I'm not a barber, dumbass, I'm the engineer who made the barber machine that replaces the barber.
Then what you need to be worried about is a "home engineer machine" that would do your job for you. But there is no such thing. We still need people to write programs, so as long as we need new programs written, programmers will be able to make money by doing it.
You're not getting away with a bullshit answer, either you tell me what's wrong with what I do and what I should do in a concrete way instead in order to maximise profits, or I'll see myself forced to accept your apology.
Why should I care about maximizing your profits? The innovations you're missing are innovations in business model.
You still think that the valuable thing you provide is licenses, not labor. That's antiquated thinking. As copyright becomes harder and harder to enforce, and as your magically uncrackable DRM is revealed to be as flawed as every other scheme that's been tried, that antiquated thinking is not going to help you adapt to a world where you can't rely on selling copies.
No, it really isn't. Losing money means you're poorer today than you were yesterday. Not-gaining money means you're no richer and no poorer. By your logic, you're "losing" the $20 in my pocket right now.
That's how it effectively works for me, sorry if it goes against your wishful thinking. You couldn't get a free copy of my program if your life depended on it. The facts are on my side.
If you've really created uncrackable DRM, why are you still writing software that only 300 people want? Media and software companies would pay billions for the secret of how to perfectly prevent copying. Why don't you sell it to them?
If a well known and highly regarded author can't make this work for a simple book, what makes you think this would even come close to funding something like a Hollywood movie.
What makes you think a well known and highly regarded author couldn't make it work for a simple book? It hasn't been tried.
(Perhaps you're thinking of Stephen King's The Plant, but his model for that book was not what I'm advocating. It doesn't matter what proportion of readers pay; what matters is how much money you collect in total.)
You won't get a million people to pay for something that hasn't even been created. What happens when they don't like the final product?
Then you have a conflict. How it gets resolved depends on what the conflict is about.
What happens if I don't like my haircut? I probably get a refund or at least a discount. Partly because they want me to come back, partly because I probably told them how I wanted it cut and they did something else instead.
What happens if I hire a VP to run my company, and after a year, I don't like the decisions he's been making? No refund. I hired him to use his judgment, which he did; it just turned out that his judgment wasn't what I really wanted.
Will people get thier money back if they end up not liking it?
If the author failed to deliver on his promises, then yes, he broke the deal and owes them a refund. If he delivered what he promised but people imagined that would mean something else, oh well, they're only out $10.
How much say does each individual have in the making of the work? How do you get 10 million people to agree on direction?
That's for them and the author to work out. It'd be interesting to see what sort of models for group decision making came out of this. One extreme would be "none": the author describes his idea and people either support it or don't. The other extreme would be "everything": people vote on what they want and then an author steps in to provide it.
Re:Not first-sale doctrine: Psystar altered OS X
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Psystar Crushed In Court
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I imagine if you tried to sell the modified GM vehicle, GM would come after you with their lawyers.
If they did, GM would lose. There's no question that you have the right to buy a car, modify it, and resell it, just like you can with any other piece of physical property.
That's why this ruling against Psystar is so baffling: with a car, the legal issues are straightforward. With software, although you are allowed to make modifications like the ones Psystar made, and even to have a third party make them for you, if you're going to run a business like Psystar's, you have to be very careful about exactly how your process works -- even though the end result is exactly the same.
It shouldn't matter whether you copy a pre-patched copy of OS X onto the new machine, or whether you copy an identical copy first and then patch it. It shouldn't matter whether you sell the original copy of OS X to the customer and then patch it for him, or whether you sell him a copy that's already been patched and also give him the original. But apparently it does matter, and that's stupid.
This particular type of derivative work is also known as an "adaptation", which is allowed by 17 USC 117 since it's necessary to make OS X work with a non-Apple machine. Psystar just wasn't careful enough about the order in which they did things: to stay within the letter of the law, they should have sold the copy of OS X to their end user first, then made the adaptation on the user's behalf, instead of making the adaptation first and then selling a copy of it.
Psystar may not have operated within the letter of the law, but they certainly operated within the spirit, and their process would have been legal with some minor tweaks. They lost on a technicality.
With politicians you know, more or less, what you're going to get.
But with political contributions, you have no idea what you're going to get. You don't know what the money will be used for, and you certainly don't get a refund if your candidate loses.
Yet people are still willing to give millions of dollars to campaigns, $20 or $100 at a time. They're just as passionate about art and music, and there you can offer them something concrete.
But would I pay that money up front on spec? No, and neither would the vast majority of people.
Maybe you wouldn't, but most people would contribute (1) if the price were right, or (2) if the producer had a good reputation. I know I wouldn't hesitate if a band I enjoyed needed money to record their next album -- would you?
That's why you don't see the distributed patronage model except for a few obscure niches.
The reason you don't see the distributed patronage model is that copyright is more convenient for producers, as well as more exciting (just like playing blackjack is more exciting than buying bonds).
Yes, because we've been down that road. It means the works will largely end up in the control of one person.
No, it doesn't. Today we have global communication and payment systems. You don't need to get all your funding from one person.
You'll have a much easier time collecting $10 from a million people than collecting $10 million from one person, and of course that's what happens today anyway when tickets and copies are sold. You can still tap into that same demand if you treat your work as a service and get paid up front.
As in, some people out here believe that both Adobe and I should give the products of our labour for free and not make any money of that "artificial scarcity" which is not giving everything we do away.
No one is saying that you or Adobe should not get paid for your labor. They're saying that you and Adobe should only get paid for your labor.
Neither of those are public domain: the authors still assert the right to control how they're distributed. The Quake III engine (and only the engine) is GPL, or $10,000 for a non-GPL license, and as far as I can tell, Tribes is just plain old freeware.
So while it's true that the authors have (at least partly) given up on making money from those works, they haven't really moved on.
When you buy my software it's more like you get a home barber machine.
No, a home barber machine would replace a barber. A copy of your software does not replace you.
That's as if you told musicians, don't get paid for your albums, get paid to make your albums in the first place.
Yes, exactly. People do get paid to write and perform music today, and most bands make more from performances than album sales anyway. Mozart didn't have a web site where fans could pay him directly; he didn't even have as many fans as many bands today.
