But Adobe has no grounds to sue MS because MS is using a competing format - the Word format and Excel format were both MS, too.
Word and Excel are MS proprietary formats still. Adobe has grounds to sue because it is illegal to leverage a monopoly to take over another market. The market is portable document generation tools. The common formats in it are PDF and Postscript. Now MS can make tools that generate either of these or a new format that competes with them without breaking the law. What they can't do, is use Windows to make sure their product takes over. They have to compete on even ground with the others. If a consumer decides to get and use portable document tools to send a form somewhere they should look at the options, choose the best one for them, and use it. The problem is, if they already were forced to pay for one when they bought Windows, they will just use that one. Because Windows is a monopolized product, that is against the law. So Adobe is going to sue, unless the courts bring charges first as they are legally obligated to.
Vista still ships with MS' PDF-esque format, just not PDF.
Yes, and Adobe is still trying to get the courts to do something about it.
Adobe was concerned built-in PDF-authoring in Vista would kill sales of Acrobat Pro, so they threatened to sue MS for "abusing" its monopoly status.
Adobe complained that both the PDF authoring tools and the XPS authoring tools would kill sales of Acrobat Pro despite not being the better product.
That is the whole point of antirust law, to ensure competition. If MS makes and sells better portable document tools and format, or even PDF generation tools great, there is nothing Adobe can do about it. It is when MS makes an inferior product, but takes over the market anyway by using their Windows or Office domination to do so that Adobe complains. And they should complain and so should we. Capitalism is great for the innovation and competition. This removes that from the market and results in a de-facto winner, despite no innovation and results in yet another market with MS dominating and basically no progress happening.
Uh, analogies are supposed to simplify what you are talking about. You, as inevitably happens after the 3rd or 4th analogy revision in a slashdot discussion, have failed miserably.
Analogies are supposed to provide a clear parallel. It is nice if they provide simplicity, so long as they remain analogous. The previous analogy was qualitatively different and thus not apt. If you have a problem with my analogy, do point out how it is not the same, in principal.
Being incorporated in Canada does not exempt them from Illinois law. That's like saying a Canadian citizen can't be prosecuted for crimes committed in Illinois.
You're oversimplifying. First, this is civil law, not criminal. Second, no crime was committed. Third, This is an Illinois court ordering a canadian company to suspend a service they contract to a UK organization. If the service is provided in the US, then the court might have the authority, but if the service is not, there is some serious question of jurisdiction here. You can't go ordering companies that do business both within and outside the US to take arbitrary actions outside the US in response to civil suits within the US.
Their first request (not bundling it with Office 2007, instead requiring a separate step to install it) was met.
This is an open and shut case bundling and MS knows they would lose in a minute if they tried this.
But then Adobe demanded MS charge for it, and MS said no and removed the functionality altogether.
From what I read Adobe demanded it be a separate download from Office, and MS complied, but they are still bundling XPS with Vista which will almost certainly result in them going to court.
Doesn't sound like MS was doing something wrong, to me.
Which is a better format PDF or XPS? Which is more accepted? Which is openly licensed so anyone can read and write to it? Which is documented?
Keeping that in mind, because XPS is going to be bundled in Windows, do you think it will take over the market in the next 5 years, even if it is never as good as PDF? I think it will unless the courts step in and make sure they both have to compete on level ground, without leveraging either Windows or MS Office to make XPS the winner. In which case, it is hard to tell which will win, but they will both have to improve and compete for our dollars and in the end, we the consumers will win and that is what the courts are supposed to be insuring.
You just highlighted a problem of the proprietary formats... the owner can deside who can and cannot use its format.
PDF is an open standard anyone can implement, so long as doing so does not break some other law.
In this case as it is for Apple, Adobe will probably make no problem. Only Microsoft is forbidden to include PDF in Office.
Actually, Apple is forbidden from bundling it with anything they have monopoly on as well (iPod being the only real candidate). If Adobe decided they don't want Apple or me or most anyone else building in PDF generation tools in out products, they could do nothing about it. The complaints Adobe brought concern both PDF generation and XPS generation (an MS proprietary format). The format, however, has nothing to do with the complaint.
Microsoft would probably not be authorised by Adobe to use PDF, but anyway Adobe is still complaining when they use another format...
Okay apply some logic here. Adobe complains when MS takes an illegal action using PDF and they also complain when MS takes the same illegal action using XPS. Maybe you might infer from this that it is the action, not the format that is the issue?
If I make a gun using no patented technology and shoot the CEO of Colt with it, or if I license the rights to build a rifle using Colt's patents and shoot the CEO of Colt with it, I'm still going to be in trouble for murder. Half the people here, however, are focusing on the fact that I licensed the patent from Colt, and saying other people should avoid licensing patents from Colt too, since they might go to jail for murder. Crazy.
Well that should make me happy to see Microsoft hurt, but at the end of the day, who will be the next Adobe target?
Just as the CEO of Colt would probably bring charges against the next person to shoot him, Adobe will probably lodge antitrust complaints against the next monopolist that tries to bundle a product with their monopolized product to illegally take over one of Adobe's markets.
Proprietary format are a plague, when they reach a status of monopol they should automatically fall in public domain, as trademark.
Wow, I'm not even going to start correcting this mess.
Adobe holds the patents, but they'll license without royalties as long as you conform to the standard... and as long as they can't find a good reason not to. Of course, the minute they try to, the world will move to a free open format pretty quickly.
Umm, they've already licensed the format including patent protection. Nothing can stop companies from implementing the current standard well into the future, whatever Adobe does, since they can't rescind the license without some legal reason. If Adobe were to not freely license the next version of PDF, well no one else would move to it and people would still write applications that use the old versions.
I don't know the details of the MS case - did MS do it without permission, maybe?
MS's actions had nothing to do with licensing PDF. It is a red herring. Adobe would have done the exact same thing if MS tried to bundle a photoshop competitor read and wrote to open formats. MS can do anything anyone else can with PDF, so long as they are not violating some other law. Think of it this way. Anyone can read and write PDF, just as anyone can chop things up with a meat cleaver. That does not mean you can get away with murder using the defense that you were just chopping things, like everyone else. It in no way means that it is illegal to chop things with cleavers.
Let's say GM is the dominant automobile seller (jokes aside, it's an analogy), and Ford invents airbags.
Why does it happen that every time a discussion about a monopoly comes up, someone immediately proposes an analogy that has no monopolies in it? Use a monopoly in all analogies about monopolies. Also, if someone invents something new, there won't be an existing market for it, so bundling is perfectly legal.
