With the iPhone, Apple vets apps, which (in theory) enforces this at the expense of competition.
In practice, of course, malware slips through Apple's haphazard censorship process anyway.
With the Android Marketplace, any scammer can pay the $20 and get their malware added to the place that people trust. If they only scam one person with it then they've made a profit.
Android at least has a security model that attempts to restrict the damage a malicious app can do. Apps are sandboxed and don't have access to other apps' data (except as permitted by those apps, which can enforce their own security models), and the user is warned at install time about the permissions an app is requesting. If that hot new fart app wants access to your SMS logs or the dialer, maybe you shouldn't install it.
Yes, paedophiles exist, and so does child porn, but the NUMBER of paedophiles hasn't increased, has it? If it has, nobody's saying why.
The raw number probably has, yes. If X% of people are pedophiles, then as the number of people goes up, so does the number of pedophiles.
Even the percentage may have gone up. That's because many disorders can be caused by childhood trauma: sources of trauma in childhood often become sources of attraction in adulthood. If one person is molested as a child and grows up to be a pedophile, and then he has multiple victims, he may create multiple pedophiles in the next generation.
Your overall point is right on, though. There still aren't enough pedophiles to justify the amount of hysteria, and obsessing over child porn does nothing at all to protect real live children anyway.
Look at the movie example - every person on the production crew earns an ordinary salary. For the most part they don't make a lot of money if the movie booms, and they don't lose anything if the movie busts. The production company can afford to pay them because it knows that some percentage of their movies will pay off, so they surf the peaks and the valleys.
Right: the production company is taking the risk, not the individual crew members. That doesn't change what I said. The risk is still there.
If you find someone to front you some money to play roulette, someone who'll take most of your winnings but let you off the hook if you lose, that doesn't mean you're not gambling. It just means you're gambling with someone else's money.
If you eliminated the incentive to create the movie, then nobody would get paid.
Of course, because getting paid is the incentive. That incentive exists under any system, as long as there's demand for new movies.
If you have to abolish the current system to try out yours, that just tells me that you're unable to compete with it.
It wouldn't be competing on a level playing field. The copyright-lottery model is subsidized by the money we spend to enforce copyright law and by the freedoms that law takes away.
If you want a fair comparison, why not abolish copyright and let people who choose that model bear the true costs of maintaining their position as the only distributor of copies? Why should everyone else have to give up their speech rights, technical innovations, and tax dollars just to prop up one particular business model? If that business model can't stand on its own, doesn't it deserve to fail and be replaced by one that can?
Name one [industry where pay-in-advance doesn't create mediocre works in general].
Accounting, mechanics, plumbing, teaching, medicine, landscaping, cooking... sorry, is that too many?
When you hire a plumber does he do exactly the job he was paid to do, or does he try to make your pipes a work of art on the off chance that you'll be so impressed that you'll throw more money at him?
He does exactly the job he was paid to do, and if he does it competently, that's not mediocre at all -- it's perfect.
When I go to a restaurant, I "pay in advance" by entering a sales contract as soon as I place an order. I specify what I want in general terms, and leave the creative decisions about presentation, spices and specific ingredients, etc. up to the kitchen. Generally it turns out pretty well.
With a bounty system you can only hire Peter and hope it turns out for the best, and that you don't get King Kong instead.
If you're really that concerned that you might not get what you paid for, then you can work out another payment arrangement that depends on some post-hoc measurement of quality. As long as you come to some kind of agreement before the work is done, the specific terms don't really matter: what matters is that there's an agreement to exchange work for money, and the people on both sides of that agreement are clearly identified.
Convenience and laziness are just another way of saying it is the best way to get something done for the least effort - ie it is efficient!
It's only efficient in a market that has already been seriously distorted. Without the expensive, stifling system of copyright law, it would not be efficient. Again, why should the rest of us have to sacrifice in order to make a business model that's ridiculous on its face seem efficient?
I want my government to establish systems that are convenient and work best when we don't have to do any work at all - that means that it is practical.
But that's not true of copyright at all. Copyright requires massive amounts of work: it's expensive
The fact is that a group of 100 highly paid innovative people could miss an idea that some guy in his garage figures out in his spare time.
If you can come up with that idea in your garage in your spare time, then clearly you don't need the incentive of a government-enforced monopoly to get you to do it. That's a great example of how the purpose of copyrights (and patents) shifts from enticing people to create new works, which is at least a legitimate goal, to rewarding the first person to do something that would've been done anyway and enriching them at everyone else's expense.
If those shows offend you so much, then don't watch them.
Not sure what you're talking about here. The shows don't offend me. The restrictions on my freedom (and on technological and artistic innovations) are what offends me, and I face those same restrictions whether I watch the shows or not.
What about artists who only have a few great hits (that would be most of them)? Most scientists don't even have one truly great discovery, and almost nobody has more than 1 or 2.
What about them? Do you think someone who can only write one good song deserves a free ride for the rest of his life?
I think they deserve to get paid a fair price for the time they spent writing that one good song, and then if they want more money after that, they should either come up with another good song or find another line of work. Same as anyone else in any other industry. A barber who gives one great haircut, then nothing but mediocre haircuts after that, is not going to end up a millionaire. Why should he?
Your system assigns zero value to people before they create a great work, and then it assigns great value to somebody who will almost certainly never produce another great work. Sure, they're more likely to do so than some others, but it amounts to a big lottery, with lots of people not getting any benefit or sponsorship of any kind.
No... the current, copyright-based system is the lottery. You invest time and money into something without knowing if it'll pay off. Many will enter, few will win.
My system lets everyone assign their own value: no one has to do a lick of work without knowing exactly what they'll be paid for it. You won't become a millionaire overnight by surprise, but you won't waste your effort on something you thought was profitable only to find out that no one wants it, either.
Sure, they'd do a decent job so that they get future assignments, but pay-in-advance tends to create mediocre works in general.
Except in the thousands of industries where it doesn't, you mean?
Virtually all high-wage jobs depend on IP in some form.
They don't inherently depend on IP, they've just settled on that model out of convenience and laziness. The only people who would truly be out of a job in a world without copyright are copyright lawyers.
You are right, I was wrong. But you were still wrong. The second break in your example shouldn't be there.
Actually, the LINQ example was the one that was wrong. The first C# example, and the I7 example, find the first matching menu item and uncheck it. The LINQ example unchecks all matching items, which isn't what I meant to do (but is probably more realistic).
The I7 version of the LINQ example would be:
now every menu item in the Style menu corresponding to a font style which is not provided by the current font is unchecked;
Anyway, the correct way to do the non-linq version in this case is to break out the inner for loop to a method of its own.
Another way to say that would be that one statement in I7, using relative clauses, can express as much as a loop plus a whole separate method in C#.
"if there is a woman who loves a man who owns a dog in a park that contains a tree next to a bench that is heavier than most benches"... that's at least six loops in C#. Six separate methods.
