Well, do they violate it? By *your* laws maybe. By theirs, they don't. The USA is just one country of many and just because it happens to have a massively corporatist and anti-consumer law with regards to intellectual works (not as if the word "intellectual" would be relevant to most Hollywood films) doesn't mean that all other countries have it or should have it.
No they don't need to have it, but if they want to trade with the US we can ask for them to have it. It's up to the rest of the world whether or not they want to give into such demands like copyright. Fortunately (for the corporate interests), most politicians in the rest of the world are as greedy and corrupt as those in the US. They agree to impose draconian restrictions within their own borders so that the US keeps the money flowing to them.
Well, maybe the problem is that "internationally recognised copyright" is not exactly the the same as the "Sonny Bono Act", at least not on that side of the US border where that insignificant 95% of the world's population happens to live.
Yes, the EU chose to extend their copyright terms to 70 years before the US created "Sonny Bono Act" and even decided to make them apply retroactively (which the SBA didn't do). The US lags a bit on caving in to the entertainment industry.
I don't like these gender balances because they tend to have tunnel vision. We are greatly rewarding mediocre women in engineering fields due to their low numbers, but we aren't doing the same for men in other fields.
The tunnel vision is the ignorance of social stigma and associated fear. Typically such programs don't reward mediocre candidates, they identify talented candidates and try to recruit them. For example a colleague of mine was originally working to become a veterinarian (a job more socially accomodating to women), but was recruited into ChemE (and had a 4.0 GPA). She was not a mediocre candidate, what she was looking for was an environment with social support, and encouragement.
How many men get special seats in programs for nursing, education, etc., where the field is dominated by women? In fact, of the people who get college degrees, only 43% are men. Why doesn't this get the same attention that the lack of women in science and engineering gets?
As others have pointed out there are similar programs for the recruitment of men into traditional female occupations such as nursing.
I admit, these are interesting features. I think adding these things could indeed renew the game for one, perhaps even two whole sequels. Madden, according to the quick websearch I just performed, has been around since the Apple II. I only even remember it back to the Genesis!
This comment leads me to believe that you in fact don't play Madden games. Those are just a handful of features that HAVE been added over the years. The fact that they shove a game out every year doesn't mean the game hasn't changed. Perhaps Madden 2006 is a lot like 2005 which is a lot like 2004... 2002. But then when you compare 2006 to 2002, the game is very different, it's evolutionary change. The nature of the market that game competes in doesn't allow 3 years off, so they introduce changes slowly.
On your big list of game genres, you lump together games from different eras. An early parser-based Sierra On-Line adventure plays differently (arguably better) than their more recent point-and-click games.
What I was showing is that franchises, which you claim are a recent phenomenon, existed in the 80's. King's Quest was on a 1-2 year release cycle, as was Ultima and Zork. The sequels in most cases played the same as their predecessors, but didn't diminish the franchises. In fact, as you point out, the technological innovation that you seem to want, actually hurt adventure games on the whole when they moved from parser to point-n-click.
Would you care to elaborate on your assertion that assets would be difficult to liquidate if the government didn't print paper money? Have I completely missed your mark?
You have a good understanding. As you pointed out there is an issue with gold, deflationary pressure due to increased demand for currency with a limited supply. This requires the addition of silver (or alternate an alternate currency such as Microsoft stock) to increase the liquid assests in circulation for use. That is by definition inflation, that the original poster is against.
The essential rules of all those games remains:
a) navigate a maze to collect all the items
b) dodge enemies
c) collect powerup to let you destroy enemies
Adding keys and such increases the challenge, and requires some new thinking, but doesn't break the core rules Just as Madden remains football, but introduction of features like: analog passing - requires the player not just to identify passing target but also judge timing and distance sprint button, spin, highstep - prevent being tackled with correct timing blocking control - directly control a second player on the field change how the game is played.
THe difference there is that, then, most games sold weren't clones, and the most popular games then tended to be ones that were relatively unique. Now, generally it's the same franchises that get the lion's share of the attention. The word "franchise" wasn't even applied to video games until relatively recently.
