If they won't hire you as an employee why would you help them?
Instead of a contest for $100,000 why not offer employment? I know a programmer for Atari working on Pong will make $100,000 a year+. They want to get you to do all the hard work of designing the game so they can come along and give you $100,000 to steal it.
Know what your ideas are worth. They are cheap and this is a complete scam.
I have had ideas for new versions of pong and for many games but I damn sure am not going to give my idea to Atari or any game company. Atari if you want my idea for pong hire me for $100,000 a year and I'll even help you code it.
You sound like a Catholic Spock. "People spend too much sex worrying about how stuff feels rather than what that stuff does to their body. Forget about feelings. It is reproduction."
Man cannot live by bread alone. If you're starving then taste is unimportant, but good food makes for a better life.
They wouldn't. If they can't afford it, they don't get to have it. You don't get to have whatever you want just because you want it.
If they don't steal it then how do they pay their rent, their bills, feed themselves?
You're saying they should use gimp but in some situations the only way to do something is to buy some software which costs nearly $1000. Someone with deep pockets gets to have a career because they can afford the software while someone without deep pockets is locked in poverty without any opportunity UNLESS they pirate. This is the problem.
Personally, I'd flip on satellite radio... because I don't keep many MP3s. I have Last.FM (through RhythmBox... no ads, and if I really want to hear a song from my selection on there, I can skip forward a bit and usually get it), and a Sirius subscription. Really though, there are places that pay people to play music for their customers. Bands can usually book gigs and if they get popular enough, venues. There are ways for "artists" to make money. They just don't want to work for it... who blames them. If you could do something one time and profit off it the rest of your life, wouldn't you?
Speaking as an artist, artists don't profit from digital sales. This is why you don't see artists coming out supporting the RIAA except for the superstars who sell millions of Albums and who have no business sense.
People spend too much food worrying about how stuff tastes rather than what that stuff does to their body.
Forget about taste. It is fuel.
Your right and that reminds me of another thing. People spend too much time worrying about how sex feels rather than what sex does to their bodies. Forget about pleasure. Its for procreation. Stop worrying about doggie style, 3somes, and oral.
Not everyone has to or needs to procreate. Everyone has to eat. There is a difference in that with eating you don't get a choice and the consequences for eating incorrectly are an early death.
A tip for anyone who wants to go through with it. The simple design is usually the better design. The inconsistency are factors which you have to factor for in your design. Kind of like how in life nothing is truly consistent.
Well, what would happen is this (applies to both music and software): - Those in it for the money get out of it - Those in it for the love stay in it - The world will find balance, because - Either everyone is fine with the new situation - Or there becomes a renewed demand for engineers/musicians.
Now, the days of middle men and a lifetime of royalties, selling one piece of software a million times, may be be coming to an end. There will however always be people paying for an engineer to solve their problems, or a musician to perform at their venue.
But even this is exaggerated, since we're far from there yet. Do you think the average Joe would not prefer to spend a dollar and instantly watch the new episode of House at 1080p on his big screen TV ? Or pay 4,95 for iPhoto on his iPad ?
The BS is that the content is not available, we still have prehistoric models of region-based releases and 'this item is not available in your country' BS, and deal with stupid DRM schemes that only hurt the paying customers (so why become one?)
Apple has already shown there is a market for software and media content, the fact that it is easier to torrent something than pay a reasonable amount for it is what the problem is.
Digital sales and licensing structures can change. People can be paid. We might even get paid more when all is said and done, it depends on how we structure it.
But the way the record industry is currently set up, even most big time stars aren't getting paid.
And also the problem is that Photoshop costs so much that everyone I know has to take out a loan to buy it. If we simply don't have the money to buy every single song we listen to then it's not our fault it's your fault and the markets fault.
I'm all for spreading the wealth but when the wealth doesn't exist what is there to spread?
As a software engineer and a musician, I disagree with your assessment that "no one is hurt by your consumption". It's the tragedy of the commons. If just you download my software, or download my song for free, Your right, I'm not really hurt. But the problem comes when that behavior becomes widespread. Software is hard work, and so is music. I need someway to be paid for those efforts. With software in particular, There isn't always one person that is willing to pay 500,000 dollars for a piece of software without that kind of return. Something like Photoshop: no one person wants to fund that, and just let everyone else copy it. But it still a useful piece of software that is worth something to a lot of people. So how else do you do it? You make it so everyone that wants it pays a piece of it. And when you download it for free, that 1) is not fair to the people that do pay, and 2) is not fair to the people who developed that software. You're saying that their hard work is worth nothing to you, but you still want the work. The "It's not stealing" argument is BS. You can argue it all you want, and it is actually an easy point to argue, but that doesn't mean you're not just trying to explain away why people like me should give you our work for free.