Okay, so here's a more apt analogy. The power company has a monopoly on power distribution, like MS does on office suites. You can still buy a generator, or use solar panels, but those are not competing in the same market and are not really comparable solutions. So then, the electric company decides they want to move into the related light bulb business. They start bundling light bulbs with your electrical service. You get two regular light bulbs and two special MS patented light bulbs every 3 months, whether you want them or not. The cost of your electricity goes up to cover it, but you have to have electricity, so there is not a lot you can do.
In this situation, Adobe is the existing light bulb company being driven out of business. It does not matter if they can make bulbs more cheaply, or even that are better than the ones the electric company gives you. Everyone already has bulbs so no one buys from them. And the light bulb industry goes to hell. Their is no motivation to make better bulbs or cheaper bulbs. In fact, the electric company is motivated to make bulbs that use more electricity and they can get away with it. Consumer are getting products that are not only inferior, but that are intentionally designed to hinder the consumer. The innovation and efficiency that makes capitalism so successful has been bypassed.
The lock in is annoying, but not the primary problem. Bundling was the problem, as I understand it.
There's an edit-compile-test cycle; results are completely predictable; modern editors are almost full-blown IDEs for LaTeX.
A lot of programing is done with IDEs these days, for a reason.
It integrates well into multi-user editing scenarios: you can check in your source tex files into CVS or subversion, and get free version control with diffing capabilities. Try that with a binary format.
I think you're making three mistakes here. First, LaTeX is a layout application, than many people use for word processing. You can't compare it to MSWord and assume you've done a comparison of WYSIWYG versus markup. Second, you're discounting the learning curve and its affect upon collaboration. Third, you're equating LaTeX with text based format and word processor with binary, and that is just plain wrong.
Collaborating with LaTeX is a pain in the butt in almost every instance I've used it because their are invariably people who don't know the language and who then have to learn it, greatly slowing the whole process. As for CVS and Subversion, I often use them to check in both binary and XML files from other word processors and layout applications and collaboration with them is not a problem using these tools.
How many times have you struggled to get an image placed just right in a popular WYSIWYG text editor?
Never, as text editors don't support images. I've often placed images with ease in an exact location, however, using WYSIWYG layout programs, which I find to be much, much easier to use and more flexible for that task than LaTeX.
How many times has your favorite WYSIWYG editor added a page to your report that makes it go over the page limit, minutes before a critical submission deadline?
Never. If I have a page limitation, I'm almost certainly using the right WYSIWYG tool, like InDesign, Framemaker, Quark, or the like (depending on the particulars).
The little time spent in learning the language far outweighs the advantages it provides. Give it a try!
I use LaTeX for certain projects and it is even the best tool I know for certain types of projects. You seem, however, to have compared it to MS Word for certain tasks and concluded that it is superior and everyone should switch to LaTeX. This is not very good advice. Most people, performing normal tasks would be a lot better off with some of the WYSIWYG tools available, or better yet a hybrid tool like InDesign that allows the user to edit both the markup and the WYSIWYG view. It even uses the same basic layout engine as LaTeX, but you don't have to mess with all the hacks to get color and graphics and the like to function smoothly and you don't have to build it constantly to see the end result. Give it a try!
G*d, how hard! You have to download and install them once...
This depends upon usage. You have to download the program and all the updates and all the files, once per machine you want to use to access them, per change. So if a person uses a computer in a lab at their school and one at the library after school and one at their mother's house later yet, and occasionally one at their estranged father's house that gives us, four installations of a given software, assuming it works on all the platforms and has enough licenses and is up kept up to date on them, and four downloads of each file used on those machines in order to move it from place to place.
Now what if he is working on this with a friend and they'd like to collaborate on the same file? How easy is that with currently available freeware?
Web apps have a lot of drawbacks and I'm unlikely to use them myself, but that does not mean Web applications don't have some real advantages as well. In fact, this sort of a program may be ideal for use by K-12 schools. Personally, I think we'll eventually move to hybrid applications that, like e-mail, have a Web client and a regular client so that we can have the advantages of both.
Google is very friendly to Mac users, it just takes them a while to get software they acquire to work well with Macs, and for some projects that are not as needed on the Mac, they don't bother. The reason Google is Mac friendly in general is because a lot of people there use them.
So while I was fooling around with this, I couldn't help but notice that it has the option of saving to a Portable Document Format (PDF) which, according to Wikipedia is:
a file format proprietary to Adobe Systems for representing two-dimensional documents in a device independent and resolution independent fixed-layout document format.
Umm, maybe you should look for more than one source. Wikipedia has a lot of slant on various topics, including this one. The truth is PDF is a trademarked term that refers to a standard format maintained for Adobe and which they provide both open licensing, documentation, and patent protection. In all practical terms, it is an open standard and certain versions of it are ISO certified standards. There are both open and closed source, free and commercial implementations of it and none have ever had any legal problems.
I bolded the word that has caused Adobe to sue Microsoft. My question is simple, doesn't Google face the same kind of lawsuit?
Microsoft was not sued for implementing the open PDF standard. They were sued for anti-competative bundling of tools that just happen to use that format. Google could be in trouble for the same thing, if they acquired a monopoly in some market and tied the PDF generation tools to that monopolized product.
Really causes one to wonder how 'free' something is when it comes to standards.
Yeah this is a concern, if you only read marketing blurbs.
Now we'll just have to wait and see if Adobe begins to sue everyone who wants this functionality in their application.
No we don't. People have been doing just that for many years without issue.
A lot of people I talk to regard PDF as an 'open' standard when the only part that's free is the ability to decode it--not encode it.
Please stop repeating this nonsense. It is misinformation plain and simple as you'd know if you even read the Wikipedia page you link to. Anyone can code programs that read and write PDF, provided they call it PDF. What they can't do is take the code and make a new format based on PDF, but that does not follow the standard as they would no longer have patent protection from Adobe, much like every other open standard.
Antitrust laws cover a variety of anti-competitive business practices.
Traditionally anti-trust refers to monopolies and cartels that have control of a market. While I've seen a few laws that pertain to other matters labeled as anti-trust (mistakenly?) I don't see how any of them might apply here.
Why not? Everything you've just mentioned is certainly do-able in a few years if enough people want it.
I suspect you're trolling, but it is not practical for one person to reform the system. It takes a lot of people and serious changes to our society. You say everything is doable if enough people want it, but they don't. They want to sit on their asses, watch TV and drink beer without having to think too hard.
With the exception of the Mac Pro (way out of most people's price range) - the video card.
With the exception of the Mac Pro, all they sell are laptops, ultra compacts, and all-in-ones. The fact that you can't upgrade the video card is not because it is a mac. The same holds true for laptops, all-in-ones, and ultra compact systems in the PC world too.
This highlights a different problem for mac users, which is with only one manufacturer the choices are limited for hardware, so you are less likely to find something with the exact specs you want. This does not translate to "macs aren't upgradeable" however.
