OK - while I'm a staunch advocate for the protection of privacy of information and p2p activity and the overall fight against the greedy assholes who deliver basically any kind of media, this is just stupid.
It's like forming a party who's only mandate is to have greenhouse gas emmissions lowered. You can't base a party manifesto on one (and it's really only one) issue. Let's say somethign weird happened and these guys we elected - aside from being pirate central for about 2 months (until they were kicked out and a new government had to spend many more millions fixing what they broke) what would htey do as far as health, law enforcement, education, foreign policy - and basically the non-consumer related issues that are the bedrock of making a country tick?
Silly, silly people. I suppose if you have nothing better to do with yuor time and lots of money to waste it would be worth it, but why bother.
Copyright law is completely outdated and hasn't kept up with the greedy bastards who seek to twist it to their advantage. In that way, it's very similar to the US legal system. In a beautiful sunny place I like to call "Software development land" we change our product to meet the needs of the consumer, we don't tell the consumer "this is all you're getting for the next 100 years" so I think it's about time that this and other socio-economic processes were re-thunk.
Copyrights should expire after 5 years. They should be limited to resale or plagiarism, not to copy or distributing for free. The whole notion of "MINE!!!! YOU CAN'T SEE IT!!!" baffles me. Take our good friend Bill for example - if the source code of his product were accessible, third party products would WORK BETTER and make his product MORE ATTRACTIVE to consumers. Instead - there exists the daily battle to make things work that should inherently be easy to integrate. This is a direct result of the ridiculous patent laws perpetuated around the world by greedy money-men. Someone said earlier "allow them to make a reasonable amount of money" - that's difficult to gauge, but a nice concept. "We need to make Billions to be able to afford the research". No - you make billions, so people charge you more for their services. It's a never ending cycle that could be chopped down to the knees with a simple restriction on what can be copyrighted and for how long.
In the IT industry, if you're still using the same technology after 5 years, you're probably out of business. We are forced to adapt and innovate. Strict copyright laws will dampen the enthusiasm of the innovative and will condemn us to a ridiculous "how much will you pay for me to say hi" state of affairs. There has to be a point where enough becomes enough.
While technology is driving the arguments on this at the moment - it can be applied to many other areas - automotive devices - the more knowledge, the faster improvements can be made to increase efficiency, safety and cost - how does this not benefit everyone?
The people who want to hide their toys and not let anyone play are usually the ones who are making sub-standard crap they don't want exposed for what it is. Open up the box and let us look inside. If you've done your job properly, we'll appreciate it and maybe try to help you make it even better.
I guess this really highlights my open-source mentality, but that's a lifestyle as much as a working ethos and is completely relevant to this topic.
I hope to God they don't try incorporating any of that GO-Live cr#p into dreamweaver. Pricing is going to go up. Licensing agreements for bigger shops probably more so and service and support will take a hit.
On top of that - we no have no choice. What else is there? Front Page and Paint?
On the linux side , I agree it doesn't bode well, but I don't think Macromedia were making any definite plans to release an open source version any way - which in itself puzzles me given the extremely extensible nature of the product...
Slashdot Mirror
OK - while I'm a staunch advocate for the protection of privacy of information and p2p activity and the overall fight against the greedy assholes who deliver basically any kind of media, this is just stupid. It's like forming a party who's only mandate is to have greenhouse gas emmissions lowered. You can't base a party manifesto on one (and it's really only one) issue. Let's say somethign weird happened and these guys we elected - aside from being pirate central for about 2 months (until they were kicked out and a new government had to spend many more millions fixing what they broke) what would htey do as far as health, law enforcement, education, foreign policy - and basically the non-consumer related issues that are the bedrock of making a country tick? Silly, silly people. I suppose if you have nothing better to do with yuor time and lots of money to waste it would be worth it, but why bother.
Copyright law is completely outdated and hasn't kept up with the greedy bastards who seek to twist it to their advantage. In that way, it's very similar to the US legal system. In a beautiful sunny place I like to call "Software development land" we change our product to meet the needs of the consumer, we don't tell the consumer "this is all you're getting for the next 100 years" so I think it's about time that this and other socio-economic processes were re-thunk. Copyrights should expire after 5 years. They should be limited to resale or plagiarism, not to copy or distributing for free. The whole notion of "MINE!!!! YOU CAN'T SEE IT!!!" baffles me. Take our good friend Bill for example - if the source code of his product were accessible, third party products would WORK BETTER and make his product MORE ATTRACTIVE to consumers. Instead - there exists the daily battle to make things work that should inherently be easy to integrate. This is a direct result of the ridiculous patent laws perpetuated around the world by greedy money-men. Someone said earlier "allow them to make a reasonable amount of money" - that's difficult to gauge, but a nice concept. "We need to make Billions to be able to afford the research". No - you make billions, so people charge you more for their services. It's a never ending cycle that could be chopped down to the knees with a simple restriction on what can be copyrighted and for how long. In the IT industry, if you're still using the same technology after 5 years, you're probably out of business. We are forced to adapt and innovate. Strict copyright laws will dampen the enthusiasm of the innovative and will condemn us to a ridiculous "how much will you pay for me to say hi" state of affairs. There has to be a point where enough becomes enough. While technology is driving the arguments on this at the moment - it can be applied to many other areas - automotive devices - the more knowledge, the faster improvements can be made to increase efficiency, safety and cost - how does this not benefit everyone? The people who want to hide their toys and not let anyone play are usually the ones who are making sub-standard crap they don't want exposed for what it is. Open up the box and let us look inside. If you've done your job properly, we'll appreciate it and maybe try to help you make it even better. I guess this really highlights my open-source mentality, but that's a lifestyle as much as a working ethos and is completely relevant to this topic.
I hope to God they don't try incorporating any of that GO-Live cr#p into dreamweaver. Pricing is going to go up. Licensing agreements for bigger shops probably more so and service and support will take a hit.
On top of that - we no have no choice. What else is there? Front Page and Paint?
On the linux side , I agree it doesn't bode well, but I don't think Macromedia were making any definite plans to release an open source version any way - which in itself puzzles me given the extremely extensible nature of the product...