I don't even know how that's supposed to work for software, are you really suggesting that someone with deep pockets pays for Adobe to develop Photoshop from scratch?
One individual with massive pockets? No. I'm suggesting that thousands of people pool their funds to pay for it.
Yeah, because you have the convenience of having a boss (or a client who commissioned your work, which is the same thing as a boss except with less direct management) who writes your cheques whose concern it is to find a way to make money out of what you do.
Incorrect. I wrote "directly or indirectly" for a reason: the business model does not depend on restricting the number of copies in existence. We don't sell software, we provide solutions, and the software exists to enable those solutions. The disc with the number burned onto it is useless without the uncopyable goods and services we provide.
And giving my product away for free isn't exactly the way to do it, but you wouldn't know, I'm the entrepreneur here, you're just a code monkey with no need for any sort of business sense.
Entrepreneurs know how to innovate. You're no entrepreneur, you're just another businessman who's so stuck in the past that he doesn't even know what his "product" really is.
Firstly, if you want to be paid a wage to live off of, your client has to pay an enormous sum for the product (relative to today's price). Let's say you're really good and can bang out a decent piece of software in one week. Now, assuming you're getting paid $30,000/yr [...], that's still $625. That's a hell of a lot for a product that only took one man one week to write (ie, either complex but buggy or simple and therefore already out there). Copies amortise this cost [...]
Yes, that's a large amount of money, but no, selling copies isn't what amortize it today. Having more than one client is what makes software affordable today, and that wouldn't have to change if you charged up front. If you find ten people who want you to write this program, they'll only have to pay $62.50 each.
Now, any moderately intelligent person will either trade or give away (ie, "buy goodwill") in order to get other people's software, thus saving themselves trouble in the future. Soon, there's enough free software out there to fill every need, and everyone's out of a job [...]. And before some smartypants points out "but there IS free software out there, and yet programmers can still find jobs!", I'd point out that this is because most F/OSS coders cannot dedicate the amount of time or resources required to make a project up to the standard people have come to expect from software
Uh...
If I understand this correctly, you're suggesting that programmers asking for money up front will lead to a massive wave of free software rising up to fill every niche, crushing commercial software development.
First, can I have some of what you're smoking?
Second, even if this came to pass, why would it be a bad thing? You're suggesting that the world's demand for software would all be satisfied by volunteers. If people are actually willing to give their time away to write every desired program for free, why should we stop them? Why should we prefer a system where volunteers can't do that?
No one would share their copy because then I'd deactivate their license, but also because most people are honest and don't try to screw me and know that if I don't get my money I'll stop working on the damn thing.
If that were true, there would be no piracy. But there is piracy, because DRM doesn't work perfectly ("deactivate their license"?) and people don't always care about funding future development when they already have what they need.
Again, that's wishful thinking from you that you could get my program for free. Lots of niche programs are nowhere to be found on warez sites.
If there were sufficient demand for your program, it would be on the warez sites. Relying on your program's unpopularity is an interesting and probably effective approach, but it's not for everyone.
Exactly, and if you make software then people distributing binaries or serials impacts you in that you'll make less money, so in the same way it'll cost you money. Don't you see how this is the same thing?
No, it isn't. Losing money is not the same as not-gaining money.
If you make a fraudulent charge to my credit card, that costs me money (-$50). The alternative is that you don't make a fraudulent charge, which costs me nothing ($0).
If I pirate your program, that costs you nothing but you gain nothing ($0). The likely alternative is that I don't pirate your program, in which case you still gain nothing ($0). See the difference?
No, you fucking dumbass, cause you're on the criminal side, so obviously the downsides aren't on your side.
Then where are they? What is the "downside" of someone running your program without having paid for it? Don't assume they would have given you money otherwise: most P2P users have far more content than they'd be willing or able to obtain if they had to pay for it.
Well if you want to feed my numbers into your equipment you're gonna have to put some numbers preceded with a dollar sign into my bank account. What's hard to understand about that?
It's not hard to understand, it's just naive and unrealistic. That may be what an unenforceable law says, or what your hubris has led you to believe your DRM system is capable of, but it's not how the world works.
Sometimes, the pay up front model just isn't realistic. SOMEONE has to fork over the large sum of money for the artist to get paid. Either you have to collect all the orders up front, or someone has to gamble on the outcome and hope to recoup the cost later.
So collect all the "orders" up front. The same internet that makes it possible to share a million copies of a song, one peer-to-peer transfer at a time, also makes it possible to collect a large sum of money, one small payment at a time. The model has already been demonstrated for political contributions.
Technlogy is NOT "changing everything." Not many peope can write software, compelling stories, make good movies, video games, etc. As long as THAT doesn't change (and I don't see it changing anytime soon), copyright is just as valid today as it was 200 years ago.
No... you're conflating copyright, a government-granted monopoly on making copies and derivative works, with the ability of creative people to make money. What you should have said is "as long as THAT doesn't change (and I don't see it changing anytime soon), people will still be able to earn a living by creating this stuff."
But technology is still undermining the validity of copyright. Copyright is an artifact of a relatively brief era in which it was feasible for a small number of wealthy entities to mass-produce copies, but infeasible for the masses to do the same. That era is now fading. You can't enforce copyright against billions of people in their own homes the way you can enforce it against a relative handful of publishers and factory owners.
Someone is providing a benefit, which, while not physical property, does mean they deserve to be paid.
Yes, they absolutely deserve to be paid for their work, just like anyone else who provides a valuable service. But that doesn't mean they deserve to be paid per copy, or paid for years and years long after they did the work. No one is forcing them to do any work without getting paid for it; if they aren't selling as many copies as they'd like, then maybe selling copies is a bad business model and they should come up with a better way to get paid for their work.
Everyone else who provides a valuable service manages to do it without a government-granted monopoly, so why can't writers, programmers, filmmakers, and musicians?
Information, yes; a newly-created something-or-other (script, novel, song, etc) not so much. Sure, all the words and everything were already there, but the act of creativity needed to put them together in a new and different way... that's something worth being compensated for if/when someone(s) find it worthwhile.
Why are you treating the "act of creativity" differently from any other act that people get paid for?
