Free Software fans believe zealously in copyright. Nope. Copyright is what copyleft licenses like the GPL and GFDL rely on, but the whole point of copyleft is to subvert copyright and restore the rights that copyright law took away in the first place.
With no copyright, you wouldn't be able to force people to release their modified source code; but on the other hand, they wouldn't be able to stop you from sharing their modified binaries, or reverse engineering the binaries and porting their changes back into the open source version. No one would be able to interfere with anyone else's use. That's free.
I bought my television because I got a great deal on it $1400 for a TV is a rotten deal, whether it's on sale or not. But the fact that you think it was a good deal shows that the salesman did a great job.
Try watching BBC's fabulous Planet Earth [wikipedia.org] documentaries on Blu-Ray on a decent set (none of this overpriced plasma garbage), then watch it on your $300 TV. Hmm. High-definition TV, $1400; Blu-ray player, another $400. Unless those documentaries explain the meaning of life and come with a coupon book for free blowjobs, they're not worth a $1500 premium no matter how many pixels they have.
Chances are that's why thousands of other people have made the switch - not to mention that in 2009, everybody will be using an HD signal if they use an antenna to pick up broadcast television. You'll just be downgrading it with your $40 signal converter. Broadcast television? Wow, that takes me back.
No, I'm not going to need any signal converter, I have cable. That means I can watch more than just five channels. I have a wide variety of content at my disposal, most of which isn't available in HD anyway, so it actually looks better at native resolution on my $300 TV than it would scaled up on your $1400 TV.
I believe you may already know but, because if you pay for it: then pimps step in and abuse girls to do it. That's a result of prostitution being illegal, not a cause. When an industry is legal, workers can freely move from one employer to another, and disputes can be resolved with words in open court instead of a gold-tipped cane in a dark alley.
Not everybody appreciates the same old fuzzy myopic picture that grandpappy watches. Funny, no one complained about TV being "fuzzy" or "myopic" until the HDTV manufacturers and retailers launched a campaign to convince them that it was.
Just because a person isn't a penny pinching luddite doesn't mean they are foolish. If someone doesn't blow thousands of dollars on buggy new technology just because it's new, you think that makes them a penny-pinching Luddite? That's cute.
If you want to be an early adopter, you've got to recognize that what you're paying for is having it first. Not for quality or reliability, and certainly not for value. So if you've reached a wealthy middle age, and having a 50" TV before your neighbors do is the only way you can get wood anymore, go ahead and do it, and the rest of us will eventually benefit from your eagerness to be parted from your money. But don't expect to get a smooth ride just because you're paying that much; you'll have more trouble than those of us who wait, not less.
Or perhaps you just haven't reached the stage in your life yet where you're paying your own bills, in which case, go ahead and enjoy all that disposable income while you still can. Meanwhile, those of us in the real world have other things to spend our money on: food, rent, gas, and so on. You'll learn about that stuff soon enough.
i had a $6000 tv set drop a hdmi port due to a faulty hdcp signal. why the hell should i even be forced into having hdcp to start with? we need to fight back in the only way possible - with our wallets. Like, by not buying $6000 TVs in the first place? You don't need a special campaign to convince me not to do that. Anyone who pays that much for a damn TV is bending over and begging to get screwed. If it's not the DRM, it'll be the cables, the new receivers and switches, and having to upgrade everything else you own when you notice that scaled-up content looks awful.
The last brand-new TV I bought cost $300 and was big enough for my living room. HDCP isn't even on my radar as long as comparably sized sets that use it still cost 2-3 times that much.
I think this exchange is proof that RightBad=Insightful and LeftBad=Troll in the minds of some mods. And now look, your comments are both at +4 Insightful. I'd say that's proof that complaining about phony liberal bias is insightful in the minds of some mods.
You got modded down for comparing "left wing" California to the "left wing" USSR, China, and Cuba, as if those countries are even on the same political spectrum as the US. Then you got modded back up, a net positive, for whining about the moderation. Does that mean the system works?
you can take them to court for the money, and if you win, they are forced to give you the money back..by law.
Not if I just went up to their house and started mowing the lawn, without asking them if they wanted me to do it or telling them how much it would cost. That particular business model doesn't work at all, because the government doesn't step in and force people to play along with it (like they do with the copyright-based business model).
If you refuse to pay your bill, your electricity will get cut off and you may even get bill collectors after you and eventually be forced to pay the money back (same with cable, internet, and all of your other examples).
Yes, and if I refuse to pay for any other service that I had promised to pay, I'll also get bill collectors after me and eventually be forced to pay the money back. That's what happens when you break your contracts.
The fact that my service will be shut off is somewhat of a disincentive, but if I'm moving anyway, I don't care. Should I just skip paying the last month's phone bill, electric bill, and so on whenever I move, because I don't need the service anymore? No, of course not. I agreed to pay for that last month of usage. There's no loophole; they know who I am, and I'll probably have to pay it eventually no matter what.
With your model, the person can't just get cut off. They will get it for free and can use it forever.
And if I refuse to pay the guy who painted my house, I'll get to use that paint forever for free. Until he takes me to court for theft of service, that is.
I'm waiting for you to give me a true example of this.
I'm waiting for you to stop ignoring the ones I'm giving you! You've ignored the house painter twice already. Will you address it this time, or ignore it once again?
Now a better example would be if the food was sitting out there with nobody watching with a little sign that says "please pay". How many people do you think would actually pay?
No, that's not "better"; it's actually nothing like what I've been proposing.
You're talking about making food before any customers have arrived, then making it available before anyone has paid (or agreed to pay), and asking people to please pay you later if they take some.
I'm talking about finding the customers first and getting them to agree to pay -- so you know who they are and exactly how much money you can expect to get from them -- and then making the food (or software, or music, etc.). That way, by the time anyone can take a bite, you either have the money already or know where to find it.
See the difference?
Maybe they will think of something a little more creative than copying someone else's work.
