Just who is going to pay the car designer? I mean, the car itself is free. It sounds to me like he would have to have some legal means to protect his efforts... some sort of a licensing scheme maybe?
No, he doesn't need a licensing scheme.
No one can force him to design cars against his will, right? The abolition of slavery is the only "legal means" he needs. If someone wants him to design a new car, they're going to have to meet his terms; if they aren't willing to pay the price he asks, then he can spend his time doing something else instead of designing cars. So as long as the public still wants new car designs, they'll have no choice but to pay him to create those designs.
As for the question of who specifically is going to pay him, well, who benefits from his work? Answer that and you've answered your own question: anyone who benefits from the creation of new designs has an incentive to fund that creation, and of course the funding doesn't all have to come from one person. (For example: car buyers who want something they haven't seen before, car manufacturers who want a more exciting product to sell, or aftermarket part makers who want to expand their product lines.)
You have to explain that to me. As soon as the car designer sells his new design to ONE customer, that design can (and will, if it's desirable) immediately be copied by everyone for $0. How does the designer, or software developer, or [fill in your favorite IP creator] earn a living?
By charging enough for that first copy -- actually, for the act of designing -- to compensate him for his time.
If you make one new car design a year, and you charge $50,000 for it, then you're earning $50,000 a year. It doesn't matter how many people end up copying your design once you release it; you're still making a living, because you don't release the design until someone coughs up $50,000. (Or, more likely, a bunch of people each cough up a small amount that totals $50,000.)
You don't really think that's a viable alternative to the current system?
I absolutely do.
So every writer, musician, film studio etc will set up a little fund and will only start working once it fills up, right? Until then, they will just sit around and keep that masterpiece they have in mind on the shelf somewhere until enough people have paid?
Yup. They won't necessarily have to manage the fund themselves, of course -- they can get a middleman to do that. And there's nothing stopping them from writing down notes or drafts or whatever before they're been funded, as long as they realize that there's a chance they won't get paid for doing it.
How will you persuade sufficient numbers of people to pay even though they know that what they are paying for won't come to fruition until years from now, if ever?
The same way anyone persuades people to pay for his services: building a reputation by showing a portfolio of past work, lowering his prices if he's new on the scene, offering refunds if the work is never done or doesn't meet the terms that were agreed upon beforehand, etc.
Someone has to keep track of who paid what, so that in case the artist changes his mind (or gets sick, or dies) everything can be paid back. Do you have any concept of the scale and inefficiency of that system given the huge numbers of content creators out there?
Yes, and I really don't think it's much to worry about. Keeping track of data isn't inefficient, it's something computers are very good at.
The scale is nothing unusual compared to the scale of, say, Amazon or eBay or The Pirate Bay. Those are big sites, but the technology to support a large number of transactions (and the associated support requests) is well understood.
Furthermore, look at the scale and inefficiency of the things we need to support the current business model: copyright enforcement, royalty distribution, etc. Every time a song is played on any radio station, someone has to catalog that and keep track of royalties... but it still gets done, even though it requires a lot more human effort than an automated clearinghouse for funding production would. And copyright enforcement has to take place on a massive scale because it's everyone's problem: every web host from YouTube to crappy local ISPs need to deal with takedown notices and enforce other people's copyrights on their own customers, every hardware manufacturer needs to worry about DRM, every bar or restaurant has to worry about whether their TV/radio is audible to enough people that they'll have to pay royalties, and so on.
What is the result of an author's labour if it is not books/literature? and if he is not allowed to benefit from his labour, what else can he do?
I'm not sure what you mean. He is allowed to benefit from his labor, and in fact that's exactly what I'm suggesting. (Today, authors only benefit indirectly from their labor: their income depends on how many copies they sell, not how much work they put in.)
An author's labor results in books, sure. But that doesn't mean an author has to sell books in order to make money. He can sell his labor directly by saying "if you promise to pay me $10,000 for my effort, I will write a book, and then you can make all the copies you want".
This business model is used by billions of people every day, in countless fields, and it's not nearly as fragile as the copyright-based business model (which requires a complicated set of restrictions on speech, which are expensive and ultimately impossible to enforce).