Do mechanics go around fixing cars for free, expecting to be compensated "if/when someone(s) find it worthwhile"? Do barbers give out free haircuts hoping to be paid later? Do accountants calculate everyone's taxes, unsolicited, and then demand to be paid when those tax forms are filed?
Of course not. If you perform a valuable service, the time to get paid is at the time when you perform the service -- not at some undefined future time, possibly years later, when someone derives a benefit from your service.
Also, other people who perform valuable acts calculate a finite value for their time and expect to be paid that amount, no more and no less. The price of fixing your car doesn't depend on how many miles you drive later that week; it depends on how much time the mechanic spends working (and how expensive the parts are).
If you want to go into business performing the valuable act of writing, then what you ought to do is come up with a value for your time, find buyers who are willing to give you that amount of money, and then release the completed work into the public domain. After you've been compensated, it's none of your business how many people make copies or derivative works.
Actually it doesn't [rely on government enforcement], it relies on my software just not being out there for everybody to use for free. If you want access to the full version of my program, you need to chuck $40 my way.
Well, no, they don't. They can get the full version much cheaper from anyone who already has a copy (or a crack/keygen, depending on what protection measures you've used).
If you expect to be the sole provider of copies, then you do need to rely on government enforcement.
They don't want you to spread it around just like you don't want anyone to spread around your passwords or credit card number and codes, or SSID, which are all just numbers, and not even such big ones as that.
The danger in spreading around passwords, credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc. comes from what those numbers can be used for. If I could be guaranteed that no one else would use my CC# to make fraudulent charges, I'd have no reason to care who had that number.
So, what's the danger in spreading around the number that represents a program or a song? The danger that someone might feed it into their own computer and run the program, or feed it into their own MP3 player and hear the song? Those don't affect you in any way; you'll probably never even be aware of them.
To put it bluntly, it's none of your business what numbers someone else feeds into their own equipment. It is my business what charges someone makes on my account, because I'm going to have to pay for them, or at least spend my time getting them removed. That's the difference.
If everything comes down to just a bunch of 1s and 0s, then why don't you just create them as you need them?
For the same reason I don't cut my own hair: the barber is better at cutting hair than I am.
Oh, what's that? Creating what you want is non-trivial and the only way to create that is to do it the way it's currently done, which costs money?
Yes, which is why I pay a barber to cut my hair instead of demanding that he do it for free. But of course, I only pay the barber when I get my hair cut, not every time I comb it!
Cutting hair is a service: he does it, I give him money, and then we both move on until the next time I need my hair cut.
Programmers can use the very same model. Writing code is a service. Give a programmer money, he'll write code, and then you can both move on until you need another program written. There's absolutely nothing about software development that requires you to pay for a copy of a program instead of paying for the act of writing it.
I'm a self employed software developer and make a living off a program I created all on my own, I create value with my work, you wouldn't know what that means.
For what it's worth, I'm a professional developer as well. But my business model doesn't depend (directly or indirectly) on controlling the number of copies. My living comes from writing code, not making copies.
That's just a matter of accounting. The writers could just charge more up-front and end up with the same amount earned at the end of the road.
No, it's more than that. Charging up front means you decide on a value for your time, and once you collect that amount, the transaction is complete.
Charging per copy means the value of your time is unknown. You could sell one copy, or you could sell a million; you did the same amount of work either way, but the amount you get paid can vary wildly. And since there's no upper bound on the (retroactive) value of your time, you'll never be satisfied with any amount.
Think about it. When was the last time a well-known artist or author said "hey, I've made enough money on this work already, I'm going to release it into the public domain"?
The issue is not with how long they're paid, it's with how much they're paid.
The issue is with how they're paid, and how that payment scheme impacts the rest of us.
If writers collected payment up front, and moved on once they'd done their work and gotten paid as agreed, there'd be no need for infringement lawsuits, no royalties or licensing restrictions. That would open the door to free production of derivative works and allow many more people to enjoy the completed work.
If I build a house, I get paid by the people who use it.
No, no, no. That's a very misleading way to think about it.
If you build a house, you get paid by the people who asked you to build it (who may or may not be the same people who end up living there). They hire you to perform a service, and once that service is done, you no longer have any connection to that house.
If I put the same effort into, say, a film script, that might take anywhere from 6 weeks to a year to write, why should people get it for free?
They shouldn't. Just like with the house, you should demand payment from the people who asked you to write it.
But no one asked you to write it, you say? You just decided to do it on your own? Well then, I guess you'll need to think of a different business model.
If you build a house of your own accord, you can make money by selling that house -- in that case, you're not really being paid for your labor, you're selling an object. Likewise, if you write a film script of your own accord, you can make money by selling that script (that is, a stack of papers, or a CD-ROM containing a file). But that means you can't go around showing it to everyone before you've been paid, because they'll have no need to buy a copy from you if they already have enough information to make their own copy.
Interesting how the kiddies who've never had to work for a living thing they should get everything for free and don't have the backbone to produce anything worthwhile in exchange. They're the real users or AOLusers -- use and use and too impotent to produce on their own.
For the record, I've been a professional developer for ten years (as well as a freeware and OSS developer). I like to think I've produced plenty that's worthwhile: during PAX 2009 I was pleased to see a girl in dragon wings stand up at a panel Q&A and mention a freeware project I've worked on; the software I've been writing for my day job is the first in its niche and has attracted the interest of some major domestic and international players.
But I suspect you'd still classify me as one of those "kiddies" because I believe copyright should be abolished. I've managed to earn a living as a programmer without relying on the ability to limit copying, and if I can do it, I'm pretty sure you can too.
Admittedly, I haven't used XP in a while, but I have found that it's inbuilt unzipping capabilities are actually pretty good. They're slow, but they integrate into the UI nicely, and have several useable options on the right-click context menu.
XP's built-in unzipping is ridiculously slow if you have large zip archives containing many files. 7-Zip integrates just as well, runs much faster, and is free.
You can't attach a.zip file that contains an.exe, either. As a programmer working remotely, I have to send ".rename-to-zip" attachments all the time because of this.
I would suggest cold turkey, or exclusively using free (libre) content, before engaging in risky reform, especially if it's paired with discarding copyright.
