Just as it's only a matter of time until you get sick. At least this might help keep your doctor affordable to actually heal you instead of the possibility that someone will know what Allergy medication I'm on.
It's not the marketplace, it's the lack of policy on demo/trial downloads.
And when there is a demo/trial it's almost always another app all together so I have to go hunting for it under "Demo" or "trial" or "lite" or "light" or...
I wanted to try ADWLauncher EX this weekend but couldn't find a demo so that's a potential lost sale. I'm not going to spend $10 to see how well it works in practice.
I hear this meme a lot but did Firefox really save us from stagnation or did AJAX finally come into its own.
Older versions of IE still run most sites even the new whizbang ones. We're only just now starting to do things that old versions of IE couldn't.
About the time Firefox "Beat IE" broadband started to finally become common place and we started to see innovation on pushing more logic to the web.
Firefox certainly did a better job of *following* these trends for a long time but I think it, along with the other browsers were more following the trends and natural evolution of a larger technological ecosystem than forging ahead on some new path.
Acquiring imaginary property does not deprive someone else of it's use, acquiring physical property by definition means you have exclusive control over it.
Removing intellectual property rights by definition strips the creator of their 'exclusive control' over it.
Physical property - Exclusive control over how it is used. Intellectual property - Exclusive control over how it is used.
They're exactly the same. If you strip me of my IP for my creation then I no longer have control over how it's used.
Property is only worth the value of what someone is willing to pay. By stripping IP of its exclusive control you've stripped it of all value. You're destroying its value by eliminating IP.
If I have a DVD it has $9 of IP value and $1 of physical value. Eliminate IP and you just stripped the DVD of all value (except for recycling).
Eliminating IP deprives the creator the opportunity to profit from their labor.
Kickstarter is great. But some of us actually do like Game of Thrones or Fringe. And those cost >$1m PER EPISODE. Good luck getting a kickstarter project for a $40m-$100m project.
And even then, you'll still probably get the same product. After all, Lost kept getting made because people kept watching it. No business model is going to change the fact that lowest common denominator products will be the most successful and get the most funding.
Vendor never gets hurt by inventory overhead, sells a larger volume of Product to a (potentially) larger market. The profit ratio (in terms of value provided) is more equitable, with the majority of the profit going to the party that did the majority of the work.
Sure. But the only way to sell more product for less is to still be the exclusive owner of said product.
If the Vendor payed 0C for distribution rights then he could sell it for 0.5C! Even less, even more potential customers!
Businesses aren't altruistic. If you eliminated IP law (what I'm arguing against) then the creator would get $0 and the distributor would pocket 100% of the profit.
The distributors aren't the ones who get fucked when you eliminate IP law. If Netflix didn't have to pay anything for streaming rights they would dramatically increase their portfolio and customer base. They would still probably survive on the convenience factor. People would still pay for Netflix... until someone else came along and bought up more servers and better apps. Meanwhile the content creators would get $0.
Maybe the distributors would protect their source of income by creating a "Fund" for content creation. But it would inevitably be destroyed by one rogue distributor popping up and taking advantage of the situation.
You need *some* protection from IP law for the content creators to make any money from their creations. You need money to create quality content.
There is certainly a place for the extent of IP protections. There is certainly a place for a discussion on enforcement. But ultimately you need *something* as a minimum or else it simply wouldn't work.
- Because something isn't 100% original doesn't mean it isn't an original creative work. Duplication != Recreation.
- Advocating protection of specific categories of work for a limited period doesn't mean it has to be applied to "All instances" for "all time". The OP was arguing for the abolishment of all intellectual property. The only alternative isn't "All instances" for all time.
- Intellectual protection of people's creativity doesn't preclude people from collaborating on public works e.g. C++, HTML, OpenGL etc... as proven by the fact that with IP law we've managed to create all these things just fine thank you very much.
Obviously IP law doesn't cause an apocalypse of creativity considering the fact that it seems to be carrying on just fine. I'm not hearing a lot of complaining from artists that they can't work anymore.