How exactly would this make it "commercially viable to create content" since only one copy will be sold?
Simple: authors would stop trying to sell copies, and instead focus on selling their labor.
In the digital era, copies are not valuable. A copy of an e-book is worth little more than the media it's stored on. The act of writing, however, still has value -- you can't make authors write for free, so if you want to read anything new, you're gonna have to pay someone to write it. And the same technology that makes it easy to distribute free copies to lots of people can also make it easy for lots of people to pool their money and fund production of new works.
Quite right. With libel and slander, and some other cases (inciting a crowd to riot, shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, breaching national security), there are very good reasons for restricting speech. We admit that we're eroding free speech, which is a drastic step, but we believe it's justified because the alternative is even worse: it puts people in harm's way or causes significant damage.
Copyright, on the other hand, restricts everyone's speech in order to make it a little easier for a relative handful of people to make a buck. The alternative doesn't harm anyone, it just means an inconvenience for authors who'd have to sell their labor (like billions of other people do every day) instead of selling shiny discs. I don't see any rational way to justify this restriction on speech -- not to mention the expense of enforcing it -- when the benefit is so small compared to the cost.
Well then, I guess your concern has been addressed: you can substitute those examples into my original comment and the point stands.
I assume, since you haven't disputed it, that you're conceding that point: copyright gives you veto power over a broad category of speech, not just verbatim repetition of the copyrighted work. For any given copyrighted work, there are an infinite number of things that the copyright holder is allowed to block you from saying.
And you can happily produce T shirts and the like using copyrighted material as long as the copyright holder allows it.
And if the copyright holder doesn't allow it, you can't. When your speech is subject to someone else's veto, it isn't really free at all, now is it?
People also exercise fair use without fear of legal retribution, every day, without rulings from a court for their specific use.
I see what you did there.
Yes, people exercise fair use without fear of legal retribution because they don't think anyone will bother to sue -- not because they know for a fact that their use is legal. They don't know that for sure until a court rules on it.
The law simply does not say that any particular use is fair: it gives the court a set of guidelines to use when deciding whether to accept a fair use defense.
Lets say you copy the crop and give it to anyone who approaches the farmer's front gate.
The farmer still has his crop, he is not out anything right? (except all those who came to buy some crop but you said "Here! have some free crop")
I don't see a problem there. If it costs nothing to "copy" crops, then why should anyone have to pay for them? You've just described a scenario where we could end world hunger overnight -- alleviate the suffering of millions -- for free! Why should they suffer just so that the farmer can sell something that costs nothing to produce?
The farmer's services aren't needed to duplicate ears of corn, only to grow the first one, and the first one has already been grown. If people want a new type of crop, they can hire the farmer to grow one of those, and then copy it for free. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Entertaining the masses isn't quite as noble as feeding the masses, but the same principle is at work there. If someone wants to watch a movie, and it'll cost you nothing to let him watch that movie (he can get a copy from someone who already has one and is willing to share), then why should he have to go without just so that you can make another buck? Distributing the movie to more viewers costs you nothing. Creating it in the first place does cost something, and if people want another movie, they can hire you to make another, but your duplication services aren't needed.
You don't need approval from a court to exercise fair use. Quite the opposite actually.
You need a judgment from a court to know what is fair use, because the law only provides general guidelines. There's no guarantee that your use will be considered fair if you only use a certain number of words, or a certain percentage of the work.
And you can't copyright the phrase you propose in any meaningful way.
Of course not, which is why I acknowledged that when I wrote it. I chose a short phrase to simplify the example. If you want to choose a longer one, and provide the equivalent encoded/modified phrases yourself, be my guest.
I think your choice of it, at the exclusion of better examples, reveals your desire to spread fear about the topic.
Well, now that you know this assumption about my desire was mistaken, perhaps you'd like to post a better response.
Then novelists everywhere will stop writing. Or creating music. Or scripts for movies/shows.
And then, milliseconds later, an enterprising novelist/musician/screenwriter will stumble upon the concept that billions of other people are already familiar with: selling one's labor.
