But how do you have a "free market" if there is a referee controlling things? Either Libertarians are lying about their wish for a free market, or their philosophy doesn't work.
That's clearly a delusional perspective you have there. There's nothing hyper-liberal about slashdot. It's dominated by right-of-center Libertarians with Ayn Rand superiority complexes, not by liberals.
Please. You mean to tell me you've encountered as many kooks and assholes in your entire life as you have in one day of reading c|net comments, Digg, and Slashdot?
Oh, that's nothing. You've clearly never read the YouTube comments. And strangely enough, those of some major newspapers and media outlets. I can't remember exactly where it was, but I think it was ABC News (America) that was just full of insane people on every thread about the Democratic primaries. The "nerd oriented" sites have nothing on those which appeal to the general population. Which is odd, because I thought nerds were experts at being trolls and anti-social loons, but you learn something new every day.
But all you have to do to stop that is put a "no junk mail" sign on your mail box, and it all stops. All of it. It's too expensive for the marketing companies to risk going to court by disobeying the sign.
Why is this only getting attention now when it's been a problem for years? Is it just because someone has coined a word for it?
no, something has changed. At work, we have pretty well-maintained spam filtering, and I haven't seen a "backscatter" for years. But in the last month, they started coming in the hundreds. Maybe it has something to do with the sudden popularity of poorly-configured "anti-spam appliances" (Barracuda, etc.) mentioned elsewhere in this discussion? In other words, the popularity of anti-spam measures is increasing inadvertent spam?
Uhhh, you can go out and buy Mac OS X and run it on generic hardware. Anyway, the idea that the market is so different seems silly. The market is computer users. The exact same market that Linux and Windows cater to. What real difference do the other details make? People want to use a computer, and choose an OS that suits their needs best. If it were a different market, then why do we see so many people switching between Windows, Linux and Mac? Or let's take it back further. In the 80s, there was no single dominant OS, and many of them were tied to specific hardware. But they were all competing in the same market, all competing for computer users' dollars.
For instance the ability to create details and perspectives that didn't originally exist in photos in Bladerunner is pretty silly.
Not really. We already have that ability to a limited extent today. We can make a 3D recreation of a scene from a photograph. We could use reflections to recreate part of a scene that is otherwise obscured.
Who knows how far image processing could evolve? And that's assuming that the image was a regular photograph as we know it, and not some kind of hologram or stereograph or something. Is there anything in the film that indicates it's an ordinary 2D photo? Not that I remember.
Except of course for the fact that Mac OS doesn't cost any more than Windows, and is not about being "shiny". If anything, Vista is the OS that's expensive and all about superficial bling. The way you are talking, you'd think Mac OS required a bank loan, and didn't have any function beyond looking good. You might want to try looking at the facts.
No, it's like restricting free trade by making it illegal for a builder to build another house like yours in the same area, thus artificially boosting the value of yours.
No, it's nothing like that at all. By making copies you are not "making something like it" - you are copying the exact same thing.
The media exists, but if I already own a blank DVD, I'm not making anything by copying data on to it, I'm just changing its state.
So? That data still physically exists. And what about the examples of non-digital media that I gave - like animation cells and film? Are they not a physical product?
Umm, the traditional definition of capitalism is that private companies, not the state, control free trade. IP is a law, passed by the government to try to manage the market.
Right. Do you think private companies want a free market? Of course not! They want to own and control the market. If the government did not exist, then these companies would surely find a way to punish you for copying their IP - for example, they might higher a mobster or a private army to break your knee caps or kill you.
There is no such thing as "free trade" - either the government regulates trade, or organized crime, or vast monopolies with private armies regulate trade. I'm not sure why you believe so strongly in this ridiculous fantasy that there can be such a thing as a truly free market. The propagandists have truly done a great job getting people to believe this one.
There's also the problem that everybody has a different definition. To you, the copyright laws are anti-free-market. To the companies, not having copyright laws would be anti-free-market.
What you need to do is stop being underage. But seriously, your point is very valid. But what do we do about it? This is why I don't participate in Facebook and other sites like it.
They are contained on media, which exists, but it is not duplication of the media that is restricted, but the data.
You seem to be arguing that the data on that media does not exist. Which doesn't make much sense. Of course the data exists! How would we be able to play it back or view it if it didn't exist?
When a child draws a picture, does the picture not exist? Or do you just see it is a blank piece of paper (the medium) without anything on it?
You should have finished reading my paragraph. Like where I wrote, "Creation of IP, on the other hand fits just fine in traditional capitalism... as a service." Blowjobs, like the creation of IP are a service, not a commodity.
But a TV show is a commodity. As is a blowjob.
Yes, if you artificially restrict the duplication of IP (as our laws do) you can try to make it more like property, but that is by restricting free trade and hence, the capitalist free market.
