Theft requires depriving someone else of their property.
This is a common and incorrect understanding of
theft. Dictionary definitions of theft are very broad. It certainly doesn't have to involve tangible items. Have you ever heard of "theft of servces" ?
Of course, it is an unconventional and possibly misleading usage, but then the anti-copyright folks use exactly the same sort of linguistic demagoguery (eg abusing the word "information")
Like Liebowitz, you're prepared to jump from conclusion to conclusion, U-Turning with each bit of data released, rather than evaluting the bigger global picture and all the data available, before reaching a logical conclusion - that current data is inconclusive.
Dishonest, false, and not in any way supported
by your posts to this forum.
I am not shifting the argument. Liebowitz is discussing the US in particular, where broadband is available. You brought the UK into the discussion. On questions regarding how do I explain what's going on elsewhere in the world -- I don't. In fact, I don't hold a strong opinion on what's going on in the USA. I'm just pointing out that your venemous attacks on Liebowitz appear to lack substance and are probably more the result of a zealous opinion on P2P than any logical thought process (the completely false claim that he changed his mind 3 times in 4 months is an example of your illogical frothing)
In other words, if we're going to be pedantic (which you appear to want to be), this economist never bothered examining the numbers before publishing his paper. If he had, salon would state he was RE-examining the numbers.
The Salon article is sloppily worded, so I disagree with the latter remark. As for the former, it's not clear (to me, anyway) that he didn't do any examination of the numbers.
In 2001 it used to take me 2 - 3 hours on an unmetered narrowband line to download an entire album, hardly a big deal. 128k Cable access was highly popular then too. Would waiting 2 - 3 hours have put people off ?
I rarely download anything that takes that long (meaning I don't remember doing it). It is inconvenient. You need to tie up your phone line for that time, and I have better things to do with my connection, my phone line, and my time. It's even worse if you're a kid living with your parents-- they will not want you monopolising the phone line.
only having to wait 2 or 3 hours to get a free album would not have put stopped anyone,
People who've moved out of home consider their time
more valuable than this, people who live with their parents share a phone line with the family.
Your 3 hour time line also assumes that the
search for a complete album is instantaneous,
and the download completes uninterrupted.
it's the great demon P2P and his mysterious sidekick, ADSL.
Well it's true. P2P is bandwidth intensive (hence the problems with cable companies limiting bandwidth).
When record sales remain bouyant in the UK next year, following this summers broadband explosion, what excuse are you going to use then ?
You're speculating. But like Liebowitz, I'm prepared to reevaluate my position if there is new data available that appears to contradict it.
You obviously don't work out much
3x/week weights 5x1hr/week cardio. Tapes have their
problems, but that didn't stop people using them.
But I certainly agree that MP3 players are better than tapes for
this.
Except he changed his mind yet again, within 2 months - June - August.
That's not what the article says. Here's a quote:
But in June, by the time Salon caught up with him, he was questioning his own conclusions after having examined the numbers and finding little solid proof that file sharing was hurting CD sales.
In other words, he was re-considering his position. It is not clear that he changed his mind at all.
The crux of his argument is that MP3 downloading seriously damages sales. It isn't so.
Perhaps the BBC [bbc.co.uk] is "ranting" also ?
The impact of broadband is not necessarily going
to be the same in the UK as it is in the US.
As I previously stated - Solid state MP3 players allow people to jog or do violent exercise, where previous walkmans, discmans, mini-disc players and so forth would jump and skip. Therefore, the MP3 player is a new medium, and music ideal for such activity - 140 BPM 4/4 beat techno, should see an increase in sales, based on his argument that a new medium results in new sales.
People have been doing exercise with cassette players for years.
So, this respected researcher has changed his mind three times in 4 months .
WRONG. This
might be news to you, but there is some latency
between having an opinion, and having that
opinion published in a journal. The submission/review process is quite lengthy.
I would guess that it took about 6 months, and the
research took a few months also. To the extent that he "changed his mind", he probably did so over the period of close to a year.
Perhaps he should think and formulate a well conceived, intelligent opinion before opening his mouth next time - is this guy the salon version of the first post trolls ?
I'm going to momentarily ignore the fact that
this viscious verbal assault is based on a false premise, and address the fact that he re-evaluated his position.
