Why would you need to pass it off as your own? WalMart sells stuff every day that they didn't make. So they could just as easily sell artists work without compensating them. No copyright law means there would be nothing to prevent this from happening.
Oh, really?
Where is Walmart going to get all this material to sell if artists aren't being paid to produce it? Do you think all those artists will just work for free, knowing that their work will immediately be copied and resold?
If an artist is happy working for free, then sure, the Walmarts of the world will have a chance to make money by reselling his work. And they'll deserve to make that money, because they're providing a distribution service.
But an artist who doesn't want to work for free can easily stop this scenario from happening. Walmart may be a powerful company, but even they can't force artists to work against their will.
Becasue it's different when you actual partake in the service and not pay.
Different from whose perspective? Not the artists' -- they're in exactly the same situation either way.
This isn't like getting a haircut or a meal and then refusing to pay for it. If I download a song, I'm not costing the artist any more than if I decide not to listen to it at all.
It only makes a difference from my perspective, and if that's what you're railing against, well, you're going to come off just like the puritans who oppose dancing, sex, and any other harmless pleasure that isn't "earned".
Oh, wait, sorry, did someone forget to inform you that copyright law is more than just making money? It also entails plagiarism and similar concepts.
You know what else also "entails" plagiarism and similar concepts? Anti-fraud laws. Lying about something in order to sell it is already illegal.
You don't need copyright in order to outlaw plagiarism. Even if you find that existing anti-fraud laws aren't enough, then you can pass a new law that specifically forbids passing someone else's work off as your own, and you still won't need copyright.
Remember that Slashdot is very pro-Linux and pro-GPL, so there's an attitude of providing things for free. The thing is, the GPL relies on copyright to exist. It's actually a copyright and usage license, even though Slashdot often posts stories about how evil copyright laws and EULAs are.
The primary benefit of the GPL, according to many of us, is that it turns copyright against itself, restoring the freedoms that copyright took away in the first place.
In a world with no copyright, there wouldn't be nearly as much need for the GPL: we'd all be free to distribute software, patches, and reverse engineered source code. If you release a proprietary fork of Linux and refuse to give out the source code, that's OK, we'll just disassemble it and incorporate your changes into our open-source branch.
And, of course, there are the stories of "stolen" GPL code, even though we constantly hear that "piracy isn't theft."
I agree that it's a poor choice of words, but "stealing" GPL code is actually closer to theft than copying commercial works is. It deprives end users of the source code and the distribution rights that they rightfully should have.
It's pointless to point out these kinds of hypocrisies, because the mod system is so easily gamed to drown those kinds of criticisms out.
You mean, the people who point out flaws in your arguments get modded up, while your flawed arguments get modded down? Gee, what a terribly broken system.
The only sense in which the victims of copyright infringement lose money is that they don't get money they might otherwise have had. That's a very different thing from taking away money which they actually did have.
Right -- and it's a thing we've all come to accept already as a fact of doing business.
If I decide not to see Terminator Salvation (because I've heard it sucks), the theater and the studio are "losing" money they might otherwise have had. The reviewers who convince me not to buy a ticket are every bit as responsible for that "lost" revenue as the file sharers who give out free copies so other people don't have to buy tickets. So if the anti-P2P forces are so concerned about lost revenue, why aren't they fighting against bad reviews too?
Yes, because it's all about the publishers. No artist could possibly want to sell their work. They'd much rather pack your bags at the grocery store and then go home to make music, video games, movies and books for you in the evening because they like you so much.
Yes, because that's the only alternative. No artist could possibly make money from their work if they didn't have a government-granted license to restrict other people's speech. They'd rather give up and go work at grocery stores than adopt a sensible business model that isn't threatened by technology.
AFAIK the boxing/unboxing occur at compile (to bytecode) time and the JVM sees *exactly* the same code as if you'd done List int -- that is, generics is strictly a syntactic sugar in Java which can only be detected at compile time.
I can't tell if you're disagreeing: that sounds just like what I said.
The Java compiler turns all ArrayList<T> types into the same ArrayList type. The "T" part is erased, and the compiler inserts casts or boxing/unboxing operations to convert between "T" and "object", effectively changing a statement like "list.add(5)" into "list.add(new Integer(5))".
The boxing/unboxing opcodes are inserted at compile time, but those opcodes cause boxing/unboxing operations to take place at runtime. That means more runtime overhead. Instead of just copying an int into the array, now you're allocating a new Integer on the heap and copying that reference into the array.
Sure, c# is a tad better in some regards, but what's the point of a VM which isn't cross platform?
Not sure what you mean here. That VM is an ECMA standard, and there are multiple implementations of it on various platforms, most notably Mono.
While I can see why this would be a good thing to implement on the user end. TPM is about the other side trusting you as much as you trust the other side. If you could forge this "Remote Attestation" then what good would it be?
That's kinda the point. What good is it anyway, for home users?
I don't want third parties to be able to trust that I'm running their preferred software, because that gives them leverage to force me to run it. I want my computer to be a black box from their perspective. If they know that my attestation could be false, then they won't enter into schemes that require me to prove I'm running software I don't want.
Clearly if you could forge it then so could someone who has hacked your system.
No, not if the forgery option is controlled by a physical switch.
So, do you have any actual, real-world example of TPM being used that way? Or just spreading the old recycled FUD around?
I don't think it's FUD. The technology clearly could be used that way, and it's hard to believe that wasn't the intent.
You don't really need the cryptographic assurance of TPM's remote attestation unless you're in an antagonistic relationship with someone beyond your reach, like media companies vs. consumers. Sure, it makes IT admins' lives a little easier, but IT admins have always been able to enforce software configurations through things like network booting and their physical/social presence anyway.
