It does not really matter if it is or is not against some "code" or "guideline". Giving credit where credit is due is the right thing to do. Deleting credit over and over again... well, you will each come to your own conclusion.
I'd like to add to that: It does not really matter whether what the community wrote about him is true or false in Wales' opinion. That's not what Wikipedia is about. If that's how the community observes his role in (for instance) the creation of Wikipedia, than that's what the entry for his person should read.
And to keep things clear: if a Wikipedia entry is about a person, I really think that same person does not belong to "the community" who is producing the entry. It's just like reviewing your own book. As Wales said himself, or so I understand: it just isn't done.
Writing an autobiography is fine. But I think the key feature of Wikipedia is "inter-subjective". An autobiography is "subjective", which is something completely different. If Wales wants to write an autobiography, then he really should do just that. But the entry for his person on Wikipedia should present the inter-subjective description as produced by "the community", after all that's what Wikipedia is about isn't it?
Nothing is wrong with writing an autobiography. You can even claim a load of bullshit in it since everyone knows that autobiographies are totally utterly subjective, and biographies are very, very likely to present a polished version of reality. That's okay by the way, that's only human.
...but I think an encyclopedia entry is something completely different. Even a wikipedia entry. It may not be objective or the absolute truth, at least it's intersubjective because it is the complementary result of many people's opinions. Wikipedia, as far as I understood, is supposed to present a combined, "intersubjective" community description of a certain topic. Now when a person is editing his own entry, the whole community idea is ruined, isn't it?
For instance: this guy me feel he is the sole creator of Wikipedia; appearantly the comminity who wrote the description felt otherwise, and saw other important contributors. In the philosophy of Wikipedia, that's what matters, isn't it? And what Jim Wales gains from inside information ("he was there so he knows"), he loses in objectivity. Maybe, *because* he was there, the outside, the community is a much better judge.
It's like writing a review about your own book, it just doesn't make sense. From what I read, Jim Wales even said this in other words somewhere. It's a faux pas indeed.
And, sorry, I think the whole debate about "editing isn't writing" is kinda futile. Aren't edits supposed to be done after thorough debate? How can Wales just single handedly edit stuff that he thinks aren't giving him enough praise? I mean, come on, it's like rewriting history. Sure, *he* felt they were errors. But Wikipedia isn't about individuals pushing through their opinions is it?
I think the system could work quite well. There needs to be some easy way of registering that you sell something to someone else (who has to authorise the change obviously), or recycling centres and other official disposal agents can transfer items. Otherwise your item can be linked to you and it's your responsibility. If they can do this while satisfying privacy concerns then I'd be 100% behind the scheme.
If this will also mean that if you sell an old pair of computer speakers to a friend, you're gonna be charged an income tax for that... I'm not so sure what you're describing is a favourable improvement.
So what are you saying? That this new technology has no use and we need not be affraid of the people who will be using it? Somehow I think you're being a little optimistic. This new technology can be used to gather an awful lot more data than is already being gathered today... and I'm pretty sure these possibilities will be exploited to the max.
For instance, what if they were a gift for somebody 3,000 miles away?
People may be buying presents now and then, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that most of the times you buy shoes for yourself. And I'm pretty sure that the people who are gathering these data know that too. So what if 1 pair of shoes out of every 500 is a present? If for instance they're gonna use the data to send advertising, then they're gonna send out 1 useless advert. Or maybe not, because if you buy it as a present, then maybe you are likely to visit the shop again. Anyway, I think the "error rate" is gonna be lower than in the case of undirected, random advertising such as snail mail or the kind of e-mail spam we know these days.
Like with Google ads, if I have to live with ads, I much prefer directed ones with at least some research behind them than undirected ones. In other words -- in this case with shoes, if they wished to send me ads by mail, I'd rather only get ads for men in my age than women and kids.
Personally I prefer not to receive ANY ads by e-mail, regardless whether they are about stuff I never buy, or about stuff I do sometimes buy. My mailbox is for mail, and I don't want any advertising clogging things up in there at all. If I want to buy something I'll do some research myself. So frankly, I'm not at all in favour of any new techniques to make e-mail ads more directed. Because this will only mean that e-mail advertising will become more effective, thus more profitable, which makes it highly likely that we're gonna receive more of it than ever before!