Unlike the slashdot herd, he is constantly re-evaluating his position with a critical eye and some intellectual honesty, instead of foaming at the mouth and spewing dogma. This is what scientists are supposed to do-- think critically,
as opposed to spewing dogma.
Far from completely changing his mind, these apparent changes are really a gradual convergence towards him converging to the truth. At first, he had some
argument that it would hurt the industry. Further analysis offered a possible counter-argument to
that, but an appraisal of that counter-argument
showed that he had it right the first time.
You don't publish a paper, then change your mind about your own conclusions less than a month later, then change your mind yet again, and expect to be taken seriously.
I don't see why you can't offer counter-arguments
to your own writing. To do so is the hallmark of intellectual honesty, something that you mistakenly consider to be a weakness.
It's not like he's doing a complete U-turn.
Except, that a) we're in a recession, b) teenage disposable income is now spilt between DVDs, Games and CDs c) bland mass appeal music always sees a drop in sales
The crux of his argument is that this is not
the case, or to be more precise, recessions hurt
music sales, but they don't hurt them that much.
Ranting on slashdot that it isn't so is not much
of a rebuttal.
2)We have new mediums now, such as the MP3 player, so according to your "theory" that should overwhelm any copying.
That's not true. The MP3 only provides a new medium, but the cassette provided new functionality. That is, the point of the cassette is that you didn't have portability before then. Of course MP3s also offer portability, but that portability isn't new anymore.
If people bought albums in the 80's specifically for the purpose of taping them for their new toy the walkman, then isn't the same going to happen now ?
Yes, but this won't result in an increase in sales, because they could already buy albums to record for the purpose of jogging. The only difference is that there will be a new mediium.
Or to put it another way, MP3s do not create a market that didn't already exist (or at least, you have not argued that this is the case)
It's not like someone rented a ship, filled it up and went to the coast of china. Once there they didn't just throw the crap out there.
Sure they did. If they dispose of hazardous waste knowing that it will end up in someones back yard,
they're to blame. Hiring polluters to do your dirty
work does not make you any better than the polluter.
It's sort of like buying stolen goods-- no respectable business person would do such a thing, and the law takes a very dim view on those who do.
So most of the following is just packing peanuts to prevent the binaries from breaking during shipping?
These libraries are not "layered" on top of each
other. The different libraries provide different
functionality. For example, ncurses handles terminal IO. libXaw provides widgets, ICE provides authentication services. You are confusing "modularity" with "bloat"
Re:Breaking interoperability... again???
on
GCC 3.2 Released
·
· Score: 1
It is exactly his point. Code *compiled* with a new compiler version (say a.so) ->*_SHOULD_*- be interoperable with code *compiled* with older compiler verions.
There are a lot of things that should be
a certain way. When it gets interesting is when you have conflicting "shoulds", and these are the questions gcc developers
need to solve. The gcc development team don't need slashdot to tell them that binary compatibility is useful.
Re:A mess for those running old/current distros...
on
GCC 3.2 Released
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Anyone have better ideas on how to do this?
Newer versions of gcc have different sonames for the
libstdc++ library. For example, gcc 3.1 used libstdc++.so.4.
Backward binary compatibility is a non-issue. The only tricky issue is recompiling C++ libraries that
you wish to use for your development with the new
compiler.
He didn't advocate hatred anywhere in his comments.
Sure he did. He spewed invective at these people, and suggested that such people be treated in a way
consistent with that spiteful invective.
Your subject line says it all-- you're as spiteful as he is.
It's difficult to comment on the details of
"treating people like human filth" unless those details are offered, but the language suggests
obnoxious, hateful behaviour.
As for the suggestion that I advocate "turning the other cheek", or even condoning that conduct, you're proposing a false dichotomy. Perhaps you
should abstain from such simple logical fallacies if you want to use words like "clueless fuck" to describe others (-;
I'm not saying that nothing should be done, I'm saying that there are processes for effecting
change, and obnoxious, antisocial behaviour, and hateful rhetoric has a very poor track record in
bringing about positive social changes.
