You may be able to install it, but PsyStar won't have the rights to redistribute it; that is copyright infringement.
I think you're wrong. 17 USC 117 allows "the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy" in order to run it. If I buy a computer and a copy of OS X from Psystar, I can install the OS myself, or I can authorize Psystar to do it on my behalf at the factory.
...all it requires is that you throw out 12 USC 1201.
No, I don't think the DMCA would apply.
Remember, Lexmark was smacked down for trying to claim that their bundling arrangement between printers and toner constituted a DMCA-protected "access control" for the software inside the printer. The court found that, since the software in the printer was available in the clear to anyone who owned the printer, the "access" was granted by purchasing the printer, not by installing an authorized toner cartridge.
Likewise, once you buy a disc containing OS X, you have access to all the code stored on that disc. The access control is your purchase of the disc, not the interaction between the disc an an Apple-branded computer.
If selling OS X at a profit means raising the price to $800, then so be it! Let people see what the product costs and decide whether it's worth the price.
Apple is most likely profiting from Psystar's OS purchases. If you buy a copy of OS X in a box for $129, you can reasonably assume that Apple paid less than $129 to make it, even factoring in their development costs; selling things at a loss is pretty rare, because it's usually a stupid idea. Now, it's possible that they are selling it at a loss, but if that's the case, all they need to do is charge enough to make a profit.
On the other hand, this move by Psystar will probably reduce Apple's overall profits if it's successful, because Apple makes much heftier profits on their hardware. But that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with what Psystar is doing; they're making the market more efficient, while still allowing everyone to profit.
As an analogy, suppose I'm a razor maker. It costs me $1 to make a blade that I sell for $2, but (unlike real razor makers) I make all my real money off the razors themselves: it costs me $5 to make a razor that I sell for $50, and the blades are just there to get people to buy my razors.
But suppose it turns out that people don't really care about my stylish, feature-packed razors; what they really like is the blades. Some other company comes along and sells a razor for $10 that uses my blades, and everyone starts buying the razors from them instead (while still buying the blades from me).
Now I might be upset because I'm not making $45 profit per razor anymore, but I'm still turning a profit of $1 per blade. And if that's not enough money to keep my company running, all I need to do is charge more for the blades -- since those are what people really want, and they were used to paying a premium on the razor just to use those blades anyway, I'll have no problem selling them even at a higher price.
Since Apple sells complete packages and makes most of their money on hardware sales, if Psystar wins, it could spell the end of Apple.
No, it couldn't.
See, even if Apple is selling OS X at a loss today, which is a little hard to believe, there's no reason they can't sell it at a profit instead. All they have to do is charge more for boxed copies of OS X. There's no magic spell stopping them from charging more per copy than it costs to develop (like everyone else who sells boxed copies of software).
According to the EULA, the retail boxed copies of OS X are meant as upgrades to prior versions of OS X. Much like how MS sells upgrades of Vista from XP for considerably less than the full retail version (at least they used to.)
Apple can say those copies are "meant" for whatever they want, but according to 17 USC 117, you don't need to listen to them. You can buy the software, reject the license, and install it using your statutory rights instead of anything granted to you by Apple.
By "ride Apple's development efforts", you mean "purchase an Apple product at retail and resell it", right?
Surely you don't think Apple is losing money on the deal or being taken advantage of in any way. If anyone knows how to set retail prices high enough to guarantee profit, it's Apple.
For the Dems, this is the same thing. Their worldview doesn't accomodate any political thinking more complex than us vs. them.
Some Dems, sure, but of course the same is true of many libertarians. In most of the political threads here, for example, you'll find folks saying the Democrats and Republicans are the same because they both support things like the concept of taxation. If you're not an anarcho-libertarian, you're "one of them".
I agree that multi-issue bills are a problem, but I think it's better to just not pass a mixed-bag bill than to live with the results of it.
Unfortunately, that also makes great fodder for one's political opponents. "Look, he voted against the Ice Cream For Orphans (And Some Other Stuff) Act! Why does he hate children so much?"
in the course of two years, Sellaband has only had 23 bands reach the 50,000 $10.00 "parts" mark.
Well, sure. It's much easier to drive down to Best Buy and pick up a CD that's already been made for $12. As long as musicians are willing to roll the dice by recording first and scrounging up the money later, that will be an easier alternative for consumers -- and those same musicians will keep having to worry about piracy and where their next meal is coming from.
Do you know how many more "parts" would be required to just pay the costs for AAA video games? Some games cost upwards of $30 million to make; even if you instead do $50 increments, that's still 600,000 parts just to cover the cost of development, nevermind profits.
So what? A game that turns a profit has to reach that many customers anyway, even under the present model. The demand is out there already.
It is true that if a publisher doesn't feel that a developer held up his end of the bargain, that they do not pay the developer, but the employees there still do get paid. I assumed that you meant paying the publisher, or some combo of the publisher/developer; but instead it seems that you are saying we the people should become the publisher, that strikes me as a bit off.
I don't think the division between publisher and developer is relevant here; it seems like an artifact of the present business model anyway.