The linq expression is actually contextually equivalent to the I7 example you gave. There simply is no difference in abstraction.
There is: see the new I7 example above and compare it to the LINQ example. LINQ still talks about objects one at a time. I7 talks in generalizations.
So using a Foreach construct in C# loses readability? But if you look at the I7 example, that is exactly what it is doing. Sure, it isn't called.ForEach, but it damn well is a construct to apply something on all items in a list.
Actually, that original I7 code was a construct to find a single object, give it a name for future reference ("X"), and then do something to it.
The new I7 code above is sort-of a construct to apply something to all items in a list, but not explicitly. It doesn't say "for each matching object X, do this to X". It says "I want this condition to be true" and lets the compiler figure out how to make that happen.
But anyway. Yes, I think it does lose readability. I've been using C# for a lot longer than I've been using I7, and written a lot more C# code than I7 code, but this:
False, 17 USC 117 only allows adaptation only with the authorization of the copyright holder.
You've seriously misunderstood what the law says.
There would be no point in writing a law that says "you can make adaptations with the copyright holder's permission", because you can do that anyway. The normal state of affairs is that you need permission to make adaptations or other derivative works. The point of 17 USC 117 is to make an exception to the normal state of affairs.
I put the pertinent part in bold.
Let me clear that up for you: "Adaptations so prepared may be transferred only with the authorization of the copyright owner."
You can create the adaptation without the copyright holder's authorization. What you can't do is "transfer" it, but "transfer" in this case doesn't mean physically transfer, it means transfer ownership. Section 117 allows you to have someone else make the adaptation for you ("it is not an infringement [...] to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation"). You just can't make one for yourself and then give or sell it to someone else.
Besides, your non-Linq example should be like this.
No, it was right... your version unchecks an item corresponding to a style that is provided by the current font. Mine unchecks an item whose style is not provided.
The above is highly readable, and quite compact. Probably my favorite.
Yes, but it's still operating at a lower level of abstraction. In I7, you can speak in generalities and let the compiler figure out when it needs to make a loop; you can also use the same relation syntax for different relation types (some implemented as properties, some as 2D truth tables, some as boolean functions). In C#, you explicitly write as many loops as you need -- unless you're using the.ForEach() method which destroys readability -- and you explicitly manage the implementation of your object relationships.
So you want a system where every piece of work is delayed until content producers can gather up money to pay for the work ?
Ideally, yes.
And you think this can compete with the existing model in being enough of an incentive for people to produce better creative content?
Yes. People who do a good job can command higher prices, just like in every other industry.
Like I said before, what reason is there to think artists can't muster up the motivation to do good work without special incentives that involve the rest of us giving up part of our free speech? Everyone else does it.
What I meant to say was I pay for goods when I have enough of a reason to believe that they are worth it, and I procure services with favorable reputations whenever possible. If its not possible to know before hand, then well, I cant do anything about that.
Sure. But pretty much everyone does that too, and new producers still manage to enter the market. How do they do it? By lowering their prices and/or putting out some free samples. The problem of how to convince people to pay you for doing stuff is one that people have been solving for centuries.
But this is fine on a small scale. If you require 200 million dollars to create an operating system, you cant rely on this model.
Sure you can. If there's $200 million worth of demand for a new operating system, the money will be there: the free market is great at connecting supply with demand. If you have a hard time finding people to pay you, then maybe they don't really want a new operating system after all.
To be more specific what is incentive to produce better and better work?
The prospect of getting paid more, faster, for work you do in the future.
Is being compensated in proportion with distribution a bad thing?
Yes. It encourages overproduction, enticing producers to gamble, and it depends on passing laws that slow the pace of artistic progress (can't build on the works of others) and place needless restrictions on consumers (can't share certain numbers) and technological innovators (can't add certain features).
But I don't see where you get the argument that piracy has positive consequences for consumers. Lets say I like to listen to Radiohead and enjoy their music. If there were a large amount of piracy of their work and they got little to no revenue from sales, they would have to shut down and either leave the music business or come up with a new way to get paid.
First, most bands make little or nothing from album sales, they make their money from touring. The album is essentially advertising for concert tickets and merchandise. Wider distribution means more advertising, and if pirates are doing the distribution for you, then it's free advertising.
Second, one person pirating is not the same as everyone pirating. One person choosing to download a song instead of buying a copy is not going to make the band go broke.
Third, people tend to support artists they like in some form anyway. Radiohead offered an album for any price people cared to pay, including zero, and it brought in more money than any previous album. Even with widespread piracy, you'd still have people buying albums, tickets, and merchandise.
Even a band that doesn't tour, doesn't sell merchandise, and doesn't have the kind of fans who buy things just to support them can still make money by selling their labor, as long as people want them to keep recording. If they can't make money from any of those things, then maybe they aren't cut out to be professional musicians.
Finally, remember the context. We're talking about the positive consequences of piracy as compared to the alternative, which is boycotting copyrighted works. A boycott has exactly the same effect of depriving the artist of money. The difference is that a boycott
If you have a choice of $15 and $0 for an album that you like, quite a few people with questionable ethics would go for $0 (and thus taking money away from artists).
And yet when Radiohead offered that exact choice, they ended up making more than they'd made on any previous album.
A friend of mine has around 60,000 MP3s. Even if he could have found them all on used CDs, those CDs would cost over $20,000, a sum he would not and could not have spent on music. The majority of artists in his collection didn't lose a dime.
As I said earlier in the thread one of the main reasons they enter the studio is they are aware of the protections they would enjoy if they created something worth paying for. If they knew the information they created was going to be effectively worth $0 once they left the studio, they might not have agreed to record any songs.
But they do know that. They know their music can be copied as soon as it's released to the public. Anyone who's ever seen a tape recorder or a CD burner knows that.
They choose to go ahead with the copyright-lottery-based business model because they think they'll sell enough copies to turn a profit. Well, maybe they won't: piracy is just one of many reasons they might not sell as many as they'd like. When you gamble, you must be prepared to lose.
Theories/experiments are not developed/performed because the scientist enters into the field expecting to get paid for the result.
Exactly! Scientists get it: they expect to be paid for their labor, which can't be copied, instead of the information they produce, which can. Why don't artists get it?
Also, Theories/experiments are not analogous to movies,movies.
They're information that takes a lot of human effort to produce originally and can be copied at no cost afterward. That's analogous enough for the purpose of this discussion.
You think Microsoft is going to hire 1000 engineers and pay them $100,000/yr for their labor to create software and then just wait for $5 contributions from 20 million people to come in
Not quite. Why should Microsoft pay engineers to write software before they know who's going to pay Microsoft for it? That's just more gambling.
just so _one_ person with access to the binaries can then pirate the software to 600 million people?
It's not piracy if the creators have already been paid. Just like it's not piracy to copy the tax forms an accountant gives you: he gets paid for doing the work in the first place, not for each copy.
