Mondoarchive works pretty well for backing up a Linux system. It uses your existing kernel and other various OS parts to make a bootable set of backup disks (via Mindi Linux), which you can use to restore your partitions and files in the event of a crash.
On the one hand the government is continually taking more and more control away from parents (for example, if a young girl wants an abortion she can get one without having to obtain parental permission; children are routinely taken away from "unfit" parents; parents are not allowed to prevent their children from being exposed to school material they find objectionable).
Ah yes, the ever-so-important "rights" to (1) force your children to give birth against their will and become parents long before they're equipped to handle such responsibility, (2) maintain control over children even though you're incompetent, and (3) keep your children ignorant by sheltering them from facts and opinions you disagree with, have indeed been eroded. That's unquestionably a good thing, and I hope they're completely eliminated as soon as possible.
You can't have it both ways. If it takes a village to raise a child, then it is the village that is responsible when that child commits a crime, not the parents who's authority has been, in many cases, usurped
Er.. how about holding the child himself responsible? After all, he made the choice to commit the crime.
Indeed. Remember, we're talking about Apple here. Apple customers expect things to "just work", and they aren't afraid to pay for it. That means whatever kind of TV they have, they should be able to plug it in and have it work, just like the Series3 TiVo - except Apple customers won't balk at paying an extra $600 for the feature the way many TiVo users do.
AFAIK, with only the VOBs, you'll just get one huge chunk of video containing all the menus, the main movie, all the extras, etc., and you'll have to go in by hand to cut out the parts you don't want to keep. You need the IFO to tell you where different titles start and stop.
Actually, copy protection in games did go away for a while when publishers realized it was ineffective and inconvenient to players (a cracked copy is more fun to play than an official copy which asks you to look up the 4th word on page 15 of the manual every ten minutes), only to come back when publishers came across new methods that they thought would be effective. Today's provably ineffective DRM schemes will go away, and in the future they'll probably be replaced with new schemes that music publishers will consider effective, until those schemes in turn are defeated.
GPLv3 is the worst of the series, IMO. Where it fails is in its insistence that if you want to be part of the community that you basically have to turn over every single thing to the whole community before you get the blessing to participate.
Wow, I don't see it that way at all. Yes, you have to turn over enough that the community can actually use the code you're giving back to them, and that seems perfectly reasonable to me. To give back modifications that are useless to the community because of patents or hardware DRM is to spit in the face of what the GPL is all about.
In America, we don't have a Switch/Interacc type of debit card. Anything issued by a bank is Visa or Mastercard branded.
Actually, we do... your debit or credit cards probably have logos on the back like Star, Plus, Cirrus, Instant Cash, Interlink, etc. Those are debit networks, and when you use your debit card at a store and they give you the option to enter your PIN instead of signing, they're trying to get you to use those networks instead of the Visa/MC network (which charges higher fees). Before the Visa check card was introduced, that was the only way to pay electronically from your bank account.
YouTube's player has a huge problem: you can't skip forward. Google Video lets you skip to any part of the stream, but YouTube's tracking bar is useless for any part of the video that hasn't loaded yet.
Let's keep in mind that Google Video doesn't even allow you to post comments.
Incorrect! The comment feature is still labeled as new, but it's been available for a while now. Look on the right side of the page, below the download button and the description of the video. There's a list of links, "Playlist - Details - From user - Related - Comments[New!] - Flag as inappropriate".
How will an artist with a brilliant (but as yet unrealized) creative idea line up paying customers in advance?
Again, this is a strange question to ask, because millions of other people have faced this same problem. How will a new barber, landscaper, architect, programmer, etc. line up paying customers if they haven't seen his work yet? Maybe they lower their prices so people feel better taking a risk on someone they don't know. Maybe they do a little work for free just to get samples of their work out there where people can see it. It's not exactly a trivial problem, but neither is it unique to artists, and I think artists are clever enough to overcome it just like everyone else.