From the public's perspective, there's one "developer" entity (although that entity might be a company with many employees), where money goes in and software comes out. Customers pool their money together and use it to pay that entity to write some software.
If that entity decides that they actually want to be a "publisher", passing part of the money on to someone else who does the actual development, that's fine, but it doesn't change their obligation to the customers who provide the money. That is, once you accept customers' money and promise that they'll get something for it, you're obligated to either give them what they paid for or return their money. If you don't have the money anymore because you gave it to someone else, that's your problem; better hope you have a good lawyer.
Additionally, if there is a guarantee that people will get a product back or their money back, then what you're talking about is a nightmare of legal paperwork which nobody in their right mind would deal with. You'd have so many new investors coming in, old investors getting out etc. that you'd have to hire an entire department just to deal with that and it would eat up a large part of your budget.
Not really. First, there's no requirement to let people "get out" whenever they feel like it, so there goes half of the complexity. Second, it really isn't that complex anyway; plenty of organizations manage to deal with that many transactions (charities and political campaigns come to mind).
Third, and most importantly, developers wouldn't have to do it themselves. Just like publishers act as middlemen in the present model, separating developers from the work of shipping boxes to thousands of retailers, similar entities could act as middlemen in the model I've proposed, separating developers from the work of handling thousands of transactions.
For example, look at what Sellaband does (using a business model that's close, but not quite what I've proposed): they collect money from lots of people and use it to provide recording services for the bands who've signed up with them. They run a web site where bands and fans can connect, they handle the money and paperwork, and the bands only have to worry about writing and recording music.
Again, the middlemen would still have the same obligations to their customers as the developers would. If I pay for development, I don't care whether that money went through a middleman or not; I expect to either see that software made or get my money back. But middlemen would have an advantage in meeting those obligations, since they could handle many projects at once, and use part of one project's profit to cover another project's loss.
You're confusing service industries with production; which may be your fundamental problem, I'll address each of your examples in turn.
No, there's no confusion involved. Writing software is a service.
Consider something that's already pretty common in the open source world: a business uses a particular package, but it lacks a feature they need, so they pay one of the developers to add that feature. They're not buying a product; his changes are made available to everyone who uses that package. They're paying him to perform the service of adding that feature.
What you are suggesting, though you don't realize it, is a small investment that instead of paying money, pays in the form of a finished product.
Close, but not quite: it pays in the form of a performed service. They're not paying to receive an item, they're paying to have something done.
I'm not sure why you're calling it an investment. Is it an investment when you pay someone to build a pool that won't be finished for a few months? I don't think so. You're paying them to do some work, just like in this case you're paying someone to write some code.
If I invest in your product, there is no guarantee I will get a product out or that I will get my money if you don't come back with a product I like. That is why the idea fails; there is no backup plan or guarantee that the finished product will be pleasant.
What makes you think there isn't?
There's exactly the same guarantee as with any other service. If I hire someone to write a program, then they're obligated to either deliver a program that meets that specification, or give back my money. That guarantee comes from the contract we made when I hired him: I agreed to pay him on the condition that he'd write a certain program, so if he doesn't hold up his end of the deal, I don't have to hold up mine.
Are you suggesting that we buy the game in advance of its creation? Or that after a game is finished, a certain amount has to be paid to the developer by everyone before the game is released to anyone? How would it work?
The core of this idea is that before the game has been created, people agree to pay for part of the development, and development begins when enough money has been pledged. Beyond that, I think, it comes down to implementation details, and I don't think it makes sense to speculate in too much detail at this point.
For example, maybe the money is collected up front and held in escrow, to be released when the game is finished; maybe it's released slowly during the development process; or maybe the money isn't actually collected until development is finished. There are some competing interests to balance: the developers need to eat while development is going on, but customers need to get as much of their money back as possible if the project is aborted due to lack of funding or if the end result isn't what was promised. In a new model like this, there's room to experiment, and the market will probably settle on whichever implementation proves most effective.
Also, how much profit would a developer stand to make? Would the profit potential be in the ballpark that it is now for a successful game? Hell, if a game is good, I want the developer to make millions. They deserve it.
Well, most likely the profit potential would be less, but the loss potential would also be less.
The current model works sort of like a tournament or a lottery: many will enter, few will win. The few developers who come up with a hit will sell lots of copies and earn massive profits, but most will earn meager profits or even lose money. It's the same with music: for every millionaire rock star, there are hundreds of failures, even though the failures might have worked just as hard.
If you charge for development instead of selling copies, it becomes less of a tournament and more of a regular job. Instead of risking a probable loss for the small chance of striking it rich, you'd know exactly how much money you had coming, but it probably wouldn't be so much that you'd never have to work again.
On the other hand, if a particular developer has a record of quality work, they'll be able to charge more for their future projects. Some developers might still earn massive profits, but it wouldn't happen by accident.
I don't see the current model as people paying for distribution. I see it as people paying for the product they're getting (code, art, etc).
The ultimate goal of selling copies is to pay for that code and art, but the way the goal is achieved is by charging for distribution. That disconnect is where the tournament effect and the problem of piracy come from: there's no direct relation between the amount of money/effort spent to create a piece of software, the amount of money that comes in from selling copies, and the number of people who eventually possess a copy. The development cost is fixed, but the revenue could be much more or much less than the development cost, depending on factors beyond the developer's control.