I personally would NEVER pay for anything in advance that I haven't sampled/'test driven' (in whatever legal way possible) or heard good things about from people who have tried it before me.
Then you must have a pretty austere life. Every time you hire someone to perform a service -- cut your hair, fix your car -- you're implicitly "paying in advance". You might not hand over the money immediately, but you enter a contract and you're obligated to pay once it's done.
As for waiting to hear good reviews of a new producer: good! Nothing would stop you from continuing to do that. If you have doubts about a particular artist, then let more adventurous customers pay him first and see if he does quality work. New artists can lower their prices to counter that effect, or they can release portfolios to demonstrate their talent.
There are millions of movies, music albums, books, software and other items protected by copyright. If you want to show your economic model which can replace copyright law is sustainable you have to show that it can work for _all_ of them.
Nonsense. A different system would produce different sets of works.
One reason is that copyright makes it illegal to distribute certain works, so some artists decide to produce something else other than what they really have in mind.
Another is that many items protected by copyright probably shouldn't have been made. Howard the Duck had a budget of $36 million, but moviegoers were only willing to spend $10 million to see it. Under a pay-for-production model, the producer either would've found a way to shoot it for less than $10 million, or would've cancelled the project and made something else.
The set of works we see today is not the "right" set of works in any objective sense. It's just the result of one particular set of incen
Uh, if it is so lousy, then why are so many people eager to download it?
You missed the point he was making. Try rereading the part he quoted. Here it is again for your convenience:
Content creators invest millions each year into creating new content. A significant proportion of music,movies,etc are never going to become hits. The major incentive to continue pumping out new content is the hope that one of those investments will turn into a hit and pay off.
"Tons of crap" refers to the "significant proportion" of works that are "never going to become hits": someone invested their own time and money making those works, but there isn't enough demand to justify that investment, so the end up losing money. The copyright-lottery-based business model encourages people to churn out tons of crap, whether there's a market for it or not, in the hopes that some tiny piece of it will become a hit and make up for the money they lost on everything else.
A business model based on identifying paying customers and then performing the work would not produce crap that people are unwilling to buy.
Howard the Duck cost $36 million to make, but consumers were only willing to spend $10 million at the box office. The copyright lottery resulted in a $26 million loss there, which meant some other movie had to make at least a $26 million profit to keep the studio afloat (i.e. people who see good movies have to pay extra to counter the losses incurred on bad movies). Under a more sensible business model, the producer would have either found a way to shoot that movie for under $10 million, or canned it and moved on to something people actually wanted to see.
However when you are making your case before a Judge you need to have all the cards on your side. Or you will not enact the change you desire.
Copyright isn't going to be changed by a judge, it's going to be changed by the legislature. And they're not going to care whether the people demanding change are pirates or boycotters, they're just going to care whether there are enough of them to sway an election.
Off the cuff, so if your employer said: "You only need $500 a week to get by..." Would you still agree with what you said?
Absolutely.
See, in employment, the negotiation comes before any work is done. If a potential employer thinks I only need $500 a week and is unwilling to pay more, I'm going to say "no thanks" and look for a better offer.
It would be very, very stupid of me to work all week without discussing pay, and wait until the end of the week to start pleading with my boss to pay me more than $500. I'd have no leverage in the negotiation, since I've already done the work, and he'd have no obligation to pay me anything at all, since I did the work voluntarily without anyone promising to pay for it.
So we discuss pay up front, and we form a contract. Now if I do X hours of work, I know I'm entitled to be paid $Y, and if he doesn't pay, I can take him to court and show the judge his signature. If he decides $Y is too much, he can try to negotiate different terms for work I do in the future, but he still owes me $Y for the work I did under the old terms, because that's the amount he already agreed to pay.
If the RIAA were playing records in the public square and then walking around charging people for happening to be there listening to it, I'd say you have a point.
They essentially are. They broadcast music over the radio, on TV, etc., and then "charge" for it not by demanding money, but by demanding restrictions on what I can do with my own property unless I pay them money. Remember the scandal over "home taping"? Why should my right to use the record button on my own stereo require someone else's permission?
Nobody is forcing you to download songs you don't want.
No, but they try to force other people not to communicate certain facts to me, in an attempt to force me to pay someone I've never met for labor I never requested.
However, there are lots of other industries where the primary value of an employee ISN'T in their labor, but in the information they produce. Most sciences and entertainment industries fall into that category.
Not quite. Their primary value is in their ability to produce that information, i.e., their labor.
A real musician is a better artist than me, not because of the songs he has recorded in the past -- I can produce copies of his albums just as well as he can -- but because of his ability to produce songs in the future. One hour of his time in the studio is worth far more than one hour of my time. But once he leaves the studio, my time spent distributing copies is just as valuable as his; if he tries to make a living from distribution instead of production, he's in a market where he has no advantage except legal bullying.
Likewise, a scientist who measures the speed of light is valuable not because of the number he came up with, but because of the insight that he used to measure it. That insight cannot be copied, and it'll be valuable in the future when he's working on something else: when someone wants a new physical constant measured, that scientist will be first on the list of candidates. But the number itself has essentially no economic value... or do you think we ought to pay every time we use that number?
The myth is that nobody would make major production movies if there were no copyright law.
Fixed that for you.;)
Making a movie like LOTR costs many millions of dollars. Nobody does something like that for fun. [...] Nobody is going to pay to commission a work like that just for their personal edification, either. [...] Ok, go ahead and explain how to fund the next LOTR or whatever without the use of IP laws.
I agree, no single person is going to pay to commission a work like LOTR. But millions of people together will. That's ultimately how movies are funded today, just not as directly.
The Fellowship of the Ring grossed around $870 million worldwide. Varying ticket prices and multiple viewings make it hard to gauge how many people bought tickets, but it's probably somewhere between 50 and 100 million. The movie had a budget of $93 million: if 10-20% of people who were interested in seeing it had contributed an average of $10 each, they could have funded the movie in advance.
Should we force all sorts of manufacturers in general to hand out copies of popular product designs for free after those designs have been in production for more than X years?
No, just like we shouldn't force artists to hand out copies of anything for free. If you want to charge $20 for a copy of a CD, go right ahead.
But we absolutely should stop them from interfering with other people's attempts to distribute those copies themselves. If your $20 CD isn't any better than the torrent I can download for free, you deserve to go out of business.
You may not have asked her to record her material but if you are downloading and listening to Lady Gaga's music you are obviously not indifferent to her work since you value it enough to put some effort (and a small amount of risk) into obtaining it illegally.
Sure, but how do you get from "I'm not indifferent to her work" to "I'm obligated to give her some of my money"?
I use the English language every day. Do I owe money to the descendants of everyone who invented the words I use?
I use electronics every day that rely on precise values of physical constants such as the speed of light. Does that mean I owe money to the descendants of the people who measured the speed of light?
I'm certainly grateful for the work they did, but they chose on their own to do that work, and if they wanted to get paid for their time, that's something they could have arranged when they did the work. It's not my responsibility to pay them, months or years or decades later, for work they did without any input from me.