"People still want new material, right? And the only way they can get it is for someone to write it. But they can't make me write against my will. So if I offer to write something new for $10,000, they'll have no choice! They'll pool their money and beg me to take it! What else are they gonna do, never see any new material ever again?"
If car manufacturers are losing out because 99% of people are simply copying existing cars, then who would pay the car designers to develop these new cars? The public, who is busy waiting for their neighbour to purchase one so that they can copy it?
The people who want new car designs badly enough that they get tired of waiting (*), and the people who benefit in other ways from having new types of cars on the road (**).
(* If everyone is happy to keep waiting forever, then that means the designer's services aren't needed, because there isn't really any demand for new designs.)
(** Aftermarket parts makers, perhaps? If we substitute software for cars, this would be hardware manufacturers, system integrators, support contractors, strategy guide authors, etc.)
Yes you can, unless by 'repeat' you mean 'distribute, unmodified, in its entirety, contrary to the will of the author'.
Not true. Copyright makes it illegal to repeat modified or encoded versions as well, in whole or in part (except when a court finds it to be fair use).
If I were able to copyright the phrase "call me Ishmael", that wouldn't just mean you couldn't say "call me Ishmael". It'd mean you couldn't share too many facts or observations about that phrase, no matter what you actually spoke or wrote.
For example, you couldn't say "pnyy zr Vfuznry"; or "the first word is what you do with a phone, the second is Windows from late 2000, the third is Abraham's eldest son"; or any representation in any base of the number 516,013,372,831,636,978,131,339,489,436,591,468 (including any mathematical formula that produces that number).
There are also countless T-shirts you couldn't wear, songs you couldn't sing, pictures you couldn't paint... copyright prevents you from conveying any ideas that would allow someone to recreate the copyrighted material.
I'm actually more interested in the ethical side of things. Why is making it easy for people to steal ethical?
Because copying isn't stealing: no one is deprived by it.
The reason stealing is unethical in the first place is that it takes property away from its rightful owner. Someone steals your car; you can't drive to work the next day, because you have no car.
If new technology allowed car thieves to copy cars (at zero cost) instead of stealing them, just about everyone would win. Car manufacturers would lose out, since we'd no longer need massive factories to build cars, but car designers would still earn a living as long as the public was still hungry for new car designs.
It's the same with software. P2P has made the distribution channels obsolete, but we still need programmers to write new software, so they can still earn a living as long as the public is hungry for new programs. They just have to think of their "product" as a service -- their labor, which they perform all at once -- rather than a disc or a download that they sell over and over.
I'm sorry. Where do we have a right to copy others' work?
The same place we have a right to speak and write. That's all copying is.
If I had spent 2-3 years creating a novel, I certainly don't want somebody taking my labor without pay...
Don't worry, that won't happen: the only way to take your labor without pay would be to force you into slavery.
If you spend 2-3 years creating a novel, you're voluntarily performing that labor. And if you do it despite the fact that no one has offered to pay you for your labor, then you're voluntarily giving it away for free.
Nonsense. If that was true, then why don't we have a state-sanctioned monopoly on all foodstuffs so we don't run the risk of 'unreliable' supply? I mean, food is so crucial.
Because we regulate food from the other end: we set minimum levels of quality and penalize sellers who deliver anything less. Perhaps we should do the same for internet service?
Personally, I think a better reason for ISP monopolies is to minimize the amount of infrastructure. It's wasteful for a dozen different companies to run their own sets of wires down every street -- not to mention expensive for the ISPs and thus a barrier to competition.
On the other hand, how much would it cost you to learn how to do those tasks in Windows as quickly as you can do them on OS X or Linux? Perhaps you'd still come out ahead from the cheaper hardware.
Google is touting it as an open-source platform. However, as we saw last week about tethering, Google and device makers may be beholden to the interests of service providers.
The platform is still open source, and although Google has unfortunately pulled apps from the Android Market (as seen by T-Mobile users, at least), you can still download and run them, because unlike the iPhone, Android doesn't force you to get all your software from a central repository.