Best selling franchises and clones were very much a part of the early industry, and at times entire genres were dominated by a single company:
Text Adventure(Infocom): Zork, with Infocom also producing other similar text adventures *-Quest (Sierra On-line): Kings Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Liesure Suit Larry, etc. RPG: Ultima, Wizardry, "Gold Box" & other SSI games Platformers: Donkey Kong, Mario (DK spinoff) Sidescrolling shooters: R-Type, 19xx, etc Beat 'em Ups: Can't think of any franchises with alot of sequels, but there were a lot of clones: Double Dragon, Bad Dudes, TMNT, heck even The Simpsons Brawlers: Street Fighter, Tekken, and a few dozen knockoffs Flight Sims: Microprose sims (F-15, F19, etc)
The industry hasn't really changed, only the popular genres, and dominant players have. Just as Ultima IV is considered great, even though it was the 4th game of the series; there is no reason that Doom IV can't be great, if it does something innovative.
in the US, the Internet will be a place for businesses that can pay the carrier cartels. In Europe, the Internet will be a place (more like what we in the US have today) where ideas are exchanged freely.
What you ignore is that big business cannot survive on the internet without average folk and small businesses. The corps are not completely self-sufficient. They buy/sell products and services from/to small businesses and individual consumers and increasingly look to do such transactions over the net to cut down on costs. If the pipline cartels exclude the little guy, they exclude a significant portion of corporate business. We are more likely to see systems that are priced on how the access is used, rather than just bandwidth. That will in fact be more efficient in terms of passing cost to the end user (eg the guy constantly downloading videos will be paying more than the mom checking recipes and email).
Note, also, that Pac-Man has inspired more varied sequels: Super Pac-Man and Pac 'n Pal are both maze collection games, but they are much more different from Pac-Man than Ms Pac-Man.
Which is my point. Pac-Man went through the same evolutionary transition that Madden games have. Taking advantage of better graphics and technology to add little bits to gameplay. None of the sequels in both cases (Pac-Man and Madden) is revolutionary compared to its predecessor, however, comparing titles several years apart shows the significant changes of gameplay. The continuity of Madden 96, 97...05 is similar to Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Pac Mania, etc.
Getting back to your orignal statements that "knockoffs are the industry" it has been so since the birth of the industry. There was a bunch of Pong, Pac-Man, Space Invader, and Asteroid clones. Further, the successful franchises spawned sequels, just as is going on today.
Because a game has a familiar icon or name, doesn't mean that it can't advance the industry (eg Mario 64, GTA3, Dune 2, Half-life 2, etc).
Agreed, although I don't think it's always better than a solo game. Further, there are some multiplayer games that are almost impossible for a new player to get into because the established pool of players is exceedingly skilled. New players trying to get into, say, a FPS, and getting consistantly schooled by everyone they play against, are not going to stick with it for very long.
Many games have bots for the novice player, then "Noob" servers once those players have mastered the AI. After that point they can be fairly competitive, and if there is a dominant player on one server, just switch to the thousands of others.
Not so. For Ms. Pac-Man cannot be beaten with patterns like Pac-Man can, which at high, and even middle, levels of play makes it a fundamentally different game.
Essentially this is an AI tweak to make the game more challenging, same thing they do for every Madden Game.
Meanwhile Madden 2k5 and 2k6 are still, ultimately, football. It is possible that AI tweaks could make it a different game, although I doubt it in this case.
Essentially Pac-Man and Ms Pac-Man are maze collection games (just like loadrunner, etc). What you cite as the main difference is a change of AI so that the patterns are different. That doesn't change the core gameplay, it changes how the player plays the game. Just as AI tweaks in Madden don't change the core gameplay (football), but can significantly affect how the game is played. Further, Madden updates the player interface, which gives additional choices and strategy. Imagine adding a "sprint button" to Pac-Man.
I'm not saying that Madden is groundbreaking by any means, but to put the transition from Pac-Man to Ms. Pac-Man on a pedestal is laughable.
You grossly oversimplify the case in your dismissal of "faster and faster enemies," but even faster play can, potentially, make a game interesting. For a modern example, check the WarioWare games, which ultimately boil down to an extended reaction test.
Yes "faster enemies" make the game interesting to a point. WarioWare is unique example, as it's not just "faster" which would get boring. It has a wild mix of gameplay, so the player is always switching which keeps things interesting.
Many more people, assuredly, have mastered Madden, but that is not why the endless line of Madden sequels are bad.