But the creator of the work is (or is not) making that money back over time. Maybe he shouldn't! Why are you looking for a way to pay him for something that might not be worth it?
If someone decides to pay him for his work, then his work is worth it to that person, by definition. Just like if you pay for a haircut, you've decided that the barber's time is worth $Y, even though you haven't seen the final results yet. If your hair turns out to look absolutely terrible, then you have some grounds to argue that the barber didn't hold up his end of the deal, but generally you work out your expectations beforehand and then settle for whatever you get as long as it reasonably fits the description of what you asked for.
Would you have any provision for taking back the money from a person who, essentially, lied about the quality of what they were going to produce?
Yes. Put your expectations in writing before work starts, then if you aren't satisfied with the results, find an arbitrator and show him that the work didn't meet expectations. Just like enforcing any other breach of contract.
No? Then that means that whoever, in your model, is paying in advance is risking their investment.
Whoa! Slow down there, hoss. I said yes.
But it's so simple! Don't do business with that person.
That'd be fine, if not for those annoying little laws saying I still can't copy or share certain information even though I'm not doing business with the person who holds a monopoly over it.
But you also should have no problem walking away from the creative works of people who choose a business model you don't like... since they obviously see the world differently (in a way very opposed to yours: they want influence over the use of their work), you surely wouldn't want to prop up them and their ill-conceived world view by supporting them or their work anyway, right? Why would you want to celebrate (by reading words, or listening to music, or watching images) an artist that you think is acting contrary to your sense of liberty? Just let them rot, since you don't like them anyway.
Ridiculous. If I don't like the politics of the guy who discovered the speed of light, should I not use that number? If I think Marconi was an asshole, should I stop using anything with a radio in it? A person's discoveries or creations are separate from that person. Enjoying the creation is not necessarily a celebration or support of the person.
You just want your entertainers to follow the burger-flipping model because you resent the ones that sometimes hit it big, and feel sorry for the ones that might seem creative, but can't pull it together to generate an audience large enough to live off of.
Er, no, you're way off. I've already explained to you why I want them to follow the money-for-labor model: because if they've already been paid for their work, they have no justification for telling me what I can or can't do with my own computer, CD burner, or internet connection in the future. The money-for-labor model is one that doesn't depend on stifling anyone's free speech.
So, someone should be paying an author as he types things? Or just when the chapter is finished? Or just when the manuscript is complete?
That's a detail he can work out with whoever's paying him, don't you think?
Who will pay that, before anyone has bought a copy, yet?
That's a strange question; you might as well ask who will pay the barber before anyone has gotten a haircut yet. You pay a barber to cut your hair, and you pay an author to write something. You don't know exactly what he'll come up with, just as you don't know exactly how your hair will look until it's done, but that's why you work out your expectations beforehand.
Now, it's a week later, and he hasn't "worked" for days. Just absurd for him to receive money next month as people start to discover and choose to buy his work, right?
Buying copies of a previously-created work is a relatively recent phenomenon whose only success has come from the fact that, for a time, it was easier to mass produce copies than it was for individuals to make their own copies.
If he wants to get paid next month, he can work next month. He already did last month's work last month, and if the amount he got paid wasn't enough, then he should've asked for more before he started working on it.
Would you be happy if all million people that will ever buy an artist's work all bought it, together, the same instant he stopped typing it? Would that suit your authors-are-the-same-as-burger-flippers model? If you're OK with that, then why do you care if the same million people make those purchases over the course of a week? Or a month? Or 25 years?
I don't. What I care about is when someone tells me I can't share or copy certain information because his business model requires that he's the only person who can do that. No one else demands that kind of control, because there are perfectly sensible business models that don't depend on it.
He invested the time and effort, and it may or may not pay off. His risk. Most will fail, some will succeed.
Don't you see how foolish that is? That's the same business model that a bum uses when he walks up to a car stopped at a traffic light, washes the windshield without asking, and expects the driver to pay him. Do the work first, pray that you get paid later.
