Anonymity is a prime ingredient for a functioning democracy. Take camera surveillance. People are going to be scared to do anything out of the ordinary, for fear of being flagged as a peculiar guy (and thus much more likely to be caught doing anything illegal, even the mundane stuff like throwing something on the ground instead of in the trashcan). This fear prevents anyone from questioning the status quo, and thus a "democracy" results in everyone agreeing with the current government.
Well, what if I want to encrypt sensitive company data?
The company would kill me if the data (or rather the items in question) would leak to the public, so I cannot give them the key for fear of company secrets leaking.
Yes, and somehow, everyone assumes that if they put their watch/gsm in their shoe, it is safe. No wait, make that the tip of the shoe, because the thief will only check the first bit of the shoe!
Just.... don't bring anything valuable or bring friends.
I've seen it worse than that. I've seen a university page on water striders (the insects) deliberately blotting out the exact spot where two insects were copulating. I mean, INSECTS.
I think in the case of a few people managing to unlock their phone, this is not worthy of the Jobs glare. On the other hand, if the hack is made available through a multi-platform click-through free installer, there'll be a software update quietly disabling it.
They didn't complain about the hacks of the iTV, so I haardly expect them to throw a tantrum over these few geeks willing to turn their iPhone into a webserver...
(thanks for the proper thought you appear to have put into this argument, they are rare finds these days.)
I agree with you that the dispute is silly, but I don't think it is pointless. If you call it theft, you associate the ideas of (nocturnal) break-ins and prison sentences with copying files. If you call it copying, people associate much less severe repercussions with their actions. Thus it matters what it is called.
I also agree that the concept could be called stealing, if you envision the supply of products owned by the owner as infinite, because as such, a copy makes no impact on the supplies, you do not bereft anyone from their property. And that is what I think makes the biggest difference with theft. You do not take, you duplicate.
In your lawnmower argument, that would be the unnoticed duplication of your neighbours lawnmower, potentially reducing the resale value of his own. He does not lose one moment of the time he can spend with his lawnmower, nobody takes it.
So there is an argument for calling it theft, and an argument against calling it theft. I think in situations like these, we should call it by its true name (i.e. filesharing), as to prevent confusion and the association of the activity with previously constructed notions. The internet is not a series of tubes, like a series of tubes perhaps, and so filesharing is like stealing, but it is not stealing by itself.
Let's throw around terminology that does not fit the bill, on the other hand, that will really help confuddle matters. Copying is copying, thievery is thievery.
Nono, I think the parent to your post was correct. And I think you're correct. The market for entertainment we now enjoy is something that will drastically change (I doubt it'll get wiped out. Even the most headstrong lemming has to concede and change sometime). And such is life. We have no need for phrenologists anymore, so they changed and got a job as sushi-makers.
If the industry changes because of people stealing the work, then the industry will change. People are unlikely to stop stealing the work. It has been the case since the advent of personal computers. Remember copying games on 5 1/4" floppy disks? Tape? Copying them from magazines? I did. And look at the industry now.
hmm. I'd say that you don't take something that doesn't belong to you, rather you copy something that doesn't belong to you. Thus devaluating the product. I see your point, but it still is not stealing. It's copying.
My argument was merely that copying is not stealing. I do not advocate either, unless it be legal (to copy, that is). That aside, I would like to offer some more reply to your post.
Protecting IP is quite important I'd say. They're trying to push it here as well. However, whilst protecting you IP, you can still make it easy for a broad market to purchase rights to listen, read or watch such IP. For example, they could provide in several different formats, each with their own price (i.e. hardcovers and paperbacks). Where it goes wrong is that they try to squeeze as much money out of it as they can, which means that for Joe Consumer, the price of what he wants is always slightly above that which he's willing to pay for it. Most consumers still pay for it, hence the position of the pricepoint. It goes wrong when J. C. can only buy one version, the super-duper high-def quadrovox DVD, most probably because the other formats do not provide as much revenue. J. C. can either buy from his (assumed) limited budget, or download.