Which is why multiplayer play is so interesting, it is the modern equivalent of dynamic content, and provides a far more interesting challenge than just speeding the game up.
Both of the later games draw from earlier things (as all created things must), but both these things add substantial new elements that makes them greatly different from their predecessors
What in the Sims is substantially new in terms of innovation? It is very much like a tomogatchi. You tell your little character what to do to keep them happy and you can buy things for your little character. Adding complexity does not equal innovation.
As for Second Life there was some innovation in being able to exchange real world money, but the core game is very much like MUSHs, just with graphics.
What made the games popular is they presented existing game types in a way that was more accessable to players (Just like EQ did with MUDs), not groundbreaking innovation.
There's enough different from Pac-Man to Ms. Pac-Man
There are a lot more differences between Madden 2005 and 2006, than Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. Both keep the same core gameplay with AI tweaks and graphics updates. But Madden also included ways for the player to interact.
Part of this has been the move from algorithmic-generated, dynamic situations to static "content" to be consumed (which gives us the relatively recent notion that a game can be "completed," and is itself a tremendous shame)
The faster and faster enemies of yester-year does not make the games better, especially if you figure the pattern. People have mastered Pac-man. I remember mastering "Laserblast" on the Atari 2600, as a kid. Eventually I figured out the pattern so I just completed wave after wave until I got bored.
This is as if UPS, Fedex, Airborne express all suddenly started to demand greater payments along the route for prompt delivery, not just by weight, but based on the source and destination of the packet.
This is what they do, they just add up all the charges up front.
The Athlon 64 has made AMD hugely profitable this year
No, Athlon 64 made AMD gain market share, if you look at the numbers spinning off their memory division made them the most profit (they cut their cost of sales almost in half).
Re:Where are the bunkers to protect Citizens ?
on
Back to the Bunker
·
· Score: 5, Funny
But what about hordes of people who constitute 'the people' in the declaration of independence ?
*sigh* how easily we forget history. Watch those old training films. Hiding under a desk or picnic blanket will provide protection in the event of a nuclear attack.
What's left? Control of the distribution channels. And they're fighting to their last breath to keep them.
RIAA control of distribution channels (eg radio airtime) is a completely different issue than copyright. The RIAA doesn't exclude free distribution of from artists on the internet, it tries to exclude the material it has rights to. Artists are free to setup their own webpage, myspace, or get their music on iTunes. The RIAA can't stop people from taking advantage of the lower cost of distribution on the internet. It's up to the individual artists whether or not they want to sign with a big label. Indie labels are viable alternatives, but they aren't able to provide the level of services on the marketing side that big labels can.
We can narrow it down even more to the US Government. The US has pushed for more and more global copyright. And for longer and longer terms. And for less and less importance to public domain.
Other governments are just as bad - 1993 EU harmonization of copyright based on Germany's 70 years (predating the 1998 Sonny Bono copyright act). The US doesn't have a monopoly on politicians catering to big business.
The US democracy has huge problems, but that's another topic.
All democracies have problems. "Democracy is the worst form of government... except for all those others that have been tried"
But taken to extremes it gets to what we have now. Do any DRM system revert to unDRM once copyright exprires and the work goes into public domain ? No.
Actually DRM is a free market solution. It is not a legislative change, but rather a product change that allows the consumer to decide. For me I don't mind Apple's DRM strategy, it does not significantly affect the way I listen to music. However, for another consumer it may be too restrictive, in which case they can choose not to purchase.
That's good, but the RIAA group still controls airways, retail distribution channels, and they want to control Internet distribution channels as well. To put up a larger barrier of entry, to keep new players out. They were just trying to regulate podcasts. So I'm not sure that the number of suppliers is going up as fast as it could/should.
One area that I do agree with you is control of the airways. However, the courts have struck down the digital broadcast flag, and the labels have been fined for paying radio stations to play their songs. These are the key issues to worry about, because that is where competition comes in.
In economics, things have value because they are scarse. Bits are not scarse.
Original bits are scarce. The problem is there is no good economic method yet to reconcile high costs to create with low cost to reproduce.
So the RIAA puts special limitations to make it scarse.