Many people get paid to create without intellectual property protection. I'm not just talking open source developers and academics, but also really big industries like fashion:
There is still a barrier to entry for fashion. If you want to duplicate a dress you love you have to spin up a factory in China or spend hours at a sewing machine, sourcing materials etc.
And if a customer wants to buy Chinese reproductions then they have to take the gamble that the stitching is sub-par and that they probably don't have a retail outlet to sell it to them or let them try on different sizes.
A movie copied is a perfect duplicate. Whether that's a Chinese DVD or an 'official' DVD it'll be identical bit for bit.
Maybe we'd get some decent content again instead of that low-quality, derivative commercial crap. Maybe people would enter the industry again who do it because they care about the product instead of fame and fortune.
I would highly disagree that True Grit, Jaws, Star Wars, Munich, Blood Diamond, 2001, Battlestar Galactica, Good Night and Good Luck, The Assassination of Jesse James etc etc etc... are all just commercial crap.
And like I said, that commercial crap pays for the indie films that you love so much (which I would point out are almost all 1) Made with the intent to profit. 2) Crewed by crews who work on "commercial Crap" 3) Borrowing equipment from rental houses which bought it from studios renting their gear for "Commercial Crap".
The entire industry is funded by "commercial crap". And I've never heard of a feature film which wasn't financed with on the assumption that it could pay itself off from a distribution deal.
Without the ability to sign a distribution deal (and IP law to protect the distributor's exclusivity) then almost none of those "micro budget" indie films in the $200k range would get funded.
Not to mention that 95% of a film crew has no creative input. Why would an electrician work on a film when he isn't going to get payed? "For the love the art." What art? He's an electrician.
The companies who make software aren't going under or shutting down as a result of piracy or torrenting. If you need a perfect example, check out Adobe. They have some of the most pirated software on the Internet, and they're still raking in huge profits.
Huge profits from people who actually pay for the software. We buy all of our Adobe products. If it was free and there was no law requiring you to pay why would you? "So and So will take care of it."
I've used Paint.NET, Gimp etc. They all work off of donations and they all suck. I'm glad myself and all the other companies are required to pay. It results in usable software.
I think if SciFi could make it's low-budget original films as direct copies of successful movies, people might actually watch them. I
Syfy does make low budget rip-offs. And they're almost unwatchable. They also are "low budget" at about $3 million dollars each.
Movies are really fucking expensive. And why would Syfy make anything if nobody subscribes to their channel anymore? You could either watch it on SyFy or watch it 1 hour later. They would get $0 in revenue from DVD sales later. They would get $0 in subscription. They would get $0 in advertising. Where is Syfy going to get this money oh wise one?
The shit that has been coming out lately is so watered down and pseudo-copied from some other story, while trying to tiptoe around and not be seen as pure plagiarism, that they just plain suck.
So what you're saying is that IP law is the only thing keeping TV shows from completely ripping off other works. But somehow if they were able to COMPLETELY rip off other shows word for word, shot for shot... they would be more original? WTF?
You don't have to void your warranty to side-load an app. And you can install alternative marketplaces. The 'tyranny' of the Apple store is that it's the only legitimate way to get applications onto the device.
I will say that there is cost in the original production of intellectual property, but reproduction is free so there should be much more leeway for fair use. I wouldn't mind giving software we produce free for non profits for example, as their aim is to provide a public service, not earn money. But in Capitalist America, money rules you.
That's what's so great though about IP. You can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on something and then millions of people get to enjoy it.
I don't disagree that there should be more lee-way and I actually think that piracy to some degree has the potential to boost revenue if limited. I for instance think that used games cost the games industry more than piracy every year. If people just pirated games they would have more money to spend on new games (which would actually go into developer's products). And there are those who don't have enough money to afford it in which case it gets them 'hooked' on media which they can later translate into sales. And there are people like me who have Netflix but will download a torrent of the show just because my internet connection is kind of unreliable and I don't want to wait for it to buffer half way through.
In an ideal world there would be no copy protection on anything and people would 'see to it' that those who deserve compensation get what they deserve. But that is predicated on the belief that we do actually assign value to intellectual property.
