The point of everything that Microsoft (and most companies) does is to make money.
"First off, anyone who wanted Halo 2 has it for Xbox."
The long-delayed arrival of the original Halo on the Windows platform was a big deal. It did pretty good business. A similar argument -- "anybody who wants Halo already has it for XBox" -- would not have proved accurate.
"Secondly, Halo isn't that good a game- it got a big name as a great Xbox game because Xbox had jack shit else to play."
Halo was decent, Halo 2 was awful. IMHO, of course. Which is, irrelevant. Both sold, which made Microsoft money.
"Thirdly, noone is going to upgrade their OS just to buy a praticular game."
Already covered by other posters.
"This isn't going to push VIsta sales, its just going to kill sales of Halo 2 PC."
I am quite sure that Microsoft has already done the cost analysis. On the plus side, they have:
Avoiding backward-compatibility time and expense
Incentive to upgrade
On the negative side, they have:
Smaller audience
If the conclusion they've made from this analysis seems silly to you, keep in mind that the Halo franchise has already paid for itself severalfold. They don't really need the additional revenue from sales of Halo 2 to XP users. But they do need to build Windows Vista awareness, and this is a tool in their arsenal.
If I were the brand manager for the Halo series, I would call this "taking one for the team." It happens a lot in business.
"They haven't gone down anywhere near as much as the cost to produce them has."
Most of the price you pay for a CD (or most products, for that matter) goes towards salaries and overhead. Salaries have gone up in the past 20 years, as have overhead items such as electricity, shipping, and the like. You're correct that the manufacturing cost of the plastic has gone down, but that's a very small small slice of the pie. It's the old COG vs. NCOS, gross-vs-net thing that makes the retail business so fun.
FWIW, based on my experience in buying pressed data CDs in qty and watching the pricing falling over the years, my educated guess is that the cost of the CD/jewel case/booklet has remained a constant of about 10% of the retail price of the CD. (Cue the "so they're making 90% margin!" idiots in three, two, one...)
"I would venture a guess that the profit margins are as good or better than they were 20 years ago."
Agreed, I think they're about the same. CD prices have been in freefall over the past couple of years, but I think that's a correction for overcharging during the late 90's boom, and the net margin over time is largely flat. Similarly, profit margins on cars, clothing, and lots of other products have also remained the same over time. Nothing wrong with that.
"Oh, the CD's were probably cheaper to make, but the recordings are state protected intellectual monopolies."
So is Coca-Cola. Only Universal (or whomever) can legally sell a Kelly Clarkson CD, and only the Coca-Cola corporation can sell the Coca-Cola formula. This is the case with innumerable brands and industries.
"Pricing is set as a function of what the customers can pay, not as a function of production cost enforced by competition."
You're correct that CD pricing is set according to the supply/demand curve (as are most things; notable exceptions being things like milk, which have government-induced price controls), but as these are semi-commodities, they're affected by competitive forces. Coke and Pepsi can get away with charging a little more than the competition, since they have an "intellectual monopoly" on the brand, as you've put it, but they don't have free reign. If they go too high, enough customers will decide that Royal Crown tastes just fine.
"Revenue when you have monopoly control is maximized when a higher number of customers are unable to afford the product, so that the more surplus capital the consumers have, the higher the price will rise."
True -- but only to a point. The law gives Universal (or whatever her record company is) and Kelly Clarkson a temporary monopoly on their work, but they are both beholden to the demand for Kelly Clarkson. The record companies, artists and songwriters also had legally granted temporary monopolies on lots of CDs that were complete and utter failures last year.
"This reminds me of when CD's were introduced. LP's were $8 and CD's were $16. They told us "Unfortunately, there are only 3 plants in the world that can make these disks. As soon as more production comes on line, these will be cheaper than LP's because they're cheaper to make". I guess they were lying."
Huh? That was back in the 80's, right? I was buying them, too. My recollection is that it was a few years before they came down to $16, but let's use your number.
$16 in 1985 dollars is $28 in 2005 dollars. If prices hadn't gone down, you'd be paying $28 per CD today. The average price of a new CD is now less than $13. That's about $7 in 1985 dollars -- in other words, if CD prices hadn't gone down, as you claim, we'd have been paying $7 each for them back then.
