Truth is, average people just disregard the laws, its civil disobediance in its finest
Mob rule and disregard for the law is NOT what civil disobedience is about. Expediently commiting illegal acts for ones own personal benefit is NOT civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is a public refusal to comply with laws that you feel are unjust. Basically, if you illegaly copy MS Office and then turn yourself into the Microsoft piracy hotline, that is civil disobedience.
The truth is that the warez crowd are anything but public. Rather, they are anonymous and secretive.
If developer time were that much of a premium, people wouldn't be programming in C++. Obviously, there are other tradeoffs.
Obviously there are -- but still, developer time and/or developer productivity is important, and good development tools are worth quite a bit.
In any case, I don't think Qt is particularly competitive among commercial cross platform toolkits. Many of them are more mature and have better tools support (GUI builders, scripting, etc.).
So what would you suggest for a Linux/Windows app ? Qt is by a long shot the nicest toolkit I've seen on Linux.
The cost of the license is negligeable when you compare it to the cost of developer time. Do the math -- if Qt saves just a little bit of development time, it's worth the money.
The fact that Qt is well documented is in itself a big time saver.
The GPL restricts distribution of a GPL program unless you can provide the entire source of the program down to virtually the OS level, including libraries and everything needed to make the program work, under terms no less restricive than the GPL, with the exception of components that are part of the operating system.
What about Motif ? You certainly couldn't ship the motif source code with a motif app, yet the GNU-zealots were not whining about motif. Also, "part of the operating system" is a loophole that you could drive a truck through.
So, now that everyone is making Windows-type applications or porting them right over, what's to keep Linux from becoming a Windows clone?
Regardless of what applications you choose ( and in linux, you can choose ) to run, the underlying operating system is extremely robust. Linux is not and will never be a windows clone. It is a robust, well designed operating system.
The problem with Windows is certainly not the fault of the applications that run on it. I wouldn't complain if all of those apps ran on Linux. The main problem with Windows is that the core operating system itself is unreliable.
With KDE and GNOME, the desktop is almost as easy as Windows. Will there be a time when there's no distinction?
Well, hopefully, there'll be no difference between Linux and Windows in terms of ease of use. However, there will always be a key difference -- in Linux, you can choose. You can run KDE, or GNOME, or the bloat-whiners like yourself can even run TWM and use Xterms.
Linux could end up just like Windows
No, it couldn't unless someone sabotaged the kernel.
BTW, I could go on and on about how QT/KDE is really better designed than Win32, but that's another topic in itself.
I didn't say that. I merly said that musicians play music. Likewise, composers compose music.
There is not such a clear distinction nowadays between instrumentalists and composers. Usually, the same person composes and performs the music. Often, live performance is nor practical ( for example, the same guy records half the tracks on the album )
Both can make good money if they are good at it.
Yes, thanks to copyrights.
I have no personal ambition to destroy, in my opinion, bad music. I mearly don't listen to it. Rather, it's destroying itself right now. Call it survial of the fittest if you want.
You can't have it both ways. Do you want everything for free, or do you want the artists to be paid ? Or do you just want other people to pay the artists so that you can freeload ?
I do think you realize that the value of something is defined by what other people are prepared to pay for it. What is the value of an mp3 song, you tell me?
You are confusing the value of a copy of a song with the value of the song itself. There is no such thing as an "MP3" song. MP3 is a medium of distribution, the song is just a song. The value of the song is the amount that the public is prepared to pay to get the song written. In other words, how much the public are prepared to hear the song. All that copyright does is enable a distributed payment system. The distributed payment system works quite well for the most part. It discourages freeloading, and each listener pays an equal share.
Perhapes I should state the obvious: I don't see the mp3 revolution as a way of getting things for free.
Well, thanks for stating it. No, it was not obvious. For a lot of people, the "MP3 revolution" really is about getting something for nothing. Hence the "raw communist" reference -- this term describes the forced redistribution of resources that takes place in the early phase of a communist revolution. Communsits don't really like "raw communism" either, rather it's seen as a necessary evil while capitalists would see it as an unnecessary evil.
And that's what scaring the major record companies. No, what's scaring the major record companies is the Rodney-King-rioters that are using this as an opportunity to freeload. I'd be scared too if I the same mob had their hands in my pockets.