Surely the people who "never asked" or "agreed to pay" are also people who don't want the product? If someone has a need for some product, isn't the act of looking very similar to asking someone to do work?
No, not unless they own a time machine.
Making use of something that already exists is not the same as asking for something new to be created. Cause and effect matter, and so does the agreement between buyer and seller. Without that agreement, there's no obligation for one party to pay, or for the other to perform a service; if they choose to provide money or services anyway, even though they haven't been promised anything in return, then it can only be considered a gift.
I don't think you can equate the statement "I need a programme to do foo" with "Well, I never asked for it to be written, therefore I do not need to pay."
Sure you can, considering that these statements are coming after the program has already been written. Is there any other situation where people are expected to pay for work that was done months or years in the past, without their involvement, simply because they find it beneficial in the present? I don't think so. We all extract a benefit every day from work that was done in the past, but we aren't obligated to pay the people who did that work, because we didn't hire them to do it.
Why can't it work for games? When a AAA title costs $20M to make, you won't find the required 1M users out there willing to pay up front for a game that's 2-3 years from delivery.
I think you'd be surprised. Political campaigns manage to raise far greater sums, for example, and they don't even promise anything in return.
Exactly how do you intend to get people to DIRECTLY pay up front for a product that doesn't exist yet? I'll answer for you, you won't; people are not going to pay you for a product that doesn't exist, they want to see it work, they want to see reviews and previews so that they can decide if they want/need it. People want to know you have a product before they pay for it.
If you look at the things people actually do pay for, you'll realize that isn't true. In fact, people commonly pay for things that don't exist yet.
When you agree to pay someone to cut your hair, fix your car, or build you a swimming pool, you don't know exactly how it'll turn out. Instead, you make a decision based on the reputation of the person who's providing the service and the guarantees they're willing to make. It's the same with nearly every service (even software, when you hire an employee or contractor to write something that doesn't exist yet).
Okay, you obviously have no idea how and why you are being charged more than the physical thing costs to make (which makes you an idiot) or you're just acting dumb to try and justify your theft so I'll explain.
No, neither of those. Sorry you went to all the effort of writing this explanation, but we all know how the business model works. They invest a bunch of their own money up front to develop the software, then they want to recoup that investment by selling copies, so they factor the cost of development into the price of each copy, in addition to the cost of physically creating that copy. I get it.
The problem is, that model doesn't work very well in a world where anyone can make their own copies at home. That's not just a problem of people being naughty, or the existence of naughty copying technologies - it's a fundamental aspect of the product they're trying to sell.
If you put a bunch of money into designing a car, you can be pretty sure people aren't going to build their own cars based on your design, because building cars is expensive and difficult even if you already have the design. The same is not true of copying software, which requires virtually no skill, resources, or time. All the lawsuits and DRM systems in the world still aren't enough to ensure that the people who want a copy will buy it from you instead of getting a cheaper copy somewhere else.
pirating software means your taking money away from the people who made that software, and if enough people pirate the software then the company will go bankrupt and there won't be any new software from them.
Only if they stubbornly cling to the same business model, investing their own money into development and then trying to recoup it by selling copies (even though they can't compete effectively with other sources for copies).
If, on the other hand, they charge directly for their development effort as I've been suggesting, then piracy ceases to be a problem. By the time there's any software to be copied, the developers will have already been paid.
No. Charging for "making the thing" is exactly what they're doing!
No, it isn't.
Think about it: their development costs don't depend on the number of players, right? If you spend a year writing a game, you incur expenses for that whole year, even if no one ever plays it. On the other hand, if your game is so awesome that a billion people buy copies for $50 each, you'll end up with $50 billion, even though your actual costs of development were much lower.
The link between the revenue from selling copies and the cost of development is only a statistical one: better-selling games tend to cost more to make.
What I'm talking about it charging directly for the effort that goes into development. If you expect it to take one year, then decide how much one year of your development time is worth, and ask for that much money.
The difference is, they're charging lots of people an affordable price instead of charging one person an exorbitant price... which requires controlling the distribution.
No, it doesn't. You don't have to ask a single person to give you one year's pay, for example; you can ask 365 people to each give you one day's pay instead.
It doesn't matter how many people are involved, as long as they come up with enough money overall to pay for development. You still don't need to control distribution, because once there's a product to distribute, you will have already been paid for making it.
If you try to charge someone on a commission basis for it, no one will be able to afford it, because of the huge numbers of people that work together on these projects (and hence, a high cost for the project).
You're forgetting the other side of it. There are also huge numbers of people who benefit from these projects enough to warrant spending their money on it. They can pool their money together to pay the developers.
That's what the current model boils down to anyway; it's just that the work is done up front, with the developers gambling that there will be enough customers to pay for it later (which is why they feel the need to control distribution). If they look for customers first, they won't have to gamble.
The workman's effort was expended to create that house.
Yes, but do you know why? It's because someone hired him to put that effort into building the house. He didn't just show up at the job site uninvited, build the house for free, and then demand money from whoever was standing nearby.
