However, we are the good guys. We did not start this war.
Sounds exactly like the religious, environmentalist, anti-abortion, animal rights wackos... Hell I think Bush probably used that line in one of his speeches on the Iraq invasion. No matter what you think would be accomplished, history has shown that such a group will become perverted towards extremists ends and likely make things worse in the power struggle between government and the systems union..
We are the defenders - defending our systems from attacks (both legal and illegal). They are the aggressors, seeking to insert themselves.
You're confusing defender and manager. How many systems do you actually own? Who defines the "morality?" Don't you see the potential danger of the organization you're advocating, and that unlike government there is no feedback loop from the people. Given the existing methods of influencing change haven't been exhausted (especially educating the public) there is no need for a power hungry special interest group unless control is the ultimate purpose.
thousands of petty little dictators from all walks of life (government, religion, busybodies, corporate) have zeroed in their guns and are beginning to fire.... We, the technically inclined... the engineers who conceptualized, and then actualized this network... we hold the cards. We build and install the equipment, we write the software, and we understand what's at stake. We need to organize, and we need to do it now.
Yes that's exactly what we need, yet another special interest group with it's own disruptive agenda motivated for "the good of the people." Isn't that exactly what those other petty little dictators are doing?
If only we could find a way to abolish these Copyright and Patent issues we might have progress, which is what copyrights and patents are supposed to provide.
Because destroying incentives which lead to capital investment and collapsing industries based on intellectual property would clearly help progress. What is needed is massive reform, not complete abolition.
The abuse of the "general welfare clause" to mean that the Federal government can do whatever it wants is a fairly recent perversion of the Constitution,
You make the mistake that the framers of the Constitution were of one mind with one meaning. The wide ranging view of general welfare was a Hamiltonian interpretation, not a recent event.
and blame for that can be laid at the feet of FDR, probably the worst president we ever had. Just about every mess we're in can be tied back to his bullshit.
Depends on your point of view. He would be terrible for those who would rather suffer by blindly following idealism, or great by those who would rather prosper following pragmatic change. The US wasn't exactly a utopia before FDR took office. It doesn't matter what government you have, what laws, there will be shit to deal with because the world isn't perfect.
and the 10th amendment, have no real meaning.
The 10th amendment has no meaning... that war was fought and lost, and there isn't much support for a replay.
Why in the Hell would the framers of the Constitution spend so much time on the Constitution only to provide an easy "out" for any expansion that the Federal government wanted?
The Constitution isn't some tightly locked document clear and perfect. If you think that, then even if federal government meddling in education was unconstitutional, there wouldn't be a remedy since Judicial Review is also an interpreted power.
I find 'b' highly unlikely, and 'a' is just plain absurd.
How about C - Not at the top of their list when trying to keep the 13 colonies together after the failure of the Articles of Confederation. This was especially true in an agrarian society where literacy to read the bible was the focus of education. In such a society only the aristocracy would need education, and which represented significant voice - hence the method of electing the president and senators. Industrialization and the great social and economic changes that came with it, spurred the need for universal education which the framers of the Constitution may not necessarily have seen.
Stop campaigning the federal government for educational things. The federal government has NOT been granted the right to deal with education in any way.
"To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"
Education improves the social and economic welfare of a nation.
The reason US Companies didn't choose to manufacture this technology domestically is because Wall Street only cares about projects that turn a profit in 4 months.
Yeah, we should go back to the good ol' dotcom days when turning a profit in 10 years was enough to get Wall Street dollars.
Do away with Wall Street's drag on R&D, fund it directly.
Fund what? There's R&D investment going on, It just isn't necessarily in new consumer products, but rather improving efficiency. Given the current economic climate, evolutionary new products from most big companies aren't going to help the bottom line. So instead spend the bulk of R&D money which is used on evolutionary development, and buy new software, training, and other systems to reduce costs - and maintain the smaller amount of risk captial investing in small companies hoping to strike the "next big thing." Economic recovery is going to come out of disruptive technology, and most Wall Street companies don't handle disruptive technology well. They prefer to adopt it buy buying stakes in small startups rather than trying to constantly redirect a monolithic organization.
