I'm actually going to work on that question for my bachelor assignment. I'm going to try to extend the bittorrent protocol to include anonymous collection of trustable statistics for use in this exact scenario. It's not going to be easy though, lots of things to overcome (like attacks etc).
About the price: If it's a flat rate then well that's what it is. People seem to prefer the current system where you pay a flat rate and can use e.g. your internet connection as much as you want, compared to the old days where you pay per minute you're using it. It's not "fair" that I have to pay equally for my internet connection say when I'm on holliday and not using it, but I still prefer to have it this way.
I believe its ok to have a patent on an idea, only if the language is specific to the actual item, to the minute detail.
But why though? I'm not trying to flamebait, but why should someone be allowed to own an idea, ie one of my thoughts, just because they thought that thought before me?
I sit quietly in my office and think of a system where video, tv and phone goes over the same wire conveniently for the user. I start a business to sell this, but I'm slapped in the face with a patent violation because "well, somebody thought about that before you," so eventhough you've never heard about this other company before they actually "own" my idea.
You're saying it has to be specific, perhaps to prevent these coincidenses from happening, but what if it does happen? We thought of the same thing, why is the other guy entitled to "own" my idea just because he came up with it first?
What justifies this? (Again, not trying to flamebait, just curious.)
We also need to reduce all the desktop applications to just one per category (except for games, we can have six there), we can't have choice, it's too confusing for the user.
What I find strange is that (other) people actually suggest these kind of things in a serious discussion about how to make Linux better. "We need fewer options so we don't confuse the users. GNOME and KDE should merge into one desktop environment, so we can have less choice." I mean wtf? People just don't understand what really makes Linux and F/OSS so great [the diversity].
The whole point is that we can all agree that the terms that Apple poses on the costumer never leaves the costumer winning. So you can either accept that and let whoever is dumb enough eat their own fate and whoever has no choice choose that path, OR you could make it illegal and thus change the pretences for the situation.
The reason I pulled in the child work thing is because although it's not related on moral grounds it illustrates how this process works and why it's important that it's there.
When children work in childern factories because they starve it's because they have no choice. Make it illegal and all the children starve right? If you make it illegal then whoever owns factory X isn't just going to close down and eat dust, they're going to hire other people - grown people that is. Unless they're all orphans this means that their parents are going to get a job, which means they'll get food on the table. If their parents already had a job, and the kids needed to work in order to bring in extra cash, stopping all of those children working means the number of workers in the market drasticly decreases. This again leeds the average worker to be more valuable, thus providing them higher salaries, thus giving food on the table, again.
This is how the market works, it adjusts. If you change the playing field the market adjusts, it's the survival of the fittest after all. Apple now either has to change their terms or get out of the market. If the former the customer wins, if the latter it will create a void in the market that someone else will fill. The customer wins again.
If you leave everything up to the market you've got anarchy, and seeing how the world is not peaches and cream the big international corporations will use their power to ally with eachother and thus completly control the costumer. What will the costumer choose if there aren't any fair businesses? Fair businesses will not have a chance to survive, because treating the costumer unfairly shifts the power from the costumer to the corporations, which will make these companies even more powerful.
>no. Business which knows how to influence politicians how to create laws which don't inflict them too much. >Bussiness which treats the costumer fairly is created by costumers choosing the company which produces the best product for them
That's the whole point. You can rely on that, but look around you and you'll see that it's not working, e.g. in this case. If everyone agrees that what they're doing is no good what's the point of letting them do it? If you on the other hand do stop them, you've changed the playing field and forced the market to adjust. If Apple does pull out, it will only be a matter of time before another company picks up the market shares and continues: This time with better treatment of the costumer.
>no. Business which knows how to influence politicians how to create laws which don't inflict them too much.
Well then we're back to square one aren't we, are you saying that your unregulated marked exists because of corruption?
In my opinion that's a naive response, more of a kneejerk reaction than thought through.
These battles have been fought countless times in the past, this is nothing new. Corporation X gets big and gets lots of power. The executives use that power to get what they want leaving them even more power.
