If it was just another phone that was stolen, would he have shopped it around trying to get a payday from a tech site he knew would be interested in it?
If you're truly interested, there's this list. It includes: iCloud support. Twitter integration. OTA updates. Wi-fi syncing. Siri (iphone 4s only) New notification interface & functionality. Time/location-based reminders MUCH better camera (init & picture-taking speed as well as image quality) built in iMessage - essentially, 'free' iOS-to-iOS SMS/MMS messaging that won't count towards your phone plan's message limit.
There's really quite a bit of new stuff, it's worth reviewing the list if you're actually interested in seeing what's changed.
iPhone 3GS will be free (with contract) when the iPhone 4S releases, at least in the US. If you're cost-conscious, and have an original iPhone or iPhone 3G, you can upgrade your device (and then the iOS version) for the cost of renewing your contract with your current carrier. OR, you can consider upgrading to an iPhone 4 for $99 or $199, or go right to the latest & greatest and get yourself an iPhone 4S for $199-399.
Considering you can upgrade to a better, free phone if you're on an outdated phone, I don't see much cause for concern - you can backup your original/3G, restore your data to the 3GS/4/4S that you purchase, and be off and running with iOS 5 in pretty short order.
I'll use your own argument back at you: the sellers (artists/creators) don't have any "rights" to control who can or cannot "copy" their stuff. They either sell their thing of value (song/game/movie/etc) and let people do as they please with the CD/DVD, or don't sell it.
But that's NOT my argument that you're using, that's a straw man.
What I said was that your choices are to "buy under the terms set, live without that product, or buy a similar product from someone who sells under terms that you deem more fair." In other words, support the business model that you believe makes the most sense for you as a consumer.
Even doing away with legally-enforced blanket copyrights, a creator would be absolutely within his rights to ask you to sign a contract agreeing that you will not share copies of the digital work with anybody else without the authorization of the creator, as a condition of that sale. And you would be well within your rights to *decline* to sign that contract and continue shopping around, or you could negotiate better terms if you liked, or accept the terms as stated. But if you then broke that contract, the creator would be well within his rights to prosecute you under the law for breaching that contract. Copyright (in concept) is not a case of "taxpayer money protecting private profits" any more so than any other contract laws in practice today - you can certainly argue that current copyright terms are unreasonable as a result of intense and expensive lobbying on behalf of the middlemen (RIAA, MPAA, etc. etc.) who profit from controlling sales of created works, but you are not forced in any way to buy those works, or support the artists who sell using that model. Support indie filmmakers, indie artists, creative commons, open source. Nothing entitles you to something someone else created that you "really want" but "don't like the terms they're selling it for."
Get over that sense of entitlement ("I should be able to take a copy of anything I want because it's super cheap to copy"), because it's the absolute biggest thing that's slowing down the death of restrictive copyright: it gives the businesses interested in preserving the status quo targets to sue, and a way to pitch themselves as victims. Nothing forces people to release harshly-copyrighted creations today: you can creative-commons or "open source" it - distribute it with as permissive a license as you want. If you value uncopyrighted works, then patronize and support the people who create them under those permissive terms to encourage them to continue creating more. It's really that simple.
Also of note: Without copyright law, the GPL, creative commons, and other "permissive / free" copyright schemes doesn't exist. You okay with something you created being jacked for a national ad campaign that makes Microsoft a billion dollars, and being told, "HA, thanks for making our logo & ad music for free, sucker! We normally pay millions for graphics and music of this quality!" All of the free and permissive licensing/copyright schemes REQUIRE copyright to exist to have any enforceable terms whatsoever. Arguing that "abolishing" copyright is the solution is stupid, misguided, and incredibly short sighted.
Starcraft videos? That's your "high quality culture"? Pray tell, what happens when nobody pays for games like Starcraft because "everything's free"? You think that game gets created?
College humor? Owned by CH Media - you think they're doing that with no expectation of getting paid? You're the product, my friend. They're not producing that website for free.
Sitasingstheblues - An animated retelling of an old Indian story, by a self-serving support of "free culture," who supports no copyright because that would allow her to use someone else's songs in her animations without paying them. Funny how "I want to reuse something someone else did," is cited as an example of all the "brilliant new culture" we're going to see as a result of this. Why couldn't she write her own music? Why couldn't she come up with a brand new story, not just reuse the story of Sita and Rama?
Kernel.org - you realize without copyright, the GPL would not work... right? It *relies* on copyright to provide any protection whatsoever. Do away with copyright (as you've argued repeatedly), and suddenly the Linux kernel, and all that open source software, is fair game for everybody to rip off with absolutely zero responsibility to their upstream code provider. Do you really want to see all your GPLv3 code tivo-ized?
Your arguments about film are inane - who's going to risk millions of dollars producing a movie when the finished product is "free to anybody who wants a copy"? Your citations of all the "great culture" we'd get for free if we abolished copyright amount to a bunch of retreads of existing creations by "innovative" people who can't come up with original songs or stories, and so borrow liberally from other creators and call their snarky send-ups of original content "new culture." Movie studios won't be "pressured to create new movies," movie studios will cease to exist, and youtube - with all its grainy, reality-tv-glory, will be the great culture of our age. Oh good, I can't wait to see 3 million remixes of the bedroom intruder song.
Yes, you're right - reality television, which is pretty much the poster child for "notoriety-seeking behavior," has dramatically enriched and enlivened our culture. I can't wait until everything reaches that pinnacle of quality.
