You make a valid point - Slashdot is not the market segment Apple is aiming at with the iPad. Rather, it's the woman in my class whom I overhead saying "I was thinking about getting a Kindle, but now I might get the iPad - it looks cooler and can do more stuff" or my buddy whom I saw last night saying "The iPad looks so cool, and it's CHEAP! [for an Apple product]"
Problem is, I pointed out to my friend that since the iPad lacks flash, he won't be able to watch Hulu on it. He was very disappointed to hear this. Unless, of course, Hulu releases an iPhone/iPad app. There was a rumor about that last year, but nothing solid so far. ATT complains that the iPhone is already killing their network, think they will really want to let Hulu on the iPhone? How will Apple feel about Hulu as a potential competitor to iTunes? Yeah, there are other streaming apps, but still.
slow refresh, low contrast, no color, bad user interface. I can't fathom why anybody would want to do that to themselves.
Most of those points are true, but they're also irrelevant for many people's reading needs. It takes at least 20 seconds to read a page, the contrast is really no worse than a newspaper, and 95% or more of my books are black and white. The user interface is a matter of opinion, but also mostly irrelevant, since it's mainly used to select the book and start reading.
I've written about this before - people's reading needs differ. If you need to quickly reference a lot of full color PDFs and annotate them, then no, the Kindle is not for you, and you would likely be better off with some kind of tablet computer.
But if you're like me and you tend to read straight text, with the occasional black and white diagram thrown in, for hundreds of pages on end, eInk kicks ass.
You're not the only one - the only features I was interested in for this iPad were its processor and its OS. Is it confirmed that it is ARM-based? The stubbish WP article suggests that it may not be... but I did see that ARM stock went up 4.5% this afternoon:-)
I hope that when other companies see that Apple can successfully release an ARM-based device and still sell Intel products, they will grow some balls and release more ARM-based netbooks/smartbooks.
I have don't have any problem reading on LCD screens either. The point is not that you can't read on LCD screens, it's about how much you can and want to read on those screens.
I have a Kindle, and it's wonderful. I've read several thousand pages on it already. There is no way I would have read all that material on an LCD screen. The battery life is better than any laptop or netbook. It weighs less than netbooks.
Can I read material without it? Yes. But I don't want to anymore. Remember, just because someone disagrees with you, it's not group think.
How likely is it someone already owns an iPhone or (better yet) iPod Touch, but does not own a computer to which it is synced, and then goes and buys a netbook and not only intends to use that netbook as their primary machine, but intends to sync their iPhone/iPod Touch to it?
That strikes me as farfetched. If you already have an iPhone or iPod Touch and you are looking to buy a netbook, I'd wager you already have another desktop or laptop with iTunes and your iPhone is synced and backed up with it.
We can sit here and dream up all sorts of scenarios where free/open-source software won't cut it. But the point is, how many of these are likely to be experienced by the average user? Netbooks aren't designed to be a person's primary computer.
The geek quotes list for Office and forgets every other legitimate distribution channel known to man.
Not really, I mentioned you can get it pre-installed. I've been a beneficiary of MSDN-AA inter alia in the past, too. But your point was this hypothetical user has a bunch of software at home they can just load up on their netbook, not that they have to go out and buy again.
Chances are if they have Word on their home desktop or other laptop, it's an OEM copy that came will their Dell or whatever. Not easy to load on the netbook, and the licensing is questionable. Besides, netbooks are supposed to be cheap. What's the point of spending $250 then spending another 20% of that to repurchase Windows programs you already own? I don't think people actually do this.
iTunes. Games.
If you use iTunes for play music, there are plenty of alternatives. There are also plenty of alternatives that allow for iPod syncing with the majority of iPods in the wild. If you have an iPhone or Touch, maybe you're right, I don't know what the status of those is. Of course if you aleady have one, it's probably already synced to your primary machine, in which case it's not an issue.
I mentioned games, and pointed out that any serious Windows-only game probably wouldn't be fun to play on a netbook. Any FPS on a 10" screen would suck. Do people really purchase netbooks to carry around and play old games available on Steam? Seems unlikely. I see them playing Flash games.