Yeah, who cares about all those mash-ups, remixes, samples, fan fiction, parodies, extended universes... none of the stuff these young people enjoy counts as art anyway. After Frank Sinatra and Herman Melville, it's all downhill, right?
3) how large is a large audience? If you want to show a movie, for free, to 100 of your friends..I don't think it will be a problem. If you want to pass it out to them or charge for money, then you have a problem.
First, you're wrong, it will be a problem. People have gotten sued for playing the radio in their stores, so you can forget about playing a movie for an audience of hundreds.
Second, if I've paid for the DVD, what business is it of anyone else's to tell me whether or not I can charge people to watch it? It's my screen, my seats, my air conditioning, and my disc. I'm not even giving out copies, just letting people come onto my property and watch my screen.
As far as copyright law is concerned, there's no difference between publicly exhibiting a movie for free or for profit. They both need the copyright holder's permission. Getting paid isn't enough for them; they demand to tell me how I can u
Maybe there are benefits packages apple is offering which even google does not (though it's highly unlikely). Like discounts on Apple hardware. Those could easily add up to tens of thousands a year, if you like Apple products enough.
I know you're not concerned about it Hardly anyone else is, either, except for people in the industries that depend on copyright. Go ahead, ask someone "If there were a magical way I could make a copy of your car, and drive the copy home while leaving your car right in your driveway, as good as new, would you consider that stealing? And if I insisted on calling it stealing, would you consider it a form of stealing worth trying to stop?"
Perhaps you could find a handful of people who'd be upset that you were able to drive a car for free when they had to pay good money for it, but even they might change their minds when they realized they wouldn't have to pay for their next car either. In general, people are concerned about theft because they lose the things that get stolen, not because they can't stand for other people to have access to the same things they do.
Hell, ask anyone who's seen an episode of Star Trek if they think the replicator, and the post-scarcity economy it represents, is a good thing or a bad thing.
Really now? Everything I said? Do you mean the part where [...] Go re-read my posts. No, I'm ignoring those parts in order to paint an inaccurate picture of your beliefs, just like you're ignoring things I wrote in order to do the same to me.
I'm sure if I re-read your posts I'd find plenty of evidence that you really are opposed to DRM. And if you re-read mine, you'd find plenty of evidence that I want artists, programmers, etc. to get paid for the work they do, in a way that's compatible with my rights and everyone else's. But if you're going to ignore all that and claim I really believe the opposite, you shouldn't be surprised when the same thing happens to you.
I can't honestly say I wish you well -- I really hope you do get caught. Well then, I guess I'll hope you get killed in an accidental fall. Luckily for both of us, the odds are pretty slim.
I'm arguing, that as indicated by common sense, you never knew the number The only way that can be true is if you're pedantically defining "knew" as "memorized", and by that definition, no one else knew it either. And yet they were still able to share it with each other. What a mystery!
the product represented by the number is property You sure seem to think so, but you'll have a hard time convincing anyone of that just by stamping your foot. The defining characteristic of property is the need for an owner to mediate usage conflicts; songs and music need no such owner.
and you owe the creator if you solicit and download this property. Not according to any sensible understanding of how people come to owe each other money. You can owe someone because they did a service for you, and the exchange of money was a term of that deal; or you can owe someone because they're selling you an object, and the exchange of money was a term of that deal. In both cases, the money is an incentive you provide in order to convince someone else to do something for you.
It makes no sense, however, that A would owe money to B as a result of receiving information from C. In that situation, there's no deal between A and B at all. B wants the money, but that doesn't mean he's owed it. That money isn't an incentive for B to do anything, because whatever he might have done is in the past already; unless he has a time machine we don't know about, he can't go back and change the past based on whether or not he receives money in the present.
Someone else is not merely "willing to upload them for free". They are stealing. Huh? Oh, you must mean that phony, toothless kind of "stealing" that's missing the one thing that makes real stealing objectionable. I think you'll find that, outside of the copyright industry, few people are concerned about that; I certainly am not.
Except that we both refuse to purchase DRMed songs, but you rip the artist off and I don't. Do you really refuse to purchase them? I mean, you say you do, but if you won't believe me when I say I don't mind paying for things, why should I believe you? Everything you've said here suggests that you support the main principle behind DRM: that taking away consumer freedom is justified if it helps someone make a profit.
They own the product Well, no, they don't. No one owns that either.
You seem to be acknowledging that, as indicated by common sense, no one can own these numbers. But you then seem to be claiming that a person can own the thing that's encoded in them, and that this gives them the right to stop the spread of the numbers.
You're just adding a layer of abstraction, but that doesn't change anything: there's no more reason to believe you can own a song or a program than to believe you can own a number. All the same reasoning applies. A song can be everywhere at once, and no person's use of it can interfere with anyone else's use; like a number and unlike a physical object, a song is not subject to ownership, because there's no need for anyone to dictate how or where it may be used.
You still don't know it. You never did. I know it as much as anyone does: I have the ability to look it up in my own storage media. I may not have memorized it, but neither has anyone else; we all understand that, as human beings, we're capable of augmenting our biological memory with technology.
So when I walk out of a gas station because they wanted to see my license because I wanted to pay for a coke and some chips with my credit card, can I do anything about it? You can call 1-800-VISA-911 and report them. Preferably within earshot of the gas station manager.
I don't think you know what subsidized means. Copyright holders don't get their content subsidized by the government, otherwise it would passed out for free and paid for by your taxes. Now, it is protected by the government through copyright laws.
I didn't say the content was subsidized; the business model is what's subsidized, through copyright laws.
Suppose I wanted to run a landscaping business where instead of asking people up front if they wanted their lawns mowed, I'd just go down the street, mowing every lawn, and then bill people for it later. I'd have a hard time getting money out of the people who didn't want to pay me, right? That would be a pretty stupid model for me to try to use, if I had to enforce it myself. But suppose the government offered to help me collect that money, say, by sending the sheriff to everyone's house if they wouldn't pay me. That would be a subsidy.