I'm a software engineer and musician too. Nice try.
As a musician I know most money isn't made from digital sales. In fact every musician knows this. And software patents don't actually make it easier for software developers.
The people who say information sharing is stealing aren't understanding that for a person who doesn't have the money to afford to buy something their options aren't the same as the person who has the money to buy something.
If a starving person stole bread that doesn't necessarily make it right, though we might be sympathetic and judge them less harshly.
Movies, music & games aren't really necessities though, are they?
Why wouldn't it be right? They didn't starve so how could that be wrong?
So tell me, if piracy is acceptable if you're poor, why isn't piracy acceptable if you simply don't feel like paying? Why should someone who DOES have money be required to pay for something that people who don't have money get for free? What possible incentive is there to be honest when there is no consequence for dishonesty?
Why should ANYONE have to pay for movies, music, books or software? Corollary: Why should only SOME people have to pay for movies, music, books or software? Corollary^2: Why should anyone get PAID for making movies, music, books or software? Conclusion: Actors, musicians, authors and programmers are worthless, as are their works.
That's not reducto ad absurdum. That's the exact model (and conclusion) that media and software pirates advocate and promote.
You can argue semantics all you want, but the base argument is very simple and straight forward: Should you be allowed to take another person's efforts and do whatever you want with them?
If you answer Yes, nothing else needs to be discussed, people "own" nothing.
If you say No, then you need to start breaking down things to qualify what belongs to a person and what is effort. Since this simple question is overlooked to quibble about false analogies and traditional word meanings, very little useful dialogue tends to pop up in these conversations.
Except that information != physical property. You can't compare the two because they behave in totally different methods. For instance I can't simply copy a chair by right clicking o it, the same is not true for information. All there person's effort went into making the first copy. Once it's made there is no additional effort expended in the copying of said idea.
This is the problem though, people want to treat information as physical property with defined rights of ownership. Well unfortunately you physically can't. The best you can do is lock down every information channel and force everything into a DRM mandated system. The damage to the free flow of general ideas (i.e. ones that people may not even be trying to own) is obvious and catastrophic.
We need to find a way to reward the initial creation of an idea, not it's distribution.
Too broad a question to answer in a simple comment. Even just the plain concept of right and wrong depends so much on a person's background, their upbringing, what they've gone through in life, intelligence, gullibility and social and monetary status. Then you have to define what it actually means to own something, which in and of itself is enough to write a full thesis on. Just as defining stealing is terribly subjective, and then there's also the motive; are you "stealing" for your own uses, are you "stealing" for someone else, are you "stealing" for a cause and so on.
If everything is owned and you cannot afford something you need, at what point does it become right to steal? Or is it always wrong even if you can starve to death if you don't steal?
The people who say information sharing is stealing aren't understanding that for a person who doesn't have the money to afford to buy something their options aren't the same as the person who has the money to buy something.
Should fingerprint scanners be used to allow someone to download and listen to a particular song or watch a particular movie or unlock a particular game?
When there is an equitable distribution of reward for every contribution everyone has made throughout history, weighted to take account of opportunities varying with time, location, health, innate intelligence and any remaining factors other than the productive man's effort, then I'll start worrying about the morality of ignoring the artificial constructs of copy rights and patents.
Until then, I'll not take stuff from people because that deprives them of their enjoyment. But I shall most definitely copy stuff.
Please elaborate. Do you believe it's ethical to defy Copyright?
What good is tracking IP addresses when every computer on the internet can become a proxy so that it's impossible to know who downloaded what?
The proxy service could be built into file sharing apps themselves or created as a chrome plugin which uses onion routing to hide file sharers behind other file sharers and then download the file in bits and pieces and reconstruct it. This could even be done in a way so it looks like ordinary port 80 traffic.
The idea that you can sell your product and retain control over what people do with it. That's BS.
I would like for anyone on Slashdot to logically and mathematically answer this from a consequence based risk analysis perspective.
Why is it wrong to download music if no one is hurt by your consumption of it? Is artificial scarcity worth it and why do we have to maintain artificial scarcity? Is it a religion or tradition to maintain artificial scarcity in certain industries?
I don't see how it's unethical. I do the math and I don't see the fans of music/movies/art losing, I don't see the artists/actors/ losing, as people will always go to concerts, movie theaters, or buy copies to see them before everyone else.