If the carrot of being allowed to incorporate, with all of the legal and financial benefits that brings, is not sufficient for the aforementioned sub-human filth to behave ethically, and they are able to purchase or pervert legislation to permit said behavior, then the only thing that remains is the stick, be it social stigmatization of the human beings which comprise the sub-human filth that is the corporate entity in question, or the use of more direct methods by the rest of humanity to protect its own interests against the aforementioned sub-human filth.
I see -- hatred as a solution, huh ? This has got to be one of the silliest things I've heard, even on slashdot.
Hollering hostile rhetoric at these people isn't
going to change anything. They don't care what
you think anyway. The other problem is that
adopting the sort of viscious hostile behaviour
that you advocate here is an effective way of
drawing similar hostilities in your own direction, or at the very least alientating yourself.
You might enjoy salivating and grinding your
teeth at a hostile zealot on the other side of the issue to yourself who will reciprocate, but
most people really don't care for this sort of
thing, and are prone to not only abstain from
adopting such behaviour, as well as having the
good sense to avoid people with the temprament of
a rabid premenstrual hyena.
Actually the USPO would probably approve the patent. Simply because their usual method of looking for prior art does not involve watching porn.
But maybe it does. It would certainly explain their
failure to find prior art in computer technology patents.
Patent examiner goes to his office, watches a porn movie for a while, comes back and says "yeah, I've been looking for prior art for the last hour, I couldn't find any. This application meets our usual standards."
Typical irrelevant slashdotism. If the
author signed away their rights to MIT, then that would be "yes", and this is not news. There are a lot of instances where Universities claim copyright to work performed by researchers there. If you're
smart, you release the software under a free license
so that if the university does "claim ownership".
it doesn't hurt you.
Really, even if you are working on company time to come up with something wonderful the only rights to your ideas the company should have is disclosure of everything you designed or thought up on their dime.
This is one of the worst problems in our legal system.
But perhaps he would have won the case if he
had a lawyer.
No, one of the worst problems with your legal system is that if you have an incompetent lawyer
who thinks that "Websters" is an authoritative source, you will get nowhere fast. Making legal arguments based on how you think the
law should work is not a good strategy for winning in court. He who represents himself has a fool for a client.
Doesn't abusing open relay
violate various anti-cracking laws such as CFAA ? It's a clear abuse / unauthorized access of the computer. Existing cases of the CFAA seem
to use a pretty weak definition of "protected computer".
Sure, they can hack into overseas computers, but
if these guys hack into Chinese computers, why not extradite them ? (-; (-;
No you never did, what music was on the radio? Oh yeah the music record companies want to make you buy not the music thats best.
As usual, you're talking rubbish. Support your local community radio station, and send in a donation, Mr Freeloader. These music stations do play what is "best", and aren't lackeys of the music business. I listened to and purchased alternative music long before the P2P freeloaders
came along, and I heard it all on the radio first.
This lying demagoguery of yours is disgusting. The use of the word "sharing" is extremely misleading, because the term "share" implies that you are selflessly giving away your own resources, while the truth is that you are in fact selfishly groping at ebody elses resources without their permission. Sharing ? Nahh. Fraud, theft, etc.
Look, If someone makes good music I'll go to their concerts and I'll pay them not because I have to but because I think they deserve it, because they EARNED it.
No one is forcing you to buy CDs. If you don't like the music, don't buy it. It's that simple. Paying someone for their work is not an option. You can't sort of hire someone to do a job for you, then pay them if you decide they did a good job. Can you see the problems with such a model ?
Make all the lame rationalisations you like, but the fact is that musicians do have control by default. They choose to yield that control, and choose the best compensation
package the market offers.
Your imaginary business models are interesting, and I'm sure they have a lot of appeal for the free riders. That is why they are bad business models. Appealing to freeloaders is not a good business strategy, because (drum roll... ) freeloaders freeload.
We should be able to choose what we want to buy, when you walk into a store, you can look at a toy, and decide if you want to buy it. With music or information they dont even want you to LOOK at it, this harms me, taking away my freedom to choose.
Nonsense. There are radio stations, and several music shops let you listen before you buy,. Some music shops have systems set up where you can swipe any CD and listen to excerpts.