Or, from another perspective: if I'm the person who wants that house, I owe the workers money because I hired them. I promised them that if they do X work, I'll give them Y dollars - we had a contract, and they held up their end of the deal on the condition that I'd hold up my end. On the other hand, if someone shows up at the job site uninvited, he can do all the work he wants, but it'll be a gift and I won't owe him a dime.
Why should the programmer not be rewarded for it?
Because the programmer is demanding money today for work he did in the past, from people who never asked him to do that work or agreed to pay him for it.
As a professional developer, I certainly believe programmers should be paid for their work -- but not like this. Instead, they should avoid doing that work in the first place until someone (or a large group of someones pooling their money) has agreed to pay them an acceptable price for it. That's what I've been doing for years.
What is the right way to make profit on R&D (which may include art, music, literature etc.), that isn't distribution?
Charge directly for the R&D. Someone benefits from it, right? Find them and get them to pay for that benefit directly.
I don't care about shareholders and wall street...yet they are the only people with the money to invest the $1M + it takes to invent, design and test a new product.
Not true! Remember, those investors expect to get their money back eventually, and the money you use to pay them back will ultimately come from your customers.
In other words, your customers have the money it takes to invent, design, and test the product that they'll eventually buy. The investors are just giving you an advance on that money: you effectively take out a loan from your investors, then pay back the loan using money you get from your customers.
But what if you didn't use a loan at all? What if you identified your potential customers first and got them to directly fund the development of the product they want?
You get one immediate benefit from that model, which is that you don't have to worry about paying back that investment. If you can't raise enough money from your customers to fund development, then the development never happens - you can just give back the money and try something else instead.
Everyone else benefits too. By the time your product is ready, you will have already been paid for your work, and that means you don't need to control its distribution. The product can be made freely available with no restrictions on copying.
When someone is making a new type of thing which obsoletes software, get back to me, and then you can use the buggy whip analogy.
But software makers don't charge for "making the thing"; they charge for distribution (handing out copies of software that they've already written), and their distribution model is obsolete. That's where the analogy to buggy whips works. I don't need a buggy whip because I have a car, and I don't need a box with a disc in it because I have internet access. (Or: I don't need a paid download server because I have a torrent client.)
What I still need is the act of writing that software in the first place, but that doesn't seem to be for sale. They expect me to buy a disc in a box instead, even though I don't need it.
Yes, and that is because the work in those [other] areas is the reproduction of the product. The work in IP is actually creating the thing you wish to sell, reproduction is and always has been effortless.
Then maybe they should stop charging for reproduction, and charge instead for the work they do that isn't effortless.
Their skill and talent as developers can't be reproduced. If they just come out and say "I'm not writing any more software until there's money in my hand", what could the pirates possibly do? Kidnap them and force them to write software for free? Of course not.
Someone will put money in that hand, because people still need new software to be written, and then the developer gets paid for writing software, and everyone's happy.
Good God, why is is that no one on/. who opposes IP even understands the issue at hand?
Apparently no one who supports IP understands the issue either. The issue is that developers are doing the hard work for free and then charging money for something that's trivial and effortless. It's no surprise that people would rather do the trivial stuff themselves for free; the trouble is that developers aren't willing to charge directly for their hard work.
(And no, I'm not some kid who's never created anything of value. I've been a professional developer for about a decade, and as a hobbyist I've written tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of lines of OSS and freeware.)
With true victimless "crimes" where there's not even a fictional victim.
There is if you make one up -- just like there is in this case. For example, if you pretend that cocaine is poisonous to magic nose goblins, then snorting coke is attempted fictional murder.
Of course, magic nose goblins aren't real. But neither is the money.
It's a real child the human failure is trying to rape, not the FBI agent.
All right, then which real child is he trying to rape? How did this make her feel? Will she need counseling? Will she have to testify against him?
Those questions have no answers, because there isn't actually any real child involved. The victim is fictional. The would-be criminal thinks it's a real child, but it isn't.
There probably is some law making the request for an illegal act an illegal act, but I'm interested in comparing a person soliciting a (fake)prostitute with a person taking part in a supposed Nigerian money laundering scheme. Both people aim to commit a crime, and both end up missing their goals. Are they both innocent?
Yes. In both cases, there's no actual chance of the crime being committed: the money doesn't really exist, and the policewoman isn't really a prostitute. They might as well all be actors in a play; the only difference is that some of them think the play is real.
The problem is not their thoughts but the fact that they are conspiring with another person to commit a crime. Similarly, a person A might agree to blow up a building or engage in a drug transaction with a person B when there is no real explosive or drugs involved at all as the person B is actually an undercover cop.
I would argue that they aren't agreeing to commit a crime.
They're agreeing to do something that they think is a crime, but it really isn't. I mean, suppose you convince some poor sucker that sugar is illegal, and then you sell him a bag of sugar. It's the same thing: he thinks he's committing a crime, but he isn't. The crime is all in his head.
We should be concerned with whether he's actually breaking the law, not whether he thinks he is.
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You may be able to install it, but PsyStar won't have the rights to redistribute it; that is copyright infringement.