Definately! Eccentric genius is much better (and believable) than the disturbed kid who never grew up. Though, I wouldn't call the Gene Wilder version sadistic, he didn't intentionally want to hurt anybody. He would just stand idly and watch the self destruction unfold and hopefully teach the kids and their parent a lesson. I always felt his pleasure came from the cruel irony, than the actual limited harm caused.
The thing is--there isn't a Woz-type engineer at Apple anymore, nor does there need to be. From an engineering standpoint, absolutely NOTHING Apple sells today is the least bit groundbreaking...That is "Jobs territory" and is why engineering talent at Apple is secondary.
From a leadership standpoint you are correct, however, from a nuts and bolts engineering talent is extremely important to realize the product. The engineering challenge at Apple isn't the feature checkboxes, it's getting the right checkboxes into the form the designers create.
This is something that can only happen when there is a monopoly involved. If there were a real and competitive environment, a vendor would not be able to do this to their customers without them choosing the competition.
This can happen in any market, look at the cola wars. The problem isn't that there isn't competition in the OS space, it's that nobody has convinced consumers that there are good alternatives. Blame it on Linux's lack of marketing.
the reason we have secret ballots is simple: the framers of the constitution (any western constitution) realized that people could only truly vote their conscience, express their political preference, if they could do so without fear of reprisal or ridicule. anonymity is a cornerstone of a free and democratic society.
it's kind of a shame that ms. dyson doesn't realize that.
If you read the article you would see that she realizes that. "[Anonymity] should be allowed. People should be able to make that choice, and there are many reasons to make that choice" At the same time, she also realizes it's not perfect and encourages some bad behavior. With anonymous ballots you get people who vote their conscience, but you also get morons who vote completely uninformed since they know they won't be challenged. One of the side effects is that politics becomes less about voting records or plans on solving issues, and more about name recognition.
My disagreement lies with with the assumption that words themselves (from a non-authority figure) can impinge on ones' rights.
What about SPAM, the people next door throwing a loud party, somebody following you with a megaphone saying "meat is murder." It's not necessarily the words themselves, but the ability to deliver that can disrupt the life of others. One of the issues is that you can't really seperate speech from its delivery, so any abridgement of the latter consequently adbridges the former. Further, the right to retribution is related to the fundamental right of association. A moderator kicking somebody off a message board for racist comments may be just as much about their right to not associate, as the writer's right to free speech.
One the one hand, you've got the people in favor of it claiming that abortion isn't "killing" anything because the fetus isn't alive and thinking yet.
However, following that logic, then mothers should have the ability to "abort" a child for several months following the birth. Not until several months after birth do memories (a basic building block of sentience) begin to form.
Further along that path of thought; mothers (or guardians, I guess) should be allowed to "abort" children with severe mental disabilities. If these children could not pass a sentience test then, in following the logic of the pro-choice followers, there should be absolutely nothing wrong with having them killed for convenience.
You're missing the basic conflict, it's not necessarily about thinking. There is a general agreement that a person has rights, the question is at what point is a person a person? That of course is a philosophical question that has been debated for thousands of years. There is no "answer" to the abortion question, it's a matter for social dialog and agreement which is subject to change.
she's dead wrong. this is a fundamental RIGHT, or should be considered as such.
Just because it's a fundamental right, doesn't mean that it's perfect and that we shouldn't lament the faults. I'm sure there many folks on slashdot wish there was a better way to select leadership given that most voters are uninformed about candidates and issues. Even though the current system sadly amounts to selecting who has the better ad campaign, the alternative can lead to gross abuse. So we begrudgingly deal with the fact that elected officials are the ones people will follow, not necessarily the ones best suited to lead.