H.264 hardware-accelerated video.
You're probably right, for now - though I don't know how many current Atom-based netbooks actually have this. Also, pretty much every recent ARM-based prototype sports this. Also, anyone know if Microsoft is lifting the hardware limits for Netbooks running Win 7? I believe for the OEM XP license most netbooks came with, manufacturers were limited to 1 GB RAM among other things. I wonder if a Win 7 OEM license for a machine with a decent graphics chip is more expensive to the manufacturer...
He has tons of Windows software at home which will load and run without a problem.
Software he knows.
Software he uses. Software he likes.
What Windows-only software lacks a reasonable open-source or Linux equivalent and would also be useful on a netbook?
People seem to use netbooks to... browse the web. Maybe listen to music. Work on documents. I suppose you could argue Microsoft Office, etc. I've seen someone using Word 2007 on a netbook. It was pathetic - the ribbon takes up way too much screen real estate on a netbook. Also, I guess people are pirating Office to run on their netbooks - who in their right mind is going to spend $250 to $300 on the netbook, then turn around and throw down another $100 to $300 for Office? I guess you can get it pre-installed for less.
Games, maybe. But any serious game isn't going to fun on a netbook, and probably won't run well anyway.
Actually the average netbook buyer can't load their "home" software onto their netbook, because their netbook doesn't have a CD drive. They have to download it, which either means pirating Windows apps or downloading free Windows apps. And free Windows apps likely have a free Linux equivalent that is easily downloadable (or better yet installable via a package manager).
I just wish there were some decent ARM offerings on the market - beating the Intel Atoms on battery life and price. Anyway, my point is that I really doubt the average netbook user has a bunch of Windows-only apps that are forcing them to remain with Win 7. I've installed two Win 7 machines so far, and the screen dimming every 30 seconds is enough to keep it away from my desk for good.
De Beers actually has much less control over the diamond market than they used to... the market is still tightly controlled, but it's not just De Beers anymore.
But, as long as enough women get sucked in by diamond industry marketing and make receiving a ridiculously priced piece of carbon a condition of getting married, diamond prices will remain high.
Might be worth the cost of shipping if it did away with the diamond industry once and for all! Of course, what with marketing, De Beers would probably buy up the stock from Uranus and either dump it in the ocean, or sell it at 500% the price of normal diamonds as "space diamonds... the most romantic diamond yet. Shit that's been floating on the seas of Uranus for millions of years can now be on your hand - FOREVER."
Since the negotiators are theoretically supposed to represent the sum of interests in their entire countries, it's (in theory) supposed to be the other way around - they negotiate based on what's best for the 99%, often at the expense of the 1%.
Also, what sometimes happens is that Congress turns over "trade promotion authority" to the President that allows him to negotiate a trade deal quietly, then present it as a whole to Congress. In this way, those negatively affected by the deal still get a chance to contact their senators, but those senators are forced to weight the complaints versus the potential good of the entire treaty (trade promotion authority means the president presents the trade deal to the Senate as a "take it or leave it" decision).
Another problem with ACTA is that since it's an executive agreement, there is zero Congressional involvement required. Once Obama signs it, we'll see it, but it will be too late for anyone to do anything about it.
It's true that we can't blame Steve Metalitz for the lack of transparency... he had to sign an NDA just like everyone else. Yes, the real show stopper is Kirk at USTR. The problem, however, is that USTR's job is essentially to funnel corporate interests into US trade policy. This is probably nowhere more evident than in the Special 301 process, in which USTR essentially goes around asking every major industry in the country, "What don't you like about foreign countries' IP policies?", then they cut and paste the answers into a document and release it as a threatening "watch list" for all of us to read. And yes, they actually do cut and paste, sometimes word for word, submissions from groups like MPAA and PhRMA inter alia.
The culture of secrecy and being the lap-dog of corporate interests is just particularly bad at USTR. From what I hear, people at Commerce would prefer more transparency around ACTA. I don't think Obama really knows or cares too much about it, as he has much more politically important issues to deal with.