And the average consumer wouldn't have much use for my car. It weighs less than a ton, barely holds two people (forget about luggage), and it cost $50K, despite the fact that it was built by the British, who are notoriously bad at building road-worthy vehicles. Sure, it does an amazing job of sticking to the road and gets me to 60 in about 4.5 seconds, but is that really important to the average consumer?
Yet the company that makes them can't build them fast enough.
The thing about marketing is that you don't always have to go for 100% of the market. Sometimes, 10% or even 1% will do you just fine.
"They'll claim that in time, the price to the consumer will come down. (See also: "The history of compact disc pricing")."
For the benefit of our younger readers who might think CD prices have always been about the same: when I started buying them in 1984, I paid about $20 per CD, to play on my $250 CD player.
That's the equivalent of a $37 CD playing on a $460 CD player, kids!
By comparison, in 2003 the average price of a new CD was $13.42, and by the end of 2004, it was down to $12.95. In other words, CD prices have fallen by 2/3 in the time I've been buying them. I wish I could say the same thing about clothes, food and gas.
The point is: just be glad you were born in the 80's or 90's. You're paying 66% less for CDs than I was at your age, and if you happen to be a fan of P2P, you can get all the music you want for free. The other point is that people who try to tell you that CD prices haven't gone down are, quite simply, lying to you.
If the total number of protesters really is approaching 100,000 people, that's a hundredth of one percent of the muslim population.
Remember all the anti-war protests in the USA when the US started invading Iraq? Thousands upon thousands of people -- if there were 30,000 protesters, then that's a hundredth of one percent of the American population, too. Yet while their views were shared by many people who otherwise chose not to protest, it would not be accurate to say that they represented all of the American people.
"One just has to love the irony of protesting against being called violent using violence."
That's not why they're protesting. What gave you that idea -- have you read any of the news accounts of the protests?
They are protesting the simple depiction of their prophet, and not the fact that some of the cartoons referenced violence. Yes, Alanis, that would be ironic if it weren't the case, but it's not.
"So they're getting all bent out of shape about a comic depicting them as violent and what do they do to protest the comic? They get violent, start riots and deface things."
You're presently marked +4, Insightful, so there are a few other people who don't understand, either.
Muslims are upset over the simple act of depicting their prophet. Not because the prophet is depicted as violent.
Most of the cartoons are quite mild... just a guy in middle eastern garb. They're easy enough to find with a little googling... check them out yourself; perhaps it will help you understand a little better.
Back in December a woman in Chicago tried that defense -- that she was just sharing stuff with Kazaa because she wanted to listen to the tracks before she bought them. She even rejected the RIAA's settlement offer of $3.5K. The judge didn't buy it, and now she's out $22.5K.
I've never had a lack of ways to sample music make me feel like I was forced to pirate something just to make an informed buying decision. Some of the resources I use:
The iTMS preview feature
The iTMS / Amazon "people who bought this also bought that" recommendation engines have helped me discover lots of cool artists that fit within my somewhat obscure musical tastes.
Hearing them on the radio - -specifically, XM. My XM receiver displays the artist name and song title, so snagging it off of the iTMS is easy.
My success rate of buying only stuff I like has been very high, just using the tools available. Not once have I felt that my hand was being forced into installing Kazaa.
"I suppose not everyone is as good at buying CD's they like as I am perhaps, but I think the artists should start to use the power of the internet instead of letting the RIAA buy lawyers new cars for them."
Interesting that your experience has been different than mine. I've found lots of great music -- legally -- using the power of the Internet. And, those few people I've met who work in the music industry are hard-working people who don't happen to have very nice cars. At any rate, the music industry isn't too much different than the computer peripheral industry, the software industry, the frozen foods industry, and the clothing industry. To wit:
The ones at the top get paid a lot... many, many times the average industry worker's salary.
The industries have trade groups. The trade groups do things like hiring lawyers, and lobbying Washington.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect the music industry to be any different -- particularly if one is using this as justification for putting a bunch off files in one's Kazaa share directory.
"unlike patents, you need to charge everyone the same. If you only charge a group of people which you deem 'bad', Then your claim that you need to protect your tradmark at all becomes very shaky."