A free market requires mutually consenting exchanges of value for value. If you don't like paying for stuff, you're welcome to refuse to pay for it, and do without it. You do not have an inherent "right" to own the products of someone else's work, and you do not have an inherent "right" to dictate the prices for that work. You have the right to buy it at the price set by the creator if you find the price reasonable, or the right to decline to buy it, and live without it - or purchase an alternative from someone who is willing to sell a similar work under terms you find more reasonable. Until you understand the concept of mutual consent and its role in a free market, you have no business offering opinions on "how free markets work."
copyright =/= drm. Learn the difference, because they're two separate issues.
Claiming that the only solution to some abusive elements of copyright is to dismantle the entire notion of copyright is simply throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
As a practical example - you realize that abolishing copyright would also abolish the GPL, and allow any corporation who wants to to grab any piece of code they want to, closed-source it and contribute nothing back to the community... right?
Interestingly, in the romanticized time you're talking about, "art" was primarily something created at the behest of wealthy patrons, corporations, monarchs, and religious figures. And when it was created that way, there weren't a lot of people engaging in "art for art's sake" (compared to today), and access to those creations was primarily restricted to the wealthy patrons who commissioned the pieces. The "common man" was too busy scratching out a living to bother himself with much in the way of art, other than singing a few traditional songs and maybe seeing a play if their local upper class bothered providing some circuses to go with all that bread.
And you keep saying that people are producing art just for the fun of it... so please, point me to some amateur who works at McDonald's who also happen to be consistently creating things that are the equivalent of works by David Foster Wallace, Martin Scorsese, the Beatles, or Henri Cartier-Bresson. I'm quite interested to see the work of these wunderkind.
The logical consequence is to abolish copyright
No, that's not the logical consequence. That would be a very poor replacement for our current copyright system.
or reduce its term drastically
Perhaps. People love to use weasel words here though, and say we need "reasonable terms," when what they really mean by "reasonable" entails weeks or months, rather than years. The sensible solution in an age of digital media is that the creator owns all rights to his work, and may set the terms under which he wishes to sell or share that work while he is alive. After that, the work becomes public domain, and the creator can decide to (irrevocably) put his work in the public domain at ANY point during his life as well. Alternately, a creator may choose to sell his copyrights to a corporation, but then those rights expire much faster - say 5 years after the transfer of copyright, at which point the creation moves to the public domain.
My issue here is with the people who seem to feel it's okay to punish artists for the abusive copyright practices of the distributors - abolishing copyright is foolish and short-sighted.
1) Not be anywhere near as proficient or accomplished at their art if they only did it in their "spare" time; 2) would not create nearly so much if they couldn't keep a roof over their heads and have food to eat while doing it;
If you want a world where the height of artistic expression is producing some writing of the same quality of the shitty fan fiction or obnoxious electronic music the web is full of, then I think it's reasonable to suggest that you have no business offering opinions about viable funding strategies for the arts.
Artists are doing just fine these days, despite all the "damage" piracy is doing. In fact, there's a far greater percentage of the world's population making a far greater inflation-adjusted income today than ever before in any history we have access to. So spare me the "starving artist" bullshit.
So then there's no problem with the current system. Huge numbers of artists are thriving, by your own admission, sounds like copyright & the current system of payments works exactly as intended.
What exactly is your problem with the current system, then, besides "I can't have free shit"?
Clearly you don't realize what the goose is here. You're talking about their protected works. Thing is, by themselves, those works aren't worth jack shit. We're the goose, and our money is the golden eggs. Those protected works are merely the tool used to extrect the eggs from the goose. And they are indeed working very hard at bilking us for every red cent we're worth as quickly as possible, and nevermind about tomorrow, let alone next year.
Right... because creators aren't forced to create anything, as you've inanely asserted twice. But consumers... holy hell, we're forced to buy DOZENS of movies we don't need or want, and songs we hate, and books we'll never read, all to support some big ominous mega corps that are sucking the life out of us. Do you really believe this idiotic shit you're spouting, or are you just firing for rhetorical effect right now?
The creators are the goose. The golden eggs are the things they produce that people wish to buy. The original post I responded to suggested that we do away with any copyright protection whatsoever, positing the notion that "sure, the creator might lose something, but the enrichment of society far outweighs that." Any system that says it's okay to kill the creator to get your hands on some free golden eggs is - as I correctly noted - monstrously unjust, and therefore ineligible for any credibility or rational consideration.
No one is requiring those creators to produce anything.
Correct. And nobody is REQUIRING you to buy anything. Write your own stories. Film your own movies. Sing your own songs. If you want something produced by another person, they have the right to determine the terms under which they'll sell you a copy. They are not your slaves, to be told "PRODUCE!" with no alternative. The entire alternate system that is suggested by the post I originally responded to relies on some people being so driven to create that they will do so even if it comes at great detriment to their own well being - create, with no hope of compensation or reward. And once again, any system that relies on this, rather than providing incentive and reward for talented creators to spend time, money, and effort to create something, is, simply put, evil.
No, you didn't. You made a lot of hand-waving assertions about lots of time and millions of dollars that absolutely positively must be spent to produce anything, ever.
I see that your reading comprehension has once again failed you. Let's check the replay, shall we? Here's what I wrote: "Except the time and effort required to produce a song, movie, book, picture, or any other creative work is not zero. Therefore it is not free to create, and in fact might require many hundreds, thousands, or even millions of dollars to produce, as well as many weeks, months, or even years to create it."