Take childeren's factories in third world countries. You could say "hey, they didn't have to work there you know," but it shows that you don't get it. In the west it's illegal to hire small children to work because we've learned the hard way that even if they have a "choice" not to work, the choice to actually do it is always a bad one and thus shouldn't be legal in the first place. It's illegal in order to protect those who can't make that decision/don't know any better/don't think they have a choice etc.
The same thing goes here. Some european countries are putting their foot down in order to protect their citicens. They're not idiots, they understand that agreeing to the terms of Apple (in this case) will always leave the consumer loosing. By forcing the corporations to not play that game, you've automatically protected whoever that would have agreed to those unfair rules. In doing this, it's not possible to do business which are unfair to the customer, and as such those business pratices simply disappear: It's illegal.
What's left? Business that treats the customer fairly. Instead you want less fair business, traded away in exchange for more yet unfair choice.
The playing field is equal for everyone. If Apple can't survive without treating the customers unfairly, they're doing a shitty job, since it's no problem for everyone else to play nicely and still have a pretty fine profit.
The point is: Everyone knows it's wrong, that's the whole point. Because no one wants to defend it, and joe random easily attacks it (that's you in this case) it's used as an excuse for government control. Just like terrorism is.
The government can do anything they want by just labeling something as either "terrorism/terrorism act" or "child pornogrophy/pedophiles." It works because people blindly attack those things (including anything labeled as such). It works because social norms makes people afraid to say otherwise. Label it and control it. In this case it was (a node in) an anonymous network. What's next?
It is exactly because of this people need to be critical. I'm not condoning child pornography, and it's typical that anyone attacking the governments actions would be told that they were (underlining my point here). The government is using it as en excuse to do what they want, and in this case that's excactly what they did. As others have pointed out: Seizing a Tor server returns no useful information, that's the whole point of an anonymous network: No single node can reveal the origin of a connection. Whoever is in charge doesn't care: They want to frighten people. By labeling it.
First of all you're bashing the DMCA which has absolutely nothing to do with this, that law has nothing to do with Norway.
Second, no one is attacking the IPod, and it's irrelevant if it's a fine product or a pile of manure.
Third, changing a contract after a deal has been made without consent from both parties can only be defended in a commercial dictatorship.
Fourth, the force behind this is the same force that stopped companies making small children work in factories for low wages many years ago in the western world (etc). They're trying to protect us, normal people, from big corporations who only think about profits and wouldn't give a damn about peoples rights if they didn't have to. And you're playing the devils advocate saying "we'd better let them do whatever they want, even if it's totally unreasonable, because I want cheaper/better products." Wake up man.
Perhaps, but I think the linux kernel (like all open source projects) is continously moving and evolving, and the engineer in charge just wants to make good code, and not get caught up/delayed in bureaucracy and restrictions.
It's a typical windows/linux debate argument: Windows has a stable ABI, vendors are happy, but the OS is crippled by legacy code that can't be thrown away because of ancient decisions (can't change the ABI).
Linux developers on the other hand are free to do whatever they want with few restrictions to create the best kernel, but vendors pay by having to keep up with the changes (which is time consuming and hard).
Local kernel code shouldn't break itself of course, but as the article for the previous slashdot article pointed out: Some drivers broke because of a API clean up, it happens.
As others have commented on already: You're thinking about a stable ABI, not API.
And there's a reason they don't have a stable ABI: Having that restricts the freedom and creativity of the kernel hackers to choose the best possible solution to every problem.
They choose innovation over a stable ABI, and if you don't like it just switch to closed source OS.
"Aldri er det tatt opp dinosaurer i så dype borehull noen gang før. Dette er nåla i høystakken ganger 10. Å vinne i lotto er dagligdags i forhold, sier dinosaurforsker Jørn Hurum ved Naturhistoriske museer." -- http://www.dagbladet.no/magasinet/2006/04/21/46416 0.html
"Never before have dinosaurs been dug up in so deep drillholes. This is finding the needle in the haystack times ten. Winning the lottery is a normal days event in comparison, says dinosaur scientist Jørn Hurum from Nature Historic Museums (Norway)."