So what is the point? Can they squeeze a few percent more profits by artificial scarcity? Probably, but these profits aren't enough to justify putting the entire file sharing industry out of business and totally changing the face of the internet.
I agree and disagree. I think some of the stuff they did deserves some prison time (though not 20 years). They did financial crime which didn't have any political component. They exposed confidential user information which did not have a political component.
If you are talking about people who launched a DDOS attack and who are involved in politics then I agree they shouldn't get much time. Their crime was being too passionate about politics and being too young to have the wisdom and rationality to temper it.
"Their life is changed forever, many of them might not survive it, those who do could have their life destroyed in all kinds of ways, basically it's young people sacrificing their future."
Doesn't this say something? The fact that kids are now en-masse willing to do this?
Think it could be related to high levels of youth unemployment? a feeling of being powerless in society?
Make no mistake, these kids don't care anymore because they have no reason to, governments out of touch with the internet generation coupled with woes relating to the economic downturn have left them with little to care about. It's made an impact - even my rather conservative mother in her 60s is now expressing her anger at government going after kids and allowing them to be extradited for running file sharing link sites when there's other crimes she'd much rather they were spending resources on.
I understand why young people do this and I know the situation is messed up. That is why I said what I said. I cannot say that young people have any realistic options for a better future. At the same time some of these hackers are fairly bright so to lose them behind prison walls and have their lives be rendered worthless is beyond pathetic to me. I see it as wasted potential in the extreme.
Why aren't old retired workers willing to sacrifice? They've lived their lives and have nothing to lose if they go to jail. They are retired, have made their money. But no it's always expected that the young are to be the martyrs in society and ruin their lives but when that happens then the generation after them are ruined as well. The civil rights movement produced the gang violence, the war on drugs, and the mass incarceration. Where is the support for all the political prisoners of the drug war many of whom are the children and grand children of civil rights activists?
Slashdot Mirror
If they won't hire you as an employee why would you help them?
Instead of a contest for $100,000 why not offer employment? I know a programmer for Atari working on Pong will make $100,000 a year+. They want to get you to do all the hard work of designing the game so they can come along and give you $100,000 to steal it.
Know what your ideas are worth. They are cheap and this is a complete scam.
I have had ideas for new versions of pong and for many games but I damn sure am not going to give my idea to Atari or any game company. Atari if you want my idea for pong hire me for $100,000 a year and I'll even help you code it.
Otherwise fuck off :)
You sound like a Catholic Spock. "People spend too much sex worrying about how stuff feels rather than what that stuff does to their body. Forget about feelings. It is reproduction."
Man cannot live by bread alone. If you're starving then taste is unimportant, but good food makes for a better life.
It also makes people fat.
How would anyone afford Photoshop without piracy?
They wouldn't. If they can't afford it, they don't get to have it. You don't get to have whatever you want just because you want it.
If they don't steal it then how do they pay their rent, their bills, feed themselves?
You're saying they should use gimp but in some situations the only way to do something is to buy some software which costs nearly $1000. Someone with deep pockets gets to have a career because they can afford the software while someone without deep pockets is locked in poverty without any opportunity UNLESS they pirate. This is the problem.
Personally, I'd flip on satellite radio... because I don't keep many MP3s. I have Last.FM (through RhythmBox... no ads, and if I really want to hear a song from my selection on there, I can skip forward a bit and usually get it), and a Sirius subscription. Really though, there are places that pay people to play music for their customers. Bands can usually book gigs and if they get popular enough, venues. There are ways for "artists" to make money. They just don't want to work for it... who blames them. If you could do something one time and profit off it the rest of your life, wouldn't you?
Speaking as an artist, artists don't profit from digital sales. This is why you don't see artists coming out supporting the RIAA except for the superstars who sell millions of Albums and who have no business sense.
People spend too much food worrying about how stuff tastes rather than what that stuff does to their body.
Forget about taste. It is fuel.
Your right and that reminds me of another thing. People spend too much time worrying about how sex feels rather than what sex does to their bodies. Forget about pleasure. Its for procreation. Stop worrying about doggie style, 3somes, and oral.
Not everyone has to or needs to procreate. Everyone has to eat. There is a difference in that with eating you don't get a choice and the consequences for eating incorrectly are an early death.
Only rich elite kids could afford the Brittanica.
I remember being a kid begging my parents to Brittanica only to hear over and over again that they couldn't afford it.