Oh -- one thing I forgot to mention.
I've done more licensing agreements than I can count (including ones that have given me the right to use another company's trademark) and it's common knowledge that licensors can and do charge different fees to different licensees. I do not believe that trademark law adds such restrictions to contract negotiations.
"unlike patents, you need to charge everyone the same. If you only charge a group of people which you deem 'bad', Then your claim that you need to protect your tradmark at all becomes very shaky."
That's fine. Make the license charge $1.00 for all perpetuity for anybody who qualifies for a license. The point of the program is to not give licenses to people that they don't want to have 'em -- the aforementioned spyware/adware cretins. It's not about extorting these people because they do bad things... it's about witholding permission in the first place.
"That means that BitTorrent may find itself having to choose between suing the makers of an Open Source BT client or giving up their mark. Which will they choose?"
If the Open Source client is adware or spyware, then I hope they choose to sue them. There's no excuse for releasing adware or spyware, even if you're bathed in the blood of OSS.
If the client is not adware/spyware, no need to sue them. Charge 'em a license fee of one dollar for all of eternity, and move on.
The point of the program is to stop the bad guys from using the name, not to make money on licensing.
The AC's point was intellectual property. It's in BitTorrent's best interest to protect their own intellectual property (their trademark). It's not in BitTorrent's best interest to make efforts to protect the intellectual property of others (the copyrights held by the musicians, record companies, programmers, game companies, filmmakers, and so on).
Obviously it's a double standard. The fact is that money makes the world go 'round. Bram (and his investors) want to make money. So do the folks behind Kazaa, eDonkey, etc. Just because you write software that helps people save money by avoiding paying copyright holders (the usual "but it can be used to get game patches and Linux distributions, too" clause applies here), this doesn't mean that you have to surrender to some free-love, crunchy granola RMS-style existence where you eschew material wealth. Bram would like a shiny new S-Class just like all those copyright holders would. No shame in acknowledging this.
That's the point that should be made -- not that trademarks are somehow more sacrosanct than copyrights. They're both intellectual property.
"As long as the Software is not using the trade mark BitTorrent within its name, it should not be affected."
and it isn't adware or spyware. That's the whole point of the licensing program... to go after the adware/spyware people. Not the OSS software. Bad guys, not good guys.
You can aswer this one by putting yourself in their position. If you were writing the terms of a licensing agreement, would you put in a clause that said, in effect, that if the software substantially changed, then the license must be re-applied for?
If your answer to this is something like "well, yes, of course... duh!" then you can safely assume that BitTorrent's lawyers are smart enough to put in their own clause.
I've read a squillion licensing agreements in my time (and that's a metric squillion, not an imperial squillion) and they all have these sorts of protections built in. That's why the small print is necessary... there's a lot of stuff to cover.
"Wont this just hurt the makers of Free/OSS software?"
No, unless said free/OSS software is adware or spyware.
"The adware people are the ones making money, and as such, can pay the fee."
Software must meet security standards before the vendor is allowed to use the name. Adware and spyware vendors won't be given a license, no matter how much they pay.
This is what the summary stated:
"The company will set the lawyers on anyone using the BitTorrent name, and trademark, if they are using it to distribute spyware or adware"
In other words, I don't think this is a RTFA situation, but a RTFS issue.
Huh? The point of the licensing program is to stop the adware makers and the spamware makers from applying the "BitTorrent" name to their crap.
How will that affect the rest of us?
"However, the sorts of hobbyist programmers writing BitTorrent clients aren't the sorts who are going to mount a legal fight."
The program is designed to stop the adware / spamware writers. These typically aren't "hobbyists."
"I really hope that people settle on another name for it (preferably with the same "bt" abbreviation) that is the same, instead of the name fragmenting into eight zillion different names (I remember Sony calling Firewire "iLink"...). "ByteTorrent?""
You, me, the people who write the open source BitTorrent clients, and virtually everybody else in the world can keep calling it BitTorrent. The bad guys -- again, the adware/spamware writers at whom this is targetted -- will not, because they will not get a license to use the name, no matter how much they pay. If an adware or spamware writer is inconvenienced, this really has little effect on my world -- and, I presume, yours.