I guess I don't understand your complaint about not being able to trust scientific testing. Where is it that science has failed us? Are the scientists corrupt? Are the corporations not releasing the bad results? Is the FDA cooking the books?
There is very little scientific testing going on since most of the testing is not open and cannot be reproduced due to both legal restrictions and lack of access to the technology. Yes, the so called scientists are corrupt. My girlfriend was a biochemist until a short while ago, when she quit because all of her jobs involved unethical and unscientific behavior, including faking numbers and undocumented methodologies designed to get particular results while the common reader would assume standard methodologies were used. When there is this much profit involved, the tendency towards biased results is very obvious.
Whatever the flaw is, my suggestion would be to correct it. Use the same forces that've propelled science since it was created. That is openess, peer review, honesty, integrity, etc.
That doesn't answer my question. I asked what you propose the average person does. Reforming the broken FDA, legal system, federal subsidies, federal grant program, or breaking the law and conducting our own experiments on live subjects using patented materials at extreme cost is not a practical solution.
Not everyone is motivated solely towards profit to the exclusion of all else.
No, but most of those people are in no position to do anything, since they were driven out of the field when they presented real results. From what I've seen if you trust the pseudo-scientific studies from the FDA and these companies claiming adding nano materials, or synthetic additives, or a number of other modifications as safe, you're taking a huge gamble. The only practical test I know and can afford is to avoid them and wait to see what happens to the general populace that is eating them. That means avoiding them as much as possible for quite some time.
The Mac point is moot, as I said, Mac is way worse than Windows.
But you fail to address why, aside from two points where I showed you were wrong.
And no, they don't run in Wine, I've specifically checked, as I had my fair share of attempts to move to linux. Crossover office has some of them working so-so, and still not for production use.
I know Photoshop, Flash, and DreamWeaver work in WINE on Linux and Crossover is pretty much just the WINE code mixed with some proprietary finish. You also don't address the other half of the emulation equation. Work just handed me a laptop with the Intel Core Duo processor in it, specifically so I can run multiple OS's at a usable speed. Even running a full copy of Windows, OS X, and two Linux variants, it runs plenty fast to do real work. When and if Crossover gets one more application up and running (it is on their short list), I won't be booting the Windows OS at all. For me, that will make Windows irrelevant, despite the application availability barrier and my needing specialty niche apps. I'm certainly not the only one in that boat. I know a number of people who are consolidating workstations due to the new chips.
There is one thing all the people I know doing this have in common, Windows apps are running on top of some other OS, usually Linux or OS X. This is to provide the stability and security benefits of these OS's over Windows. That means users have real incentive to switch to apps that are native, and that means pressure on app developers. It may well be the Windows lock-in breaker is already here.
We've been using selective breeding techniques ever since we started agriculture.
True, but there are some more recent changes. First, selective breeding has moved towards market attributes, like the ability to survive shipping and appear ideal, instead of taste ideal. Second, genetic tampering, additives, nano-scale materials, and the like have a lot less testing behind them to prove their safety.
Is the corn, wheat, tomatoes, etc the same as it was 2000 years ago, or even 200 years ago?
Nope, but neither do I assume that is a good thing.
Rejecting GM, processed, or whatever food with broad strokes doesn't make any sense.
No, but taking a cautious approach and being slow to adopt new, potentially dangerous food modification technologies does make a lot of sense.
If you want "purity before human intervention" you should go back to the hunter-gatherer society, just be carefull not to gather anything that's reproduced with human-interferred stuff.
That is awfully hard to do, but actually not a bad goal. Some of the best meat for me is the lean, natural meat from game I hunt myself. Pollution has made most inland fish and many waterfowl risky to eat from the wild, but native berries and plants are among the most flavorful and nutritious foods I eat.
It's just a matter of making sure it's all safe rather than rejecting it all out of hand.
How do you propose the average person does this? We sure can't trust the "science" behind it, since the motivations behind it lead to bogus results, and even completely false data. What is a reasonable approach? I'd argue avoiding foods made with "new" techniques until it has had a few generations of human guinea pigs chowing down on it may be the best way to make sure it is safe.
Organic food is mostly a scam. It's really a way to crank up the price. The farming cost differential for "organic" crops is small, but the retail price differential is large. You've been had by Whole Foods.
I shop at Whole Foods, especially when I need veggies. I often don't buy their organic products either, they do sell non-organic (dumb terminology) veggies. The thing is, the produce they sell tends to be much better quality than the competition and the price difference is very small from my comparison shopping tests. So long as you avoid the random really expensive items you won't notice much of a hit to your pocketbook.
Whole Foods is amusing. They have a huge booze section. Looks like a liquor store that also carries food.
Interesting, the whole foods near me does not even sell liquor, only beer and wine. Not that I would mind if they did.
The problem with restaurants seems to be pasta. There's been this huge move towards Italian restaurants
Is this in your region, or is this some sort of national trend that does not seem to be affecting my region? We have about the same number of italian places as we do French, German, and Indian.
well, common thinking would hold that the cough syrup would work faster, as you wouldn't have to wait for it to disolve in the stomach acid, unlike with the tablet. though the differance would be a few minutes at most.
Actually, some syrups also act on the esophagus on the way down, while capsules are passed through with no effect on the esophagus.
Imagine relearning all they know about their desktop in a Linux environment.
I've seen plenty of average people in both home and business move to both Linux and Mac OS X. With a system installed for them (like Windows was when they bought their computer) they all adjusted fairly quickly.
Windows also has a lot of software not offered on other platforms, such as Photoshop, Flash (the IDE), Dreamweaver, 3DSMax and so on.
Windows has a variety o software not found on other platforms, but that software is shrinking. More things are ported to the Mac. Emulation technologies on the chip combines with emulators and WINE type solutions make the number of programs fewer each day. All those you mentioned run on the Mac natively and I think all of them run on Linux via WINE.
The Linux alternatives for a designer are mostly jokes (like Gimp, where you can't even draw a rounded rectangle without installing specially crafted Script-Fu commands).
I use Photoshop and the GIMP (photoshop more). Both are better for different tasks. No surprise there.
The Mac platform is a lot worse than Windows where I'm locked not only into proprietary OS (which is outdated every year and you have to re-buy it), but also proprietary hardware which you can't upgrade any better than a laptop (add some RAM, a DVD.. and that's it.. wanna faster processor on your iMac? throw away the whole machine and buy a new one).
I'm always astounded when people make the argument that because new versions of OS X come out more often, with new features, it is inferior to Windows in this regard. I think the opposite is true. Each version does the same thing it did when I bought it. OS X just gives me more options. I can upgrade more often if I want the features, or I can wait and upgrade every other version, or every third version. Compared to Windows where I don't have the option of getting any new features every year and I'm forced to wait 4 years, or 6 years to get that one feature I want that has been on OS X for many years, well I'd really rather have the flexibility and choices.
