If the record companies really want Apple to charge more all they have to do is raise their prices until Apple is forced to raise it's or stop being profitable.
...again, I could be wrong, but I think that that is exactly what is happening here...
AFAIK, Apple makes in the order of 10cents a song... the other 89cents goes to the copyright holder.
So what is really being negotiated is that the copy-right holder is going to charge Apple (say) $1.85 for some songs, forcing Apple to charge more than the $.99 they are charging now. I don't think the copyright holder is saying: Hey Apple; we're going to keep charging you $.90, but you need to raise your retail price and make more money than us...these are the same guys that want a cut of the HARDWARE sales...'member?
then perhaps Apple will realize that it is not in their best interests to switch to such a scheme.
I could be wrong, but the way i've been reading this, it's not Apple that's pushing this change... it's the copyright holder, and since they own the rights to what Apple is selling, they don't have much choice in the matter.
Just like the consumer has the choice to pay more, or not buy, Apple has the choice to pay more or not sell...
I wonder what will happen if US academic graduates begin to emmigrate overseas? Will the Brain Drain effect be felt in the States too?
Probably not to the same extend that it might be felt in other countries.
The US is still one of the best places on earth to live (along with others: Norway, Sweden, Canada always rate highly) so if you have the choice of living in the US or some {dictatorship, no-medical, no-food, no-freedom....}-type country, most people would chose the US.
America's not perfect, but I think most Americans who have never been abroad have no idea just how nice it is to live in the US, and how lucky they are to have such riches and freedoms.
'course that doesn't mean that the drain couldn't head towards Norway, Sweden or Canada... but at least here in Canada we've lamented the last 10yrs about the brain-drain drawing talent south with bigger bucks. (for those without a map/globe, Canada is the big country to the north of the US)
Romney, a Republican, has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate.
...so it wasn't just me that felt like this article was campaign rhetoric?
Take 1-part flattering bio, stir in some fear-of-others, mix with more-money-for-you, but leave out the real-plan-to-spend-the-money (or at least leave out the how-more-money-will-make-a-difference) throw in a dash of social-policy and flavour with a foreign-policy to taste.... yes sir, what we have here is some pre-election soup...
I guess I'm seeing a problem that has not been adequately resolved - people do lose files on a semi-regular basis. A problem that has not been perfectly resolved is a prime place to look for and implement some new innovation... i like to flex the creative/problem-solving part of my brain once in a while, to keep it from getting too rusty.
A file having a path is not incompatible with attributes, but perhaps becomes redundant, or more specifically, the file-path can be an attribute.
While it may have taken you multiple searches and time refining searches to find specific documents, I can only assume that if you were forced to search for it, you didn't already know a hard-path to it - Once you know that Ford's cars can be found at www.ford.com, you don't search for it again. "www.ford.com" can be viewed as merely an attribute that you give your browser, but instead of resulting in multiple hits, only a single 'file' is returned. In a database, this is commonly called the primary, or unique key...
Why a relational database? why to relate the data of course!:)
...and yes, the nice quote at the end, is still my own disatisfaction with any kind of attribute system: garbage in, garbage out. The time it takes to apply attributes to documents still seems to outweigh the occasional lost document...
I guess my point was only that just because people use the current hierarchy of folders to store their files doesn't mean it is in fact the best possible way to organise and retrieve them. Folders and Files are a virtual implementation of a physical operation: Filing cabinets filled with documents.... since when does a physical-world operation translate directly to the best virtual-world implementation?
Just because it hasn't worked doesn't mean it can't.
I think everyone who has filed stuff in a hierarchy has lost a file at least once.
The problem with a hierarchy is that only one "attribute" can be assigned to the file: that is the file path. Any other attributes the file may have are within the file, not the file system, and result in a click on the "find files" button which iteratively reads all files in the selected path looking for matches.
If on the other hand, at file-save- / -creation-time, multiple tags could be associated with it, and this stored in a (relational) database, then finding like-files would be a database search...much quicker.
So the question remains: Will it ever really work? not sure. The key reason it works for MP3s is the existing database of songs + tags, with legions of people updating it with new data... no such database can exist for custom documents I create, or my organisation creates. These tags must be created either by the person authoring the file, or by me when I receive the file, and this is much more time-consuming than clicking Save-As and dumping it a folder...
wow. get a grip... there's so many irrelevant points in your post, I can't begin to discuss each one separately.