The U.S. is such a powerful player in these negotiations that if we decided we wanted them to be transparent, no one else would prevent that from happening. We can make it happen. Of course no one really knows why USTR is so reluctant, but when Jamie Love ran into Kirk on a plane and asked him, Kirk said something along the lines of "if we revealed what was in it, people would walk away from table and the agreement would be doomed." Who knows what the hell that means.
You joke, but the MPAA has actually called for the negotiations to be more transparent, if only to avoid the negative attention garnered by the current total lack of transparency.
There are actually good reasons to keep drafts of a trade treaty secret, or at least to keep Congress from meddling too much in the negotiation of a trade treaty (and one way to accomplish that is secrecy). Often a trade treaty might involve lowering tariffs or other barriers to trade, which result in a net economic benefit to the countries involved as a whole. However, they also hurt specific businesses or industries, which have a strong incentive to mobilize and lobby against lowering tariffs (see, e.g., Chinese tires). By keeping a treaty secret until most details have been hammered out, it gives less time for special interests to derail what can potentially be overall a beneficial product.
That said, as Jonathan Band of Policy Bandwidth (one of the panelists) pointed out during the event, ACTA is fundamentally not a trade agreement, and it's dishonest to pretend that it is, even if it has "trade" in the name. ACTA seems to be combination agreement on customs and law enforcement (not trade) and on intellectual property (also not trade). This difference is important, because IP agreements have a much more transparent history than trade agreements. This is something that Jamie Love kept trying to point out to Steve Metalitz; Steve was arguing that ACTA is no less transparent than trade agreement X, but the proper comparison would be any of WIPO's recent work, and the fact that NGOs, business groups, and academics all have access to draft WIPO agreements and resolutions, and their input is taken seriously. Draft texts are even put up on the Internet. That's transparency. It's also precisely the reason why ACTA can't be negotiated in a forum like WIPO.
I was there too. To clarify the things you bring up:
- The consequences of ACTA will likely be felt more by any states that join it in the future. The parties negotiating now are fairly like-minded; the real issue will come when a middle-income country wants to join, e.g., the OECD, whose members then say "Reform your IP law to conform to ACTA, and then you can join." The world already has a high bar for IP in the form of TRIPS. The last thing it needs is ever more ratcheting up of IP restrictions.
- No one is really clear on whether patents are included in ACTA. Ron Wyden's letter asks USTR point blank, and I've heard different things from different people. However, even if patents are not included, trademark provisions and anything pertaining to "counterfeiting" could potentially impede the flow of generics.
- In addition to your point (the panelist suggested that litigants would cite ACTA as a non-binding but influential international agreement that judges might take seriously, thereby affecting litigation), ACTA will almost certainly tie the hands of Congress significantly when it comes to any change or reform of IP law.
That assumes that software is fundamentally without value
More precisely, it assumes that the marginal cost of producing software is zero.
Dev loses $20. That is $20 that he doesn't have to spend on latte's. Keep piling up these "Net loss to economy = $0"'s and Dev will be out of a job. Eventually, the whole industry is no longer viable. Where are the jobs going to come from now?
The only way the industry will no longer be viable is if everyone (or some critical mass of people) pirate. Clearly, enough people are paying for software to make the current industry viable.
Second, if someone steals a latte, Starbucks has lost the marginal material and labor that went into producing that latte, which is a significant portion of its cost. If someone pirates software, the developer's lost marginal material and labor costs are effectively zero. (Of course, this means the up front costs of material and labor are spread over fewer units sold, and if everyone pirates, then the developer has no incentive to invest material and labor in the first place).
Your logic is fine as long as there is no difference between an economy based on selling lattes and an economy based on creative and highly skilled labor.
My impression is that my logic relies precisely on the difference between an economy based on selling tangible goods and one selling intangible goods.
The whole point is the difference in the marginal cost of a latte versus some piece of software. In both cases, if you steal, the producer has to swallow the marginal cost. But the marginal cost of much commercial software is zero.
Many software companies have a complex relationship with piracy. In some cases, the network effects of a certain amount of piracy can outweigh its costs. Or, to bring up a different point, to what extent does piracy drive the sale of large capacity storage devices, media writers, portable music players, high-speed internet subscriptions, etc.?