Android is in the same situation relative to phone manufacturers that Linux is relative to TiVo. You can recompile the open source code that TiVo is based on, but you can't install it on your DVR without significant hacking. Just because Linux is open source doesn't mean everyone who sells you Linux-based hardware has to give you the ability to install your own distro, because Linux isn't GPLv3 (and neither is Android).
This isn't Google's fault any more than the TiVo situation is Linus's fault. Blame the manufacturers and carriers who insist on locking down their hardware. Nothing is stopping other manufacturers or carriers from selling hardware that isn't locked down; let them know you're willing to pay for it.
The best chance of an open software platform for a phone is for manufacturers to all jump on the Android bandwagon but allow 'unlocked' phones to be bought in stores as with traditional GSM phones.
"Unlocked" in that case would have to mean more than it does with traditional GSM phones. You can use an unlocked phone on any carrier, but that doesn't mean you can flash whatever firmware you want.
By the way, if you want an Android phone that you can flash with whatever firmware you want, you can buy one today. It's called the ADP1, and you can get it for $400 after signing up as an Android developer ($25).
I fail to see how being anti-war, anti-empire, anti-drug war, pro-privacy, and pro-freedom are characteristics of the far right.
Those characteristics don't fall on the left-right axis, except to the extent that they translate into government doing less.
On the left-right axis, the Libertarian party is certainly at the far right: they want a government that basically does nothing. "Smaller government, lower taxes" is two-thirds of their motto. They oppose all sorts of regulations and social programs. They're not socially conservative, but they're about as fiscally conservative as you can get.
You don't have the options for directional, as oppposed to rotational, movement that you have in the later games and you can tell that the game was designed for a controller with only one analogue stick.
I think you mean no analog sticks. The PlayStation didn't have a single-analog controller.
Actually, I did disprove what you said and made a case for the other side. A theory can never become a law, even if you provide "a much firmer proof", because theories and laws are entirely different.
It's like you just like to post replies without reading the comments you're replying to.
Just an observation. (But if you find this happening every time you post something on Slashdot, maybe it's actually a law.)
From what I've seen it's the same old bullshit as usual. Tied to certain carriers, certain apps are blocked, etc.
Would someone with an android phone or maybe an android dev explain what exactly is open source about it?
G1 owner and hobbyist Android app developer here.
Android is open source in that you can download the source code for the OS, recompile it, redistribute it with or without modifications, recompile it, bundle it with hardware you sell, and so on. Just like Linux. That means you can expect to see it on a lot of hardware, since companies can use it for the cost of porting (no license needed to get the code or distribute it).
That doesn't mean the hardware is open source, though -- just like Linux. That's up to the manufacturer. TiVo runs Linux, but you can't install your own modified firmware (without some hacking), and the same is true of the G1. But you can root your G1 and install your own firmware, or buy an ADP1 and install whatever you want with no hacking.
Android isn't "tied to certain carriers". The G1 is, to an extent (it's hardware-incompatible with AT&T's 3G network), but other carriers have Android phones in the works.
It's also not true to say "certain apps are blocked". Google has unfortunately caved to T-Mobile's request to remove tethering apps from the Android Market (as seen by T-Mobile users, at least), but you don't have to use the Android Market anyway. You can install apps from any web site with the built-in browser, whether or not they're on some carrier's blacklist. No hacking required; anyone can do it without using special software, violating the carrier or manufacturer's terms, or being accused of copyright infringement (cough cough, iPhone).
Of course, since Android is open source, the carrier could sell a phone with a version of Android that's been modified to reject blacklisted apps from any source, and then prevent you from installing unsigned firmware, subjecting you to their application policies (much like TiVo does to subject you to their advertisement and copying policies). That hasn't happened yet, but it could. That's the downside of most open source licenses.
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Just who is going to pay the car designer? I mean, the car itself is free. It sounds to me like he would have to have some legal means to protect his efforts... some sort of a licensing scheme maybe?
No, he doesn't need a licensing scheme.