Let's be clear here: I'm not making legal definitions; law makers did, and they decided that the act of copying software w/o permission was called "infringement" as opposed to theft. They did this since they are not the same thing. They also decided that "murder" was not simply "life theft", as it is not simply a form of theft. The points I made were neither to condone copy-right infringement or the breaking of any law, nor did I say anything about whether the *AA's are evil, or right, or wrong, nor offer any other such opinion. Let's stretch your analogy until all law breaks down to X-theft as the only remaining legal term. so, we already have murder==Life theft, let's do some more: Kidnapping==Freedom Theft. Speeding==FastLane Theft Assault causing bodily harm==Epidermis Theft c'mon! together we can re-write the laws so everything is theft..!
Legal definitions are important, and I think we all know that a rose-by-any-other-name is in fact no longer a rose. 'Digital Rights Management' is a corp-speak way of saying 'Digital Rights Restrictions', but try selling that as a feature on your MP3 player. There's a reason that the words 'piracy' and 'theft' are used by those that own copyrights. These words are far stronger, and conjure mental images of wrong-doing that the correct legal words never can.
It's Orwellian to allow others to redefine how and what you think by using newspeak.
ps: [quote]Walking out on a bill at a restaurant is not considered stealing I guess, even though it is in part stealing.[/quote] uhm... I'm pretty sure you'd in fact get charged for theft if you walked out on a restaurant bill... but hey, IANAL...:)
Unless you're talking about shoplifting software from the local best-buy, "stealing" is incorrect.
It's important to remember that "copy-right infringemnt" != "stealing", and if people on/. can't keep this straight, how can anyone expect Joe Public to keep it straight?
This is as much a PR battle as a legal battle, and any succesful commercial organisation knows a thing or two about marketing/spin. And obviously judging by the crap they _sell_ (read push-on-consumers) as music and art, the *AA's must be succesful marketers.
dammit, I hope this goes to court and the spy-guy wins... then we can finally start moving to add more useful clauses to EULAs, and us poor software writers can finally scratch out a proper living...
That's my personal answer, no patents + no copyright.
What makes humanity strong is for one person to build on the ideas of those that came before. If North Americans and Europeans don't build on what humanity has, I guarantee that others will, and it will be our loss.
Indeed, one of my major complaints about the computer field is that whereas Newton could say, "If I have seen a little farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants," I am forced to say, "Today we stand on each other's feet." Perhaps the central problem we face in all of computer science is how we are to get to the situation where we build on top of the work of others rather than redoing so much of it in a trivially different way. Science is supposed to be cumulative, not almost endless duplication of the same kind of things.
-- Richard W. Hamming, "One Man's View of Computer Science," 1968 Turing Award Lecture
1968??? ...seems that this is not a *new* problem afterall...if in 40+/- years we have gotten worse (certainly not better!) under the current system, then perhaps the minimum we should look at is the total abolition of the protection systems.
it's dot-com, but instead of losing your investment, you lose life/liberty...
imho, IT is the single most misunderstood event/thing in human history; yet there are constantly new uses that fail to address impacts/flaws/hacks/misuse, disregard how well IT actually addresses the problem, and ignore any new problems that might be created by the IT solution.
IANAL, but I think that generally infringement suits are preceded with cease-and-desist orders.
This would be the moment where (say RedHat) would be able to review the code, determine if they thought the claim was legit, and (if necessary) desist as per the cease-and desist.
Once the code is removed/replaced, the cease-and-desist is met, and there is no further action (i.e. no damages sought, since they complied) ...if on the other hand RedHat thought there was nothing to substantiate the claim, they can go to court and take the financial responsibility (if any) that goes along with legal actions....
I wonder if billie reads/. on his megabucks laptop, on his megabucks couch in his megabucks house and laughs as the linux supporters argue incessantly about whether or not it's ready for various people to use.
I used to think that the problem with linux was the complexity, but the more involved I become, the more I realise the problem is far simpler: marketing.
What linux needs is a full time international public awareness campaign aka: marketing. Succesful companies don't necessarily make good products, nor do they necessarily make products people need or want. What succesful companies all have in common is succesful marketing.