I think the studios and record labels have done more damage to promoting that than good by criminalizing copyright infringement but I'm not opposed to the fundamental belief that intellectual property has value. It's often the encapsulation of millions of hours of labor and exceptional creativity.
Let's try a thought experiment. How would americans have liked it, if after 9/11 George W. had declared that traffic accidents kill many more americans each year than al quaeda ever will, so to honor the memory of the twin tower victims he would enact policies to make american roads safer?
I for one would have embraced and welcomed that such sane and enlightened leadership. But not many. Are you saying that since people like sensational news we shouldn't be critical of it even if it has the tangible outcome of a less safe and secure world?
Well, if it then vaporized the item in front of it, it might be analogous to theft I guess. Theft is really more about depriving something from someone else than gaining it for yourself; in this case, the outlet still has the physical item.
I don't think copyright infringement is the same as theft and I agree with you on that point... BUT philosophically speaking let's look at it from a wider angle.
Creator Creates Product. Creator sells 100x products to Vendor for 1Currency 100 buyers enter the store and instead of paying 1.5C for item scans the item and leaves with their desires satisfied.
As far as that vendor is concerned they had 150C worth of product that is now worthless and they're out 100C in inventory which while not physically vaporized has had the demand vaporized and is essentially worth $0.
A DVD has $0.01 of material value and $10 of intellectual value. They didn't vaporize the $0.01c but they did vaporize the other 99.9% of the item's worth.
If I walk into an art gallery and splash a bucket of paint on a limited edition print I'm actually adding value (in material worth) to the item, but I'm destroying intellectual value.
Once you get into the notion that vaporizing intangible value isn't actually harming the vendor then graffiti isn't really damage since the only thing damaged is the subjective intellectual opinion of the owner on what color their property's wall should be.
(1) Many geeks don't get more than a salary from their intellectual creations. They'd likely get the same salary if copyright didn't exist. In fact, copyright and patents often make work harder and less pleasant for geeks.
Many geeks work for companies who sell intellectual property. If there was no protection for intellectual property then there would be no employer to provide them a salary.
It's a cost/benefit tradeoff. If copyrights and patents didn't exist, some content might not get created, and other content that doesn't get created now would get created.
In the case of TV and Film you would probably have none of the films or TV shows you've seen in the last few years. Even the "low budget" films are almost always made on the backs and labor of those who pay their bills off of the financed studio work.
Without the studio financed blockbuster economy you wouldn't see the software, training and let's be honest well payed talent that can take off a month to help someone with a low budget indie film.
Almost every no-budget indie flick of note is written, directed, financed and crewed by professionals who are donating their free time. Without intellectual property none of them would have had the time and training to bring that talent to independent works.
And that's ignoring just the morality of it. If you're an author and some factory owner can just scan a copy of your manuscript and start printing like crazy you have a case where someone will make millions or billions (in the case of something like harry potter) without contributing anything. The people who would most benefit from an end to intellectual property are those with the power and the resources to distribute creative works. Aka Record Companies and Distributors. You think artists get screwed today, imagine if a theater didn't have to pay anything for a movie. With their screens and seats they would have something protected by law that they could charge money for but the person who is bringing them business would be in the lurch.
From the way you describe your work and your attitudes towards it, I have my doubts that we'd be worse off without your creations.
Well, my creations and one of my employers have contributed to hundreds of major feature films released in the last 8 years so... maybe you hate movies. I don't know. Personally I enjoyed many of them.
ALL PROPERTY IS IMAGINARY PROPERTY. Your house is wood. Who says you get to own that wood and brick and concrete? A piece of paper, if that. There is no special property to material goods which imbues it with moral worth.
While I agree with you on principle, in practice this probably is inducing less copyright infringement than an RSS reader built in.
I can't imagine someone actually scanning a bar-code for something they don't own. Most likely this is for scanning DVDs you already own. Who would go to the store to search for torrents?:D
Now an RSS feed though that just automatically downloads new TV episodes as they come out. That is probably for the sake of piracy (or theoretically podcasts, but let's be honest, most likely piracy).
