Why do people rob banks and not homeless people? Because there is money in the bank, but the homeless person is likely broke.
A dial up connections obviously can't put out the same load that a broad band connection can. So it would stand to reason that a zombie net creater would be less interested in the computer. But most zombie net creater's are trying to get a huge number of PCs over a wide region, so while your PC isn't is sweet as a Win 98 box on a 5 meg DSL line, it is still another zombie. and it would likely be harder for the creators to make a filter to ignore your machine.
Same for spy/adware. Your machine isn't the best, but it is another machine.
so this is not obscurity he was preaching, it was desirablility he was preaching, albeit incorrectly.
"Oh, wait, you mean that by including all this concern for non-academic characteristics like sports, diversity (of background, not ideas), and the ilk our schools have lost the ability to test for the right skills?"
The article is about 2 year schools. Most voc-tech schools that are designed to get you a job, not a career. Not to be confused with Universities and traditional four year degreee programs.
And laugh at the 21% interest rate. Honestly, the only literacy skill college students need when it comes to credit card offers is knowing which button turns on the paper shredder.
Get a bundle of plastic hot swap cases(minus the hardware) and put together a cubby hole structure sized to fit them. Easily organized, and the drives will have at least some amount of protection from handling.
Leaky Coax would likely be a cheap way to handle it. You would still need "towers" at regular intervals, but then you run a copper line along the train line for each antena. This is a pretty common trick in large buildings. You let the carrier install antenas on your roof line and drop leaky coax off one of them so that the signal inside the building is just as strong as the signal outside.
The expencive part would be getting the pipe to support the volume. I road the DC blue line a few times during rush hour, there are ALOT of people in a very small area. Running that many people on one antena might not work so well, expecially when they are all getting handed off every 45 seconds. You might need some type of redundant line of antenas to handle the call volume, hand offs, and load balancing. And then likely a fiber line to carry the data from the antenas back to the junction.
-Rick
-Rick
You are correct, open sourcing the DRM tool would be essentially the same as removing the DRM. Although people would still have to download/install a DRM stripper, it still doesn't have the same difficulty factor of remanufacturing a run of ripped CDs.
My solution would be a hardware integrated system, which means it would be best implimented with a new meidum (ie: HD-DVD/Blu-ray, holo disks, what ever comes next). It would also have to be implimented in all new old media players also (so that a new CD player could play content with this DRM). The driver for the hardware would be closed source, but open standard, and the assemblies would have to be available on all industry standard processors (ie x86, arm, etc). The goal there is to make the 'black box' portion of the DRM as widely available and ubiquitous as possible. Proprietary systems from different vendors just screw users(like the Apple lock in). Since we are going for total solution that also means ensuring that the 'black box' MUST work with Linux, albeit as a closed source driver.
The key to me is loosely defining the boarder between legal activity, and illegal. I don't want the DRM to enforce the law, I just want the DRM to make it more cumbersum to break the law. To do this we need an identifier, likely for a person, family, or household. The DRM would allow you to bind your personal/family/household identifiers to the hardware. And by identifiers I just mean some easy to entry code, maybe like 5 digits 1-6 (so even basic car sterios can be easily set up). Now that you have all of your hardware entered with your keys, you can stick your DRM'd content into it. The content, if marked as being just sold, updates it's acceptable key's with those that are on the hardware. You now have a piece of DRM'd content that is accosiated with all of your gear. You can burn it to CD, copy it, put it on the internet, what ever, but it will have that association to your gear. (Notice that the 5 digit identifier is not going to be an absolute unique identifier, so no one can 'track back' from the internet who gave who what)
But then comes the question about loaning media to a friend? Sure, pop the media in to your player of choice, if the content's key is not listed on the hardware, it just prompts you for it. That way, you can borrow all of your friends music, but mass distrobution is significantly less likely because everyone would have to keep lists of their downloaded content and what identifier goes with each piece.