And that's what copyright is. Ordinarily, it's pretty stupid to do all the work of creating something up front for free, then make it available to the public (by broadcasting it or just selling copies to people who are willing to share), and still expect people to buy copies from you. It only starts to look sensible if you know the government is going to help enforce your business model: in this case by letting you use the court system, at taxpayer expense, to extract money from the people who don't play along.
These are bad examples. If you don't pay any of those..you get your service shut-off. There is no theft of service.
Sure there is; they're fine examples even if you'd like to pretend they don't exist. If I use a bunch of electricity during the month of June, I'll get billed for it at the end of June. If I refuse to pay that bill, I will have gotten all that electricity for free.
If I hire someone to paint my house, and then refuse to pay him once it's done, then I've gotten all that work for free. Theft of service. See how that works?
In your model, if you don't pay, you get it for free anyway. Give me an example of anything that works this way right now (and is successful).
Well, there are the four examples I gave you.
There are plenty more, too: anything that you pay for after it's provided is something you could, theoretically, skip out on paying. A restaurant, for example: you could order a meal, eat it, and then sneak out without paying the check. And yet, most people don't do that; restaurants manage not to go out of business because of dine 'n dash. Now imagine how much less of a problem that would be if you had to identify yourself when you walked in, like you would when you agreed to pay for software development.
it has no benefits for developers/artists or anyone interested in creating something new. It would mean that if you don't find some way to protect yourself, a bigger company with more resources could steal your idea and you would have no recourse.
That's only a "problem" if you're already locked into the copyright mindset. If you're a little more open-minded, it doesn't matter, because you'll realize ideas can't be "stolen" at all.
Abolishing copyright would have plenty of benefits for developers and artists: they wouldn't have to worry about whether what they were creating was a little too similar to something that had been created earlier. They'd be able to create derivative works (forking), or incorporate parts of other projects into their own instead of reinventing the wheel. Anyone who wants to write a sequel or a prequel, a remix or a mash-up, a parody or a critique, would avoid all the lawsuits that plague artists today: even if you can claim fair use, you still have to defend yourself against those lawsuits, and that threat is often enough to discourage you from creating what you have in mind.
They'd also benefit from being able to use any tools they needed, of course.
If you were a creator of anything worth copyrighting, you
There will still be problems with this. Most people will not be willing to give their money to a company and wait a week, a month, or a year (or many years) before getting their software. The software can't really be given out to anyone until all money has actually been collected, because anyone that has paid could release it on the internet and prevent the rest of the money from getting collected. I don't think they'll have a problem putting at least some of the money down - look at video game presales, for example.
But as I said, they wouldn't necessarily need to hand the cash over in advance. When you hire someone to do some work for you, whether it's writing a program or cutting your hair, that's your agreement to pay them once the work is done. If you try to stiff them, they'll press charges.
If everyone owns it, who decides what goes into it with regards to features? The developers make that decision. If customers want to offer suggestions, and if the developers want to incorporate those suggestions, that's their choice, but it's not a fundamental aspect of the business model. Ultimately it boils down to the developers offering to write certain features and the customers deciding whether those features are worth paying for.
As a customer, why would I even want to pay in the first place if I know someone else will eventually have to pick up the slack and I will get the software for free anyway? Why would you want to pay your cable bill, your phone bill, or your electric bill? When you hire someone to paint your house, why would you want to pay him after he's done it?
Because you know that if you refuse to pay, you're committing theft of service or breach of contract, you'll go to court/jail, and you'll end up having to pay anyway. Unlike copyright infringement, which can be committed anonymously and without anyone ever knowing, in this case you specifically agreed to pay someone; they know who you are and where you live.
I'm surprised you are actually fighting for this model, because it adds significant risk for all the customers involved. They will be giving money to a company on blind faith and may not be getting anything in return for a couple of months or maybe a year (and may not even get their original investment back until that point either if things fall through). Well, whatever risk it adds for the customer, it subtracts from the developer. But that's not why I prefer this model; I prefer it because it works without copyright, and eliminating copyright has countless benefits for consumers, developers/artists, and third parties (web hosts, electronics manufacturers, etc.) who have to deal with the enforcement of copyright.
"When [programmers today] guess wrong, they waste their effort and fail to recoup their development costs."
That is the free market at work. You take a huge risk and you could come out on top and make a profit...or lose all of it. Yes, and I wouldn't mind much if the only losers there were the developers who took the risk. But in order for that business model to have any chance of working at all, you need to pass and enforce copyright laws, and then everyone loses.
There are thousands of software companies out there that could be using your model right now. There is nothing stopping them. They aren't because it isn't profitable. I'd say they aren't using it because it isn't as quick and convenient, for them, and because it's difficult to compete using this model when your competitors' model is subsidized by the government.
But the laws have not had that effect; crime has only gotten worse. Not so. Crime rates in NYC are far lower today than they were 20 years ago - the crime rate there is comparable to Boise, Idaho.
New gun control laws were passed in 2006; in 2007, the homicide rate was 20% lower than it had been in 2006 (although one can't be sure that's a direct result of the gun laws). It hadn't been that low since the 60's.
In your fantastic world of software companies using this model, what is to stop the first person buying it and giving it out for free to everyone else (before the company recoups the total cost of development). Simple: the software isn't written until the money has been collected (or at least pledged via a binding contract).
So, does that mean that nobody gets the software until the complete cost by everyone together is paid (since it's not a donation)? Yes.
Let's say the 9 people give the pavers $8000. He needs the other $2000 or he won't actually complete the work. Correction: the pavers need the other $2000 or they won't even start the work. If they said the work is worth $10,000, they're not going to change their minds and do it for $8000 instead.
Now, that doesn't mean they literally need to have the cash in their hands. It's enough for the customers to agree, before the work is done, that they'll pay afterward; that's how it works with a lot of services.
Can the pavers take them all to court if they don't pay? and if they do, who pays if they win, is the judgement divided among the 9? Anyone who promises beforehand that he'll pay, but refuses to pay once the work is done, has broken his agreement and is liable as an individual. Everyone who held up their part of the deal is fine.
and should that 10th person be involved if he didn't pay? No. He might benefit from the work, but that's beside the point; he didn't ask for it to be done and he didn't agree to pay.