You got your morality issues ass-backwards. Imaginary property rights are immoral. Furthermore the world would be a better, wealthier, and more equitable place if immaginary property rights were completely abolished.
Imaginary property takes real time and money to create.
It baffles me how *GEEKS* of all people are so antagonistic against their own beliefs out of small scale greed.
Geeks are the kings of intellectual property. We don't weld things together. We don't tend to work in assembly lines. We don't forge steel or mine for ore. We Think. The geek creed is that intellect and creativity are at least as valuable as physical might.
But when it comes time to being payed for the products of our minds we dismiss its value as just "imaginary property".
The product of my mind is as valuable as the product of someone's hand. If you don't want to pay for it then you can't have it. If you don't want it, then you don't have to have it.
People *WANT* movies, television, software, books etc... they *VALUE* movies, television, software and books. But unlike other things of value which were created from the industry of the hand you want to destroy any economy from industry of the mind.
Well, Fuck You. I want to make a living off of my creativity and intellect. I work long, often 14+ hour days to create what you want to have. If imaginary property has no value and requires no input of resources go fucking do it yourself. But no, you won't (and you probably can't even if you wanted to).
I'm not saying that I think piracy is equivalent to stealing. I would say it's more akin to not putting a few cents in the parking meter and hoping you don't get caught. And I think the fines should be comparable. Get caught for downloading a $1.00 show then pay a $30 fine. And I'm certainly guilty just this week of failing to pay for parking and downloading torrents. But I also do buy a lot of media and I also do usually pay for parking and I think that tenuous balance between respecting the law but also ignoring it when practical is a fair and workable solution.
There were plenty of parking spaces on the street open but I certainly denied the city a little revenue by not paying and running into grab a smoothie. So by your standards a parking space is "imaginary property". After all, it didn't cost the city anything directly for me to be parking there.
Who is demanding a News Black Out? I only see people demanding honest news which properly puts the risks into context.
If I told you "Coal plant kills hundreds of people!" you would be alarmed but we don't get those kinds of stories since they're boring and mathy. Instead we get "Catastrophic failure* at nuclear plaNT!#@!!!" and a fine print story below that then clarifies that nobody was hurt, there isn't any danger and this is pretty much a non-story.
How about "Cars kill hundreds of thousands of people and make hundreds of square miles uninhabitable!!#*!"
Who Joe Herring is, is not the issue. It's not the messenger, it's the message. Unless you want to indulge in a lot of ad hominem arguments.
Eventually you can stop fact checking the schizophrenic homeless guy on the street corner.
"Consider your source". While even a broken clock is right twice a day, you shouldn't be using a source which is consistently wrong since it'll more often than not be misleading. Now, if this is all true then this source should have no trouble finding a reliable source to verify and certify it.
A larger part of being a manager is communicating and programming is one of the only languages on earth that is 100% clear since it compiles and does exactly what you told it to do.
I like to write "Psuedo-code" or create a primitively scripted demo so that I'm not just talking about how the user will interact with the application--I can show it.
I would say learn enough, on the side, on your own time so that you can create prototypes but don't worry about contributing project-code. Your job is to contribute direction. If you haven't gone through years of school or immersed yourself full time for months on end learning the nitty gritty you'll just be a slow handicapped developer contributing questionable code. But if you can script well enough to prototype and understand the concepts of programming you can find creative ways to get around the limitations your developers see.
By nature people are kind of lazy. They aren't anxious to come up with ideas which entail a lot of extra work. As a director or manager it's your job to find the best possible solution and if you aren't responsible for actually doing it you're far less likely to be blinded by the "easy way out". Which isn't to say it'll end up being hard; good developers can often find an easy and creative way to implement something which at first glance is impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
Just as it's only a matter of time until you get sick. At least this might help keep your doctor affordable to actually heal you instead of the possibility that someone will know what Allergy medication I'm on.
This sounds great until you have a dam fail and take out your plant.
Considering the safety of dams, I wouldn't want to put much of value under one.
It's not the marketplace, it's the lack of policy on demo/trial downloads.
And when there is a demo/trial it's almost always another app all together so I have to go hunting for it under "Demo" or "trial" or "lite" or "light" or...