"Most of the big spammers and adware purveyors seems to have lots more money than I do, and than Open Source developers do. Sounds to me like the fee will hit the wrong people."
You'll only get to use the license if your software meets their security standards; ie. no adware or spyware. If you're distributing adware or spyware you don't get to use the name, no matter how much you pay.
I think there's still a disconnect between most commenters, and the purpose of the licensing program. It is designed to stop the bad people from using the name, and to protect the good people. Putting the licensing requirement in place, with the stipulation that anybody who uses the name must adhere to the no adware/no spyware standard, is the essential first step they must take so they can chase the bad guys.
I doubt they will even bother asking for a license fee from the good guys since that is not the point of the licensing program. They are not using it to make money. They are not using it to inconvience the good guys. They are using it with the express purpose of causing grief for the bad guys who soil the BitTorrent name.
"Yes, but sooner or later a company will need thiere software to have a certain feature, it currently does not. So they will pay someone to add it."
Yup. The software market would change drastically. If companies needed a feature that they couldn't get by pirating some third-party work, they'd hire a contractor.
A future in which programmers are treated the same way as we want to treat musicians would be great if you're a contract programmer or you're already in the habit of giving your stuff away for free, but a bummer for you if you're used to the "write once, sell many times" model. Likewise, a similar future for composers, lyricists and musicians would be fine for you if you wrote your own stuff and largely made money playing in coffeehouses. Otherwise, it would suck.
"Yeah, right. As long as P2P is around nobody can sing a song, compose lyrics, record a song, perform at your local coffee shop, write a screenplay, make a movie, or do anything else creative at all. You're all dead in your tracks."
I'm aware you were being sarcastic, but think of it this way. Say that once we put the musicians in their place, we made a law outlawing the sale of software, or legalizing software piracy, or something similar. Software development would continue to exist (e.g. the OSS movement would continue on), but a lot of people who make their living writing software would be mighty pissed.
"The thing is, nobody said that the p2p service would follow traditional (usd) $20/album costs."
CDs are the US equivalent of $20 in France? Ouch. No wonder they want to do this. CD prices haven't averaged $20 in the USA in years -- the average price of a new release is now sub $13 here in the US.
"I believe it has been stastistically shown (take that with as much salt as you like) that if everyone pays a flat fee, and Nielsen-box equivalents are used, the Entertainment Industry would actually make more money by allowing unlimited downloads via any medium than they get through current means."
Unfortunately, a lot of songwriters and performing artists (the ones who are the first, essential step in producing the music) don't agree, or don't understand this. The breadth of the catalog offered by the Yahoo! and Napster "all you can eat" plans is woefully inadequate compared to the catalog offered by Apple's pay-per-song model. I found this out the hard way when I bought my girlfriend a subscription to the Yahoo! store to go along with the Zen Vision I got her. I did some digging by asking friends at Yahoo! and Napster, and it seems that it's often because the songwriter, composer and/or artist don't want to release their music via the flat-fee licensing model.
If certain French lawmakers have their way, said songwriters/composers/artists wouldn't get that choice any more. Composers, along with novelists and poets, are typically among the three lowest-paid professions, so it's interesting to see that the French want to further disenfranchise them... but there you have it.
"That's silly. First off Lawyers aren't supposed to lie."
Alas, but sometimes they do. Sometimes they're misleading. Sometimes they deliberately omit things to confuse the issue (as I believe is the case here in the lawyer's page you read). Sometimes the lying is subtle, but often you hear it when they say "my client is innocent, your honor" when the lawyer is pretty damn sure that the client is not.
The lawyer's page requires that we use those critical reading skills we learned in high school. If something sounds untrue, it probably is. The exercise, left to the reader, is to examine the lawyer's claim and ask what isn't being said.
"Really, do you truly believe this? [that each case should be tried on its own merits]"
Indeed I do. Lots of people here have slippery-sloped this -- "if this woman is innocent, then everybody the RIAA has sued is innocent!" and the like. That might sound righteous on the face of it, but what if it were reversed? "Joe Teenager was caught with 5,000 pirated songs in his share directory. So, everybody the RIAA sues is probably similarly guilty!"
