I agree that the issue boils down to one of supply and demand. One one hand, you have a base of people who effectively made the supply infinite, as you say. On the other hand you have the Industry setting artificially high demand through legislation and pricing (lack of fair use, price fixing).
The RIAA / MPAA are facing similar issues and have chosen to deal with them in noticably different ways. The MPAA has at least delt with the issue of value added commodities.
Lets assume for a moment that I can get a hold of a movie without hassle from somewhere on the internet. Lets say that I like the movie as well. I now have the following choice. I have availiable to me the effectively free version (movie only at reduced bitrate video, possibly reduced channel sound) and the DVD version for a cost at the store. These version differences alone are unlikely to motivate me to buy the DVD.
Ah, but wait! The DVD also includes multiple endings, film analysis, director's commentary and perhaps director's cut additional footage. These additions are the value add that the MPAA has introduced to motivate people to continue buying DVDs.
Meanwhile, the RIAA has not added value to their product while enforcing prices that do not match the value of the product. I will use movie soundtracks as an example since a valid comparison exists. The soundtrack for a given movie costs only slightly less than the movie itself. Most would reason that $(value of movie content other than soundtrack) != $(cost of movie) - $(cost of soundtrack). This is an imbalance.
Granted, the MPAA also does its share of Dr. Evil cackling (broadcast flag, region encoding, DeCSS). They, however, have started to adapt.
It is this adaptation that must continue - not strong arm legistlation - for both the RIAA and MPAA to continue in anything resembling their current form.
Go into your local University store and you'll see Apples all over the place and Linux.
Point of Information: Not always. I work for the ResNet at a small liberal arts college (~1500). There are two other people I know of running Linux on campus (Gentoo and Redaht or Debian - Redhat here) The Macs fare a little better - maybe about 5%. Unfortunately, most of the Mac users are not power users. The labs run about 40% Macs and 60% Windoze. But its telling that the admins haven't clsoed the nidump vulnerability on the Macs.
Honestly, I hope its more like you paint it elsewhere.
It seems obvious to me. Microsoft is just as upset as the rest of the open source community about the license changes to XFree86. This is just their way of protesting;)
I work at the ResNet side of a small liberal arts college. Even though we are suppose to be upper teir, its amazing what one hears.
"Oh, I got all of the Windows Updates at the beginning of the year - I should be fine." Then later... "Why is my internet gone? I think you all need to fix something." (we cut it)
Worms continue to propage on our network due to users like this. One literally cannot install a copy of XP without becoming infected with something while installing the patches.
I can only imagine what Joe Sixpack cable user does.
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err... its was *Kevin*, no?
I agree that the issue boils down to one of supply and demand. One one hand, you have a base of people who effectively made the supply infinite, as you say. On the other hand you have the Industry setting artificially high demand through legislation and pricing (lack of fair use, price fixing).
The RIAA / MPAA are facing similar issues and have chosen to deal with them in noticably different ways. The MPAA has at least delt with the issue of value added commodities.
Lets assume for a moment that I can get a hold of a movie without hassle from somewhere on the internet. Lets say that I like the movie as well. I now have the following choice. I have availiable to me the effectively free version (movie only at reduced bitrate video, possibly reduced channel sound) and the DVD version for a cost at the store. These version differences alone are unlikely to motivate me to buy the DVD.
Ah, but wait! The DVD also includes multiple endings, film analysis, director's commentary and perhaps director's cut additional footage. These additions are the value add that the MPAA has introduced to motivate people to continue buying DVDs.
Meanwhile, the RIAA has not added value to their product while enforcing prices that do not match the value of the product. I will use movie soundtracks as an example since a valid comparison exists. The soundtrack for a given movie costs only slightly less than the movie itself. Most would reason that $(value of movie content other than soundtrack) != $(cost of movie) - $(cost of soundtrack). This is an imbalance.
Granted, the MPAA also does its share of Dr. Evil cackling (broadcast flag, region encoding, DeCSS). They, however, have started to adapt.
It is this adaptation that must continue - not strong arm legistlation - for both the RIAA and MPAA to continue in anything resembling their current form.
Does Linux add up to lower TCO? Ask the Experts.
Sounds to me like they've got it about right.
Point of Information: Not always. I work for the ResNet at a small liberal arts college (~1500). There are two other people I know of running Linux on campus (Gentoo and Redaht or Debian - Redhat here) The Macs fare a little better - maybe about 5%. Unfortunately, most of the Mac users are not power users. The labs run about 40% Macs and 60% Windoze. But its telling that the admins haven't clsoed the nidump vulnerability on the Macs.
Honestly, I hope its more like you paint it elsewhere.
Huh?
"Oh, I got all of the Windows Updates at the beginning of the year - I should be fine." Then later ... "Why is my internet gone? I think you all need to fix something." (we cut it)
Worms continue to propage on our network due to users like this. One literally cannot install a copy of XP without becoming infected with something while installing the patches.
I can only imagine what Joe Sixpack cable user does.