As for the hardware being proprietary, what exactly can't you upgrade on a Mac these days that you can on a PC? The only thing I know about is the motherboard. You can swap every other part with one not from Apple, as far as I know, without issue. You can even swap the chips on the new ones.
Of course since 90% or more of users never upgrade anything and do just get a new computer, this is really a non-issue for most users.
I guess I just don't see that your arguments have much relevance to the real world today. Those points you make that ever had relevance have mostly disappeared in the last few years.
If you felt so secure that your "logical reason" would be a good enough argument on it's own you wouldn't have mentioned your "profession".
I mentioned it to point out that you are being irrational, a point you seem unconcerned with. Even assuming I'm lying about my profession because I really want to impress some anonymous person on Slashdot for some reason, it does not have any bearing on the fact that you are not using reason to determine the truth, but have already made up your mind and are now looking for ways to justify that belief. Prejudice is irrational. You don't know have any way of knowing what I do for a living. You made an assertion about what my profession is, despite this. If incontrovertible proof of your own irrationality is not enough to make you rethink your opinions, then nothing I say is likely to. I'm not sure there is any point to continuing this conversation.
I've already answered why I I feel the current system is beneficial, artists rights and control of their own works.
I'm not sure I can figure out what your belief is based upon the jumble of your previous posts. Why don't you just state it clearly for me.
As far as works that "disappear"... This happened long before such a thing as copyright was even considered. Copyright has less to do with it than what bad artistry does.
The fact that things that were not beneficial happened in the past does not make the beneficial in the present. I've already rebutted the argument that only "bad" works disappear, which is patently not the case.
Oh, selective audience. So you should have the right to control your own work but in your utopia that wouldn't be true? You keep asking me the same questions, how about not skirting mine?
Some of my works, especially commissioned ones are considered trade secrets and protected as such. Others are of use only to a limited portion of the population, in a fairly small industry. As for a "utopia" we should all be striving for the best possible laws, most beneficial to society, should we not? As I said, I think a well crafted copyright would be a good idea and I'm in favor of copyright, if the laws are reformed to benefit society. I don't, however, delude myself into thinking I have some entitlement to copyright to restrict distribution of what I make and I already explained why it is not necessary for me to profit from my craft.
My understanding is that you can open any work you own to public domain.
For those I have not transferred the copyright to, I certainly could, but to what end? Why should I put any works into the public domain that I do not need to? It's like asking a corporation why they don't stop using tax loopholes to avoid paying taxes. It is wholly beside the point of whether or not the law should be changed to close those loopholes and make copyright benefit society.
Well, since I know nothing of your supposed works I can't say much for them, but I'm damn sure Pink Floyd has made a massive amount more off their works after the first two years.
I'm sure they do. The question, however, is would they have made their works if they did not gain that benefit. Also, we must consider the common case, not the exception. The vast majority of works do not make money after the first few years, and are not even available for sale, yet they are denied to the public. Why?
One of my proposed reforms is that when a work is no longer offered for sale, at a reasonable market value, that work immediately enters the public domain. This removes no incentive for the creation of works, but greatly benefits society.
Maybe all this art this is going "missing" has no long term value and they're not really missing at all but "misallocated" due to a lack of interest.
Sure, maybe it all sucks. Who would you rather have making that decision, society as a whole, or entertainment industry executives?
People already don't give enough of a damn to pay artists when
Yeah, I always here stories like this. I'm calling you out! PROVE to me that this is true. You can make up any crap you want and get away with it. PROVE IT.
No. My anonymity is an important part of the reason I post here. Without it, my comments can cause public relations problems for my employer(s) or lead me to have to censor myself to maintain good relationships in the industry. In any case, the fact that I'm a writer does not have any bearing on the validity of my points. It is ad hominem. I just thought I'd point out your prejudice and assumption that you know what profession other people have. You don't. You're just making assumptions that fit with your belief system in an attempt to come up with an emotive reason to dismiss the arguments. Look for a logical reason.
And while we're at it, how about addressing some of my points. Do you think the current system is beneficial the way it is implemented? If so why? What makes you think all these works disappearing is a good thing for society?
And if you have such faith in this why are your (supposed) works under the protection of copyright?
A lot of my works benefit from copyright. A lot do not. Many are made on commission, for a select audience. All of them are copyrighted because everything is copyrighted by default in the US. And as I said before, I'm in favor of copyright and think it can be beneficial to society. I'm opposed to the current, unreasonable copyright laws. Do you know what percentage of my income is generated by copyrights lasting longer than 2 years? Maybe 1%, if that. So where is the benefit to society for making them last so long? Would I stop writing or creating artwork if that 1% of my income was lost? No. Would I create fewer works? No, in fact I might make more since I'd be motivated to make up that lost income.
For that matter, if copyrights were abolished would I switch careers? Nope. I'd probably do more commission work, and I'd use novelty to make money from others via advertisement. Tune in next week to see the next chapter of my exciting new novel, and remember ad blockers make baby jesus cry... seriously people, don't make me put the whole thing in a flash presentation!
You really need to think about this issue again, after tossing out your presuppositions. Man was not born with the inherent right to force others not to copy him or his creations. Copyright is only justified as a bargain between society and a creator, and if it is not one that benefits society, there is no justification for it. As it is currently implemented, it is harming society, as even the supreme court stated in their review.
So tell me. What is your position. Do you believe copyright is benefitting society? Why?
Copyright is not the problem -- lobbying of the US government is the problem.
I never said copyright was the problem, only the current implementation of it.
To answer your question: if copyright went away entirely, I do think that the number of works created would decrease. Simple economics would tell you that.
That is immaterial because the number of works created is not a goal by itself. For example, if we could pass a law that would double the number of works created, but half of them would be buried in a vault and encrypted so no one could ever see them, and another portion of the works would cost a billion dollars to view, have we benefitted society? No.
The vast majority of copyrighted works are not available for sale and certainly not at a reasonable price a normal person could afford. What does it matter if their are twice as many if 99% are unavailable to society? And make no mistake, that is the current situation.
We not only need shorter copyright durations, but we need to make sure that all works are available or it does not matter how many there are. To this end, I propose that in addition to shorter copyright lengths and return of the reference copy requirement in a usable form (no DRM), we also need a provision to prevent copyright from being a tool of censorship. Any works that are not available to the public at a price comparable to the market value for that type of work, should enter the public domain, regardless of the copyright duration. If the copyright holder is not selling it, then copyright provides them with no motivation and hence should be immediately revoked.
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But Adobe has no grounds to sue MS because MS is using a competing format - the Word format and Excel format were both MS, too.