Your comparison with swimming is kinda useless. The news is clearly not that the top 25 contribute more than the next 25 -- the news is that these 25 contribute *considerably* more.
So the news is that unlike the romantic picture of 1000's of hobbyists providing comparable amounts of time and effort to make Linux possible, the main force behind Linux is actually a fairly small group of people.
The guy's point is clearly NOT that hobbyism doesn't play a role with Linux. Sure, these 25 may be hobbyists as well, but they are professionaly trained hobbyists, and they certainly don't work in sloppy basements.
If everyone worked simply to better themselves and society, my scenario would work perfectly.
Well there's a problem. You work either to better yourself, or to better society if you ask me. To maintain both ideals at once is too ambivalent for people I think and a person is bound to make a choice at one point. Working to better yourself is obviously what drives the capitalist system. That works pretty good if you ask me, as long as it is guided by some government supervision -- plenty of examples from reality can be named, and the USA is not one of them;-)
Working just for the good of society on the other hand is pretty utopian, I think. People aren't really altruistic, I mean common we're not the freakin' Borg. Unless the individual benefits to a certain degree, people will give up. That's human nature, and calling it good or bad is pretty useless I think. One thing to NOT do, is deny this and design society in such a way that individuals can't realize benefit for themselves (such as communism) -- it simply isn't gonna work.
It's called a gift economy [wikipedia.org], and has worked well in the past [wikipedia.org].
Personally I think it really makes a difference whether it's native Americans you are talking about or our society today. I mean they're both people from the same species, but the fact is our society and the people in it have become used to certain things that native Americans didn't have at all. Still, I think most of us wouldn't want to do without home computers, cars, airplanes, DVD's and cellphones. And I really think it would be quite impossible to maintain our current standards of living after returning to a gift based system -- not even mentioning the fact that such a drastic change would be quite technically undoable in itself.
I never said I would abolish money, nor did I say bills were always avoidable. I was just saying that not everyone needs to take such a view. Part of the problem of today is that all that we percieve to be money is actually just smoke and mirrors.
Well if you look at it, indeed you could say that money is just smoke. You're spending it as fast as you earn so in the end you have nothing more than you started with. (appart from the fact that you're still alive because you have bought food in the meantime, and you still own your house because you pay the rent). But if that's your critique on money as a concept, than maybe we all need to start seeing money the way it was originally meant: not as a property in itself but as an intermediate administrative unit. It merely administrates how many goods you're allowed to take from the store, based upon the amount of work you did earlier that day. Considering the fact that humans are humans and humans are materialistic, it makes sense to implement this kind of relation between amount of work and amount of goods that you can have, since it builds in a perfect motivation for people to do their best at their jobs. I'm still wondering how else you could arrange this?
All I am suggesting is that you don't be surprised if someone comes around with an alternative, you'd be caught with your mental pants down apparently.
Excuse me but I'm not really sure what you mean by this sentence.:x Do you mean I should expect people to come up with a suitable alternative for money? As I said, I'm still very curious what that idea would be, and I'm also very curious how we could be sure that this alternative would work, and would work better than the present system.
I'd love to work for free on any FOSS program. The only problem is that I need to be paid enough for food, clothing, and shelter. If those were taken care of, I'd work for free.
Ahh... now we are discussing within the realms of reality again. Indeed you need food, clothing and shelter. Which costs money. Which someone has to provide for. In other words, in one way or another, money has to be generated. Besides, if you and a bunch of other guys work on this project together, the least thing you're gonna need is computers I suppose. And who's gonna pay for them? Now if all of this is gonna cost so much that you can't afford it any longer, why, or better put, *how* are you gonna continue it?
If money is generated from the finished product, isn't it only fair that the people who made it get a reasonable share of it? After all they paid for all the computers and the food, clothes and shelter that were needed while developing the product. Society can't expect from you and your collegues that you're gonna do all these expenses on an altruistic basis right? I mean, at least you're gonna need money for upgraded computers to work on the next project once this one is finished.
If they said there was no incentive to do good things unless the government could choose your religion... or they said there is no incentive to grow food, unless farmers could rip up your garden... most people would see these as the awful values that they are. But if they say that there is no incentive to make beneficial or creative works without the power to restrict what people copy (copyrights), then all too many people just take it on faith. They don't even question it, as if incentive makes rights, as if society would fall apart without them.