No the government elected by the people makes special limitations to create artificial scarcity of reproductions. You can say the politicians are in the pocketbook of the RIAA, but that is more a reflection of an apathetic voting populace who only cares about which politician is on TV most (if they even vote at all).
This artificially raises the prices, and as anyone who has taken a basic economics course, is not efficient. ANY artificial restriction to a market makes it less efficient than free trade. So yes, copyright is an anti free trade aberration.
Yes, it does artifically raise prices, which at the same time artificially raises the number of suppliers. There is a positive effect on society to have more inventors, musicians, authors, moviemakers. Not saying that currently things are balanced (copyright has been extended too long, limitations of fair use, etc), but I don't agree that copyright is completely bad for society.
Talent on the other hand IS scarse, but that's hardly the issue here.
I never understood this. If music protected by the RIAA sucks, why do you care if you can get free access to it?
No Navigator was free in the beginning to capture marketshare, then version 3.0 cost $49 (how else would they make money?), then was free in 1998 after it lost the browser war.
Is keeping prices artificially low actually illegal? Governments normally support anything that benefits the consumer
It was illegal for Microsoft. They dropped web browser prices artificially low by bundling. Even though it meant the end user got a free web browser, it was an anti-competitive practice meant to put other software makers out of business.
Extortion generally needs an illegal act in the attempt to gain what you want.
No, extortion just needs to involve coercion, whether it is legal or illegal does not matter. The demand is the criminal offense.
This is closer to a store selling you equipment and you protesting with pictures/signs out front until they refund your money. If your claim is true (in this case the laptop was defective and he refused to refund the money) - oh well, perfectly legal and should be (well, at least in the US, I don't know about the UK). He sold him the stuff so it's now his to do with as he pleases
If you protest with signs in front there is no crime. If you demand the store give you money with the threat of protest then it can criminal. The former is freedom of speech, the latter is coercion.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, do they violate it? By *your* laws maybe. By theirs, they don't. The USA is just one country of many and just because it happens to have a massively corporatist and anti-consumer law with regards to intellectual works (not as if the word "intellectual" would be relevant to most Hollywood films) doesn't mean that all other countries have it or should have it.
No they don't need to have it, but if they want to trade with the US we can ask for them to have it. It's up to the rest of the world whether or not they want to give into such demands like copyright. Fortunately (for the corporate interests), most politicians in the rest of the world are as greedy and corrupt as those in the US. They agree to impose draconian restrictions within their own borders so that the US keeps the money flowing to them.
Well, maybe the problem is that "internationally recognised copyright" is not exactly the the same as the "Sonny Bono Act", at least not on that side of the US border where that insignificant 95% of the world's population happens to live.
Yes, the EU chose to extend their copyright terms to 70 years before the US created "Sonny Bono Act" and even decided to make them apply retroactively (which the SBA didn't do). The US lags a bit on caving in to the entertainment industry.
I don't like these gender balances because they tend to have tunnel vision. We are greatly rewarding mediocre women in engineering fields due to their low numbers, but we aren't doing the same for men in other fields.
The tunnel vision is the ignorance of social stigma and associated fear. Typically such programs don't reward mediocre candidates, they identify talented candidates and try to recruit them. For example a colleague of mine was originally working to become a veterinarian (a job more socially accomodating to women), but was recruited into ChemE (and had a 4.0 GPA). She was not a mediocre candidate, what she was looking for was an environment with social support, and encouragement.
How many men get special seats in programs for nursing, education, etc., where the field is dominated by women? In fact, of the people who get college degrees, only 43% are men. Why doesn't this get the same attention that the lack of women in science and engineering gets?
As others have pointed out there are similar programs for the recruitment of men into traditional female occupations such as nursing.
I admit, these are interesting features. I think adding these things could indeed renew the game for one, perhaps even two whole sequels. Madden, according to the quick websearch I just performed, has been around since the Apple II. I only even remember it back to the Genesis!
This comment leads me to believe that you in fact don't play Madden games. Those are just a handful of features that HAVE been added over the years. The fact that they shove a game out every year doesn't mean the game hasn't changed. Perhaps Madden 2006 is a lot like 2005 which is a lot like 2004... 2002. But then when you compare 2006 to 2002, the game is very different, it's evolutionary change. The nature of the market that game competes in doesn't allow 3 years off, so they introduce changes slowly.