No one can force him to design cars against his will, right? The abolition of slavery is the only "legal means" he needs. If someone wants him to design a new car, they're going to have to meet his terms; if they aren't willing to pay the price he asks, then he can spend his time doing something else instead of designing cars. So as long as the public still wants new car designs, they'll have no choice but to pay him to create those designs.
As for the question of who specifically is going to pay him, well, who benefits from his work? Answer that and you've answered your own question: anyone who benefits from the creation of new designs has an incentive to fund that creation, and of course the funding doesn't all have to come from one person. (For example: car buyers who want something they haven't seen before, car manufacturers who want a more exciting product to sell, or aftermarket part makers who want to expand their product lines.)
You have to explain that to me. As soon as the car designer sells his new design to ONE customer, that design can (and will, if it's desirable) immediately be copied by everyone for $0. How does the designer, or software developer, or [fill in your favorite IP creator] earn a living?
By charging enough for that first copy -- actually, for the act of designing -- to compensate him for his time.
If you make one new car design a year, and you charge $50,000 for it, then you're earning $50,000 a year. It doesn't matter how many people end up copying your design once you release it; you're still making a living, because you don't release the design until someone coughs up $50,000. (Or, more likely, a bunch of people each cough up a small amount that totals $50,000.)
You don't really think that's a viable alternative to the current system?
I absolutely do.
So every writer, musician, film studio etc will set up a little fund and will only start working once it fills up, right? Until then, they will just sit around and keep that masterpiece they have in mind on the shelf somewhere until enough people have paid?
Yup. They won't necessarily have to manage the fund themselves, of course -- they can get a middleman to do that. And there's nothing stopping them from writing down notes or drafts or whatever before they're been funded, as long as they realize that there's a chance they won't get paid for doing it.
How will you persuade sufficient numbers of people to pay even though they know that what they are paying for won't come to fruition until years from now, if ever?
The same way anyone persuades people to pay for his services: building a reputation by showing a portfolio of past work, lowering his prices if he's new on the scene, offering refunds if the work is never done or doesn't meet the terms that were agreed upon beforehand, etc.
Someone has to keep track of who paid what, so that in case the artist changes his mind (or gets sick, or dies) everything can be paid back. Do you have any concept of the scale and inefficiency of that system given the huge numbers of content creators out there?
Yes, and I really don't think it's much to worry about. Keeping track of data isn't inefficient, it's something computers are very good at.
The scale is nothing unusual compared to the scale of, say, Amazon or eBay or The Pirate Bay. Those are big sites, but the technology to support a large number of transactions (and the associated support requests) is well understood.
Furthermore, look at the scale and inefficiency of the things we need to support the current business model: copyright enforcement, royalty distribution, etc. Every time a song is played on any radio station, someone has to catalog that and keep track of royalties... but it still gets done, even though it requires a lot more human effort than an automated clearinghouse for funding production would. And copyright enforcement has to take place on a massive scale because it's everyone's problem: every web host from YouTube to crappy local ISPs need to deal with takedown notices and enforce other people's copyrights on their own customers, every hardware manufacturer needs to worry about DRM, every bar or restaurant has to worry about whether their TV/radio is audible to enough people that they'll have to pay royalties, and so on.
Didn't think very hard about this, did you?
1. Stephen King announces intention to write a new novel, posts a brief description, and sets his price at $X.
2. People contribute money totaling $X (into an escrow account, if people don't trust Stephen King).
3. Stephen King writes novel. (Money is released from escrow. Profit!)
4. People download free ebooks.
5. Stephen King gets an idea for his next novel. Go to step 1.
What is the result of an author's labour if it is not books/literature? and if he is not allowed to benefit from his labour, what else can he do?
I'm not sure what you mean. He is allowed to benefit from his labor, and in fact that's exactly what I'm suggesting. (Today, authors only benefit indirectly from their labor: their income depends on how many copies they sell, not how much work they put in.)
An author's labor results in books, sure. But that doesn't mean an author has to sell books in order to make money. He can sell his labor directly by saying "if you promise to pay me $10,000 for my effort, I will write a book, and then you can make all the copies you want".