There are a few things that I don't have figured out, like what if you want to resell a piece of content? Do you need to contant the original copyright holder to get the key reset? and what's preventing every user in the world from using 55555 as their household key? But if those issues could be figured out, you would have a system that reduces (not prevents!) casual piracy, and doesn't effect the user's rights under fair use.
You're story about people reacting to your idea likely has little to do with race and significantly more to do with either 1) poor management, or 2) your attitude.
I'm white, I grew up on a farm, the son of a tech ed teacher. I grew up constant trying to learn the hows and whys. I wiz my way through logic tests, rebuild my own engines, remodeled my own house, solder my own electronics etc...
When I got out of the military, I was a slightly younger guy who thought I knew it all and could figure the rest out. And I ran into numerous situations like the one you described.
It actually turns out that I was just an egotistical ass hat. Cocky and arrogant coming off of my last military tour.
It took a couple years, a wife, a kid, and a hell of a lot of hard knocks, but my ego finally deflated and I find myself getting a long with most people much better.
Let's face it, no matter what their skin color, all assholes are brown on the in side;)
It promotes consumer based valuing of goods (ie: Supply & Demand) and Capitalism.
I think current DRM options have sever technical issues that interfere with personal rights.
"Ownership of limited rights, rather than a wholesale copy of the media itself."
We already have limited rights of ownership. If you buy a CD, it is illegal to burn 5000 copies and sell(or give away) them on a busy street corner. Doing this is made difficult for a few reasons, primarily that the equipment needed to burn 5000 CD's is either expensive, inefficient, or otherwhys difficult to deal with.
With digital media, we still have that same law stating that it is illegal to buy a piece of content and give/sell it to 5000 people. But now, instead of needing a high speed press, or a lot of time and a bunch of burners, you only need to grab a small client.
Adding a DRM shouldn't stop everything. It shouldn't be designed to. What it should do is make people who want to illegally distribute content make a clearly defined step over the boarder of legality.
A DRM shouldn't get in the way of you making a back up, playing the media on any industry standard player (ie: PC, Home sterio, Car sterio, DVD player, etc...), loaning a copy to a friend, etc... Those are technical issues that can be overcome.
"NO DRM is acceptable. When I buy a book, it's mine to do what I wish with. The same goes for a CD; if I want a mix tape or a backup then damn it, I'll do it."
Physically, yes. Legally, no. But you're an AC so I don't expect you to know any better.
Why do you feel that it creates property unnecessarily? Is an audio recording not already a piece of property? Whether it is digital, on a CD, an LP or an old 8-track, it is something that has value. (Google defines property as "something owned; any tangible or intangible possession that is owned by someone")
So if you paid for ownership the content. It should be yours, and yours alone. Yes, you should be able to back it up, copy it, and loan it to your friends (ie: fair play). And those are current technical limitations of DRM solutions.
I would say DRM's are less of a block to the natural order, and more of a crutch or tool to maintain a limitation of supply in a supply/demand environment. And I have yet to see anyone on SlashDot explain a viable market solution that is not government control that rewards the best (Darwinism in the entertainment industry) in as efficient manor as Capitalism.
"Moglen said that DRM technology, which places limits on how consumers can play movies, music or other digital content, is "fundamentally incompatible" with the principles of the FSF."
Sounds pretty clear that GPL3 and DRMs are oil and water. I haven't read the GPLv3 so you are correct, I am spreading hearsay and congecture, not factual information. But I personally don't have a problem with the theory of DRMs. What I have a problem with is the current options, technical issue, and limitations of existing solutions. Pushing good developers away from DRM solutions will not make them better.
Where as a DRM that is transparent, flexible and only limits distribution through social networking (ie: you can back up, copy, burn run on any 'industry standard' device, and hand the media off to any one within one or two degrees of seperation) and can be excepted by the vast majority of consumers and content producers, would benefit everyone.
Well how would you like a GPLv3 licensed Linux based iTunes music store? Too bad.
And what about hardware based DRMs? Want to release a project that works with Trusted Computing under GPLv3? sorry.