I think you're wrong. 17 USC 117 allows "the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy" in order to run it. If I buy a computer and a copy of OS X from Psystar, I can install the OS myself, or I can authorize Psystar to do it on my behalf at the factory.
...all it requires is that you throw out 12 USC 1201.
No, I don't think the DMCA would apply.
Remember, Lexmark was smacked down for trying to claim that their bundling arrangement between printers and toner constituted a DMCA-protected "access control" for the software inside the printer. The court found that, since the software in the printer was available in the clear to anyone who owned the printer, the "access" was granted by purchasing the printer, not by installing an authorized toner cartridge.
Likewise, once you buy a disc containing OS X, you have access to all the code stored on that disc. The access control is your purchase of the disc, not the interaction between the disc an an Apple-branded computer.
If selling OS X at a profit means raising the price to $800, then so be it! Let people see what the product costs and decide whether it's worth the price.
Apple is most likely profiting from Psystar's OS purchases. If you buy a copy of OS X in a box for $129, you can reasonably assume that Apple paid less than $129 to make it, even factoring in their development costs; selling things at a loss is pretty rare, because it's usually a stupid idea. Now, it's possible that they are selling it at a loss, but if that's the case, all they need to do is charge enough to make a profit.
On the other hand, this move by Psystar will probably reduce Apple's overall profits if it's successful, because Apple makes much heftier profits on their hardware. But that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with what Psystar is doing; they're making the market more efficient, while still allowing everyone to profit.
As an analogy, suppose I'm a razor maker. It costs me $1 to make a blade that I sell for $2, but (unlike real razor makers) I make all my real money off the razors themselves: it costs me $5 to make a razor that I sell for $50, and the blades are just there to get people to buy my razors.
But suppose it turns out that people don't really care about my stylish, feature-packed razors; what they really like is the blades. Some other company comes along and sells a razor for $10 that uses my blades, and everyone starts buying the razors from them instead (while still buying the blades from me).
Now I might be upset because I'm not making $45 profit per razor anymore, but I'm still turning a profit of $1 per blade. And if that's not enough money to keep my company running, all I need to do is charge more for the blades -- since those are what people really want, and they were used to paying a premium on the razor just to use those blades anyway, I'll have no problem selling them even at a higher price.
Since Apple sells complete packages and makes most of their money on hardware sales, if Psystar wins, it could spell the end of Apple.
No, it couldn't.
See, even if Apple is selling OS X at a loss today, which is a little hard to believe, there's no reason they can't sell it at a profit instead. All they have to do is charge more for boxed copies of OS X. There's no magic spell stopping them from charging more per copy than it costs to develop (like everyone else who sells boxed copies of software).
According to the EULA, the retail boxed copies of OS X are meant as upgrades to prior versions of OS X. Much like how MS sells upgrades of Vista from XP for considerably less than the full retail version (at least they used to.)
Apple can say those copies are "meant" for whatever they want, but according to 17 USC 117, you don't need to listen to them. You can buy the software, reject the license, and install it using your statutory rights instead of anything granted to you by Apple.
By "ride Apple's development efforts", you mean "purchase an Apple product at retail and resell it", right?
Surely you don't think Apple is losing money on the deal or being taken advantage of in any way. If anyone knows how to set retail prices high enough to guarantee profit, it's Apple.
For the Dems, this is the same thing. Their worldview doesn't accomodate any political thinking more complex than us vs. them.
Some Dems, sure, but of course the same is true of many libertarians. In most of the political threads here, for example, you'll find folks saying the Democrats and Republicans are the same because they both support things like the concept of taxation. If you're not an anarcho-libertarian, you're "one of them".
I agree that multi-issue bills are a problem, but I think it's better to just not pass a mixed-bag bill than to live with the results of it.
Unfortunately, that also makes great fodder for one's political opponents. "Look, he voted against the Ice Cream For Orphans (And Some Other Stuff) Act! Why does he hate children so much?"
in the course of two years, Sellaband has only had 23 bands reach the 50,000 $10.00 "parts" mark.
Well, sure. It's much easier to drive down to Best Buy and pick up a CD that's already been made for $12. As long as musicians are willing to roll the dice by recording first and scrounging up the money later, that will be an easier alternative for consumers -- and those same musicians will keep having to worry about piracy and where their next meal is coming from.
Do you know how many more "parts" would be required to just pay the costs for AAA video games? Some games cost upwards of $30 million to make; even if you instead do $50 increments, that's still 600,000 parts just to cover the cost of development, nevermind profits.
So what? A game that turns a profit has to reach that many customers anyway, even under the present model. The demand is out there already.
It is true that if a publisher doesn't feel that a developer held up his end of the bargain, that they do not pay the developer, but the employees there still do get paid. I assumed that you meant paying the publisher, or some combo of the publisher/developer; but instead it seems that you are saying we the people should become the publisher, that strikes me as a bit off.
I don't think the division between publisher and developer is relevant here; it seems like an artifact of the present business model anyway.
From the public's perspective, there's one "developer" entity (although that entity might be a company with many employees), where money goes in and software comes out. Customers pool their money together and use it to pay that entity to write some software.