As for why we haven't seen the TPM dystopia in action yet: I suspect it's mainly because TPM isn't deployed widely enough. The "BitLocker" feature in Windows Vista uses TPM, and Vista has been out for over two years, but BitLocker still isn't supported on a lot of new machines. It'll still be a while before media companies can assume that everyone who wants to view their stream has a TPM installed.
People have to be aware of the potential abuses of TPM. If someone manages to come up with an application more exciting than BitLocker, we've got to be ready to say "sure, I'll install a TPM for that, but only if you let me forge attestations when I need to". Because if TPM becomes ubiquitous in its current form, public opinion will be the only thing stopping media companies from trying to control our PCs... and you've seen how little they care about public opinion.
Would you ask for one? If your favorite artist retired, would you ask for a refund for your last purchase? You know, I really like you a lot, I've followed you for years, but I just don't want you to keep my $10 if you're not going to produce anything else. I don't really care about your well-being that much.
No, but that's because I don't have any delusions that the money I gave them for their latest album was supposed to fund their next album.
You can't have it both ways: either I'm "giving them a few bucks... to allow them to create the next one" or I'm giving them a few bucks because I care about their well-being (and thus want to reward them for the work they've already done). If the former, then I expect a refund if that next work doesn't materialize. If the latter, then buying their last work is no substitute for direct funding of their next work.
Shit man, I don't know, because you want to actually support the artist instead of just yelling about how much of their work you should be allowed to get for free?
Like I said, I'll gladly support the artist if they need funding for their next work. I'm fully in favor of paying for the creation of artistic works.
What I'm opposed to is being forced to go through the artist's preferred distributors when I want a copy of something that's already been recorded. I don't need them to make me a copy: I can make my own copies for less using information that people are willing to give me for free. (I have been known to buy CDs to reward artists, but only because it's more convenient than sending money directly.)
But that's not a justification at all for you can't drive my car, even if I'm not using it at the moment â" unless I allow you to.
No, this follows directly from the fact that the car can only be in one place at a time.
If I borrow your car while you're not using it, then what happens an hour later when you want to drive somewhere but I haven't brought it back? You have no car to drive, that's what. I can't predict the future, so I can't borrow your car without possibly denying you its use later, even if you're not using it at the moment I borrow it.
Also, your attempt at making a distinction presumes, that the only use of a book is reading it. But that's not true â" the author needs not read it, in fact. He often wants to sell it. And his attempts at selling it are hampered by the pirates attempts at same.
You don't have a right to sell anything, only a right to offer it for sale. If people don't want to buy your product for whatever reason -- the price is too high, the product sucks, someone else is offering it for less -- then sorry, but that's the way it goes. You're entitled to try, but that doesn't mean you'll succeed.
So, no, piracy doesn't interfere with your ability to use your book. You can offer it for sale even if someone else is giving it away for free. You just won't find much success unless you provide a better value than the pirate.
Face it. Unless you are willing to dispense with the notion of property altogether, your attempts to do so selectively will remain ridiculous. Bring this point up on the next party meeting. See, what senior comrades tell you about your blowing your cover too early.
I was not talking about people not buying his work. I was talking about people buying his work from pirates. Each such purchase is a theft from him.
No, like I said, it's only stealing if you become poorer as a result. The author has exactly as much money (and exactly as many books) after the pirate's transaction as he did before the transaction, which makes sense because he wasn't part of that transaction at all. Nothing was stolen from him.
I know you'd like to ignore the fact that the author "loses" potential revenue in exactly the same way when people don't buy his work for other reasons, but that doesn't make it go away. You will have to justify your distinction between an author who fails to make a sale because people don't want his book, and an author who fails to make a sale because someone else is giving the book away -- both authors end up in exactly the same situation. The only difference is on the reader's end, not the author's.
The exact same line of reasoning can justify resale of (tangible) stolen goods â" an obviously immoral and illegal activity. Therefor, the line of reasoning is wrong and without merit.
Ah, but reselling stolen goods does harm the rightful owner, by making it more difficult for him to track down his property. (That obviously doesn't apply to information, since the author hasn't been deprived of anything and has no need to track it down.)
All of those things are not (yet) easy to replicate â" fixing a car or driving a bus is hard and one is paid for every time they do it. Replicating books is trivial â" writing them is hard...
Yes, that's exactly my point! Writing a book is hard just like fixing a car is hard. And copying a book is easy, just like driving a car that's been fixed is easy.
Therefore, authors can get paid for writing books, just like mechanics get paid for fixing cars. He can get paid for every book he writes, just like a mechanic gets paid for every car he fixes.
An author basing his business model on charging for copies is as foolish as a mechanic basing his business model on charging people to drive the car after he fixes it. It's unenforceable and it cause
He has not earned the right to derive utility (enjoyment) from a pirated product.
He "earned the right" to run programs on his computer when he bought the computer. That's the only right he needs. It's his computer, he can feed whatever data he wants into it.
You pro-piracy folks love to trot out "well, if he wasn't going to buy it anyway, who cares?"--well, turn it around. If he wasn't going to buy it, why should he gain a benefit from it? "Because it hurts no one" is a laughable excuse.
I'm sorry you don't like it, but it's a perfectly good response. It doesn't hurt anyone.
Scenario A: Adobe doesn't get paid. I don't use Photoshop.
Scenario B: Adobe doesn't get paid. I use Photoshop.
What advantage does Scenario B have for anyone? It's the same for Adobe, and worse for me. Tie-lose!
You've posted all over this thread urging people to choose an option that's objectively worse. Doesn't that tell you something about the logic of your position?