This works for a small amount of people pooling their money together, but it doesn't scale. You haven't shown that to be true.
People, by nature, will not pay if they don't have to (see: anything funded by donations and taxes). Er... political campaigns manage to raise huge amounts of money via donations. Everyone who decides to send in money knows that they don't have to do it, but they choose to do it anyway, because they also know that if no one contributes, the goal will never be met.
In the case of a group pooling their money to fund a program, everyone who contributes knows that they don't have to pay -- they could wait for other people to pay and then enjoy the result for free -- but they also know that if they don't pay, that makes it more likely that the software will never be written at all.
If they care enough about the software being written, they'll choose to pay. If they don't care whether it's written or not, then they won't. If hardly anyone cares whether the software is written, then it won't be written, but so what? That's what already happens today, except instead of knowing how many people want to pay for the software, the programmers have to guess how many people will buy copies. When they guess wrong, they waste their effort and fail to recoup their development costs.
Every writing class you have ever taken since high school has taught you that if you use "excerpts" (which is all this guy said his users did), that you cite the original source. Like, for example, by putting a prominent link above the excerpt, so any reader can click the link and go directly to the original source to see the excerpt in context?
Does iGoogle repost the entire article? Does the Drudge Retort repost the entire article? No. They quote a couple sentences and link to the original.
If they are, they shouldn't be, they should at most be posting a relevant snippet, then if you want to read the story, then you can click through to get the story from a news source that subscribes to said wire service. That's exactly how it works at the site in question. The AP's accusation is nonsense.
And you didn't shake the bank manager's hand and promise never to change your 'just a number' bank balance. Nor did he promise to let me change it at any time. It's stored on his property, after all, not mine, so I would need his permission.
Really, you're only making yourself look foolish with this bank nonsense. I mean, keep going if you want, I'll knock them down as fast as you set them up. But surely you have something better to say.
They don't even know if they have a hit on their hands at that time. So? The barber doesn't know if the haircut I'm paying for will give me the edge I need to land a high-paying job or marry a supermodel. He's doing exactly the same work whether it does or not, though, so it doesn't really matter.
It is true that shifting from the "roll the dice and pray to strike it rich" model to a "get paid for working" model would make it hard to achieve massive superstar levels of profit. But most people aren't superstars anyway. That occasional loss would be offset by the fact that everyone would be guaranteed a profit for the work they do, whether it turned out to be a hit or not.
No to mention the little detail of you getting their song for free, which seems to be all you care about. Well, it's certainly all you like to pretend I care about.
You still haven't explained why that gives you the right to download songs for free -- just because the artist chose a distribution model you don't prefer. Because someone else is willing to upload them for free, and the artist has no right to force his "distribution model" on our transaction. I'm sure we've been over this before.
After all your attempts at justifying your cheapness don't even bother telling anyone you would actually do this -- you don't have a shred of credibility for this claim. Uh huh. Sure. I could make a similarly snotty remark about how after all the enthusiasm you've shown for limiting other people's speech, you don't have a shred of credibility when you claim to dislike DRM, since its main purpose is to limit speech.
But instead, I'll take your word for it, since you're a better judge of your opinions than I am, and I'll try to understand how you can give the impression of wanting to stifle speech without actually wanting to do it. Perhaps you could try something similar.
And this proves that pirate bay is legal? or morally right? or what? What's your point? I suppose it proves that in practice, people can't effectively infringe on your right to share numbers.
I'm not entirely sure what your point was that I was responding to, actually, so it's hard to say. You wrote about testing the theory that "nobody can infringe on your right to do whatever you want with 'a number'" - well, obviously, they have the legal ability to infringe on it. The test for that is simply reading the law. Morally, they can't, but there's no test for morals. Realistically, they can't, and the test for that is to observe that copyright infringement is still as common as ever; the people who want to exercise their right to share information are almost always able to do it.
And again, you see the big picture when it suits you, and pedantically cling to "it's just a number when it suits you". Nope. You just refuse to respond to what I've actually said; you'd prefer to fight the strawman of some crazy guy claiming the right to do whatever he wants, anywhere in the world, involving other people against their will if need be, as long as a number is involved at some point in the process.
That's not what I'm claiming, it never was, and I've pointed that out repeatedly. But you still refuse to listen.
Remind me again why you can't change the bank balance on your last statement and just have your bank make a correction. You don't have to hack into the bank's computer to do that. I can cross out the number on my bank statement and write in a different one, sure. It's my piece of paper and I can write whatever I want on it.
I can even bring it into the bank. It's my piece of paper, the bank doesn't care about that.
But you seem to be asking whether I can force the bank to update their records with that change or give me more money than I've actually deposited. Obviously, I can't do that, and I've never said anything that would lead a reasonable person to believe that I thought I could.
I could ask them to, sure. And then they'd say no, and that would be that.
Oh, you say this number actually represnts something? Guess what -- the other 'numbers' represent music, movies, games and apps. Heh, talk about not being able to see the "big picture"! You get as far as recognizing that those numbers represent something, but then you shut off your brain before considering that it might actually matter what they represent.
Hint: the most important part of "that number represents an obligation" is the word obligation, not represents.
I suggest the next time you want to play a game without paying it, you write down that number from memory. You never knew the number. Originally, no. But someone else knew it, and they told it to me. That's how knowledge spreads.
And claiming that a song/movie/game/app is just a number, (yet again) is you refusing to acknowledge the fact that this number is somebody's creation. You're mistaken, sir. I explicitly acknowledged it earlier, and of course I never denied it in the first place. Someone came up with that number, but that doesn't change what it is. No one can own a number, any number, whether they came up with it or not.