If you are not a consumer of her content, then you are free to ignore her work. Commercial artists record songs to sell them. If you are a consumer then you are expected to pay.
Yes, she expects me to pay and you expect me to pay, but why do your expectations create an obligation on my part?
If I mow your lawn without asking, merely expecting that you'll pay me once you've seen what a good job I did, does that mean you're obligated to pay? Or does it just mean I'm a fool who gave his labor away for free?
If you don't want to live by the current rules, then be prepared to face the consequences.
By consequences, I presume you mean the chance of being sued for infringement, which is about as likely as being struck by lightning. Not much preparation needed.
Since digital content can't be technically stolen, you need copyright law to protect it.
Nonsense. Artists don't need to protect the content they produce, any more than lawyers need to protect the things they say in court, or accountants need to protect the numbers they write down on tax forms. The real value is in their labor.
I have no clue what "free speech" is doing in this argument. This is about entertainment, not oppression.
Copyright is a restriction on speech. I'm surprised you didn't realize that.
Why are you demanding that there shouldn't be a way whereby artists can get compensated by selling their goods and their rights protected through copyright?
Because copyright law restricts everyone, whether or not they choose to use copyright themselves. Regardless of what business model I use to earn a living, there are still bits I'm not allowed to share and equipment I'm not allowed to have.
Surely there can be more than one business model so that it works for everyone?
Only if they can all compete on a level playing field. Since the business model of selling copies is given special protection by the government -- everyone else's speech is restricted in order to make it easier for you to sell copies -- what would be a similar way to protect the work-for-pay business model? Maybe force everyone to spend $X a year on artistic production whether they want to or not?
If the current business model is a failure then the companies will die out. Thats how the free market is supposed to work. Why does it matter to you if they content producers stay afloat?
I enjoy some of the content they produce, and I would rather see them adapt now so they're able to keep producing it, instead of clinging to a failed model and going bankrupt.
So, where does the money to pay the artists come from?
From some subset of the people who benefit from the artists' work. Mostly, those are the same people who buy copies today (who benefit by gaining access to a new work), although there are others who'd also have an incentive to pay (e.g. a Blu-Ray player manufacturer benefits a little bit from every new movie that comes out on Blu-Ray).
For example, I'd probably do something like this in python:
for item in filter(lambda x: x.Checked, styleMenu):
if item.Style not in currentFont.ProvidedStyles:
item.Checked = false
Yes, but this isn't much different from the C# examples I gave. It's still expressed in terms of "loop over these objects, then if any of them matches this condition, do this to it". That's a step below "do this to everything matching the condition". A chain of relative clauses in Inform 7 lets you express in a single, straightforward line what would take multiple nested loops in another language.
That only works if you have the chance and the ability to prove that you really are boycotting - otherwise you'll just be accused of being a pirate anyway.
There are also other ways to demonstrate nobility: living by the same rules you expect others to live by, for instance. If you work in a field affected by copyright, but you earn a living without relying on the ability to restrict copies, then you're putting your money where your mouth is.
Finally, is it really such a big deal if you're suspected of having "selfish motives"? Everything is at least partly selfish anyway. I don't just want more freedom for other people, I want more freedom for myself too.
I see your point -- I think that reads pretty clearly, but maybe that's only because I'm used to it. What do you think?
It's still working at a lower level of abstraction. I think in generalizations like "do this to every X" or "if there is a Y", but even Ruby requires me to code in terms of loops, iterating over a set of objects one at a time.
It's not as clear how and why this works -- "not provided by the current font" -- how does Inform know what you're talking about here? English is pretty big and ambiguous.
Some relations, properties, etc. (like containment) are included as part of the standard world model, but you'd need to define the others first: [General definitions...]
A font is a kind of thing.
The current font is a font that varies.
A font style is a kind of thing.
Provision relates various fonts to various font styles. The verb to provide (it provides, they provide, it is provided, it is providing) implies the provision relation.
A menu item is a kind of thing. A menu item can be checked or unchecked. It is usually unchecked.
Correspondence relates various things to one thing. The verb to correspond (it corresponds to, they correspond to, it is corresponded to, it is corresponding to) implies the correspondence relation.
A menu is a kind of thing.
[Some sample definitions for specific objects...]
Bold is a font style.
Courier is a font providing Bold.
The Style menu is a menu. The Bold item is a menu item in the Style menu, corresponding to Bold.
What crap. A TON of pirated content happens to be recent movies, games, music, books, etc. Your argument is intellectually dishonest.
No, it's quite honest. Don't you think the people who hold the copyrights on works released this year will still expect to be paid for copies ten or twenty years from now? Why would they act any differently from the people who hold copyright on works from past decades?
Besides, expecting to be paid today for work I did a year ago, a month ago, or a week ago is no better. It's still an attempt to enforce a contract on someone who wasn't a party to it at the time. I didn't ask Lady Gaga to record "Poker Face", so regardless of whether I listen to it or download it, why would I have any obligation to pay her for that effort?
Content creators invest millions each year into creating new content. A significant proportion of music,movies,etc are never going to become hits. The major incentive to continue pumping out new content is the hope that one of those investments will turn into a hit and pay off. That is the current business model in existence.
Yes, it's a stupid framework that barely qualifies to be called a business model. It's like calling "lottery player" a career. The major incentive to continue buying lottery tickets is the hope that you'll win the jackpot... but you probably won't. Why play the copyright lottery when you could be getting paid directly for creating art?
The incentive of earning a lot of money seems to work in motivating people to create better content.
You know what works just fine as an incentive in every other industry? The incentive of being paid for doing quality work. The best lawyers command a higher rate than the worst lawyers. The best carpenters get more work and get paid more for it. What makes you think artists can't muster up the motivation to do good work without special incentives that involve the rest of us giving up part of our free speech?
So where are the "information wants to be free"-pirates who are hiring people to create content they like?
They're on sites like Sellaband and Kickstarter.
Then they can exchange this information all day long on their terms.
Surely you've noticed that they can already exchange any information all day long on their terms. The question is, will content producers adapt to that reality, or will they remain in denial with a business model that depends on being the sole source of copies?
If the situation was one-on-one then not doing the work until paid would be the pragmatic choice. However, with multiple parties some will pay and some will not but the work was still performed.
Again, that work is only performed when the artist chooses to perform it. No one's forcing him to do anything.
It doesn't matter how many parties there are, or how many of them pay. What matters is how much money they pay in total.
If the artist needs $500 to live on this week, it doesn't matter whether he finds one person to pay him $500 or five hundred people to pay him $1 each. It also doesn't matter if after he's collected that $500, another thousand or million people enjoy his art for free: he's already been paid a price he considers fair for his effort.
Slashdot Mirror
With the iPhone, Apple vets apps, which (in theory) enforces this at the expense of competition.
In practice, of course, malware slips through Apple's haphazard censorship process anyway.
