Companies aren't evil because they want to make a profit: they're evil because they want to make that profit at the expense of anything and everything else: like society, the planet, the people...
If companies had a social conscience like (most) people do, then they wouldn't be evil as a rule, but as an exception. Humans are social creatures and generally humans want to do good for their follow-kind by instinct.
Business doesn't "suffer" from this social care for mankind... hence: evil.
To begin with, your vote is not as important as the campaign bribes they need to advertise themselves to get your vote. ...and with only two to chose from, where both have the same Pro-IP stance, your really talking about joining the large percentage of the population that already doesn't vote. And not voting is not a solution, because it's seen as apathy, not protest. "none of the above" should get votes where you can write something in...:)
The US needs real change... not just a new flavor of the same thing.
I believe there is a measurable %age of the population that equates "right" == "legal" and "illegal" == "wrong". And they equate this without question. There is clearly no point in asking any of these people your questions.
I believe further that of the remaining population the overwhelming majority have never done any serious research into copyright. These people will largely make up their mind based on what has been 'sold' to them over the years. There has been aggressive marketing from various Copyright Industries (software, music, movies etc) to convince people that without copyright, they will cease to produce, and we will return to a dark age of culture. There is (again, though possibly less clearly) no point in asking any of these people your questions.
Until such time as people have researched every single issue (copyright is just one issue people need to make decisions about) we will always be in a situation where people accept whatever they're told. And since I don't ever foresee a day when we all become experts in every subject we will always be at the whim of those that are strong and have an agenda.
I don't recall the source, but a quote I like on this is something to the affect of "If you're explaining, you're losing"... and copyright makes "common sense", so it will always be a losing battle for those opposed to it, and an easy battle for those monopolies that abuse us with it.
5) write letter to ISP demanding its logs of what customer was on that IP address at that time.
to which the correct ISP response is, got warrant?
and when you don't, they say "piss off, come back with a warrant".
and so you wander off to the judge and say i've got these IP addresses I want to know who owns them, and the judge says: on what basis? and you say 'cause I saw them on the BitTorrent downloading, and stuff. To which he says, "Your word as an interested individual that they did this isn't reasonable grounds to demand the ISP identify the account holder. you need some kind of evidence. And even if i were to give you the account holder, you still don't have any way to attach that to a person performing infringement, as there may be more than one individual using it, and there may be individuals using it without the knowledge of the account holder. So your evidence is suspect, and even if it wasn't it wouldn't mean anything. so piss off. Come back when you have independent evidence that can be linked to an individual."
which you can't get.
At least that's how it should work in a working legal system.
The fashion industry is a strong contributer to anorexia and other eating disorders in teenagers (mostly girls). The damaging effects of this industry also include suicide.
The images and lifestyles presented by the advertising of the alcohol and tobacco industry also create damaging and harmful expectations, with the associated lifestyles killing thousands annually.
The (fast-)food industry sells (and targets kids with) foods that are damaging to the proper development of our youth and teaches poor nutritional habits that not only carry into adulthood, but are then passed to the next generation, corrupting the kids from birth. Obesity is considered the biggest health issue in America. (for irony, see point#1)
There are plenty of industries that have negative influence and are damaging, yet these don't get near the attention of pornography. I'm not disagreeing that certain stimulus and input can damage our children, but isn't it the parent's job to...uhm, parent? and wouldn't part of that be to ensure that there were discussions about sex and YES! even pornography at the appropriate levels when the child is reaching appropriate levels of maturity?
Since most/. agree that anything the government does, it does badly, why do we get our morality from it? Regulating kids' access to porn should one of the many things that should be in the purview of the parents, not the state.
...and on a positive note, without porn I suspect that there'd be not much more than the Acceptable Missionary Position. Porn pushes boundaries and lets adults experiment and enjoy one of the most fundamental human experiences and desires in new ways.
