Really, about the only advantage that electronic books have over the real thing is the ability to search (but real books have an index), and the fact that they occupy no additional physical space/weight above that of the reader.
Well, these are two direct benefits to the consumer. But there's also the lower costs of production and distribution (great for independent publishers) and literally hundreds of pages of paper saved per book (nice for the environment).
Having spent a summer at Microsoft, I can verify that Microsoft does, in fact, treat protocols as "innermost workings." They are treated as intellectual property, and when the protocols are good, that means they are valuable business assets. Interoperability is not a metric for many protocols (unless you consider different versions of Windows).
And those anti-tobacco lobbyists are just the left arm of the tobacco recovery industry? Just because such an industry exists, doesn't mean the people against porn addiction are trying to make a quick buck.
Believe it or not, some people have found that porn has realized negative effects in their lives. People who point out porn addiction are just trying to help people who already perceive inner demons.
Your idea sounds nice in a naively idealistic way, but so does communism. Without copyrights, there would be far less incentive to publish works. Copyrights are, in my opinion, primarily a means to encourage development.
Because sex spam is explicit, but spam is indiscriminate. I'm sure you don't have kids, but imagine some parent's reaction when his child is exposed to obscene images, just because his e-mail address is named after a pokemon and is easy to guess. The problem is NOT the middle-aged adults who don't bother to look into scams, it's the kids who are exposed to obscenity before society says they should be.
Slashdot Mirror
Cool. This is known as Peano arithmetic.
Having spent a summer at Microsoft, I can verify that Microsoft does, in fact, treat protocols as "innermost workings." They are treated as intellectual property, and when the protocols are good, that means they are valuable business assets. Interoperability is not a metric for many protocols (unless you consider different versions of Windows).
And those anti-tobacco lobbyists are just the left arm of the tobacco recovery industry? Just because such an industry exists, doesn't mean the people against porn addiction are trying to make a quick buck. Believe it or not, some people have found that porn has realized negative effects in their lives. People who point out porn addiction are just trying to help people who already perceive inner demons.
Your idea sounds nice in a naively idealistic way, but so does communism. Without copyrights, there would be far less incentive to publish works. Copyrights are, in my opinion, primarily a means to encourage development.
Because sex spam is explicit, but spam is indiscriminate. I'm sure you don't have kids, but imagine some parent's reaction when his child is exposed to obscene images, just because his e-mail address is named after a pokemon and is easy to guess. The problem is NOT the middle-aged adults who don't bother to look into scams, it's the kids who are exposed to obscenity before society says they should be.
A little different, but similar: Konspire