Money is also, in most people's eyes (I know there are many exceptions), a measure of success. It is also required to live in almost any part of the world. If someone writes a book that is read and enjoyed by many people, don't they deserve to be compensated for something?
I totally agree. But I think that when someone "uses" a product they really like (e.g. read a good book) they actually want to use their money on that writer. You just have to give them something to spend their money on. Distribute the book electronically, people will buy the book. Distribute a CD electronically, people will go to the concerts, etc.
The majority probably won't use their money on the writer/artist, but that doesn't mean no one will (I think). And if you expand your market to covering the entire world (which is possible with the internet), it's not unreasonable to assume that you reach a fair amount of people that do in fact want to spend money on the writer/artist, and that the money from these will be enough to make a living (unless your product isn't any good, but who's to blame then other than yourself?). If you expand your market that vastly by using free distribution, the percent of people giving money in return can be that much smaller without the original creator losing any money (however, gaining a lot of audience).
People should be compensated for their work, I agree. But I think it's possible while still permitting free distribution. I also respect those that aren't in favour of this, like those that put more value into money than the currency (as you pointed out). But as my first post goes, I really think most people really want their creations to reach to most amount of people (... even if the majority doesn't pay...).
Excellent reply, I wasn't aware of this (as others also pointed out).
I'm not saying that I'm against the changes to the GPL license, but from the interviews I've read of Linus this just seems like something he'd be against. But if the licensee can choose to use GPL v2 then it probably wouldn't have made a difference anyway, I just wasn't aware of that.
If you really appreciate writing, wouldn't you want as many as possible to have access to and read your books, even if the majority didn't pay you? (In contrast to only a few/lesser reading your works, but everyone reading them also paid you.)
I bet Linus is grateful he didn't put ".. or later" in the Linux copyright. These kind of political doings seems like exactly the thing he'd be against.
I think just about every country in Europe handles this perfectly fine, there's no reason the US shouldn't too. It's illegal to sell adult rated whatever it is to minors, but an adult can perfectly go to the store *with their child* and buy it for them without the store getting into trouble. That's why there's a rating system, but whatever you do behind closed doors is your own business.
A little story: My brother (works at a videogame store in Norway) normally tells the buyer when they're buying GTA to their little kid that "it's rated 18+ for a reason you know, it's not meant for little kids," in which the costumer goes "nonsense, I'll buy whatever I want for my kid!" The next day the same costumer comes back and is angry because the game is totally unsuitable for kids... (in which my brother goes "I told you so, no refunds, go away")
I just don't see why this is a problem. Why are there so many US citizens that actually want their kids to go to the nearest store and buy adult movies/games/magazines? If you really want your kids exposed to this stuff, why don't attack the rating system instead?
One thought comes to mind. From an engineering point of view, knowledge (in general and about engineering) should be free (as in speech). It's good for the society and the common man if everyone has access to the worlds knowledge and can use that as he/she sees fit to expand and create new knowledge, thus making the world progress.
Artistic creations (one might call code artistic, but it's more technical than artistic) don't need to be "free" in the same sense. Artistic creations aren't hard facts knowledge, they're made out of creativity, not engineering. This would explain why RMS has that view as you described (but I'm only guessing here).
You mean the same way they look at how exploits are done and use that information to create a 100% virus/spyware/adware-free OS?
Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. Nothing is perfect, and trying to decrypt and encrypt something on the same box right infront of the "evil consumer" is very hard to make bulletproof.
In general they don't, even though Mr. Lessig is an example of the opposite. How many Lessigs are there out there? It's not FUD even though there is one counter example, you don't have to take everything litteraly.
"He believes that rather than adopting technological methods to try to stop unauthorized copying of music, record companies need to do more to remove the incentive for piracy."
Let's say that no one is allowed to use a vcr because copying copyrighted material off a TV-broadcast is illegal, _unless_ the prices for VHS-cassets goes up sligthly in which case everyone would be allowed to use their vcr as they choose.