With the Android Marketplace, any scammer can pay the $20 and get their malware added to the place that people trust. If they only scam one person with it then they've made a profit.
Android at least has a security model that attempts to restrict the damage a malicious app can do. Apps are sandboxed and don't have access to other apps' data (except as permitted by those apps, which can enforce their own security models), and the user is warned at install time about the permissions an app is requesting. If that hot new fart app wants access to your SMS logs or the dialer, maybe you shouldn't install it.
More seriously, app stores are a problem if they are the only way to install software.
Luckily, with Android, they're not.
Yes, paedophiles exist, and so does child porn, but the NUMBER of paedophiles hasn't increased, has it? If it has, nobody's saying why.
The raw number probably has, yes. If X% of people are pedophiles, then as the number of people goes up, so does the number of pedophiles.
Even the percentage may have gone up. That's because many disorders can be caused by childhood trauma: sources of trauma in childhood often become sources of attraction in adulthood. If one person is molested as a child and grows up to be a pedophile, and then he has multiple victims, he may create multiple pedophiles in the next generation.
Your overall point is right on, though. There still aren't enough pedophiles to justify the amount of hysteria, and obsessing over child porn does nothing at all to protect real live children anyway.
This is hardly the case.
Look at the movie example - every person on the production crew earns an ordinary salary. For the most part they don't make a lot of money if the movie booms, and they don't lose anything if the movie busts. The production company can afford to pay them because it knows that some percentage of their movies will pay off, so they surf the peaks and the valleys.
Right: the production company is taking the risk, not the individual crew members. That doesn't change what I said. The risk is still there.
If you find someone to front you some money to play roulette, someone who'll take most of your winnings but let you off the hook if you lose, that doesn't mean you're not gambling. It just means you're gambling with someone else's money.
If you eliminated the incentive to create the movie, then nobody would get paid.
Of course, because getting paid is the incentive. That incentive exists under any system, as long as there's demand for new movies.
If you have to abolish the current system to try out yours, that just tells me that you're unable to compete with it.
It wouldn't be competing on a level playing field. The copyright-lottery model is subsidized by the money we spend to enforce copyright law and by the freedoms that law takes away.
If you want a fair comparison, why not abolish copyright and let people who choose that model bear the true costs of maintaining their position as the only distributor of copies? Why should everyone else have to give up their speech rights, technical innovations, and tax dollars just to prop up one particular business model? If that business model can't stand on its own, doesn't it deserve to fail and be replaced by one that can?
Name one [industry where pay-in-advance doesn't create mediocre works in general].
Accounting, mechanics, plumbing, teaching, medicine, landscaping, cooking... sorry, is that too many?
When you hire a plumber does he do exactly the job he was paid to do, or does he try to make your pipes a work of art on the off chance that you'll be so impressed that you'll throw more money at him?
He does exactly the job he was paid to do, and if he does it competently, that's not mediocre at all -- it's perfect.
When I go to a restaurant, I "pay in advance" by entering a sales contract as soon as I place an order. I specify what I want in general terms, and leave the creative decisions about presentation, spices and specific ingredients, etc. up to the kitchen. Generally it turns out pretty well.
With a bounty system you can only hire Peter and hope it turns out for the best, and that you don't get King Kong instead.
If you're really that concerned that you might not get what you paid for, then you can work out another payment arrangement that depends on some post-hoc measurement of quality. As long as you come to some kind of agreement before the work is done, the specific terms don't really matter: what matters is that there's an agreement to exchange work for money, and the people on both sides of that agreement are clearly identified.
Convenience and laziness are just another way of saying it is the best way to get something done for the least effort - ie it is efficient!
It's only efficient in a market that has already been seriously distorted. Without the expensive, stifling system of copyright law, it would not be efficient. Again, why should the rest of us have to sacrifice in order to make a business model that's ridiculous on its face seem efficient?
I want my government to establish systems that are convenient and work best when we don't have to do any work at all - that means that it is practical.
But that's not true of copyright at all. Copyright requires massive amounts of work: it's expensive
The fact is that a group of 100 highly paid innovative people could miss an idea that some guy in his garage figures out in his spare time.
If you can come up with that idea in your garage in your spare time, then clearly you don't need the incentive of a government-enforced monopoly to get you to do it. That's a great example of how the purpose of copyrights (and patents) shifts from enticing people to create new works, which is at least a legitimate goal, to rewarding the first person to do something that would've been done anyway and enriching them at everyone else's expense.
If those shows offend you so much, then don't watch them.
Not sure what you're talking about here. The shows don't offend me. The restrictions on my freedom (and on technological and artistic innovations) are what offends me, and I face those same restrictions whether I watch the shows or not.
What about artists who only have a few great hits (that would be most of them)? Most scientists don't even have one truly great discovery, and almost nobody has more than 1 or 2.
What about them? Do you think someone who can only write one good song deserves a free ride for the rest of his life?
I think they deserve to get paid a fair price for the time they spent writing that one good song, and then if they want more money after that, they should either come up with another good song or find another line of work. Same as anyone else in any other industry. A barber who gives one great haircut, then nothing but mediocre haircuts after that, is not going to end up a millionaire. Why should he?
Your system assigns zero value to people before they create a great work, and then it assigns great value to somebody who will almost certainly never produce another great work. Sure, they're more likely to do so than some others, but it amounts to a big lottery, with lots of people not getting any benefit or sponsorship of any kind.
No... the current, copyright-based system is the lottery. You invest time and money into something without knowing if it'll pay off. Many will enter, few will win.
My system lets everyone assign their own value: no one has to do a lick of work without knowing exactly what they'll be paid for it. You won't become a millionaire overnight by surprise, but you won't waste your effort on something you thought was profitable only to find out that no one wants it, either.
Sure, they'd do a decent job so that they get future assignments, but pay-in-advance tends to create mediocre works in general.
Except in the thousands of industries where it doesn't, you mean?
Virtually all high-wage jobs depend on IP in some form.
They don't inherently depend on IP, they've just settled on that model out of convenience and laziness. The only people who would truly be out of a job in a world without copyright are copyright lawyers.
You are right, I was wrong. But you were still wrong. The second break in your example shouldn't be there.
Actually, the LINQ example was the one that was wrong. The first C# example, and the I7 example, find the first matching menu item and uncheck it. The LINQ example unchecks all matching items, which isn't what I meant to do (but is probably more realistic).
The I7 version of the LINQ example would be:
now every menu item in the Style menu corresponding to a font style which is not provided by the current font is unchecked;
Anyway, the correct way to do the non-linq version in this case is to break out the inner for loop to a method of its own.
Another way to say that would be that one statement in I7, using relative clauses, can express as much as a loop plus a whole separate method in C#.
"if there is a woman who loves a man who owns a dog in a park that contains a tree next to a bench that is heavier than most benches"... that's at least six loops in C#. Six separate methods.
The linq expression is actually contextually equivalent to the I7 example you gave. There simply is no difference in abstraction.