"Each case should be tried on its own merits" is one of those truisms that extends beyond piracy, and beyond civil law. Think about some instances and I think you'll see what I mean. But in this instance... perhaps they have the wrong woman. Perhaps it was her kid who did the pirating, and you don't happen to believe that adults should be responsible for the actions of children under their care in civil cases. There are thousands of possible outcomes, none of which relate to any other given case.
Slashdot Mirror
"Whats the point of this?"
The point of everything that Microsoft (and most companies) does is to make money.
"First off, anyone who wanted Halo 2 has it for Xbox."
The long-delayed arrival of the original Halo on the Windows platform was a big deal. It did pretty good business. A similar argument -- "anybody who wants Halo already has it for XBox" -- would not have proved accurate.
"Secondly, Halo isn't that good a game- it got a big name as a great Xbox game because Xbox had jack shit else to play."
Halo was decent, Halo 2 was awful. IMHO, of course. Which is, irrelevant. Both sold, which made Microsoft money.
"Thirdly, noone is going to upgrade their OS just to buy a praticular game."
Already covered by other posters.
"This isn't going to push VIsta sales, its just going to kill sales of Halo 2 PC."
I am quite sure that Microsoft has already done the cost analysis. On the plus side, they have:
On the negative side, they have:
If the conclusion they've made from this analysis seems silly to you, keep in mind that the Halo franchise has already paid for itself severalfold. They don't really need the additional revenue from sales of Halo 2 to XP users. But they do need to build Windows Vista awareness, and this is a tool in their arsenal.
If I were the brand manager for the Halo series, I would call this "taking one for the team." It happens a lot in business.
"They haven't gone down anywhere near as much as the cost to produce them has."
Most of the price you pay for a CD (or most products, for that matter) goes towards salaries and overhead. Salaries have gone up in the past 20 years, as have overhead items such as electricity, shipping, and the like. You're correct that the manufacturing cost of the plastic has gone down, but that's a very small small slice of the pie. It's the old COG vs. NCOS, gross-vs-net thing that makes the retail business so fun.
FWIW, based on my experience in buying pressed data CDs in qty and watching the pricing falling over the years, my educated guess is that the cost of the CD/jewel case/booklet has remained a constant of about 10% of the retail price of the CD. (Cue the "so they're making 90% margin!" idiots in three, two, one...)
"I would venture a guess that the profit margins are as good or better than they were 20 years ago."
Agreed, I think they're about the same. CD prices have been in freefall over the past couple of years, but I think that's a correction for overcharging during the late 90's boom, and the net margin over time is largely flat. Similarly, profit margins on cars, clothing, and lots of other products have also remained the same over time. Nothing wrong with that.
"Oh, the CD's were probably cheaper to make, but the recordings are state protected intellectual monopolies."
So is Coca-Cola. Only Universal (or whomever) can legally sell a Kelly Clarkson CD, and only the Coca-Cola corporation can sell the Coca-Cola formula. This is the case with innumerable brands and industries.
"Pricing is set as a function of what the customers can pay, not as a function of production cost enforced by competition."
You're correct that CD pricing is set according to the supply/demand curve (as are most things; notable exceptions being things like milk, which have government-induced price controls), but as these are semi-commodities, they're affected by competitive forces. Coke and Pepsi can get away with charging a little more than the competition, since they have an "intellectual monopoly" on the brand, as you've put it, but they don't have free reign. If they go too high, enough customers will decide that Royal Crown tastes just fine.
"Revenue when you have monopoly control is maximized when a higher number of customers are unable to afford the product, so that the more surplus capital the consumers have, the higher the price will rise."
True -- but only to a point. The law gives Universal (or whatever her record company is) and Kelly Clarkson a temporary monopoly on their work, but they are both beholden to the demand for Kelly Clarkson. The record companies, artists and songwriters also had legally granted temporary monopolies on lots of CDs that were complete and utter failures last year.
"This reminds me of when CD's were introduced. LP's were $8 and CD's were $16. They told us "Unfortunately, there are only 3 plants in the world that can make these disks. As soon as more production comes on line, these will be cheaper than LP's because they're cheaper to make". I guess they were lying."
Huh? That was back in the 80's, right? I was buying them, too. My recollection is that it was a few years before they came down to $16, but let's use your number.