The same logic goes for this: those who don't use a vcr to record TV-shows would feel it's unfair, but those of us who do (the majority) would be OK with it.
The difference here is our perception of "right," both legal and ethical. No one has a problem with taping TV-shows, even though it obviously is copying copyrighted material, but when it comes to physical media it's suddenly Very Bad.
I don't think of myself as a thief, just like you probably wouldn't think of yourself as a thief when recording TV-shows *if* it was illegal.
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying I belong to the other half who disagrees with you.
(That last one made no sense, but ok I'll leave it in)
As stupid as it is, I would actually accept it if it means distributing copyrighted material would be legal. But they're getting it both ways (it's illegal, AND we're supposed to pay for those who don't follow the law, regardless what we do ourselves) and that's just stupid.
I'm talking from a consumers point of view, I can see why a company wouldn't like it either way.
if you wish people to respect your rights under the GPL, you should respect their rights with respect to licensing other material. Obviously, if we only abide by licenses we personally agree with, then licenses in general would be worthless.
Yes, but being a lawful citizen doesn't equal to supporting all and every law (with "supporting" I mean "agree to"). Obviously we're talking about the same law here (copyright), but they're using it differently. The GPL uses copyright to keep information Free and open, the RIAA/MPAA uses copyright to impose strong restrictions upon the consumer. Thus, I personally don't support **AA's actions (trying to limit my freedom of using their products that I've paid for). Copyright law should be far less stricter, and promote much more fair use.
My point is that eventhough everyone should respect the law (licenses and so forth), that still doesn't make every law "right". The RIAA should not try to take away my freedom to do use their products as I please. So legally speaking you can say "respect the law, context being GPL or RIAA", but morally speaking I say they are completely different matters. One doesn't have support the RIAA to support the GPL (or vica versa for that matter).
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I'm actually going to work on that question for my bachelor assignment. I'm going to try to extend the bittorrent protocol to include anonymous collection of trustable statistics for use in this exact scenario. It's not going to be easy though, lots of things to overcome (like attacks etc).
About the price: If it's a flat rate then well that's what it is. People seem to prefer the current system where you pay a flat rate and can use e.g. your internet connection as much as you want, compared to the old days where you pay per minute you're using it. It's not "fair" that I have to pay equally for my internet connection say when I'm on holliday and not using it, but I still prefer to have it this way.
I believe its ok to have a patent on an idea, only if the language is specific to the actual item, to the minute detail.
But why though? I'm not trying to flamebait, but why should someone be allowed to own an idea, ie one of my thoughts, just because they thought that thought before me?
I sit quietly in my office and think of a system where video, tv and phone goes over the same wire conveniently for the user. I start a business to sell this, but I'm slapped in the face with a patent violation because "well, somebody thought about that before you," so eventhough you've never heard about this other company before they actually "own" my idea.
You're saying it has to be specific, perhaps to prevent these coincidenses from happening, but what if it does happen? We thought of the same thing, why is the other guy entitled to "own" my idea just because he came up with it first?
What justifies this? (Again, not trying to flamebait, just curious.)
We also need to reduce all the desktop applications to just one per category (except for games, we can have six there), we can't have choice, it's too confusing for the user.
What I find strange is that (other) people actually suggest these kind of things in a serious discussion about how to make Linux better. "We need fewer options so we don't confuse the users. GNOME and KDE should merge into one desktop environment, so we can have less choice." I mean wtf? People just don't understand what really makes Linux and F/OSS so great [the diversity].
(I get your sarcasm, I'm not bashing at you.)
The whole point is that we can all agree that the terms that Apple poses on the costumer never leaves the costumer winning. So you can either accept that and let whoever is dumb enough eat their own fate and whoever has no choice choose that path, OR you could make it illegal and thus change the pretences for the situation.
The reason I pulled in the child work thing is because although it's not related on moral grounds it illustrates how this process works and why it's important that it's there.