There is: see the new I7 example above and compare it to the LINQ example. LINQ still talks about objects one at a time. I7 talks in generalizations.
So using a Foreach construct in C# loses readability? But if you look at the I7 example, that is exactly what it is doing. Sure, it isn't called .ForEach, but it damn well is a construct to apply something on all items in a list.
Actually, that original I7 code was a construct to find a single object, give it a name for future reference ("X"), and then do something to it.
The new I7 code above is sort-of a construct to apply something to all items in a list, but not explicitly. It doesn't say "for each matching object X, do this to X". It says "I want this condition to be true" and lets the compiler figure out how to make that happen.
But anyway. Yes, I think it does lose readability. I've been using C# for a lot longer than I've been using I7, and written a lot more C# code than I7 code, but this:
styleMenu.Items.ForEach(i=> i.Checked &= !currentFont.ProvidedStyles.Contains(i.CorrespondingStyle)
still takes me longer to parse than this:
now every menu item in the Style menu corresponding to a font style which is not provided by the current font is unchecked;
False, 17 USC 117 only allows adaptation only with the authorization of the copyright holder.
You've seriously misunderstood what the law says.
There would be no point in writing a law that says "you can make adaptations with the copyright holder's permission", because you can do that anyway. The normal state of affairs is that you need permission to make adaptations or other derivative works. The point of 17 USC 117 is to make an exception to the normal state of affairs.
I put the pertinent part in bold.
Let me clear that up for you: "Adaptations so prepared may be transferred only with the authorization of the copyright owner."
You can create the adaptation without the copyright holder's authorization. What you can't do is "transfer" it, but "transfer" in this case doesn't mean physically transfer, it means transfer ownership. Section 117 allows you to have someone else make the adaptation for you ("it is not an infringement [...] to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation"). You just can't make one for yourself and then give or sell it to someone else.
As for modifications, that breaks copyright.
False. Modifying software ("creating an adaptation") to make it work on your hardware is explicitly allowed by 17 USC 117.
Besides, your non-Linq example should be like this.
No, it was right... your version unchecks an item corresponding to a style that is provided by the current font. Mine unchecks an item whose style is not provided.
The above is highly readable, and quite compact. Probably my favorite.
Yes, but it's still operating at a lower level of abstraction. In I7, you can speak in generalities and let the compiler figure out when it needs to make a loop; you can also use the same relation syntax for different relation types (some implemented as properties, some as 2D truth tables, some as boolean functions). In C#, you explicitly write as many loops as you need -- unless you're using the .ForEach() method which destroys readability -- and you explicitly manage the implementation of your object relationships.
So you want a system where every piece of work is delayed until content producers can gather up money to pay for the work ?
Ideally, yes.
And you think this can compete with the existing model in being enough of an incentive for people to produce better creative content?
Yes. People who do a good job can command higher prices, just like in every other industry.
Like I said before, what reason is there to think artists can't muster up the motivation to do good work without special incentives that involve the rest of us giving up part of our free speech? Everyone else does it.
What I meant to say was I pay for goods when I have enough of a reason to believe that they are worth it, and I procure services with favorable reputations whenever possible. If its not possible to know before hand, then well, I cant do anything about that.
Sure. But pretty much everyone does that too, and new producers still manage to enter the market. How do they do it? By lowering their prices and/or putting out some free samples. The problem of how to convince people to pay you for doing stuff is one that people have been solving for centuries.
But this is fine on a small scale. If you require 200 million dollars to create an operating system, you cant rely on this model.
Sure you can. If there's $200 million worth of demand for a new operating system, the money will be there: the free market is great at connecting supply with demand. If you have a hard time finding people to pay you, then maybe they don't really want a new operating system after all.
To be more specific what is incentive to produce better and better work?
The prospect of getting paid more, faster, for work you do in the future.
Is being compensated in proportion with distribution a bad thing?
Yes. It encourages overproduction, enticing producers to gamble, and it depends on passing laws that slow the pace of artistic progress (can't build on the works of others) and place needless restrictions on consumers (can't share certain numbers) and technological innovators (can't add certain features).
But I don't see where you get the argument that piracy has positive consequences for consumers. Lets say I like to listen to Radiohead and enjoy their music. If there were a large amount of piracy of their work and they got little to no revenue from sales, they would have to shut down and either leave the music business or come up with a new way to get paid.
First, most bands make little or nothing from album sales, they make their money from touring. The album is essentially advertising for concert tickets and merchandise. Wider distribution means more advertising, and if pirates are doing the distribution for you, then it's free advertising.
Second, one person pirating is not the same as everyone pirating. One person choosing to download a song instead of buying a copy is not going to make the band go broke.
Third, people tend to support artists they like in some form anyway. Radiohead offered an album for any price people cared to pay, including zero, and it brought in more money than any previous album. Even with widespread piracy, you'd still have people buying albums, tickets, and merchandise.
Even a band that doesn't tour, doesn't sell merchandise, and doesn't have the kind of fans who buy things just to support them can still make money by selling their labor, as long as people want them to keep recording. If they can't make money from any of those things, then maybe they aren't cut out to be professional musicians.
Finally, remember the context. We're talking about the positive consequences of piracy as compared to the alternative, which is boycotting copyrighted works. A boycott has exactly the same effect of depriving the artist of money. The difference is that a boycott
If you have a choice of $15 and $0 for an album that you like, quite a few people with questionable ethics would go for $0 (and thus taking money away from artists).
And yet when Radiohead offered that exact choice, they ended up making more than they'd made on any previous album.
A friend of mine has around 60,000 MP3s. Even if he could have found them all on used CDs, those CDs would cost over $20,000, a sum he would not and could not have spent on music. The majority of artists in his collection didn't lose a dime.
As I said earlier in the thread one of the main reasons they enter the studio is they are aware of the protections they would enjoy if they created something worth paying for. If they knew the information they created was going to be effectively worth $0 once they left the studio, they might not have agreed to record any songs.
But they do know that. They know their music can be copied as soon as it's released to the public. Anyone who's ever seen a tape recorder or a CD burner knows that.
They choose to go ahead with the copyright-lottery-based business model because they think they'll sell enough copies to turn a profit. Well, maybe they won't: piracy is just one of many reasons they might not sell as many as they'd like. When you gamble, you must be prepared to lose.
Theories/experiments are not developed/performed because the scientist enters into the field expecting to get paid for the result.
Exactly! Scientists get it: they expect to be paid for their labor, which can't be copied, instead of the information they produce, which can. Why don't artists get it?
Also, Theories/experiments are not analogous to movies,movies.
They're information that takes a lot of human effort to produce originally and can be copied at no cost afterward. That's analogous enough for the purpose of this discussion.
You think Microsoft is going to hire 1000 engineers and pay them $100,000/yr for their labor to create software and then just wait for $5 contributions from 20 million people to come in
Not quite. Why should Microsoft pay engineers to write software before they know who's going to pay Microsoft for it? That's just more gambling.
just so _one_ person with access to the binaries can then pirate the software to 600 million people?