Note that there is no third option here, which is that J.C. pays what he's willing to pay (plus perhaps a little bit extra), and accepts some loss in quality (there has to be a tradeoff somewhere). So with those two options available, the flourishing downlaod "market" tells us that many go for option two. There needs to be a store with a slider, in which J. C. can set the quality he wants for the price he's willing to pay, confident in the knowledge that the RIAA won't come knocking on his door.
Now as for my stealing vs. copying argument, it is clear that the producer (in your case) stands to lose. However, it is not as if people came up to the producer and took money out of his pocket. In effect, copying is an indirect method for preventing sales. No one loses a valuable product, but the product itself loses in value. It is similar to many things when viewed in that way. People putting spoilers of harry P. on the web might be devaluating a product. A smear campaign might be devaluating. Commercials might be devaluating some competitors products. Would you, then, call that stealing too?
In my opinion, we should call stealing stealing and copying copying. The implications of both are clear, but there is simply no reason to confuddle the two. Would you not agree?
I disagree. I think there's a whole grey area between interested enough to copy it, and interested enough to pay money for it. The grey area spans the economic value range of 0 to the price of the article. There are many reasons not to be interested enough to pay money for it (e.g. when it means having no money left for food) and interested enough to try. The target market is the people that have the money and are willing to spend that money on the product. Here, the pirates (arr) are not willing to spend their money on the product and thus fall outside of the target market. Apparently, the value they associate with the product does not warrant their spending.
(by the by, the tone of your article makes it sound as if you've got problems with me, personally. Well, I buy my stuff, but that doesn't mean that I disagree with the Pirates (arr.) on all of their points. I think there is a reason for the existence of this "market", and as with many markets, it cannot be force away. Thus an alternative is to be found)
I beg to differ. I think it matters what the dictionary considers to be theft, and there (the Oxford Am. Eng. dict) it is clearly stated that it is the taking of another persons property without intending to return it. Therefore calling copying thieving might skew the definition of theft, and therefore the dictionary has to change, or the law has to change to address copying instead of thieving.
Besides semantics, thieving has a much more negative association to it in the mind of the public than copying. I understand the goal of the Industry to further this goal, but in the end it might be trying to call an apple a pear. It is simply not the same.
As a side note, your sentence raises an interesting point, capable of separating individuals between those whom live by the law, and those whom live by their dictionary. I'm not sure what I mean here, but it feels like there's something... Law is in the State (or country) of the beholder, but a dictionary spans the entire world. I'm not sure what to make of that.
I'm sorry, but I did have a decent upbringing, and still can't see this as theft. As indicated many times in the past, theft implies that you bereft someone of their property. Copying is a sort of half-theft in that manner, you will not pay for your copy, but the provider can still sell theirs, and is thus not directly financially impeded. Mind you, copying does not imply that I'd have bought the album were it unavailable for copying.
So, to make a long-ish story short: Copying is not stealing. Copying is not theft. Copying is copying. Copying wa Copying-des.
Instead of ad hominem attacks on my argument, I'd be very pleased to see clear, unemotional responses here. No talk about people complaining about content either, the argument here is that copying is not stealing.
The article is replete with terms of "stealing" and "theft".
They are trying really hard to associate these terms with filesharing in a subversive way, just to make filesharing sound worse than it is. I think filesharing is a better term --> it's not called file-theft for a reason.
We had two minidisk players in a studio, and always, always always when you put a minidisc recorded on the left player into the right player, the TOC would be messed up, and the disk became unreadable in both. Then, the MD's had to be sent to Sony, who recreated a TOC, but without any of the titles, or other data.
In other words, MD was crap besides the compression algorithm of which I will not speak here.
Actually, I think you're confusing the calorie with the Calorie (see the capital C there? see? see? there's a huge difference there).