On your big list of game genres, you lump together games from different eras. An early parser-based Sierra On-Line adventure plays differently (arguably better) than their more recent point-and-click games.
What I was showing is that franchises, which you claim are a recent phenomenon, existed in the 80's. King's Quest was on a 1-2 year release cycle, as was Ultima and Zork. The sequels in most cases played the same as their predecessors, but didn't diminish the franchises. In fact, as you point out, the technological innovation that you seem to want, actually hurt adventure games on the whole when they moved from parser to point-n-click.
Would you care to elaborate on your assertion that assets would be difficult to liquidate if the government didn't print paper money? Have I completely missed your mark?
You have a good understanding.
As you pointed out there is an issue with gold, deflationary pressure due to increased demand for currency with a limited supply.
This requires the addition of silver (or alternate an alternate currency such as Microsoft stock) to increase the liquid assests in circulation for use. That is by definition inflation, that the original poster is against.
The essential rules of all those games remains:
a) navigate a maze to collect all the items
b) dodge enemies
c) collect powerup to let you destroy enemies
Adding keys and such increases the challenge, and requires some new thinking, but doesn't break the core rules
Just as Madden remains football, but introduction of features like:
analog passing - requires the player not just to identify passing target but also judge timing and distance
sprint button, spin, highstep - prevent being tackled with correct timing
blocking control - directly control a second player on the field
change how the game is played.
THe difference there is that, then, most games sold weren't clones, and the most popular games then tended to be ones that were relatively unique. Now, generally it's the same franchises that get the lion's share of the attention. The word "franchise" wasn't even applied to video games until relatively recently.
Best selling franchises and clones were very much a part of the early industry, and at times entire genres were dominated by a single company:
Text Adventure(Infocom): Zork, with Infocom also producing other similar text adventures
*-Quest (Sierra On-line): Kings Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Liesure Suit Larry, etc.
RPG: Ultima, Wizardry, "Gold Box" & other SSI games
Platformers: Donkey Kong, Mario (DK spinoff)
Sidescrolling shooters: R-Type, 19xx, etc
Beat 'em Ups: Can't think of any franchises with alot of sequels, but there were a lot of clones: Double Dragon, Bad Dudes, TMNT, heck even The Simpsons
Brawlers: Street Fighter, Tekken, and a few dozen knockoffs
Flight Sims: Microprose sims (F-15, F19, etc)
The industry hasn't really changed, only the popular genres, and dominant players have. Just as Ultima IV is considered great, even though it was the 4th game of the series; there is no reason that Doom IV can't be great, if it does something innovative.
Now, if only we could turn off the farmers at the Federal Reserve and stop inflation in the "real" world.
Yes because what we really need is only the rich being able to readily access liquid assets.
in the US, the Internet will be a place for businesses that can pay the carrier cartels. In Europe, the Internet will be a place (more like what we in the US have today) where ideas are exchanged freely.
What you ignore is that big business cannot survive on the internet without average folk and small businesses. The corps are not completely self-sufficient. They buy/sell products and services from/to small businesses and individual consumers and increasingly look to do such transactions over the net to cut down on costs.
If the pipline cartels exclude the little guy, they exclude a significant portion of corporate business. We are more likely to see systems that are priced on how the access is used, rather than just bandwidth. That will in fact be more efficient in terms of passing cost to the end user (eg the guy constantly downloading videos will be paying more than the mom checking recipes and email).
Note, also, that Pac-Man has inspired more varied sequels: Super Pac-Man and Pac 'n Pal are both maze collection games, but they are much more different from Pac-Man than Ms Pac-Man.
Which is my point. Pac-Man went through the same evolutionary transition that Madden games have. Taking advantage of better graphics and technology to add little bits to gameplay. None of the sequels in both cases (Pac-Man and Madden) is revolutionary compared to its predecessor, however, comparing titles several years apart shows the significant changes of gameplay. The continuity of Madden 96, 97...05 is similar to Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Pac Mania, etc.
Getting back to your orignal statements that "knockoffs are the industry" it has been so since the birth of the industry. There was a bunch of Pong, Pac-Man, Space Invader, and Asteroid clones. Further, the successful franchises spawned sequels, just as is going on today.