Hundreds, thousands, or even millions of dollars to produce - absolutely true: -- How will you produce even an a cappella song without at least a recording device, and some method of duplicating and distributing it? That'll cost you at least a hundred bucks for a shitty recording device and a few hours of computer time. -- How will you produce a 2 hour film without the tools and personnel to record, produce, and star in it? (or even worse, the teams of animators to produce the animated characters you want to make a film about?) No-budget indie films regularly clock in with budgets of several thousand dollars. Summer popcorn movies (quite popular, even if you don't think they're particularly worthy of your money) regularly clock in with budgets of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Weeks, months, even years to create it - again, absolutely true. Show me a creative endeavor whose production doesn't take at least a week of investment in developing the skills and procuring the materials required to produce anything. "But you can paint a picture in an hour," you're
I've said this elsewhere in this thread, but I really want to repeat it because I think it's important, and always gets overlooked in these arguments by people who think that "I can make a million copies of an MP3 for free, why should I pay anything for it?"
COST TO DUPLICATE != COST TO PRODUCE
The two costs are absolutely not the same. Cost to duplicate shrinks over time, and is absolutely subject to reduction by improvements in technology. Cost to produce will *never* reach (or even, really, approach) zero. It will always require time, money, and materials to create instruments to play, to learn how to play those instruments, and record the playing of those instruments. Even with a perfectly virtualized system, until somebody comes up with a way of making us immortal, time will always be valuable.
That's exactly what the mega corps are doing, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with that.
... really? Because I'm pretty certain that the mega corps are all about protecting that goose with walls, fences, razorwire, and armed guards so nobody can get to it but them.
No one's requiring those creators to produce anything.
If your system of compensation says "do away with copyright so anybody can have anything they want for free," then the system you have constructed requires creators to create by sacrificing their own time and money to the "enrichment" of their fellow man, and we are told by GGP that this is a good thing. If you build a system that constrains the creators' ability to set their own terms and conditions for acquiring a copy of the thing they've created, you are "requiring" them to work under a specific set of conditions. Are you suggesting that a system in which creators simply... don't create anything - or in which creators are expected to create to their own detriment - is better than the current system?
Who cares? You're doing exactly the same in this next quote:
In fact, I did the exact opposite - I specifically called out the fact that there IS a cost - in time, money, materials, and expertise - required to produce any creative work. And then I asked the GGP how he proposed that a content creator be compensated for that time, money, material, and expertise. It would be really great if I could eat without having to work for anything, and have a place to live without any effort, but that's not reality. Things have costs to produce, even if they have "very low duplication costs." Hell, a printed book has very low production costs compared to the cost of the book already - do you really think it costs $12.99, or even a majority of that list price, to print & bind a copy of a typical paperback? Of course not - editors, writers, typesetters, graphic designers, advertisers all need to be paid for their time spent bringing the book to market, too.
Any system that disregards the cost of production - not just the cost of duplicating an original - does so to the detriment of the creator, and in essence turns them into a beast of burden, sentenced to create things for the "benefit" of other people, to the detriment of themselves. I specifically ended my statements about cost with a question: What mechanism is proposed to compensate creators for their time and effort, if we want to make all content freely available to anybody who wants a copy? It was a genuine question, which I'd like to hear genuine answers to, not handwaving assertions about "somehow the math will work out because I *feel* it will."
Right - we should kill the goose and take all the golden eggs out at once! Enough with this waiting for a single egg every few days!
Any system which requires a creator to produce in order to have his creation shoveled into the outstretched hands of other people to "enrich their lives" with no consideration or value given in return for the effort and skill required to perform the act of creation is monstrously unjust.
You make a lot of hand-waving assertions, and then tell us that you're "not gonna worry your pretty little head trying to calculate numbers, but I'm sure the math is solid." Which tells us you have devoted exactly zero time to actually thinking about what you've proposed.
If we can give something good to everyone for free, it would be the right thing to do.
Yes, if we could give something to everyone for free, it would totally be right. Except the time and effort required to produce a song, movie, book, picture, or any other creative work is not zero. Therefore it is not free to create, and in fact might require many hundreds, thousands, or even millions of dollars to produce, as well as many weeks, months, or even years to create it. So what mechanism do you propose that will compensate creators for their time, talent, effort and materials?
6 people in concealed firing positions with lots of ammunition are a bit harder to coordinate a response to in a panicked building evacuation than you might think.
Yes, they'd die. Yes, security & police would eventually kill them or capture them. And yes, many security and many people who just happened to exit through a door these people were aiming at would be injured and die.
How many minutes do you think it would take for security to mount a coordinated response when they realize that a) the explosion was a diversion; b) there are "some number" of people firing on people evacuating the building? I'd say you'd be looking at at least a couple minutes, realistically. Now, how many bullets can an assault rifle fire in that time?
Using an M-16 as an example... the rifle is rated for a sustained rate of fire of 12-15 rounds per minute (i.e., reasonably aimed shots, no danger of overheating, accounting for reloading, etc.), and can burst up to 45-60 rounds/min in semi-automatic mode. And if you really don't care and go for a "spray until they kill me mode," well, the mechanisms are rated for up to ~900 rounds/min cyclic fire. And the weapon is specc'ed with an effective range of ~500m against point targets.
So... 6 people, up to 500m away from the exits, firing 12-15 rounds per minute until they're dead/disarmed, for as long as it takes security to understand the threat and coordinate a response. I don't care how heavily armed and well trained that security team is, a lot of people would die and be injured, and that's a pretty high death toll for a remarkably "low tech" plan.
Someremote controlled aircraft can carry JDAMs, Hellfires, Mavericks, and other pretty lethal ordnance.