This business model is used by billions of people every day, in countless fields, and it's not nearly as fragile as the copyright-based business model (which requires a complicated set of restrictions on speech, which are expensive and ultimately impossible to enforce).
How exactly would this make it "commercially viable to create content" since only one copy will be sold?
Simple: authors would stop trying to sell copies, and instead focus on selling their labor.
In the digital era, copies are not valuable. A copy of an e-book is worth little more than the media it's stored on. The act of writing, however, still has value -- you can't make authors write for free, so if you want to read anything new, you're gonna have to pay someone to write it. And the same technology that makes it easy to distribute free copies to lots of people can also make it easy for lots of people to pool their money and fund production of new works.
Quite right. With libel and slander, and some other cases (inciting a crowd to riot, shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, breaching national security), there are very good reasons for restricting speech. We admit that we're eroding free speech, which is a drastic step, but we believe it's justified because the alternative is even worse: it puts people in harm's way or causes significant damage.
Copyright, on the other hand, restricts everyone's speech in order to make it a little easier for a relative handful of people to make a buck. The alternative doesn't harm anyone, it just means an inconvenience for authors who'd have to sell their labor (like billions of other people do every day) instead of selling shiny discs. I don't see any rational way to justify this restriction on speech -- not to mention the expense of enforcing it -- when the benefit is so small compared to the cost.
I gave you 100 examples you don't want.
Well then, I guess your concern has been addressed: you can substitute those examples into my original comment and the point stands.
I assume, since you haven't disputed it, that you're conceding that point: copyright gives you veto power over a broad category of speech, not just verbatim repetition of the copyrighted work. For any given copyrighted work, there are an infinite number of things that the copyright holder is allowed to block you from saying.
And you can happily produce T shirts and the like using copyrighted material as long as the copyright holder allows it.
And if the copyright holder doesn't allow it, you can't. When your speech is subject to someone else's veto, it isn't really free at all, now is it?
People also exercise fair use without fear of legal retribution, every day, without rulings from a court for their specific use.
I see what you did there.
Yes, people exercise fair use without fear of legal retribution because they don't think anyone will bother to sue -- not because they know for a fact that their use is legal. They don't know that for sure until a court rules on it.
The law simply does not say that any particular use is fair: it gives the court a set of guidelines to use when deciding whether to accept a fair use defense.
Lets say you copy the crop and give it to anyone who approaches the farmer's front gate.
The farmer still has his crop, he is not out anything right? (except all those who came to buy some crop but you said "Here! have some free crop")
I don't see a problem there. If it costs nothing to "copy" crops, then why should anyone have to pay for them? You've just described a scenario where we could end world hunger overnight -- alleviate the suffering of millions -- for free! Why should they suffer just so that the farmer can sell something that costs nothing to produce?
The farmer's services aren't needed to duplicate ears of corn, only to grow the first one, and the first one has already been grown. If people want a new type of crop, they can hire the farmer to grow one of those, and then copy it for free. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Entertaining the masses isn't quite as noble as feeding the masses, but the same principle is at work there. If someone wants to watch a movie, and it'll cost you nothing to let him watch that movie (he can get a copy from someone who already has one and is willing to share), then why should he have to go without just so that you can make another buck? Distributing the movie to more viewers costs you nothing. Creating it in the first place does cost something, and if people want another movie, they can hire you to make another, but your duplication services aren't needed.
You don't need approval from a court to exercise fair use. Quite the opposite actually.
You need a judgment from a court to know what is fair use, because the law only provides general guidelines. There's no guarantee that your use will be considered fair if you only use a certain number of words, or a certain percentage of the work.
And you can't copyright the phrase you propose in any meaningful way.
Of course not, which is why I acknowledged that when I wrote it. I chose a short phrase to simplify the example. If you want to choose a longer one, and provide the equivalent encoded/modified phrases yourself, be my guest.
I think your choice of it, at the exclusion of better examples, reveals your desire to spread fear about the topic.
Well, now that you know this assumption about my desire was mistaken, perhaps you'd like to post a better response.
Then novelists everywhere will stop writing. Or creating music. Or scripts for movies/shows.