Because a game has a familiar icon or name, doesn't mean that it can't advance the industry (eg Mario 64, GTA3, Dune 2, Half-life 2, etc).
Agreed, although I don't think it's always better than a solo game. Further, there are some multiplayer games that are almost impossible for a new player to get into because the established pool of players is exceedingly skilled. New players trying to get into, say, a FPS, and getting consistantly schooled by everyone they play against, are not going to stick with it for very long.
Many games have bots for the novice player, then "Noob" servers once those players have mastered the AI. After that point they can be fairly competitive, and if there is a dominant player on one server, just switch to the thousands of others.
Not so. For Ms. Pac-Man cannot be beaten with patterns like Pac-Man can, which at high, and even middle, levels of play makes it a fundamentally different game.
Essentially this is an AI tweak to make the game more challenging, same thing they do for every Madden Game.
Meanwhile Madden 2k5 and 2k6 are still, ultimately, football. It is possible that AI tweaks could make it a different game, although I doubt it in this case.
Essentially Pac-Man and Ms Pac-Man are maze collection games (just like loadrunner, etc). What you cite as the main difference is a change of AI so that the patterns are different. That doesn't change the core gameplay, it changes how the player plays the game. Just as AI tweaks in Madden don't change the core gameplay (football), but can significantly affect how the game is played.
Further, Madden updates the player interface, which gives additional choices and strategy. Imagine adding a "sprint button" to Pac-Man.
I'm not saying that Madden is groundbreaking by any means, but to put the transition from Pac-Man to Ms. Pac-Man on a pedestal is laughable.
You grossly oversimplify the case in your dismissal of "faster and faster enemies," but even faster play can, potentially, make a game interesting. For a modern example, check the WarioWare games, which ultimately boil down to an extended reaction test.
Yes "faster enemies" make the game interesting to a point. WarioWare is unique example, as it's not just "faster" which would get boring. It has a wild mix of gameplay, so the player is always switching which keeps things interesting.
Many more people, assuredly, have mastered Madden, but that is not why the endless line of Madden sequels are bad.
Which is why multiplayer play is so interesting, it is the modern equivalent of dynamic content, and provides a far more interesting challenge than just speeding the game up.
Both of the later games draw from earlier things (as all created things must), but both these things add substantial new elements that makes them greatly different from their predecessors
What in the Sims is substantially new in terms of innovation? It is very much like a tomogatchi. You tell your little character what to do to keep them happy and you can buy things for your little character. Adding complexity does not equal innovation.
As for Second Life there was some innovation in being able to exchange real world money, but the core game is very much like MUSHs, just with graphics.
What made the games popular is they presented existing game types in a way that was more accessable to players (Just like EQ did with MUDs), not groundbreaking innovation.
Sims and Second Life are truly unique concepts, and it could be argued that their uniqueness is what makes them popular
Nope, ever hear Tomogachis (The Sims) or MUDs/MUSHs (Second Life)?
There's enough different from Pac-Man to Ms. Pac-Man
There are a lot more differences between Madden 2005 and 2006, than Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. Both keep the same core gameplay with AI tweaks and graphics updates. But Madden also included ways for the player to interact.
Part of this has been the move from algorithmic-generated, dynamic situations to static "content" to be consumed (which gives us the relatively recent notion that a game can be "completed," and is itself a tremendous shame)
The faster and faster enemies of yester-year does not make the games better, especially if you figure the pattern. People have mastered Pac-man. I remember mastering "Laserblast" on the Atari 2600, as a kid. Eventually I figured out the pattern so I just completed wave after wave until I got bored.
This is as if UPS, Fedex, Airborne express all suddenly started to demand greater payments along the route for prompt delivery, not just by weight, but based on the source and destination of the packet.
This is what they do, they just add up all the charges up front.
In case any of you slashdotters are in need of legal representation
Too much work... just play Progress Quest
Once they have control of the market, you will buy what they are selling because there is nobody else to buy from
Then don't buy.
The Athlon 64 has made AMD hugely profitable this year
No, Athlon 64 made AMD gain market share, if you look at the numbers spinning off their memory division made them the most profit (they cut their cost of sales almost in half).
But what about hordes of people who constitute 'the people' in the declaration of independence ?
*sigh* how easily we forget history. Watch those old training films. Hiding under a desk or picnic blanket will provide protection in the event of a nuclear attack.