A home-built kit would obviously carry less than a B52 or a B2 could carry, but a reasonably small home-built RC aircraft could easily carry a couple pounds of explosives and fly, provided you didn't intend to do all kinds of acrobatics with it. If you don't think a pound or two can be dangerous, perhaps you'd reconsider after looking at the damage a claymore mine, grenade, or molotov cocktail can do. None of these weigh that much, but can cause extensive damage kill people with ease..
Was the kid going to destroy the Pentagon? Of course not. Could he have still killed people? You betcha.
Abstinence would also... extinguish humanity from the face of the earth within only a few decades, if used widely, too!
Or did you forget that: 1) not everybody contracts aids from sex, and so it will still be able to spread via IV drug use, perinatal transmission, and nonsexual contact with the blood of infected people; 2) humans reproduce using sex;
Or did you have data to share that demonstrates that the sole cause of AIDS is losing your virginity outside of marriage?
Tell that to the 30 or so books I've bought from Amazon on my iPad so far.
I own a Kindle, and avoid the device for a host of reasons, mostly the fact that I read in the evenings and have to turn on lights, and the myriad keys on the front are annoying and distracting to me. I bought an iPad, loaded the kindle app, and use that for reading nearly every day.
The Fire looks nice, and the Kindle Touch also eliminates one of the annoyances that I had with the original Kindle - namely the keyboard and the fact that I'd hit keys while reading and there never felt like a comfortable way to hold it because i was afraid of pressing a key. From what I've seen so far, I think these will sell pretty well, because Amazon has a built in library of content to offer for these devices - books, movies, music, tv shows, and their own Android store - a "walled garden," if you will, which will greatly appeal to people looking for a cheap and functional alternative to an iPad. Of course, I fully expect that Amazon will continue supporting other devices as much as possible - after all, they sell content, and the hardware is a teaser to get you buying all those books and movies.
We reserve the right to update our Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will post a notice on the Websites for a reasonable period of time after such changes are made that this Privacy Policy has been updated and we will revise the "Last Modified" date at the top of this Privacy Policy. We encourage you to check this page periodically for any updates. Your continued use of the Websites following the posting of updates to this Privacy Policy will mean you accept those updates.
Key terms: "from time to time" == "whenever we feel it's necessary." "post a notice [...] for a reasonable period of time after changes are made" == "for a day or two, unless we forget, in which case, well, you didn't check the modified date anyway, did you?"
In other words: "We will change this occasionally. Your notice that it's changed is that the Last Modified date has been updated, and we'll post a little blurb on the main site saying "We updated our privacty policy, check out the new version! Oh, and if you continue using the sites after the policy has been updated, you accept the terms of the update."
Net effect: "The policy is subject to change at any time, with a bare minimum of effort given to notifying you of the change."
And in plain terms: "This policy is subject to change whenever we want, we'll do whatever we feel we need to with your data with the wide latitude given to us by current legal standards, and you won't say a thing about it because you're too lazy to pay attention to these things."
So is a Wellstone plane a plane that is piloted by two borderline-incompetent pilots with a history of needing corrective reminders? Pilots who failed to maintain a safe airspeed and put the plane into an unrecoverable stall because they weren't paying attention to the instruments while looking for the airport that they were having difficulty finding under IFR flight? I don't see what incompetent pilots making a mistake have to do with a lawsuit against the government, perhaps you could explain this a little more, using facts and logic?
I think it says a lot that you appear to believe the tripe you're spewing. Let me guess: 9/11 was also an inside job, and the Illuminati control all the world governments from the shadows?
The report that Bush "screamed" those words at Republican congressional leaders in November 2005 is unsubstantiated, to put it charitably.
We judge that the odds that the report is accurate hover near zero. It comes from Capitol Hill Blue, a Web site that has a history of relying on phony sources, retracting stories and apologizing to its readers.
I also let my prejudices get in the way. When some White House sources came to me with a story that claimed George W. Bush called the Constitution a “god damned piece of paper, I believed it without question because of my personal prejudices against Bush. I now believe I was wrong and that the incident never happened. The story in our database was modified to reflect my belief that I was lied to about the statement and I was wrong to print it.
Where are the economies of scale going? Will Intel and ARM processors stop being used in these appliances, so that the only people looking for general CPUs are hobbyists who must buy them at a price made to support only a couple thousand units a year? No, the displays, the cpus, the components - will all be mass produced still. Most will find their way into appliances, and a smaller number will find their way into the hobbyist/professional market, where they will be used in the general-purpose computers which will be used as programming computers by the techno-hobbyists and programming professionals.
Your argument would suggest that the arrival of mass-produced, 'locked down' cars would make it impossible to find spark plugs, brake pads, and indicator lights at the local auto supply shop. Most people are happy to let someone else service the vehicle, but the "hobbyists" and mechanically inclined are still able to go buy a set of plugs at the local ADAP very cheaply, and do the work themselves.
Your vision of a dystopian, computer-less future is bizarrely nonsensical. These devices will increase the ubiquity of "computing devices," meaning that there will be even more need for professionals and even more ways for "interested" people to exercise their curiosity and program functionality into the "appliance" devices. It serves nobody to restrict and obsolete general computing systems from people who want them.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Most - i.e., 95+% - of the computer-purchasing public has no need, desire, or interest in installing an OS, or modifying source, or doing anything other than using the device as a "general purpose computing appliance" - I press a button, click a few times, check my email, read some news, pull up directions to the store I need to go to later, and maybe watch a movie via netflix, or read a book.