You say that legally they DO have to pay, and I agree that's true. I just think that the laws are simply wrong. If I download music from the internet, it's not stealing, it's making a political statement. It's civil disobedience. It's a peaceful form of protest. Don't I have the right to protest?
This "civil disobedience" argument is a crock, and it's a crock because civil disobedience is about public protest, it is not about expediently redistributing resources ( whether they be tangible or other ) in ones own direction. Most of the people who are doing this are not expressing "civil disobedience", they are not public about their actions. They are simply making a quick grab at something that they are arguably not entitled to.
I'm not doing it because it's cheap. I had to have a two thousand dollar computer in order to do it. That's not freeloading.
Yeah it is. The fact that you paid for your computer does not absolve you of your obligation to pay for other things you use. One might as well argue that riding the train without paying is not "freeloading" because you paid for your computer. A better example still would be theft of cable services. You paid for the TV, right ? And it was an expensive TV ?
So, let music be free, and let musicians make money playing music . And that means live. Just about any screw up can be made to sound ok in a studio. But only good musicians can make a good live consert.
Another raw communist who wants something for nothing. Why should all music be played live ? It's not always practical or feasible. For example, I might write some orchestral piece and record it on a decent synthesizer because I simply don't have the resources to hire a whole orchestra. Or I might write some music that uses so much sampling that it really is essentially studio music. I don't see why you desire to effectively destroy such music, and I don't see why producing creative work is not valuable in itself.
And that's a pretty decent living too. Remeber what a consert ticket usually costs? And the number of people at a consert with a good band playing.
SOunds like you're trying really hard to come up with a good reason why you should get something for nothing. Nice try.
Yes, there is overhead in producing and marketing, but that doesn't explain why CDs cost $16 or more while cassettes of the same material only cost around $10. That extra $6 or so is simple price gouging
Hate to burst your bubble, but that doesn't really follow. The problem is that the "cassette sales" may well not be a viable business proposition in a vacuum. However, given the existence of a CD sales operation, where you have already paid the marketting $$, the marginal cost of adding cassettes could be below the marginal revenue obtained from cassette sales.
A CD in the quantities that record companies produce probably costs WELL less than a buck in packaging. The artist I've heard gets around a buck. The rest of $14 goes to distributors, retailers, and marketing folk?
for f*ck's sake, do some research before whining about how CDs "cost too much". These companies are public and detailed financial info is widely available.
Clue 1 -- Markup is compounded exponentially -- one middleman marks up (X) %, the next middleman marks up another (X) %, etc etc. Sales taxes and/or import duties can also add another (Y)% to the price. The result is that the retail price could be much higher than the cost at which distributors attain the CD for.
Clue 2 -- It takes a lot of work to distribute those CDs. The artist just makes the album and then that's it, the job's done. The artist doesn't need to perform their job on a per-CD basis, the record distributors do. Sure, there's a lot of money "going to the rest of those people", because "the rest of those people" vastly outnumber the artist.
In conclusion, you have not shown that anything's overpriced. All you've shown us is that you want something for nothing, which is hardly surprising given the prevailing mentality here.
Amen to that, brother. You could cut the music industry down to a tenth the size it is now, and there'd still be more music available than you could possibly listen to in your lifetime.
Maybe there would be -- but I bet that you'd lose all except the most "economically viable" musicians.
[ snip ] To sum it up, I agree that the patent system has obvious problems. The main objection to it is that they too often act as a force to suppress creativity, because they are too broad. Copyrights are sufficiently narrow that they really only protect the authors own work. Copyrights are narrow enough that you don't have to require the work to be original or creative. I could write an attrocious romance novel, and it wouldn't hurt anyone else if I copyrighted it.
However, it does not follow that our only means of accomplishing that end is for hard-workers to be granted residual property rights in the fruits of their labour.
Correct. However, this appears to be the best way to do it with creative works.
People can be rewarded for hard work by being paid for their time,
The problem with applying this model to creative works is twofold -- (a) a distributed payment system is needed, as no single buyer can afford to pay for the creative work, and (b) The creative work is produced before it reaches the market place, so the author cannot collect payment until after the work has been done.
by sharing profits
Yes, and how are the profits made in the first place ? How does one generate profits from the production creative work ?
by giving awards for productivity
How do we measure productivity without a market place for creative work ?