Answer the marketing question, and you'll achieve market penetration...FUD works 'cause it's the only set of 'facts' most people ever hear...
close. while I agree it's never gone to court to set a legal precedence, it has been 'tried':
Eben Moglen has apparently offered many people/orgs the opportunity to try it in court:
... you have to be prepared to meet a call that I make reasonably often... "Mr. Potential Defendant, you are distributing my client's copyrighted work without permission. Please stop. And if you want to continue to distribute it, we'll help you to get back your distribution rights, which have terminated by your infringement, but you are going to have to do it the right way."
At the moment that I make that call, the potential defendant's lawyer now has a choice. He can cooperate with us, or he can fight with us. And if he goes to court and fights with us, he will have a second choice before him. We will say to the judge, "Judge, Mr. Defendant has used our copyrighted work, copied it, modified it and distributed it without permission. Please make him stop."
One thing that the defendant can say is, "You're right. I have no license." Defendants do not want to say that, because if they say that they lose. So defendants, when they envision to themselves what they will say in court, realize that what they will say is, "But Judge, I do have a license. It's this here document, the GNU GPL. General Public License," at which point, because I know the license reasonably well, and I'm aware in what respect he is breaking it, I will say, "Well, Judge, he had that license but he violated its terms and under Section 4 of it, when he violated its terms, it stopped working for him."
But notice that in order to survive moment one in a lawsuit over free software, it is the defendant who must wave the GPL. It is his permission, his master key to a lawsuit that lasts longer than a nanosecond. This, quite simply, is the reason that lies behind the statement you have heard... that there has never been a court test of the GPL.
[all emphasis mine]
imho, a perfect system would never get tried... the reason even truly guilty people take a shot at court is b/c the law is not perfect, and sometimes they can get away with something. If everyone knew that there was no possible positive personal outcome, why would anyone bother?
perhaps b/c certain (portions of) certain eula's have been found unenforceable, but the gpl has never been found unenforceable?
search "Eben Moglen" for more...
The earliest music was performed by the church by monks who were funded by the church
wow. so you're suggesting that church monks invented music? Music is a human social interaction, and predates monks, churches and funding.
music was funded by patrons of the arts, rich people who could afford to contract the artists to create music for them. Composers couldn't afford on their own to hire an orchestra
yes, rich people funded the concerts and commissioned all kinds of works of art, and I suspect that rich people will fund art into the future. The 'classics' however, did not write music exclusively on contract, they wrote music b/c they were artists.
and they also had to eat
they also taught music, for which they earned money to eat.
I think you are confusing "music you've heard of" with "music the human race makes/has made". How much music from the African jungle do you have/have you heard? I suspect 'none', yet it exists, and has existed as long as humans have lived there.
imho, the partrons of the past, and riaa of today only ensure advertising $$$ for their specific reasons. The patrons of the past liked the music and paid for it, the riaa makes a profit by selling you the music they feel makes them the most profit.
from tfa:
The Greeks believed in an earth-centric universe and accounted for celestial bodies' motions using elaborate models based on epicycles, in which each body describes a circle (the epicycle) around a point that itself moves in a circle around the earth. Mr Wright found evidence that the Antikythera mechanism would have been able to reproduce the motions of the sun and moon accurately, using an epicyclic model devised by Hipparchus, and of the planets Mercury and Venus, using an epicyclic model derived by Apollonius of Perga.
I'm still trying to get my head around the math that would be involved in explaining the shifting orbits for an earth-centric universe...I'm amazed at the lengths to which we go in explaining things around us. This leaves me wondering how many complicated explanations we have today for things that are far more simple. Will one day people ponder in disbelief our current scientific 'facts'?
...if it is free how you are going to fund creation of new entertainment.
Your mistake is in presuming that entertainment only exists because a group of capitalists figured out how to monetize it.
Since music and art have existed for all of human history, I can feel pretty comfortable that it will exist long after the demise of the *AA's.
While the *AA's were able to fill a need (a fundamental element of capitalism), they are (unfortunately for them) no longer required in the artist+fan equation. Their business model has been superceeded by events, and the better distribution model is taking over (another fundamental element of capitalism). What we are witnessing now is a large rich organisation in it's death throes, and is doing what it believes will help it survive (another fundamental element of capitalism).
Slashdot Mirror
So what is really being negotiated is that the copy-right holder is going to charge Apple (say) $1.85 for some songs, forcing Apple to charge more than the $.99 they are charging now.