And then, milliseconds later, an enterprising novelist/musician/screenwriter will stumble upon the concept that billions of other people are already familiar with: selling one's labor.
"People still want new material, right? And the only way they can get it is for someone to write it. But they can't make me write against my will. So if I offer to write something new for $10,000, they'll have no choice! They'll pool their money and beg me to take it! What else are they gonna do, never see any new material ever again?"
If car manufacturers are losing out because 99% of people are simply copying existing cars, then who would pay the car designers to develop these new cars? The public, who is busy waiting for their neighbour to purchase one so that they can copy it?
The people who want new car designs badly enough that they get tired of waiting (*), and the people who benefit in other ways from having new types of cars on the road (**).
(* If everyone is happy to keep waiting forever, then that means the designer's services aren't needed, because there isn't really any demand for new designs.)
(** Aftermarket parts makers, perhaps? If we substitute software for cars, this would be hardware manufacturers, system integrators, support contractors, strategy guide authors, etc.)
Yes you can, unless by 'repeat' you mean 'distribute, unmodified, in its entirety, contrary to the will of the author'.
Not true. Copyright makes it illegal to repeat modified or encoded versions as well, in whole or in part (except when a court finds it to be fair use).
If I were able to copyright the phrase "call me Ishmael", that wouldn't just mean you couldn't say "call me Ishmael". It'd mean you couldn't share too many facts or observations about that phrase, no matter what you actually spoke or wrote.
For example, you couldn't say "pnyy zr Vfuznry"; or "the first word is what you do with a phone, the second is Windows from late 2000, the third is Abraham's eldest son"; or any representation in any base of the number 516,013,372,831,636,978,131,339,489,436,591,468 (including any mathematical formula that produces that number).
There are also countless T-shirts you couldn't wear, songs you couldn't sing, pictures you couldn't paint... copyright prevents you from conveying any ideas that would allow someone to recreate the copyrighted material.
These days you can even get by without a tracker, using DHT instead.
I'm actually more interested in the ethical side of things. Why is making it easy for people to steal ethical?
Because copying isn't stealing: no one is deprived by it.
The reason stealing is unethical in the first place is that it takes property away from its rightful owner. Someone steals your car; you can't drive to work the next day, because you have no car.
If new technology allowed car thieves to copy cars (at zero cost) instead of stealing them, just about everyone would win. Car manufacturers would lose out, since we'd no longer need massive factories to build cars, but car designers would still earn a living as long as the public was still hungry for new car designs.
It's the same with software. P2P has made the distribution channels obsolete, but we still need programmers to write new software, so they can still earn a living as long as the public is hungry for new programs. They just have to think of their "product" as a service -- their labor, which they perform all at once -- rather than a disc or a download that they sell over and over.
I'm sorry. Where do we have a right to copy others' work?
The same place we have a right to speak and write. That's all copying is.
If I had spent 2-3 years creating a novel, I certainly don't want somebody taking my labor without pay...
Don't worry, that won't happen: the only way to take your labor without pay would be to force you into slavery.
If you spend 2-3 years creating a novel, you're voluntarily performing that labor. And if you do it despite the fact that no one has offered to pay you for your labor, then you're voluntarily giving it away for free.
Whoops, didn't mean to post that anonymously.
Heh. Android users can get those without having to hack anything.
You're telling me you can't change the text ringtone on a stock iPhone? Seriously?
Nonsense. If that was true, then why don't we have a state-sanctioned monopoly on all foodstuffs so we don't run the risk of 'unreliable' supply? I mean, food is so crucial.
Because we regulate food from the other end: we set minimum levels of quality and penalize sellers who deliver anything less. Perhaps we should do the same for internet service?
Personally, I think a better reason for ISP monopolies is to minimize the amount of infrastructure. It's wasteful for a dozen different companies to run their own sets of wires down every street -- not to mention expensive for the ISPs and thus a barrier to competition.
On the other hand, how much would it cost you to learn how to do those tasks in Windows as quickly as you can do them on OS X or Linux? Perhaps you'd still come out ahead from the cheaper hardware.