If that entity decides that they actually want to be a "publisher", passing part of the money on to someone else who does the actual development, that's fine, but it doesn't change their obligation to the customers who provide the money. That is, once you accept customers' money and promise that they'll get something for it, you're obligated to either give them what they paid for or return their money. If you don't have the money anymore because you gave it to someone else, that's your problem; better hope you have a good lawyer.
Additionally, if there is a guarantee that people will get a product back or their money back, then what you're talking about is a nightmare of legal paperwork which nobody in their right mind would deal with. You'd have so many new investors coming in, old investors getting out etc. that you'd have to hire an entire department just to deal with that and it would eat up a large part of your budget.
Not really. First, there's no requirement to let people "get out" whenever they feel like it, so there goes half of the complexity. Second, it really isn't that complex anyway; plenty of organizations manage to deal with that many transactions (charities and political campaigns come to mind).
Third, and most importantly, developers wouldn't have to do it themselves. Just like publishers act as middlemen in the present model, separating developers from the work of shipping boxes to thousands of retailers, similar entities could act as middlemen in the model I've proposed, separating developers from the work of handling thousands of transactions.
For example, look at what Sellaband does (using a business model that's close, but not quite what I've proposed): they collect money from lots of people and use it to provide recording services for the bands who've signed up with them. They run a web site where bands and fans can connect, they handle the money and paperwork, and the bands only have to worry about writing and recording music.
Again, the middlemen would still have the same obligations to their customers as the developers would. If I pay for development, I don't care whether that money went through a middleman or not; I expect to either see that software made or get my money back. But middlemen would have an advantage in meeting those obligations, since they could handle many projects at once, and use part of one project's profit to cover another project's loss.
You're confusing service industries with production; which may be your fundamental problem, I'll address each of your examples in turn.
No, there's no confusion involved. Writing software is a service.
Consider something that's already pretty common in the open source world: a business uses a particular package, but it lacks a feature they need, so they pay one of the developers to add that feature. They're not buying a product; his changes are made available to everyone who uses that package. They're paying him to perform the service of adding that feature.
What you are suggesting, though you don't realize it, is a small investment that instead of paying money, pays in the form of a finished product.
Close, but not quite: it pays in the form of a performed service. They're not paying to receive an item, they're paying to have something done.
I'm not sure why you're calling it an investment. Is it an investment when you pay someone to build a pool that won't be finished for a few months? I don't think so. You're paying them to do some work, just like in this case you're paying someone to write some code.
If I invest in your product, there is no guarantee I will get a product out or that I will get my money if you don't come back with a product I like. That is why the idea fails; there is no backup plan or guarantee that the finished product will be pleasant.
What makes you think there isn't?
There's exactly the same guarantee as with any other service. If I hire someone to write a program, then they're obligated to either deliver a program that meets that specification, or give back my money. That guarantee comes from the contract we made when I hired him: I agreed to pay him on the condition that he'd write a certain program, so if he doesn't hold up his end of the deal, I don't have to hold up mine.
Are you suggesting that we buy the game in advance of its creation? Or that after a game is finished, a certain amount has to be paid to the developer by everyone before the game is released to anyone? How would it work?
The core of this idea is that before the game has been created, people agree to pay for part of the development, and development begins when enough money has been pledged. Beyond that, I think, it comes down to implementation details, and I don't think it makes sense to speculate in too much detail at this point.
For example, maybe the money is collected up front and held in escrow, to be released when the game is finished; maybe it's released slowly during the development process; or maybe the money isn't actually collected until development is finished. There are some competing interests to balance: the developers need to eat while development is going on, but customers need to get as much of their money back as possible if the project is aborted due to lack of funding or if the end result isn't what was promised. In a new model like this, there's room to experiment, and the market will probably settle on whichever implementation proves most effective.
Also, how much profit would a developer stand to make? Would the profit potential be in the ballpark that it is now for a successful game? Hell, if a game is good, I want the developer to make millions. They deserve it.
Well, most likely the profit potential would be less, but the loss potential would also be less.
The current model works sort of like a tournament or a lottery: many will enter, few will win. The few developers who come up with a hit will sell lots of copies and earn massive profits, but most will earn meager profits or even lose money. It's the same with music: for every millionaire rock star, there are hundreds of failures, even though the failures might have worked just as hard.
If you charge for development instead of selling copies, it becomes less of a tournament and more of a regular job. Instead of risking a probable loss for the small chance of striking it rich, you'd know exactly how much money you had coming, but it probably wouldn't be so much that you'd never have to work again.
On the other hand, if a particular developer has a record of quality work, they'll be able to charge more for their future projects. Some developers might still earn massive profits, but it wouldn't happen by accident.
I don't see the current model as people paying for distribution. I see it as people paying for the product they're getting (code, art, etc).
The ultimate goal of selling copies is to pay for that code and art, but the way the goal is achieved is by charging for distribution. That disconnect is where the tournament effect and the problem of piracy come from: there's no direct relation between the amount of money/effort spent to create a piece of software, the amount of money that comes in from selling copies, and the number of people who eventually possess a copy. The development cost is fixed, but the revenue could be much more or much less than the development cost, depending on factors beyond the developer's control.