It's not piracy if the creators have already been paid. Just like it's not piracy to copy the tax forms an accountant gives you: he gets paid for doing the work in the first place, not for each copy.
I personally would NEVER pay for anything in advance that I haven't sampled/'test driven' (in whatever legal way possible) or heard good things about from people who have tried it before me.
Then you must have a pretty austere life. Every time you hire someone to perform a service -- cut your hair, fix your car -- you're implicitly "paying in advance". You might not hand over the money immediately, but you enter a contract and you're obligated to pay once it's done.
As for waiting to hear good reviews of a new producer: good! Nothing would stop you from continuing to do that. If you have doubts about a particular artist, then let more adventurous customers pay him first and see if he does quality work. New artists can lower their prices to counter that effect, or they can release portfolios to demonstrate their talent.
There are millions of movies, music albums, books, software and other items protected by copyright. If you want to show your economic model which can replace copyright law is sustainable you have to show that it can work for _all_ of them.
Nonsense. A different system would produce different sets of works.
One reason is that copyright makes it illegal to distribute certain works, so some artists decide to produce something else other than what they really have in mind.
Another is that many items protected by copyright probably shouldn't have been made. Howard the Duck had a budget of $36 million, but moviegoers were only willing to spend $10 million to see it. Under a pay-for-production model, the producer either would've found a way to shoot it for less than $10 million, or would've cancelled the project and made something else.
The set of works we see today is not the "right" set of works in any objective sense. It's just the result of one particular set of incen
Uh, if it is so lousy, then why are so many people eager to download it?
You missed the point he was making. Try rereading the part he quoted. Here it is again for your convenience:
"Tons of crap" refers to the "significant proportion" of works that are "never going to become hits": someone invested their own time and money making those works, but there isn't enough demand to justify that investment, so the end up losing money. The copyright-lottery-based business model encourages people to churn out tons of crap, whether there's a market for it or not, in the hopes that some tiny piece of it will become a hit and make up for the money they lost on everything else.
A business model based on identifying paying customers and then performing the work would not produce crap that people are unwilling to buy.
Howard the Duck cost $36 million to make, but consumers were only willing to spend $10 million at the box office. The copyright lottery resulted in a $26 million loss there, which meant some other movie had to make at least a $26 million profit to keep the studio afloat (i.e. people who see good movies have to pay extra to counter the losses incurred on bad movies). Under a more sensible business model, the producer would have either found a way to shoot that movie for under $10 million, or canned it and moved on to something people actually wanted to see.
However when you are making your case before a Judge you need to have all the cards on your side. Or you will not enact the change you desire.
Copyright isn't going to be changed by a judge, it's going to be changed by the legislature. And they're not going to care whether the people demanding change are pirates or boycotters, they're just going to care whether there are enough of them to sway an election.
Off the cuff, so if your employer said: "You only need $500 a week to get by..." Would you still agree with what you said?
Absolutely.
See, in employment, the negotiation comes before any work is done. If a potential employer thinks I only need $500 a week and is unwilling to pay more, I'm going to say "no thanks" and look for a better offer.
It would be very, very stupid of me to work all week without discussing pay, and wait until the end of the week to start pleading with my boss to pay me more than $500. I'd have no leverage in the negotiation, since I've already done the work, and he'd have no obligation to pay me anything at all, since I did the work voluntarily without anyone promising to pay for it.
So we discuss pay up front, and we form a contract. Now if I do X hours of work, I know I'm entitled to be paid $Y, and if he doesn't pay, I can take him to court and show the judge his signature. If he decides $Y is too much, he can try to negotiate different terms for work I do in the future, but he still owes me $Y for the work I did under the old terms, because that's the amount he already agreed to pay.
If the RIAA were playing records in the public square and then walking around charging people for happening to be there listening to it, I'd say you have a point.
They essentially are. They broadcast music over the radio, on TV, etc., and then "charge" for it not by demanding money, but by demanding restrictions on what I can do with my own property unless I pay them money. Remember the scandal over "home taping"? Why should my right to use the record button on my own stereo require someone else's permission?
Nobody is forcing you to download songs you don't want.
No, but they try to force other people not to communicate certain facts to me, in an attempt to force me to pay someone I've never met for labor I never requested.
However, there are lots of other industries where the primary value of an employee ISN'T in their labor, but in the information they produce. Most sciences and entertainment industries fall into that category.
Not quite. Their primary value is in their ability to produce that information, i.e., their labor.
A real musician is a better artist than me, not because of the songs he has recorded in the past -- I can produce copies of his albums just as well as he can -- but because of his ability to produce songs in the future. One hour of his time in the studio is worth far more than one hour of my time. But once he leaves the studio, my time spent distributing copies is just as valuable as his; if he tries to make a living from distribution instead of production, he's in a market where he has no advantage except legal bullying.
Likewise, a scientist who measures the speed of light is valuable not because of the number he came up with, but because of the insight that he used to measure it. That insight cannot be copied, and it'll be valuable in the future when he's working on something else: when someone wants a new physical constant measured, that scientist will be first on the list of candidates. But the number itself has essentially no economic value... or do you think we ought to pay every time we use that number?
The myth is that nobody would make major production movies if there were no copyright law.
Fixed that for you. ;)
Making a movie like LOTR costs many millions of dollars. Nobody does something like that for fun. [...] Nobody is going to pay to commission a work like that just for their personal edification, either. [...] Ok, go ahead and explain how to fund the next LOTR or whatever without the use of IP laws.
I agree, no single person is going to pay to commission a work like LOTR. But millions of people together will. That's ultimately how movies are funded today, just not as directly.
The Fellowship of the Ring grossed around $870 million worldwide. Varying ticket prices and multiple viewings make it hard to gauge how many people bought tickets, but it's probably somewhere between 50 and 100 million. The movie had a budget of $93 million: if 10-20% of people who were interested in seeing it had contributed an average of $10 each, they could have funded the movie in advance.
Should we force all sorts of manufacturers in general to hand out copies of popular product designs for free after those designs have been in production for more than X years?
No, just like we shouldn't force artists to hand out copies of anything for free. If you want to charge $20 for a copy of a CD, go right ahead.
But we absolutely should stop them from interfering with other people's attempts to distribute those copies themselves. If your $20 CD isn't any better than the torrent I can download for free, you deserve to go out of business.
You may not have asked her to record her material but if you are downloading and listening to Lady Gaga's music you are obviously not indifferent to her work since you value it enough to put some effort (and a small amount of risk) into obtaining it illegally.
Sure, but how do you get from "I'm not indifferent to her work" to "I'm obligated to give her some of my money"?
I use the English language every day. Do I owe money to the descendants of everyone who invented the words I use?
I use electronics every day that rely on precise values of physical constants such as the speed of light. Does that mean I owe money to the descendants of the people who measured the speed of light?