Most people don't "invest" their time and effort without any guarantee that they'll be compensated for it. Some do (e.g. an entrepreneur starting up a new business), but they realize they're taking a big risk, that no one is obligated to come to them for anything, and that they'll have to compete to make money. But apparently competition goes out the window when the product being sold is a plastic disc with a certain sequence of bits on it.
Your preference is to make the risk (taken by the artist) always a surely losing effort. Nice empty world you're proposing, there.
Nonsense. If you think that, then you really need to read what I wrote again, because you've completely missed the point. My preference is to eliminate the risk by making sure the artist already has a paying audience when he starts working - just like a barber already has a paying customer when he starts cutting hair.
Just because you aren't creative enough to build something [...]
Ooh, I can play that game too: Just because your work isn't good enough that people want to pay you for it doesn't mean you get to stifle everyone else's free speech.
The Slashdot zeitgeist is that creators should live on pity handouts, like mimes, and only earn as much as they can stuff in their cheek pouches, like squirrels.
No, not really. I don't think I've ever seen anyone here opposed to compensating creators directly for their labor, for example.
Am I the only person that hates the little screens put on the outside of the shells of flip cell phones? The reason I buy a flip phone is because I want to protect the screen when it is in my pocket.
That's not the only reason to buy them. Flip phones are smaller (at least in the dimension that counts) than bar phones with the same screen size and button count, and they protect the buttons from being pressed in your pocket. I like being able to see who's calling, or just check the time, without unflipping the phone.
The "you shouldn't get to make money later, off of work you did yesterday" crowd is shrill, carping, ridiculous...
Nah, the opposite viewpoint is what's ridiculous. The guy flipping burgers at Wendy's doesn't get to just flip a few burgers when he starts, then kick back and collect royalties off of them for life + 70 years, so why should an artist or author? Let them get paid for their labor at the time they perform it, just like everyone else, and if they want to get paid some more, let them work some more.
TPMs are neither good nor bad. They are simply a way for the owner of the platform to measure the integrity of his/her platform, and to attest that integrity to a remote verifier. That's all it can do. [...] But fundamentally, if you control the hardware, you also control the mechanism for verifying any result.
Well, the thing is, the whole point of that attestation process is to prove to a third party that you're running the software they want you to be running. It doesn't help you at all, except for the fact that they might choose not to speak to you if they suspect you're running something else. But that's none of their business, is it?
What would really make TPM work for users, instead of against them, would be a "fake out" switch. That is, the ability for the owner of the PC to make his TPM chip attest to a software configuration that he isn't actually running. That way, you'd still get the advantages of TPM (hardware encryption with keys that can't be stolen), without the disadvantages (hardware-enforced DRM).
It'd essentially do for TPM what a user agent switcher does for web browsers. Today, if you go to a site and it says "Sorry, you can't get in unless you're running IE", you can turn on your UA switcher, and now the site thinks you're running IE. But tomorrow, maybe that site won't be satisfied with your User-Agent header; maybe it'll want a digital signature from your TPM chip proving that you're running IE 7.0 on Windows Vista. If you had a fake out switch, you could still access the site, even if you're running Firefox on Linux. That might upset the people who want to lock their sites to a specific software configuration, but they can go fuck themselves - this feature would be good for users, and that's what matters.
IMO, iTunes DRM (FairPlay) is probably the best DRM scheme on the market right now, I don't know a single person who has run into a DRM problem (I'm at 3/5 machines, and unregging one is simple). It is optional. Rather unabtrusive. No real problems, but then again I don't have a problem with rational DRM schemes, ones that don't hinder function.
Sure. But, just to reiterate, all you really know is that it doesn't hinder function yet. They can pull the rug out from under you at any time; if they do, then as you said, you'll only have yourself to blame for trusting them.
Mark me troll at will.