That's an excellent point, and something that is often forgotten when talking about numbers surrounding piracy.
So an iPhone user doesn't spend $20 on a couple apps because they pirate them. Apple and software developers lose out on $20. Then, the iPhone user buys four mochas at Starbucks with the $20 they didn't spend on apps. Net loss to economy = $0.
Even if people "save" money instead of spending it, if that saving consists in investment, it's often providing capital for those who want it elsewhere in the economy. These "losses" are almost never actual "loss" to the economy as a whole, they simply result in a different distribution of the same amount of money.
The same goes for all the piracy statistics thrown about for foreign countries. I was recently discussing this with a colleague; sure, maybe country X pirates $20 million worth of CAD/CAM software. Then, they turn around and spend $20 million purchasing CNC machines from US companies.
"And, because a Sun Ray Client doesn't contain a disk drive or any means of persistent data storage, it's an unattractive target for theft."
And how do they think the average thief is going to know that it doesn't contain a disk drive? Probably be better off spray-painting it hot pink, that might make it an unattractive target.
Not necessarily. The percentage of patents being granted to residents of a country doesn't tell the whole story. For example, Japan has an extremely high percentage... but recently, so has Armenia. You can't therefore conclude that both Japan and Armenia are economically dominant. What this percentage best shows you is the attractiveness of patenting a product in that domestic market. In that sense, to a certain degree the more foreigners who want to patent in the U.S., the more attractive our market is to them - which almost leads to the opposite of your conclusion.
The consistently high Japanese numbers have to do with the level of innovation in that country, yes, but also with the fact that when it comes to patent heavy sectors (technology, chemicals, pharma), their economy is almost entirely export driven. How many U.S. companies do you see making products for the Japanese domestic market versus the other way around?
I actually calculated the percentage for about 150 countries using all available data from WIPO, and you do find some interesting patterns. What you've said is pretty much right... the U.S. has a strong patent system, and huge internal market, so it's no surprise foreigners want to patent their inventions here.
GDP per capita plays a big role in this percentage, as does the total population of the country, and the strength of the patent system. I'm not going to upload all my images, but here are a few interesting ones:
I actually sometimes find myself preferring Safari for actual web-browsing... especially for Slashdot! Firefox seems to slow down when loading long discussion pages, whereas Safari is quite fast. But extensions are Firefox's killer feature. AdBlock Plus, but also Zotero (citation management, only available for Firefox), Greasemonkey + DownloadThemAll... without the extensions, there's little that would make me prefer Firefox to Safari.
Yes, multilateral treaties are hard to negotiate. That's exactly why the U.S. et al. are not pursuing ACTA's provisions in the proper forum - WIPO. They know there is too much opposition from developing countries at WIPO, and such proposals would go nowhere.
Their solution has been what is referred to as "forum shifting" - all the like-minded governments (US, EU, Japan, plus some other who want to play ball - Mexico, South Korea) are taking their marbles and finding somewhere else to play. For the most part, these states agree on basic IP policy. Sure, there is disagreement on specific details - sui generis database rights in the EU, for example. But on the whole, the parties negotiating ACTA are much less diverse when it comes to IP policy than we might think.
By they way, the U.S. has also been pushing its IP policy through practically every bilateral free-trade agreement at the same time. The EU is doing the same thing. Both have decide that IP is important enough to warrant its own agreement. Initially ACTA will be between these like-minded countries, but after it is passed, we can expect it to become a necessity for future bilateral agreements. New FTA between US and country X? Sure, but on the condition that you join ACTA, which means reforming your IP laws to TRIPS-plus, "first-world" standards. Want to become a member of the OECD? Sure, but you also need to join ACTA to show us you're ready.