How about the right to free speech? This is so abridged that regular people feel the need to speak anonymously, lest they be fired from their work, denied a new job, sued, etc. So, it seems to me that anonymity is a symptom of the problem rather than the fundamental right that is being violated.
The right to something doesn't mean you don't have to deal with the consequences. Getting fired, sued, heckled, ignored etc are all consequences of your actions not an abridgement of your rights.
No. Some property rights are NATURAL that we should have it. For example, it is natural that I should have ownership of a pencil on my desk. It is in my possession, I can easily exclude others from using it, and if others use it, I can't use it. Regarding physical objects, we have a very natural property rights where taking those rights away (such as in communism) would be highly unusual.
Physical property rights are based on cultural views, not some fundamental natural fact. There have been socities where the idea of excluding the rest of the group from using a tool would be foreign. The success of property owning societies does not mean it is the "natural" state of things. While class cultures are dominant because they better promote technological and economical advancement, it does not dismiss the existence of viable communal societies throughout human history.
But the strange idea that one should own his words (or, in this case, some lines of code that he wrote) didn't arise until modern times (17th century or so), and while not everything new should be criticized, it is a strong evidence that "intellectual property rights" are highly unusual and unnatural.
Technology is the driving force in challenging and forcing social change. The strange idea that people should own things didn't arise until the excesses created by the domestication of plants and animals. When technology got to the point that humans no longer needed to share everything with their band to survive, new ideas like property ownership and social classes developed. Before the written word, there was no idea of an original author whose name was associated with the story. There was no need since the retelling of stories were all essentially derivative works, with as much influence from the speaker as the original teller. So it isn't that strange that with the invention of the printing press new social agreements would *naturally* arise.
I don't think existing copyright law really encourages creation of new work and/or benefits the public---if this is the true intent, we should first do away with retroactive copyright extensions and the life of the author + 65 years crap
I would say current copyright law does encourage the creation of new works, but I would agree that the same can be accomplished with more limited protections (on the order of 5-10 years). Other significant changes are necessary to place the law in better balance since the public benefit portion of the compromise has all but been ignored.
If we don't, we get nonsense slogans like "copying is theft", and we have stupid people believing in this ridiculous propaganda.
The propaganda on both sides of the debate won't go away. Like any complex issue where there is really no perfect answer, those pushing their agenda will try to sway the uneducated masses with emotion. The only way to combat such tactics is to educate people so they can engage in informed debate and make decisions (either way) - which of course is easier said than done.
False. There are some rights that are a *natural* consequence of being a human being. Such as the right to not be enslaved, or the right to use your brain, or the right to speak your thoughts, or the right of self-defense against thieves/murderers. *Study Greek, Roman, and Scottish philosophy.*
*Study modern philosophy* If natural rights really are fundamental, why does the list of them differ from person to person? The fundamental problem with the idea of natural rights is that they are either derived from a moral (this is what's good), or theological (endowed by the creator) sources; neither of which can be well defined. If rights are truly based on the nature of humans then that would mean that infringing upon them would result in an unstable state which cannot be maintained. However, history has shown long-lasting stable societies where members actively supported slavery, intellectual and physical persecution.
And as a result of those rights being natural, they come from within each individual. Both natural rights and power comes from the people and is devolved upon government with our consent... not the other way around.
If rights truly came from the individual, then rights and responsibilities would come via an "opt in" method. However, we see the opposite as the case, the default state is for society to impose on the individual rights and responsibilities. If there is dispute about the list of rights, it is not until society comes to agreement (often through violent conflict) that the new rights are granted. Property rights, free speech, slavery, due process, taxation, if you want to define it as "natural" or not... it really doesn't matter what gets agreed upon, what is important and what leads to social stability is the agreement itself.
Thing is, large portion of the society actively dislikes copyright. Authors are a minority. Spammers and identity thieves are also a disliked minority.