How does "cold turkey" solve the piracy problem for anyone? I assume you mean "stop buying copyrighted works". That's a detriment for consumers, who enjoy less entertainment; a detriment for producers, who lose even more potential income than they did to piracy; and likely a detriment to the movement, since the loss in profits will be blamed on piracy anyway and result in calls for even more draconian laws.
That assumes that demand can be satisfied a trivial amount of time after it arises. Your system forces the X + Y month pause in between demand and production, which could very plausibly form a boom-bust cycle.
That pause already exists, but it's out of consumers' sight. It takes months or years between the time when a producer identifies the demand for a work ("say, these 3D kids' movies are pretty hot") and the time when that work is available for purchase. Moving the funding up front simply brings that pause into the open.
No, I have to disagree with you there. What about the copyright on the Linux kernel? Is that a restriction on speech, another dollar of royalties to a publisher lobbying for longer terms, etc, etc?
Fair enough, I should say "every work sold under the copyright business model", etc.
But yes, the copyright on the Linux kernel is a restriction on speech. It's just not as strict as the restriction imposed by, say, the copyrights on Disney movies.
How about any copyright to an indie artist who can't afford to protect their copyrights? What about the copyrights that aren't bought by anyone?
Yes, I agree that ineffective, unenforced copyright is less harmful than effective, enforced copyright.;)
If anyone can make a fair amount of money from your system, as you claim that they can, then it stands to reason that the people to blame for your current complaints could also profit from the system, and use the money for their nefarious purposes. Your system wouldn't really fix anything.
The nefarious purposes I've complained about are a consequence of the system those people rely on. The RIAA demands stricter copyright laws because copyright is how they make their money. If they made their money by selling their services instead, they would have different demands.
Fair enough, but I still reckon that, for most people, there's a far cry between an "inability to enjoy", and "ability to enjoy only what you can afford". It just means you have to pick the top 100 or so titles, rather than the top 1000.
Sure, 90% seems like a huge cut down, but given that most people tend to spend 90+% of their free time in a core 5-10% of their general interests, it's not such a bad deal.
Don't you think my friend would notice if his music collection were cut from 60,000 songs down to only 6000? How are you going to convince him it's "not such a bad deal"?
The problem is that they are copies, which means their very existence relies on the copyrighted material. The door to these derivative works may be closed (for those who choose not to license), but copyright is most probably the reason such a door exists in the first place.
No. Even if copyright is the reason particular original works exist, it isn't the reason for all works to exist. A system without copyright would still produce songs, and those songs could be freely remixed, mashed-up, etc.
Well, perhaps the anime show, but for what it's worth, the serious sequel to star wars and the harry potter reference is fine by copyright, but not necessarily by trademarks.
Not true. The Harry Potter Lexicon was shot down for copyright infringement, not trademarks.
all we know is that liberty must be protected if we are to have a reliable economy at all. Roads on the other hand? Not so much.
You think we'd have a reliable economy without roads? When was the last time you bought something and didn't use roads to either pick it up or get it delivered?
What about all the savings? That didn't disappear.
What savings? The average American had little or none to begin with, and with the economy in shambles, any savings they had would've been spent shortly after they were laid off.
If your theory was true, no one would be buying cell phones or computers: The prices are always coming down, yet it is one of the fastest growing sectors there is.
I have absolutely no idea what you mean here.
Of course people buy cell phones and computers. Those things are getting cheaper relative to wages. But if everything goes down at the same time, that won't happen. And if wages go down sooner than the prices of the goods they want, they'll buy fewer goods.
The race to the bottom is a good thing, it increases wealth.
It may in the long run. But as they say, in the long run, we're all dead. Increased wealth 10 years from now is no help to anyone who's struggling today.
Where did that purchasing power come from? It came from someone who was going to save it (which would decrease interest rates by the way), to employ someone to build roads.
Money saved is money not spent, and that doesn't help the economy.
As for interest rates, check your bank's rate sheet sometime. They're plenty low as it is. The Fed is practically giving money away, and it shows in what banks are willing to pay for savings (although, oddly enough, not in what they're willing to accept for loans).
Congratulations, you just made one less future sale of a television, one less loan to buy a car, one fewer person to make that television cheaper, all in one fell swoop.
Luckily, we have a progressive income tax, so the bulk of that money comes from people who would not have spent it on goods.
Again, while generally so, you cannot assume money is a reliable meter stick for wealth, you must look at money as a commodity good just like any other good.
Indeed. A recession is what happens when demand for money is too high: everyone hoards their money. To get things moving, you need to introduce more money (i.e. government spending) to satisfy that demand.
That means that too many roads are not economically viable, perhaps. Who are you to say how many roads are ideal? As for maintaining security and liberty, that is unquestionably a legitimate government function (if ironic).
Now, hang on. Who are you to say how much fire protection or law enforcement is ideal? Maybe too much fire protection and law enforcement is not economically viable! Are you saying the government is better at spending your money (on police and fire departments) than you are?;)
Once you admit that some services are most effectively provided by a central government, you've lost the argument, because you've given up on your bedrock principle that government spending is always worse than private spending.
Are you really trying to imply that prices will spiral down to zero? Really? I mean, come on, you wouldn't buy a bazillion houses if they eventually were priced at $0.01 each?
By that time, my wages would have dropped to insignificant fractions a penny, if I even still had a job, so probably not.
Eventually people run out of money to continue inflating bubbles, likewise, eventually people have enough money to stop price deflation.
And in the meantime, everyone has become unemployed, hungry, and miserable because the economy has ground to a halt. No thanks! This is like arguing that a global plague is no big deal because it'll correct itself once the human race has been decimated.
It has to do with the fact that you cannot spend money on whatever you want: An economy satisfies things I want in return for things I have. If government is spending my money instead, it is sending wrong price signals, generating the wrong capital.
That's still better than sending the signal "everything is too expensive, please slash all prices and lay off all workers", which is what happens when no one spends that money.
We need to be building manufacturing plants, not roads, bridges, and houses, for instance.
We need to repair the roads and bridges that people drive on and businesses ship their goods on. That takes money.
Spending works on the theory that you can take unemployed capital in one area and move it to another, but you cannot, capital is not homogeneous.
No, it works on the theory that increased activity in one sector will spill over into other sectors. More money in the pockets of road builders leads to more money in the pockets of people who sell things to road builders, and more opportunities for people who use roads.