Slashdot Mirror
You make a valid point - Slashdot is not the market segment Apple is aiming at with the iPad. Rather, it's the woman in my class whom I overhead saying "I was thinking about getting a Kindle, but now I might get the iPad - it looks cooler and can do more stuff" or my buddy whom I saw last night saying "The iPad looks so cool, and it's CHEAP! [for an Apple product]"
Problem is, I pointed out to my friend that since the iPad lacks flash, he won't be able to watch Hulu on it. He was very disappointed to hear this. Unless, of course, Hulu releases an iPhone/iPad app. There was a rumor about that last year, but nothing solid so far. ATT complains that the iPhone is already killing their network, think they will really want to let Hulu on the iPhone? How will Apple feel about Hulu as a potential competitor to iTunes? Yeah, there are other streaming apps, but still.
slow refresh, low contrast, no color, bad user interface. I can't fathom why anybody would want to do that to themselves.
Most of those points are true, but they're also irrelevant for many people's reading needs. It takes at least 20 seconds to read a page, the contrast is really no worse than a newspaper, and 95% or more of my books are black and white. The user interface is a matter of opinion, but also mostly irrelevant, since it's mainly used to select the book and start reading.
I've written about this before - people's reading needs differ. If you need to quickly reference a lot of full color PDFs and annotate them, then no, the Kindle is not for you, and you would likely be better off with some kind of tablet computer.
But if you're like me and you tend to read straight text, with the occasional black and white diagram thrown in, for hundreds of pages on end, eInk kicks ass.
You're not the only one - the only features I was interested in for this iPad were its processor and its OS. Is it confirmed that it is ARM-based? The stubbish WP article suggests that it may not be... but I did see that ARM stock went up 4.5% this afternoon :-)
I hope that when other companies see that Apple can successfully release an ARM-based device and still sell Intel products, they will grow some balls and release more ARM-based netbooks/smartbooks.
I have don't have any problem reading on LCD screens either. The point is not that you can't read on LCD screens, it's about how much you can and want to read on those screens.
I have a Kindle, and it's wonderful. I've read several thousand pages on it already. There is no way I would have read all that material on an LCD screen. The battery life is better than any laptop or netbook. It weighs less than netbooks.
Can I read material without it? Yes. But I don't want to anymore. Remember, just because someone disagrees with you, it's not group think.
Heh, that's pretty good. I may have to add it!
What primary machine?
How likely is it someone already owns an iPhone or (better yet) iPod Touch, but does not own a computer to which it is synced, and then goes and buys a netbook and not only intends to use that netbook as their primary machine, but intends to sync their iPhone/iPod Touch to it?
That strikes me as farfetched. If you already have an iPhone or iPod Touch and you are looking to buy a netbook, I'd wager you already have another desktop or laptop with iTunes and your iPhone is synced and backed up with it.
We can sit here and dream up all sorts of scenarios where free/open-source software won't cut it. But the point is, how many of these are likely to be experienced by the average user? Netbooks aren't designed to be a person's primary computer.
The geek quotes list for Office and forgets every other legitimate distribution channel known to man.
Not really, I mentioned you can get it pre-installed. I've been a beneficiary of MSDN-AA inter alia in the past, too. But your point was this hypothetical user has a bunch of software at home they can just load up on their netbook, not that they have to go out and buy again.
Chances are if they have Word on their home desktop or other laptop, it's an OEM copy that came will their Dell or whatever. Not easy to load on the netbook, and the licensing is questionable. Besides, netbooks are supposed to be cheap. What's the point of spending $250 then spending another 20% of that to repurchase Windows programs you already own? I don't think people actually do this.
iTunes. Games.
If you use iTunes for play music, there are plenty of alternatives. There are also plenty of alternatives that allow for iPod syncing with the majority of iPods in the wild. If you have an iPhone or Touch, maybe you're right, I don't know what the status of those is. Of course if you aleady have one, it's probably already synced to your primary machine, in which case it's not an issue.
I mentioned games, and pointed out that any serious Windows-only game probably wouldn't be fun to play on a netbook. Any FPS on a 10" screen would suck. Do people really purchase netbooks to carry around and play old games available on Steam? Seems unlikely. I see them playing Flash games.
H.264 hardware-accelerated video.
You're probably right, for now - though I don't know how many current Atom-based netbooks actually have this. Also, pretty much every recent ARM-based prototype sports this. Also, anyone know if Microsoft is lifting the hardware limits for Netbooks running Win 7? I believe for the OEM XP license most netbooks came with, manufacturers were limited to 1 GB RAM among other things. I wonder if a Win 7 OEM license for a machine with a decent graphics chip is more expensive to the manufacturer...