People spend too much food worrying about how stuff tastes rather than what that stuff does to their body.
Forget about taste. It is fuel.
A tip for anyone who wants to go through with it. The simple design is usually the better design. The inconsistency are factors which you have to factor for in your design. Kind of like how in life nothing is truly consistent.
Well, what would happen is this (applies to both music and software):
- Those in it for the money get out of it
- Those in it for the love stay in it
- The world will find balance, because
- Either everyone is fine with the new situation
- Or there becomes a renewed demand for engineers/musicians.
Now, the days of middle men and a lifetime of royalties, selling one piece of software a million times, may be be coming to an end. There will however always be people paying for an engineer to solve their problems, or a musician to perform at their venue.
But even this is exaggerated, since we're far from there yet. Do you think the average Joe would not prefer to spend a dollar and instantly watch the new episode of House at 1080p on his big screen TV ? Or pay 4,95 for iPhoto on his iPad ?
The BS is that the content is not available, we still have prehistoric models of region-based releases and 'this item is not available in your country' BS, and deal with stupid DRM schemes that only hurt the paying customers (so why become one?)
Apple has already shown there is a market for software and media content, the fact that it is easier to torrent something than pay a reasonable amount for it is what the problem is.
Digital sales and licensing structures can change. People can be paid. We might even get paid more when all is said and done, it depends on how we structure it.
But the way the record industry is currently set up, even most big time stars aren't getting paid.
And also the problem is that Photoshop costs so much that everyone I know has to take out a loan to buy it. If we simply don't have the money to buy every single song we listen to then it's not our fault it's your fault and the markets fault.
I'm all for spreading the wealth but when the wealth doesn't exist what is there to spread?
As a software engineer and a musician, I disagree with your assessment that "no one is hurt by your consumption". It's the tragedy of the commons. If just you download my software, or download my song for free, Your right, I'm not really hurt. But the problem comes when that behavior becomes widespread. Software is hard work, and so is music. I need someway to be paid for those efforts. With software in particular, There isn't always one person that is willing to pay 500,000 dollars for a piece of software without that kind of return. Something like Photoshop: no one person wants to fund that, and just let everyone else copy it. But it still a useful piece of software that is worth something to a lot of people. So how else do you do it? You make it so everyone that wants it pays a piece of it. And when you download it for free, that 1) is not fair to the people that do pay, and 2) is not fair to the people who developed that software. You're saying that their hard work is worth nothing to you, but you still want the work. The "It's not stealing" argument is BS. You can argue it all you want, and it is actually an easy point to argue, but that doesn't mean you're not just trying to explain away why people like me should give you our work for free.
I'm a software engineer and musician too. Nice try.
As a musician I know most money isn't made from digital sales. In fact every musician knows this. And software patents don't actually make it easier for software developers.
If a starving person stole bread that doesn't necessarily make it right, though we might be sympathetic and judge them less harshly.
Movies, music & games aren't really necessities though, are they?
Why wouldn't it be right? They didn't starve so how could that be wrong?
Well, I think we can all agree that nobody has ever faced the choice of torrent transformers 2 or starve to death.
But a graphic artist may face: Pirate "Photoshop or starve".
So tell me, if piracy is acceptable if you're poor, why isn't piracy acceptable if you simply don't feel like paying? Why should someone who DOES have money be required to pay for something that people who don't have money get for free? What possible incentive is there to be honest when there is no consequence for dishonesty?
Why should ANYONE have to pay for movies, music, books or software?
Corollary: Why should only SOME people have to pay for movies, music, books or software?
Corollary^2: Why should anyone get PAID for making movies, music, books or software?
Conclusion: Actors, musicians, authors and programmers are worthless, as are their works.
That's not reducto ad absurdum. That's the exact model (and conclusion) that media and software pirates advocate and promote.
How would anyone afford Photoshop without piracy?
You can argue semantics all you want, but the base argument is very simple and straight forward: Should you be allowed to take another person's efforts and do whatever you want with them?
If you answer Yes, nothing else needs to be discussed, people "own" nothing.
If you say No, then you need to start breaking down things to qualify what belongs to a person and what is effort. Since this simple question is overlooked to quibble about false analogies and traditional word meanings, very little useful dialogue tends to pop up in these conversations.
Except that information != physical property. You can't compare the two because they behave in totally different methods. For instance I can't simply copy a chair by right clicking o it, the same is not true for information. All there person's effort went into making the first copy. Once it's made there is no additional effort expended in the copying of said idea.