Google is touting it as an open-source platform. However, as we saw last week about tethering, Google and device makers may be beholden to the interests of service providers.
The platform is still open source, and although Google has unfortunately pulled apps from the Android Market (as seen by T-Mobile users, at least), you can still download and run them, because unlike the iPhone, Android doesn't force you to get all your software from a central repository.
Android is in the same situation relative to phone manufacturers that Linux is relative to TiVo. You can recompile the open source code that TiVo is based on, but you can't install it on your DVR without significant hacking. Just because Linux is open source doesn't mean everyone who sells you Linux-based hardware has to give you the ability to install your own distro, because Linux isn't GPLv3 (and neither is Android).
This isn't Google's fault any more than the TiVo situation is Linus's fault. Blame the manufacturers and carriers who insist on locking down their hardware. Nothing is stopping other manufacturers or carriers from selling hardware that isn't locked down; let them know you're willing to pay for it.
The best chance of an open software platform for a phone is for manufacturers to all jump on the Android bandwagon but allow 'unlocked' phones to be bought in stores as with traditional GSM phones.
"Unlocked" in that case would have to mean more than it does with traditional GSM phones. You can use an unlocked phone on any carrier, but that doesn't mean you can flash whatever firmware you want.
By the way, if you want an Android phone that you can flash with whatever firmware you want, you can buy one today. It's called the ADP1, and you can get it for $400 after signing up as an Android developer ($25).
I fail to see how being anti-war, anti-empire, anti-drug war, pro-privacy, and pro-freedom are characteristics of the far right.
Those characteristics don't fall on the left-right axis, except to the extent that they translate into government doing less.
On the left-right axis, the Libertarian party is certainly at the far right: they want a government that basically does nothing. "Smaller government, lower taxes" is two-thirds of their motto. They oppose all sorts of regulations and social programs. They're not socially conservative, but they're about as fiscally conservative as you can get.
You don't have the options for directional, as oppposed to rotational, movement that you have in the later games and you can tell that the game was designed for a controller with only one analogue stick.
I think you mean no analog sticks. The PlayStation didn't have a single-analog controller.
Actually, I did disprove what you said and made a case for the other side. A theory can never become a law, even if you provide "a much firmer proof", because theories and laws are entirely different.
It's like you just like to post replies without reading the comments you're replying to.
Just an observation. (But if you find this happening every time you post something on Slashdot, maybe it's actually a law.)
From what I've seen it's the same old bullshit as usual. Tied to certain carriers, certain apps are blocked, etc.
Would someone with an android phone or maybe an android dev explain what exactly is open source about it?
G1 owner and hobbyist Android app developer here.
Android is open source in that you can download the source code for the OS, recompile it, redistribute it with or without modifications, recompile it, bundle it with hardware you sell, and so on. Just like Linux. That means you can expect to see it on a lot of hardware, since companies can use it for the cost of porting (no license needed to get the code or distribute it).
That doesn't mean the hardware is open source, though -- just like Linux. That's up to the manufacturer. TiVo runs Linux, but you can't install your own modified firmware (without some hacking), and the same is true of the G1. But you can root your G1 and install your own firmware, or buy an ADP1 and install whatever you want with no hacking.
Android isn't "tied to certain carriers". The G1 is, to an extent (it's hardware-incompatible with AT&T's 3G network), but other carriers have Android phones in the works.
It's also not true to say "certain apps are blocked". Google has unfortunately caved to T-Mobile's request to remove tethering apps from the Android Market (as seen by T-Mobile users, at least), but you don't have to use the Android Market anyway. You can install apps from any web site with the built-in browser, whether or not they're on some carrier's blacklist. No hacking required; anyone can do it without using special software, violating the carrier or manufacturer's terms, or being accused of copyright infringement (cough cough, iPhone).
Of course, since Android is open source, the carrier could sell a phone with a version of Android that's been modified to reject blacklisted apps from any source, and then prevent you from installing unsigned firmware, subjecting you to their application policies (much like TiVo does to subject you to their advertisement and copying policies). That hasn't happened yet, but it could. That's the downside of most open source licenses.