Piracy encourages further piracy (the "everyone's doing it" effect), which, even if he "wasn't going to buy it anyway", may induce somebody who would have to pirate it instead.
No, the cat's already out of the bag. Pirates don't do it because of peer pressure. Copyright is unenforceable and morally dubious; pirated software is cheaper, more convenient, and sometimes even more functional... what more inducement do you think people need?
Why would they? There's not a single piece of evidence to suggest they would. Throughout history, only the rich have commissioned artists and writers to create works. [...] People don't pay to have cultural works created. They just don't. They never have.
Government endowments for the arts. Public radio and television. Netroots-funded political campaign ads. Sellaband.
Right... sort of like.. I don't know, maybe giving them a few bucks for their *current* work, to allow them to create the next one.
What makes you so sure there's going to be a next one? If their current work ends up being their last work, do I get a refund? How do I know I'm not just wasting money on a copy that I could've gotten elsewhere for free?
I hold the creator's right to control his creation to be self-evident. Pure and simple. To deny this right you need pages of arguments, which are very easy to prove wrong.
I hold that supposed right to be bunk. Phony. A fantasy made up by weak, arrogant people in order to claim power over others.
And while I'm at it, I'll assert that you "need pages of arguments, which are very easy to prove wrong" in order to support this supposed right. (Come on, what does that even mean? Do you really think you can prove a point just by pretending you can win an argument that hasn't happened?)
Your disdain for his lowly "wanting to get paid", as opposite to the noble "moral right" was obvious. Hence the (strong) suspicion, you hold money-making in disfavor.
Oh, I see. You imagined a subtext in my comment that wasn't there.
Well, now you know better, right? When I wrote "he's just trying to get paid" I was responding to your claim that the concern here was morality rather than business -- a claim that isn't backed up by the original submission.
In fact, I think making money is great. I'm very interested in new models that authors and artists can use to make money without restricting anyone else's speech.
But the pirates steal from him â" every copy bought from the pirates is not bought from him.
There are a dozen movies at the theater right now that I haven't seen and don't plan to see. Am I "stealing" from the theater by declining to give them my money? Certainly not. What if I wait for them to come out on DVD or TV? Still no.
No one is obligated to buy a product from you just because you're offering it for sale. They're free to get it from someone else, or not get it at all. It's not "stealing" unless you actually become poorer as a result.
I fail to see, how anyone can justify this. And you've spent three postings already without trying.
I hold the justification to be self-evident. Pure and simple. To deny this justification you need pages of arguments, which are very easy to prove wrong...;)
Seriously, though, it is simple: it's justified because it's a voluntary transaction between the pirate and the consumer. Consumer sees that pirate is offering to send a file; consumer requests file; pirate sends file; transaction is complete. No one is harmed, so it's justified by default.
(One might argue that the author is harmed by being excluded, but one would be wrong. The author is in the same position after this transaction as he would be if the consumer decided not to get the book at all: he loses nothing, even though the consumer gains something. I hope we can agree that I'm not "harming" the author of every book I choose not to read!)
The billions are still working on things, which are hard to replicate.
No, not all of them. There's more to the world than manufacturing.
Many of them perform services: barber, doctor, accountant, mechanic, house painter, bus driver, CEO, and so on. They don't make something, they do something. And they manage to get paid for their labor without any special monopoly powers: they simply don't do any work unless someone has agreed to pay them for it.
I contend that what authors and artists do is closer to service than manufacturing. Writing isn't "making", it's "doing". Writers can get paid for writing rather than selling books, just like an accountant gets paid for filling out tax forms rather than copying them.
Oh, please, spare the "Freedom of Speech" strawman...
You seem to misunderstand the meaning of "strawman". Freedom of speech is valuable, and copyright is quite simply a restriction on speech: it limits the facts that I'm allowed to share, the sequences of words I'm allowed to say. Whether those words originally came out of someone else's mouth is irrelevant
Of course PC's also have categories of malware that act as desirable applications from the user to download over the web
Those are called trojans, and we're ignoring those, remember? OS X doesn't stop a user from running a "desirable application" that turns out to be malware either.
(Frankly, I think Windows does more in that regard: you usually have to click through a warning to launch an executable that you've downloaded.)
You're assuming manufacturers are going to produce a separate line of motherboards for home use and office use? I think that would drive the cost of hardware up.
I don't think it would. If TPM had been designed from the beginning to be less evil, then remote attestation could be disabled by setting a jumper or cutting a trace -- or controlled by a switch.
On a typical user's desktop forging attestations doesn't really have any legitimate uses, only evil ones.
Retaining control of my computer is a legitimate use.
So is discouraging the spread of invasive DRM: if every would-be digital tyrant knows that the attestations coming from my computer might be fake, then they won't pursue DRM schemes that rely on restricting the software I'm allowed to run. I might not even need to use the forgery switch; its mere presence might be enough to keep those third parties from trying to control my PC.
As a system administrator, I disagree in the strongest possible terms [...] often the user of the computer isn't the owner, and/or isn't the person responsible for managing and maintaining it. In these cases remote attestation becomes highly attractive.
Hi, and thanks for reading the first two paragraphs of my comment!
Since you're a system administrator, I'd like to extend a special offer to you: click here to read the final paragraph of my comment, absolutely free! I think you'll find it specifically addresses your concerns.
Remote attestation might not be something you care for, but if you were designing an ATM system you might feel differently about the ability to know, with a pretty high confidence, that the remote terminals are uncorrupted.
Fair enough. But if I were designing an ATM (or a kiosk, or any other public-facing terminal where remote attestation might have a legitimate use), I could put whatever additional hardware in there I wanted. I'm already adding a keypad, card reader, touch screen, etc. so why not one more thing?