Now, before you run off into the night crying, pray tell - do you really think people will be using iOS on an iPad 2 to *develop* the software all these Joe Schmo's are going to run on their appliances? Of course not. They will develop on general-purpose desktop computers, running Linux, or OS X, or Windows 8, or whatever other OS eventually replaces them - JUST LIKE THEY DO NOW.
The hobbyist & programmer community - i.e., the people who actually care about being able to dick around with the internals of their computers - will still be able to do that. And the people who just want an appliance - for whom walled gardens and Trusted Platform Modules represent a benefit - will have the devices they want.
In my opinion, it's because whether it harms them or not is completely up to them. You don't have to be "overly sensitive" or be offended by anything you see.
So your solution to antisocial behavior is for us all to become numbed sociopaths who aren't fazed in the slightest by emotions?
And this is a *preferable* state of affairs in your opinion?
I just want to make a point that someone may find these pages dedicated to the suicide memory something worth to oppose to.
Then the solution is to speak in general terms about the use of web page memorials possibly glamorizing suicide, and back your points up with relevant facts and data. The solution is NOT to pick a handful of teens (not all of whom were suicide deaths, anyway), and stalk them online with a clear intent of inflicting pain and suffering on bereaved family and friends out of a sadistic desire for "lulz".
Slashdot Mirror
If it was just another phone that was stolen, would he have shopped it around trying to get a payday from a tech site he knew would be interested in it?
If you're truly interested, there's this list. It includes:
iCloud support.
Twitter integration.
OTA updates.
Wi-fi syncing.
Siri (iphone 4s only)
New notification interface & functionality.
Time/location-based reminders
MUCH better camera (init & picture-taking speed as well as image quality)
built in iMessage - essentially, 'free' iOS-to-iOS SMS/MMS messaging that won't count towards your phone plan's message limit.
There's really quite a bit of new stuff, it's worth reviewing the list if you're actually interested in seeing what's changed.
iPhone 3GS will be free (with contract) when the iPhone 4S releases, at least in the US. If you're cost-conscious, and have an original iPhone or iPhone 3G, you can upgrade your device (and then the iOS version) for the cost of renewing your contract with your current carrier. OR, you can consider upgrading to an iPhone 4 for $99 or $199, or go right to the latest & greatest and get yourself an iPhone 4S for $199-399.
Considering you can upgrade to a better, free phone if you're on an outdated phone, I don't see much cause for concern - you can backup your original/3G, restore your data to the 3GS/4/4S that you purchase, and be off and running with iOS 5 in pretty short order.
But that's NOT my argument that you're using, that's a straw man.
What I said was that your choices are to "buy under the terms set, live without that product, or buy a similar product from someone who sells under terms that you deem more fair." In other words, support the business model that you believe makes the most sense for you as a consumer.
Even doing away with legally-enforced blanket copyrights, a creator would be absolutely within his rights to ask you to sign a contract agreeing that you will not share copies of the digital work with anybody else without the authorization of the creator, as a condition of that sale. And you would be well within your rights to *decline* to sign that contract and continue shopping around, or you could negotiate better terms if you liked, or accept the terms as stated. But if you then broke that contract, the creator would be well within his rights to prosecute you under the law for breaching that contract. Copyright (in concept) is not a case of "taxpayer money protecting private profits" any more so than any other contract laws in practice today - you can certainly argue that current copyright terms are unreasonable as a result of intense and expensive lobbying on behalf of the middlemen (RIAA, MPAA, etc. etc.) who profit from controlling sales of created works, but you are not forced in any way to buy those works, or support the artists who sell using that model. Support indie filmmakers, indie artists, creative commons, open source. Nothing entitles you to something someone else created that you "really want" but "don't like the terms they're selling it for."
Get over that sense of entitlement ("I should be able to take a copy of anything I want because it's super cheap to copy"), because it's the absolute biggest thing that's slowing down the death of restrictive copyright: it gives the businesses interested in preserving the status quo targets to sue, and a way to pitch themselves as victims. Nothing forces people to release harshly-copyrighted creations today: you can creative-commons or "open source" it - distribute it with as permissive a license as you want. If you value uncopyrighted works, then patronize and support the people who create them under those permissive terms to encourage them to continue creating more. It's really that simple.
Also of note: Without copyright law, the GPL, creative commons, and other "permissive / free" copyright schemes doesn't exist. You okay with something you created being jacked for a national ad campaign that makes Microsoft a billion dollars, and being told, "HA, thanks for making our logo & ad music for free, sucker! We normally pay millions for graphics and music of this quality!" All of the free and permissive licensing/copyright schemes REQUIRE copyright to exist to have any enforceable terms whatsoever. Arguing that "abolishing" copyright is the solution is stupid, misguided, and incredibly short sighted.
Starcraft videos? That's your "high quality culture"? Pray tell, what happens when nobody pays for games like Starcraft because "everything's free"? You think that game gets created?
College humor? Owned by CH Media - you think they're doing that with no expectation of getting paid? You're the product, my friend. They're not producing that website for free.
Sitasingstheblues - An animated retelling of an old Indian story, by a self-serving support of "free culture," who supports no copyright because that would allow her to use someone else's songs in her animations without paying them. Funny how "I want to reuse something someone else did," is cited as an example of all the "brilliant new culture" we're going to see as a result of this. Why couldn't she write her own music? Why couldn't she come up with a brand new story, not just reuse the story of Sita and Rama?
Kernel.org - you realize without copyright, the GPL would not work... right? It *relies* on copyright to provide any protection whatsoever. Do away with copyright (as you've argued repeatedly), and suddenly the Linux kernel, and all that open source software, is fair game for everybody to rip off with absolutely zero responsibility to their upstream code provider. Do you really want to see all your GPLv3 code tivo-ized?