Like I said, there are other licenses, people can stick with GPLv2, its just a shame that GPLv3 is getting so much attention and it is going to have this rather massive flaw because someone is feeling ideological.
"Not really, because it is the programmer who specifies, not the state, and the role of the GPL is to maximise freedom overall, not hand it all to the next programmer."
So everyone has to give up some freedoms so that everyone gets more freedom? I'm not a big fan of trading my freedom away, expecially for something that is going to be a major field of software development for the forseeable future.
Me personally, I would much rather see a license that promoted the development of a DRM that protected a user's legal rights then to see this garbage about barring the whole branch of development.
How is a DRM a government law that imposes on your right to free speech? You are still free to say what ever you want, and with a DRM you are free to make people pay to hear it.
"From a moral angle, this clause allows programmers to restrict how the fruit of their skills is to be exploited"
It also altogether limits the fruits that programmers are allowed to work on. How is that freedom!?!? That's like saying "We will make sure all Americans have access to all literature, except books about Communism, because we think it is evil."
If there was one hope for an acceptable DRM solution it was the OS community. Atleast there are still many other good licenses out there that don't ban and entire field of software development.
I disagree. You still haven't answered the primary question, who pays?
If I am an artist, and I create what I consider to be my master piece. A painting that is of such great artistic value (to me) that I feel rich just looking at it. But where do I get the money from? And who determines how much I should get paid? And what if, like you mention, I create something that is on the fringes, like images of mutilated women. (just for example, not a big fan of that style myself.) I could think that my latest masterpiece is the greatest image ever created by man, but the vast majority of society would be highly offended and claim that the image has no artistic value. So why should I get funding? And who is going to pay it?
The reason why nobody complains about tool prices is because they can be calculated. A few weeks back I took some vacation time to tile my bathroom. I had a bunch of tiles to cut, and I figured with my hand tools I could do the job in about 3 hours. With a wet saw I could do the job in 30 minutes. Given that my time is worth roughly $25/hour I knew that I could save about $65 in time by using a wet saw. But a new wet saw costs $100+. So it is not worth it for me to buy a new wet saw. But I can rent a wet saw for about $5/hr. So I can say the wet saw has a perceived value of $65 (less then the $100 for a new one, but more then the rental fee).
The problem is artistic value doesn't pay the rent. Perceived value in the eyes of the consumer is what gives your content worth. Not the medium it is delivered over. Not the number of copies sold. The value of your work is based on how much the consumer want it.
The same is true for software. Me, I like the idea of software patents, when they are limited to a 5 year max with out continued seeding. Let's say you have a small shop, 3 coders, a lead developer, a DBA, and a manager. And let's say your product takes 2 years to develop and release. You're looking at about 1 million dollars just in labor and taxes. Not including hardware, software, licensing, lawyers, marketing, etc... You need some what to recoup that million dollars. Most people preach "support" as the solution, but then you'll need a hand full of semi-skilled laborers, a phone bank, a larger office, multiple supervisors, another manager, a training department. All in all you could be looking at more then another million dollars just to get your support team up and running. So now you're out a couple mil, you have a yearly operating cost over a mil, and half of your company (the development side) is not making you any money. Well, if there is no money to be made developing software, why develop it?
Especially when companies can place a measured value on it. Just last week I was looking into some new bug tracking software. The licensing cost was going to be about a grand, but I could weigh it against the cost in man-hours that we currently waste on tracking bugs manually, and the cost to our users when the bugs slip past us. It was easy to see that the value the software added to our company was more then the $1000 for licenses.
As for buying upgrades, it matters on what value it brings to me. If they add features X, Y, and Z and offer an upgrade price of $500 I will look at what benefits X,Y, and Z brings my company, if it's more then $500 then I would recommend we buy it, if not, then we wont.
Just because MS puts out a new version of Word every other year doesn't mean you have to buy it, in fact, most people don't. There was a great article last year about how Office XP sales were sucking because it didn't offer any benefit to the consumer over Office 2k.