Remote attestation isn't something that needs to be built into the average PC. On a typical user's desktop, remote attestation doesn't really have any legitimate uses, only evil ones.
I'd really like a system that allowed me to know if one of the workstations around here had been compromised. All of our machines are 'mine' in the sense I'm the one responsible for them, the employees sitting in front of em just use em.
If those workstations came with a switch on the side for forging attestations, and you didn't want users doing that, you could simply disable the switch. Just like you can already disable CD-ROM drives, USB ports, or whatever else users might use to compromise the workstations.
That's almost exactly what we have now. The only difference is that you're suggesting that authors get paid before they write the books instead of after. They're still charging for their books.
No, they're charging for the act of writing. Instead of taking a cut of each book's cover price, they take a fixed amount up front, because writing a book only involves a fixed amount of work no matter how many copies you make.
Even so, many authors get money up front from the publisher as an advance, and then they get residuals on sales. The only thing you're suggesting is that the advance is more and they elminate residuals.
Not quite: you're assuming that the money comes from a publisher. I'm not.
The act of writing can be funded by anyone who benefits from the existence of the new book. That could include publishers, who benefit from having one more product to sell... but it could also include the teachers who benefit from having a book to teach from, the students who benefit from having a book to learn from, the businesses who benefit from having a book to educate their future workers, the taxpayers who benefit from having a more educated population, etc.
What about the money for the publisher? They aren't going to publish the books for free, are they getting tax handouts also?
Publishers will get money from selling copies, the same way they do today. But the price of those copies won't need to include a royalty for the author, because the author will have already been paid.
On the other hand, if readers decide that they like e-books better than hard copies, the publishers might go out of business. Not much of a loss if there's no demand for publishing, though. The authors will still earn a living, because e-books still need someone to write them.
As for the assumption that private individuals will pay authors to write a book.. well, that's precisely the problem that we're dealing with now, isn't it? It's apparent that private individuals are unwilling to pay authors for their work.
No, you're overlooking the difference between a book that exists and a book that does not exist.
Private individuals are apparently unwilling to pay authors for works that have already been written. There's little incentive to pay $50 for a copy when I can get a copy for $0 instead, right? The author/publisher can't stop other people from offering me copies, so that business model is on shaky ground.
But if the book I want hasn't been written yet, I don't have the option of getting a free copy illegally. I'll need to get someone to write it for me, which only an author can do. He's going to ask for something in return, and if I don't pay him, I'm not going to get that book.
(Of course in reality, it wouldn't be just me paying the author, but rather a group of people pooling their money.)
And your "solution" doesn't even apply to non-educational authors, entertainment, history, etc, who are also affected by book piracy. Even though Dan Brown or the lady who writes Harry Potter might sell millions of copies, no one is going to get a fund together to pay them to write a new entertainment book. No one is going to pay an author to write a biography on a historical figure. No one is going to pay a scientist to write a book explaining his new theory, say about evolution, or the laws governing heavenly bodies, or a new system of math. No one is going to pay Donald Knuth to write a book about algorithms.
I disagree. People obviously value the literary efforts of Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling, biographers, scientists, Don Knuth, and other authors. Why wouldn't those same people be willing to contribute to their future works?
I know if my favorite author (or musician, or filmmaker, etc.) came to me and said "I need a few bucks or my next work is never going to be made", I wouldn't hesitate. And I'm hardly the most loyal fan in the world, so I have no doubt that they'd be able to raise enough money to fund production.
Being somewhat serious, why does the slashdot groupthink give C# a free pass whereas java gets all the hate? I haven't looked, but I assumed both are similar in performance.
.NET (including C#) keeps more metadata around for the JIT to use, which could theoretically result in improved performance.
One example is generics: if you use ArrayList<int> in Java, you end up with a bunch of boxing/unboxing overhead at runtime, because the compiler erases the type and turns it into a list of objects. List<int> in.NET remains a list of primitives, so there's no boxing.
On the other hand, I suspect more effort has gone into optimizing JVMs than optimizing the CLR, so I'm not sure whether the extra metadata actually translates into better performance.
He basically makes the argument that TPM is a dual-use technology: it can be used for good or evil. Problem is, the evil uses could easily be disabled without impairing the good uses... but that hasn't happened.
"Remote attestation" is for DRM, plain and simple. It's evil. There is no reason I'd want my computer to produce a report of what software I'm running without giving me the ability to change that report before it's sent out. That feature is useless for me as a user; it's only useful to third parties that want to restrict the software I'm allowed to run (e.g. by refusing to send me a video stream unless they know I'm using their preferred player).
If they removed remote attestation from the TPM spec, or simply put a switch on the side of the computer so the owner could forge attestations whenever he felt like it, it wouldn't be evil. So the question is, if Trusted Computing is such a boon for users, why does it still have features that only serve to undermine those very users?
So trivial in fact to launch an exploit on the Mac, that there's only one in the wild - and that's a trojan in a pirated application.
Cute. Does that mean PC defenders get to ignore all the computers that have been infected by trojans too?
According to that logic, I think we'd find that Windows is nearly as "secure" as OS X. Most infections happen because people are stupid enough to run any program that promises them free smiley-face cursors, not because of vulnerabilities in the OS.
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Why would you need to pass it off as your own? WalMart sells stuff every day that they didn't make. So they could just as easily sell artists work without compensating them. No copyright law means there would be nothing to prevent this from happening.
Oh, really?
Where is Walmart going to get all this material to sell if artists aren't being paid to produce it? Do you think all those artists will just work for free, knowing that their work will immediately be copied and resold?