Surely the people who "never asked" or "agreed to pay" are also people who don't want the product? If someone has a need for some product, isn't the act of looking very similar to asking someone to do work?
No, not unless they own a time machine.
Making use of something that already exists is not the same as asking for something new to be created. Cause and effect matter, and so does the agreement between buyer and seller. Without that agreement, there's no obligation for one party to pay, or for the other to perform a service; if they choose to provide money or services anyway, even though they haven't been promised anything in return, then it can only be considered a gift.
I don't think you can equate the statement "I need a programme to do foo" with "Well, I never asked for it to be written, therefore I do not need to pay."
Sure you can, considering that these statements are coming after the program has already been written. Is there any other situation where people are expected to pay for work that was done months or years in the past, without their involvement, simply because they find it beneficial in the present? I don't think so. We all extract a benefit every day from work that was done in the past, but we aren't obligated to pay the people who did that work, because we didn't hire them to do it.
Why can't it work for games? When a AAA title costs $20M to make, you won't find the required 1M users out there willing to pay up front for a game that's 2-3 years from delivery.
I think you'd be surprised. Political campaigns manage to raise far greater sums, for example, and they don't even promise anything in return.
Exactly how do you intend to get people to DIRECTLY pay up front for a product that doesn't exist yet? I'll answer for you, you won't; people are not going to pay you for a product that doesn't exist, they want to see it work, they want to see reviews and previews so that they can decide if they want/need it. People want to know you have a product before they pay for it.
If you look at the things people actually do pay for, you'll realize that isn't true. In fact, people commonly pay for things that don't exist yet.
When you agree to pay someone to cut your hair, fix your car, or build you a swimming pool, you don't know exactly how it'll turn out. Instead, you make a decision based on the reputation of the person who's providing the service and the guarantees they're willing to make. It's the same with nearly every service (even software, when you hire an employee or contractor to write something that doesn't exist yet).
Okay, you obviously have no idea how and why you are being charged more than the physical thing costs to make (which makes you an idiot) or you're just acting dumb to try and justify your theft so I'll explain.
No, neither of those. Sorry you went to all the effort of writing this explanation, but we all know how the business model works. They invest a bunch of their own money up front to develop the software, then they want to recoup that investment by selling copies, so they factor the cost of development into the price of each copy, in addition to the cost of physically creating that copy. I get it.
The problem is, that model doesn't work very well in a world where anyone can make their own copies at home. That's not just a problem of people being naughty, or the existence of naughty copying technologies - it's a fundamental aspect of the product they're trying to sell.
If you put a bunch of money into designing a car, you can be pretty sure people aren't going to build their own cars based on your design, because building cars is expensive and difficult even if you already have the design. The same is not true of copying software, which requires virtually no skill, resources, or time. All the lawsuits and DRM systems in the world still aren't enough to ensure that the people who want a copy will buy it from you instead of getting a cheaper copy somewhere else.
pirating software means your taking money away from the people who made that software, and if enough people pirate the software then the company will go bankrupt and there won't be any new software from them.
Only if they stubbornly cling to the same business model, investing their own money into development and then trying to recoup it by selling copies (even though they can't compete effectively with other sources for copies).
If, on the other hand, they charge directly for their development effort as I've been suggesting, then piracy ceases to be a problem. By the time there's any software to be copied, the developers will have already been paid.
No. Charging for "making the thing" is exactly what they're doing!
No, it isn't.
Think about it: their development costs don't depend on the number of players, right? If you spend a year writing a game, you incur expenses for that whole year, even if no one ever plays it. On the other hand, if your game is so awesome that a billion people buy copies for $50 each, you'll end up with $50 billion, even though your actual costs of development were much lower.
The link between the revenue from selling copies and the cost of development is only a statistical one: better-selling games tend to cost more to make.
What I'm talking about it charging directly for the effort that goes into development. If you expect it to take one year, then decide how much one year of your development time is worth, and ask for that much money.
The difference is, they're charging lots of people an affordable price instead of charging one person an exorbitant price... which requires controlling the distribution.
No, it doesn't. You don't have to ask a single person to give you one year's pay, for example; you can ask 365 people to each give you one day's pay instead.
It doesn't matter how many people are involved, as long as they come up with enough money overall to pay for development. You still don't need to control distribution, because once there's a product to distribute, you will have already been paid for making it.
If you try to charge someone on a commission basis for it, no one will be able to afford it, because of the huge numbers of people that work together on these projects (and hence, a high cost for the project).
You're forgetting the other side of it. There are also huge numbers of people who benefit from these projects enough to warrant spending their money on it. They can pool their money together to pay the developers.
That's what the current model boils down to anyway; it's just that the work is done up front, with the developers gambling that there will be enough customers to pay for it later (which is why they feel the need to control distribution). If they look for customers first, they won't have to gamble.
The workman's effort was expended to create that house.
Yes, but do you know why? It's because someone hired him to put that effort into building the house. He didn't just show up at the job site uninvited, build the house for free, and then demand money from whoever was standing nearby.