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I'm not a barber, dumbass, I'm the engineer who made the barber machine that replaces the barber.
Then what you need to be worried about is a "home engineer machine" that would do your job for you. But there is no such thing. We still need people to write programs, so as long as we need new programs written, programmers will be able to make money by doing it.
You're not getting away with a bullshit answer, either you tell me what's wrong with what I do and what I should do in a concrete way instead in order to maximise profits, or I'll see myself forced to accept your apology.
Why should I care about maximizing your profits? The innovations you're missing are innovations in business model.
You still think that the valuable thing you provide is licenses, not labor. That's antiquated thinking. As copyright becomes harder and harder to enforce, and as your magically uncrackable DRM is revealed to be as flawed as every other scheme that's been tried, that antiquated thinking is not going to help you adapt to a world where you can't rely on selling copies.
It is when you're in business. Think about it.
No, it really isn't. Losing money means you're poorer today than you were yesterday. Not-gaining money means you're no richer and no poorer. By your logic, you're "losing" the $20 in my pocket right now.
That's how it effectively works for me, sorry if it goes against your wishful thinking. You couldn't get a free copy of my program if your life depended on it. The facts are on my side.
If you've really created uncrackable DRM, why are you still writing software that only 300 people want? Media and software companies would pay billions for the secret of how to perfectly prevent copying. Why don't you sell it to them?
If a well known and highly regarded author can't make this work for a simple book, what makes you think this would even come close to funding something like a Hollywood movie.
What makes you think a well known and highly regarded author couldn't make it work for a simple book? It hasn't been tried.
(Perhaps you're thinking of Stephen King's The Plant, but his model for that book was not what I'm advocating. It doesn't matter what proportion of readers pay; what matters is how much money you collect in total.)
You won't get a million people to pay for something that hasn't even been created. What happens when they don't like the final product?
Then you have a conflict. How it gets resolved depends on what the conflict is about.
What happens if I don't like my haircut? I probably get a refund or at least a discount. Partly because they want me to come back, partly because I probably told them how I wanted it cut and they did something else instead.
What happens if I hire a VP to run my company, and after a year, I don't like the decisions he's been making? No refund. I hired him to use his judgment, which he did; it just turned out that his judgment wasn't what I really wanted.
Will people get thier money back if they end up not liking it?
If the author failed to deliver on his promises, then yes, he broke the deal and owes them a refund. If he delivered what he promised but people imagined that would mean something else, oh well, they're only out $10.
How much say does each individual have in the making of the work? How do you get 10 million people to agree on direction?
That's for them and the author to work out. It'd be interesting to see what sort of models for group decision making came out of this. One extreme would be "none": the author describes his idea and people either support it or don't. The other extreme would be "everything": people vote on what they want and then an author steps in to provide it.
I imagine if you tried to sell the modified GM vehicle, GM would come after you with their lawyers.
If they did, GM would lose. There's no question that you have the right to buy a car, modify it, and resell it, just like you can with any other piece of physical property.
That's why this ruling against Psystar is so baffling: with a car, the legal issues are straightforward. With software, although you are allowed to make modifications like the ones Psystar made, and even to have a third party make them for you, if you're going to run a business like Psystar's, you have to be very careful about exactly how your process works -- even though the end result is exactly the same.
It shouldn't matter whether you copy a pre-patched copy of OS X onto the new machine, or whether you copy an identical copy first and then patch it. It shouldn't matter whether you sell the original copy of OS X to the customer and then patch it for him, or whether you sell him a copy that's already been patched and also give him the original. But apparently it does matter, and that's stupid.
This particular type of derivative work is also known as an "adaptation", which is allowed by 17 USC 117 since it's necessary to make OS X work with a non-Apple machine. Psystar just wasn't careful enough about the order in which they did things: to stay within the letter of the law, they should have sold the copy of OS X to their end user first, then made the adaptation on the user's behalf, instead of making the adaptation first and then selling a copy of it.
17 USC 117.
Psystar may not have operated within the letter of the law, but they certainly operated within the spirit, and their process would have been legal with some minor tweaks. They lost on a technicality.
With politicians you know, more or less, what you're going to get.
But with political contributions, you have no idea what you're going to get. You don't know what the money will be used for, and you certainly don't get a refund if your candidate loses.
Yet people are still willing to give millions of dollars to campaigns, $20 or $100 at a time. They're just as passionate about art and music, and there you can offer them something concrete.
But would I pay that money up front on spec? No, and neither would the vast majority of people.
Maybe you wouldn't, but most people would contribute (1) if the price were right, or (2) if the producer had a good reputation. I know I wouldn't hesitate if a band I enjoyed needed money to record their next album -- would you?
That's why you don't see the distributed patronage model except for a few obscure niches.
The reason you don't see the distributed patronage model is that copyright is more convenient for producers, as well as more exciting (just like playing blackjack is more exciting than buying bonds).
Yes, because we've been down that road. It means the works will largely end up in the control of one person.
No, it doesn't. Today we have global communication and payment systems. You don't need to get all your funding from one person.
You'll have a much easier time collecting $10 from a million people than collecting $10 million from one person, and of course that's what happens today anyway when tickets and copies are sold. You can still tap into that same demand if you treat your work as a service and get paid up front.
As in, some people out here believe that both Adobe and I should give the products of our labour for free and not make any money of that "artificial scarcity" which is not giving everything we do away.
No one is saying that you or Adobe should not get paid for your labor. They're saying that you and Adobe should only get paid for your labor.
Neither of those are public domain: the authors still assert the right to control how they're distributed. The Quake III engine (and only the engine) is GPL, or $10,000 for a non-GPL license, and as far as I can tell, Tribes is just plain old freeware.
So while it's true that the authors have (at least partly) given up on making money from those works, they haven't really moved on.
When you buy my software it's more like you get a home barber machine.
No, a home barber machine would replace a barber. A copy of your software does not replace you.
That's as if you told musicians, don't get paid for your albums, get paid to make your albums in the first place.
Yes, exactly. People do get paid to write and perform music today, and most bands make more from performances than album sales anyway. Mozart didn't have a web site where fans could pay him directly; he didn't even have as many fans as many bands today.