If an artist is happy working for free, then sure, the Walmarts of the world will have a chance to make money by reselling his work. And they'll deserve to make that money, because they're providing a distribution service.
But an artist who doesn't want to work for free can easily stop this scenario from happening. Walmart may be a powerful company, but even they can't force artists to work against their will.
Becasue it's different when you actual partake in the service and not pay.
Different from whose perspective? Not the artists' -- they're in exactly the same situation either way.
This isn't like getting a haircut or a meal and then refusing to pay for it. If I download a song, I'm not costing the artist any more than if I decide not to listen to it at all.
It only makes a difference from my perspective, and if that's what you're railing against, well, you're going to come off just like the puritans who oppose dancing, sex, and any other harmless pleasure that isn't "earned".
Oh, wait, sorry, did someone forget to inform you that copyright law is more than just making money? It also entails plagiarism and similar concepts.
You know what else also "entails" plagiarism and similar concepts? Anti-fraud laws. Lying about something in order to sell it is already illegal.
You don't need copyright in order to outlaw plagiarism. Even if you find that existing anti-fraud laws aren't enough, then you can pass a new law that specifically forbids passing someone else's work off as your own, and you still won't need copyright.
Remember that Slashdot is very pro-Linux and pro-GPL, so there's an attitude of providing things for free. The thing is, the GPL relies on copyright to exist. It's actually a copyright and usage license, even though Slashdot often posts stories about how evil copyright laws and EULAs are.
The primary benefit of the GPL, according to many of us, is that it turns copyright against itself, restoring the freedoms that copyright took away in the first place.
In a world with no copyright, there wouldn't be nearly as much need for the GPL: we'd all be free to distribute software, patches, and reverse engineered source code. If you release a proprietary fork of Linux and refuse to give out the source code, that's OK, we'll just disassemble it and incorporate your changes into our open-source branch.
And, of course, there are the stories of "stolen" GPL code, even though we constantly hear that "piracy isn't theft."
I agree that it's a poor choice of words, but "stealing" GPL code is actually closer to theft than copying commercial works is. It deprives end users of the source code and the distribution rights that they rightfully should have.
It's pointless to point out these kinds of hypocrisies, because the mod system is so easily gamed to drown those kinds of criticisms out.
You mean, the people who point out flaws in your arguments get modded up, while your flawed arguments get modded down? Gee, what a terribly broken system.
The only sense in which the victims of copyright infringement lose money is that they don't get money they might otherwise have had. That's a very different thing from taking away money which they actually did have.
Right -- and it's a thing we've all come to accept already as a fact of doing business.
If I decide not to see Terminator Salvation (because I've heard it sucks), the theater and the studio are "losing" money they might otherwise have had. The reviewers who convince me not to buy a ticket are every bit as responsible for that "lost" revenue as the file sharers who give out free copies so other people don't have to buy tickets. So if the anti-P2P forces are so concerned about lost revenue, why aren't they fighting against bad reviews too?
Yes, because it's all about the publishers. No artist could possibly want to sell their work. They'd much rather pack your bags at the grocery store and then go home to make music, video games, movies and books for you in the evening because they like you so much.
Yes, because that's the only alternative. No artist could possibly make money from their work if they didn't have a government-granted license to restrict other people's speech. They'd rather give up and go work at grocery stores than adopt a sensible business model that isn't threatened by technology.
That's why I set the upload speed to 0. I'm just making my own copy, I'm not distributing.
And that's why the download takes a month to finish.
My laptop runs Tiger, but I've never seen these warnings. Are they a feature of Safari? (I use Firefox.)
AFAIK the boxing/unboxing occur at compile (to bytecode) time and the JVM sees *exactly* the same code as if you'd done List int -- that is, generics is strictly a syntactic sugar in Java which can only be detected at compile time.
I can't tell if you're disagreeing: that sounds just like what I said.
The Java compiler turns all ArrayList<T> types into the same ArrayList type. The "T" part is erased, and the compiler inserts casts or boxing/unboxing operations to convert between "T" and "object", effectively changing a statement like "list.add(5)" into "list.add(new Integer(5))".
The boxing/unboxing opcodes are inserted at compile time, but those opcodes cause boxing/unboxing operations to take place at runtime. That means more runtime overhead. Instead of just copying an int into the array, now you're allocating a new Integer on the heap and copying that reference into the array.
Sure, c# is a tad better in some regards, but what's the point of a VM which isn't cross platform?
Not sure what you mean here. That VM is an ECMA standard, and there are multiple implementations of it on various platforms, most notably Mono.
While I can see why this would be a good thing to implement on the user end. TPM is about the other side trusting you as much as you trust the other side. If you could forge this "Remote Attestation" then what good would it be?
That's kinda the point. What good is it anyway, for home users?
I don't want third parties to be able to trust that I'm running their preferred software, because that gives them leverage to force me to run it. I want my computer to be a black box from their perspective. If they know that my attestation could be false, then they won't enter into schemes that require me to prove I'm running software I don't want.
Clearly if you could forge it then so could someone who has hacked your system.
No, not if the forgery option is controlled by a physical switch.
So, do you have any actual, real-world example of TPM being used that way? Or just spreading the old recycled FUD around?
I don't think it's FUD. The technology clearly could be used that way, and it's hard to believe that wasn't the intent.
You don't really need the cryptographic assurance of TPM's remote attestation unless you're in an antagonistic relationship with someone beyond your reach, like media companies vs. consumers. Sure, it makes IT admins' lives a little easier, but IT admins have always been able to enforce software configurations through things like network booting and their physical/social presence anyway.