And on a side note I am currently developing a independent piece of software with a small team. We have every intention of patenting the system when we have a complete prototype. My goal is to either market or sell the technology in 5 year. If my team and I can't do anything with it in 5 years, someone else or even everyone else should get a shot at it.
"If I were a book publisher, why should I be able to gross in lots more money from selling books than just the cost of printing them plus a modest bonus?"
Simple, because lots of people see the value in it. Your profit is consumer driven. Your book has a precived value in the eyes of the consumer. Let's say I am a fan of your work, and I go out and spend $25 dollars on your latest book to get the hard cover right at release. That book, in my eyes is worth $25. How I feel about you as an author is inmaterial to me as a consumer (although it may have guided my decision in purchasing the book). Whether the book was a hard cover, soft cover, ebook, or hand writen, it's content would have the same value to me (although the different mediums would alter that value somewhat).
If other people also like your book and purchase it, yes you get a multiplier for proffit, but the delivery system is not the cause of the proffit, the fact that many people see value in your work is the cause of the profit. In this case, you are a successful author and will likely write again. (Hurray!)
On the opposite side of the scale, let's say your book sucks. I don't buy it, very few people do. You as an author will make little to no profit, and will likely have to look elsewheres for gainful employment. Thanks to Darwinism in Capitalism humanity is spared from another bad author.
But let's put supply & demand and Capitalism to side for now. Let's instead switch to a more communistic approach. (Not trying to flame here, I am actually a fan of socialist and communist ideals in specific situations)
With your desired outcome, authors make enough money to cover the cost of writing their books and a slight profit while the content is freely and with out limit distributed. My first question is, Who Pays? If consumers aren't paying for the content, who is? Do consumers just pay a generic "Media" tax that gets divided amoungst all authors? And if so wouldn't that place the Government in charge of which authors are funded? (Which could quickly turn into a free speech issue!) Also, how much do authors get paid for their work? Jimmy could be living in the mountains of South Carolina paying a couple hundred bucks a month for his house, food, utilities, etc... while Johny could be living in a 1 bedroom efficiency in Manhatan paying a couple grand a month for the same. Should all of the authors be paid like Jimmy? or like Johny? And who determines the size of the profit each author makes? If you pay them based on down loads then you are removing the consumers from the decision and going with that exact system you are fighting about (getting paid due to content delivery monopolies). And then you will have the inevidable cheaters, people who rent mail boxes in New York but live in Iowa to get the extra cost of living bonus, and people who script or 'hire out' downloaders to inflate their popularity. And all that just to get a calculated sum of our tax money. No matter how good or bad of an author the person is.
But still, you are removing the cost from the items that have a measurable value, and placing it on something completely unrelated.
Would you pay $50 to meet the 200 people responsible for the digital effects in Star Wars? I mean, you'll have 200 geeks traveling across the country to share in the experience of Star Wars graphics? Most of these people lead uneventful work lives, they sit in a chair working for 8 hours a day, and now you are saying that their acomplishments should hold no monitary value and that in addition to working full time on graphics projects (for which they won't get paid) they should be out touring the nation getting fans to pay them.
So along with 200 or so CGI geeks/managers/support personel, we'll toss in a fleet of hair dressers, make up artists, prostetic manufacturers, grips, electricians, boom mic opperators, coffee grabbers, etc. We'll just parade a couple hundred people world wide so they can tour for their money.
Nah, this whole theory is delusional. Sure, it works somewhat acceptable for digital copies of performable pieces, but for the vast majority of content, it would fail miserably.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, I miss-read that. I thought it was only saying 75% of 2 year schools, I missed the 50% of 4 years. My bust.
-Rick
Why do people rob banks and not homeless people? Because there is money in the bank, but the homeless person is likely broke.
A dial up connections obviously can't put out the same load that a broad band connection can. So it would stand to reason that a zombie net creater would be less interested in the computer. But most zombie net creater's are trying to get a huge number of PCs over a wide region, so while your PC isn't is sweet as a Win 98 box on a 5 meg DSL line, it is still another zombie. and it would likely be harder for the creators to make a filter to ignore your machine.