This is a very strange comparison really. In the first case it's quite logical that people would protest; after all something important gets taken from you namely your potatoes or your freedom of religion (excuse me for the hilarity but they were YOUR examples). In the second case, all that is harmed is the right to own everything, even that what belongs to others. Since when is that a basic human right?
But just as much of the Renaissance happened without copyrights so should the information age.
This comparison is even stranger. If you don't see the essential difference then let me explain. In the information age, large groups of society depend on selling copyrighted material for their living, such as music, movies and software. In the period of Renaissance, there weren't. I love all your utopian idea's about absolute freedom of speech and everything being owned by the community instead of individuals, but are *you* gonna feed all those people that lose their jobs?
The truth is that for every artist or writer that has made it "big", there are unmentioned thousands whom copyrights haven't helped a bit, hindered, or even destroyed. Some are even barred or sued from sharing their own creations in public, while others die with the world never truly knowing their artistic genius as the mass media drowns them out. Most creators are far better off sharing and distributing their creations freely to make a reputation for themselves.
Yeah, and there are probably even more who make a living *thanks to* copyrights. Where do you get all these vaguely statistic statements? I'd like to see some figures here. And by claiming that creators are better of sharing everything for free, I understand that you yourself aren't depending on it for a living?
You have some nice utopian ideas man. But I'm affraid it's never gonna work out. Collective property has been tried before and it didn't work... people got lazy because there was no motivation. Besides, I really wonder how you want to make all this happen without ridding huge groups of people of their daily source of income.
Ah... so I understand what you propose is getting rid of bills and money?
People have tried that before, and all motivation for inovation was gone, so if you wanna see any technological innovation in the future, that doesn't seem very logical.
Sure, 100.000 years ago there wasn't any money. But there's no denying in the fact that inovation has sped up a little since money was introduced.
And before you say well let's get rid of motivation then and find other ways to get happy... be so kind to think of all the other consequences that would bring.
I don't know what you do for a living, but I'm glad for you that it earns you enough to pay the bills. Remember however that a lot of people depend on the software business for their living.
Besides, I don't know what great inventions you did, but please be so realistic about it as to acknowledge the fact that not every innovation can be made by an altruistic individual human being like yourself. Some innovations require lots of money and effort (= employees = money), and without the safety of returned investments these innovations won't occur at all.
You are referring to people trying to copyright things that are very common.
Luckily, people can't just patent every darn thing they want. There are rules, I don't know what they are exactly, but they prevent the sort of absurd examples you named.
But it doesn't profit me for creators to benefit from their works. In fact, that benefit probably derives from me, so in fact it's harmful. How can you justify harming me so?
This is complete nonsense. Anyone who produces something is allowed to benefit from it. How is producing software any different? If you considering paying for stuff you use harmful, then maybe you shouldn't buy anything from now on... at all. But if you decide to keep buying stuff, be so kind to explain why paying for software is more harmful than paying for other things. The only difference is that with software you CAN use it without paying for it. But is that the only criterion? How can you be so self centered?
Innovation is good, but refinement and commoditizing are also good. It's great to invent the first light bulb, but light bulbs are better when they last longer, are very inexpensive, are very cheap, and can be had anywhere or made by anyone. Innovation alone isn't enough, and so we must avoid encouraging it at the expense of all else.
I think you're getting carried away. How is innovation encouraged at the expense of "everything" else? The one who invented the first light bulb probably didn't want people running in and out of the factory either. Of course, people were free to buy a light bulb in the store, study it closely and make a competing product. In your analogy maintaining ownership of intellectual property would mean that 25 years later there'd still only be 1 producer of light bulbs? Come one... the world doesn't work that way man. People can have the right to benefit from their own works and be stimulated to innovate even further without the loss of commodities you are talking about. Ideas will spread anyway as they have done in the past when there were copyright laws.
why should we allow people to own an idea at all? Can you name an example of when we have done so? (n.b. inventions are not ideas; they're more refined and are much rarer)
You want a reason why people should be able to own their intelligent work? Because some innovation requires a lot of money. Without the safety of returned investments, some innovations won't occur. We all like innovation don't we? Well, property of ideas is a great motivation to come up with one. I think you can think of plenty of examples both in the software market and in other markets.
Maybe people can be creative without financial motivations, but in technology, a lot of innovation requires financial input. If you don't have some sense of safety that your product will be able to generate you some money in return, then investments will stall.