Your arguments about film are inane - who's going to risk millions of dollars producing a movie when the finished product is "free to anybody who wants a copy"? Your citations of all the "great culture" we'd get for free if we abolished copyright amount to a bunch of retreads of existing creations by "innovative" people who can't come up with original songs or stories, and so borrow liberally from other creators and call their snarky send-ups of original content "new culture." Movie studios won't be "pressured to create new movies," movie studios will cease to exist, and youtube - with all its grainy, reality-tv-glory, will be the great culture of our age. Oh good, I can't wait to see 3 million remixes of the bedroom intruder song.
Yes, you're right - reality television, which is pretty much the poster child for "notoriety-seeking behavior," has dramatically enriched and enlivened our culture. I can't wait until everything reaches that pinnacle of quality.
A free market requires mutually consenting exchanges of value for value. If you don't like paying for stuff, you're welcome to refuse to pay for it, and do without it. You do not have an inherent "right" to own the products of someone else's work, and you do not have an inherent "right" to dictate the prices for that work. You have the right to buy it at the price set by the creator if you find the price reasonable, or the right to decline to buy it, and live without it - or purchase an alternative from someone who is willing to sell a similar work under terms you find more reasonable. Until you understand the concept of mutual consent and its role in a free market, you have no business offering opinions on "how free markets work."
copyright =/= drm. Learn the difference, because they're two separate issues.
Claiming that the only solution to some abusive elements of copyright is to dismantle the entire notion of copyright is simply throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
As a practical example - you realize that abolishing copyright would also abolish the GPL, and allow any corporation who wants to to grab any piece of code they want to, closed-source it and contribute nothing back to the community... right?
Interestingly, in the romanticized time you're talking about, "art" was primarily something created at the behest of wealthy patrons, corporations, monarchs, and religious figures. And when it was created that way, there weren't a lot of people engaging in "art for art's sake" (compared to today), and access to those creations was primarily restricted to the wealthy patrons who commissioned the pieces. The "common man" was too busy scratching out a living to bother himself with much in the way of art, other than singing a few traditional songs and maybe seeing a play if their local upper class bothered providing some circuses to go with all that bread.
And you keep saying that people are producing art just for the fun of it... so please, point me to some amateur who works at McDonald's who also happen to be consistently creating things that are the equivalent of works by David Foster Wallace, Martin Scorsese, the Beatles, or Henri Cartier-Bresson. I'm quite interested to see the work of these wunderkind.
No, that's not the logical consequence. That would be a very poor replacement for our current copyright system.
Perhaps. People love to use weasel words here though, and say we need "reasonable terms," when what they really mean by "reasonable" entails weeks or months, rather than years. The sensible solution in an age of digital media is that the creator owns all rights to his work, and may set the terms under which he wishes to sell or share that work while he is alive. After that, the work becomes public domain, and the creator can decide to (irrevocably) put his work in the public domain at ANY point during his life as well. Alternately, a creator may choose to sell his copyrights to a corporation, but then those rights expire much faster - say 5 years after the transfer of copyright, at which point the creation moves to the public domain.
My issue here is with the people who seem to feel it's okay to punish artists for the abusive copyright practices of the distributors - abolishing copyright is foolish and short-sighted.
Oh, I'm sorry, only GGP is allowed to be deliberately obtuse and completely misrepresent the commentary of other people.
I stand corrected.
The best artists, musicians, writers etc. would:
1) Not be anywhere near as proficient or accomplished at their art if they only did it in their "spare" time;
2) would not create nearly so much if they couldn't keep a roof over their heads and have food to eat while doing it;
If you want a world where the height of artistic expression is producing some writing of the same quality of the shitty fan fiction or obnoxious electronic music the web is full of, then I think it's reasonable to suggest that you have no business offering opinions about viable funding strategies for the arts.
So then there's no problem with the current system. Huge numbers of artists are thriving, by your own admission, sounds like copyright & the current system of payments works exactly as intended.
What exactly is your problem with the current system, then, besides "I can't have free shit"?
Right... because creators aren't forced to create anything, as you've inanely asserted twice. But consumers... holy hell, we're forced to buy DOZENS of movies we don't need or want, and songs we hate, and books we'll never read, all to support some big ominous mega corps that are sucking the life out of us. Do you really believe this idiotic shit you're spouting, or are you just firing for rhetorical effect right now?
The creators are the goose. The golden eggs are the things they produce that people wish to buy. The original post I responded to suggested that we do away with any copyright protection whatsoever, positing the notion that "sure, the creator might lose something, but the enrichment of society far outweighs that." Any system that says it's okay to kill the creator to get your hands on some free golden eggs is - as I correctly noted - monstrously unjust, and therefore ineligible for any credibility or rational consideration.
Correct. And nobody is REQUIRING you to buy anything. Write your own stories. Film your own movies. Sing your own songs. If you want something produced by another person, they have the right to determine the terms under which they'll sell you a copy. They are not your slaves, to be told "PRODUCE!" with no alternative. The entire alternate system that is suggested by the post I originally responded to relies on some people being so driven to create that they will do so even if it comes at great detriment to their own well being - create, with no hope of compensation or reward. And once again, any system that relies on this, rather than providing incentive and reward for talented creators to spend time, money, and effort to create something, is, simply put, evil.
I see that your reading comprehension has once again failed you. Let's check the replay, shall we? Here's what I wrote: "Except the time and effort required to produce a song, movie, book, picture, or any other creative work is not zero. Therefore it is not free to create, and in fact might require many hundreds, thousands, or even millions of dollars to produce, as well as many weeks, months, or even years to create it."