More scientifically there are numerous studies that show a link between increased availability of porn and a decrease in sex-crimes. This is an obvious benefit of the porn industry. You can't discuss negatives of something without allowing that there are positives as well.
On a final and personal note, I can't really say I've ever understood the American indulgence of violence and violent behaviour (which is so obviously anti-social and damaging both individually and societally) while crusading against anything even remotely sexual in nature (see Wardrobe Malfunction, the object of which can be found on most any European newsstands without fanfare), even though sex is so obviously a positive social interaction.
What you are highlighting is the fundamental problem of a number/name combination having such wide-reaching implications. The fact that knowledge of these two facts grants individuals the capability of becoming you or committing fraud in your name is scary.
I don't know the answer, but maybe a PKI-type setup, or challenge-response or... I don't know, but fundamentally, yes, it should not be important whether or not you publicly associate some number with my name.
For myself, in the interim, I see a difference between public info (how the public transit system works) and private info (like my income, social security number etc). I think that personal privacy should trump freedom of speech, but reporting on public facts, or about public utilities or institutions should not only be covered under free speech, but as public services their info belongs to us (to paraphrase: "we the public").
These laws like copyright extension would be good, on balance...
Retroactive Copyright extension is theft. Real theft. The authors and publishers made a deal with the public: They would do/publish something creative, and we'd grant them a limited duration during which they'd be the only ones that had rights to distribute this work. The reason we're willing to make this deal is that once the monopoly period is over, the work gets added to the public domain... that same public domain that Disney needed to pillage to make piles of their work. If the terms were good enough for the artist when they made and distributed the art then they were good enough: there's no reason to grant a longer monopoly.
For future-only extensions, there's still nothing to suggest that longer terms (then current) would do anything to encourage more works then we get today. It seems most income happens in the first few years (too lazy to find references, but IIRC it was less than 5yrs for 90% of revenue) so there's little reason to increase the terms...and in fact this would be reason to decrease terms.
So, I must disagree, laws like copyright extension are on balance bad, regardless of who holds the gold.
How much money is wasted in the government on a daily basis to fund lawyers, lawmakers, congresspeople and judges to uphold copyright and patents, which could have gone to supporting arts and sciences directly? Surely, that could do a lot more to encourage true art than the system we have now.
If you bought, then the limitations of DRM were also a part of the purchase, and should have been factored into the purchase decision.
I guess consumer protection acts have to exist precisely because of people who think like this. You make some pretty big (and imho incorrect) assumptions about the general buying public.
No one has suggested that by discontinuing the service, Yahoo has in any way broken their side of the contract by discontinuing the service.
I'm sure they covered their legal ass on this, and so although I haven't read their terms of use I suspect you are correct: they haven't done anything legally actionable. But this assumes an educated consumer which is what shysters, con-artists and out-right-thieves have counted on for generations.
In this case, it is a question of expectation. When you buy a CD, you expect to put it in your CD player and play it. And you play it in your car, at the cottage, on your portable CD-player and when any one of those dies (or gets killed by your four-year-old) you go and buy a new CD player to replace it, and the CD just keeps on working.
So when you, as a consumer, buy music on-line, you have no reason to even ask the question of "will this play when my computer dies?". It's music. You "know" how music works....or you think you do.
If you buy something, you can't be expected to account for every possible way they might screw you. You have an expectation of how this thing should work based on experience, and you'll probably ask some questions to ensure that it does the things you want. If you buy a cell-phone you don't ask if it can send and receive calls: you make the assumption that it does...'cause it's a cell phone and they do that. If you buy a pair of pants on-line you assume the bottom of the legs have holes for your feet to go through. If you buy music you assume you'll be able to play it on your computer and there's no reason to ask about whether or not the some other computer will control how your music can be used, because this is well out-side of how a consumer uses music.
they just won't be able to transfer them to another computer without a workaround such as burning them to a CD. Annoying, yes, but not the end of the world.
There is a loss of quality and meta-data when you do this. Of course it's not actually the end of the "world" but it is the end of the music (at specified quality & features) that you paid for. So pretty much it is the end of the world (for your purchase).