We should be able to do what we want with our music, even share it, because music truely has no owners,
The problem is, how do you compensate the authors of creative works ? "User pays" is a good model, and one that is facilitated by copyright. Voluntary systems don't work-- you have a prisoners dilemma where no-one wants to release music because there's no incentive, and no one wants to pay for music that they can get for free anyway.
So how do artists get paid?
How do concerts end up sold out?
I don't understand your point, but you didn't address his. The fact that you can buy a musicians CD is NOT the same as the music being "released to the public". If your religion requires
you to break the law, then you're welcome to say
your prayers in the comfort of your countries
prison system (-;
In addition, they make it sound like "Unix Hardware" is more expernsive than "Linux Hardware", which while Linux works on just about anything, I don't see why they didn't use 3,000 dollar each machines for Unix in the first place. I don't see a 47,000 difference, unless they were stupid and just scrapped important stuff like memory, RAID, good mobos, redundant Power supplies, etc...
Most UNIX vendors do not sell x86 boxes running
UNIX. For example, if you want to buy Suns, it's
very expensive (I did the numbers once, and my conclusion was that if you're spending less than $50,000, you're much better off with x86 hardware) . You're basically paying a lot of
money for L2 cache, which is great if you want that, and not so great if you don't.
I really don't appreciate that statement. Clearly, the hardware upgrade was the primary factor in the speed increase.
I think the point was that Linux runs on commodity
hardware, which is cheaper. Upgrading the UNIX
servers to new versions of similar machines would not be an option in a budget constrained world.
They could hardly use the computer, let alone dial up a BBS and learn all of the conventions, in 1992.
So does that mean piracy has gone up, or just computer use ? Since they're pirating music, surely, they knew how to record a CD onto tape, or copy a tape in 1992 ? This is certainly simpler than downloading.
Re:There is no such thing as "intellectual propert
on
Reclaiming the Commons
·
· Score: 1
Oh, and have you seen the laws of most countries?
This is a red herring. The rant against "information as property" is a straw-man argument, because that is not a mainstream position, and in particular, the
existence of copyright and patent law does not imply
a legal recognition of information as property.
The growth of the internet, broadband, and the consumerization of programs like Napster and Kazaa have absolutely made it substantially easier to violate copyright than it was in 1992. (In 1992, you'd dial up a local BBS with 20 megs of hard drive space and a 14.4k modem... if you're lucky!)
You could still get warez in 1992. Warez has been
around for a long time. As for music, one could
always "share" their friends tapes, and make copies. This is especially feasible since most
people have some friends with similar tastes in music.
In terms of broadband, I don't think it makes it
that easy to pirate. From what I've heard, getting
a complete album is quite hard, and it takes time
poking around on the internet, and you need to pay your broadband fee (unless you're a whiny slashdot luser living in your parents basement, of course) Despite all the noise on slashdot, I suspect that the majority of piracy
nowadays still uses more traditional techniques:
"sharing" a friends CD, obtaining "warez" CDs, "sharing" CDs with friends, etc.
Knowledge is no longer a common due to intellectual propery.
There is no such thing as "intellectual property"
as far as the laws of most countries are concerned.
Knowledge should be free.
Knowledge is not the same thing as "entertainment". Your use of terminology is misleading at best.
As far as the use of the word should is concerned, I believe good governments should
avoid creating prisoners dilemmas. Allowing free riders to the show creates a prisoners dilemma,
because a rational person will prefer to be a free rider than a paying customer, but free riders do not serve the interests of society.
"Knowledge" is not "free", because it takes time and resources to produce "knowledge". That's what
copyright is for -- it exists with the explicit intention of avoiding a prisoners dilemma and
furthering the interests of society by granting
authors control of their works.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a common and incorrect understanding of theft. Dictionary definitions of theft are very broad. It certainly doesn't have to involve tangible items. Have you ever heard of "theft of servces" ? Of course, it is an unconventional and possibly misleading usage, but then the anti-copyright folks use exactly the same sort of linguistic demagoguery (eg abusing the word "information")
Dishonest, false, and not in any way supported by your posts to this forum. I am not shifting the argument. Liebowitz is discussing the US in particular, where broadband is available. You brought the UK into the discussion. On questions regarding how do I explain what's going on elsewhere in the world -- I don't. In fact, I don't hold a strong opinion on what's going on in the USA. I'm just pointing out that your venemous attacks on Liebowitz appear to lack substance and are probably more the result of a zealous opinion on P2P than any logical thought process (the completely false claim that he changed his mind 3 times in 4 months is an example of your illogical frothing)
The Salon article is sloppily worded, so I disagree with the latter remark. As for the former, it's not clear (to me, anyway) that he didn't do any examination of the numbers.