As for why we haven't seen the TPM dystopia in action yet: I suspect it's mainly because TPM isn't deployed widely enough. The "BitLocker" feature in Windows Vista uses TPM, and Vista has been out for over two years, but BitLocker still isn't supported on a lot of new machines. It'll still be a while before media companies can assume that everyone who wants to view their stream has a TPM installed.
People have to be aware of the potential abuses of TPM. If someone manages to come up with an application more exciting than BitLocker, we've got to be ready to say "sure, I'll install a TPM for that, but only if you let me forge attestations when I need to". Because if TPM becomes ubiquitous in its current form, public opinion will be the only thing stopping media companies from trying to control our PCs... and you've seen how little they care about public opinion.
Then don't be surprised when Time Warner says "Fuck you back, you can't have our content."
Good, bring it on! I think we know who'll win that staring contest. There's plenty of other content I can access without ceding control of my PC.
THAT'S what TPM media attestation is all about. Balancing the equation.
Hah. The "equation" is already heavily slanted toward Big Content. TPM slants it even more toward them, and you call that balance?
Would you ask for one? If your favorite artist retired, would you ask for a refund for your last purchase? You know, I really like you a lot, I've followed you for years, but I just don't want you to keep my $10 if you're not going to produce anything else. I don't really care about your well-being that much.
No, but that's because I don't have any delusions that the money I gave them for their latest album was supposed to fund their next album.
You can't have it both ways: either I'm "giving them a few bucks ... to allow them to create the next one" or I'm giving them a few bucks because I care about their well-being (and thus want to reward them for the work they've already done). If the former, then I expect a refund if that next work doesn't materialize. If the latter, then buying their last work is no substitute for direct funding of their next work.
Shit man, I don't know, because you want to actually support the artist instead of just yelling about how much of their work you should be allowed to get for free?
Like I said, I'll gladly support the artist if they need funding for their next work. I'm fully in favor of paying for the creation of artistic works.
What I'm opposed to is being forced to go through the artist's preferred distributors when I want a copy of something that's already been recorded. I don't need them to make me a copy: I can make my own copies for less using information that people are willing to give me for free. (I have been known to buy CDs to reward artists, but only because it's more convenient than sending money directly.)
But that's not a justification at all for you can't drive my car, even if I'm not using it at the moment â" unless I allow you to.
No, this follows directly from the fact that the car can only be in one place at a time.
If I borrow your car while you're not using it, then what happens an hour later when you want to drive somewhere but I haven't brought it back? You have no car to drive, that's what. I can't predict the future, so I can't borrow your car without possibly denying you its use later, even if you're not using it at the moment I borrow it.
Also, your attempt at making a distinction presumes, that the only use of a book is reading it. But that's not true â" the author needs not read it, in fact. He often wants to sell it. And his attempts at selling it are hampered by the pirates attempts at same.
You don't have a right to sell anything, only a right to offer it for sale. If people don't want to buy your product for whatever reason -- the price is too high, the product sucks, someone else is offering it for less -- then sorry, but that's the way it goes. You're entitled to try, but that doesn't mean you'll succeed.
So, no, piracy doesn't interfere with your ability to use your book. You can offer it for sale even if someone else is giving it away for free. You just won't find much success unless you provide a better value than the pirate.
Face it. Unless you are willing to dispense with the notion of property altogether, your attempts to do so selectively will remain ridiculous. Bring this point up on the next party meeting. See, what senior comrades tell you about your blowing your cover too early.
I was not talking about people not buying his work. I was talking about people buying his work from pirates. Each such purchase is a theft from him.
No, like I said, it's only stealing if you become poorer as a result. The author has exactly as much money (and exactly as many books) after the pirate's transaction as he did before the transaction, which makes sense because he wasn't part of that transaction at all. Nothing was stolen from him.
I know you'd like to ignore the fact that the author "loses" potential revenue in exactly the same way when people don't buy his work for other reasons, but that doesn't make it go away. You will have to justify your distinction between an author who fails to make a sale because people don't want his book, and an author who fails to make a sale because someone else is giving the book away -- both authors end up in exactly the same situation. The only difference is on the reader's end, not the author's.
The exact same line of reasoning can justify resale of (tangible) stolen goods â" an obviously immoral and illegal activity. Therefor, the line of reasoning is wrong and without merit.
Ah, but reselling stolen goods does harm the rightful owner, by making it more difficult for him to track down his property. (That obviously doesn't apply to information, since the author hasn't been deprived of anything and has no need to track it down.)
All of those things are not (yet) easy to replicate â" fixing a car or driving a bus is hard and one is paid for every time they do it. Replicating books is trivial â" writing them is hard...
Yes, that's exactly my point! Writing a book is hard just like fixing a car is hard. And copying a book is easy, just like driving a car that's been fixed is easy.
Therefore, authors can get paid for writing books, just like mechanics get paid for fixing cars. He can get paid for every book he writes, just like a mechanic gets paid for every car he fixes.
An author basing his business model on charging for copies is as foolish as a mechanic basing his business model on charging people to drive the car after he fixes it. It's unenforceable and it cause
He has not earned the right to derive utility (enjoyment) from a pirated product.
He "earned the right" to run programs on his computer when he bought the computer. That's the only right he needs. It's his computer, he can feed whatever data he wants into it.
You pro-piracy folks love to trot out "well, if he wasn't going to buy it anyway, who cares?"--well, turn it around. If he wasn't going to buy it, why should he gain a benefit from it? "Because it hurts no one" is a laughable excuse.
I'm sorry you don't like it, but it's a perfectly good response. It doesn't hurt anyone.