I don't even know how that's supposed to work for software, are you really suggesting that someone with deep pockets pays for Adobe to develop Photoshop from scratch?
One individual with massive pockets? No. I'm suggesting that thousands of people pool their funds to pay for it.
Yeah, because you have the convenience of having a boss (or a client who commissioned your work, which is the same thing as a boss except with less direct management) who writes your cheques whose concern it is to find a way to make money out of what you do.
Incorrect. I wrote "directly or indirectly" for a reason: the business model does not depend on restricting the number of copies in existence. We don't sell software, we provide solutions, and the software exists to enable those solutions. The disc with the number burned onto it is useless without the uncopyable goods and services we provide.
And giving my product away for free isn't exactly the way to do it, but you wouldn't know, I'm the entrepreneur here, you're just a code monkey with no need for any sort of business sense.
Entrepreneurs know how to innovate. You're no entrepreneur, you're just another businessman who's so stuck in the past that he doesn't even know what his "product" really is.
Firstly, if you want to be paid a wage to live off of, your client has to pay an enormous sum for the product (relative to today's price). Let's say you're really good and can bang out a decent piece of software in one week. Now, assuming you're getting paid $30,000/yr [...], that's still $625. That's a hell of a lot for a product that only took one man one week to write (ie, either complex but buggy or simple and therefore already out there). Copies amortise this cost [...]
Yes, that's a large amount of money, but no, selling copies isn't what amortize it today. Having more than one client is what makes software affordable today, and that wouldn't have to change if you charged up front. If you find ten people who want you to write this program, they'll only have to pay $62.50 each.
Now, any moderately intelligent person will either trade or give away (ie, "buy goodwill") in order to get other people's software, thus saving themselves trouble in the future. Soon, there's enough free software out there to fill every need, and everyone's out of a job [...]. And before some smartypants points out "but there IS free software out there, and yet programmers can still find jobs!", I'd point out that this is because most F/OSS coders cannot dedicate the amount of time or resources required to make a project up to the standard people have come to expect from software
Uh...
If I understand this correctly, you're suggesting that programmers asking for money up front will lead to a massive wave of free software rising up to fill every niche, crushing commercial software development.
First, can I have some of what you're smoking?
Second, even if this came to pass, why would it be a bad thing? You're suggesting that the world's demand for software would all be satisfied by volunteers. If people are actually willing to give their time away to write every desired program for free, why should we stop them? Why should we prefer a system where volunteers can't do that?
No one would share their copy because then I'd deactivate their license, but also because most people are honest and don't try to screw me and know that if I don't get my money I'll stop working on the damn thing.
If that were true, there would be no piracy. But there is piracy, because DRM doesn't work perfectly ("deactivate their license"?) and people don't always care about funding future development when they already have what they need.
Again, that's wishful thinking from you that you could get my program for free. Lots of niche programs are nowhere to be found on warez sites.
If there were sufficient demand for your program, it would be on the warez sites. Relying on your program's unpopularity is an interesting and probably effective approach, but it's not for everyone.
Exactly, and if you make software then people distributing binaries or serials impacts you in that you'll make less money, so in the same way it'll cost you money. Don't you see how this is the same thing?
No, it isn't. Losing money is not the same as not-gaining money.
If you make a fraudulent charge to my credit card, that costs me money (-$50). The alternative is that you don't make a fraudulent charge, which costs me nothing ($0).
If I pirate your program, that costs you nothing but you gain nothing ($0). The likely alternative is that I don't pirate your program, in which case you still gain nothing ($0). See the difference?
No, you fucking dumbass, cause you're on the criminal side, so obviously the downsides aren't on your side.
Then where are they? What is the "downside" of someone running your program without having paid for it? Don't assume they would have given you money otherwise: most P2P users have far more content than they'd be willing or able to obtain if they had to pay for it.
Well if you want to feed my numbers into your equipment you're gonna have to put some numbers preceded with a dollar sign into my bank account. What's hard to understand about that?
It's not hard to understand, it's just naive and unrealistic. That may be what an unenforceable law says, or what your hubris has led you to believe your DRM system is capable of, but it's not how the world works.
Sometimes, the pay up front model just isn't realistic. SOMEONE has to fork over the large sum of money for the artist to get paid. Either you have to collect all the orders up front, or someone has to gamble on the outcome and hope to recoup the cost later.
So collect all the "orders" up front. The same internet that makes it possible to share a million copies of a song, one peer-to-peer transfer at a time, also makes it possible to collect a large sum of money, one small payment at a time. The model has already been demonstrated for political contributions.
Technlogy is NOT "changing everything." Not many peope can write software, compelling stories, make good movies, video games, etc. As long as THAT doesn't change (and I don't see it changing anytime soon), copyright is just as valid today as it was 200 years ago.
No... you're conflating copyright, a government-granted monopoly on making copies and derivative works, with the ability of creative people to make money. What you should have said is "as long as THAT doesn't change (and I don't see it changing anytime soon), people will still be able to earn a living by creating this stuff."
But technology is still undermining the validity of copyright. Copyright is an artifact of a relatively brief era in which it was feasible for a small number of wealthy entities to mass-produce copies, but infeasible for the masses to do the same. That era is now fading. You can't enforce copyright against billions of people in their own homes the way you can enforce it against a relative handful of publishers and factory owners.
Someone is providing a benefit, which, while not physical property, does mean they deserve to be paid.
Yes, they absolutely deserve to be paid for their work, just like anyone else who provides a valuable service. But that doesn't mean they deserve to be paid per copy, or paid for years and years long after they did the work. No one is forcing them to do any work without getting paid for it; if they aren't selling as many copies as they'd like, then maybe selling copies is a bad business model and they should come up with a better way to get paid for their work.
Everyone else who provides a valuable service manages to do it without a government-granted monopoly, so why can't writers, programmers, filmmakers, and musicians?
Information, yes; a newly-created something-or-other (script, novel, song, etc) not so much. Sure, all the words and everything were already there, but the act of creativity needed to put them together in a new and different way... that's something worth being compensated for if/when someone(s) find it worthwhile.
Why are you treating the "act of creativity" differently from any other act that people get paid for?