Same for spy/adware. Your machine isn't the best, but it is another machine.
so this is not obscurity he was preaching, it was desirablility he was preaching, albeit incorrectly.
-Rick
"Oh, wait, you mean that by including all this concern for non-academic characteristics like sports, diversity (of background, not ideas), and the ilk our schools have lost the ability to test for the right skills?"
The article is about 2 year schools. Most voc-tech schools that are designed to get you a job, not a career. Not to be confused with Universities and traditional four year degreee programs.
-Rick
And laugh at the 21% interest rate. Honestly, the only literacy skill college students need when it comes to credit card offers is knowing which button turns on the paper shredder.
-Rick
I'm 80 years old and have no fingers you insensitive clod!
j/k
-Rick
Get a bundle of plastic hot swap cases(minus the hardware) and put together a cubby hole structure sized to fit them. Easily organized, and the drives will have at least some amount of protection from handling.
-Rick
But Apple mice only have 1 button, so maybe he could wear a 1 ear hat ;)
-Rick
Leaky Coax would likely be a cheap way to handle it. You would still need "towers" at regular intervals, but then you run a copper line along the train line for each antena. This is a pretty common trick in large buildings. You let the carrier install antenas on your roof line and drop leaky coax off one of them so that the signal inside the building is just as strong as the signal outside. The expencive part would be getting the pipe to support the volume. I road the DC blue line a few times during rush hour, there are ALOT of people in a very small area. Running that many people on one antena might not work so well, expecially when they are all getting handed off every 45 seconds. You might need some type of redundant line of antenas to handle the call volume, hand offs, and load balancing. And then likely a fiber line to carry the data from the antenas back to the junction. -Rick -Rick
You are correct, open sourcing the DRM tool would be essentially the same as removing the DRM. Although people would still have to download/install a DRM stripper, it still doesn't have the same difficulty factor of remanufacturing a run of ripped CDs.
My solution would be a hardware integrated system, which means it would be best implimented with a new meidum (ie: HD-DVD/Blu-ray, holo disks, what ever comes next). It would also have to be implimented in all new old media players also (so that a new CD player could play content with this DRM). The driver for the hardware would be closed source, but open standard, and the assemblies would have to be available on all industry standard processors (ie x86, arm, etc). The goal there is to make the 'black box' portion of the DRM as widely available and ubiquitous as possible. Proprietary systems from different vendors just screw users(like the Apple lock in). Since we are going for total solution that also means ensuring that the 'black box' MUST work with Linux, albeit as a closed source driver.
The key to me is loosely defining the boarder between legal activity, and illegal. I don't want the DRM to enforce the law, I just want the DRM to make it more cumbersum to break the law. To do this we need an identifier, likely for a person, family, or household. The DRM would allow you to bind your personal/family/household identifiers to the hardware. And by identifiers I just mean some easy to entry code, maybe like 5 digits 1-6 (so even basic car sterios can be easily set up). Now that you have all of your hardware entered with your keys, you can stick your DRM'd content into it. The content, if marked as being just sold, updates it's acceptable key's with those that are on the hardware. You now have a piece of DRM'd content that is accosiated with all of your gear. You can burn it to CD, copy it, put it on the internet, what ever, but it will have that association to your gear. (Notice that the 5 digit identifier is not going to be an absolute unique identifier, so no one can 'track back' from the internet who gave who what)
But then comes the question about loaning media to a friend? Sure, pop the media in to your player of choice, if the content's key is not listed on the hardware, it just prompts you for it. That way, you can borrow all of your friends music, but mass distrobution is significantly less likely because everyone would have to keep lists of their downloaded content and what identifier goes with each piece.
There are a few things that I don't have figured out, like what if you want to resell a piece of content? Do you need to contant the original copyright holder to get the key reset? and what's preventing every user in the world from using 55555 as their household key? But if those issues could be figured out, you would have a system that reduces (not prevents!) casual piracy, and doesn't effect the user's rights under fair use.