Hundreds, thousands, or even millions of dollars to produce - absolutely true:
-- How will you produce even an a cappella song without at least a recording device, and some method of duplicating and distributing it? That'll cost you at least a hundred bucks for a shitty recording device and a few hours of computer time.
-- How will you produce a 2 hour film without the tools and personnel to record, produce, and star in it? (or even worse, the teams of animators to produce the animated characters you want to make a film about?) No-budget indie films regularly clock in with budgets of several thousand dollars. Summer popcorn movies (quite popular, even if you don't think they're particularly worthy of your money) regularly clock in with budgets of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Weeks, months, even years to create it - again, absolutely true. Show me a creative endeavor whose production doesn't take at least a week of investment in developing the skills and procuring the materials required to produce anything. "But you can paint a picture in an hour," you're
I've said this elsewhere in this thread, but I really want to repeat it because I think it's important, and always gets overlooked in these arguments by people who think that "I can make a million copies of an MP3 for free, why should I pay anything for it?"
COST TO DUPLICATE != COST TO PRODUCE
The two costs are absolutely not the same. Cost to duplicate shrinks over time, and is absolutely subject to reduction by improvements in technology. Cost to produce will *never* reach (or even, really, approach) zero. It will always require time, money, and materials to create instruments to play, to learn how to play those instruments, and record the playing of those instruments. Even with a perfectly virtualized system, until somebody comes up with a way of making us immortal, time will always be valuable.
If your system of compensation says "do away with copyright so anybody can have anything they want for free," then the system you have constructed requires creators to create by sacrificing their own time and money to the "enrichment" of their fellow man, and we are told by GGP that this is a good thing. If you build a system that constrains the creators' ability to set their own terms and conditions for acquiring a copy of the thing they've created, you are "requiring" them to work under a specific set of conditions. Are you suggesting that a system in which creators simply... don't create anything - or in which creators are expected to create to their own detriment - is better than the current system?
In fact, I did the exact opposite - I specifically called out the fact that there IS a cost - in time, money, materials, and expertise - required to produce any creative work. And then I asked the GGP how he proposed that a content creator be compensated for that time, money, material, and expertise. It would be really great if I could eat without having to work for anything, and have a place to live without any effort, but that's not reality. Things have costs to produce, even if they have "very low duplication costs." Hell, a printed book has very low production costs compared to the cost of the book already - do you really think it costs $12.99, or even a majority of that list price, to print & bind a copy of a typical paperback? Of course not - editors, writers, typesetters, graphic designers, advertisers all need to be paid for their time spent bringing the book to market, too.
Any system that disregards the cost of production - not just the cost of duplicating an original - does so to the detriment of the creator, and in essence turns them into a beast of burden, sentenced to create things for the "benefit" of other people, to the detriment of themselves. I specifically ended my statements about cost with a question: What mechanism is proposed to compensate creators for their time and effort, if we want to make all content freely available to anybody who wants a copy? It was a genuine question, which I'd like to hear genuine answers to, not handwaving assertions about "somehow the math will work out because I *feel* it will."
Right - we should kill the goose and take all the golden eggs out at once! Enough with this waiting for a single egg every few days!
Any system which requires a creator to produce in order to have his creation shoveled into the outstretched hands of other people to "enrich their lives" with no consideration or value given in return for the effort and skill required to perform the act of creation is monstrously unjust.
You make a lot of hand-waving assertions, and then tell us that you're "not gonna worry your pretty little head trying to calculate numbers, but I'm sure the math is solid." Which tells us you have devoted exactly zero time to actually thinking about what you've proposed.
Yes, if we could give something to everyone for free, it would totally be right. Except the time and effort required to produce a song, movie, book, picture, or any other creative work is not zero. Therefore it is not free to create, and in fact might require many hundreds, thousands, or even millions of dollars to produce, as well as many weeks, months, or even years to create it. So what mechanism do you propose that will compensate creators for their time, talent, effort and materials?
6 people in concealed firing positions with lots of ammunition are a bit harder to coordinate a response to in a panicked building evacuation than you might think.
Yes, they'd die. Yes, security & police would eventually kill them or capture them. And yes, many security and many people who just happened to exit through a door these people were aiming at would be injured and die.
How many minutes do you think it would take for security to mount a coordinated response when they realize that a) the explosion was a diversion; b) there are "some number" of people firing on people evacuating the building? I'd say you'd be looking at at least a couple minutes, realistically. Now, how many bullets can an assault rifle fire in that time?
Using an M-16 as an example... the rifle is rated for a sustained rate of fire of 12-15 rounds per minute (i.e., reasonably aimed shots, no danger of overheating, accounting for reloading, etc.), and can burst up to 45-60 rounds/min in semi-automatic mode. And if you really don't care and go for a "spray until they kill me mode," well, the mechanisms are rated for up to ~900 rounds/min cyclic fire. And the weapon is specc'ed with an effective range of ~500m against point targets.
So... 6 people, up to 500m away from the exits, firing 12-15 rounds per minute until they're dead/disarmed, for as long as it takes security to understand the threat and coordinate a response. I don't care how heavily armed and well trained that security team is, a lot of people would die and be injured, and that's a pretty high death toll for a remarkably "low tech" plan.
Some remote controlled aircraft can carry JDAMs, Hellfires, Mavericks, and other pretty lethal ordnance.