Word and Excel are MS proprietary formats still. Adobe has grounds to sue because it is illegal to leverage a monopoly to take over another market. The market is portable document generation tools. The common formats in it are PDF and Postscript. Now MS can make tools that generate either of these or a new format that competes with them without breaking the law. What they can't do, is use Windows to make sure their product takes over. They have to compete on even ground with the others. If a consumer decides to get and use portable document tools to send a form somewhere they should look at the options, choose the best one for them, and use it. The problem is, if they already were forced to pay for one when they bought Windows, they will just use that one. Because Windows is a monopolized product, that is against the law. So Adobe is going to sue, unless the courts bring charges first as they are legally obligated to.
Vista still ships with MS' PDF-esque format, just not PDF.
Yes, and Adobe is still trying to get the courts to do something about it.
Adobe was concerned built-in PDF-authoring in Vista would kill sales of Acrobat Pro, so they threatened to sue MS for "abusing" its monopoly status.
Adobe complained that both the PDF authoring tools and the XPS authoring tools would kill sales of Acrobat Pro despite not being the better product.
That is the whole point of antirust law, to ensure competition. If MS makes and sells better portable document tools and format, or even PDF generation tools great, there is nothing Adobe can do about it. It is when MS makes an inferior product, but takes over the market anyway by using their Windows or Office domination to do so that Adobe complains. And they should complain and so should we. Capitalism is great for the innovation and competition. This removes that from the market and results in a de-facto winner, despite no innovation and results in yet another market with MS dominating and basically no progress happening.
Uh, analogies are supposed to simplify what you are talking about. You, as inevitably happens after the 3rd or 4th analogy revision in a slashdot discussion, have failed miserably.
Analogies are supposed to provide a clear parallel. It is nice if they provide simplicity, so long as they remain analogous. The previous analogy was qualitatively different and thus not apt. If you have a problem with my analogy, do point out how it is not the same, in principal.
Being incorporated in Canada does not exempt them from Illinois law. That's like saying a Canadian citizen can't be prosecuted for crimes committed in Illinois.
You're oversimplifying. First, this is civil law, not criminal. Second, no crime was committed. Third, This is an Illinois court ordering a canadian company to suspend a service they contract to a UK organization. If the service is provided in the US, then the court might have the authority, but if the service is not, there is some serious question of jurisdiction here. You can't go ordering companies that do business both within and outside the US to take arbitrary actions outside the US in response to civil suits within the US.
Their first request (not bundling it with Office 2007, instead requiring a separate step to install it) was met.
This is an open and shut case bundling and MS knows they would lose in a minute if they tried this.
But then Adobe demanded MS charge for it, and MS said no and removed the functionality altogether.
From what I read Adobe demanded it be a separate download from Office, and MS complied, but they are still bundling XPS with Vista which will almost certainly result in them going to court.
Doesn't sound like MS was doing something wrong, to me.
Which is a better format PDF or XPS? Which is more accepted? Which is openly licensed so anyone can read and write to it? Which is documented?
Keeping that in mind, because XPS is going to be bundled in Windows, do you think it will take over the market in the next 5 years, even if it is never as good as PDF? I think it will unless the courts step in and make sure they both have to compete on level ground, without leveraging either Windows or MS Office to make XPS the winner. In which case, it is hard to tell which will win, but they will both have to improve and compete for our dollars and in the end, we the consumers will win and that is what the courts are supposed to be insuring.
You just highlighted a problem of the proprietary formats ... the owner can deside who can and cannot use its format.
PDF is an open standard anyone can implement, so long as doing so does not break some other law.
In this case as it is for Apple, Adobe will probably make no problem. Only Microsoft is forbidden to include PDF in Office.
Actually, Apple is forbidden from bundling it with anything they have monopoly on as well (iPod being the only real candidate). If Adobe decided they don't want Apple or me or most anyone else building in PDF generation tools in out products, they could do nothing about it. The complaints Adobe brought concern both PDF generation and XPS generation (an MS proprietary format). The format, however, has nothing to do with the complaint.
Microsoft would probably not be authorised by Adobe to use PDF, but anyway Adobe is still complaining when they use another format...
Okay apply some logic here. Adobe complains when MS takes an illegal action using PDF and they also complain when MS takes the same illegal action using XPS. Maybe you might infer from this that it is the action, not the format that is the issue?
If I make a gun using no patented technology and shoot the CEO of Colt with it, or if I license the rights to build a rifle using Colt's patents and shoot the CEO of Colt with it, I'm still going to be in trouble for murder. Half the people here, however, are focusing on the fact that I licensed the patent from Colt, and saying other people should avoid licensing patents from Colt too, since they might go to jail for murder. Crazy.
Well that should make me happy to see Microsoft hurt, but at the end of the day, who will be the next Adobe target?
Just as the CEO of Colt would probably bring charges against the next person to shoot him, Adobe will probably lodge antitrust complaints against the next monopolist that tries to bundle a product with their monopolized product to illegally take over one of Adobe's markets.
Proprietary format are a plague, when they reach a status of monopol they should automatically fall in public domain, as trademark.
Wow, I'm not even going to start correcting this mess.
Adobe holds the patents, but they'll license without royalties as long as you conform to the standard... and as long as they can't find a good reason not to. Of course, the minute they try to, the world will move to a free open format pretty quickly.
Umm, they've already licensed the format including patent protection. Nothing can stop companies from implementing the current standard well into the future, whatever Adobe does, since they can't rescind the license without some legal reason. If Adobe were to not freely license the next version of PDF, well no one else would move to it and people would still write applications that use the old versions.
I don't know the details of the MS case - did MS do it without permission, maybe?
MS's actions had nothing to do with licensing PDF. It is a red herring. Adobe would have done the exact same thing if MS tried to bundle a photoshop competitor read and wrote to open formats. MS can do anything anyone else can with PDF, so long as they are not violating some other law. Think of it this way. Anyone can read and write PDF, just as anyone can chop things up with a meat cleaver. That does not mean you can get away with murder using the defense that you were just chopping things, like everyone else. It in no way means that it is illegal to chop things with cleavers.
No, that's not how it works.
Actually, it is pretty close.
Let's say GM is the dominant automobile seller (jokes aside, it's an analogy), and Ford invents airbags.
Why does it happen that every time a discussion about a monopoly comes up, someone immediately proposes an analogy that has no monopolies in it? Use a monopoly in all analogies about monopolies. Also, if someone invents something new, there won't be an existing market for it, so bundling is perfectly legal.
Okay, so here's a more apt analogy. The power company has a monopoly on power distribution, like MS does on office suites. You can still buy a generator, or use solar panels, but those are not competing in the same market and are not really comparable solutions. So then, the electric company decides they want to move into the related light bulb business. They start bundling light bulbs with your electrical service. You get two regular light bulbs and two special MS patented light bulbs every 3 months, whether you want them or not. The cost of your electricity goes up to cover it, but you have to have electricity, so there is not a lot you can do.