When children work in childern factories because they starve it's because they have no choice. Make it illegal and all the children starve right? If you make it illegal then whoever owns factory X isn't just going to close down and eat dust, they're going to hire other people - grown people that is. Unless they're all orphans this means that their parents are going to get a job, which means they'll get food on the table. If their parents already had a job, and the kids needed to work in order to bring in extra cash, stopping all of those children working means the number of workers in the market drasticly decreases. This again leeds the average worker to be more valuable, thus providing them higher salaries, thus giving food on the table, again.
This is how the market works, it adjusts. If you change the playing field the market adjusts, it's the survival of the fittest after all. Apple now either has to change their terms or get out of the market. If the former the customer wins, if the latter it will create a void in the market that someone else will fill. The customer wins again.
If you leave everything up to the market you've got anarchy, and seeing how the world is not peaches and cream the big international corporations will use their power to ally with eachother and thus completly control the costumer. What will the costumer choose if there aren't any fair businesses? Fair businesses will not have a chance to survive, because treating the costumer unfairly shifts the power from the costumer to the corporations, which will make these companies even more powerful.
>no. Business which knows how to influence politicians how to create laws which don't inflict them too much.
>Bussiness which treats the costumer fairly is created by costumers choosing the company which produces the best product for them
That's the whole point. You can rely on that, but look around you and you'll see that it's not working, e.g. in this case. If everyone agrees that what they're doing is no good what's the point of letting them do it? If you on the other hand do stop them, you've changed the playing field and forced the market to adjust. If Apple does pull out, it will only be a matter of time before another company picks up the market shares and continues: This time with better treatment of the costumer.
>no. Business which knows how to influence politicians how to create laws which don't inflict them too much.
Well then we're back to square one aren't we, are you saying that your unregulated marked exists because of corruption?
In my opinion that's a naive response, more of a kneejerk reaction than thought through.
These battles have been fought countless times in the past, this is nothing new. Corporation X gets big and gets lots of power. The executives use that power to get what they want leaving them even more power.
Take childeren's factories in third world countries. You could say "hey, they didn't have to work there you know," but it shows that you don't get it. In the west it's illegal to hire small children to work because we've learned the hard way that even if they have a "choice" not to work, the choice to actually do it is always a bad one and thus shouldn't be legal in the first place. It's illegal in order to protect those who can't make that decision/don't know any better/don't think they have a choice etc.
The same thing goes here. Some european countries are putting their foot down in order to protect their citicens. They're not idiots, they understand that agreeing to the terms of Apple (in this case) will always leave the consumer loosing. By forcing the corporations to not play that game, you've automatically protected whoever that would have agreed to those unfair rules. In doing this, it's not possible to do business which are unfair to the customer, and as such those business pratices simply disappear: It's illegal.
What's left? Business that treats the customer fairly. Instead you want less fair business, traded away in exchange for more yet unfair choice.
The playing field is equal for everyone. If Apple can't survive without treating the customers unfairly, they're doing a shitty job, since it's no problem for everyone else to play nicely and still have a pretty fine profit.
The point is: Everyone knows it's wrong, that's the whole point. Because no one wants to defend it, and joe random easily attacks it (that's you in this case) it's used as an excuse for government control. Just like terrorism is.
The government can do anything they want by just labeling something as either "terrorism/terrorism act" or "child pornogrophy/pedophiles." It works because people blindly attack those things (including anything labeled as such). It works because social norms makes people afraid to say otherwise. Label it and control it. In this case it was (a node in) an anonymous network. What's next?
It is exactly because of this people need to be critical. I'm not condoning child pornography, and it's typical that anyone attacking the governments actions would be told that they were (underlining my point here). The government is using it as en excuse to do what they want, and in this case that's excactly what they did. As others have pointed out: Seizing a Tor server returns no useful information, that's the whole point of an anonymous network: No single node can reveal the origin of a connection. Whoever is in charge doesn't care: They want to frighten people. By labeling it.
What is this "dot-slash" you're speaking of?