Society dislikes a lot of things, doesn't mean those groups don't deserve legal protections. The majority has consistently pushed to abolish free speech, regulate private matters, and tried impose it's ideals, with only Constitutional law to keep its whims in check. I would argue in the digital age, intellectual property creators are a significant minority that can't be ignored. Manufacturing, even for physical objects, has become trivial. Anybody can make an MP3 player, computer chip, cell phone, or toy extremely cheaply - what is valuable is the design, which is not cheap to create.
What happens to the "free market" thing? If publishing music and software without copyright and DRM is not profitable, then people should just switch to farming. Western city-dwellers speak of how there's not enough food in the world, there's not enough oil in the world, but none of them desires to farm the land and enjoys driving the cars.
The masses will always complain. They will say schools aren't good enough, yet not want their taxes increased; they say they don't earn enough money, yet pay $5 for a latte. Western societies are built to be "unhappy," which is one of the reason they have progressed so much more in terms of technology. As Adam Smith noted - there are unlimited wants, so the wants satiated by every bit of progress will be replaced by new ones.
Free market and lack of copyright would destroy music/software publishing industries, and probably only book printing industry would survive since they actually manufacture physical stuff.
Which would be a sad loss, not just for individuals in software and music, but for society which loses the ideas and culture from specialized creators.
Taking a step back. Lets say Spore had perfect DRM and very few could afford it, what is lost? All that is lost is the spreading of ideas which can lead to new ones. There really is no clear concrete loss, civilization won't collapse. On the flip side without copyright you lose investment, and viability of specialization which means Spore isn't created and you end up with the similar results. Now if the creator and public compromise, as is the intent of copyright law, you can end up with a win-win. The author has incentive to invest (time & money) in creating knowing they have the opportunity to recover that investment, but at some point their creation must be freed to the public so that the social gain can be fully realized.
As I said, this compromise has been perverted to move too far in favor of personal gain for the creator. The problems with DRM at the time of release (an annoyance) is far less a worry than the problems with DRM down the road when the work is supposed to be public and can't be accessed (a breach of the original agreeement). Unfortunately people on both sides of the argument as well as legislators lose perspective on the original intent of copyright, a compromise between an individual and society to promote progress, and gravitate towards the extreme they like best.
But understand this: copyright and patents are not natural rights, they are granted by the society.
All rights are.
They are rights to take away other people's freedoms. Copyright may have served books well, but in "digital millennium" they are barely enforceable and outdated anachronisms of a past era.
Copyrights are seen as a necessary evil to encourage risk taking where there is a high cost to create but low cost to duplicate. And yes, I do realize that people will still create culture even when there are no copyright protections, but the quality will suffer due to resource restrictions. I guess we should also give up on managing SPAM, identity theft, DNA profiling, etc. since in the information age it's easy to do and barely enforcable.
Let's face it, copyright serves so companies and people like me could earn money off their products. It's not a right, it's a tool. No, scratch that -- more like a toy. A toy that should be taken away from the babies.
A tool like the ability to vote, or getting judged by your peers. These things, like copyright, are not necessary parts of a functioning society, but they have been demonstrated to improve the quality of life. That said, the "babies" have gotten out of control moving the balance between the creator and public too far in favor of the creator. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, reevaluate the implementation of copyright, don't just abandon the idea.
They do not understand that piracy cannot be defeated by technical means, so they'll just keep on layering increasingly nasty DRM on the games.
Actually publishers do understand this, so PC games are becoming an after thought. Games used to be designed for PCs then ported to consoles, now it's becoming the opposite and we're stuck with watered down gameplay and poor control schemes. The only real PC-centric development will be service games like MMOs where publishers control the game, you just rent the access.
Which can mean hardware locking ala moving exclusively to consoles and stopping releases PC versions. Sure there is piracy in console space, but it's far less since the need to physically mod the system discourages a large number of people.