How does restricting the availability of property restrict free trade? That's like saying you are restricting the free market if you don't agree to sell me your house. It's perfectly within your rights not to have your house on the free market. As for "capitalist free market", no such thing exists.
It is abstract in terms of property because what is being restricted is not physical property, but speech. Natural human rights to free expression mean if you sing a song and I hear you, I also can sing the song.
How does that make anything abstract? Sure, I can sing a pop song, but that is not the same thing as a professionally-produced CD, is it? I can quote Family Guy, but that doesn't mean I own Family Guy.
Sure it does, but as speech, not property.
Why can't it exist as property? It is property. It's not speech.
The data is not property in the traditional, capitalist sense
Why not?
That is not to say IP laws are "bad" just that they are anti-capitalist. So are public roads, that doesn't mean they are a bad idea.
You appear to have a very unusual idea of what capitalism is. I haven't seen any "traditional" definitions that exclude intellectual property.
Bill Gates doesn't have anything to do with the system being broken? Bullshit. His company and his practices have retarded technology by many years. And in retarding technology, he has contributed to waste and inefficiency - he's helped cripple entire nations. And this money for charity he speaks of is the direct result of his meddling. Without Microsoft, we might actually have real solutions for some of these problems by now.
I don't disagree... and I can solder. But the topic of this was a complaint about the iPod's battery not being replaceable... so I'm not sure what you were implying by the context you posted this in.
I consider myself a capitalist, and this doesn't ring true at all. The closed source way of doing things tends to restrict the flow of information (in this case, source code), creating an artificial scarcity on a product that has essentially zero marginal cost.
Supply and demand do not apply to abstract property. The cost of duplicating IP is basically zero, hence in traditional capitalism its cost also moves to zero.
Sure it does. You can restrict the supply of abstract property, and you can increase demand for it. For example - it costs nothing to give somebody a blowjob, but you can make a lot of money by restricting the giving of blowjobs to those who pay.
Likewise, look at the most popular IP - TV shows. You restrict a popular TV show to a certain network, and that network makes more money in advertising because they have a popular show that there is a lot of demand for. They make less money on shows that are in lesser demand.
There' also the fact that this property isn't really abstract. Are you claiming that a TV show, or a piece of software is simply an abstract, intangible notion? It's not. That software code actually exists. The tapes/film/animation cells of a TV show actually exist. They aren't abstract.
When was the last that time anything Bush said was news? At most, it's a joke on The Daily Show. Nobody seriously expects anything from that guy's words anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
But how do you have a "free market" if there is a referee controlling things? Either Libertarians are lying about their wish for a free market, or their philosophy doesn't work.
Hmmm... you'd think something like that would be in the news. Got any evidence of that?
That's clearly a delusional perspective you have there. There's nothing hyper-liberal about slashdot. It's dominated by right-of-center Libertarians with Ayn Rand superiority complexes, not by liberals.
Oh, that's nothing. You've clearly never read the YouTube comments. And strangely enough, those of some major newspapers and media outlets. I can't remember exactly where it was, but I think it was ABC News (America) that was just full of insane people on every thread about the Democratic primaries. The "nerd oriented" sites have nothing on those which appeal to the general population. Which is odd, because I thought nerds were experts at being trolls and anti-social loons, but you learn something new every day.
Right - and there are plenty of people running Mac OS on Dells, Toshibas, homebuilt systems that Apple had nothing to do with.
But all you have to do to stop that is put a "no junk mail" sign on your mail box, and it all stops. All of it. It's too expensive for the marketing companies to risk going to court by disobeying the sign.
no, something has changed. At work, we have pretty well-maintained spam filtering, and I haven't seen a "backscatter" for years. But in the last month, they started coming in the hundreds. Maybe it has something to do with the sudden popularity of poorly-configured "anti-spam appliances" (Barracuda, etc.) mentioned elsewhere in this discussion? In other words, the popularity of anti-spam measures is increasing inadvertent spam?
Thunderbird??? You delete that shit from your hard drive permanently. Isn't using that piece of shit worse than receiving spam?
Uhhh, you can go out and buy Mac OS X and run it on generic hardware. Anyway, the idea that the market is so different seems silly. The market is computer users. The exact same market that Linux and Windows cater to. What real difference do the other details make? People want to use a computer, and choose an OS that suits their needs best. If it were a different market, then why do we see so many people switching between Windows, Linux and Mac? Or let's take it back further. In the 80s, there was no single dominant OS, and many of them were tied to specific hardware. But they were all competing in the same market, all competing for computer users' dollars.
Not really. We already have that ability to a limited extent today. We can make a 3D recreation of a scene from a photograph. We could use reflections to recreate part of a scene that is otherwise obscured.