This won't be the wake-up call that makes the average user see the evils of DRM, because most of them won't even notice.
This is only true because on the Dark Day it's unlikely that even an insignificant number of the customer will want to move their music to a new computer. There won't be a wake-up call, because it will only be as people replace their old computers or want to move it to another device that they will realise they've been screwed. That doesn't make Digital Restrictions Management any less evil.
On the other hand, there was enough backlash to make MS decide to leave their servers on... so who knows? I think that what is true, is that the more this happens, the more people will realise they don't want DRM on their media. Like Linux adoption, there may never be a "Year Of The Anti-DRM": it may just be a slow awakening.
At the risk of feeding an anonymous troll, you're missing the point.
Adobe has spent (managers, programmers et.al) their time creating the software. This is in the past: "has spent". They have done so regardless of whether or not anyone subsequently pirates or purchases the software. In other words, it costs Adobe nothing when their software gets pirated: they've already spent their time, hence the argument that they lose nothing.
For the programmer-for-hire (common OSS model) the coder only writes once they are hired, hence non-payment is a loss, since they spent the time directly at the request of the customer. Had the customer not requested the work, the coder would done something else with their time, hence they are losing their time.
As far as your point about enforceability of payment you're really describing a credit-worthyness issue which has nothing to do with the issue. However, should it be a real problem that coder-for-hire model regularly doesn't get paid, there are simple ways (pre-payment, payment in escrow, 3rd party guarantors, etc) to deal with ensuring payment.
This is different then if I write something on my own time and then expect people to retro-actively pay for my time. And this is exactly the difference between selling copies of software and selling my time to do work on some software. And this is exactly the model where open-source developers get paid.
So you win the best-Windows-install time, and you're still 3x as long as a linux install and still only works assuming you know your hardware and have pre-fetched all the drivers... and whoops! the linux install *also* has a pile of applications installed as well.... huh.
Once local companies and artists started to make things that could sell, IP laws started to be tightened up.
That's one of the best anti-copyright arguments I've seen.
Based on the Pro-IP crowd, shouldn't it work the other way-round? There was no artistic creation, so some IP laws were created to encourage creation and now local companies and artists can make things they can sell?
but you no longer have the opportunity to attempt to profit from your work by charging me for a copy of that work. That's not the same as depriving you access to a physical item, but it is at least a notional, potential loss. (Or rather, loss of potential)
When Burger King sets up shop next to McDonalds are they depriving Mickey-D's of potential income?
There's no such thing as "depriving of potential income" - the argument you're making is the one Big Copyright relies on in order to make up (read: fabricate) their "loss" numbers.
but I would hold that this creative process only leads to discoveries, not creations. In other words, something that was already there, waiting to be discovered, a truth as you call it. That's different than artistic creation, which does add something that was not there in the first place.
Musicians do not invent new notes, they merely discover arrangements of frequencies that we find pleasing.
Interesting pick, the XJ220, 'cause the way I read it, the XJ220 is Jaguar's Vista except that Jaguar isn't a monopoly that could force everyone to buy this over-priced turd.
So we see in this example the difference - when you're a monopoly, you sell crap and people have no choice. Jaguar on the other hand had trouble unloading their stock, and I'm sure people with half-a-million bucks to blow on car simply went and got Porche's, Ferrari's etc instead...
So to simply state that you can't buy an old model car is missing part of the point. I'm going to suggest that had the car sold well, it could well still be available today. Porsche has been making the 911 for many years and will make it for many more since it sells very well. Ford (for reasons beyond me) tried to replace the Mustang with the Probe and the outcry from the public resulted in the return of the Mustang - now you can't buy the Probe. Coke tried New Coke, today we pretty much have Coke.
There's plenty of examples in industry where successful companies respond to customer demand and sell them what they want, and when the company goes off the path they actually listen to their customers. This is because they have to compete with other companies offering customers an alternative.