I don't think the copyright holder is saying: Hey Apple; we're going to keep charging you $.90, but you need to raise your retail price and make more money than us...these are the same guys that want a cut of the HARDWARE sales...'member?
I could be wrong, but the way i've been reading this, it's not Apple that's pushing this change... it's the copyright holder, and since they own the rights to what Apple is selling, they don't have much choice in the matter.
Just like the consumer has the choice to pay more, or not buy, Apple has the choice to pay more or not sell...
Probably not to the same extend that it might be felt in other countries. ... but at least here in Canada we've lamented the last 10yrs about the brain-drain drawing talent south with bigger bucks. (for those without a map/globe, Canada is the big country to the north of the US)
The US is still one of the best places on earth to live (along with others: Norway, Sweden, Canada always rate highly) so if you have the choice of living in the US or some {dictatorship, no-medical, no-food, no-freedom....}-type country, most people would chose the US.
America's not perfect, but I think most Americans who have never been abroad have no idea just how nice it is to live in the US, and how lucky they are to have such riches and freedoms.
'course that doesn't mean that the drain couldn't head towards Norway, Sweden or Canada
for PHd holding statisticians trying to recruit into their program.
as long as they're freedom fries.
Take 1-part flattering bio, stir in some fear-of-others, mix with more-money-for-you, but leave out the real-plan-to-spend-the-money (or at least leave out the how-more-money-will-make-a-difference) throw in a dash of social-policy and flavour with a foreign-policy to taste.... yes sir, what we have here is some pre-election soup...
A file having a path is not incompatible with attributes, but perhaps becomes redundant, or more specifically, the file-path can be an attribute.
While it may have taken you multiple searches and time refining searches to find specific documents, I can only assume that if you were forced to search for it, you didn't already know a hard-path to it - Once you know that Ford's cars can be found at www.ford.com, you don't search for it again. "www.ford.com" can be viewed as merely an attribute that you give your browser, but instead of resulting in multiple hits, only a single 'file' is returned. In a database, this is commonly called the primary, or unique key...
Why a relational database? why to relate the data of course! :)
I guess my point was only that just because people use the current hierarchy of folders to store their files doesn't mean it is in fact the best possible way to organise and retrieve them. Folders and Files are a virtual implementation of a physical operation: Filing cabinets filled with documents.... since when does a physical-world operation translate directly to the best virtual-world implementation?
I think everyone who has filed stuff in a hierarchy has lost a file at least once.
The problem with a hierarchy is that only one "attribute" can be assigned to the file: that is the file path. Any other attributes the file may have are within the file, not the file system, and result in a click on the "find files" button which iteratively reads all files in the selected path looking for matches.
If on the other hand, at file-save- / -creation-time, multiple tags could be associated with it, and this stored in a (relational) database, then finding like-files would be a database search...much quicker.
So the question remains: Will it ever really work? not sure. The key reason it works for MP3s is the existing database of songs + tags, with legions of people updating it with new data ... no such database can exist for custom documents I create, or my organisation creates. These tags must be created either by the person authoring the file, or by me when I receive the file, and this is much more time-consuming than clicking Save-As and dumping it a folder...
Need: Management ( check! )
Need: Programmer ( vacant )
Let's be clear here: I'm not making legal definitions; law makers did, and they decided that the act of copying software w/o permission was called "infringement" as opposed to theft. They did this since they are not the same thing. They also decided that "murder" was not simply "life theft", as it is not simply a form of theft.
The points I made were neither to condone copy-right infringement or the breaking of any law, nor did I say anything about whether the *AA's are evil, or right, or wrong, nor offer any other such opinion. Let's stretch your analogy until all law breaks down to X-theft as the only remaining legal term.
so, we already have murder==Life theft, let's do some more:
Kidnapping==Freedom Theft.
Speeding==FastLane Theft
Assault causing bodily harm==Epidermis Theft
c'mon! together we can re-write the laws so everything is theft..!
Legal definitions are important, and I think we all know that a rose-by-any-other-name is in fact no longer a rose. 'Digital Rights Management' is a corp-speak way of saying 'Digital Rights Restrictions', but try selling that as a feature on your MP3 player. There's a reason that the words 'piracy' and 'theft' are used by those that own copyrights. These words are far stronger, and conjure mental images of wrong-doing that the correct legal words never can.