I wanted to try ADWLauncher EX this weekend but couldn't find a demo so that's a potential lost sale. I'm not going to spend $10 to see how well it works in practice.
The alternative is that Google should start requiring demos...
Using the Android Marketplace is an effort in frustration and regret.
I hear this meme a lot but did Firefox really save us from stagnation or did AJAX finally come into its own.
Older versions of IE still run most sites even the new whizbang ones. We're only just now starting to do things that old versions of IE couldn't.
About the time Firefox "Beat IE" broadband started to finally become common place and we started to see innovation on pushing more logic to the web.
Firefox certainly did a better job of *following* these trends for a long time but I think it, along with the other browsers were more following the trends and natural evolution of a larger technological ecosystem than forging ahead on some new path.
Technically you shouldn't use Terrorists to Cancer cases as your metric.
It should be (Terrorists x ~200) vs ((Cancer Cases * $painSufferingMultiplier) / $SurvivalRates).
It'as based on sedimentary core samples. (If you're actually curious.)
It's almost as if the natural world is nothing more than bunch of delicately balanced equilibriums! Who would have thought!?
Acquiring imaginary property does not deprive someone else of it's use, acquiring physical property by definition means you have exclusive control over it.
Removing intellectual property rights by definition strips the creator of their 'exclusive control' over it.
Physical property - Exclusive control over how it is used.
Intellectual property - Exclusive control over how it is used.
They're exactly the same. If you strip me of my IP for my creation then I no longer have control over how it's used.
Property is only worth the value of what someone is willing to pay. By stripping IP of its exclusive control you've stripped it of all value. You're destroying its value by eliminating IP.
If I have a DVD it has $9 of IP value and $1 of physical value. Eliminate IP and you just stripped the DVD of all value (except for recycling).
Eliminating IP deprives the creator the opportunity to profit from their labor.
Kickstarter is great. But some of us actually do like Game of Thrones or Fringe. And those cost >$1m PER EPISODE. Good luck getting a kickstarter project for a $40m-$100m project.
And even then, you'll still probably get the same product. After all, Lost kept getting made because people kept watching it. No business model is going to change the fact that lowest common denominator products will be the most successful and get the most funding.
Vendor never gets hurt by inventory overhead, sells a larger volume of Product to a (potentially) larger market. The profit ratio (in terms of value provided) is more equitable, with the majority of the profit going to the party that did the majority of the work.
Sure. But the only way to sell more product for less is to still be the exclusive owner of said product.
If the Vendor payed 0C for distribution rights then he could sell it for 0.5C! Even less, even more potential customers!
Businesses aren't altruistic. If you eliminated IP law (what I'm arguing against) then the creator would get $0 and the distributor would pocket 100% of the profit.
The distributors aren't the ones who get fucked when you eliminate IP law. If Netflix didn't have to pay anything for streaming rights they would dramatically increase their portfolio and customer base. They would still probably survive on the convenience factor. People would still pay for Netflix... until someone else came along and bought up more servers and better apps. Meanwhile the content creators would get $0.
Maybe the distributors would protect their source of income by creating a "Fund" for content creation. But it would inevitably be destroyed by one rogue distributor popping up and taking advantage of the situation.
You need *some* protection from IP law for the content creators to make any money from their creations. You need money to create quality content.
There is certainly a place for the extent of IP protections. There is certainly a place for a discussion on enforcement. But ultimately you need *something* as a minimum or else it simply wouldn't work.
Reductio ad absurdum
- Because something isn't 100% original doesn't mean it isn't an original creative work. Duplication != Recreation.
- Advocating protection of specific categories of work for a limited period doesn't mean it has to be applied to "All instances" for "all time". The OP was arguing for the abolishment of all intellectual property. The only alternative isn't "All instances" for all time.
- Intellectual protection of people's creativity doesn't preclude people from collaborating on public works e.g. C++, HTML, OpenGL etc... as proven by the fact that with IP law we've managed to create all these things just fine thank you very much.
Obviously IP law doesn't cause an apocalypse of creativity considering the fact that it seems to be carrying on just fine. I'm not hearing a lot of complaining from artists that they can't work anymore.