In 2001 it used to take me 2 - 3 hours on an unmetered narrowband line to download an entire album, hardly a big deal. 128k Cable access was highly popular then too. Would waiting 2 - 3 hours have put people off ?
I rarely download anything that takes that long (meaning I don't remember doing it). It is inconvenient. You need to tie up your phone line for that time, and I have better things to do with my connection, my phone line, and my time. It's even worse if you're a kid living with your parents-- they will not want you monopolising the phone line.
only having to wait 2 or 3 hours to get a free album would not have put stopped anyone,
People who've moved out of home consider their time more valuable than this, people who live with their parents share a phone line with the family. Your 3 hour time line also assumes that the search for a complete album is instantaneous, and the download completes uninterrupted.
it's the great demon P2P and his mysterious sidekick, ADSL.
Well it's true. P2P is bandwidth intensive (hence the problems with cable companies limiting bandwidth).
When record sales remain bouyant in the UK next year, following this summers broadband explosion, what excuse are you going to use then ?
You're speculating. But like Liebowitz, I'm prepared to reevaluate my position if there is new data available that appears to contradict it.
You obviously don't work out much
3x/week weights 5x1hr/week cardio. Tapes have their problems, but that didn't stop people using them. But I certainly agree that MP3 players are better than tapes for this.
That's not what the article says. Here's a quote:
In other words, he was re-considering his position. It is not clear that he changed his mind at all.
The crux of his argument is that MP3 downloading seriously damages sales. It isn't so. Perhaps the BBC [bbc.co.uk] is "ranting" also ?
The impact of broadband is not necessarily going to be the same in the UK as it is in the US.
As I previously stated - Solid state MP3 players allow people to jog or do violent exercise, where previous walkmans, discmans, mini-disc players and so forth would jump and skip. Therefore, the MP3 player is a new medium, and music ideal for such activity - 140 BPM 4/4 beat techno, should see an increase in sales, based on his argument that a new medium results in new sales.
People have been doing exercise with cassette players for years.
WRONG. This might be news to you, but there is some latency between having an opinion, and having that opinion published in a journal. The submission/review process is quite lengthy. I would guess that it took about 6 months, and the research took a few months also. To the extent that he "changed his mind", he probably did so over the period of close to a year.
Perhaps he should think and formulate a well conceived, intelligent opinion before opening his mouth next time - is this guy the salon version of the first post trolls ?
I'm going to momentarily ignore the fact that this viscious verbal assault is based on a false premise, and address the fact that he re-evaluated his position.
Unlike the slashdot herd, he is constantly re-evaluating his position with a critical eye and some intellectual honesty, instead of foaming at the mouth and spewing dogma. This is what scientists are supposed to do-- think critically, as opposed to spewing dogma. Far from completely changing his mind, these apparent changes are really a gradual convergence towards him converging to the truth. At first, he had some argument that it would hurt the industry. Further analysis offered a possible counter-argument to that, but an appraisal of that counter-argument showed that he had it right the first time.
You don't publish a paper, then change your mind about your own conclusions less than a month later, then change your mind yet again, and expect to be taken seriously.
I don't see why you can't offer counter-arguments to your own writing. To do so is the hallmark of intellectual honesty, something that you mistakenly consider to be a weakness. It's not like he's doing a complete U-turn.
Except, that a) we're in a recession, b) teenage disposable income is now spilt between DVDs, Games and CDs c) bland mass appeal music always sees a drop in sales
The crux of his argument is that this is not the case, or to be more precise, recessions hurt music sales, but they don't hurt them that much. Ranting on slashdot that it isn't so is not much of a rebuttal.
2)We have new mediums now, such as the MP3 player, so according to your "theory" that should overwhelm any copying.