Side note: I, for one, am sick of these reverse-psychology moderation tricks, and I happily mod people down when they ask for it like this.
I think that part of you comment pretty much sums up what the groupthink of P2P proponents is. Artists are there to provide you with a service.
Uh... sure, I guess, just like barbers and mechanics. That's "service" as opposed to "product": the benefit they provide is through their effort, not a physical item. If they want to be paid for their effort, that's perfectly fine, and there are adequate ways for them to be paid for their effort without having to prevent anyone else from copying or sharing files.
Do you even leave a tip for them them when they pour you a beer at the local pub?
As a matter of fact, I do. The beer is a product, pouring the beer (and keeping the place clean, running the poker tournaments, etc.) is a service, and I pay for both. Is that clear now?
Um, you still don't get it. You can use all those files with any software. The network sharing changes affected all files. If you didn't like them, go use another piece of software.
Oh, really? Which other software can play Apple's protected AAC files? The fact that Apple hasn't let anyone else do that is precisely why people like DVD Jon need to crack it.
Um, examples, please? Are you talking about things like being able to burn one playlist 7 consecutive times instead of 10?
Yup.
Other than that, I am not aware of any changes that makes Apple's DRM more restrictive, unless you're talking about the waaaaay-old changes to iTunes that disabled the ability to do music sharing via IP [...] or the syncing changes in iTunes 2.0 [...] or disallowing music from easily being downloaded by others (as opposed to streamed) via iTunes, which, again, had nothing to do with DRM.
Well, first of all, I'd argue that those do have something to do with DRM: if not for DRM, you'd be able to use a third-party program to restore those features; but because there is DRM, you must rely on Apple's software to enjoy your purchased music, and any features they take out of their software are features you no longer have available without bypassing the DRM.
The fact that the restrictions can be bypassed seems irrelevant. Sure, you can change your playlist around to burn another copy (for now). And you can burn songs to CD, then rip them back unencrypted (for now). And no matter what happens, you'll always be able to make analog recordings. DRM doesn't keep music locked up forever, it just makes it inconvenient to enjoy music in ways The Man doesn't approve of. That's hardly an argument in its favor, though: "it's not as bad as it could be."
While your point stands in general with regard to DRM, Apple has not introduced any new restrictions that fundamentally limit what you can do, and instead has removed limitations that previously existed.
Sure, so far. But my point stands in regard to Apple's DRM as well. They have introduced new restrictions, and much more importantly, no one knows what they might do in the future. If you buy music from iTMS, you really only know what you'll be able to do with it for now. You might hope that since Apple hasn't done anything really bad in the past, they'll keep that up for the forseeable future, but in the end you just have to trust them.
And just like the vast majority of independent politicians out there, most artists won't even cover the cost of the payment/refund system they have to set up. Why would anyone ever support a new and unheard-of artist?
Why would anyone support a new and unheard-of mechanic, landscaper, hairstylist, architect, etc.? Hard to say. Is it therefore impossible for new people to enter service fields? I think not.
If you're new and you have a hard time making money because no one has heard of you, there are a variety of things you can do, such as lowering your prices so people feel more inclined to take a risk, or releasing some sample work for free. This problem is hardly new or unique to the copyright-based industries.
For that matter, do you really think it would be better if established artists could collect huge advances on a new album and then produce any old rubbish and take the money?
Nope. Again, there are various ways to deal with that, although I didn't go into the details because frankly, I get tired of explaining it all the time when it should be self-apparent after a few minutes' thought.
The most obvious possibility is to place the money in escrow until the work is finished, and have a third party judge whether it meets the terms which were set at the beginning. Another is to gradually release the money to the artist on a predetermined schedule, and have him release snapshots of his work to the contributors, who can vote on how well it's meeting the terms. I'm sure you can think of a few more.
Everyone who buys content from, e.g., iTunes, knows exactly what the restrictions are. No one is forcing them to buy it.