Lucky for Microsoft they don't have such baggage to worry about....and this goes for most of the other examples I'm reading here like cell-phone and internet service providers. The lack of competition leaves a lot of power in the hands of the company to do what it wants instead of providing what the customer is demanding.
It's recent for me, though I'm reading others have had it for a while.
I walked into a Bell Store, told them I needed dry loop dsl, and they filled the paperwork. About a week later I had working internet. no fuss. never tried to sell me back to their phone service. it was probably the nicest experience i ever had with bell...:)
"Eleven Seven Music was developed in association with ADA, a Warner Music Group company." says wikipedia...Warner, of course being one of the Big-Four. Worse, whenever I check and find that a label (seems) to have no riaa affiliation, and I actually wander down to my local (independent) CD store, I discover that it was still distributed by one of the Big Four.
I hate like hell to give them even a nickle, so that put some severe limits on what you can buy.
I guess not everything is looking for a solution. Programmers get paid by charging for their (scarce) time. So in general this already follows the first half of what the techdirt guys say: charge for what you don't have a lot of, and give away stuff that has a negligible cost (to you) but (hopefully!) generates a greater premium for your (scarce) time. Since it's a service that you get paid for, you're correct that there may be nothing for this specific example to give away in order to increase your per-diem.
However, still with software, the guys that are doing this are (one example) redhat. They give away the source code for free, but charge for the support. The more people that accept the free source-code download (or derivative thereof eg. centos, fedora) the more valuable the support redhat is offering becomes.
Does this mean that everyone needs a lesson in "free" ? no, just those (most notably the recording industry and their ilk) who believe that you can't make money with free.
I read techdirt daily, and the way I read them isn't that everyone needs to add "free" to their business model. Adding free needs to be thought out and the decision to include free has to make sense for your business. And most importantly that it can make sense. This is important because there are a lot of people who either genuinely believe you can't make money with free, or who have a vested interest in keeping things that way. Like the dot-com bubble showed that adding ".com" to your business plan didn't generate revenue, adding "free" to your business plan has to generate revenue. After that, it's simply logical that you give away things that cost you nothing in order to increase the value of the stuff you don't have a lot of (which is most commonly your time) which maximizes your overall profit.
They make a fundamental error in they're argument that programmers are being paid for their time and not for their code.
Please explain.
I don't know of any coders who get paid by the line: they get paid by some measure of time. Sure there are instances where the deliverable takes more time than was budgeted and you end up working unpaid overtime, but that's an estimation and contract problem. (though if coders got paid by the line, it sure would explain bloat-ware!)
The problem is that most every programmer who is being paid for their time, doesn't own the code they produce.
Precisely, because they are being paid for their time, much like a plumber doesn't own your pipes when he's done installing your sink. It's the service of coding that's being charged for. In the end, with a few exceptions, we all bill for our time. Activities like "provide solution" might be why one contractor bills more than another, but in general they don't itemise "solutions" on their invoice, but "hours" or "days". There are two broad categories: "Goods" and "Services" and writing software falls in the "service" category.
...and I'm sure people will point to a few exceptions to all this, which is why I stated "generally" and "with some exception"...
Ah yes, the "linux is communism" argument "which clearly doesn't work".
The real problem is that ideas ARE NOT PROPERTY.
The real problem is that people assume that practices that are good to encourage efficient use of scarce resources will apply to non-rivalrous goods.
Slashdot Mirror
If companies had a social conscience like (most) people do, then they wouldn't be evil as a rule, but as an exception. Humans are social creatures and generally humans want to do good for their follow-kind by instinct.
Business doesn't "suffer" from this social care for mankind ... hence: evil.
To begin with, your vote is not as important as the campaign bribes they need to advertise themselves to get your vote. ... :)
... not just a new flavor of the same thing.