He has tons of Windows software at home which will load and run without a problem. Software he knows. Software he uses. Software he likes.
What Windows-only software lacks a reasonable open-source or Linux equivalent and would also be useful on a netbook?
People seem to use netbooks to... browse the web. Maybe listen to music. Work on documents. I suppose you could argue Microsoft Office, etc. I've seen someone using Word 2007 on a netbook. It was pathetic - the ribbon takes up way too much screen real estate on a netbook. Also, I guess people are pirating Office to run on their netbooks - who in their right mind is going to spend $250 to $300 on the netbook, then turn around and throw down another $100 to $300 for Office? I guess you can get it pre-installed for less.
Games, maybe. But any serious game isn't going to fun on a netbook, and probably won't run well anyway.
Actually the average netbook buyer can't load their "home" software onto their netbook, because their netbook doesn't have a CD drive. They have to download it, which either means pirating Windows apps or downloading free Windows apps. And free Windows apps likely have a free Linux equivalent that is easily downloadable (or better yet installable via a package manager).
I just wish there were some decent ARM offerings on the market - beating the Intel Atoms on battery life and price. Anyway, my point is that I really doubt the average netbook user has a bunch of Windows-only apps that are forcing them to remain with Win 7. I've installed two Win 7 machines so far, and the screen dimming every 30 seconds is enough to keep it away from my desk for good.
De Beers actually has much less control over the diamond market than they used to... the market is still tightly controlled, but it's not just De Beers anymore.
But, as long as enough women get sucked in by diamond industry marketing and make receiving a ridiculously priced piece of carbon a condition of getting married, diamond prices will remain high.
Might be worth the cost of shipping if it did away with the diamond industry once and for all! Of course, what with marketing, De Beers would probably buy up the stock from Uranus and either dump it in the ocean, or sell it at 500% the price of normal diamonds as "space diamonds... the most romantic diamond yet. Shit that's been floating on the seas of Uranus for millions of years can now be on your hand - FOREVER."
So now /.ers can tell their "girlfriends" that if you want a diamond, you're free to look for one in Uranus?
Since the negotiators are theoretically supposed to represent the sum of interests in their entire countries, it's (in theory) supposed to be the other way around - they negotiate based on what's best for the 99%, often at the expense of the 1%.
Also, what sometimes happens is that Congress turns over "trade promotion authority" to the President that allows him to negotiate a trade deal quietly, then present it as a whole to Congress. In this way, those negatively affected by the deal still get a chance to contact their senators, but those senators are forced to weight the complaints versus the potential good of the entire treaty (trade promotion authority means the president presents the trade deal to the Senate as a "take it or leave it" decision).
Another problem with ACTA is that since it's an executive agreement, there is zero Congressional involvement required. Once Obama signs it, we'll see it, but it will be too late for anyone to do anything about it.
It's true that we can't blame Steve Metalitz for the lack of transparency... he had to sign an NDA just like everyone else. Yes, the real show stopper is Kirk at USTR. The problem, however, is that USTR's job is essentially to funnel corporate interests into US trade policy. This is probably nowhere more evident than in the Special 301 process, in which USTR essentially goes around asking every major industry in the country, "What don't you like about foreign countries' IP policies?", then they cut and paste the answers into a document and release it as a threatening "watch list" for all of us to read. And yes, they actually do cut and paste, sometimes word for word, submissions from groups like MPAA and PhRMA inter alia.
The culture of secrecy and being the lap-dog of corporate interests is just particularly bad at USTR. From what I hear, people at Commerce would prefer more transparency around ACTA. I don't think Obama really knows or cares too much about it, as he has much more politically important issues to deal with.
The U.S. is such a powerful player in these negotiations that if we decided we wanted them to be transparent, no one else would prevent that from happening. We can make it happen. Of course no one really knows why USTR is so reluctant, but when Jamie Love ran into Kirk on a plane and asked him, Kirk said something along the lines of "if we revealed what was in it, people would walk away from table and the agreement would be doomed." Who knows what the hell that means.