It's Orwellian to allow others to redefine how and what you think by using newspeak.
ps: :)
[quote]Walking out on a bill at a restaurant is not considered stealing I guess, even though it is in part stealing.[/quote] uhm... I'm pretty sure you'd in fact get charged for theft if you walked out on a restaurant bill... but hey, IANAL...
It's important to remember that "copy-right infringemnt" != "stealing", and if people on /. can't keep this straight, how can anyone expect Joe Public to keep it straight?
This is as much a PR battle as a legal battle, and any succesful commercial organisation knows a thing or two about marketing/spin. And obviously judging by the crap they _sell_ (read push-on-consumers) as music and art, the *AA's must be succesful marketers.
Of course, it's insightful -- any mention of Linux on /. gets modded up ... even mis-seplled or unintentional.
dammit, I hope this goes to court and the spy-guy wins ... then we can finally start moving to add more useful clauses to EULAs, and us poor software writers can finally scratch out a proper living...
What makes humanity strong is for one person to build on the ideas of those that came before. If North Americans and Europeans don't build on what humanity has, I guarantee that others will, and it will be our loss.
1968???
...seems that this is not a *new* problem afterall...if in 40+/- years we have gotten worse (certainly not better!) under the current system, then perhaps the minimum we should look at is the total abolition of the protection systems.
imho, IT is the single most misunderstood event/thing in human history; yet there are constantly new uses that fail to address impacts/flaws/hacks/misuse, disregard how well IT actually addresses the problem, and ignore any new problems that might be created by the IT solution.
right?
IANAL, but I think that generally infringement suits are preceded with cease-and-desist orders.
This would be the moment where (say RedHat) would be able to review the code, determine if they thought the claim was legit, and (if necessary) desist as per the cease-and desist. Once the code is removed/replaced, the cease-and-desist is met, and there is no further action (i.e. no damages sought, since they complied)
...if on the other hand RedHat thought there was nothing to substantiate the claim, they can go to court and take the financial responsibility (if any) that goes along with legal actions....
It's so nice to see that not every company has abandoned the idea of not having a revenue stream...
I used to think that the problem with linux was the complexity, but the more involved I become, the more I realise the problem is far simpler: marketing.
What linux needs is a full time international public awareness campaign aka: marketing. Succesful companies don't necessarily make good products, nor do they necessarily make products people need or want. What succesful companies all have in common is succesful marketing.
Answer the marketing question, and you'll achieve market penetration...FUD works 'cause it's the only set of 'facts' most people ever hear...
Eben Moglen has apparently offered many people/orgs the opportunity to try it in court:
[all emphasis mine]imho, a perfect system would never get tried ... the reason even truly guilty people take a shot at court is b/c the law is not perfect, and sometimes they can get away with something. If everyone knew that there was no possible positive personal outcome, why would anyone bother?
perhaps b/c certain (portions of) certain eula's have been found unenforceable, but the gpl has never been found unenforceable?
search "Eben Moglen" for more...
wow. so you're suggesting that church monks invented music? Music is a human social interaction, and predates monks, churches and funding.
yes, rich people funded the concerts and commissioned all kinds of works of art, and I suspect that rich people will fund art into the future. The 'classics' however, did not write music exclusively on contract, they wrote music b/c they were artists.
they also taught music, for which they earned money to eat.
I think you are confusing "music you've heard of" with "music the human race makes/has made". How much music from the African jungle do you have/have you heard? I suspect 'none', yet it exists, and has existed as long as humans have lived there.
imho, the partrons of the past, and riaa of today only ensure advertising $$$ for their specific reasons. The patrons of the past liked the music and paid for it, the riaa makes a profit by selling you the music they feel makes them the most profit.
Your mistake is in presuming that entertainment only exists because a group of capitalists figured out how to monetize it.
Since music and art have existed for all of human history, I can feel pretty comfortable that it will exist long after the demise of the *AA's.
While the *AA's were able to fill a need (a fundamental element of capitalism), they are (unfortunately for them) no longer required in the artist+fan equation. Their business model has been superceeded by events, and the better distribution model is taking over (another fundamental element of capitalism). What we are witnessing now is a large rich organisation in it's death throes, and is doing what it believes will help it survive (another fundamental element of capitalism).