...and with only two to chose from, where both have the same Pro-IP stance, your really talking about joining the large percentage of the population that already doesn't vote. And not voting is not a solution, because it's seen as apathy, not protest. "none of the above" should get votes where you can write something in
The US needs real change
I believe further that of the remaining population the overwhelming majority have never done any serious research into copyright. These people will largely make up their mind based on what has been 'sold' to them over the years. There has been aggressive marketing from various Copyright Industries (software, music, movies etc) to convince people that without copyright, they will cease to produce, and we will return to a dark age of culture. There is (again, though possibly less clearly) no point in asking any of these people your questions.
Until such time as people have researched every single issue (copyright is just one issue people need to make decisions about) we will always be in a situation where people accept whatever they're told. And since I don't ever foresee a day when we all become experts in every subject we will always be at the whim of those that are strong and have an agenda.
I don't recall the source, but a quote I like on this is something to the affect of "If you're explaining, you're losing" ... and copyright makes "common sense", so it will always be a losing battle for those opposed to it, and an easy battle for those monopolies that abuse us with it.
to which the correct ISP response is, got warrant?
and when you don't, they say "piss off, come back with a warrant".
and so you wander off to the judge and say i've got these IP addresses I want to know who owns them, and the judge says: on what basis? and you say 'cause I saw them on the BitTorrent downloading, and stuff. To which he says, "Your word as an interested individual that they did this isn't reasonable grounds to demand the ISP identify the account holder. you need some kind of evidence. And even if i were to give you the account holder, you still don't have any way to attach that to a person performing infringement, as there may be more than one individual using it, and there may be individuals using it without the knowledge of the account holder. So your evidence is suspect, and even if it wasn't it wouldn't mean anything. so piss off. Come back when you have independent evidence that can be linked to an individual."
which you can't get.
At least that's how it should work in a working legal system.
The images and lifestyles presented by the advertising of the alcohol and tobacco industry also create damaging and harmful expectations, with the associated lifestyles killing thousands annually.
The (fast-)food industry sells (and targets kids with) foods that are damaging to the proper development of our youth and teaches poor nutritional habits that not only carry into adulthood, but are then passed to the next generation, corrupting the kids from birth. Obesity is considered the biggest health issue in America. (for irony, see point#1)
There are plenty of industries that have negative influence and are damaging, yet these don't get near the attention of pornography. I'm not disagreeing that certain stimulus and input can damage our children, but isn't it the parent's job to ...uhm, parent? and wouldn't part of that be to ensure that there were discussions about sex and YES! even pornography at the appropriate levels when the child is reaching appropriate levels of maturity?
Since most /. agree that anything the government does, it does badly, why do we get our morality from it? Regulating kids' access to porn should one of the many things that should be in the purview of the parents, not the state.
More scientifically there are numerous studies that show a link between increased availability of porn and a decrease in sex-crimes. This is an obvious benefit of the porn industry. You can't discuss negatives of something without allowing that there are positives as well.
On a final and personal note, I can't really say I've ever understood the American indulgence of violence and violent behaviour (which is so obviously anti-social and damaging both individually and societally) while crusading against anything even remotely sexual in nature (see Wardrobe Malfunction, the object of which can be found on most any European newsstands without fanfare), even though sex is so obviously a positive social interaction.
I don't know the answer, but maybe a PKI-type setup, or challenge-response or ... I don't know, but fundamentally, yes, it should not be important whether or not you publicly associate some number with my name.
For myself, in the interim, I see a difference between public info (how the public transit system works) and private info (like my income, social security number etc). I think that personal privacy should trump freedom of speech, but reporting on public facts, or about public utilities or institutions should not only be covered under free speech, but as public services their info belongs to us (to paraphrase: "we the public").
Retroactive Copyright extension is theft. Real theft. The authors and publishers made a deal with the public: They would do/publish something creative, and we'd grant them a limited duration during which they'd be the only ones that had rights to distribute this work. The reason we're willing to make this deal is that once the monopoly period is over, the work gets added to the public domain ... that same public domain that Disney needed to pillage to make piles of their work. If the terms were good enough for the artist when they made and distributed the art then they were good enough: there's no reason to grant a longer monopoly.