Or, from another perspective: if I'm the person who wants that house, I owe the workers money because I hired them. I promised them that if they do X work, I'll give them Y dollars - we had a contract, and they held up their end of the deal on the condition that I'd hold up my end. On the other hand, if someone shows up at the job site uninvited, he can do all the work he wants, but it'll be a gift and I won't owe him a dime.
Why should the programmer not be rewarded for it?
Because the programmer is demanding money today for work he did in the past, from people who never asked him to do that work or agreed to pay him for it.
As a professional developer, I certainly believe programmers should be paid for their work -- but not like this. Instead, they should avoid doing that work in the first place until someone (or a large group of someones pooling their money) has agreed to pay them an acceptable price for it. That's what I've been doing for years.
What is the right way to make profit on R&D (which may include art, music, literature etc.), that isn't distribution?
Charge directly for the R&D. Someone benefits from it, right? Find them and get them to pay for that benefit directly.
I don't care about shareholders and wall street...yet they are the only people with the money to invest the $1M + it takes to invent, design and test a new product.
Not true! Remember, those investors expect to get their money back eventually, and the money you use to pay them back will ultimately come from your customers.
In other words, your customers have the money it takes to invent, design, and test the product that they'll eventually buy. The investors are just giving you an advance on that money: you effectively take out a loan from your investors, then pay back the loan using money you get from your customers.
But what if you didn't use a loan at all? What if you identified your potential customers first and got them to directly fund the development of the product they want?
You get one immediate benefit from that model, which is that you don't have to worry about paying back that investment. If you can't raise enough money from your customers to fund development, then the development never happens - you can just give back the money and try something else instead.
Everyone else benefits too. By the time your product is ready, you will have already been paid for your work, and that means you don't need to control its distribution. The product can be made freely available with no restrictions on copying.
When someone is making a new type of thing which obsoletes software, get back to me, and then you can use the buggy whip analogy.
But software makers don't charge for "making the thing"; they charge for distribution (handing out copies of software that they've already written), and their distribution model is obsolete. That's where the analogy to buggy whips works. I don't need a buggy whip because I have a car, and I don't need a box with a disc in it because I have internet access. (Or: I don't need a paid download server because I have a torrent client.)
What I still need is the act of writing that software in the first place, but that doesn't seem to be for sale. They expect me to buy a disc in a box instead, even though I don't need it.
Yes, and that is because the work in those [other] areas is the reproduction of the product. The work in IP is actually creating the thing you wish to sell, reproduction is and always has been effortless.
Then maybe they should stop charging for reproduction, and charge instead for the work they do that isn't effortless.
Their skill and talent as developers can't be reproduced. If they just come out and say "I'm not writing any more software until there's money in my hand", what could the pirates possibly do? Kidnap them and force them to write software for free? Of course not.
Someone will put money in that hand, because people still need new software to be written, and then the developer gets paid for writing software, and everyone's happy.
Good God, why is is that no one on /. who opposes IP even understands the issue at hand?
Apparently no one who supports IP understands the issue either. The issue is that developers are doing the hard work for free and then charging money for something that's trivial and effortless. It's no surprise that people would rather do the trivial stuff themselves for free; the trouble is that developers aren't willing to charge directly for their hard work.
(And no, I'm not some kid who's never created anything of value. I've been a professional developer for about a decade, and as a hobbyist I've written tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of lines of OSS and freeware.)
With true victimless "crimes" where there's not even a fictional victim.
There is if you make one up -- just like there is in this case. For example, if you pretend that cocaine is poisonous to magic nose goblins, then snorting coke is attempted fictional murder.
Of course, magic nose goblins aren't real. But neither is the money.
It's a real child the human failure is trying to rape, not the FBI agent.
All right, then which real child is he trying to rape? How did this make her feel? Will she need counseling? Will she have to testify against him?
Those questions have no answers, because there isn't actually any real child involved. The victim is fictional. The would-be criminal thinks it's a real child, but it isn't.
What happened to 1.0? I've never seen any wireless USB devices for sale.
If there is such a thing, maybe that explains why it's so hard to find a name-brand Bluetooth mouse anymore...
There probably is some law making the request for an illegal act an illegal act, but I'm interested in comparing a person soliciting a (fake)prostitute with a person taking part in a supposed Nigerian money laundering scheme. Both people aim to commit a crime, and both end up missing their goals. Are they both innocent?
Yes. In both cases, there's no actual chance of the crime being committed: the money doesn't really exist, and the policewoman isn't really a prostitute. They might as well all be actors in a play; the only difference is that some of them think the play is real.
The problem is not their thoughts but the fact that they are conspiring with another person to commit a crime. Similarly, a person A might agree to blow up a building or engage in a drug transaction with a person B when there is no real explosive or drugs involved at all as the person B is actually an undercover cop.
I would argue that they aren't agreeing to commit a crime.
They're agreeing to do something that they think is a crime, but it really isn't. I mean, suppose you convince some poor sucker that sugar is illegal, and then you sell him a bag of sugar. It's the same thing: he thinks he's committing a crime, but he isn't. The crime is all in his head.
We should be concerned with whether he's actually breaking the law, not whether he thinks he is.