-Rick
You're story about people reacting to your idea likely has little to do with race and significantly more to do with either 1) poor management, or 2) your attitude.
;)
I'm white, I grew up on a farm, the son of a tech ed teacher. I grew up constant trying to learn the hows and whys. I wiz my way through logic tests, rebuild my own engines, remodeled my own house, solder my own electronics etc...
When I got out of the military, I was a slightly younger guy who thought I knew it all and could figure the rest out. And I ran into numerous situations like the one you described.
It actually turns out that I was just an egotistical ass hat. Cocky and arrogant coming off of my last military tour.
It took a couple years, a wife, a kid, and a hell of a lot of hard knocks, but my ego finally deflated and I find myself getting a long with most people much better.
Let's face it, no matter what their skin color, all assholes are brown on the in side
-Rick
I think DRM is a good thing.
It promotes consumer based valuing of goods (ie: Supply & Demand) and Capitalism.
I think current DRM options have sever technical issues that interfere with personal rights.
"Ownership of limited rights, rather than a wholesale copy of the media itself."
We already have limited rights of ownership. If you buy a CD, it is illegal to burn 5000 copies and sell(or give away) them on a busy street corner. Doing this is made difficult for a few reasons, primarily that the equipment needed to burn 5000 CD's is either expensive, inefficient, or otherwhys difficult to deal with.
With digital media, we still have that same law stating that it is illegal to buy a piece of content and give/sell it to 5000 people. But now, instead of needing a high speed press, or a lot of time and a bunch of burners, you only need to grab a small client.
Adding a DRM shouldn't stop everything. It shouldn't be designed to. What it should do is make people who want to illegally distribute content make a clearly defined step over the boarder of legality.
A DRM shouldn't get in the way of you making a back up, playing the media on any industry standard player (ie: PC, Home sterio, Car sterio, DVD player, etc...), loaning a copy to a friend, etc... Those are technical issues that can be overcome.
-Rick
"NO DRM is acceptable. When I buy a book, it's mine to do what I wish with. The same goes for a CD; if I want a mix tape or a backup then damn it, I'll do it."
Physically, yes. Legally, no. But you're an AC so I don't expect you to know any better.
-Rick
"Simply, it creates property unnecessarily."
Why do you feel that it creates property unnecessarily? Is an audio recording not already a piece of property? Whether it is digital, on a CD, an LP or an old 8-track, it is something that has value. (Google defines property as "something owned; any tangible or intangible possession that is owned by someone")
So if you paid for ownership the content. It should be yours, and yours alone. Yes, you should be able to back it up, copy it, and loan it to your friends (ie: fair play). And those are current technical limitations of DRM solutions.
I would say DRM's are less of a block to the natural order, and more of a crutch or tool to maintain a limitation of supply in a supply/demand environment. And I have yet to see anyone on SlashDot explain a viable market solution that is not government control that rewards the best (Darwinism in the entertainment industry) in as efficient manor as Capitalism.
-Rick
"Moglen said that DRM technology, which places limits on how consumers can play movies, music or other digital content, is "fundamentally incompatible" with the principles of the FSF."
Sounds pretty clear that GPL3 and DRMs are oil and water. I haven't read the GPLv3 so you are correct, I am spreading hearsay and congecture, not factual information. But I personally don't have a problem with the theory of DRMs. What I have a problem with is the current options, technical issue, and limitations of existing solutions. Pushing good developers away from DRM solutions will not make them better.
Where as a DRM that is transparent, flexible and only limits distribution through social networking (ie: you can back up, copy, burn run on any 'industry standard' device, and hand the media off to any one within one or two degrees of seperation) and can be excepted by the vast majority of consumers and content producers, would benefit everyone.
-Rick
Sorry that should be ban AN entire field (DRM related software). Not THE entire field. (or AND as I typo'd it in the original post)
-Rick
Well how would you like a GPLv3 licensed Linux based iTunes music store? Too bad.
And what about hardware based DRMs? Want to release a project that works with Trusted Computing under GPLv3? sorry.