Many people get paid to create without intellectual property protection. I'm not just talking open source developers and academics, but also really big industries like fashion:
There is still a barrier to entry for fashion. If you want to duplicate a dress you love you have to spin up a factory in China or spend hours at a sewing machine, sourcing materials etc.
And if a customer wants to buy Chinese reproductions then they have to take the gamble that the stitching is sub-par and that they probably don't have a retail outlet to sell it to them or let them try on different sizes.
A movie copied is a perfect duplicate. Whether that's a Chinese DVD or an 'official' DVD it'll be identical bit for bit.
Maybe we'd get some decent content again instead of that low-quality, derivative commercial crap. Maybe people would enter the industry again who do it because they care about the product instead of fame and fortune.
I would highly disagree that True Grit, Jaws, Star Wars, Munich, Blood Diamond, 2001, Battlestar Galactica, Good Night and Good Luck, The Assassination of Jesse James etc etc etc... are all just commercial crap.
And like I said, that commercial crap pays for the indie films that you love so much (which I would point out are almost all 1) Made with the intent to profit. 2) Crewed by crews who work on "commercial Crap" 3) Borrowing equipment from rental houses which bought it from studios renting their gear for "Commercial Crap".
The entire industry is funded by "commercial crap". And I've never heard of a feature film which wasn't financed with on the assumption that it could pay itself off from a distribution deal.
Without the ability to sign a distribution deal (and IP law to protect the distributor's exclusivity) then almost none of those "micro budget" indie films in the $200k range would get funded.
Not to mention that 95% of a film crew has no creative input. Why would an electrician work on a film when he isn't going to get payed? "For the love the art." What art? He's an electrician.
The companies who make software aren't going under or shutting down as a result of piracy or torrenting. If you need a perfect example, check out Adobe. They have some of the most pirated software on the Internet, and they're still raking in huge profits.
Huge profits from people who actually pay for the software. We buy all of our Adobe products. If it was free and there was no law requiring you to pay why would you? "So and So will take care of it."
I've used Paint.NET, Gimp etc. They all work off of donations and they all suck. I'm glad myself and all the other companies are required to pay. It results in usable software.
I think if SciFi could make it's low-budget original films as direct copies of successful movies, people might actually watch them. I
Syfy does make low budget rip-offs. And they're almost unwatchable. They also are "low budget" at about $3 million dollars each.
Movies are really fucking expensive. And why would Syfy make anything if nobody subscribes to their channel anymore? You could either watch it on SyFy or watch it 1 hour later. They would get $0 in revenue from DVD sales later. They would get $0 in subscription. They would get $0 in advertising. Where is Syfy going to get this money oh wise one?
The shit that has been coming out lately is so watered down and pseudo-copied from some other story, while trying to tiptoe around and not be seen as pure plagiarism, that they just plain suck.
So what you're saying is that IP law is the only thing keeping TV shows from completely ripping off other works. But somehow if they were able to COMPLETELY rip off other shows word for word, shot for shot... they would be more original? WTF?
I give away 90% of my code as well. I don't want to support most of it. I don't see any commercial value. I want to build an ecosystem of tools.
But there is other stuff that I only develop because other people want it. I'm not going to make stuff that I don't want for free.
The world is mostly made of stuff people making it don't want for themselves.
You don't have to void your warranty to side-load an app. And you can install alternative marketplaces. The 'tyranny' of the Apple store is that it's the only legitimate way to get applications onto the device.
I will say that there is cost in the original production of intellectual property, but reproduction is free so there should be much more leeway for fair use. I wouldn't mind giving software we produce free for non profits for example, as their aim is to provide a public service, not earn money. But in Capitalist America, money rules you.
That's what's so great though about IP. You can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on something and then millions of people get to enjoy it.
I don't disagree that there should be more lee-way and I actually think that piracy to some degree has the potential to boost revenue if limited. I for instance think that used games cost the games industry more than piracy every year. If people just pirated games they would have more money to spend on new games (which would actually go into developer's products). And there are those who don't have enough money to afford it in which case it gets them 'hooked' on media which they can later translate into sales. And there are people like me who have Netflix but will download a torrent of the show just because my internet connection is kind of unreliable and I don't want to wait for it to buffer half way through.