Apparently some whizz-PR-kids thought it would be good PR if they lost the Kilo-multiplier in their energy description, so they decided that the Kilo- be replaced with a capital C. Well, all in all, if you're dealing with calories, you know you're in trouble. Check out the Wikipedia page on the Calorie. You'll see there are about a zillion different definitions for the calorie.
So, if some of them were considered point releases, this raises a question, perhaps of rhetorical nature.
Why do people complain about paying for an "essentially point release" for mac os X "while it is nothing more than a service pack", but are happy to put up to 500% more dollars on the table for a "point release" upgrade to their windows versions (I'm referring to the change from 2000 to XP, for example)?
This is certainly a list to remember, when the next OS X 10.5 discussion starts, with fundi's saying that people shouldn't pay for 10.5 since it's a point release.
Nope. A university should be a bastion of wisdom. They should correct, where others have accepted. Incidentally, it also teaches, but that's in room 3b, which doesn't exist.
I only know what my colleagues in the field of chemical engineering tell me. They know the reviewers most of the time, sometimes can even make suggestions to the journal which reviewers they might want. It might be different in other fields though.
One thing I have heard from colleagues, is that they would like to have the names of the reviewers on the final published article as well, so that the reviewers might put an extra effort in reviewing. They (colleagues) complain about badly reviewed papers.
sorry, no citations other than [1] B. [1] Colleagues, unpublished results.
Whilst the US indeed produces many a good paper, it should not be forgotten that many of the reviewers for papers hint that inclusion of their papers in the citation list of an article might be beneficial to further the goal of acceptance of the paper. What nationality the reviewers have is something that I do not know, but the distribution might be skewed given that many good journals are published from the US.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, no. You have it wrong there.
Anonymity is a prime ingredient for a functioning democracy. Take camera surveillance. People are going to be scared to do anything out of the ordinary, for fear of being flagged as a peculiar guy (and thus much more likely to be caught doing anything illegal, even the mundane stuff like throwing something on the ground instead of in the trashcan). This fear prevents anyone from questioning the status quo, and thus a "democracy" results in everyone agreeing with the current government.
B.
Well, what if I want to encrypt sensitive company data?
The company would kill me if the data (or rather the items in question) would leak to the public, so I cannot give them the key for fear of company secrets leaking.
What if they ask me for the key now?
B.
Yes, and somehow, everyone assumes that if they put their watch/gsm in their shoe, it is safe. No wait, make that the tip of the shoe, because the thief will only check the first bit of the shoe!
Just.... don't bring anything valuable or bring friends.
B.
I've seen it worse than that. I've seen a university page on water striders (the insects) deliberately blotting out the exact spot where two insects were copulating. I mean, INSECTS.
B.
Depends.
I think in the case of a few people managing to unlock their phone, this is not worthy of the Jobs glare. On the other hand, if the hack is made available through a multi-platform click-through free installer, there'll be a software update quietly disabling it.
B.
They didn't complain about the hacks of the iTV, so I haardly expect them to throw a tantrum over these few geeks willing to turn their iPhone into a webserver...
B.
(thanks for the proper thought you appear to have put into this argument, they are rare finds these days.)
I agree with you that the dispute is silly, but I don't think it is pointless. If you call it theft, you associate the ideas of (nocturnal) break-ins and prison sentences with copying files. If you call it copying, people associate much less severe repercussions with their actions. Thus it matters what it is called.
I also agree that the concept could be called stealing, if you envision the supply of products owned by the owner as infinite, because as such, a copy makes no impact on the supplies, you do not bereft anyone from their property. And that is what I think makes the biggest difference with theft. You do not take, you duplicate.
In your lawnmower argument, that would be the unnoticed duplication of your neighbours lawnmower, potentially reducing the resale value of his own. He does not lose one moment of the time he can spend with his lawnmower, nobody takes it.
So there is an argument for calling it theft, and an argument against calling it theft. I think in situations like these, we should call it by its true name (i.e. filesharing), as to prevent confusion and the association of the activity with previously constructed notions. The internet is not a series of tubes, like a series of tubes perhaps, and so filesharing is like stealing, but it is not stealing by itself.