While I enjoy slasdot, there's something to be said about sports parties where you help hold a college girl upside down over a keg... if only we could get something similar after getting modded up to 5:)
Chess is simulated warfare from the viewpoint of the generals, where the soldiers don't matter and the strategy, tactics, and outcome of the battle is everything -- just like real life
Football is simulted warfare with strategy and tactics where the soldiers do matter.
If the spandex outfits, butt grabbing, and superfluous piles-o-guys don't cue you in, that's simply a lack of perception on your part. It doesn't change anything. Football is as intentionally homoerotic as "professional wresting", for many of the same reasons, and no amount of rationalizing will change that.
If you look at any sport with that mentality then every one of them is homoerotic. In fact, I'd say chess is the worst of them all, since every almost piece is shaped like a penis.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds exactly like the religious, environmentalist, anti-abortion, animal rights wackos... Hell I think Bush probably used that line in one of his speeches on the Iraq invasion. .
No matter what you think would be accomplished, history has shown that such a group will become perverted towards extremists ends and likely make things worse in the power struggle between government and the systems union.
You're confusing defender and manager. How many systems do you actually own? Who defines the "morality?" Don't you see the potential danger of the organization you're advocating, and that unlike government there is no feedback loop from the people.
Given the existing methods of influencing change haven't been exhausted (especially educating the public) there is no need for a power hungry special interest group unless control is the ultimate purpose.
Yes that's exactly what we need, yet another special interest group with it's own disruptive agenda motivated for "the good of the people."
Isn't that exactly what those other petty little dictators are doing?
That kind of parenting made information a heroine addicted stripper, now come over here and rub your data against me for a dollar.
Because destroying incentives which lead to capital investment and collapsing industries based on intellectual property would clearly help progress. What is needed is massive reform, not complete abolition.
You make the mistake that the framers of the Constitution were of one mind with one meaning. The wide ranging view of general welfare was a Hamiltonian interpretation, not a recent event.
Depends on your point of view. He would be terrible for those who would rather suffer by blindly following idealism, or great by those who would rather prosper following pragmatic change. The US wasn't exactly a utopia before FDR took office. It doesn't matter what government you have, what laws, there will be shit to deal with because the world isn't perfect.
The 10th amendment has no meaning... that war was fought and lost, and there isn't much support for a replay.
The Constitution isn't some tightly locked document clear and perfect. If you think that, then even if federal government meddling in education was unconstitutional, there wouldn't be a remedy since Judicial Review is also an interpreted power.
How about C - Not at the top of their list when trying to keep the 13 colonies together after the failure of the Articles of Confederation. This was especially true in an agrarian society where literacy to read the bible was the focus of education. In such a society only the aristocracy would need education, and which represented significant voice - hence the method of electing the president and senators. Industrialization and the great social and economic changes that came with it, spurred the need for universal education which the framers of the Constitution may not necessarily have seen.
"To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"
Education improves the social and economic welfare of a nation.
Trick question, they are both mixed economies
Basically both countries are coming to points somewhere in the middle of the economic spectrum from different sides.
Yeah, we should go back to the good ol' dotcom days when turning a profit in 10 years was enough to get Wall Street dollars.
Fund what? There's R&D investment going on, It just isn't necessarily in new consumer products, but rather improving efficiency. Given the current economic climate, evolutionary new products from most big companies aren't going to help the bottom line. So instead spend the bulk of R&D money which is used on evolutionary development, and buy new software, training, and other systems to reduce costs - and maintain the smaller amount of risk captial investing in small companies hoping to strike the "next big thing."
Economic recovery is going to come out of disruptive technology, and most Wall Street companies don't handle disruptive technology well. They prefer to adopt it buy buying stakes in small startups rather than trying to constantly redirect a monolithic organization.
Definately! Eccentric genius is much better (and believable) than the disturbed kid who never grew up.
Though, I wouldn't call the Gene Wilder version sadistic, he didn't intentionally want to hurt anybody. He would just stand idly and watch the self destruction unfold and hopefully teach the kids and their parent a lesson. I always felt his pleasure came from the cruel irony, than the actual limited harm caused.