You joke, but the MPAA has actually called for the negotiations to be more transparent, if only to avoid the negative attention garnered by the current total lack of transparency.
There are actually good reasons to keep drafts of a trade treaty secret, or at least to keep Congress from meddling too much in the negotiation of a trade treaty (and one way to accomplish that is secrecy). Often a trade treaty might involve lowering tariffs or other barriers to trade, which result in a net economic benefit to the countries involved as a whole. However, they also hurt specific businesses or industries, which have a strong incentive to mobilize and lobby against lowering tariffs (see, e.g., Chinese tires). By keeping a treaty secret until most details have been hammered out, it gives less time for special interests to derail what can potentially be overall a beneficial product.
That said, as Jonathan Band of Policy Bandwidth (one of the panelists) pointed out during the event, ACTA is fundamentally not a trade agreement, and it's dishonest to pretend that it is, even if it has "trade" in the name. ACTA seems to be combination agreement on customs and law enforcement (not trade) and on intellectual property (also not trade). This difference is important, because IP agreements have a much more transparent history than trade agreements. This is something that Jamie Love kept trying to point out to Steve Metalitz; Steve was arguing that ACTA is no less transparent than trade agreement X, but the proper comparison would be any of WIPO's recent work, and the fact that NGOs, business groups, and academics all have access to draft WIPO agreements and resolutions, and their input is taken seriously. Draft texts are even put up on the Internet. That's transparency. It's also precisely the reason why ACTA can't be negotiated in a forum like WIPO.
I was there too. To clarify the things you bring up:
- The consequences of ACTA will likely be felt more by any states that join it in the future. The parties negotiating now are fairly like-minded; the real issue will come when a middle-income country wants to join, e.g., the OECD, whose members then say "Reform your IP law to conform to ACTA, and then you can join." The world already has a high bar for IP in the form of TRIPS. The last thing it needs is ever more ratcheting up of IP restrictions.
- No one is really clear on whether patents are included in ACTA. Ron Wyden's letter asks USTR point blank, and I've heard different things from different people. However, even if patents are not included, trademark provisions and anything pertaining to "counterfeiting" could potentially impede the flow of generics.
- In addition to your point (the panelist suggested that litigants would cite ACTA as a non-binding but influential international agreement that judges might take seriously, thereby affecting litigation), ACTA will almost certainly tie the hands of Congress significantly when it comes to any change or reform of IP law.
That assumes that software is fundamentally without value
More precisely, it assumes that the marginal cost of producing software is zero.
Dev loses $20. That is $20 that he doesn't have to spend on latte's. Keep piling up these "Net loss to economy = $0"'s and Dev will be out of a job. Eventually, the whole industry is no longer viable. Where are the jobs going to come from now?
The only way the industry will no longer be viable is if everyone (or some critical mass of people) pirate. Clearly, enough people are paying for software to make the current industry viable.
Second, if someone steals a latte, Starbucks has lost the marginal material and labor that went into producing that latte, which is a significant portion of its cost. If someone pirates software, the developer's lost marginal material and labor costs are effectively zero. (Of course, this means the up front costs of material and labor are spread over fewer units sold, and if everyone pirates, then the developer has no incentive to invest material and labor in the first place).
Your logic is fine as long as there is no difference between an economy based on selling lattes and an economy based on creative and highly skilled labor.
My impression is that my logic relies precisely on the difference between an economy based on selling tangible goods and one selling intangible goods.
The whole point is the difference in the marginal cost of a latte versus some piece of software. In both cases, if you steal, the producer has to swallow the marginal cost. But the marginal cost of much commercial software is zero.
Many software companies have a complex relationship with piracy. In some cases, the network effects of a certain amount of piracy can outweigh its costs. Or, to bring up a different point, to what extent does piracy drive the sale of large capacity storage devices, media writers, portable music players, high-speed internet subscriptions, etc.?
That's an excellent point, and something that is often forgotten when talking about numbers surrounding piracy.