Close: they know what the restrictions are right now. They don't know what the restrictions will be tomorrow or next year. Apple has, in fact, issued updates to iTunes to tighten the restrictions on music that had already been purchased, and they may very well do so again in the future.
In spite of America's failings (the most obvious one about letting citizens own guns for the purpose of schoolyard shootings) I have to admire the balls Congress has in this situation. They just decimated the share value of a number of online gambling companies!
Er, I hope you're joking. American legislators are as worried as ever about the share value of American companies, but online casinos are run out of other countries (or from Indian reservations).
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Mondoarchive works pretty well for backing up a Linux system. It uses your existing kernel and other various OS parts to make a bootable set of backup disks (via Mindi Linux), which you can use to restore your partitions and files in the event of a crash.
Ah yes, the ever-so-important "rights" to (1) force your children to give birth against their will and become parents long before they're equipped to handle such responsibility, (2) maintain control over children even though you're incompetent, and (3) keep your children ignorant by sheltering them from facts and opinions you disagree with, have indeed been eroded. That's unquestionably a good thing, and I hope they're completely eliminated as soon as possible.
Er.. how about holding the child himself responsible? After all, he made the choice to commit the crime.
Indeed. Remember, we're talking about Apple here. Apple customers expect things to "just work", and they aren't afraid to pay for it. That means whatever kind of TV they have, they should be able to plug it in and have it work, just like the Series3 TiVo - except Apple customers won't balk at paying an extra $600 for the feature the way many TiVo users do.
AFAIK, with only the VOBs, you'll just get one huge chunk of video containing all the menus, the main movie, all the extras, etc., and you'll have to go in by hand to cut out the parts you don't want to keep. You need the IFO to tell you where different titles start and stop.
Actually, copy protection in games did go away for a while when publishers realized it was ineffective and inconvenient to players (a cracked copy is more fun to play than an official copy which asks you to look up the 4th word on page 15 of the manual every ten minutes), only to come back when publishers came across new methods that they thought would be effective. Today's provably ineffective DRM schemes will go away, and in the future they'll probably be replaced with new schemes that music publishers will consider effective, until those schemes in turn are defeated.
They will be DRM-free once the content providers realize DRM doesn't put a dent in piracy and only costs them money.
Wow, I don't see it that way at all. Yes, you have to turn over enough that the community can actually use the code you're giving back to them, and that seems perfectly reasonable to me. To give back modifications that are useless to the community because of patents or hardware DRM is to spit in the face of what the GPL is all about.
Actually, we do... your debit or credit cards probably have logos on the back like Star, Plus, Cirrus, Instant Cash, Interlink, etc. Those are debit networks, and when you use your debit card at a store and they give you the option to enter your PIN instead of signing, they're trying to get you to use those networks instead of the Visa/MC network (which charges higher fees). Before the Visa check card was introduced, that was the only way to pay electronically from your bank account.
YouTube's player has a huge problem: you can't skip forward. Google Video lets you skip to any part of the stream, but YouTube's tracking bar is useless for any part of the video that hasn't loaded yet.
Incorrect! The comment feature is still labeled as new, but it's been available for a while now. Look on the right side of the page, below the download button and the description of the video. There's a list of links, "Playlist - Details - From user - Related - Comments[New!] - Flag as inappropriate".
Al only knows it to a thousand places.
Again, this is a strange question to ask, because millions of other people have faced this same problem. How will a new barber, landscaper, architect, programmer, etc. line up paying customers if they haven't seen his work yet? Maybe they lower their prices so people feel better taking a risk on someone they don't know. Maybe they do a little work for free just to get samples of their work out there where people can see it. It's not exactly a trivial problem, but neither is it unique to artists, and I think artists are clever enough to overcome it just like everyone else.
If someone decides to pay him for his work, then his work is worth it to that person, by definition. Just like if you pay for a haircut, you've decided that the barber's time is worth $Y, even though you haven't seen the final results yet. If your hair turns out to look absolutely terrible, then you have some grounds to argue that the barber didn't hold up his end of the deal, but generally you work out your expectations beforehand and then settle for whatever you get as long as it reasonably fits the description of what you asked for.