Scenario A: Adobe doesn't get paid. I don't use Photoshop.
Scenario B: Adobe doesn't get paid. I use Photoshop.
What advantage does Scenario B have for anyone? It's the same for Adobe, and worse for me. Tie-lose!
You've posted all over this thread urging people to choose an option that's objectively worse. Doesn't that tell you something about the logic of your position?
Piracy encourages further piracy (the "everyone's doing it" effect), which, even if he "wasn't going to buy it anyway", may induce somebody who would have to pirate it instead.
No, the cat's already out of the bag. Pirates don't do it because of peer pressure. Copyright is unenforceable and morally dubious; pirated software is cheaper, more convenient, and sometimes even more functional... what more inducement do you think people need?
Why would they? There's not a single piece of evidence to suggest they would. Throughout history, only the rich have commissioned artists and writers to create works. [...] People don't pay to have cultural works created. They just don't. They never have.
Government endowments for the arts. Public radio and television. Netroots-funded political campaign ads. Sellaband.
Right... sort of like.. I don't know, maybe giving them a few bucks for their *current* work, to allow them to create the next one.
What makes you so sure there's going to be a next one? If their current work ends up being their last work, do I get a refund? How do I know I'm not just wasting money on a copy that I could've gotten elsewhere for free?
I hold the creator's right to control his creation to be self-evident. Pure and simple. To deny this right you need pages of arguments, which are very easy to prove wrong.
I hold that supposed right to be bunk. Phony. A fantasy made up by weak, arrogant people in order to claim power over others.
And while I'm at it, I'll assert that you "need pages of arguments, which are very easy to prove wrong" in order to support this supposed right. (Come on, what does that even mean? Do you really think you can prove a point just by pretending you can win an argument that hasn't happened?)
Your disdain for his lowly "wanting to get paid", as opposite to the noble "moral right" was obvious. Hence the (strong) suspicion, you hold money-making in disfavor.
Oh, I see. You imagined a subtext in my comment that wasn't there.
Well, now you know better, right? When I wrote "he's just trying to get paid" I was responding to your claim that the concern here was morality rather than business -- a claim that isn't backed up by the original submission.
In fact, I think making money is great. I'm very interested in new models that authors and artists can use to make money without restricting anyone else's speech.
But the pirates steal from him â" every copy bought from the pirates is not bought from him.
There are a dozen movies at the theater right now that I haven't seen and don't plan to see. Am I "stealing" from the theater by declining to give them my money? Certainly not. What if I wait for them to come out on DVD or TV? Still no.
No one is obligated to buy a product from you just because you're offering it for sale. They're free to get it from someone else, or not get it at all. It's not "stealing" unless you actually become poorer as a result.
I fail to see, how anyone can justify this. And you've spent three postings already without trying.
I hold the justification to be self-evident. Pure and simple. To deny this justification you need pages of arguments, which are very easy to prove wrong... ;)
Seriously, though, it is simple: it's justified because it's a voluntary transaction between the pirate and the consumer. Consumer sees that pirate is offering to send a file; consumer requests file; pirate sends file; transaction is complete. No one is harmed, so it's justified by default.
(One might argue that the author is harmed by being excluded, but one would be wrong. The author is in the same position after this transaction as he would be if the consumer decided not to get the book at all: he loses nothing, even though the consumer gains something. I hope we can agree that I'm not "harming" the author of every book I choose not to read!)
The billions are still working on things, which are hard to replicate.
No, not all of them. There's more to the world than manufacturing.
Many of them perform services: barber, doctor, accountant, mechanic, house painter, bus driver, CEO, and so on. They don't make something, they do something. And they manage to get paid for their labor without any special monopoly powers: they simply don't do any work unless someone has agreed to pay them for it.
I contend that what authors and artists do is closer to service than manufacturing. Writing isn't "making", it's "doing". Writers can get paid for writing rather than selling books, just like an accountant gets paid for filling out tax forms rather than copying them.
Oh, please, spare the "Freedom of Speech" strawman...
You seem to misunderstand the meaning of "strawman". Freedom of speech is valuable, and copyright is quite simply a restriction on speech: it limits the facts that I'm allowed to share, the sequences of words I'm allowed to say. Whether those words originally came out of someone else's mouth is irrelevant
Of course PC's also have categories of malware that act as desirable applications from the user to download over the web
Those are called trojans, and we're ignoring those, remember? OS X doesn't stop a user from running a "desirable application" that turns out to be malware either.
(Frankly, I think Windows does more in that regard: you usually have to click through a warning to launch an executable that you've downloaded.)
You're assuming manufacturers are going to produce a separate line of motherboards for home use and office use? I think that would drive the cost of hardware up.
I don't think it would. If TPM had been designed from the beginning to be less evil, then remote attestation could be disabled by setting a jumper or cutting a trace -- or controlled by a switch.
On a typical user's desktop forging attestations doesn't really have any legitimate uses, only evil ones.
Retaining control of my computer is a legitimate use.
So is discouraging the spread of invasive DRM: if every would-be digital tyrant knows that the attestations coming from my computer might be fake, then they won't pursue DRM schemes that rely on restricting the software I'm allowed to run. I might not even need to use the forgery switch; its mere presence might be enough to keep those third parties from trying to control my PC.
As a system administrator, I disagree in the strongest possible terms [...] often the user of the computer isn't the owner, and/or isn't the person responsible for managing and maintaining it. In these cases remote attestation becomes highly attractive.
Hi, and thanks for reading the first two paragraphs of my comment!
Since you're a system administrator, I'd like to extend a special offer to you: click here to read the final paragraph of my comment, absolutely free! I think you'll find it specifically addresses your concerns.
