.
And I would not really feel much pity if all big pharmas go under tomorrow. They are worse then useless, because they waste their (our) resources on goals of secondary importance, while humanity's primary goal, achieving physical immortality is neglected.
And the alternatives might be much better. Compulsory licensing coupled with compulsory investment reimbursement may work better than current patents.
I spend $10 bn to develop a new drug and plan to sell 100 mln packages for $200 each. If you want to join the fun and sell your own improved version, pay me about $50-100 for each package you sell. Let's also limit the total amount of royalty payment and time period.
Just think how much good could these people do to the industry by providing valuable advice to researchers and developers about which venues of research to pursue, what their colleagues are doing, which ideas lead to dead-ends, etc. Instead they waste their time granting and filing patents which no longer seem to benefit the progress of society that much...
Not to mention that the time is worth something to the company as well. An executive worth 50$/hour spending 10 extra hours in the plane costs 500$ in extra salary alone.
Artists don't own the ideas/concepts/information of their art, because ideas belong to everyone. Artists do own a physical representation of art they create.
You don't have to give it away, but you shouldn't prevent others from doing it.
You argue that "the creator of an artwork should be able to do with it as they wish, including controlling access to it". Unfortunately, controlling access to it is impossible without infridging upon the freedom of all other people in the world, which is clearly much worse then the artist losing a few bucks. You can control the access to physical copy all you want, but if you try dictating what I can and cannot download, you step too far.
Most of your concerns/comments can be easily answered, once you understand the two main points above.
Know your history... Or maybe I'm being slightly sarcastic.
If so, I don't quite get the point of your sarcasm. Surely, he lived in entirely different time, but there are no reasons to believe that the same institute of art patronage can't work now. Most modern museums and theatres finance themselves through sponsorship, why can't modern cinema use the same system to some extent?
I have to take exception, by the way, with you calling NOLF2 unoriginal crap. Crap is, of course, purely subjective, and you're entitled to that opinion, but that game was groundbreaking in any number of ways (The slick 60's themed presentation, the depth of immersion created by being able to overhear to an entire conversation between two enemies, the humour in said conversations, the simple, but effective vehicles system).
Well, the simple fact that other games sold well tells us that the gamers didn't like it. Market is not very good at appreciating art, you see... As for the slick presentation, we already had Max Payne, conversations we had in AvP2 and vehicles in Halo.
Libraries are only a short term lending system.
No. Libraries are a proof that paid content can still compete with free. I am not suggesting that companies should pay for your free DVDs, I am just saying they mustn't limit your access to them if someone else provides them. And so nothing prevents them from packaging a better product and selling it at a premium.
And you'd be perfectly happy when your hard earned tax dollars were responsible for the making of another Matrix: Revolutions.
I don't think a normal state would promote such films (the US state might). Check out French films, they are quite nice. And if I was French, I would be more than happy to support a film like, say, Winged Migration with my tax euros. Don't forget, Bronenosets Potyomkin was made with tax roubles.
As for independent sponsors - Who?
The same people who support Metropolitan Museum. Rich people. Or may be fans of a particular director, who are more than happy to finance his next masterpiece.
Uh, hang on, say what? You're now saying money will be made from people buying DVDs? I thought the DVD was going to be free, or at least, free-minus-production-costs? or that the DivX and, naturally, all the extras would be downloadable for free.
I hate when people pick out just parts of the message. First, I mentioned cinemas and they are not going anywhere - people will pay to see the movie on a big screen. As for DVDs, nowhere I said the studio should provide a free copy to everyone, just that they should not stop others from doing that. Those people who want to pay for the DVD would still do that. As for DivX and extras, how many extras can you get on P2P? Not that many, probably not more than a few dozens. So those who want to quickly see a inferior copy of the movie, usually do it for free. Those who want to get a quality product to enjoy, usually buy a DVD.
We all agree here that the story is ridiculous. But it seems to me that the journalists are just adding to that, not making it clearer.
:) ;) "Police child exploitation section" - I though those guys were supposed to serve and protect, not to exploit the kids... :-) Is there even a thing such as an old child?
1) What the hell is "Sun media", is it even remotedely similar to "Sun" in the UK?
2) "watching a movie on his laptop of a 10-year-old girl performing fellatio on an adult" - how does this scribbler know about that? Does the police tells this kind of info at press conferences? How do they know the age? I smell bullshit.
3) "Stealing Internet, or War Driving as it is sometimes called, is becoming more and more common among perverts trying to avoid online detection." and "A man... has become the first man in Toronto charged for allegedly stealing an Internet connection." - well, how do they know about all that perverts if they have only busted one?
4) This quill-driver thinks that saying "allegedly" a lot allows him to write any kind of crap... Sadly, it seems to be true.
5) The movie can easily be closed by pressing Alt+F4, takes only about a second. Unless the policeman run to the car and busted the door open, I don't think the cop had a chance to see it playing. I mean, even my parents don't usually manage to catch me watching movies of 10-year-old girls performing fellatio on adults - and they only have to open the door.
6) As a side note, I like the department name.