Yes. Put your expectations in writing before work starts, then if you aren't satisfied with the results, find an arbitrator and show him that the work didn't meet expectations. Just like enforcing any other breach of contract.
Whoa! Slow down there, hoss. I said yes.
That'd be fine, if not for those annoying little laws saying I still can't copy or share certain information even though I'm not doing business with the person who holds a monopoly over it.
Ridiculous. If I don't like the politics of the guy who discovered the speed of light, should I not use that number? If I think Marconi was an asshole, should I stop using anything with a radio in it? A person's discoveries or creations are separate from that person. Enjoying the creation is not necessarily a celebration or support of the person.
Er, no, you're way off. I've already explained to you why I want them to follow the money-for-labor model: because if they've already been paid for their work, they have no justification for telling me what I can or can't do with my own computer, CD burner, or internet connection in the future. The money-for-labor model is one that doesn't depend on stifling anyone's free speech.
That's a detail he can work out with whoever's paying him, don't you think?
That's a strange question; you might as well ask who will pay the barber before anyone has gotten a haircut yet. You pay a barber to cut your hair, and you pay an author to write something. You don't know exactly what he'll come up with, just as you don't know exactly how your hair will look until it's done, but that's why you work out your expectations beforehand.
Buying copies of a previously-created work is a relatively recent phenomenon whose only success has come from the fact that, for a time, it was easier to mass produce copies than it was for individuals to make their own copies.
If he wants to get paid next month, he can work next month. He already did last month's work last month, and if the amount he got paid wasn't enough, then he should've asked for more before he started working on it.
I don't. What I care about is when someone tells me I can't share or copy certain information because his business model requires that he's the only person who can do that. No one else demands that kind of control, because there are perfectly sensible business models that don't depend on it.
Don't you see how foolish that is? That's the same business model that a bum uses when he walks up to a car stopped at a traffic light, washes the windshield without asking, and expects the driver to pay him. Do the work first, pray that you get paid later.
Most people don't "invest" their time and effort without any guarantee that they'll be compensated for it. Some do (e.g. an entrepreneur starting up a new business), but they realize they're taking a big risk, that no one is obligated to come to them for anything, and that they'll have to compete to make money. But apparently competition goes out the window when the product being sold is a plastic disc with a certain sequence of bits on it.
Nonsense. If you think that, then you really need to read what I wrote again, because you've completely missed the point. My preference is to eliminate the risk by making sure the artist already has a paying audience when he starts working - just like a barber already has a paying customer when he starts cutting hair.
Ooh, I can play that game too: Just because your work isn't good enough that people want to pay you for it doesn't mean you get to stifle everyone else's free speech.
No, not really. I don't think I've ever seen anyone here opposed to compensating creators directly for their labor, for example.
That's not the only reason to buy them. Flip phones are smaller (at least in the dimension that counts) than bar phones with the same screen size and button count, and they protect the buttons from being pressed in your pocket. I like being able to see who's calling, or just check the time, without unflipping the phone.
Nah, the opposite viewpoint is what's ridiculous. The guy flipping burgers at Wendy's doesn't get to just flip a few burgers when he starts, then kick back and collect royalties off of them for life + 70 years, so why should an artist or author? Let them get paid for their labor at the time they perform it, just like everyone else, and if they want to get paid some more, let them work some more.
They're better than McDonald's, but they're no Wendy's or A&W.
Well, the thing is, the whole point of that attestation process is to prove to a third party that you're running the software they want you to be running. It doesn't help you at all, except for the fact that they might choose not to speak to you if they suspect you're running something else. But that's none of their business, is it?
