I did that once. I had My Documents actually pointing to a samba share. It worked fine until one day the samba share wasn't available, and the My Documents shortcut disappeared forever.
Funny as that is, my Law, Language and Ethics professor at USC Law School actually had us watch that episode this semester, as part of our discussion of how the concept of "person" is legally constructed.
Whether this company wins or loses, I think open systems and standards will come out worse off. If Kaleidescape loses, of course the MPAA be even more likely to go after the MythTV and Freevo guys. But it might be even worse if Kaleidescape wins only because they've gone to such great lengths to lock down the box. The MPAA will push legislation saying that the only legal way you can have a DVD jukebox is with insanely oppressive DRM. And with this case as a precedent, I think judges and congressmen would be too easily persuaded.
I would also suggest using music player daemon. I use it on a 300 MHz PII. Everything is done through ssh and a web interface, so I've never put X or kde or anything like that on the box. After having it for a couple of months, my Mom asked me come over and set up the same thing on an old 500 MHz machine they had lying around. The only time I've ever had to do maintenance on the thing was when she needed to add a bigger hard drive.
I think the problem is less about a SCO type company going after the little guy's money than a company using the threat of a lawsuit to intimidate potential open source competitors. This is the way all those RIAA lawsuits work. They're not really interested in getting you to fork over your college savings, but they're very interested in scaring people like you from threatening their business model.
Re:Removing motivation to create innovative IP
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 1
I suppose you're right, I don't think there is an alternative to the government providing national defense, funded by tax dollars.
I don't think it's realistic to think that the US can provide for its national defense by just issuing a semi-automatic weapon to everyone in the country, showing them how to shoot it, and hoping for the best. Switzerland is not a viable model for US defense policy. Their defense needs and military commitments are very different from those of the United States.
I also don't think its realistic to think we could support the military solely through voluntary donations. When you talk about shunning, I think of PBS spokespeople having a fund drive to guilt their viewers into donating money to support public television. I don't think it works very well for PBS (it hasn't gotten me to donate yet), and I don't have any reason to think it would work any better for national defense.
It seems like voluntary contributions would provide an insufficient and erratic source of funding for the military. If the country felt really patriotic (as in the months right after 9/11) you'd have plenty of money. But whenever the public lost confidence, (like after the Abu Ghraib scandal) there would be a dramatic dip in funding. Given the amount of time and money that it takes to properly train a soldier, it doesn't seem like the military would be able to maintain its strength and responsiveness if they were funded by voluntary donations.
In any event, maybe neither of us will ever convince the other, and we've gotten pretty far off the topic of intellectual property. I hope this hasn't degenerated into a flame war. By the way, what did you think about the idea of computers and the internet turning information into a public good?
Re:Removing motivation to create innovative IP
on
Is IP Property?
·
· Score: 1
Having reread your comment, I see your point about depletability not applying to national defense. It's a much better example of excludability than depletability.
Re:Removing motivation to create innovative IP
on
Is IP Property?
·
· Score: 1
But once every third person on the block sees that their neighbors are getting national defense for free, they decide not to renew their subscription. Eventually, no one is willing to pay, because they all expect that someone else will. If I am wrong about national defense, then why is it provided by the government, and not by the market?
For a better explanation than I can give about why national defense is a public good, see this site: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Defense. html
Re:Removing motivation to create innovative IP
on
Is IP Property?
·
· Score: 1
From an economics standpoint, IP looks like a public good.
A public good is defined as a good that lacks excludability and depletability. Excludability means that once I give you my apple, I no longer have it. The fact that one of us possesses it excludes the other from possessing it. Depletability means that once you eat the apple, you no longer have it either. The act of consuming it prevents you from still possessing it.
The designation of public goods is important because the market is not very good at supplying them, due to the free rider problem. The classic example is national defense. There's no good way for someone to sell national defense to only paying customers. If I were to try to start a company that sold national defense to people, and my services were bought by every third person in America, how would I prevent the non-customers from enjoying the benefits of my service? I couldn't. An art museum gives a good illustration of a lack of depletability. When I view a painting, there are no significant effects on your ability to view it later. Of course, because art is easily excludable (it's not hard for me to lock it in a room), museums are not purely public goods, which is why you have to pay admission to museums.