Did you even read that sentence? Some dude who actually bought the CD, ripped it, posted it on bittorrent (or sold it like AllOfMP3) is the guy who's breaking his agreement with the artist. Except there was no agreement between that guy and the artist. When you go into a record store, you don't shake the artist's hand and promise never to let anyone else know the secret of what number is stored on that CD you're buying. You make an agreement with the clerk, representing the store, to give him money in exchange for ownership of that physical object. That agreement might say something about returns or financing, but it doesn't say anything about copying.
Can you refute that your model deflates all the profitability from the artists Of course. It's silly to think it "deflates all the profitability" when artists can still ask any price they want for their labor. That's like claiming there's no profit to be made as a barber, a landscaper, or an accountant, just because they make their money by charging for their time instead of marking up the price of a physical object.
The profit is whatever money you bring in, minus your costs. If you take three months to write something, and your expenses during that time are $3000, but you collect $5000 for the work, then you've made $2000 profit.
and provides you your much coveted free downloads? The act of downloading a song is, itself, free. But paying the artist to record the song in the first place isn't. If I'm the one paying the artist, I'm not really getting anything for free, and in fact I may even be paying more overall - I know I'd be willing to pay more than the price of a CD to fund production of a favorite band's next album.
That's exactly my point -- that's not the test of it's legality No shit. Need I remind you once again that I'm aware of the current state of copyright law?
Except that you didn't expose any flaw. You cited agreements and obligations. Oh, and the little fact that my account balance is stored in the bank's private property. You're conflating "tell a number you know to someone else who wants to hear it" with "hack into someone else's computer against their will and change a number", which, although they both involve the concept of numbers at some level, are nothing alike.
Trace back the agreements the same way for free downloads and you'll see that the first free downloader and all subsequent ones are in violation of the terms of sale. It's the same as you stealing money from the bank and then someone else stealing that money from you. The second theif is still a theif, even though he had no agreement with the bank. It's not the same at all, because money has an owner. Money belongs to someone. To give it away, you have to be the owner, because you can't transfer ownership you don't have.
Numbers, however, don't belong to anyone. You don't need any special status to tell someone a number. You just need to know what the number is.
So although you can't give away an object that someone else owns, you can share a number that someone else claims to own, because claiming to own a number is absurd and meaningless.
Furthermore, when you buy a CD, there's only one agreement: you agree to exchange money for goods. I don't know how they do things in your neck of the woods, but around here, I've never had to sign a contract giving up any of my rights when I've bought music, movies, or software.
You're able to trace the contractual obligations between you and your car dealer all the way to guys on the assembly line getting paid. But you're unable to see the breach in contract from the first illegal downloader and all that follow. Breach of contract? Hilarious! Please, tell me more about the planet you live on where people sign a contract before downloading a torrent.
You didn't -- you proposed a business model in which as much profitability as possible is taken out of the picture for the artists, and you get your music for free. Again, more hilarity. Let me know when your next stand-up special is on: if this is the material you use in your free time on Slashdot, I can't wait to see the stuff you use professionally.
How would they have gotten it for free if everyone is paying a small amount for it? The people who are paying are paying for production -- the act of writing the program in the first place -- not for copies. Copies are freely available after it's written, because no one owns the program.
And not "everyone" needs to pay. Only enough people for the programmers to collect an amount of money that they feel is fair for the work they're going to do.
If someone has the ability to not pay under your model, then it is called a donation. No, it isn't. Remember when we talked about this before? We agreed that if you're paying for a service, with specified terms and recourse if the service isn't performed, it's not a donation. It's a payment.
Suppose there are ten people living on a dirt road, and they're thinking about having the road paved. The pavers want $10,000 to do the job. If they all pooled their money, they'd pay $1000 each.
Now suppose the tenth guy doesn't want to pay. The other nine decide they're each willing to pay a little more to get the road paved (i.e. they think living on a paved road is worth $1111.11), so they pay for the service and the tenth guy gets to live on a paved road for free.
Does that mean the payments were "donations"? Of course not. The pavers agreed to do a certain task in exchange for the money, and if they didn't do a good job of it, the people who paid could demand their money back. That's not a donation. It's paying for a service.
You don't, however, have the freedom to photo-copy an entire book at the local library and give it out for free when someone asks. Under copyright law as it currently exists, you're right, I don't. But I should. The order in which words appear in that book is a fact about that book, just like the name of the author or the color of the binding, and to tell me I can't describe that aspect of the book to someone is to stifle my freedom of speech for no reason except to put a buck in someone else's pocket.
Books have the same business model as software. Yes, and I'm proposing the same direct-payment business model for books as well as software.
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With no copyright, you wouldn't be able to force people to release their modified source code; but on the other hand, they wouldn't be able to stop you from sharing their modified binaries, or reverse engineering the binaries and porting their changes back into the open source version. No one would be able to interfere with anyone else's use. That's free.
No, I'm not going to need any signal converter, I have cable. That means I can watch more than just five channels. I have a wide variety of content at my disposal, most of which isn't available in HD anyway, so it actually looks better at native resolution on my $300 TV than it would scaled up on your $1400 TV.
If you want to be an early adopter, you've got to recognize that what you're paying for is having it first. Not for quality or reliability, and certainly not for value. So if you've reached a wealthy middle age, and having a 50" TV before your neighbors do is the only way you can get wood anymore, go ahead and do it, and the rest of us will eventually benefit from your eagerness to be parted from your money. But don't expect to get a smooth ride just because you're paying that much; you'll have more trouble than those of us who wait, not less.
Or perhaps you just haven't reached the stage in your life yet where you're paying your own bills, in which case, go ahead and enjoy all that disposable income while you still can. Meanwhile, those of us in the real world have other things to spend our money on: food, rent, gas, and so on. You'll learn about that stuff soon enough.
The last brand-new TV I bought cost $300 and was big enough for my living room. HDCP isn't even on my radar as long as comparably sized sets that use it still cost 2-3 times that much.
You got modded down for comparing "left wing" California to the "left wing" USSR, China, and Cuba, as if those countries are even on the same political spectrum as the US. Then you got modded back up, a net positive, for whining about the moderation. Does that mean the system works?
you can take them to court for the money, and if you win, they are forced to give you the money back..by law.