$16 in 1985 dollars is $28 in 2005 dollars. If prices hadn't gone down, you'd be paying $28 per CD today. The average price of a new CD is now less than $13. That's about $7 in 1985 dollars -- in other words, if CD prices hadn't gone down, as you claim, we'd have been paying $7 each for them back then.
And the average consumer wouldn't have much use for my car. It weighs less than a ton, barely holds two people (forget about luggage), and it cost $50K, despite the fact that it was built by the British, who are notoriously bad at building road-worthy vehicles. Sure, it does an amazing job of sticking to the road and gets me to 60 in about 4.5 seconds, but is that really important to the average consumer?
Yet the company that makes them can't build them fast enough.
The thing about marketing is that you don't always have to go for 100% of the market. Sometimes, 10% or even 1% will do you just fine.
"They'll claim that in time, the price to the consumer will come down. (See also: "The history of compact disc pricing")."
For the benefit of our younger readers who might think CD prices have always been about the same: when I started buying them in 1984, I paid about $20 per CD, to play on my $250 CD player.
That's the equivalent of a $37 CD playing on a $460 CD player, kids!
By comparison, in 2003 the average price of a new CD was $13.42, and by the end of 2004, it was down to $12.95. In other words, CD prices have fallen by 2/3 in the time I've been buying them. I wish I could say the same thing about clothes, food and gas.
The point is: just be glad you were born in the 80's or 90's. You're paying 66% less for CDs than I was at your age, and if you happen to be a fan of P2P, you can get all the music you want for free. The other point is that people who try to tell you that CD prices haven't gone down are, quite simply, lying to you.
If the total number of protesters really is approaching 100,000 people, that's a hundredth of one percent of the muslim population.
Remember all the anti-war protests in the USA when the US started invading Iraq? Thousands upon thousands of people -- if there were 30,000 protesters, then that's a hundredth of one percent of the American population, too. Yet while their views were shared by many people who otherwise chose not to protest, it would not be accurate to say that they represented all of the American people.
"One just has to love the irony of protesting against being called violent using violence."
That's not why they're protesting. What gave you that idea -- have you read any of the news accounts of the protests?
They are protesting the simple depiction of their prophet, and not the fact that some of the cartoons referenced violence. Yes, Alanis, that would be ironic if it weren't the case, but it's not.
"So they're getting all bent out of shape about a comic depicting them as violent and what do they do to protest the comic? They get violent, start riots and deface things."
You're presently marked +4, Insightful, so there are a few other people who don't understand, either.
Muslims are upset over the simple act of depicting their prophet. Not because the prophet is depicted as violent.
Most of the cartoons are quite mild... just a guy in middle eastern garb. They're easy enough to find with a little googling... check them out yourself; perhaps it will help you understand a little better.
Back in December a woman in Chicago tried that defense -- that she was just sharing stuff with Kazaa because she wanted to listen to the tracks before she bought them. She even rejected the RIAA's settlement offer of $3.5K. The judge didn't buy it, and now she's out $22.5K.
I've never had a lack of ways to sample music make me feel like I was forced to pirate something just to make an informed buying decision. Some of the resources I use:
My success rate of buying only stuff I like has been very high, just using the tools available. Not once have I felt that my hand was being forced into installing Kazaa.
"I suppose not everyone is as good at buying CD's they like as I am perhaps, but I think the artists should start to use the power of the internet instead of letting the RIAA buy lawyers new cars for them."
Interesting that your experience has been different than mine. I've found lots of great music -- legally -- using the power of the Internet. And, those few people I've met who work in the music industry are hard-working people who don't happen to have very nice cars. At any rate, the music industry isn't too much different than the computer peripheral industry, the software industry, the frozen foods industry, and the clothing industry. To wit:
I don't think it's reasonable to expect the music industry to be any different -- particularly if one is using this as justification for putting a bunch off files in one's Kazaa share directory.
"unlike patents, you need to charge everyone the same. If you only charge a group of people which you deem 'bad', Then your claim that you need to protect your tradmark at all becomes very shaky."
Oh -- one thing I forgot to mention.
I've done more licensing agreements than I can count (including ones that have given me the right to use another company's trademark) and it's common knowledge that licensors can and do charge different fees to different licensees. I do not believe that trademark law adds such restrictions to contract negotiations.