Remote attestation might not be something you care for, but if you were designing an ATM system you might feel differently about the ability to know, with a pretty high confidence, that the remote terminals are uncorrupted.
Fair enough. But if I were designing an ATM (or a kiosk, or any other public-facing terminal where remote attestation might have a legitimate use), I could put whatever additional hardware in there I wanted. I'm already adding a keypad, card reader, touch screen, etc. so why not one more thing?
Remote attestation isn't something that needs to be built into the average PC. On a typical user's desktop, remote attestation doesn't really have any legitimate uses, only evil ones.
I'd really like a system that allowed me to know if one of the workstations around here had been compromised. All of our machines are 'mine' in the sense I'm the one responsible for them, the employees sitting in front of em just use em.
If those workstations came with a switch on the side for forging attestations, and you didn't want users doing that, you could simply disable the switch. Just like you can already disable CD-ROM drives, USB ports, or whatever else users might use to compromise the workstations.
That's almost exactly what we have now. The only difference is that you're suggesting that authors get paid before they write the books instead of after. They're still charging for their books.
No, they're charging for the act of writing. Instead of taking a cut of each book's cover price, they take a fixed amount up front, because writing a book only involves a fixed amount of work no matter how many copies you make.
Even so, many authors get money up front from the publisher as an advance, and then they get residuals on sales. The only thing you're suggesting is that the advance is more and they elminate residuals.
Not quite: you're assuming that the money comes from a publisher. I'm not.
The act of writing can be funded by anyone who benefits from the existence of the new book. That could include publishers, who benefit from having one more product to sell... but it could also include the teachers who benefit from having a book to teach from, the students who benefit from having a book to learn from, the businesses who benefit from having a book to educate their future workers, the taxpayers who benefit from having a more educated population, etc.
What about the money for the publisher? They aren't going to publish the books for free, are they getting tax handouts also?
Publishers will get money from selling copies, the same way they do today. But the price of those copies won't need to include a royalty for the author, because the author will have already been paid.
On the other hand, if readers decide that they like e-books better than hard copies, the publishers might go out of business. Not much of a loss if there's no demand for publishing, though. The authors will still earn a living, because e-books still need someone to write them.
As for the assumption that private individuals will pay authors to write a book.. well, that's precisely the problem that we're dealing with now, isn't it? It's apparent that private individuals are unwilling to pay authors for their work.
No, you're overlooking the difference between a book that exists and a book that does not exist.
Private individuals are apparently unwilling to pay authors for works that have already been written. There's little incentive to pay $50 for a copy when I can get a copy for $0 instead, right? The author/publisher can't stop other people from offering me copies, so that business model is on shaky ground.
But if the book I want hasn't been written yet, I don't have the option of getting a free copy illegally. I'll need to get someone to write it for me, which only an author can do. He's going to ask for something in return, and if I don't pay him, I'm not going to get that book.
(Of course in reality, it wouldn't be just me paying the author, but rather a group of people pooling their money.)
And your "solution" doesn't even apply to non-educational authors, entertainment, history, etc, who are also affected by book piracy. Even though Dan Brown or the lady who writes Harry Potter might sell millions of copies, no one is going to get a fund together to pay them to write a new entertainment book. No one is going to pay an author to write a biography on a historical figure. No one is going to pay a scientist to write a book explaining his new theory, say about evolution, or the laws governing heavenly bodies, or a new system of math. No one is going to pay Donald Knuth to write a book about algorithms.
I disagree. People obviously value the literary efforts of Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling, biographers, scientists, Don Knuth, and other authors. Why wouldn't those same people be willing to contribute to their future works?
I know if my favorite author (or musician, or filmmaker, etc.) came to me and said "I need a few bucks or my next work is never going to be made", I wouldn't hesitate. And I'm hardly the most loyal fan in the world, so I have no doubt that they'd be able to raise enough money to fund production.
Being somewhat serious, why does the slashdot groupthink give C# a free pass whereas java gets all the hate? I haven't looked, but I assumed both are similar in performance.
.NET (including C#) keeps more metadata around for the JIT to use, which could theoretically result in improved performance.
One example is generics: if you use ArrayList<int> in Java, you end up with a bunch of boxing/unboxing overhead at runtime, because the compiler erases the type and turns it into a list of objects. List<int> in .NET remains a list of primitives, so there's no boxing.
On the other hand, I suspect more effort has gone into optimizing JVMs than optimizing the CLR, so I'm not sure whether the extra metadata actually translates into better performance.
He basically makes the argument that TPM is a dual-use technology: it can be used for good or evil. Problem is, the evil uses could easily be disabled without impairing the good uses... but that hasn't happened.
"Remote attestation" is for DRM, plain and simple. It's evil. There is no reason I'd want my computer to produce a report of what software I'm running without giving me the ability to change that report before it's sent out. That feature is useless for me as a user; it's only useful to third parties that want to restrict the software I'm allowed to run (e.g. by refusing to send me a video stream unless they know I'm using their preferred player).
If they removed remote attestation from the TPM spec, or simply put a switch on the side of the computer so the owner could forge attestations whenever he felt like it, it wouldn't be evil. So the question is, if Trusted Computing is such a boon for users, why does it still have features that only serve to undermine those very users?
So trivial in fact to launch an exploit on the Mac, that there's only one in the wild - and that's a trojan in a pirated application.
Cute. Does that mean PC defenders get to ignore all the computers that have been infected by trojans too?
According to that logic, I think we'd find that Windows is nearly as "secure" as OS X. Most infections happen because people are stupid enough to run any program that promises them free smiley-face cursors, not because of vulnerabilities in the OS.