Not if I just went up to their house and started mowing the lawn, without asking them if they wanted me to do it or telling them how much it would cost. That particular business model doesn't work at all, because the government doesn't step in and force people to play along with it (like they do with the copyright-based business model).
If you refuse to pay your bill, your electricity will get cut off and you may even get bill collectors after you and eventually be forced to pay the money back (same with cable, internet, and all of your other examples).
Yes, and if I refuse to pay for any other service that I had promised to pay, I'll also get bill collectors after me and eventually be forced to pay the money back. That's what happens when you break your contracts.
The fact that my service will be shut off is somewhat of a disincentive, but if I'm moving anyway, I don't care. Should I just skip paying the last month's phone bill, electric bill, and so on whenever I move, because I don't need the service anymore? No, of course not. I agreed to pay for that last month of usage. There's no loophole; they know who I am, and I'll probably have to pay it eventually no matter what.
With your model, the person can't just get cut off. They will get it for free and can use it forever.
And if I refuse to pay the guy who painted my house, I'll get to use that paint forever for free. Until he takes me to court for theft of service, that is.
I'm waiting for you to give me a true example of this.
I'm waiting for you to stop ignoring the ones I'm giving you! You've ignored the house painter twice already. Will you address it this time, or ignore it once again?
Now a better example would be if the food was sitting out there with nobody watching with a little sign that says "please pay". How many people do you think would actually pay?
No, that's not "better"; it's actually nothing like what I've been proposing.
You're talking about making food before any customers have arrived, then making it available before anyone has paid (or agreed to pay), and asking people to please pay you later if they take some.
I'm talking about finding the customers first and getting them to agree to pay -- so you know who they are and exactly how much money you can expect to get from them -- and then making the food (or software, or music, etc.). That way, by the time anyone can take a bite, you either have the money already or know where to find it.
See the difference?
Maybe they will think of something a little more creative than copying someone else's work.
Yeah, who cares about all those mash-ups, remixes, samples, fan fiction, parodies, extended universes... none of the stuff these young people enjoy counts as art anyway. After Frank Sinatra and Herman Melville, it's all downhill, right?
3) how large is a large audience? If you want to show a movie, for free, to 100 of your friends..I don't think it will be a problem. If you want to pass it out to them or charge for money, then you have a problem.
First, you're wrong, it will be a problem. People have gotten sued for playing the radio in their stores, so you can forget about playing a movie for an audience of hundreds.
Second, if I've paid for the DVD, what business is it of anyone else's to tell me whether or not I can charge people to watch it? It's my screen, my seats, my air conditioning, and my disc. I'm not even giving out copies, just letting people come onto my property and watch my screen.
As far as copyright law is concerned, there's no difference between publicly exhibiting a movie for free or for profit. They both need the copyright holder's permission. Getting paid isn't enough for them; they demand to tell me how I can u
Perhaps you could find a handful of people who'd be upset that you were able to drive a car for free when they had to pay good money for it, but even they might change their minds when they realized they wouldn't have to pay for their next car either. In general, people are concerned about theft because they lose the things that get stolen, not because they can't stand for other people to have access to the same things they do.
Hell, ask anyone who's seen an episode of Star Trek if they think the replicator, and the post-scarcity economy it represents, is a good thing or a bad thing. Really now? Everything I said? Do you mean the part where [...] Go re-read my posts. No, I'm ignoring those parts in order to paint an inaccurate picture of your beliefs, just like you're ignoring things I wrote in order to do the same to me.
I'm sure if I re-read your posts I'd find plenty of evidence that you really are opposed to DRM. And if you re-read mine, you'd find plenty of evidence that I want artists, programmers, etc. to get paid for the work they do, in a way that's compatible with my rights and everyone else's. But if you're going to ignore all that and claim I really believe the opposite, you shouldn't be surprised when the same thing happens to you. I can't honestly say I wish you well -- I really hope you do get caught. Well then, I guess I'll hope you get killed in an accidental fall. Luckily for both of us, the odds are pretty slim.
It makes no sense, however, that A would owe money to B as a result of receiving information from C. In that situation, there's no deal between A and B at all. B wants the money, but that doesn't mean he's owed it. That money isn't an incentive for B to do anything, because whatever he might have done is in the past already; unless he has a time machine we don't know about, he can't go back and change the past based on whether or not he receives money in the present.
You seem to be acknowledging that, as indicated by common sense, no one can own these numbers. But you then seem to be claiming that a person can own the thing that's encoded in them, and that this gives them the right to stop the spread of the numbers.
You're just adding a layer of abstraction, but that doesn't change anything: there's no more reason to believe you can own a song or a program than to believe you can own a number. All the same reasoning applies. A song can be everywhere at once, and no person's use of it can interfere with anyone else's use; like a number and unlike a physical object, a song is not subject to ownership, because there's no need for anyone to dictate how or where it may be used. You still don't know it. You never did. I know it as much as anyone does: I have the ability to look it up in my own storage media. I may not have memorized it, but neither has anyone else; we all understand that, as human beings, we're capable of augmenting our biological memory with technology.
I don't think you know what subsidized means. Copyright holders don't get their content subsidized by the government, otherwise it would passed out for free and paid for by your taxes. Now, it is protected by the government through copyright laws.
I didn't say the content was subsidized; the business model is what's subsidized, through copyright laws.
Suppose I wanted to run a landscaping business where instead of asking people up front if they wanted their lawns mowed, I'd just go down the street, mowing every lawn, and then bill people for it later. I'd have a hard time getting money out of the people who didn't want to pay me, right? That would be a pretty stupid model for me to try to use, if I had to enforce it myself. But suppose the government offered to help me collect that money, say, by sending the sheriff to everyone's house if they wouldn't pay me. That would be a subsidy.