So if something is a public good, and it's something that society wants, then you have to go outside the market to provide it. National defense, for example, is provided by the government and paid for by taxes. Museums are typically funded through a combination of government grants, private donations, and entrance fees.
Now to get to the point, information is inherently neither excludable nor depletable. If I give you an idea (or if you take one from me), it does not mean that I no longer have the idea. If you use an idea, there is nothing stopping you from using it again, or as many times as you like.
In the past, the physical media used to carry and store information (eg, ink on paper, or magnetic encoding on tape) imposed some properties of excludability and depletability on information. If I give you a book, then I no longer have it. If you watch a videotape too many times, then it will eventually wear out. But the widespread use of digital technology to store and transport information has eliminated these limitations that information was saddled with. I can quite easily send you a PDF and still retain a copy for myself. I can listen to my mp3s as many times as I like, and easily move them to a new hard drive if the existing one starts to wear out.
Computers and the internet threaten to turn all information into a public good, which is why people who make their livings selling information are so scared. Just as you can't run a successful business trying to sell national defense to people, the internet makes it hard to run a successful business selling information to people. Will information's lack of excludability and depletability erode the profit motive so completely that we will create a world where the only information produced is from the government, and is paid for by tax dollars?
Absolutely not. While the Internet and other modern computer technologies make profit-motivated people less likely to produce information, they make it easier for people with other motivations (i.e. not-for-profit) to distribute the information they produce. I think this is a good thing. For far too long we have thought of information as being created in only the commercial and academic worlds. Through its incredible ability to widely disseminate information around the globe, the Internet has an amazing democratizing effect on information production. Suddenly, anyone, anywhere, can come up with an idea and share it with almost anyone else, anywhere else. The only limitations are poverty (many people in the world cannot afford a computer with an internet connection), underdevelopment (in some very rural places you can't connect, even if you have the money), and censorship (think China).
All of the various DRM technologies can be seen as attempts to i
You might be interested in reading William Greider's "Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country". Despite the melodramatic title, it's a serious and engaging history of money in the United States. It was assigned reading for a monetary policy class I took a couple of years ago at the University of Utah.
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I did that once. I had My Documents actually pointing to a samba share. It worked fine until one day the samba share wasn't available, and the My Documents shortcut disappeared forever.
...what's with the "Perhaps..."? IMHO, some kind of linux rescue cd is a sysadmin must-have.
Funny as that is, my Law, Language and Ethics professor at USC Law School actually had us watch that episode this semester, as part of our discussion of how the concept of "person" is legally constructed.
Whether this company wins or loses, I think open systems and standards will come out worse off. If Kaleidescape loses, of course the MPAA be even more likely to go after the MythTV and Freevo guys. But it might be even worse if Kaleidescape wins only because they've gone to such great lengths to lock down the box. The MPAA will push legislation saying that the only legal way you can have a DVD jukebox is with insanely oppressive DRM. And with this case as a precedent, I think judges and congressmen would be too easily persuaded.
I would also suggest using music player daemon. I use it on a 300 MHz PII. Everything is done through ssh and a web interface, so I've never put X or kde or anything like that on the box. After having it for a couple of months, my Mom asked me come over and set up the same thing on an old 500 MHz machine they had lying around. The only time I've ever had to do maintenance on the thing was when she needed to add a bigger hard drive.
I think the problem is less about a SCO type company going after the little guy's money than a company using the threat of a lawsuit to intimidate potential open source competitors. This is the way all those RIAA lawsuits work. They're not really interested in getting you to fork over your college savings, but they're very interested in scaring people like you from threatening their business model.
I suppose you're right, I don't think there is an alternative to the government providing national defense, funded by tax dollars.
I don't think it's realistic to think that the US can provide for its national defense by just issuing a semi-automatic weapon to everyone in the country, showing them how to shoot it, and hoping for the best. Switzerland is not a viable model for US defense policy. Their defense needs and military commitments are very different from those of the United States.
I also don't think its realistic to think we could support the military solely through voluntary donations. When you talk about shunning, I think of PBS spokespeople having a fund drive to guilt their viewers into donating money to support public television. I don't think it works very well for PBS (it hasn't gotten me to donate yet), and I don't have any reason to think it would work any better for national defense.