"unlike patents, you need to charge everyone the same. If you only charge a group of people which you deem 'bad', Then your claim that you need to protect your tradmark at all becomes very shaky."
That's fine. Make the license charge $1.00 for all perpetuity for anybody who qualifies for a license. The point of the program is to not give licenses to people that they don't want to have 'em -- the aforementioned spyware/adware cretins. It's not about extorting these people because they do bad things... it's about witholding permission in the first place.
"That means that BitTorrent may find itself having to choose between suing the makers of an Open Source BT client or giving up their mark. Which will they choose?"
If the Open Source client is adware or spyware, then I hope they choose to sue them. There's no excuse for releasing adware or spyware, even if you're bathed in the blood of OSS.
If the client is not adware/spyware, no need to sue them. Charge 'em a license fee of one dollar for all of eternity, and move on.
The point of the program is to stop the bad guys from using the name, not to make money on licensing.
The AC's point was intellectual property. It's in BitTorrent's best interest to protect their own intellectual property (their trademark). It's not in BitTorrent's best interest to make efforts to protect the intellectual property of others (the copyrights held by the musicians, record companies, programmers, game companies, filmmakers, and so on).
Obviously it's a double standard. The fact is that money makes the world go 'round. Bram (and his investors) want to make money. So do the folks behind Kazaa, eDonkey, etc. Just because you write software that helps people save money by avoiding paying copyright holders (the usual "but it can be used to get game patches and Linux distributions, too" clause applies here), this doesn't mean that you have to surrender to some free-love, crunchy granola RMS-style existence where you eschew material wealth. Bram would like a shiny new S-Class just like all those copyright holders would. No shame in acknowledging this.
That's the point that should be made -- not that trademarks are somehow more sacrosanct than copyrights. They're both intellectual property.
"As long as the Software is not using the trade mark BitTorrent within its name, it should not be affected."
and it isn't adware or spyware. That's the whole point of the licensing program... to go after the adware/spyware people. Not the OSS software. Bad guys, not good guys.
You can aswer this one by putting yourself in their position. If you were writing the terms of a licensing agreement, would you put in a clause that said, in effect, that if the software substantially changed, then the license must be re-applied for?
If your answer to this is something like "well, yes, of course... duh!" then you can safely assume that BitTorrent's lawyers are smart enough to put in their own clause.
I've read a squillion licensing agreements in my time (and that's a metric squillion, not an imperial squillion) and they all have these sorts of protections built in. That's why the small print is necessary... there's a lot of stuff to cover.
"Wont this just hurt the makers of Free/OSS software?"
No, unless said free/OSS software is adware or spyware.
"The adware people are the ones making money, and as such, can pay the fee."
Software must meet security standards before the vendor is allowed to use the name. Adware and spyware vendors won't be given a license, no matter how much they pay.
This is what the summary stated:
In other words, I don't think this is a RTFA situation, but a RTFS issue.
Huh? The point of the licensing program is to stop the adware makers and the spamware makers from applying the "BitTorrent" name to their crap.
How will that affect the rest of us?
"However, the sorts of hobbyist programmers writing BitTorrent clients aren't the sorts who are going to mount a legal fight."
The program is designed to stop the adware / spamware writers. These typically aren't "hobbyists."
"I really hope that people settle on another name for it (preferably with the same "bt" abbreviation) that is the same, instead of the name fragmenting into eight zillion different names (I remember Sony calling Firewire "iLink"...). "ByteTorrent?""
You, me, the people who write the open source BitTorrent clients, and virtually everybody else in the world can keep calling it BitTorrent. The bad guys -- again, the adware/spamware writers at whom this is targetted -- will not, because they will not get a license to use the name, no matter how much they pay. If an adware or spamware writer is inconvenienced, this really has little effect on my world -- and, I presume, yours.
"Most of the big spammers and adware purveyors seems to have lots more money than I do, and than Open Source developers do. Sounds to me like the fee will hit the wrong people."
You'll only get to use the license if your software meets their security standards; ie. no adware or spyware. If you're distributing adware or spyware you don't get to use the name, no matter how much you pay.