I love how you people like to bitch at capitalism, and I love to see how there are still people who believe that creativity can exist without financial motivations, but as invaluable as the whole community of pimpled computer geeks in their attics probably is, this is grown-up time and some projects require more input (time, money, man-hours) than they can provide for.
One simply can't deny the fact that some things wouldn't have existed without the safety of returned investments that copyrights provide.
I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to create a spinoff without hiring Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman or Hayden Christiansen.
The story could just focus on one of the many places affected by the the galactic wars, on a small scale level, for instance. That way I can perfectly see how they could create a story that's interesting from both drama and sci-fi points of view, and not feature any main Star Wars characters. What you said about main characters being sprinkled throughout Star Wars novels may still be true for this series as well; I mean they could mention an important event and a name now and then, but the character wouldn't necessiraly have to appear on screen. After all; that's probably not what the series is gonna be about; it's a spin off, not a bridge story.
As far as I know, there are no parts 7,8 and 9 to be filmed.:)
Indeed there are such rumours, but that's a common mistake. Lucas originally thought he'd need 9 films to tell the story, but already before he finished filming all 3 of the original movies, he concluded that 6 would be enough.
Some form of draft was made for 7, 8 and 9, but they date back from before 5 and 6 were filmed and have now become obsolete. Some of the things were already used in the plots for part 4, 5 and 6, and some of the events described in there have become overruled by what happens in 4, 5 and 6.
Think of the original drafts as being a short paragraph each; just a brainstorm for some important events. Oh, sure if you do a Google for those scripts you'll find a lot of stuff. But don't let yourself be fooled, that's all fan fiction or wishful thinking.
See also these pages: http://scifi.about.com/library/starwars/bl-sixorni ne.htmhttp://theforce.net/latestnews/story/gary_kurtz_re veals_original_plans_for_episodes_19_80270.asp
Conclusion: even if Lucas *wanted* to make parts 7, 8 and 9, he'd have to go back to the writing table and work out all new stories. He used the best parts from the original drafts to write the scripts for part 5 and 6, and what he didn't use was appearantly rubbish, or has become obsolete and unusable in any case.
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It does not really matter if it is or is not against some "code" or "guideline". Giving credit where credit is due is the right thing to do. Deleting credit over and over again... well, you will each come to your own conclusion.
I'd like to add to that: It does not really matter whether what the community wrote about him is true or false in Wales' opinion. That's not what Wikipedia is about. If that's how the community observes his role in (for instance) the creation of Wikipedia, than that's what the entry for his person should read.
And to keep things clear: if a Wikipedia entry is about a person, I really think that same person does not belong to "the community" who is producing the entry. It's just like reviewing your own book. As Wales said himself, or so I understand: it just isn't done.
Writing an autobiography is fine.
But I think the key feature of Wikipedia is "inter-subjective".
An autobiography is "subjective", which is something completely different.
If Wales wants to write an autobiography, then he really should do just that.
But the entry for his person on Wikipedia should present the inter-subjective description as produced by "the community", after all that's what Wikipedia is about isn't it?
Nothing is wrong with writing an autobiography. You can even claim a load of bullshit in it since everyone knows that autobiographies are totally utterly subjective, and biographies are very, very likely to present a polished version of reality. That's okay by the way, that's only human.
...but I think an encyclopedia entry is something completely different. Even a wikipedia entry. It may not be objective or the absolute truth, at least it's intersubjective because it is the complementary result of many people's opinions. Wikipedia, as far as I understood, is supposed to present a combined, "intersubjective" community description of a certain topic. Now when a person is editing his own entry, the whole community idea is ruined, isn't it?
For instance: this guy me feel he is the sole creator of Wikipedia; appearantly the comminity who wrote the description felt otherwise, and saw other important contributors. In the philosophy of Wikipedia, that's what matters, isn't it? And what Jim Wales gains from inside information ("he was there so he knows"), he loses in objectivity. Maybe, *because* he was there, the outside, the community is a much better judge.
It's like writing a review about your own book, it just doesn't make sense. From what I read, Jim Wales even said this in other words somewhere. It's a faux pas indeed.
And, sorry, I think the whole debate about "editing isn't writing" is kinda futile.