If what you say were true, auto workers would get royalties from the sale of cars, and would have some authority over their resale and subsequent use.
Well, they do !!! Yes, most automobile stocks are steady, low P/E dividend stocks. So if the employees get stock options, then they are indeed getting royalties on each car that is sold ! Not only is it a good idea, but it's an idea that is put into practice. However, the working class want a secure baseline, so what tends to happen is that there is a greater emphasis on a stable compensation package. OTOH, the execs get quite a lot of stock and dividend money.
Just because I work a little harder or I'm born with a higher IQ than you doesn't entitle me to greater *property rights*.
Copyright is more about rewarding the production of creative works than it is about "property rights". Certainly, everyone has the right to be rewarded for their work. And typically, those who are more productive are more heavily rewarded.
I don't think that rewarding talent is a)necessary or b)fair. Those with talent will always stand out, almost by definition. Rewarding them is unecessary.
It is not talent that is rewarded, it's productivity. There's obviously a positive correlation between the two. You might argue that...
Just because I work a little harder or I'm born with a higher IQ than you doesn't entitle me to greater property rights.
To which I'd counter -- if you don't reward hard work and productivity, there is simply no incentive for anyone to work hard. This is largely why communism isn't very practical. Social democracies like Sweden, Canada and Australia come closer to fulfilling Marx's vision than most communist countries. BTW, another way of looking at this is that someone who is more productive isn't obliged to subsidize those who are less productive.
Obviously, noone, not even the Americans, want to carry out "meritocracy" or capitalism to it's extreme.
I like the Japanese approach
I don't think you know very much about Japan. Big bad corporations, lots of IP and lots of patent gymnastics.
The "cracked" version might still be supported by any group of people who could sustain a business by charging for support.
Doubt it. The warez crowd are hardly the types to give any kind of organised support. Even the genuine free software types don't have a terribly convincing track record as far as formal support is concerned.
Secondly, the reseller of binary-only GNU (for instance) software might not be as knowledgable as the original author. How many programmers out there have written programs that others would have a hard time understanding? Quite a few, certainly.
Varies -- depends on how good the programmer is and how good the toolkits are. I've seen some very clean code and some code that is totally incomprehensible. There's certainly a lot of code that one could "steal".
But I also think that people would very quickly learn NOT to buy binary-only products and download software or purchase it at marginal cost
I disagree. Ordinary end users do not even know what "open source" is let alone why it's a good thing. They're more interested in quality support.
If, for instance, I decide to contribute to a Free Software project, I do so knowing full well that someone may profit from my work although I do not.
This is not the philosophy behind the GPL. If you really want your software to be free, use the artistic or BSD license.
People don't stop playing the guitar just because someone steals a riff from them.
Stealing a riff is somewhat different to outright unauthorised copying of software, because the person who steals the riff can still re-interpret it. Ditto with playing covers. Actually, I have no problem with stealing riffs, or performing covers ( provided the artist playing the cover doesn't try to pass the work of as their own )
I'm curious about what's in ports and packages. Do they have a list somewhere ? Last I checked, it wasn't very impressive compared to the other BSDs ( they didn't even have KDE ), but that was a while ago, at version 2.5.
Umm, you are aware of the general feeling for how to make money on GPLed software right? As a service. You pay for support, not the right to use the bits. And what is this warez you are talking about? In the absence of copyright there would be no such thing.
When I say the "warez" version, I am referring to an unauthorised copy of a copy-protected work. By unauthorised, I mean unregistered. My point is that even if you did manage to reverse engineer the software in question, the "cracked" version would be unsupported and hence less popular.
You could certainly have companies profiteering off binary-only derivatives of GPL'd works, so the GPL is certainly necessary to protect "free speech".
but because there is not copyright, you could reverse engineer it, remove the piracy cruft and release the good source.
This is not a trivial task. The seller could still make quite a lot of money. Who'd support the sleazy warez version ? A bunch of teeny warez punks ? Do you think that the big corps would go for the real thing or the cheap warez version ? And do you think the home users would use what they use at work, or would they go poking around for the warez version ?