I think there's still a disconnect between most commenters, and the purpose of the licensing program. It is designed to stop the bad people from using the name, and to protect the good people. Putting the licensing requirement in place, with the stipulation that anybody who uses the name must adhere to the no adware/no spyware standard, is the essential first step they must take so they can chase the bad guys.
I doubt they will even bother asking for a license fee from the good guys since that is not the point of the licensing program. They are not using it to make money. They are not using it to inconvience the good guys. They are using it with the express purpose of causing grief for the bad guys who soil the BitTorrent name.
..please mod this one up. Please!
"Yes, but sooner or later a company will need thiere software to have a certain feature, it currently does not. So they will pay someone to add it."
Yup. The software market would change drastically. If companies needed a feature that they couldn't get by pirating some third-party work, they'd hire a contractor.
A future in which programmers are treated the same way as we want to treat musicians would be great if you're a contract programmer or you're already in the habit of giving your stuff away for free, but a bummer for you if you're used to the "write once, sell many times" model. Likewise, a similar future for composers, lyricists and musicians would be fine for you if you wrote your own stuff and largely made money playing in coffeehouses. Otherwise, it would suck.
"Yeah, right. As long as P2P is around nobody can sing a song, compose lyrics, record a song, perform at your local coffee shop, write a screenplay, make a movie, or do anything else creative at all. You're all dead in your tracks."
I'm aware you were being sarcastic, but think of it this way. Say that once we put the musicians in their place, we made a law outlawing the sale of software, or legalizing software piracy, or something similar. Software development would continue to exist (e.g. the OSS movement would continue on), but a lot of people who make their living writing software would be mighty pissed.
"The thing is, nobody said that the p2p service would follow traditional (usd) $20/album costs."
CDs are the US equivalent of $20 in France? Ouch. No wonder they want to do this. CD prices haven't averaged $20 in the USA in years -- the average price of a new release is now sub $13 here in the US.
"I believe it has been stastistically shown (take that with as much salt as you like) that if everyone pays a flat fee, and Nielsen-box equivalents are used, the Entertainment Industry would actually make more money by allowing unlimited downloads via any medium than they get through current means."
Unfortunately, a lot of songwriters and performing artists (the ones who are the first, essential step in producing the music) don't agree, or don't understand this. The breadth of the catalog offered by the Yahoo! and Napster "all you can eat" plans is woefully inadequate compared to the catalog offered by Apple's pay-per-song model. I found this out the hard way when I bought my girlfriend a subscription to the Yahoo! store to go along with the Zen Vision I got her. I did some digging by asking friends at Yahoo! and Napster, and it seems that it's often because the songwriter, composer and/or artist don't want to release their music via the flat-fee licensing model.
If certain French lawmakers have their way, said songwriters/composers/artists wouldn't get that choice any more. Composers, along with novelists and poets, are typically among the three lowest-paid professions, so it's interesting to see that the French want to further disenfranchise them... but there you have it.
"That's silly. First off Lawyers aren't supposed to lie."
Alas, but sometimes they do. Sometimes they're misleading. Sometimes they deliberately omit things to confuse the issue (as I believe is the case here in the lawyer's page you read). Sometimes the lying is subtle, but often you hear it when they say "my client is innocent, your honor" when the lawyer is pretty damn sure that the client is not.
The lawyer's page requires that we use those critical reading skills we learned in high school. If something sounds untrue, it probably is. The exercise, left to the reader, is to examine the lawyer's claim and ask what isn't being said.
"Really, do you truly believe this? [that each case should be tried on its own merits]"
Indeed I do. Lots of people here have slippery-sloped this -- "if this woman is innocent, then everybody the RIAA has sued is innocent!" and the like. That might sound righteous on the face of it, but what if it were reversed? "Joe Teenager was caught with 5,000 pirated songs in his share directory. So, everybody the RIAA sues is probably similarly guilty!"
"Each case should be tried on its own merits" is one of those truisms that extends beyond piracy, and beyond civil law. Think about some instances and I think you'll see what I mean. But in this instance... perhaps they have the wrong woman. Perhaps it was her kid who did the pirating, and you don't happen to believe that adults should be responsible for the actions of children under their care in civil cases. There are thousands of possible outcomes, none of which relate to any other given case.