I'm certainly grateful for the work they did, but they chose on their own to do that work, and if they wanted to get paid for their time, that's something they could have arranged when they did the work. It's not my responsibility to pay them, months or years or decades later, for work they did without any input from me.
If you are not a consumer of her content, then you are free to ignore her work. Commercial artists record songs to sell them. If you are a consumer then you are expected to pay.
Yes, she expects me to pay and you expect me to pay, but why do your expectations create an obligation on my part?
If I mow your lawn without asking, merely expecting that you'll pay me once you've seen what a good job I did, does that mean you're obligated to pay? Or does it just mean I'm a fool who gave his labor away for free?
If you don't want to live by the current rules, then be prepared to face the consequences.
By consequences, I presume you mean the chance of being sued for infringement, which is about as likely as being struck by lightning. Not much preparation needed.
Since digital content can't be technically stolen, you need copyright law to protect it.
Nonsense. Artists don't need to protect the content they produce, any more than lawyers need to protect the things they say in court, or accountants need to protect the numbers they write down on tax forms. The real value is in their labor.
I have no clue what "free speech" is doing in this argument. This is about entertainment, not oppression.
Copyright is a restriction on speech. I'm surprised you didn't realize that.
Why are you demanding that there shouldn't be a way whereby artists can get compensated by selling their goods and their rights protected through copyright?
Because copyright law restricts everyone, whether or not they choose to use copyright themselves. Regardless of what business model I use to earn a living, there are still bits I'm not allowed to share and equipment I'm not allowed to have.
Surely there can be more than one business model so that it works for everyone?
Only if they can all compete on a level playing field. Since the business model of selling copies is given special protection by the government -- everyone else's speech is restricted in order to make it easier for you to sell copies -- what would be a similar way to protect the work-for-pay business model? Maybe force everyone to spend $X a year on artistic production whether they want to or not?
If the current business model is a failure then the companies will die out. Thats how the free market is supposed to work. Why does it matter to you if they content producers stay afloat?
I enjoy some of the content they produce, and I would rather see them adapt now so they're able to keep producing it, instead of clinging to a failed model and going bankrupt.
So, where does the money to pay the artists come from?
From some subset of the people who benefit from the artists' work. Mostly, those are the same people who buy copies today (who benefit by gaining access to a new work), although there are others who'd also have an incentive to pay (e.g. a Blu-Ray player manufacturer benefits a little bit from every new movie that comes out on Blu-Ray).
For example, I'd probably do something like this in python:
for item in filter(lambda x: x.Checked, styleMenu):
if item.Style not in currentFont.ProvidedStyles:
item.Checked = false
Yes, but this isn't much different from the C# examples I gave. It's still expressed in terms of "loop over these objects, then if any of them matches this condition, do this to it". That's a step below "do this to everything matching the condition". A chain of relative clauses in Inform 7 lets you express in a single, straightforward line what would take multiple nested loops in another language.
That only works if you have the chance and the ability to prove that you really are boycotting - otherwise you'll just be accused of being a pirate anyway.
There are also other ways to demonstrate nobility: living by the same rules you expect others to live by, for instance. If you work in a field affected by copyright, but you earn a living without relying on the ability to restrict copies, then you're putting your money where your mouth is.
Finally, is it really such a big deal if you're suspected of having "selfish motives"? Everything is at least partly selfish anyway. I don't just want more freedom for other people, I want more freedom for myself too.
I see your point -- I think that reads pretty clearly, but maybe that's only because I'm used to it. What do you think?
It's still working at a lower level of abstraction. I think in generalizations like "do this to every X" or "if there is a Y", but even Ruby requires me to code in terms of loops, iterating over a set of objects one at a time.
It's not as clear how and why this works -- "not provided by the current font" -- how does Inform know what you're talking about here? English is pretty big and ambiguous.
Some relations, properties, etc. (like containment) are included as part of the standard world model, but you'd need to define the others first:
[General definitions...]
A font is a kind of thing.
The current font is a font that varies.
A font style is a kind of thing.
Provision relates various fonts to various font styles. The verb to provide (it provides, they provide, it is provided, it is providing) implies the provision relation.
A menu item is a kind of thing.
A menu item can be checked or unchecked. It is usually unchecked.
Correspondence relates various things to one thing. The verb to correspond (it corresponds to, they correspond to, it is corresponded to, it is corresponding to) implies the correspondence relation.
A menu is a kind of thing.
[Some sample definitions for specific objects...]
Bold is a font style.
Courier is a font providing Bold.
The Style menu is a menu. The Bold item is a menu item in the Style menu, corresponding to Bold.
What crap. A TON of pirated content happens to be recent movies, games, music, books, etc. Your argument is intellectually dishonest.
No, it's quite honest. Don't you think the people who hold the copyrights on works released this year will still expect to be paid for copies ten or twenty years from now? Why would they act any differently from the people who hold copyright on works from past decades?
Besides, expecting to be paid today for work I did a year ago, a month ago, or a week ago is no better. It's still an attempt to enforce a contract on someone who wasn't a party to it at the time. I didn't ask Lady Gaga to record "Poker Face", so regardless of whether I listen to it or download it, why would I have any obligation to pay her for that effort?
Content creators invest millions each year into creating new content. A significant proportion of music,movies,etc are never going to become hits. The major incentive to continue pumping out new content is the hope that one of those investments will turn into a hit and pay off. That is the current business model in existence.
Yes, it's a stupid framework that barely qualifies to be called a business model. It's like calling "lottery player" a career. The major incentive to continue buying lottery tickets is the hope that you'll win the jackpot... but you probably won't. Why play the copyright lottery when you could be getting paid directly for creating art?
The incentive of earning a lot of money seems to work in motivating people to create better content.
You know what works just fine as an incentive in every other industry? The incentive of being paid for doing quality work. The best lawyers command a higher rate than the worst lawyers. The best carpenters get more work and get paid more for it. What makes you think artists can't muster up the motivation to do good work without special incentives that involve the rest of us giving up part of our free speech?
So where are the "information wants to be free"-pirates who are hiring people to create content they like?
They're on sites like Sellaband and Kickstarter.
Then they can exchange this information all day long on their terms.
Surely you've noticed that they can already exchange any information all day long on their terms. The question is, will content producers adapt to that reality, or will they remain in denial with a business model that depends on being the sole source of copies?
If the situation was one-on-one then not doing the work until paid would be the pragmatic choice. However, with multiple parties some will pay and some will not but the work was still performed.
Again, that work is only performed when the artist chooses to perform it. No one's forcing him to do anything.
It doesn't matter how many parties there are, or how many of them pay. What matters is how much money they pay in total.
If the artist needs $500 to live on this week, it doesn't matter whether he finds one person to pay him $500 or five hundred people to pay him $1 each. It also doesn't matter if after he's collected that $500, another thousand or million people enjoy his art for free: he's already been paid a price he considers fair for his effort.