Like I said, there are other licenses, people can stick with GPLv2, its just a shame that GPLv3 is getting so much attention and it is going to have this rather massive flaw because someone is feeling ideological.
-Rick
"Personally, I'd wish to code under GPL version 3: I seek a freer world, and DRM is harmful to that end."
Not trying to flame here, just looking to discuss, but could you break down the reasons why you feel DRM's are harmful to a freer world?
-rick
So how do you feel about socialized health care?
Trading the freedom of spending your money on your own care versus the right of accessable health care by all?
-Rick
"Not really, because it is the programmer who specifies, not the state, and the role of the GPL is to maximise freedom overall, not hand it all to the next programmer."
So everyone has to give up some freedoms so that everyone gets more freedom? I'm not a big fan of trading my freedom away, expecially for something that is going to be a major field of software development for the forseeable future.
Me personally, I would much rather see a license that promoted the development of a DRM that protected a user's legal rights then to see this garbage about barring the whole branch of development.
-Rick
How is a DRM a government law that imposes on your right to free speech? You are still free to say what ever you want, and with a DRM you are free to make people pay to hear it.
-Rick
"From a moral angle, this clause allows programmers to restrict how the fruit of their skills is to be exploited"
It also altogether limits the fruits that programmers are allowed to work on. How is that freedom!?!? That's like saying "We will make sure all Americans have access to all literature, except books about Communism, because we think it is evil."
-Rick
If there was one hope for an acceptable DRM solution it was the OS community. Atleast there are still many other good licenses out there that don't ban and entire field of software development.
-Rick
I disagree. You still haven't answered the primary question, who pays?
If I am an artist, and I create what I consider to be my master piece. A painting that is of such great artistic value (to me) that I feel rich just looking at it. But where do I get the money from? And who determines how much I should get paid? And what if, like you mention, I create something that is on the fringes, like images of mutilated women. (just for example, not a big fan of that style myself.) I could think that my latest masterpiece is the greatest image ever created by man, but the vast majority of society would be highly offended and claim that the image has no artistic value. So why should I get funding? And who is going to pay it?
The reason why nobody complains about tool prices is because they can be calculated. A few weeks back I took some vacation time to tile my bathroom. I had a bunch of tiles to cut, and I figured with my hand tools I could do the job in about 3 hours. With a wet saw I could do the job in 30 minutes. Given that my time is worth roughly $25/hour I knew that I could save about $65 in time by using a wet saw. But a new wet saw costs $100+. So it is not worth it for me to buy a new wet saw. But I can rent a wet saw for about $5/hr. So I can say the wet saw has a perceived value of $65 (less then the $100 for a new one, but more then the rental fee).
The problem is artistic value doesn't pay the rent. Perceived value in the eyes of the consumer is what gives your content worth. Not the medium it is delivered over. Not the number of copies sold. The value of your work is based on how much the consumer want it.
The same is true for software. Me, I like the idea of software patents, when they are limited to a 5 year max with out continued seeding. Let's say you have a small shop, 3 coders, a lead developer, a DBA, and a manager. And let's say your product takes 2 years to develop and release. You're looking at about 1 million dollars just in labor and taxes. Not including hardware, software, licensing, lawyers, marketing, etc... You need some what to recoup that million dollars. Most people preach "support" as the solution, but then you'll need a hand full of semi-skilled laborers, a phone bank, a larger office, multiple supervisors, another manager, a training department. All in all you could be looking at more then another million dollars just to get your support team up and running. So now you're out a couple mil, you have a yearly operating cost over a mil, and half of your company (the development side) is not making you any money. Well, if there is no money to be made developing software, why develop it?
Especially when companies can place a measured value on it. Just last week I was looking into some new bug tracking software. The licensing cost was going to be about a grand, but I could weigh it against the cost in man-hours that we currently waste on tracking bugs manually, and the cost to our users when the bugs slip past us. It was easy to see that the value the software added to our company was more then the $1000 for licenses.