First of all you're bashing the DMCA which has absolutely nothing to do with this, that law has nothing to do with Norway.
Second, no one is attacking the IPod, and it's irrelevant if it's a fine product or a pile of manure.
Third, changing a contract after a deal has been made without consent from both parties can only be defended in a commercial dictatorship.
Fourth, the force behind this is the same force that stopped companies making small children work in factories for low wages many years ago in the western world (etc). They're trying to protect us, normal people, from big corporations who only think about profits and wouldn't give a damn about peoples rights if they didn't have to. And you're playing the devils advocate saying "we'd better let them do whatever they want, even if it's totally unreasonable, because I want cheaper/better products." Wake up man.
Perhaps, but I think the linux kernel (like all open source projects) is continously moving and evolving, and the engineer in charge just wants to make good code, and not get caught up/delayed in bureaucracy and restrictions.
It's a typical windows/linux debate argument: Windows has a stable ABI, vendors are happy, but the OS is crippled by legacy code that can't be thrown away because of ancient decisions (can't change the ABI).
Linux developers on the other hand are free to do whatever they want with few restrictions to create the best kernel, but vendors pay by having to keep up with the changes (which is time consuming and hard).
Local kernel code shouldn't break itself of course, but as the article for the previous slashdot article pointed out: Some drivers broke because of a API clean up, it happens.
As others have commented on already: You're thinking about a stable ABI, not API.
And there's a reason they don't have a stable ABI: Having that restricts the freedom and creativity of the kernel hackers to choose the best possible solution to every problem.
They choose innovation over a stable ABI, and if you don't like it just switch to closed source OS.
Hehe, preparing his speech ;)
"Aldri er det tatt opp dinosaurer i så dype borehull noen gang før. Dette er nåla i høystakken ganger 10. Å vinne i lotto er dagligdags i forhold, sier dinosaurforsker Jørn Hurum ved Naturhistoriske museer." -- http://www.dagbladet.no/magasinet/2006/04/21/46416 0.html
"Never before have dinosaurs been dug up in so deep drillholes. This is finding the needle in the haystack times ten. Winning the lottery is a normal days event in comparison, says dinosaur scientist Jørn Hurum from Nature Historic Museums (Norway)."
Money is also, in most people's eyes (I know there are many exceptions), a measure of success. It is also required to live in almost any part of the world. If someone writes a book that is read and enjoyed by many people, don't they deserve to be compensated for something?
I totally agree. But I think that when someone "uses" a product they really like (e.g. read a good book) they actually want to use their money on that writer. You just have to give them something to spend their money on. Distribute the book electronically, people will buy the book. Distribute a CD electronically, people will go to the concerts, etc.
The majority probably won't use their money on the writer/artist, but that doesn't mean no one will (I think). And if you expand your market to covering the entire world (which is possible with the internet), it's not unreasonable to assume that you reach a fair amount of people that do in fact want to spend money on the writer/artist, and that the money from these will be enough to make a living (unless your product isn't any good, but who's to blame then other than yourself?). If you expand your market that vastly by using free distribution, the percent of people giving money in return can be that much smaller without the original creator losing any money (however, gaining a lot of audience).
People should be compensated for their work, I agree. But I think it's possible while still permitting free distribution. I also respect those that aren't in favour of this, like those that put more value into money than the currency (as you pointed out). But as my first post goes, I really think most people really want their creations to reach to most amount of people (... even if the majority doesn't pay...).
Excellent reply, I wasn't aware of this (as others also pointed out).
I'm not saying that I'm against the changes to the GPL license, but from the interviews I've read of Linus this just seems like something he'd be against. But if the licensee can choose to use GPL v2 then it probably wouldn't have made a difference anyway, I just wasn't aware of that.
If you really appreciate writing, wouldn't you want as many as possible to have access to and read your books, even if the majority didn't pay you? (In contrast to only a few/lesser reading your works, but everyone reading them also paid you.)
I bet Linus is grateful he didn't put ".. or later" in the Linux copyright. These kind of political doings seems like exactly the thing he'd be against.