So an iPhone user doesn't spend $20 on a couple apps because they pirate them. Apple and software developers lose out on $20. Then, the iPhone user buys four mochas at Starbucks with the $20 they didn't spend on apps. Net loss to economy = $0.
Even if people "save" money instead of spending it, if that saving consists in investment, it's often providing capital for those who want it elsewhere in the economy. These "losses" are almost never actual "loss" to the economy as a whole, they simply result in a different distribution of the same amount of money.
The same goes for all the piracy statistics thrown about for foreign countries. I was recently discussing this with a colleague; sure, maybe country X pirates $20 million worth of CAD/CAM software. Then, they turn around and spend $20 million purchasing CNC machines from US companies.
I like this quote from your link:
"And, because a Sun Ray Client doesn't contain a disk drive or any means of persistent data storage, it's an unattractive target for theft."
And how do they think the average thief is going to know that it doesn't contain a disk drive? Probably be better off spray-painting it hot pink, that might make it an unattractive target.
Not necessarily. The percentage of patents being granted to residents of a country doesn't tell the whole story. For example, Japan has an extremely high percentage... but recently, so has Armenia. You can't therefore conclude that both Japan and Armenia are economically dominant. What this percentage best shows you is the attractiveness of patenting a product in that domestic market. In that sense, to a certain degree the more foreigners who want to patent in the U.S., the more attractive our market is to them - which almost leads to the opposite of your conclusion.
The consistently high Japanese numbers have to do with the level of innovation in that country, yes, but also with the fact that when it comes to patent heavy sectors (technology, chemicals, pharma), their economy is almost entirely export driven. How many U.S. companies do you see making products for the Japanese domestic market versus the other way around?
These graphs show the total number of patents granted for all available years with data.
These show the percentage granted to residents of the country for all years with data.
I actually calculated the percentage for about 150 countries using all available data from WIPO, and you do find some interesting patterns. What you've said is pretty much right... the U.S. has a strong patent system, and huge internal market, so it's no surprise foreigners want to patent their inventions here.
GDP per capita plays a big role in this percentage, as does the total population of the country, and the strength of the patent system. I'm not going to upload all my images, but here are a few interesting ones:
China Russia (not USSR) Germany (including West Germany) USA Japan India
The dashed line indicates when the country implemented TRIPS.
I'm on Comcast. Tomato reports the following usage:
2009-12 105.87 GB
2009-11 546.60 GB
2009-10 299.63 GB
2009-09 248.94 GB
2009-08 222.14 GB
2009-07 76.76 GB
FWIW, I've yet to hear a peep from Comcast about the months that exceed 250 GB.
I actually sometimes find myself preferring Safari for actual web-browsing... especially for Slashdot! Firefox seems to slow down when loading long discussion pages, whereas Safari is quite fast. But extensions are Firefox's killer feature. AdBlock Plus, but also Zotero (citation management, only available for Firefox), Greasemonkey + DownloadThemAll... without the extensions, there's little that would make me prefer Firefox to Safari.
Yes, multilateral treaties are hard to negotiate. That's exactly why the U.S. et al. are not pursuing ACTA's provisions in the proper forum - WIPO. They know there is too much opposition from developing countries at WIPO, and such proposals would go nowhere.
Their solution has been what is referred to as "forum shifting" - all the like-minded governments (US, EU, Japan, plus some other who want to play ball - Mexico, South Korea) are taking their marbles and finding somewhere else to play. For the most part, these states agree on basic IP policy. Sure, there is disagreement on specific details - sui generis database rights in the EU, for example. But on the whole, the parties negotiating ACTA are much less diverse when it comes to IP policy than we might think.
By they way, the U.S. has also been pushing its IP policy through practically every bilateral free-trade agreement at the same time. The EU is doing the same thing. Both have decide that IP is important enough to warrant its own agreement. Initially ACTA will be between these like-minded countries, but after it is passed, we can expect it to become a necessity for future bilateral agreements. New FTA between US and country X? Sure, but on the condition that you join ACTA, which means reforming your IP laws to TRIPS-plus, "first-world" standards. Want to become a member of the OECD? Sure, but you also need to join ACTA to show us you're ready.