What are your thoughts on this?
B.
Let's throw around terminology that does not fit the bill, on the other hand, that will really help confuddle matters. Copying is copying, thievery is thievery.
Nono, I think the parent to your post was correct. And I think you're correct. The market for entertainment we now enjoy is something that will drastically change (I doubt it'll get wiped out. Even the most headstrong lemming has to concede and change sometime). And such is life. We have no need for phrenologists anymore, so they changed and got a job as sushi-makers.
If the industry changes because of people stealing the work, then the industry will change. People are unlikely to stop stealing the work. It has been the case since the advent of personal computers. Remember copying games on 5 1/4" floppy disks? Tape? Copying them from magazines? I did. And look at the industry now.
B.
hmm. I'd say that you don't take something that doesn't belong to you, rather you copy something that doesn't belong to you. Thus devaluating the product. I see your point, but it still is not stealing. It's copying.
B.
The difference between an physical product and the copy, is that a physical product is one item. a copy of a product is a duplicate of the one item.
Analog to that is the photocopying of an article. it is a reproduction of the original, but not the original itself. Hence the term copy.
Hoepfully, you now see the difference between a physical product and a copy. No economics involved.
My argument was merely that copying is not stealing. I do not advocate either, unless it be legal (to copy, that is). That aside, I would like to offer some more reply to your post.
Protecting IP is quite important I'd say. They're trying to push it here as well. However, whilst protecting you IP, you can still make it easy for a broad market to purchase rights to listen, read or watch such IP. For example, they could provide in several different formats, each with their own price (i.e. hardcovers and paperbacks). Where it goes wrong is that they try to squeeze as much money out of it as they can, which means that for Joe Consumer, the price of what he wants is always slightly above that which he's willing to pay for it. Most consumers still pay for it, hence the position of the pricepoint. It goes wrong when J. C. can only buy one version, the super-duper high-def quadrovox DVD, most probably because the other formats do not provide as much revenue. J. C. can either buy from his (assumed) limited budget, or download.
Note that there is no third option here, which is that J.C. pays what he's willing to pay (plus perhaps a little bit extra), and accepts some loss in quality (there has to be a tradeoff somewhere). So with those two options available, the flourishing downlaod "market" tells us that many go for option two. There needs to be a store with a slider, in which J. C. can set the quality he wants for the price he's willing to pay, confident in the knowledge that the RIAA won't come knocking on his door.
Now as for my stealing vs. copying argument, it is clear that the producer (in your case) stands to lose. However, it is not as if people came up to the producer and took money out of his pocket. In effect, copying is an indirect method for preventing sales. No one loses a valuable product, but the product itself loses in value. It is similar to many things when viewed in that way. People putting spoilers of harry P. on the web might be devaluating a product. A smear campaign might be devaluating. Commercials might be devaluating some competitors products. Would you, then, call that stealing too?
In my opinion, we should call stealing stealing and copying copying. The implications of both are clear, but there is simply no reason to confuddle the two. Would you not agree?
B.
I disagree. I think there's a whole grey area between interested enough to copy it, and interested enough to pay money for it. The grey area spans the economic value range of 0 to the price of the article. There are many reasons not to be interested enough to pay money for it (e.g. when it means having no money left for food) and interested enough to try. The target market is the people that have the money and are willing to spend that money on the product. Here, the pirates (arr) are not willing to spend their money on the product and thus fall outside of the target market. Apparently, the value they associate with the product does not warrant their spending.
(by the by, the tone of your article makes it sound as if you've got problems with me, personally. Well, I buy my stuff, but that doesn't mean that I disagree with the Pirates (arr.) on all of their points. I think there is a reason for the existence of this "market", and as with many markets, it cannot be force away. Thus an alternative is to be found)
B.
I beg to differ. I think it matters what the dictionary considers to be theft, and there (the Oxford Am. Eng. dict) it is clearly stated that it is the taking of another persons property without intending to return it. Therefore calling copying thieving might skew the definition of theft, and therefore the dictionary has to change, or the law has to change to address copying instead of thieving.