For future-only extensions, there's still nothing to suggest that longer terms (then current) would do anything to encourage more works then we get today. It seems most income happens in the first few years (too lazy to find references, but IIRC it was less than 5yrs for 90% of revenue) so there's little reason to increase the terms...and in fact this would be reason to decrease terms.
So, I must disagree, laws like copyright extension are on balance bad, regardless of who holds the gold.
lots.
I guess consumer protection acts have to exist precisely because of people who think like this. You make some pretty big (and imho incorrect) assumptions about the general buying public.
I'm sure they covered their legal ass on this, and so although I haven't read their terms of use I suspect you are correct: they haven't done anything legally actionable. But this assumes an educated consumer which is what shysters, con-artists and out-right-thieves have counted on for generations.
In this case, it is a question of expectation. When you buy a CD, you expect to put it in your CD player and play it. And you play it in your car, at the cottage, on your portable CD-player and when any one of those dies (or gets killed by your four-year-old) you go and buy a new CD player to replace it, and the CD just keeps on working.
So when you, as a consumer, buy music on-line, you have no reason to even ask the question of "will this play when my computer dies?". It's music. You "know" how music works. ...or you think you do.
If you buy something, you can't be expected to account for every possible way they might screw you. You have an expectation of how this thing should work based on experience, and you'll probably ask some questions to ensure that it does the things you want. If you buy a cell-phone you don't ask if it can send and receive calls: you make the assumption that it does ...'cause it's a cell phone and they do that. If you buy a pair of pants on-line you assume the bottom of the legs have holes for your feet to go through. If you buy music you assume you'll be able to play it on your computer and there's no reason to ask about whether or not the some other computer will control how your music can be used, because this is well out-side of how a consumer uses music.
There is a loss of quality and meta-data when you do this. Of course it's not actually the end of the "world" but it is the end of the music (at specified quality & features) that you paid for. So pretty much it is the end of the world (for your purchase).
This is only true because on the Dark Day it's unlikely that even an insignificant number of the customer will want to move their music to a new computer. There won't be a wake-up call, because it will only be as people replace their old computers or want to move it to another device that they will realise they've been screwed. That doesn't make Digital Restrictions Management any less evil.
On the other hand, there was enough backlash to make MS decide to leave their servers on ... so who knows? I think that what is true, is that the more this happens, the more people will realise they don't want DRM on their media. Like Linux adoption, there may never be a "Year Of The Anti-DRM": it may just be a slow awakening.
Adobe has spent (managers, programmers et.al) their time creating the software. This is in the past: "has spent". They have done so regardless of whether or not anyone subsequently pirates or purchases the software. In other words, it costs Adobe nothing when their software gets pirated: they've already spent their time, hence the argument that they lose nothing.
For the programmer-for-hire (common OSS model) the coder only writes once they are hired, hence non-payment is a loss, since they spent the time directly at the request of the customer. Had the customer not requested the work, the coder would done something else with their time, hence they are losing their time.
As far as your point about enforceability of payment you're really describing a credit-worthyness issue which has nothing to do with the issue. However, should it be a real problem that coder-for-hire model regularly doesn't get paid, there are simple ways (pre-payment, payment in escrow, 3rd party guarantors, etc) to deal with ensuring payment.
But I did lose something - my time.
This is different then if I write something on my own time and then expect people to retro-actively pay for my time. And this is exactly the difference between selling copies of software and selling my time to do work on some software. And this is exactly the model where open-source developers get paid.
what was your point again?
That's one of the best anti-copyright arguments I've seen.
Based on the Pro-IP crowd, shouldn't it work the other way-round? There was no artistic creation, so some IP laws were created to encourage creation and now local companies and artists can make things they can sell?
When Burger King sets up shop next to McDonalds are they depriving Mickey-D's of potential income?