7) "They recovered 10 computers and thousands of CDs and floppy disks" - yeah, sure. We have a guy who can break into wireless networks and he still stores images on floppies. Puuuhhlease! Not to mention that even one thousand of CDs is one terabyte of data, which is fucking huge. People who can collect that much child porn, don't usually drive naked, while watching child porn and masturbating. Ergo, the scribbler is probably lying again.
8) "It involves some of the worst child pornography that we've ever seen" and "it's becoming typical of what we're seeing" - that's in the same paragraph. Can't you at least decide whether it is the worst or something you see every day?!
9) "child pornography... including young children and babies". Well, I thought the point of child porn was that it features young children.
Some of these concernes may be unwarranted, but overall the story reads just like a million or so of stories about scary paedophiles (although I applaud the officer for using the words "like-minded people" instead of "evil paedophile scum").
Some more info about Internet child porn: original version and a censored version at Wikipedia.
You are right, it is complete idiocy! The study went as follows: they took "12 words associated with child pornography", like probably lolita, child, preteen, hcpt, kiddie, kidsex, 10yo, 7yo, R@ygold, reelkiddymov, Tarbell and ddoggprn and searched for them. Of course, the files they downloaded contained lots of child porn - it's because they searched for them. In a similar study I can search for 12 words associated with a famous pop-singer (britney, brittany, brittney, britany, britny, briteny, britteny, briney, brittny, brintey, britanny, britiny) and then argue that 60% of KaZaA files are pirated MP3s of Ms Spears, while the remaining 39% are fake photos of Ms Spears in negligee.
You do realise that would mean that being a musician would then no longer be profitable? There would be no full time career musicians, only hobbyists... :) If there is demand for quality music, then the society will find ways to support musicians. Many people will still pay for music, even though they can get it for free, simply because the music is valuable to them.
...Noone Lives Forever 2...
How much was Bach paid for distribution of his recordings? Did he have another job? Was he able to financially support himself? Thought so.
Where it all starts to look distinctly squiffy, however, is movies. The exact same arguments could be levelled at the movie industry, so tell me, when all movies are given away for free, who's going to stump up the money to make one?
The state, may be? Or independent sponsors. Or may be filmmakers will be able to finance the movies through sales of various merchandise. Or may be people will still pay for movie tickets, simply because a large screen and a powerful sound system make it worth it. There is no reason to believe movies will not be made. There might be certain negative effect, but I believe it will be offset by a greater access to movies for everyone.
I got this one. What a waste for my perfectly good 2 dollars. May be the reason it didn't do so well was that it was unoriginal crap? People chose to pay for other games, how dare they!
You claim that if EVERYONE stopped paying for art, it will disappear. Well, even then some artists will still create, but I was not talking about such extreme scenario. What I was arguing is that everyone should have free access to art, not they they may not pay for it. There are free books in libraries, but people still pay for their own copy. There are free books online, but people still buy paper copies. Same with music and movies - concerts, CDs, movie theatres and DVDs all add value to the barebones product. That's why people continue to shell out their money for art.
But I believe our world would be a little bit better if we allowed EVERYONE to have free access to any piece of art if he/she doesn't feel like paying. This would enrich our society, not impoverish it. Yes, there will be some freeloaders, who until now were paing thousands of dollars for art, but would decide to switch to pirated copies, but I somehow doubt there will be many of them...
It seems as if mergers and acqusitions always have some negative effect on the customer.
:) Usually the buyer loses a lot and the seller gains a lot. The net result is usually loss. There have been numerous studies and almost every business newspaper/magazine wrote about it at least once in the past decade.
The funniest thing is they have negative effect on the companies too!
Killing a spammer is not a very good idea, but annoying him definitely is. There are tons of guides to do just that on the Net, if you happen to live close to a spamming company, don't let them live a week without something very annoying happening to their property. :) I am planning to do just that. Not sure what would work better, though, a simple brick thrown to the window or some super-glue in the lock...
The company calling the police was OK. But the judge jailing and finding the guy was not. Postfactum it should have been pretty obvious the guy was not serious.
Check out the Anonymous Remailer FAQ. I wanted to set up a server myself, but sadly, the connection I currently have is not suited for that too well...
5 years in prison for death threats looks too much. Especially since the guy obviously had no intent on actually doing anything harmful. Just shows again how sick the American society is.
Did YOU take your daily intervals?
Or building a high tower to place solar cells on.
Buy Nothing Day is an attempt to further spread the understanding you already have. You might like to check out the site and may be use their help/ideas to promote consumption abstinence.
Correct. But I would suggest that the idea of multiplication is idiocy. Is sharing 2 songs exactly 2 times worse than sharing one? Is sharing 1100 songs exactly 1100 times worse than sharing one? The statutory damage is supposedly intended to teach a lesson, right? If I was in favour of enforcing copyright (which I am not), I would suggest the same statutory damages for each time you are caught. And they should be at the lower end of the interval for non-commercial infridgement. Surely, a fine of 1000$ is enough to teach a 15-year old teenager a lesson, but it is not enough to fuck up his life forever. At the same time, 150000$ find can be used in case of a 25 year old pirate who had 20 CD-Rs at home and an online store to sell pirated software or in case of a company that installed the same copy of Photoshop on 500 computers.
The laws should be sane, otherwise they are worth as much as Gestapo that enforces them.