That's not true. The MP3 only provides a new medium, but the cassette provided new functionality. That is, the point of the cassette is that you didn't have portability before then. Of course MP3s also offer portability, but that portability isn't new anymore.
If people bought albums in the 80's specifically for the purpose of taping them for their new toy the walkman, then isn't the same going to happen now ?
Yes, but this won't result in an increase in sales, because they could already buy albums to record for the purpose of jogging. The only difference is that there will be a new mediium. Or to put it another way, MP3s do not create a market that didn't already exist (or at least, you have not argued that this is the case)
Sure they did. If they dispose of hazardous waste knowing that it will end up in someones back yard, they're to blame. Hiring polluters to do your dirty work does not make you any better than the polluter. It's sort of like buying stolen goods-- no respectable business person would do such a thing, and the law takes a very dim view on those who do.
TrueType was created by Apple and Microsoft to break up Adobes font monopoly. Even today, Adobe are largely Type1 only.
linux people won't make/use fonts (or anything else) unless everything about them is free
Not true. THere have been several non-free packages that have enjoyed widespread popularity on Linux, such as these fonts.
Cheers,
These libraries are not "layered" on top of each other. The different libraries provide different functionality. For example, ncurses handles terminal IO. libXaw provides widgets, ICE provides authentication services. You are confusing "modularity" with "bloat"
There are a lot of things that should be a certain way. When it gets interesting is when you have conflicting "shoulds", and these are the questions gcc developers need to solve. The gcc development team don't need slashdot to tell them that binary compatibility is useful.
Newer versions of gcc have different sonames for the libstdc++ library. For example, gcc 3.1 used libstdc++.so.4. Backward binary compatibility is a non-issue. The only tricky issue is recompiling C++ libraries that you wish to use for your development with the new compiler.
Sure he did. He spewed invective at these people, and suggested that such people be treated in a way consistent with that spiteful invective. Your subject line says it all-- you're as spiteful as he is.
It's difficult to comment on the details of "treating people like human filth" unless those details are offered, but the language suggests obnoxious, hateful behaviour.
As for the suggestion that I advocate "turning the other cheek", or even condoning that conduct, you're proposing a false dichotomy. Perhaps you should abstain from such simple logical fallacies if you want to use words like "clueless fuck" to describe others (-;
I'm not saying that nothing should be done, I'm saying that there are processes for effecting change, and obnoxious, antisocial behaviour, and hateful rhetoric has a very poor track record in bringing about positive social changes.
I see -- hatred as a solution, huh ? This has got to be one of the silliest things I've heard, even on slashdot.
Hollering hostile rhetoric at these people isn't going to change anything. They don't care what you think anyway. The other problem is that adopting the sort of viscious hostile behaviour that you advocate here is an effective way of drawing similar hostilities in your own direction, or at the very least alientating yourself. You might enjoy salivating and grinding your teeth at a hostile zealot on the other side of the issue to yourself who will reciprocate, but most people really don't care for this sort of thing, and are prone to not only abstain from adopting such behaviour, as well as having the good sense to avoid people with the temprament of a rabid premenstrual hyena.
But maybe it does. It would certainly explain their failure to find prior art in computer technology patents.
Patent examiner goes to his office, watches a porn movie for a while, comes back and says "yeah, I've been looking for prior art for the last hour, I couldn't find any. This application meets our usual standards."
Typical irrelevant slashdotism. If the author signed away their rights to MIT, then that would be "yes", and this is not news. There are a lot of instances where Universities claim copyright to work performed by researchers there. If you're smart, you release the software under a free license so that if the university does "claim ownership". it doesn't hurt you.
But perhaps he would have won the case if he had a lawyer.
No, one of the worst problems with your legal system is that if you have an incompetent lawyer who thinks that "Websters" is an authoritative source, you will get nowhere fast. Making legal arguments based on how you think the law should work is not a good strategy for winning in court. He who represents himself has a fool for a client.
Doesn't abusing open relay violate various anti-cracking laws such as CFAA ? It's a clear abuse / unauthorized access of the computer. Existing cases of the CFAA seem to use a pretty weak definition of "protected computer". Sure, they can hack into overseas computers, but if these guys hack into Chinese computers, why not extradite them ? (-; (-;
As usual, you're talking rubbish. Support your local community radio station, and send in a donation, Mr Freeloader. These music stations do play what is "best", and aren't lackeys of the music business. I listened to and purchased alternative music long before the P2P freeloaders came along, and I heard it all on the radio first.