Do mechanics go around fixing cars for free, expecting to be compensated "if/when someone(s) find it worthwhile"? Do barbers give out free haircuts hoping to be paid later? Do accountants calculate everyone's taxes, unsolicited, and then demand to be paid when those tax forms are filed?
Of course not. If you perform a valuable service, the time to get paid is at the time when you perform the service -- not at some undefined future time, possibly years later, when someone derives a benefit from your service.
Also, other people who perform valuable acts calculate a finite value for their time and expect to be paid that amount, no more and no less. The price of fixing your car doesn't depend on how many miles you drive later that week; it depends on how much time the mechanic spends working (and how expensive the parts are).
If you want to go into business performing the valuable act of writing, then what you ought to do is come up with a value for your time, find buyers who are willing to give you that amount of money, and then release the completed work into the public domain. After you've been compensated, it's none of your business how many people make copies or derivative works.
Actually it doesn't [rely on government enforcement], it relies on my software just not being out there for everybody to use for free. If you want access to the full version of my program, you need to chuck $40 my way.
Well, no, they don't. They can get the full version much cheaper from anyone who already has a copy (or a crack/keygen, depending on what protection measures you've used).
If you expect to be the sole provider of copies, then you do need to rely on government enforcement.
They don't want you to spread it around just like you don't want anyone to spread around your passwords or credit card number and codes, or SSID, which are all just numbers, and not even such big ones as that.
The danger in spreading around passwords, credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc. comes from what those numbers can be used for. If I could be guaranteed that no one else would use my CC# to make fraudulent charges, I'd have no reason to care who had that number.
So, what's the danger in spreading around the number that represents a program or a song? The danger that someone might feed it into their own computer and run the program, or feed it into their own MP3 player and hear the song? Those don't affect you in any way; you'll probably never even be aware of them.
To put it bluntly, it's none of your business what numbers someone else feeds into their own equipment. It is my business what charges someone makes on my account, because I'm going to have to pay for them, or at least spend my time getting them removed. That's the difference.
If everything comes down to just a bunch of 1s and 0s, then why don't you just create them as you need them?
For the same reason I don't cut my own hair: the barber is better at cutting hair than I am.
Oh, what's that? Creating what you want is non-trivial and the only way to create that is to do it the way it's currently done, which costs money?
Yes, which is why I pay a barber to cut my hair instead of demanding that he do it for free. But of course, I only pay the barber when I get my hair cut, not every time I comb it!
Cutting hair is a service: he does it, I give him money, and then we both move on until the next time I need my hair cut.
Programmers can use the very same model. Writing code is a service. Give a programmer money, he'll write code, and then you can both move on until you need another program written. There's absolutely nothing about software development that requires you to pay for a copy of a program instead of paying for the act of writing it.
I'm a self employed software developer and make a living off a program I created all on my own, I create value with my work, you wouldn't know what that means.
For what it's worth, I'm a professional developer as well. But my business model doesn't depend (directly or indirectly) on controlling the number of copies. My living comes from writing code, not making copies.
That's just a matter of accounting. The writers could just charge more up-front and end up with the same amount earned at the end of the road.
No, it's more than that. Charging up front means you decide on a value for your time, and once you collect that amount, the transaction is complete.
Charging per copy means the value of your time is unknown. You could sell one copy, or you could sell a million; you did the same amount of work either way, but the amount you get paid can vary wildly. And since there's no upper bound on the (retroactive) value of your time, you'll never be satisfied with any amount.
Think about it. When was the last time a well-known artist or author said "hey, I've made enough money on this work already, I'm going to release it into the public domain"?
The issue is not with how long they're paid, it's with how much they're paid.
The issue is with how they're paid, and how that payment scheme impacts the rest of us.
If writers collected payment up front, and moved on once they'd done their work and gotten paid as agreed, there'd be no need for infringement lawsuits, no royalties or licensing restrictions. That would open the door to free production of derivative works and allow many more people to enjoy the completed work.
If I build a house, I get paid by the people who use it.
No, no, no. That's a very misleading way to think about it.
If you build a house, you get paid by the people who asked you to build it (who may or may not be the same people who end up living there). They hire you to perform a service, and once that service is done, you no longer have any connection to that house.
If I put the same effort into, say, a film script, that might take anywhere from 6 weeks to a year to write, why should people get it for free?
They shouldn't. Just like with the house, you should demand payment from the people who asked you to write it.
But no one asked you to write it, you say? You just decided to do it on your own? Well then, I guess you'll need to think of a different business model.
If you build a house of your own accord, you can make money by selling that house -- in that case, you're not really being paid for your labor, you're selling an object. Likewise, if you write a film script of your own accord, you can make money by selling that script (that is, a stack of papers, or a CD-ROM containing a file). But that means you can't go around showing it to everyone before you've been paid, because they'll have no need to buy a copy from you if they already have enough information to make their own copy.
Interesting how the kiddies who've never had to work for a living thing they should get everything for free and don't have the backbone to produce anything worthwhile in exchange. They're the real users or AOLusers -- use and use and too impotent to produce on their own.
For the record, I've been a professional developer for ten years (as well as a freeware and OSS developer). I like to think I've produced plenty that's worthwhile: during PAX 2009 I was pleased to see a girl in dragon wings stand up at a panel Q&A and mention a freeware project I've worked on; the software I've been writing for my day job is the first in its niche and has attracted the interest of some major domestic and international players.
But I suspect you'd still classify me as one of those "kiddies" because I believe copyright should be abolished. I've managed to earn a living as a programmer without relying on the ability to limit copying, and if I can do it, I'm pretty sure you can too.
Admittedly, I haven't used XP in a while, but I have found that it's inbuilt unzipping capabilities are actually pretty good. They're slow, but they integrate into the UI nicely, and have several useable options on the right-click context menu.
XP's built-in unzipping is ridiculously slow if you have large zip archives containing many files. 7-Zip integrates just as well, runs much faster, and is free.
You can't attach a .zip file that contains an .exe, either. As a programmer working remotely, I have to send ".rename-to-zip" attachments all the time because of this.
I would suggest cold turkey, or exclusively using free (libre) content, before engaging in risky reform, especially if it's paired with discarding copyright.