Besides semantics, thieving has a much more negative association to it in the mind of the public than copying. I understand the goal of the Industry to further this goal, but in the end it might be trying to call an apple a pear. It is simply not the same.
As a side note, your sentence raises an interesting point, capable of separating individuals between those whom live by the law, and those whom live by their dictionary. I'm not sure what I mean here, but it feels like there's something... Law is in the State (or country) of the beholder, but a dictionary spans the entire world. I'm not sure what to make of that.
B.
I'm sorry, but I did have a decent upbringing, and still can't see this as theft. As indicated many times in the past, theft implies that you bereft someone of their property. Copying is a sort of half-theft in that manner, you will not pay for your copy, but the provider can still sell theirs, and is thus not directly financially impeded. Mind you, copying does not imply that I'd have bought the album were it unavailable for copying.
So, to make a long-ish story short: Copying is not stealing. Copying is not theft. Copying is copying. Copying wa Copying-des.
Instead of ad hominem attacks on my argument, I'd be very pleased to see clear, unemotional responses here. No talk about people complaining about content either, the argument here is that copying is not stealing.
B.
The article is replete with terms of "stealing" and "theft".
They are trying really hard to associate these terms with filesharing in a subversive way, just to make filesharing sound worse than it is. I think filesharing is a better term --> it's not called file-theft for a reason.
B.
Horrible^2.
We had two minidisk players in a studio, and always, always always when you put a minidisc recorded on the left player into the right player, the TOC would be messed up, and the disk became unreadable in both.
Then, the MD's had to be sent to Sony, who recreated a TOC, but without any of the titles, or other data.
In other words, MD was crap besides the compression algorithm of which I will not speak here.
B.
Actually, I think you're confusing the calorie with the Calorie (see the capital C there? see? see? there's a huge difference there).
Apparently some whizz-PR-kids thought it would be good PR if they lost the Kilo-multiplier in their energy description, so they decided that the Kilo- be replaced with a capital C. Well, all in all, if you're dealing with calories, you know you're in trouble. Check out the Wikipedia page on the Calorie. You'll see there are about a zillion different definitions for the calorie.
B.
So, if some of them were considered point releases, this raises a question, perhaps of rhetorical nature.
Why do people complain about paying for an "essentially point release" for mac os X "while it is nothing more than a service pack", but are happy to put up to 500% more dollars on the table for a "point release" upgrade to their windows versions (I'm referring to the change from 2000 to XP, for example)?
This is certainly a list to remember, when the next OS X 10.5 discussion starts, with fundi's saying that people shouldn't pay for 10.5 since it's a point release.
Thanks anyway for the clarification.
B.
What about ME?
98?
95?
3.11? --> ok, that's three.
so it'd be
3.11
NT4
95
98
ME
2000
XP
2003
Vista
so the next should be 10! or X... huh.
floppies to fix computer issues?
yeah, when throwing them at the users.
B.
Were they not going to discontinue XP at the end of this year?
B.
Nope. A university should be a bastion of wisdom. They should correct, where others have accepted.
Incidentally, it also teaches, but that's in room 3b, which doesn't exist.
B.
I only know what my colleagues in the field of chemical engineering tell me. They know the reviewers most of the time, sometimes can even make suggestions to the journal which reviewers they might want. It might be different in other fields though.
One thing I have heard from colleagues, is that they would like to have the names of the reviewers on the final published article as well, so that the reviewers might put an extra effort in reviewing. They (colleagues) complain about badly reviewed papers.
sorry, no citations other than [1]
B.
[1] Colleagues, unpublished results.
Whilst the US indeed produces many a good paper, it should not be forgotten that many of the reviewers for papers hint that inclusion of their papers in the citation list of an article might be beneficial to further the goal of acceptance of the paper. What nationality the reviewers have is something that I do not know, but the distribution might be skewed given that many good journals are published from the US.
B.