Aren't edits supposed to be done after thorough debate? How can Wales just single handedly edit stuff that he thinks aren't giving him enough praise? I mean, come on, it's like rewriting history. Sure, *he* felt they were errors. But Wikipedia isn't about individuals pushing through their opinions is it?
I think the system could work quite well. There needs to be some easy way of registering that you sell something to someone else (who has to authorise the change obviously), or recycling centres and other official disposal agents can transfer items. Otherwise your item can be linked to you and it's your responsibility. If they can do this while satisfying privacy concerns then I'd be 100% behind the scheme.
If this will also mean that if you sell an old pair of computer speakers to a friend, you're gonna be charged an income tax for that... I'm not so sure what you're describing is a favourable improvement.
So what are you saying? That this new technology has no use and we need not be affraid of the people who will be using it? Somehow I think you're being a little optimistic. This new technology can be used to gather an awful lot more data than is already being gathered today... and I'm pretty sure these possibilities will be exploited to the max.
For instance, what if they were a gift for somebody 3,000 miles away?
People may be buying presents now and then, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that most of the times you buy shoes for yourself. And I'm pretty sure that the people who are gathering these data know that too. So what if 1 pair of shoes out of every 500 is a present? If for instance they're gonna use the data to send advertising, then they're gonna send out 1 useless advert. Or maybe not, because if you buy it as a present, then maybe you are likely to visit the shop again.
Anyway, I think the "error rate" is gonna be lower than in the case of undirected, random advertising such as snail mail or the kind of e-mail spam we know these days.
Like with Google ads, if I have to live with ads, I much prefer directed ones with at least some research behind them than undirected ones. In other words -- in this case with shoes, if they wished to send me ads by mail, I'd rather only get ads for men in my age than women and kids.
Personally I prefer not to receive ANY ads by e-mail, regardless whether they are about stuff I never buy, or about stuff I do sometimes buy. My mailbox is for mail, and I don't want any advertising clogging things up in there at all. If I want to buy something I'll do some research myself. So frankly, I'm not at all in favour of any new techniques to make e-mail ads more directed.
Because this will only mean that e-mail advertising will become more effective, thus more profitable, which makes it highly likely that we're gonna receive more of it than ever before!
Your comparison with swimming is kinda useless. The news is clearly not that the top 25 contribute more than the next 25 -- the news is that these 25 contribute *considerably* more.
So the news is that unlike the romantic picture of 1000's of hobbyists providing comparable amounts of time and effort to make Linux possible, the main force behind Linux is actually a fairly small group of people.
The guy's point is clearly NOT that hobbyism doesn't play a role with Linux. Sure, these 25 may be hobbyists as well, but they are professionaly trained hobbyists, and they certainly don't work in sloppy basements.
If everyone worked simply to better themselves and society, my scenario would work perfectly.
;-)
Well there's a problem. You work either to better yourself, or to better society if you ask me. To maintain both ideals at once is too ambivalent for people I think and a person is bound to make a choice at one point. Working to better yourself is obviously what drives the capitalist system. That works pretty good if you ask me, as long as it is guided by some government supervision -- plenty of examples from reality can be named, and the USA is not one of them
Working just for the good of society on the other hand is pretty utopian, I think. People aren't really altruistic, I mean common we're not the freakin' Borg. Unless the individual benefits to a certain degree, people will give up. That's human nature, and calling it good or bad is pretty useless I think. One thing to NOT do, is deny this and design society in such a way that individuals can't realize benefit for themselves (such as communism) -- it simply isn't gonna work.
It's called a gift economy [wikipedia.org], and has worked well in the past [wikipedia.org].
Personally I think it really makes a difference whether it's native Americans you are talking about or our society today. I mean they're both people from the same species, but the fact is our society and the people in it have become used to certain things that native Americans didn't have at all. Still, I think most of us wouldn't want to do without home computers, cars, airplanes, DVD's and cellphones. And I really think it would be quite impossible to maintain our current standards of living after returning to a gift based system -- not even mentioning the fact that such a drastic change would be quite technically undoable in itself.
I never said I would abolish money, nor did I say bills were always avoidable. I was just saying that not everyone needs to take such a view. Part of the problem of today is that all that we percieve to be money is actually just smoke and mirrors.
:x Do you mean I should expect people to come up with a suitable alternative for money? As I said, I'm still very curious what that idea would be, and I'm also very curious how we could be sure that this alternative would work, and would work better than the present system.