This is the problem though, people want to treat information as physical property with defined rights of ownership. Well unfortunately you physically can't. The best you can do is lock down every information channel and force everything into a DRM mandated system. The damage to the free flow of general ideas (i.e. ones that people may not even be trying to own) is obvious and catastrophic.
We need to find a way to reward the initial creation of an idea, not it's distribution.
Why not pay them to create ideas?
Too broad a question to answer in a simple comment. Even just the plain concept of right and wrong depends so much on a person's background, their upbringing, what they've gone through in life, intelligence, gullibility and social and monetary status. Then you have to define what it actually means to own something, which in and of itself is enough to write a full thesis on. Just as defining stealing is terribly subjective, and then there's also the motive; are you "stealing" for your own uses, are you "stealing" for someone else, are you "stealing" for a cause and so on.
If everything is owned and you cannot afford something you need, at what point does it become right to steal?
Or is it always wrong even if you can starve to death if you don't steal?
The people who say information sharing is stealing aren't understanding that for a person who doesn't have the money to afford to buy something their options aren't the same as the person who has the money to buy something.
Should fingerprint scanners be used to allow someone to download and listen to a particular song or watch a particular movie or unlock a particular game?
Or use it anyway, as you want.
When there is an equitable distribution of reward for every contribution everyone has made throughout history, weighted to take account of opportunities varying with time, location, health, innate intelligence and any remaining factors other than the productive man's effort, then I'll start worrying about the morality of ignoring the artificial constructs of copy rights and patents.
Until then, I'll not take stuff from people because that deprives them of their enjoyment. But I shall most definitely copy stuff.
Please elaborate. Do you believe it's ethical to defy Copyright?
What good is tracking IP addresses when every computer on the internet can become a proxy so that it's impossible to know who downloaded what?
The proxy service could be built into file sharing apps themselves or created as a chrome plugin which uses onion routing to hide file sharers behind other file sharers and then download the file in bits and pieces and reconstruct it. This could even be done in a way so it looks like ordinary port 80 traffic.
The idea that you can sell your product and retain control over what people do with it. That's BS.
I would like for anyone on Slashdot to logically and mathematically answer this from a consequence based risk analysis perspective.
Why is it wrong to download music if no one is hurt by your consumption of it? Is artificial scarcity worth it and why do we have to maintain artificial scarcity? Is it a religion or tradition to maintain artificial scarcity in certain industries?
I don't see how it's unethical. I do the math and I don't see the fans of music/movies/art losing, I don't see the artists/actors/ losing, as people will always go to concerts, movie theaters, or buy copies to see them before everyone else.
So what is the point? Can they squeeze a few percent more profits by artificial scarcity? Probably, but these profits aren't enough to justify putting the entire file sharing industry out of business and totally changing the face of the internet.
For anyone who knows math, logic, or who is rational, can you please answer this question as to whether stealing becomes right if everything is owned?
I agree and disagree. I think some of the stuff they did deserves some prison time (though not 20 years). They did financial crime which didn't have any political component. They exposed confidential user information which did not have a political component.
If you are talking about people who launched a DDOS attack and who are involved in politics then I agree they shouldn't get much time. Their crime was being too passionate about politics and being too young to have the wisdom and rationality to temper it.
"Their life is changed forever, many of them might not survive it, those who do could have their life destroyed in all kinds of ways, basically it's young people sacrificing their future."
Doesn't this say something? The fact that kids are now en-masse willing to do this?
Think it could be related to high levels of youth unemployment? a feeling of being powerless in society?
Make no mistake, these kids don't care anymore because they have no reason to, governments out of touch with the internet generation coupled with woes relating to the economic downturn have left them with little to care about. It's made an impact - even my rather conservative mother in her 60s is now expressing her anger at government going after kids and allowing them to be extradited for running file sharing link sites when there's other crimes she'd much rather they were spending resources on.
I understand why young people do this and I know the situation is messed up. That is why I said what I said. I cannot say that young people have any realistic options for a better future. At the same time some of these hackers are fairly bright so to lose them behind prison walls and have their lives be rendered worthless is beyond pathetic to me. I see it as wasted potential in the extreme.
Why aren't old retired workers willing to sacrifice? They've lived their lives and have nothing to lose if they go to jail. They are retired, have made their money. But no it's always expected that the young are to be the martyrs in society and ruin their lives but when that happens then the generation after them are ruined as well. The civil rights movement produced the gang violence, the war on drugs, and the mass incarceration. Where is the support for all the political prisoners of the drug war many of whom are the children and grand children of civil rights activists?