What's left? Control of the distribution channels. And they're fighting to their last breath to keep them.
RIAA control of distribution channels (eg radio airtime) is a completely different issue than copyright. The RIAA doesn't exclude free distribution of from artists on the internet, it tries to exclude the material it has rights to. Artists are free to setup their own webpage, myspace, or get their music on iTunes. The RIAA can't stop people from taking advantage of the lower cost of distribution on the internet.
It's up to the individual artists whether or not they want to sign with a big label. Indie labels are viable alternatives, but they aren't able to provide the level of services on the marketing side that big labels can.
We can narrow it down even more to the US Government. The US has pushed for more and more global copyright. And for longer and longer terms. And for less and less importance to public domain.
Other governments are just as bad - 1993 EU harmonization of copyright based on Germany's 70 years (predating the 1998 Sonny Bono copyright act). The US doesn't have a monopoly on politicians catering to big business.
The US democracy has huge problems, but that's another topic.
All democracies have problems.
"Democracy is the worst form of government... except for all those others that have been tried"
But taken to extremes it gets to what we have now. Do any DRM system revert to unDRM once copyright exprires and the work goes into public domain ? No.
Actually DRM is a free market solution. It is not a legislative change, but rather a product change that allows the consumer to decide. For me I don't mind Apple's DRM strategy, it does not significantly affect the way I listen to music. However, for another consumer it may be too restrictive, in which case they can choose not to purchase.
That's good, but the RIAA group still controls airways, retail distribution channels, and they want to control Internet distribution channels as well. To put up a larger barrier of entry, to keep new players out. They were just trying to regulate podcasts. So I'm not sure that the number of suppliers is going up as fast as it could/should.
One area that I do agree with you is control of the airways. However, the courts have struck down the digital broadcast flag, and the labels have been fined for paying radio stations to play their songs. These are the key issues to worry about, because that is where competition comes in.
In economics, things have value because they are scarse. Bits are not scarse.
Original bits are scarce. The problem is there is no good economic method yet to reconcile high costs to create with low cost to reproduce.
So the RIAA puts special limitations to make it scarse.
No the government elected by the people makes special limitations to create artificial scarcity of reproductions. You can say the politicians are in the pocketbook of the RIAA, but that is more a reflection of an apathetic voting populace who only cares about which politician is on TV most (if they even vote at all).
This artificially raises the prices, and as anyone who has taken a basic economics course, is not efficient. ANY artificial restriction to a market makes it less efficient than free trade. So yes, copyright is an anti free trade aberration.
Yes, it does artifically raise prices, which at the same time artificially raises the number of suppliers. There is a positive effect on society to have more inventors, musicians, authors, moviemakers. Not saying that currently things are balanced (copyright has been extended too long, limitations of fair use, etc), but I don't agree that copyright is completely bad for society.
Talent on the other hand IS scarse, but that's hardly the issue here.
I never understood this. If music protected by the RIAA sucks, why do you care if you can get free access to it?
How are people supposed to learn how to build the calculators they are so dependant on.
How many people know how to farm or raise livestock that we are dependant upon?
It's not funny to the 21 people who died.
Don't worry, they won't read the article
Netscape was free from the outset
No Navigator was free in the beginning to capture marketshare, then version 3.0 cost $49 (how else would they make money?), then was free in 1998 after it lost the browser war.
Is keeping prices artificially low actually illegal? Governments normally support anything that benefits the consumer
It was illegal for Microsoft. They dropped web browser prices artificially low by bundling. Even though it meant the end user got a free web browser, it was an anti-competitive practice meant to put other software makers out of business.
Extortion generally needs an illegal act in the attempt to gain what you want.
No, extortion just needs to involve coercion, whether it is legal or illegal does not matter. The demand is the criminal offense.
This is closer to a store selling you equipment and you protesting with pictures/signs out front until they refund your money. If your claim is true (in this case the laptop was defective and he refused to refund the money) - oh well, perfectly legal and should be (well, at least in the US, I don't know about the UK). He sold him the stuff so it's now his to do with as he pleases
If you protest with signs in front there is no crime. If you demand the store give you money with the threat of protest then it can criminal. The former is freedom of speech, the latter is coercion.