What would really make TPM work for users, instead of against them, would be a "fake out" switch. That is, the ability for the owner of the PC to make his TPM chip attest to a software configuration that he isn't actually running. That way, you'd still get the advantages of TPM (hardware encryption with keys that can't be stolen), without the disadvantages (hardware-enforced DRM).
It'd essentially do for TPM what a user agent switcher does for web browsers. Today, if you go to a site and it says "Sorry, you can't get in unless you're running IE", you can turn on your UA switcher, and now the site thinks you're running IE. But tomorrow, maybe that site won't be satisfied with your User-Agent header; maybe it'll want a digital signature from your TPM chip proving that you're running IE 7.0 on Windows Vista. If you had a fake out switch, you could still access the site, even if you're running Firefox on Linux. That might upset the people who want to lock their sites to a specific software configuration, but they can go fuck themselves - this feature would be good for users, and that's what matters.
Sure. But, just to reiterate, all you really know is that it doesn't hinder function yet. They can pull the rug out from under you at any time; if they do, then as you said, you'll only have yourself to blame for trusting them.
Side note: I, for one, am sick of these reverse-psychology moderation tricks, and I happily mod people down when they ask for it like this.
Uh... sure, I guess, just like barbers and mechanics. That's "service" as opposed to "product": the benefit they provide is through their effort, not a physical item. If they want to be paid for their effort, that's perfectly fine, and there are adequate ways for them to be paid for their effort without having to prevent anyone else from copying or sharing files.
As a matter of fact, I do. The beer is a product, pouring the beer (and keeping the place clean, running the poker tournaments, etc.) is a service, and I pay for both. Is that clear now?
Oh, really? Which other software can play Apple's protected AAC files? The fact that Apple hasn't let anyone else do that is precisely why people like DVD Jon need to crack it.
Yup.
Well, first of all, I'd argue that those do have something to do with DRM: if not for DRM, you'd be able to use a third-party program to restore those features; but because there is DRM, you must rely on Apple's software to enjoy your purchased music, and any features they take out of their software are features you no longer have available without bypassing the DRM.
The fact that the restrictions can be bypassed seems irrelevant. Sure, you can change your playlist around to burn another copy (for now). And you can burn songs to CD, then rip them back unencrypted (for now). And no matter what happens, you'll always be able to make analog recordings. DRM doesn't keep music locked up forever, it just makes it inconvenient to enjoy music in ways The Man doesn't approve of. That's hardly an argument in its favor, though: "it's not as bad as it could be."
Sure, so far. But my point stands in regard to Apple's DRM as well. They have introduced new restrictions, and much more importantly, no one knows what they might do in the future. If you buy music from iTMS, you really only know what you'll be able to do with it for now. You might hope that since Apple hasn't done anything really bad in the past, they'll keep that up for the forseeable future, but in the end you just have to trust them.
Why would anyone support a new and unheard-of mechanic, landscaper, hairstylist, architect, etc.? Hard to say. Is it therefore impossible for new people to enter service fields? I think not.
If you're new and you have a hard time making money because no one has heard of you, there are a variety of things you can do, such as lowering your prices so people feel more inclined to take a risk, or releasing some sample work for free. This problem is hardly new or unique to the copyright-based industries.
Nope. Again, there are various ways to deal with that, although I didn't go into the details because frankly, I get tired of explaining it all the time when it should be self-apparent after a few minutes' thought.
The most obvious possibility is to place the money in escrow until the work is finished, and have a third party judge whether it meets the terms which were set at the beginning. Another is to gradually release the money to the artist on a predetermined schedule, and have him release snapshots of his work to the contributors, who can vote on how well it's meeting the terms. I'm sure you can think of a few more.
Close: they know what the restrictions are right now. They don't know what the restrictions will be tomorrow or next year. Apple has, in fact, issued updates to iTunes to tighten the restrictions on music that had already been purchased, and they may very well do so again in the future.
Er, I hope you're joking. American legislators are as worried as ever about the share value of American companies, but online casinos are run out of other countries (or from Indian reservations).