In this situation, Adobe is the existing light bulb company being driven out of business. It does not matter if they can make bulbs more cheaply, or even that are better than the ones the electric company gives you. Everyone already has bulbs so no one buys from them. And the light bulb industry goes to hell. Their is no motivation to make better bulbs or cheaper bulbs. In fact, the electric company is motivated to make bulbs that use more electricity and they can get away with it. Consumer are getting products that are not only inferior, but that are intentionally designed to hinder the consumer. The innovation and efficiency that makes capitalism so successful has been bypassed.
The lock in is annoying, but not the primary problem. Bundling was the problem, as I understand it.
There's an edit-compile-test cycle; results are completely predictable; modern editors are almost full-blown IDEs for LaTeX.
A lot of programing is done with IDEs these days, for a reason.
It integrates well into multi-user editing scenarios: you can check in your source tex files into CVS or subversion, and get free version control with diffing capabilities. Try that with a binary format.
I think you're making three mistakes here. First, LaTeX is a layout application, than many people use for word processing. You can't compare it to MSWord and assume you've done a comparison of WYSIWYG versus markup. Second, you're discounting the learning curve and its affect upon collaboration. Third, you're equating LaTeX with text based format and word processor with binary, and that is just plain wrong.
Collaborating with LaTeX is a pain in the butt in almost every instance I've used it because their are invariably people who don't know the language and who then have to learn it, greatly slowing the whole process. As for CVS and Subversion, I often use them to check in both binary and XML files from other word processors and layout applications and collaboration with them is not a problem using these tools.
How many times have you struggled to get an image placed just right in a popular WYSIWYG text editor?
Never, as text editors don't support images. I've often placed images with ease in an exact location, however, using WYSIWYG layout programs, which I find to be much, much easier to use and more flexible for that task than LaTeX.
How many times has your favorite WYSIWYG editor added a page to your report that makes it go over the page limit, minutes before a critical submission deadline?
Never. If I have a page limitation, I'm almost certainly using the right WYSIWYG tool, like InDesign, Framemaker, Quark, or the like (depending on the particulars).
The little time spent in learning the language far outweighs the advantages it provides. Give it a try!
I use LaTeX for certain projects and it is even the best tool I know for certain types of projects. You seem, however, to have compared it to MS Word for certain tasks and concluded that it is superior and everyone should switch to LaTeX. This is not very good advice. Most people, performing normal tasks would be a lot better off with some of the WYSIWYG tools available, or better yet a hybrid tool like InDesign that allows the user to edit both the markup and the WYSIWYG view. It even uses the same basic layout engine as LaTeX, but you don't have to mess with all the hacks to get color and graphics and the like to function smoothly and you don't have to build it constantly to see the end result. Give it a try!
G*d, how hard! You have to download and install them once...
This depends upon usage. You have to download the program and all the updates and all the files, once per machine you want to use to access them, per change. So if a person uses a computer in a lab at their school and one at the library after school and one at their mother's house later yet, and occasionally one at their estranged father's house that gives us, four installations of a given software, assuming it works on all the platforms and has enough licenses and is up kept up to date on them, and four downloads of each file used on those machines in order to move it from place to place.
Now what if he is working on this with a friend and they'd like to collaborate on the same file? How easy is that with currently available freeware?
Web apps have a lot of drawbacks and I'm unlikely to use them myself, but that does not mean Web applications don't have some real advantages as well. In fact, this sort of a program may be ideal for use by K-12 schools. Personally, I think we'll eventually move to hybrid applications that, like e-mail, have a Web client and a regular client so that we can have the advantages of both.
Google is not friendly to Mac users.
Google is very friendly to Mac users, it just takes them a while to get software they acquire to work well with Macs, and for some projects that are not as needed on the Mac, they don't bother. The reason Google is Mac friendly in general is because a lot of people there use them.
So while I was fooling around with this, I couldn't help but notice that it has the option of saving to a Portable Document Format (PDF) which, according to Wikipedia is: a file format proprietary to Adobe Systems for representing two-dimensional documents in a device independent and resolution independent fixed-layout document format.
Umm, maybe you should look for more than one source. Wikipedia has a lot of slant on various topics, including this one. The truth is PDF is a trademarked term that refers to a standard format maintained for Adobe and which they provide both open licensing, documentation, and patent protection. In all practical terms, it is an open standard and certain versions of it are ISO certified standards. There are both open and closed source, free and commercial implementations of it and none have ever had any legal problems.
I bolded the word that has caused Adobe to sue Microsoft. My question is simple, doesn't Google face the same kind of lawsuit?
Microsoft was not sued for implementing the open PDF standard. They were sued for anti-competative bundling of tools that just happen to use that format. Google could be in trouble for the same thing, if they acquired a monopoly in some market and tied the PDF generation tools to that monopolized product.
Really causes one to wonder how 'free' something is when it comes to standards.
Yeah this is a concern, if you only read marketing blurbs.
Now we'll just have to wait and see if Adobe begins to sue everyone who wants this functionality in their application.
No we don't. People have been doing just that for many years without issue.
A lot of people I talk to regard PDF as an 'open' standard when the only part that's free is the ability to decode it--not encode it.
Please stop repeating this nonsense. It is misinformation plain and simple as you'd know if you even read the Wikipedia page you link to. Anyone can code programs that read and write PDF, provided they call it PDF. What they can't do is take the code and make a new format based on PDF, but that does not follow the standard as they would no longer have patent protection from Adobe, much like every other open standard.
Antitrust laws cover a variety of anti-competitive business practices.
Traditionally anti-trust refers to monopolies and cartels that have control of a market. While I've seen a few laws that pertain to other matters labeled as anti-trust (mistakenly?) I don't see how any of them might apply here.
Why not? Everything you've just mentioned is certainly do-able in a few years if enough people want it.
I suspect you're trolling, but it is not practical for one person to reform the system. It takes a lot of people and serious changes to our society. You say everything is doable if enough people want it, but they don't. They want to sit on their asses, watch TV and drink beer without having to think too hard.
With the exception of the Mac Pro (way out of most people's price range) - the video card.
With the exception of the Mac Pro, all they sell are laptops, ultra compacts, and all-in-ones. The fact that you can't upgrade the video card is not because it is a mac. The same holds true for laptops, all-in-ones, and ultra compact systems in the PC world too.
This highlights a different problem for mac users, which is with only one manufacturer the choices are limited for hardware, so you are less likely to find something with the exact specs you want. This does not translate to "macs aren't upgradeable" however.