From a leadership standpoint you are correct, however, from a nuts and bolts engineering talent is extremely important to realize the product. The engineering challenge at Apple isn't the feature checkboxes, it's getting the right checkboxes into the form the designers create.
This can happen in any market, look at the cola wars. The problem isn't that there isn't competition in the OS space, it's that nobody has convinced consumers that there are good alternatives. Blame it on Linux's lack of marketing.
Maybe he wasn't a min/maxer and just wanted to roleplay.
If you read the article you would see that she realizes that. "[Anonymity] should be allowed. People should be able to make that choice, and there are many reasons to make that choice"
At the same time, she also realizes it's not perfect and encourages some bad behavior. With anonymous ballots you get people who vote their conscience, but you also get morons who vote completely uninformed since they know they won't be challenged. One of the side effects is that politics becomes less about voting records or plans on solving issues, and more about name recognition.
Anonymity is necessary, but not ideal.
What about SPAM, the people next door throwing a loud party, somebody following you with a megaphone saying "meat is murder." It's not necessarily the words themselves, but the ability to deliver that can disrupt the life of others. One of the issues is that you can't really seperate speech from its delivery, so any abridgement of the latter consequently adbridges the former.
Further, the right to retribution is related to the fundamental right of association. A moderator kicking somebody off a message board for racist comments may be just as much about their right to not associate, as the writer's right to free speech.
You're missing the basic conflict, it's not necessarily about thinking.
There is a general agreement that a person has rights, the question is at what point is a person a person? That of course is a philosophical question that has been debated for thousands of years.
There is no "answer" to the abortion question, it's a matter for social dialog and agreement which is subject to change.
Just because it's a fundamental right, doesn't mean that it's perfect and that we shouldn't lament the faults.
I'm sure there many folks on slashdot wish there was a better way to select leadership given that most voters are uninformed about candidates and issues. Even though the current system sadly amounts to selecting who has the better ad campaign, the alternative can lead to gross abuse. So we begrudgingly deal with the fact that elected officials are the ones people will follow, not necessarily the ones best suited to lead.
The right to something doesn't mean you don't have to deal with the consequences. Getting fired, sued, heckled, ignored etc are all consequences of your actions not an abridgement of your rights.
Physical property rights are based on cultural views, not some fundamental natural fact. There have been socities where the idea of excluding the rest of the group from using a tool would be foreign. The success of property owning societies does not mean it is the "natural" state of things. While class cultures are dominant because they better promote technological and economical advancement, it does not dismiss the existence of viable communal societies throughout human history.
Technology is the driving force in challenging and forcing social change. The strange idea that people should own things didn't arise until the excesses created by the domestication of plants and animals. When technology got to the point that humans no longer needed to share everything with their band to survive, new ideas like property ownership and social classes developed. Before the written word, there was no idea of an original author whose name was associated with the story. There was no need since the retelling of stories were all essentially derivative works, with as much influence from the speaker as the original teller.
So it isn't that strange that with the invention of the printing press new social agreements would *naturally* arise.
I would say current copyright law does encourage the creation of new works, but I would agree that the same can be accomplished with more limited protections (on the order of 5-10 years). Other significant changes are necessary to place the law in better balance since the public benefit portion of the compromise has all but been ignored.
The propaganda on both sides of the debate won't go away. Like any complex issue where there is really no perfect answer, those pushing their agenda will try to sway the uneducated masses with emotion. The only way to combat such tactics is to educate people so they can engage in informed debate and make decisions (either way) - which of course is easier said than done.
*Study modern philosophy*
If natural rights really are fundamental, why does the list of them differ from person to person?
The fundamental problem with the idea of natural rights is that they are either derived from a moral (this is what's good), or theological (endowed by the creator) sources; neither of which can be well defined. If rights are truly based on the nature of humans then that would mean that infringing upon them would result in an unstable state which cannot be maintained. However, history has shown long-lasting stable societies where members actively supported slavery, intellectual and physical persecution.