There's no such thing as "depriving of potential income" - the argument you're making is the one Big Copyright relies on in order to make up (read: fabricate) their "loss" numbers.
Musicians do not invent new notes, they merely discover arrangements of frequencies that we find pleasing.
So we see in this example the difference - when you're a monopoly, you sell crap and people have no choice. Jaguar on the other hand had trouble unloading their stock, and I'm sure people with half-a-million bucks to blow on car simply went and got Porche's, Ferrari's etc instead...
So to simply state that you can't buy an old model car is missing part of the point. I'm going to suggest that had the car sold well, it could well still be available today. Porsche has been making the 911 for many years and will make it for many more since it sells very well. Ford (for reasons beyond me) tried to replace the Mustang with the Probe and the outcry from the public resulted in the return of the Mustang - now you can't buy the Probe. Coke tried New Coke, today we pretty much have Coke.
There's plenty of examples in industry where successful companies respond to customer demand and sell them what they want, and when the company goes off the path they actually listen to their customers. This is because they have to compete with other companies offering customers an alternative.
Lucky for Microsoft they don't have such baggage to worry about. ...and this goes for most of the other examples I'm reading here like cell-phone and internet service providers. The lack of competition leaves a lot of power in the hands of the company to do what it wants instead of providing what the customer is demanding.
Because when the private company is wasteful it costs the shareholders money - not me.
It's recent for me, though I'm reading others have had it for a while. :)
I walked into a Bell Store, told them I needed dry loop dsl, and they filled the paperwork. About a week later I had working internet. no fuss. never tried to sell me back to their phone service. it was probably the nicest experience i ever had with bell...
Why do you assume guilt? it's not like their methods are infallible.
"Eleven Seven Music was developed in association with ADA, a Warner Music Group company." says wikipedia...Warner, of course being one of the Big-Four.
Worse, whenever I check and find that a label (seems) to have no riaa affiliation, and I actually wander down to my local (independent) CD store, I discover that it was still distributed by one of the Big Four.
I hate like hell to give them even a nickle, so that put some severe limits on what you can buy.
However, still with software, the guys that are doing this are (one example) redhat. They give away the source code for free, but charge for the support. The more people that accept the free source-code download (or derivative thereof eg. centos, fedora) the more valuable the support redhat is offering becomes.
Does this mean that everyone needs a lesson in "free" ? no, just those (most notably the recording industry and their ilk) who believe that you can't make money with free.
I read techdirt daily, and the way I read them isn't that everyone needs to add "free" to their business model. Adding free needs to be thought out and the decision to include free has to make sense for your business. And most importantly that it can make sense. This is important because there are a lot of people who either genuinely believe you can't make money with free, or who have a vested interest in keeping things that way.
Like the dot-com bubble showed that adding ".com" to your business plan didn't generate revenue, adding "free" to your business plan has to generate revenue. After that, it's simply logical that you give away things that cost you nothing in order to increase the value of the stuff you don't have a lot of (which is most commonly your time) which maximizes your overall profit.
I don't know of any coders who get paid by the line: they get paid by some measure of time. Sure there are instances where the deliverable takes more time than was budgeted and you end up working unpaid overtime, but that's an estimation and contract problem. (though if coders got paid by the line, it sure would explain bloat-ware!)
Precisely, because they are being paid for their time, much like a plumber doesn't own your pipes when he's done installing your sink. It's the service of coding that's being charged for. In the end, with a few exceptions, we all bill for our time. Activities like "provide solution" might be why one contractor bills more than another, but in general they don't itemise "solutions" on their invoice, but "hours" or "days".There are two broad categories: "Goods" and "Services" and writing software falls in the "service" category.
...and I'm sure people will point to a few exceptions to all this, which is why I stated "generally" and "with some exception"...
The real problem is that ideas ARE NOT PROPERTY.
The real problem is that people assume that practices that are good to encourage efficient use of scarce resources will apply to non-rivalrous goods.