Google video URLs are also blocked I guess. Isnt this antitrust?
Umm, what are you proposing Yahoo has a monopoly on?
I guess I don't understand your complaint about not being able to trust scientific testing. Where is it that science has failed us? Are the scientists corrupt? Are the corporations not releasing the bad results? Is the FDA cooking the books?
There is very little scientific testing going on since most of the testing is not open and cannot be reproduced due to both legal restrictions and lack of access to the technology. Yes, the so called scientists are corrupt. My girlfriend was a biochemist until a short while ago, when she quit because all of her jobs involved unethical and unscientific behavior, including faking numbers and undocumented methodologies designed to get particular results while the common reader would assume standard methodologies were used. When there is this much profit involved, the tendency towards biased results is very obvious.
Whatever the flaw is, my suggestion would be to correct it. Use the same forces that've propelled science since it was created. That is openess, peer review, honesty, integrity, etc.
That doesn't answer my question. I asked what you propose the average person does. Reforming the broken FDA, legal system, federal subsidies, federal grant program, or breaking the law and conducting our own experiments on live subjects using patented materials at extreme cost is not a practical solution.
Not everyone is motivated solely towards profit to the exclusion of all else.
No, but most of those people are in no position to do anything, since they were driven out of the field when they presented real results. From what I've seen if you trust the pseudo-scientific studies from the FDA and these companies claiming adding nano materials, or synthetic additives, or a number of other modifications as safe, you're taking a huge gamble. The only practical test I know and can afford is to avoid them and wait to see what happens to the general populace that is eating them. That means avoiding them as much as possible for quite some time.
The Mac point is moot, as I said, Mac is way worse than Windows.
But you fail to address why, aside from two points where I showed you were wrong.
And no, they don't run in Wine, I've specifically checked, as I had my fair share of attempts to move to linux. Crossover office has some of them working so-so, and still not for production use.
I know Photoshop, Flash, and DreamWeaver work in WINE on Linux and Crossover is pretty much just the WINE code mixed with some proprietary finish. You also don't address the other half of the emulation equation. Work just handed me a laptop with the Intel Core Duo processor in it, specifically so I can run multiple OS's at a usable speed. Even running a full copy of Windows, OS X, and two Linux variants, it runs plenty fast to do real work. When and if Crossover gets one more application up and running (it is on their short list), I won't be booting the Windows OS at all. For me, that will make Windows irrelevant, despite the application availability barrier and my needing specialty niche apps. I'm certainly not the only one in that boat. I know a number of people who are consolidating workstations due to the new chips.
There is one thing all the people I know doing this have in common, Windows apps are running on top of some other OS, usually Linux or OS X. This is to provide the stability and security benefits of these OS's over Windows. That means users have real incentive to switch to apps that are native, and that means pressure on app developers. It may well be the Windows lock-in breaker is already here.
We've been using selective breeding techniques ever since we started agriculture.
True, but there are some more recent changes. First, selective breeding has moved towards market attributes, like the ability to survive shipping and appear ideal, instead of taste ideal. Second, genetic tampering, additives, nano-scale materials, and the like have a lot less testing behind them to prove their safety.
Is the corn, wheat, tomatoes, etc the same as it was 2000 years ago, or even 200 years ago?
Nope, but neither do I assume that is a good thing.
Rejecting GM, processed, or whatever food with broad strokes doesn't make any sense.
No, but taking a cautious approach and being slow to adopt new, potentially dangerous food modification technologies does make a lot of sense.
If you want "purity before human intervention" you should go back to the hunter-gatherer society, just be carefull not to gather anything that's reproduced with human-interferred stuff.
That is awfully hard to do, but actually not a bad goal. Some of the best meat for me is the lean, natural meat from game I hunt myself. Pollution has made most inland fish and many waterfowl risky to eat from the wild, but native berries and plants are among the most flavorful and nutritious foods I eat.
It's just a matter of making sure it's all safe rather than rejecting it all out of hand.
How do you propose the average person does this? We sure can't trust the "science" behind it, since the motivations behind it lead to bogus results, and even completely false data. What is a reasonable approach? I'd argue avoiding foods made with "new" techniques until it has had a few generations of human guinea pigs chowing down on it may be the best way to make sure it is safe.
Organic food is mostly a scam. It's really a way to crank up the price. The farming cost differential for "organic" crops is small, but the retail price differential is large. You've been had by Whole Foods.
I shop at Whole Foods, especially when I need veggies. I often don't buy their organic products either, they do sell non-organic (dumb terminology) veggies. The thing is, the produce they sell tends to be much better quality than the competition and the price difference is very small from my comparison shopping tests. So long as you avoid the random really expensive items you won't notice much of a hit to your pocketbook.
Whole Foods is amusing. They have a huge booze section. Looks like a liquor store that also carries food.
Interesting, the whole foods near me does not even sell liquor, only beer and wine. Not that I would mind if they did.
The problem with restaurants seems to be pasta. There's been this huge move towards Italian restaurants
Is this in your region, or is this some sort of national trend that does not seem to be affecting my region? We have about the same number of italian places as we do French, German, and Indian.
well, common thinking would hold that the cough syrup would work faster, as you wouldn't have to wait for it to disolve in the stomach acid, unlike with the tablet. though the differance would be a few minutes at most.
Actually, some syrups also act on the esophagus on the way down, while capsules are passed through with no effect on the esophagus.
Imagine relearning all they know about their desktop in a Linux environment.
I've seen plenty of average people in both home and business move to both Linux and Mac OS X. With a system installed for them (like Windows was when they bought their computer) they all adjusted fairly quickly.
Windows also has a lot of software not offered on other platforms, such as Photoshop, Flash (the IDE), Dreamweaver, 3DSMax and so on.
Windows has a variety o software not found on other platforms, but that software is shrinking. More things are ported to the Mac. Emulation technologies on the chip combines with emulators and WINE type solutions make the number of programs fewer each day. All those you mentioned run on the Mac natively and I think all of them run on Linux via WINE.
The Linux alternatives for a designer are mostly jokes (like Gimp, where you can't even draw a rounded rectangle without installing specially crafted Script-Fu commands).
I use Photoshop and the GIMP (photoshop more). Both are better for different tasks. No surprise there.
The Mac platform is a lot worse than Windows where I'm locked not only into proprietary OS (which is outdated every year and you have to re-buy it), but also proprietary hardware which you can't upgrade any better than a laptop (add some RAM, a DVD.. and that's it.. wanna faster processor on your iMac? throw away the whole machine and buy a new one).