It seems like voluntary contributions would provide an insufficient and erratic source of funding for the military. If the country felt really patriotic (as in the months right after 9/11) you'd have plenty of money. But whenever the public lost confidence, (like after the Abu Ghraib scandal) there would be a dramatic dip in funding. Given the amount of time and money that it takes to properly train a soldier, it doesn't seem like the military would be able to maintain its strength and responsiveness if they were funded by voluntary donations.
In any event, maybe neither of us will ever convince the other, and we've gotten pretty far off the topic of intellectual property. I hope this hasn't degenerated into a flame war. By the way, what did you think about the idea of computers and the internet turning information into a public good?
Having reread your comment, I see your point about depletability not applying to national defense. It's a much better example of excludability than depletability.
But once every third person on the block sees that their neighbors are getting national defense for free, they decide not to renew their subscription. Eventually, no one is willing to pay, because they all expect that someone else will. If I am wrong about national defense, then why is it provided by the government, and not by the market?
. html
For a better explanation than I can give about why national defense is a public good, see this site:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Defense
From an economics standpoint, IP looks like a public good.
A public good is defined as a good that lacks excludability and depletability. Excludability means that once I give you my apple, I no longer have it. The fact that one of us possesses it excludes the other from possessing it. Depletability means that once you eat the apple, you no longer have it either. The act of consuming it prevents you from still possessing it.
The designation of public goods is important because the market is not very good at supplying them, due to the free rider problem. The classic example is national defense. There's no good way for someone to sell national defense to only paying customers. If I were to try to start a company that sold national defense to people, and my services were bought by every third person in America, how would I prevent the non-customers from enjoying the benefits of my service? I couldn't. An art museum gives a good illustration of a lack of depletability. When I view a painting, there are no significant effects on your ability to view it later. Of course, because art is easily excludable (it's not hard for me to lock it in a room), museums are not purely public goods, which is why you have to pay admission to museums.
So if something is a public good, and it's something that society wants, then you have to go outside the market to provide it. National defense, for example, is provided by the government and paid for by taxes. Museums are typically funded through a combination of government grants, private donations, and entrance fees.
Now to get to the point, information is inherently neither excludable nor depletable. If I give you an idea (or if you take one from me), it does not mean that I no longer have the idea. If you use an idea, there is nothing stopping you from using it again, or as many times as you like.
In the past, the physical media used to carry and store information (eg, ink on paper, or magnetic encoding on tape) imposed some properties of excludability and depletability on information. If I give you a book, then I no longer have it. If you watch a videotape too many times, then it will eventually wear out. But the widespread use of digital technology to store and transport information has eliminated these limitations that information was saddled with. I can quite easily send you a PDF and still retain a copy for myself. I can listen to my mp3s as many times as I like, and easily move them to a new hard drive if the existing one starts to wear out.
Computers and the internet threaten to turn all information into a public good, which is why people who make their livings selling information are so scared. Just as you can't run a successful business trying to sell national defense to people, the internet makes it hard to run a successful business selling information to people. Will information's lack of excludability and depletability erode the profit motive so completely that we will create a world where the only information produced is from the government, and is paid for by tax dollars?
Absolutely not. While the Internet and other modern computer technologies make profit-motivated people less likely to produce information, they make it easier for people with other motivations (i.e. not-for-profit) to distribute the information they produce. I think this is a good thing. For far too long we have thought of information as being created in only the commercial and academic worlds. Through its incredible ability to widely disseminate information around the globe, the Internet has an amazing democratizing effect on information production. Suddenly, anyone, anywhere, can come up with an idea and share it with almost anyone else, anywhere else. The only limitations are poverty (many people in the world cannot afford a computer with an internet connection), underdevelopment (in some very rural places you can't connect, even if you have the money), and censorship (think China).
All of the various DRM technologies can be seen as attempts to i
You might be interested in reading William Greider's "Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country". Despite the melodramatic title, it's a serious and engaging history of money in the United States. It was assigned reading for a monetary policy class I took a couple of years ago at the University of Utah.