A home-built kit would obviously carry less than a B52 or a B2 could carry, but a reasonably small home-built RC aircraft could easily carry a couple pounds of explosives and fly, provided you didn't intend to do all kinds of acrobatics with it. If you don't think a pound or two can be dangerous, perhaps you'd reconsider after looking at the damage a claymore mine, grenade, or molotov cocktail can do. None of these weigh that much, but can cause extensive damage kill people with ease..
Was the kid going to destroy the Pentagon? Of course not. Could he have still killed people? You betcha.
Abstinence would also... extinguish humanity from the face of the earth within only a few decades, if used widely, too!
Or did you forget that:
1) not everybody contracts aids from sex, and so it will still be able to spread via IV drug use, perinatal transmission, and nonsexual contact with the blood of infected people;
2) humans reproduce using sex;
Or did you have data to share that demonstrates that the sole cause of AIDS is losing your virginity outside of marriage?
Tell that to the 30 or so books I've bought from Amazon on my iPad so far.
I own a Kindle, and avoid the device for a host of reasons, mostly the fact that I read in the evenings and have to turn on lights, and the myriad keys on the front are annoying and distracting to me. I bought an iPad, loaded the kindle app, and use that for reading nearly every day.
The Fire looks nice, and the Kindle Touch also eliminates one of the annoyances that I had with the original Kindle - namely the keyboard and the fact that I'd hit keys while reading and there never felt like a comfortable way to hold it because i was afraid of pressing a key. From what I've seen so far, I think these will sell pretty well, because Amazon has a built in library of content to offer for these devices - books, movies, music, tv shows, and their own Android store - a "walled garden," if you will, which will greatly appeal to people looking for a cheap and functional alternative to an iPad. Of course, I fully expect that Amazon will continue supporting other devices as much as possible - after all, they sell content, and the hardware is a teaser to get you buying all those books and movies.
Key terms:
"from time to time" == "whenever we feel it's necessary."
"post a notice [...] for a reasonable period of time after changes are made" == "for a day or two, unless we forget, in which case, well, you didn't check the modified date anyway, did you?"
In other words: "We will change this occasionally. Your notice that it's changed is that the Last Modified date has been updated, and we'll post a little blurb on the main site saying "We updated our privacty policy, check out the new version! Oh, and if you continue using the sites after the policy has been updated, you accept the terms of the update."
Net effect: "The policy is subject to change at any time, with a bare minimum of effort given to notifying you of the change."
And in plain terms: "This policy is subject to change whenever we want, we'll do whatever we feel we need to with your data with the wide latitude given to us by current legal standards, and you won't say a thing about it because you're too lazy to pay attention to these things."
So is a Wellstone plane a plane that is piloted by two borderline-incompetent pilots with a history of needing corrective reminders? Pilots who failed to maintain a safe airspeed and put the plane into an unrecoverable stall because they weren't paying attention to the instruments while looking for the airport that they were having difficulty finding under IFR flight? I don't see what incompetent pilots making a mistake have to do with a lawsuit against the government, perhaps you could explain this a little more, using facts and logic?
I think it says a lot that you appear to believe the tripe you're spewing. Let me guess: 9/11 was also an inside job, and the Illuminati control all the world governments from the shadows?
from FactCheck:
From Capitol Hill Blue:
Where are the economies of scale going? Will Intel and ARM processors stop being used in these appliances, so that the only people looking for general CPUs are hobbyists who must buy them at a price made to support only a couple thousand units a year? No, the displays, the cpus, the components - will all be mass produced still. Most will find their way into appliances, and a smaller number will find their way into the hobbyist/professional market, where they will be used in the general-purpose computers which will be used as programming computers by the techno-hobbyists and programming professionals.
Your argument would suggest that the arrival of mass-produced, 'locked down' cars would make it impossible to find spark plugs, brake pads, and indicator lights at the local auto supply shop. Most people are happy to let someone else service the vehicle, but the "hobbyists" and mechanically inclined are still able to go buy a set of plugs at the local ADAP very cheaply, and do the work themselves.
Your vision of a dystopian, computer-less future is bizarrely nonsensical. These devices will increase the ubiquity of "computing devices," meaning that there will be even more need for professionals and even more ways for "interested" people to exercise their curiosity and program functionality into the "appliance" devices. It serves nobody to restrict and obsolete general computing systems from people who want them.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Most - i.e., 95+% - of the computer-purchasing public has no need, desire, or interest in installing an OS, or modifying source, or doing anything other than using the device as a "general purpose computing appliance" - I press a button, click a few times, check my email, read some news, pull up directions to the store I need to go to later, and maybe watch a movie via netflix, or read a book.
Now, before you run off into the night crying, pray tell - do you really think people will be using iOS on an iPad 2 to *develop* the software all these Joe Schmo's are going to run on their appliances? Of course not. They will develop on general-purpose desktop computers, running Linux, or OS X, or Windows 8, or whatever other OS eventually replaces them - JUST LIKE THEY DO NOW.
The hobbyist & programmer community - i.e., the people who actually care about being able to dick around with the internals of their computers - will still be able to do that. And the people who just want an appliance - for whom walled gardens and Trusted Platform Modules represent a benefit - will have the devices they want.
So your solution to antisocial behavior is for us all to become numbed sociopaths who aren't fazed in the slightest by emotions?
And this is a *preferable* state of affairs in your opinion?
Then the solution is to speak in general terms about the use of web page memorials possibly glamorizing suicide, and back your points up with relevant facts and data. The solution is NOT to pick a handful of teens (not all of whom were suicide deaths, anyway), and stalk them online with a clear intent of inflicting pain and suffering on bereaved family and friends out of a sadistic desire for "lulz".