I think just about every country in Europe handles this perfectly fine, there's no reason the US shouldn't too. It's illegal to sell adult rated whatever it is to minors, but an adult can perfectly go to the store *with their child* and buy it for them without the store getting into trouble. That's why there's a rating system, but whatever you do behind closed doors is your own business.
A little story: My brother (works at a videogame store in Norway) normally tells the buyer when they're buying GTA to their little kid that "it's rated 18+ for a reason you know, it's not meant for little kids," in which the costumer goes "nonsense, I'll buy whatever I want for my kid!" The next day the same costumer comes back and is angry because the game is totally unsuitable for kids... (in which my brother goes "I told you so, no refunds, go away")
I just don't see why this is a problem. Why are there so many US citizens that actually want their kids to go to the nearest store and buy adult movies/games/magazines? If you really want your kids exposed to this stuff, why don't attack the rating system instead?
One thought comes to mind. From an engineering point of view, knowledge (in general and about engineering) should be free (as in speech). It's good for the society and the common man if everyone has access to the worlds knowledge and can use that as he/she sees fit to expand and create new knowledge, thus making the world progress.
Artistic creations (one might call code artistic, but it's more technical than artistic) don't need to be "free" in the same sense. Artistic creations aren't hard facts knowledge, they're made out of creativity, not engineering. This would explain why RMS has that view as you described (but I'm only guessing here).
You mean the same way they look at how exploits are done and use that information to create a 100% virus/spyware/adware-free OS?
Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. Nothing is perfect, and trying to decrypt and encrypt something on the same box right infront of the "evil consumer" is very hard to make bulletproof.
In general they don't, even though Mr. Lessig is an example of the opposite. How many Lessigs are there out there? It's not FUD even though there is one counter example, you don't have to take everything litteraly.
"He believes that rather than adopting technological methods to try to stop unauthorized copying of music, record companies need to do more to remove the incentive for piracy."
No shit Sherlock.
I agree.
Let's put it this way:
Let's say that no one is allowed to use a vcr because copying copyrighted material off a TV-broadcast is illegal, _unless_ the prices for VHS-cassets goes up sligthly in which case everyone would be allowed to use their vcr as they choose.
The same logic goes for this: those who don't use a vcr to record TV-shows would feel it's unfair, but those of us who do (the majority) would be OK with it.
The difference here is our perception of "right," both legal and ethical. No one has a problem with taping TV-shows, even though it obviously is copying copyrighted material, but when it comes to physical media it's suddenly Very Bad.
I don't think of myself as a thief, just like you probably wouldn't think of yourself as a thief when recording TV-shows *if* it was illegal.
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying I belong to the other half who disagrees with you.
(That last one made no sense, but ok I'll leave it in)
As stupid as it is, I would actually accept it if it means distributing copyrighted material would be legal. But they're getting it both ways (it's illegal, AND we're supposed to pay for those who don't follow the law, regardless what we do ourselves) and that's just stupid.
I'm talking from a consumers point of view, I can see why a company wouldn't like it either way.
if you wish people to respect your rights under the GPL, you should respect their rights with respect to licensing other material. Obviously, if we only abide by licenses we personally agree with, then licenses in general would be worthless.
Yes, but being a lawful citizen doesn't equal to supporting all and every law (with "supporting" I mean "agree to"). Obviously we're talking about the same law here (copyright), but they're using it differently. The GPL uses copyright to keep information Free and open, the RIAA/MPAA uses copyright to impose strong restrictions upon the consumer. Thus, I personally don't support **AA's actions (trying to limit my freedom of using their products that I've paid for). Copyright law should be far less stricter, and promote much more fair use.
My point is that eventhough everyone should respect the law (licenses and so forth), that still doesn't make every law "right". The RIAA should not try to take away my freedom to do use their products as I please. So legally speaking you can say "respect the law, context being GPL or RIAA", but morally speaking I say they are completely different matters. One doesn't have support the RIAA to support the GPL (or vica versa for that matter).