How does "cold turkey" solve the piracy problem for anyone? I assume you mean "stop buying copyrighted works". That's a detriment for consumers, who enjoy less entertainment; a detriment for producers, who lose even more potential income than they did to piracy; and likely a detriment to the movement, since the loss in profits will be blamed on piracy anyway and result in calls for even more draconian laws.
That assumes that demand can be satisfied a trivial amount of time after it arises. Your system forces the X + Y month pause in between demand and production, which could very plausibly form a boom-bust cycle.
That pause already exists, but it's out of consumers' sight. It takes months or years between the time when a producer identifies the demand for a work ("say, these 3D kids' movies are pretty hot") and the time when that work is available for purchase. Moving the funding up front simply brings that pause into the open.
No, I have to disagree with you there. What about the copyright on the Linux kernel? Is that a restriction on speech, another dollar of royalties to a publisher lobbying for longer terms, etc, etc?
Fair enough, I should say "every work sold under the copyright business model", etc.
But yes, the copyright on the Linux kernel is a restriction on speech. It's just not as strict as the restriction imposed by, say, the copyrights on Disney movies.
How about any copyright to an indie artist who can't afford to protect their copyrights? What about the copyrights that aren't bought by anyone?
Yes, I agree that ineffective, unenforced copyright is less harmful than effective, enforced copyright. ;)
If anyone can make a fair amount of money from your system, as you claim that they can, then it stands to reason that the people to blame for your current complaints could also profit from the system, and use the money for their nefarious purposes. Your system wouldn't really fix anything.
The nefarious purposes I've complained about are a consequence of the system those people rely on. The RIAA demands stricter copyright laws because copyright is how they make their money. If they made their money by selling their services instead, they would have different demands.
Fair enough, but I still reckon that, for most people, there's a far cry between an "inability to enjoy", and "ability to enjoy only what you can afford". It just means you have to pick the top 100 or so titles, rather than the top 1000.
Sure, 90% seems like a huge cut down, but given that most people tend to spend 90+% of their free time in a core 5-10% of their general interests, it's not such a bad deal.
Don't you think my friend would notice if his music collection were cut from 60,000 songs down to only 6000? How are you going to convince him it's "not such a bad deal"?
The problem is that they are copies, which means their very existence relies on the copyrighted material. The door to these derivative works may be closed (for those who choose not to license), but copyright is most probably the reason such a door exists in the first place.
No. Even if copyright is the reason particular original works exist, it isn't the reason for all works to exist. A system without copyright would still produce songs, and those songs could be freely remixed, mashed-up, etc.
Well, perhaps the anime show, but for what it's worth, the serious sequel to star wars and the harry potter reference is fine by copyright, but not necessarily by trademarks.
Not true. The Harry Potter Lexicon was shot down for copyright infringement, not trademarks.
all we know is that liberty must be protected if we are to have a reliable economy at all. Roads on the other hand? Not so much.
You think we'd have a reliable economy without roads? When was the last time you bought something and didn't use roads to either pick it up or get it delivered?
What about all the savings? That didn't disappear.
What savings? The average American had little or none to begin with, and with the economy in shambles, any savings they had would've been spent shortly after they were laid off.
If your theory was true, no one would be buying cell phones or computers: The prices are always coming down, yet it is one of the fastest growing sectors there is.
I have absolutely no idea what you mean here.
Of course people buy cell phones and computers. Those things are getting cheaper relative to wages. But if everything goes down at the same time, that won't happen. And if wages go down sooner than the prices of the goods they want, they'll buy fewer goods.
The race to the bottom is a good thing, it increases wealth.
It may in the long run. But as they say, in the long run, we're all dead. Increased wealth 10 years from now is no help to anyone who's struggling today.
Where did that purchasing power come from? It came from someone who was going to save it (which would decrease interest rates by the way), to employ someone to build roads.
Money saved is money not spent, and that doesn't help the economy.
As for interest rates, check your bank's rate sheet sometime. They're plenty low as it is. The Fed is practically giving money away, and it shows in what banks are willing to pay for savings (although, oddly enough, not in what they're willing to accept for loans).
Congratulations, you just made one less future sale of a television, one less loan to buy a car, one fewer person to make that television cheaper, all in one fell swoop.
Luckily, we have a progressive income tax, so the bulk of that money comes from people who would not have spent it on goods.
Again, while generally so, you cannot assume money is a reliable meter stick for wealth, you must look at money as a commodity good just like any other good.
Indeed. A recession is what happens when demand for money is too high: everyone hoards their money. To get things moving, you need to introduce more money (i.e. government spending) to satisfy that demand.
That means that too many roads are not economically viable, perhaps. Who are you to say how many roads are ideal? As for maintaining security and liberty, that is unquestionably a legitimate government function (if ironic).
Now, hang on. Who are you to say how much fire protection or law enforcement is ideal? Maybe too much fire protection and law enforcement is not economically viable! Are you saying the government is better at spending your money (on police and fire departments) than you are? ;)
Once you admit that some services are most effectively provided by a central government, you've lost the argument, because you've given up on your bedrock principle that government spending is always worse than private spending.
Are you really trying to imply that prices will spiral down to zero? Really? I mean, come on, you wouldn't buy a bazillion houses if they eventually were priced at $0.01 each?
By that time, my wages would have dropped to insignificant fractions a penny, if I even still had a job, so probably not.
Eventually people run out of money to continue inflating bubbles, likewise, eventually people have enough money to stop price deflation.
And in the meantime, everyone has become unemployed, hungry, and miserable because the economy has ground to a halt. No thanks! This is like arguing that a global plague is no big deal because it'll correct itself once the human race has been decimated.
It has to do with the fact that you cannot spend money on whatever you want: An economy satisfies things I want in return for things I have. If government is spending my money instead, it is sending wrong price signals, generating the wrong capital.
That's still better than sending the signal "everything is too expensive, please slash all prices and lay off all workers", which is what happens when no one spends that money.
We need to be building manufacturing plants, not roads, bridges, and houses, for instance.
We need to repair the roads and bridges that people drive on and businesses ship their goods on. That takes money.
Spending works on the theory that you can take unemployed capital in one area and move it to another, but you cannot, capital is not homogeneous.
No, it works on the theory that increased activity in one sector will spill over into other sectors. More money in the pockets of road builders leads to more money in the pockets of people who sell things to road builders, and more opportunities for people who use roads.