In an ideal world there would be no copy protection on anything and people would 'see to it' that those who deserve compensation get what they deserve. But that is predicated on the belief that we do actually assign value to intellectual property.
I think the studios and record labels have done more damage to promoting that than good by criminalizing copyright infringement but I'm not opposed to the fundamental belief that intellectual property has value. It's often the encapsulation of millions of hours of labor and exceptional creativity.
Let's try a thought experiment. How would americans have liked it, if after 9/11 George W. had declared that traffic accidents kill many more americans each year than al quaeda ever will, so to honor the memory of the twin tower victims he would enact policies to make american roads safer?
I for one would have embraced and welcomed that such sane and enlightened leadership. But not many. Are you saying that since people like sensational news we shouldn't be critical of it even if it has the tangible outcome of a less safe and secure world?
Well, if it then vaporized the item in front of it, it might be analogous to theft I guess. Theft is really more about depriving something from someone else than gaining it for yourself; in this case, the outlet still has the physical item.
I don't think copyright infringement is the same as theft and I agree with you on that point... BUT philosophically speaking let's look at it from a wider angle.
Creator Creates Product.
Creator sells 100x products to Vendor for 1Currency
100 buyers enter the store and instead of paying 1.5C for item scans the item and leaves with their desires satisfied.
As far as that vendor is concerned they had 150C worth of product that is now worthless and they're out 100C in inventory which while not physically vaporized has had the demand vaporized and is essentially worth $0.
A DVD has $0.01 of material value and $10 of intellectual value. They didn't vaporize the $0.01c but they did vaporize the other 99.9% of the item's worth.
If I walk into an art gallery and splash a bucket of paint on a limited edition print I'm actually adding value (in material worth) to the item, but I'm destroying intellectual value.
Once you get into the notion that vaporizing intangible value isn't actually harming the vendor then graffiti isn't really damage since the only thing damaged is the subjective intellectual opinion of the owner on what color their property's wall should be.
(1) Many geeks don't get more than a salary from their intellectual creations. They'd likely get the same salary if copyright didn't exist. In fact, copyright and patents often make work harder and less pleasant for geeks.
Many geeks work for companies who sell intellectual property. If there was no protection for intellectual property then there would be no employer to provide them a salary.
It's a cost/benefit tradeoff. If copyrights and patents didn't exist, some content might not get created, and other content that doesn't get created now would get created.
In the case of TV and Film you would probably have none of the films or TV shows you've seen in the last few years. Even the "low budget" films are almost always made on the backs and labor of those who pay their bills off of the financed studio work.
Without the studio financed blockbuster economy you wouldn't see the software, training and let's be honest well payed talent that can take off a month to help someone with a low budget indie film.
Almost every no-budget indie flick of note is written, directed, financed and crewed by professionals who are donating their free time. Without intellectual property none of them would have had the time and training to bring that talent to independent works.
And that's ignoring just the morality of it. If you're an author and some factory owner can just scan a copy of your manuscript and start printing like crazy you have a case where someone will make millions or billions (in the case of something like harry potter) without contributing anything. The people who would most benefit from an end to intellectual property are those with the power and the resources to distribute creative works. Aka Record Companies and Distributors. You think artists get screwed today, imagine if a theater didn't have to pay anything for a movie. With their screens and seats they would have something protected by law that they could charge money for but the person who is bringing them business would be in the lurch.
From the way you describe your work and your attitudes towards it, I have my doubts that we'd be worse off without your creations.
Well, my creations and one of my employers have contributed to hundreds of major feature films released in the last 8 years so... maybe you hate movies. I don't know. Personally I enjoyed many of them.
ALL PROPERTY IS IMAGINARY PROPERTY. Your house is wood. Who says you get to own that wood and brick and concrete? A piece of paper, if that. There is no special property to material goods which imbues it with moral worth.
While I agree with you on principle, in practice this probably is inducing less copyright infringement than an RSS reader built in.