And that's what copyright is. Ordinarily, it's pretty stupid to do all the work of creating something up front for free, then make it available to the public (by broadcasting it or just selling copies to people who are willing to share), and still expect people to buy copies from you. It only starts to look sensible if you know the government is going to help enforce your business model: in this case by letting you use the court system, at taxpayer expense, to extract money from the people who don't play along.
These are bad examples. If you don't pay any of those..you get your service shut-off. There is no theft of service.
Sure there is; they're fine examples even if you'd like to pretend they don't exist. If I use a bunch of electricity during the month of June, I'll get billed for it at the end of June. If I refuse to pay that bill, I will have gotten all that electricity for free.
If I hire someone to paint my house, and then refuse to pay him once it's done, then I've gotten all that work for free. Theft of service. See how that works?
In your model, if you don't pay, you get it for free anyway. Give me an example of anything that works this way right now (and is successful).
Well, there are the four examples I gave you.
There are plenty more, too: anything that you pay for after it's provided is something you could, theoretically, skip out on paying. A restaurant, for example: you could order a meal, eat it, and then sneak out without paying the check. And yet, most people don't do that; restaurants manage not to go out of business because of dine 'n dash. Now imagine how much less of a problem that would be if you had to identify yourself when you walked in, like you would when you agreed to pay for software development.
it has no benefits for developers/artists or anyone interested in creating something new. It would mean that if you don't find some way to protect yourself, a bigger company with more resources could steal your idea and you would have no recourse.
That's only a "problem" if you're already locked into the copyright mindset. If you're a little more open-minded, it doesn't matter, because you'll realize ideas can't be "stolen" at all.
Abolishing copyright would have plenty of benefits for developers and artists: they wouldn't have to worry about whether what they were creating was a little too similar to something that had been created earlier. They'd be able to create derivative works (forking), or incorporate parts of other projects into their own instead of reinventing the wheel. Anyone who wants to write a sequel or a prequel, a remix or a mash-up, a parody or a critique, would avoid all the lawsuits that plague artists today: even if you can claim fair use, you still have to defend yourself against those lawsuits, and that threat is often enough to discourage you from creating what you have in mind.
They'd also benefit from being able to use any tools they needed, of course.
If you were a creator of anything worth copyrighting, you
But as I said, they wouldn't necessarily need to hand the cash over in advance. When you hire someone to do some work for you, whether it's writing a program or cutting your hair, that's your agreement to pay them once the work is done. If you try to stiff them, they'll press charges. If everyone owns it, who decides what goes into it with regards to features? The developers make that decision. If customers want to offer suggestions, and if the developers want to incorporate those suggestions, that's their choice, but it's not a fundamental aspect of the business model. Ultimately it boils down to the developers offering to write certain features and the customers deciding whether those features are worth paying for. As a customer, why would I even want to pay in the first place if I know someone else will eventually have to pick up the slack and I will get the software for free anyway? Why would you want to pay your cable bill, your phone bill, or your electric bill? When you hire someone to paint your house, why would you want to pay him after he's done it?
Because you know that if you refuse to pay, you're committing theft of service or breach of contract, you'll go to court/jail, and you'll end up having to pay anyway. Unlike copyright infringement, which can be committed anonymously and without anyone ever knowing, in this case you specifically agreed to pay someone; they know who you are and where you live. I'm surprised you are actually fighting for this model, because it adds significant risk for all the customers involved. They will be giving money to a company on blind faith and may not be getting anything in return for a couple of months or maybe a year (and may not even get their original investment back until that point either if things fall through). Well, whatever risk it adds for the customer, it subtracts from the developer. But that's not why I prefer this model; I prefer it because it works without copyright, and eliminating copyright has countless benefits for consumers, developers/artists, and third parties (web hosts, electronics manufacturers, etc.) who have to deal with the enforcement of copyright. "When [programmers today] guess wrong, they waste their effort and fail to recoup their development costs."
That is the free market at work. You take a huge risk and you could come out on top and make a profit...or lose all of it. Yes, and I wouldn't mind much if the only losers there were the developers who took the risk. But in order for that business model to have any chance of working at all, you need to pass and enforce copyright laws, and then everyone loses. There are thousands of software companies out there that could be using your model right now. There is nothing stopping them. They aren't because it isn't profitable. I'd say they aren't using it because it isn't as quick and convenient, for them, and because it's difficult to compete using this model when your competitors' model is subsidized by the government.
New gun control laws were passed in 2006; in 2007, the homicide rate was 20% lower than it had been in 2006 (although one can't be sure that's a direct result of the gun laws). It hadn't been that low since the 60's.
Now, that doesn't mean they literally need to have the cash in their hands. It's enough for the customers to agree, before the work is done, that they'll pay afterward; that's how it works with a lot of services. Can the pavers take them all to court if they don't pay? and if they do, who pays if they win, is the judgement divided among the 9? Anyone who promises beforehand that he'll pay, but refuses to pay once the work is done, has broken his agreement and is liable as an individual. Everyone who held up their part of the deal is fine. and should that 10th person be involved if he didn't pay? No. He might benefit from the work, but that's beside the point; he didn't ask for it to be done and he didn't agree to pay. This works for a small amount of people pooling their money together, but it doesn't scale. You haven't shown that to be true. People, by nature, will not pay if they don't have to (see: anything funded by donations and taxes). Er... political campaigns manage to raise huge amounts of money via donations. Everyone who decides to send in money knows that they don't have to do it, but they choose to do it anyway, because they also know that if no one contributes, the goal will never be met.
In the case of a group pooling their money to fund a program, everyone who contributes knows that they don't have to pay -- they could wait for other people to pay and then enjoy the result for free -- but they also know that if they don't pay, that makes it more likely that the software will never be written at all.
If they care enough about the software being written, they'll choose to pay. If they don't care whether it's written or not, then they won't. If hardly anyone cares whether the software is written, then it won't be written, but so what? That's what already happens today, except instead of knowing how many people want to pay for the software, the programmers have to guess how many people will buy copies. When they guess wrong, they waste their effort and fail to recoup their development costs.