This lying demagoguery of yours is disgusting. The use of the word "sharing" is extremely misleading, because the term "share" implies that you are selflessly giving away your own resources, while the truth is that you are in fact selfishly groping at ebody elses resources without their permission. Sharing ? Nahh. Fraud, theft, etc.
Look, If someone makes good music I'll go to their concerts and I'll pay them not because I have to but because I think they deserve it, because they EARNED it.
No one is forcing you to buy CDs. If you don't like the music, don't buy it. It's that simple. Paying someone for their work is not an option. You can't sort of hire someone to do a job for you, then pay them if you decide they did a good job. Can you see the problems with such a model ?
Make all the lame rationalisations you like, but the fact is that musicians do have control by default. They choose to yield that control, and choose the best compensation package the market offers.
Your imaginary business models are interesting, and I'm sure they have a lot of appeal for the free riders. That is why they are bad business models. Appealing to freeloaders is not a good business strategy, because (drum roll ... ) freeloaders freeload.
We should be able to choose what we want to buy, when you walk into a store, you can look at a toy, and decide if you want to buy it. With music or information they dont even want you to LOOK at it, this harms me, taking away my freedom to choose.
Nonsense. There are radio stations, and several music shops let you listen before you buy,. Some music shops have systems set up where you can swipe any CD and listen to excerpts.
We should be able to do what we want with our music, even share it, because music truely has no owners,
The problem is, how do you compensate the authors of creative works ? "User pays" is a good model, and one that is facilitated by copyright. Voluntary systems don't work-- you have a prisoners dilemma where no-one wants to release music because there's no incentive, and no one wants to pay for music that they can get for free anyway.
I don't understand your point, but you didn't address his. The fact that you can buy a musicians CD is NOT the same as the music being "released to the public". If your religion requires you to break the law, then you're welcome to say your prayers in the comfort of your countries prison system (-;
Most UNIX vendors do not sell x86 boxes running UNIX. For example, if you want to buy Suns, it's very expensive (I did the numbers once, and my conclusion was that if you're spending less than $50,000, you're much better off with x86 hardware) . You're basically paying a lot of money for L2 cache, which is great if you want that, and not so great if you don't.
I think the point was that Linux runs on commodity hardware, which is cheaper. Upgrading the UNIX servers to new versions of similar machines would not be an option in a budget constrained world.
So does that mean piracy has gone up, or just computer use ? Since they're pirating music, surely, they knew how to record a CD onto tape, or copy a tape in 1992 ? This is certainly simpler than downloading.
This is a red herring. The rant against "information as property" is a straw-man argument, because that is not a mainstream position, and in particular, the existence of copyright and patent law does not imply a legal recognition of information as property.
You could still get warez in 1992. Warez has been around for a long time. As for music, one could always "share" their friends tapes, and make copies. This is especially feasible since most people have some friends with similar tastes in music.
In terms of broadband, I don't think it makes it that easy to pirate. From what I've heard, getting a complete album is quite hard, and it takes time poking around on the internet, and you need to pay your broadband fee (unless you're a whiny slashdot luser living in your parents basement, of course) Despite all the noise on slashdot, I suspect that the majority of piracy nowadays still uses more traditional techniques: "sharing" a friends CD, obtaining "warez" CDs, "sharing" CDs with friends, etc.
There is no such thing as "intellectual property" as far as the laws of most countries are concerned.
Knowledge should be free.
Knowledge is not the same thing as "entertainment". Your use of terminology is misleading at best.
As far as the use of the word should is concerned, I believe good governments should avoid creating prisoners dilemmas. Allowing free riders to the show creates a prisoners dilemma, because a rational person will prefer to be a free rider than a paying customer, but free riders do not serve the interests of society.
"Knowledge" is not "free", because it takes time and resources to produce "knowledge". That's what copyright is for -- it exists with the explicit intention of avoiding a prisoners dilemma and furthering the interests of society by granting authors control of their works.