If rights truly came from the individual, then rights and responsibilities would come via an "opt in" method. However, we see the opposite as the case, the default state is for society to impose on the individual rights and responsibilities. If there is dispute about the list of rights, it is not until society comes to agreement (often through violent conflict) that the new rights are granted. Property rights, free speech, slavery, due process, taxation, if you want to define it as "natural" or not ... it really doesn't matter what gets agreed upon, what is important and what leads to social stability is the agreement itself.
Society dislikes a lot of things, doesn't mean those groups don't deserve legal protections. The majority has consistently pushed to abolish free speech, regulate private matters, and tried impose it's ideals, with only Constitutional law to keep its whims in check.
I would argue in the digital age, intellectual property creators are a significant minority that can't be ignored. Manufacturing, even for physical objects, has become trivial. Anybody can make an MP3 player, computer chip, cell phone, or toy extremely cheaply - what is valuable is the design, which is not cheap to create.
The masses will always complain. They will say schools aren't good enough, yet not want their taxes increased; they say they don't earn enough money, yet pay $5 for a latte. Western societies are built to be "unhappy," which is one of the reason they have progressed so much more in terms of technology. As Adam Smith noted - there are unlimited wants, so the wants satiated by every bit of progress will be replaced by new ones.
Which would be a sad loss, not just for individuals in software and music, but for society which loses the ideas and culture from specialized creators.
Taking a step back. Lets say Spore had perfect DRM and very few could afford it, what is lost? All that is lost is the spreading of ideas which can lead to new ones. There really is no clear concrete loss, civilization won't collapse. On the flip side without copyright you lose investment, and viability of specialization which means Spore isn't created and you end up with the similar results. Now if the creator and public compromise, as is the intent of copyright law, you can end up with a win-win. The author has incentive to invest (time & money) in creating knowing they have the opportunity to recover that investment, but at some point their creation must be freed to the public so that the social gain can be fully realized.
As I said, this compromise has been perverted to move too far in favor of personal gain for the creator. The problems with DRM at the time of release (an annoyance) is far less a worry than the problems with DRM down the road when the work is supposed to be public and can't be accessed (a breach of the original agreeement). Unfortunately people on both sides of the argument as well as legislators lose perspective on the original intent of copyright, a compromise between an individual and society to promote progress, and gravitate towards the extreme they like best.
The system needs to be fixed, not abandoned.
All rights are.
Copyrights are seen as a necessary evil to encourage risk taking where there is a high cost to create but low cost to duplicate. And yes, I do realize that people will still create culture even when there are no copyright protections, but the quality will suffer due to resource restrictions.
I guess we should also give up on managing SPAM, identity theft, DNA profiling, etc. since in the information age it's easy to do and barely enforcable.
A tool like the ability to vote, or getting judged by your peers. These things, like copyright, are not necessary parts of a functioning society, but they have been demonstrated to improve the quality of life. That said, the "babies" have gotten out of control moving the balance between the creator and public too far in favor of the creator. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, reevaluate the implementation of copyright, don't just abandon the idea.
Actually publishers do understand this, so PC games are becoming an after thought. Games used to be designed for PCs then ported to consoles, now it's becoming the opposite and we're stuck with watered down gameplay and poor control schemes.
The only real PC-centric development will be service games like MMOs where publishers control the game, you just rent the access.
Which can mean hardware locking ala moving exclusively to consoles and stopping releases PC versions. Sure there is piracy in console space, but it's far less since the need to physically mod the system discourages a large number of people.
While I enjoy slasdot, there's something to be said about sports parties where you help hold a college girl upside down over a keg... if only we could get something similar after getting modded up to 5 :)
Football is simulted warfare with strategy and tactics where the soldiers do matter.
If you look at any sport with that mentality then every one of them is homoerotic. In fact, I'd say chess is the worst of them all, since every almost piece is shaped like a penis.