Really, you're only making yourself look foolish with this bank nonsense. I mean, keep going if you want, I'll knock them down as fast as you set them up. But surely you have something better to say. They don't even know if they have a hit on their hands at that time. So? The barber doesn't know if the haircut I'm paying for will give me the edge I need to land a high-paying job or marry a supermodel. He's doing exactly the same work whether it does or not, though, so it doesn't really matter.
It is true that shifting from the "roll the dice and pray to strike it rich" model to a "get paid for working" model would make it hard to achieve massive superstar levels of profit. But most people aren't superstars anyway. That occasional loss would be offset by the fact that everyone would be guaranteed a profit for the work they do, whether it turned out to be a hit or not. No to mention the little detail of you getting their song for free, which seems to be all you care about. Well, it's certainly all you like to pretend I care about. You still haven't explained why that gives you the right to download songs for free -- just because the artist chose a distribution model you don't prefer. Because someone else is willing to upload them for free, and the artist has no right to force his "distribution model" on our transaction. I'm sure we've been over this before. After all your attempts at justifying your cheapness don't even bother telling anyone you would actually do this -- you don't have a shred of credibility for this claim. Uh huh. Sure. I could make a similarly snotty remark about how after all the enthusiasm you've shown for limiting other people's speech, you don't have a shred of credibility when you claim to dislike DRM, since its main purpose is to limit speech.
But instead, I'll take your word for it, since you're a better judge of your opinions than I am, and I'll try to understand how you can give the impression of wanting to stifle speech without actually wanting to do it. Perhaps you could try something similar.
I'm not entirely sure what your point was that I was responding to, actually, so it's hard to say. You wrote about testing the theory that "nobody can infringe on your right to do whatever you want with 'a number'" - well, obviously, they have the legal ability to infringe on it. The test for that is simply reading the law. Morally, they can't, but there's no test for morals. Realistically, they can't, and the test for that is to observe that copyright infringement is still as common as ever; the people who want to exercise their right to share information are almost always able to do it. And again, you see the big picture when it suits you, and pedantically cling to "it's just a number when it suits you". Nope. You just refuse to respond to what I've actually said; you'd prefer to fight the strawman of some crazy guy claiming the right to do whatever he wants, anywhere in the world, involving other people against their will if need be, as long as a number is involved at some point in the process.
That's not what I'm claiming, it never was, and I've pointed that out repeatedly. But you still refuse to listen. Remind me again why you can't change the bank balance on your last statement and just have your bank make a correction. You don't have to hack into the bank's computer to do that. I can cross out the number on my bank statement and write in a different one, sure. It's my piece of paper and I can write whatever I want on it.
I can even bring it into the bank. It's my piece of paper, the bank doesn't care about that.
But you seem to be asking whether I can force the bank to update their records with that change or give me more money than I've actually deposited. Obviously, I can't do that, and I've never said anything that would lead a reasonable person to believe that I thought I could.
I could ask them to, sure. And then they'd say no, and that would be that. Oh, you say this number actually represnts something? Guess what -- the other 'numbers' represent music, movies, games and apps. Heh, talk about not being able to see the "big picture"! You get as far as recognizing that those numbers represent something, but then you shut off your brain before considering that it might actually matter what they represent.
Hint: the most important part of "that number represents an obligation" is the word obligation, not represents. I suggest the next time you want to play a game without paying it, you write down that number from memory. You never knew the number. Originally, no. But someone else knew it, and they told it to me. That's how knowledge spreads. And claiming that a song/movie/game/app is just a number, (yet again) is you refusing to acknowledge the fact that this number is somebody's creation. You're mistaken, sir. I explicitly acknowledged it earlier, and of course I never denied it in the first place. Someone came up with that number, but that doesn't change what it is. No one can own a number, any number, whether they came up with it or not.
The profit is whatever money you bring in, minus your costs. If you take three months to write something, and your expenses during that time are $3000, but you collect $5000 for the work, then you've made $2000 profit. and provides you your much coveted free downloads? The act of downloading a song is, itself, free. But paying the artist to record the song in the first place isn't. If I'm the one paying the artist, I'm not really getting anything for free, and in fact I may even be paying more overall - I know I'd be willing to pay more than the price of a CD to fund production of a favorite band's next album.
Numbers, however, don't belong to anyone. You don't need any special status to tell someone a number. You just need to know what the number is.
So although you can't give away an object that someone else owns, you can share a number that someone else claims to own, because claiming to own a number is absurd and meaningless.
Furthermore, when you buy a CD, there's only one agreement: you agree to exchange money for goods. I don't know how they do things in your neck of the woods, but around here, I've never had to sign a contract giving up any of my rights when I've bought music, movies, or software.
And not "everyone" needs to pay. Only enough people for the programmers to collect an amount of money that they feel is fair for the work they're going to do. If someone has the ability to not pay under your model, then it is called a donation. No, it isn't. Remember when we talked about this before? We agreed that if you're paying for a service, with specified terms and recourse if the service isn't performed, it's not a donation. It's a payment.
Suppose there are ten people living on a dirt road, and they're thinking about having the road paved. The pavers want $10,000 to do the job. If they all pooled their money, they'd pay $1000 each.
Now suppose the tenth guy doesn't want to pay. The other nine decide they're each willing to pay a little more to get the road paved (i.e. they think living on a paved road is worth $1111.11), so they pay for the service and the tenth guy gets to live on a paved road for free.
Does that mean the payments were "donations"? Of course not. The pavers agreed to do a certain task in exchange for the money, and if they didn't do a good job of it, the people who paid could demand their money back. That's not a donation. It's paying for a service. You don't, however, have the freedom to photo-copy an entire book at the local library and give it out for free when someone asks. Under copyright law as it currently exists, you're right, I don't. But I should. The order in which words appear in that book is a fact about that book, just like the name of the author or the color of the binding, and to tell me I can't describe that aspect of the book to someone is to stifle my freedom of speech for no reason except to put a buck in someone else's pocket. Books have the same business model as software. Yes, and I'm proposing the same direct-payment business model for books as well as software.