Well if you look at it, indeed you could say that money is just smoke. You're spending it as fast as you earn so in the end you have nothing more than you started with. (appart from the fact that you're still alive because you have bought food in the meantime, and you still own your house because you pay the rent). But if that's your critique on money as a concept, than maybe we all need to start seeing money the way it was originally meant: not as a property in itself but as an intermediate administrative unit. It merely administrates how many goods you're allowed to take from the store, based upon the amount of work you did earlier that day. Considering the fact that humans are humans and humans are materialistic, it makes sense to implement this kind of relation between amount of work and amount of goods that you can have, since it builds in a perfect motivation for people to do their best at their jobs. I'm still wondering how else you could arrange this?
All I am suggesting is that you don't be surprised if someone comes around with an alternative, you'd be caught with your mental pants down apparently.
Excuse me but I'm not really sure what you mean by this sentence.
I'd love to work for free on any FOSS program. The only problem is that I need to be paid enough for food, clothing, and shelter. If those were taken care of, I'd work for free.
Ahh... now we are discussing within the realms of reality again. Indeed you need food, clothing and shelter. Which costs money. Which someone has to provide for. In other words, in one way or another, money has to be generated. Besides, if you and a bunch of other guys work on this project together, the least thing you're gonna need is computers I suppose. And who's gonna pay for them? Now if all of this is gonna cost so much that you can't afford it any longer, why, or better put, *how* are you gonna continue it?
If money is generated from the finished product, isn't it only fair that the people who made it get a reasonable share of it? After all they paid for all the computers and the food, clothes and shelter that were needed while developing the product. Society can't expect from you and your collegues that you're gonna do all these expenses on an altruistic basis right? I mean, at least you're gonna need money for upgraded computers to work on the next project once this one is finished.
If they said there was no incentive to do good things unless the government could choose your religion ... or they said there is no incentive to grow food, unless farmers could rip up your garden ... most people would see these as the awful values that they are. But if they say that there is no incentive to make beneficial or creative works without the power to restrict what people copy (copyrights), then all too many people just take it on faith. They don't even question it, as if incentive makes rights, as if society would fall apart without them.
This is a very strange comparison really. In the first case it's quite logical that people would protest; after all something important gets taken from you namely your potatoes or your freedom of religion (excuse me for the hilarity but they were YOUR examples). In the second case, all that is harmed is the right to own everything, even that what belongs to others. Since when is that a basic human right?
But just as much of the Renaissance happened without copyrights so should the information age.
This comparison is even stranger. If you don't see the essential difference then let me explain. In the information age, large groups of society depend on selling copyrighted material for their living, such as music, movies and software. In the period of Renaissance, there weren't. I love all your utopian idea's about absolute freedom of speech and everything being owned by the community instead of individuals, but are *you* gonna feed all those people that lose their jobs?
The truth is that for every artist or writer that has made it "big", there are unmentioned thousands whom copyrights haven't helped a bit, hindered, or even destroyed. Some are even barred or sued from sharing their own creations in public, while others die with the world never truly knowing their artistic genius as the mass media drowns them out. Most creators are far better off sharing and distributing their creations freely to make a reputation for themselves.
Yeah, and there are probably even more who make a living *thanks to* copyrights. Where do you get all these vaguely statistic statements? I'd like to see some figures here. And by claiming that creators are better of sharing everything for free, I understand that you yourself aren't depending on it for a living?
You have some nice utopian ideas man. But I'm affraid it's never gonna work out. Collective property has been tried before and it didn't work... people got lazy because there was no motivation. Besides, I really wonder how you want to make all this happen without ridding huge groups of people of their daily source of income.
Ah... so I understand what you propose is getting rid of bills and money? People have tried that before, and all motivation for inovation was gone, so if you wanna see any technological innovation in the future, that doesn't seem very logical. Sure, 100.000 years ago there wasn't any money. But there's no denying in the fact that inovation has sped up a little since money was introduced. And before you say well let's get rid of motivation then and find other ways to get happy... be so kind to think of all the other consequences that would bring.
I don't know what you do for a living, but I'm glad for you that it earns you enough to pay the bills. Remember however that a lot of people depend on the software business for their living.
Besides, I don't know what great inventions you did, but please be so realistic about it as to acknowledge the fact that not every innovation can be made by an altruistic individual human being like yourself. Some innovations require lots of money and effort (= employees = money), and without the safety of returned investments these innovations won't occur at all.