I'm always astounded when people make the argument that because new versions of OS X come out more often, with new features, it is inferior to Windows in this regard. I think the opposite is true. Each version does the same thing it did when I bought it. OS X just gives me more options. I can upgrade more often if I want the features, or I can wait and upgrade every other version, or every third version. Compared to Windows where I don't have the option of getting any new features every year and I'm forced to wait 4 years, or 6 years to get that one feature I want that has been on OS X for many years, well I'd really rather have the flexibility and choices.
As for the hardware being proprietary, what exactly can't you upgrade on a Mac these days that you can on a PC? The only thing I know about is the motherboard. You can swap every other part with one not from Apple, as far as I know, without issue. You can even swap the chips on the new ones.
Of course since 90% or more of users never upgrade anything and do just get a new computer, this is really a non-issue for most users.
I guess I just don't see that your arguments have much relevance to the real world today. Those points you make that ever had relevance have mostly disappeared in the last few years.
If you felt so secure that your "logical reason" would be a good enough argument on it's own you wouldn't have mentioned your "profession".
I mentioned it to point out that you are being irrational, a point you seem unconcerned with. Even assuming I'm lying about my profession because I really want to impress some anonymous person on Slashdot for some reason, it does not have any bearing on the fact that you are not using reason to determine the truth, but have already made up your mind and are now looking for ways to justify that belief. Prejudice is irrational. You don't know have any way of knowing what I do for a living. You made an assertion about what my profession is, despite this. If incontrovertible proof of your own irrationality is not enough to make you rethink your opinions, then nothing I say is likely to. I'm not sure there is any point to continuing this conversation.
I've already answered why I I feel the current system is beneficial, artists rights and control of their own works.
I'm not sure I can figure out what your belief is based upon the jumble of your previous posts. Why don't you just state it clearly for me.
As far as works that "disappear"... This happened long before such a thing as copyright was even considered. Copyright has less to do with it than what bad artistry does.
The fact that things that were not beneficial happened in the past does not make the beneficial in the present. I've already rebutted the argument that only "bad" works disappear, which is patently not the case.
Oh, selective audience. So you should have the right to control your own work but in your utopia that wouldn't be true? You keep asking me the same questions, how about not skirting mine?
Some of my works, especially commissioned ones are considered trade secrets and protected as such. Others are of use only to a limited portion of the population, in a fairly small industry. As for a "utopia" we should all be striving for the best possible laws, most beneficial to society, should we not? As I said, I think a well crafted copyright would be a good idea and I'm in favor of copyright, if the laws are reformed to benefit society. I don't, however, delude myself into thinking I have some entitlement to copyright to restrict distribution of what I make and I already explained why it is not necessary for me to profit from my craft.
My understanding is that you can open any work you own to public domain.
For those I have not transferred the copyright to, I certainly could, but to what end? Why should I put any works into the public domain that I do not need to? It's like asking a corporation why they don't stop using tax loopholes to avoid paying taxes. It is wholly beside the point of whether or not the law should be changed to close those loopholes and make copyright benefit society.
Well, since I know nothing of your supposed works I can't say much for them, but I'm damn sure Pink Floyd has made a massive amount more off their works after the first two years.
I'm sure they do. The question, however, is would they have made their works if they did not gain that benefit. Also, we must consider the common case, not the exception. The vast majority of works do not make money after the first few years, and are not even available for sale, yet they are denied to the public. Why?
One of my proposed reforms is that when a work is no longer offered for sale, at a reasonable market value, that work immediately enters the public domain. This removes no incentive for the creation of works, but greatly benefits society.
Maybe all this art this is going "missing" has no long term value and they're not really missing at all but "misallocated" due to a lack of interest.
Sure, maybe it all sucks. Who would you rather have making that decision, society as a whole, or entertainment industry executives?
People already don't give enough of a damn to pay artists when
Yeah, I always here stories like this. I'm calling you out! PROVE to me that this is true. You can make up any crap you want and get away with it. PROVE IT.
No. My anonymity is an important part of the reason I post here. Without it, my comments can cause public relations problems for my employer(s) or lead me to have to censor myself to maintain good relationships in the industry. In any case, the fact that I'm a writer does not have any bearing on the validity of my points. It is ad hominem. I just thought I'd point out your prejudice and assumption that you know what profession other people have. You don't. You're just making assumptions that fit with your belief system in an attempt to come up with an emotive reason to dismiss the arguments. Look for a logical reason.
And while we're at it, how about addressing some of my points. Do you think the current system is beneficial the way it is implemented? If so why? What makes you think all these works disappearing is a good thing for society?
And if you have such faith in this why are your (supposed) works under the protection of copyright?
A lot of my works benefit from copyright. A lot do not. Many are made on commission, for a select audience. All of them are copyrighted because everything is copyrighted by default in the US. And as I said before, I'm in favor of copyright and think it can be beneficial to society. I'm opposed to the current, unreasonable copyright laws. Do you know what percentage of my income is generated by copyrights lasting longer than 2 years? Maybe 1%, if that. So where is the benefit to society for making them last so long? Would I stop writing or creating artwork if that 1% of my income was lost? No. Would I create fewer works? No, in fact I might make more since I'd be motivated to make up that lost income.
For that matter, if copyrights were abolished would I switch careers? Nope. I'd probably do more commission work, and I'd use novelty to make money from others via advertisement. Tune in next week to see the next chapter of my exciting new novel, and remember ad blockers make baby jesus cry... seriously people, don't make me put the whole thing in a flash presentation!
You really need to think about this issue again, after tossing out your presuppositions. Man was not born with the inherent right to force others not to copy him or his creations. Copyright is only justified as a bargain between society and a creator, and if it is not one that benefits society, there is no justification for it. As it is currently implemented, it is harming society, as even the supreme court stated in their review.
So tell me. What is your position. Do you believe copyright is benefitting society? Why?
Copyright is not the problem -- lobbying of the US government is the problem.
I never said copyright was the problem, only the current implementation of it.
To answer your question: if copyright went away entirely, I do think that the number of works created would decrease. Simple economics would tell you that.
That is immaterial because the number of works created is not a goal by itself. For example, if we could pass a law that would double the number of works created, but half of them would be buried in a vault and encrypted so no one could ever see them, and another portion of the works would cost a billion dollars to view, have we benefitted society? No.
The vast majority of copyrighted works are not available for sale and certainly not at a reasonable price a normal person could afford. What does it matter if their are twice as many if 99% are unavailable to society? And make no mistake, that is the current situation.
We not only need shorter copyright durations, but we need to make sure that all works are available or it does not matter how many there are. To this end, I propose that in addition to shorter copyright lengths and return of the reference copy requirement in a usable form (no DRM), we also need a provision to prevent copyright from being a tool of censorship. Any works that are not available to the public at a price comparable to the market value for that type of work, should enter the public domain, regardless of the copyright duration. If the copyright holder is not selling it, then copyright provides them with no motivation and hence should be immediately revoked.