I can't imagine someone actually scanning a bar-code for something they don't own. Most likely this is for scanning DVDs you already own. Who would go to the store to search for torrents? :D
Now an RSS feed though that just automatically downloads new TV episodes as they come out. That is probably for the sake of piracy (or theoretically podcasts, but let's be honest, most likely piracy).
You got your morality issues ass-backwards. Imaginary property rights are immoral. Furthermore the world would be a better, wealthier, and more equitable place if immaginary property rights were completely abolished.
Imaginary property takes real time and money to create.
It baffles me how *GEEKS* of all people are so antagonistic against their own beliefs out of small scale greed.
Geeks are the kings of intellectual property. We don't weld things together. We don't tend to work in assembly lines. We don't forge steel or mine for ore. We Think. The geek creed is that intellect and creativity are at least as valuable as physical might.
But when it comes time to being payed for the products of our minds we dismiss its value as just "imaginary property".
The product of my mind is as valuable as the product of someone's hand. If you don't want to pay for it then you can't have it. If you don't want it, then you don't have to have it.
People *WANT* movies, television, software, books etc... they *VALUE* movies, television, software and books. But unlike other things of value which were created from the industry of the hand you want to destroy any economy from industry of the mind.
Well, Fuck You. I want to make a living off of my creativity and intellect. I work long, often 14+ hour days to create what you want to have. If imaginary property has no value and requires no input of resources go fucking do it yourself. But no, you won't (and you probably can't even if you wanted to).
I'm not saying that I think piracy is equivalent to stealing. I would say it's more akin to not putting a few cents in the parking meter and hoping you don't get caught. And I think the fines should be comparable. Get caught for downloading a $1.00 show then pay a $30 fine. And I'm certainly guilty just this week of failing to pay for parking and downloading torrents. But I also do buy a lot of media and I also do usually pay for parking and I think that tenuous balance between respecting the law but also ignoring it when practical is a fair and workable solution.
There were plenty of parking spaces on the street open but I certainly denied the city a little revenue by not paying and running into grab a smoothie. So by your standards a parking space is "imaginary property". After all, it didn't cost the city anything directly for me to be parking there.
Who is demanding a News Black Out? I only see people demanding honest news which properly puts the risks into context.
If I told you "Coal plant kills hundreds of people!" you would be alarmed but we don't get those kinds of stories since they're boring and mathy. Instead we get "Catastrophic failure* at nuclear plaNT!#@!!!" and a fine print story below that then clarifies that nobody was hurt, there isn't any danger and this is pretty much a non-story.
How about "Cars kill hundreds of thousands of people and make hundreds of square miles uninhabitable!!#*!"
Who Joe Herring is, is not the issue. It's not the messenger, it's the message. Unless you want to indulge in a lot of ad hominem arguments.
Eventually you can stop fact checking the schizophrenic homeless guy on the street corner.
"Consider your source". While even a broken clock is right twice a day, you shouldn't be using a source which is consistently wrong since it'll more often than not be misleading. Now, if this is all true then this source should have no trouble finding a reliable source to verify and certify it.
I would say it's somewhere in between.
A larger part of being a manager is communicating and programming is one of the only languages on earth that is 100% clear since it compiles and does exactly what you told it to do.
I like to write "Psuedo-code" or create a primitively scripted demo so that I'm not just talking about how the user will interact with the application--I can show it.
I would say learn enough, on the side, on your own time so that you can create prototypes but don't worry about contributing project-code. Your job is to contribute direction. If you haven't gone through years of school or immersed yourself full time for months on end learning the nitty gritty you'll just be a slow handicapped developer contributing questionable code. But if you can script well enough to prototype and understand the concepts of programming you can find creative ways to get around the limitations your developers see.
By nature people are kind of lazy. They aren't anxious to come up with ideas which entail a lot of extra work. As a director or manager it's your job to find the best possible solution and if you aren't responsible for actually doing it you're far less likely to be blinded by the "easy way out". Which isn't to say it'll end up being hard; good developers can often find an easy and creative way to implement something which at first glance is impossible.