You are referring to people trying to copyright things that are very common. Luckily, people can't just patent every darn thing they want. There are rules, I don't know what they are exactly, but they prevent the sort of absurd examples you named.
But it doesn't profit me for creators to benefit from their works. In fact, that benefit probably derives from me, so in fact it's harmful. How can you justify harming me so?
This is complete nonsense. Anyone who produces something is allowed to benefit from it. How is producing software any different? If you considering paying for stuff you use harmful, then maybe you shouldn't buy anything from now on... at all. But if you decide to keep buying stuff, be so kind to explain why paying for software is more harmful than paying for other things. The only difference is that with software you CAN use it without paying for it. But is that the only criterion? How can you be so self centered?
Innovation is good, but refinement and commoditizing are also good. It's great to invent the first light bulb, but light bulbs are better when they last longer, are very inexpensive, are very cheap, and can be had anywhere or made by anyone. Innovation alone isn't enough, and so we must avoid encouraging it at the expense of all else.
I think you're getting carried away. How is innovation encouraged at the expense of "everything" else? The one who invented the first light bulb probably didn't want people running in and out of the factory either. Of course, people were free to buy a light bulb in the store, study it closely and make a competing product. In your analogy maintaining ownership of intellectual property would mean that 25 years later there'd still only be 1 producer of light bulbs? Come one... the world doesn't work that way man. People can have the right to benefit from their own works and be stimulated to innovate even further without the loss of commodities you are talking about. Ideas will spread anyway as they have done in the past when there were copyright laws.
why should we allow people to own an idea at all? Can you name an example of when we have done so? (n.b. inventions are not ideas; they're more refined and are much rarer)
You want a reason why people should be able to own their intelligent work? Because some innovation requires a lot of money. Without the safety of returned investments, some innovations won't occur. We all like innovation don't we? Well, property of ideas is a great motivation to come up with one. I think you can think of plenty of examples both in the software market and in other markets.
Maybe people can be creative without financial motivations, but in technology, a lot of innovation requires financial input. If you don't have some sense of safety that your product will be able to generate you some money in return, then investments will stall.
I love how you people like to bitch at capitalism, and I love to see how there are still people who believe that creativity can exist without financial motivations, but as invaluable as the whole community of pimpled computer geeks in their attics probably is, this is grown-up time and some projects require more input (time, money, man-hours) than they can provide for.
One simply can't deny the fact that some things wouldn't have existed without the safety of returned investments that copyrights provide.
I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to create a spinoff without hiring Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman or Hayden Christiansen. The story could just focus on one of the many places affected by the the galactic wars, on a small scale level, for instance. That way I can perfectly see how they could create a story that's interesting from both drama and sci-fi points of view, and not feature any main Star Wars characters. What you said about main characters being sprinkled throughout Star Wars novels may still be true for this series as well; I mean they could mention an important event and a name now and then, but the character wouldn't necessiraly have to appear on screen. After all; that's probably not what the series is gonna be about; it's a spin off, not a bridge story.
As far as I know, there are no parts 7,8 and 9 to be filmed. :)
Indeed there are such rumours, but that's a common mistake. Lucas originally thought he'd need 9 films to tell the story, but already before he finished filming all 3 of the original movies, he concluded that 6 would be enough.
Some form of draft was made for 7, 8 and 9, but they date back from before 5 and 6 were filmed and have now become obsolete. Some of the things were already used in the plots for part 4, 5 and 6, and some of the events described in there have become overruled by what happens in 4, 5 and 6.
Think of the original drafts as being a short paragraph each; just a brainstorm for some important events. Oh, sure if you do a Google for those scripts you'll find a lot of stuff. But don't let yourself be fooled, that's all fan fiction or wishful thinking.
See also these pages: http://scifi.about.com/library/starwars/bl-sixorni ne.htm
http://theforce.net/latestnews/story/gary_kurtz_re veals_original_plans_for_episodes_19_80270.asp
Conclusion: even if Lucas *wanted* to make parts 7, 8 and 9, he'd have to go back to the writing table and work out all new stories. He used the best parts from the original drafts to write the scripts for part 5 and 6, and what he didn't use was appearantly rubbish, or has become obsolete and unusable in any case.