Who knows how far image processing could evolve? And that's assuming that the image was a regular photograph as we know it, and not some kind of hologram or stereograph or something. Is there anything in the film that indicates it's an ordinary 2D photo? Not that I remember.
Wait a minute, what is this "shutdown" feature you speak of?
Except of course for the fact that Mac OS doesn't cost any more than Windows, and is not about being "shiny". If anything, Vista is the OS that's expensive and all about superficial bling. The way you are talking, you'd think Mac OS required a bank loan, and didn't have any function beyond looking good. You might want to try looking at the facts.
No, it's nothing like that at all. By making copies you are not "making something like it" - you are copying the exact same thing.
The media exists, but if I already own a blank DVD, I'm not making anything by copying data on to it, I'm just changing its state.So? That data still physically exists. And what about the examples of non-digital media that I gave - like animation cells and film? Are they not a physical product?
Umm, the traditional definition of capitalism is that private companies, not the state, control free trade. IP is a law, passed by the government to try to manage the market.Right. Do you think private companies want a free market? Of course not! They want to own and control the market. If the government did not exist, then these companies would surely find a way to punish you for copying their IP - for example, they might higher a mobster or a private army to break your knee caps or kill you.
There is no such thing as "free trade" - either the government regulates trade, or organized crime, or vast monopolies with private armies regulate trade. I'm not sure why you believe so strongly in this ridiculous fantasy that there can be such a thing as a truly free market. The propagandists have truly done a great job getting people to believe this one.
There's also the problem that everybody has a different definition. To you, the copyright laws are anti-free-market. To the companies, not having copyright laws would be anti-free-market.
What you need to do is stop being underage. But seriously, your point is very valid. But what do we do about it? This is why I don't participate in Facebook and other sites like it.
P.S:
They are contained on media, which exists, but it is not duplication of the media that is restricted, but the data.You seem to be arguing that the data on that media does not exist. Which doesn't make much sense. Of course the data exists! How would we be able to play it back or view it if it didn't exist?
When a child draws a picture, does the picture not exist? Or do you just see it is a blank piece of paper (the medium) without anything on it?
But a TV show is a commodity. As is a blowjob.
Yes, if you artificially restrict the duplication of IP (as our laws do) you can try to make it more like property, but that is by restricting free trade and hence, the capitalist free market.How does restricting the availability of property restrict free trade? That's like saying you are restricting the free market if you don't agree to sell me your house. It's perfectly within your rights not to have your house on the free market. As for "capitalist free market", no such thing exists.
It is abstract in terms of property because what is being restricted is not physical property, but speech. Natural human rights to free expression mean if you sing a song and I hear you, I also can sing the song.How does that make anything abstract? Sure, I can sing a pop song, but that is not the same thing as a professionally-produced CD, is it? I can quote Family Guy, but that doesn't mean I own Family Guy.
Sure it does, but as speech, not property.Why can't it exist as property? It is property. It's not speech.
The data is not property in the traditional, capitalist senseWhy not?
That is not to say IP laws are "bad" just that they are anti-capitalist. So are public roads, that doesn't mean they are a bad idea.You appear to have a very unusual idea of what capitalism is. I haven't seen any "traditional" definitions that exclude intellectual property.
Bill Gates doesn't have anything to do with the system being broken? Bullshit. His company and his practices have retarded technology by many years. And in retarding technology, he has contributed to waste and inefficiency - he's helped cripple entire nations. And this money for charity he speaks of is the direct result of his meddling. Without Microsoft, we might actually have real solutions for some of these problems by now.
I'm waiting for Lego Lego.
I don't disagree... and I can solder. But the topic of this was a complaint about the iPod's battery not being replaceable... so I'm not sure what you were implying by the context you posted this in.
And that's exactly what capitalism is all about.
Sure it does. You can restrict the supply of abstract property, and you can increase demand for it. For example - it costs nothing to give somebody a blowjob, but you can make a lot of money by restricting the giving of blowjobs to those who pay.
Likewise, look at the most popular IP - TV shows. You restrict a popular TV show to a certain network, and that network makes more money in advertising because they have a popular show that there is a lot of demand for. They make less money on shows that are in lesser demand.
There' also the fact that this property isn't really abstract. Are you claiming that a TV show, or a piece of software is simply an abstract, intangible notion? It's not. That software code actually exists. The tapes/film/animation cells of a TV show actually exist. They aren't abstract.
Since when did Capitalism have anything to do with free markets? It's about the people with the most capital having the most power, not about freedom.
When was the last that time anything Bush said was news? At most, it's a joke on The Daily Show. Nobody seriously expects anything from that guy's words anymore.
Meh. I'm holding out for Meth-addled Marsupial.
Yeah, it's sooo much better when wealthy and powerful elites dictate how other people's money is spent.