As for buying upgrades, it matters on what value it brings to me. If they add features X, Y, and Z and offer an upgrade price of $500 I will look at what benefits X,Y, and Z brings my company, if it's more then $500 then I would recommend we buy it, if not, then we wont.
Just because MS puts out a new version of Word every other year doesn't mean you have to buy it, in fact, most people don't. There was a great article last year about how Office XP sales were sucking because it didn't offer any benefit to the consumer over Office 2k.
And on a side note I am currently developing a independent piece of software with a small team. We have every intention of patenting the system when we have a complete prototype. My goal is to either market or sell the technology in 5 year. If my team and I can't do anything with it in 5 years, someone else or even everyone else should get a shot at it.
-Rick
"If I were a book publisher, why should I be able to gross in lots more money from selling books than just the cost of printing them plus a modest bonus?"
Simple, because lots of people see the value in it. Your profit is consumer driven. Your book has a precived value in the eyes of the consumer. Let's say I am a fan of your work, and I go out and spend $25 dollars on your latest book to get the hard cover right at release. That book, in my eyes is worth $25. How I feel about you as an author is inmaterial to me as a consumer (although it may have guided my decision in purchasing the book). Whether the book was a hard cover, soft cover, ebook, or hand writen, it's content would have the same value to me (although the different mediums would alter that value somewhat).
If other people also like your book and purchase it, yes you get a multiplier for proffit, but the delivery system is not the cause of the proffit, the fact that many people see value in your work is the cause of the profit. In this case, you are a successful author and will likely write again. (Hurray!)
On the opposite side of the scale, let's say your book sucks. I don't buy it, very few people do. You as an author will make little to no profit, and will likely have to look elsewheres for gainful employment. Thanks to Darwinism in Capitalism humanity is spared from another bad author.
But let's put supply & demand and Capitalism to side for now. Let's instead switch to a more communistic approach. (Not trying to flame here, I am actually a fan of socialist and communist ideals in specific situations)
With your desired outcome, authors make enough money to cover the cost of writing their books and a slight profit while the content is freely and with out limit distributed. My first question is, Who Pays? If consumers aren't paying for the content, who is? Do consumers just pay a generic "Media" tax that gets divided amoungst all authors? And if so wouldn't that place the Government in charge of which authors are funded? (Which could quickly turn into a free speech issue!) Also, how much do authors get paid for their work? Jimmy could be living in the mountains of South Carolina paying a couple hundred bucks a month for his house, food, utilities, etc... while Johny could be living in a 1 bedroom efficiency in Manhatan paying a couple grand a month for the same. Should all of the authors be paid like Jimmy? or like Johny? And who determines the size of the profit each author makes? If you pay them based on down loads then you are removing the consumers from the decision and going with that exact system you are fighting about (getting paid due to content delivery monopolies). And then you will have the inevidable cheaters, people who rent mail boxes in New York but live in Iowa to get the extra cost of living bonus, and people who script or 'hire out' downloaders to inflate their popularity. And all that just to get a calculated sum of our tax money. No matter how good or bad of an author the person is.
-Rick
But still, you are removing the cost from the items that have a measurable value, and placing it on something completely unrelated.
Would you pay $50 to meet the 200 people responsible for the digital effects in Star Wars? I mean, you'll have 200 geeks traveling across the country to share in the experience of Star Wars graphics? Most of these people lead uneventful work lives, they sit in a chair working for 8 hours a day, and now you are saying that their acomplishments should hold no monitary value and that in addition to working full time on graphics projects (for which they won't get paid) they should be out touring the nation getting fans to pay them.
So along with 200 or so CGI geeks/managers/support personel, we'll toss in a fleet of hair dressers, make up artists, prostetic manufacturers, grips, electricians, boom mic opperators, coffee grabbers, etc. We'll just parade a couple hundred people world wide so they can tour for their money.
Nah, this whole theory is delusional. Sure, it works somewhat acceptable for digital copies of performable pieces, but for the vast majority of content, it would fail miserably.
-Rick