Without copyrights, it would be possible to profiteer from binary-only derivatives of GPL'd work. The question is not "if", it's only "how much".
If copyright is done away with, then the GPL is no longer necessary, because the only viable software model with then be free software. Something to think about.
While you might like the idea of dispossesing software authors of the fruits of their labour, your claim is bogus. Without copyright, authors could use draconian methods to restrict access to software. This would put you in a position where a lot of people would just pay up because the security measures, while maybe imperfect would be at least difficult to circumvent. Hell, they could even profit off binary derivatives of GPL'd works.
BTW, it's not true that the only viable software model would require "freedom as in speech", you would at best get "freedom as in beer". I know that the freeloading scumbags really only care about the latter, but the GPL is about the former.
They might not get the source, but neither would you make any profit from the binaries.
sure you could. You could just sell activation keys. you might not make as much, but you could still make some. BTW, I thought the GPL was about "free as in speech", not "free as in beer". You have only established that without copyrgihts you'd always be able to get free beer, which is less than what the GPL and its philosophy demands.
The $3 figure I pulled outta my ass, but I think you could make a living selling CDs for five. A buck to make, a buck to ship, a buck to promote and 2 for the artist.
Nice idea, but your cost analysis is certainly less than rigorous. BTW, "a buck to ship" is not feasible, even if you're direct-selling by mail order. And if you're not, distribution costs more still.
By their own admission the RIAA has deduced that the marketing is the most valuable part of a CD.
Well, you could always start up your own "plain-label label" that doesn't do any advertising. In fact such things already exist, though they usually release classics as opposed to the works of signed artists.
You could still breach your contract and sue. They'd have to countersue for breach of contract. My bet is that they'd end up getting the worst of it, and would prbably just try to settle it.
Re:Napster vs. The GPL
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Napster Wars
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...and would be unnecessary, as the very freedoms it seeks to protect would be inherent.
No, they wouldn't. One could still release binary-only derivatives with technical measures to protect against using the software for free. There would be no gaurantee that you could see the source.
It's easier to make a dollar per product when the cost $15 per rather than $3 per. Keep the cost high and your can do the same with your margins.
Yep, provide more services and get more back, that's definitely a good business model. Of course, there's nothing stopping a record company from providing lower services and lowering the CD price, other than the fact that it's not a terribly smart business strategy.
BTW, the record companies do NOT get $15- revenue per CD -- did it occur to you that retail market, and depending on the country, import/export taxes and middleman fees kick the price up a few notches ? Most probably, the retail outlets will get the CD for about $8- or so.
You'd buy the raw materials (blank CD-Rs, jewel cases, glossy paper for the liner notes, etc) in bulk. Once everything was scanned in and set up properly, I'd be able to duplicate a copy, that the average joe couldn't easily tell from an original, every fifteen minutes at a cost of a $1 per. Bump my equipment budget up to $10K and I could do about 20/hour still at a cost of $1 per.
Your budget does not even include a salary for yourself. At this point I rest my case. Your cost assesment is completely naive and misses my point altogether -- the printing/pressing costs don't even come close to the total costs of distribution.
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Mob rule and disregard for the law is NOT what civil disobedience is about. Expediently commiting illegal acts for ones own personal benefit is NOT civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is a public refusal to comply with laws that you feel are unjust. Basically, if you illegaly copy MS Office and then turn yourself into the Microsoft piracy hotline, that is civil disobedience.
The truth is that the warez crowd are anything but public. Rather, they are anonymous and secretive.
Obviously there are -- but still, developer time and/or developer productivity is important, and good development tools are worth quite a bit.
In any case, I don't think Qt is particularly competitive among commercial cross platform toolkits. Many of them are more mature and have better tools support (GUI builders, scripting, etc.).
So what would you suggest for a Linux/Windows app ? Qt is by a long shot the nicest toolkit I've seen on Linux.
The fact that Qt is well documented is in itself a big time saver.
What about Motif ? You certainly couldn't ship the motif source code with a motif app, yet the GNU-zealots were not whining about motif. Also, "part of the operating system" is a loophole that you could drive a truck through.
Regardless of what applications you choose ( and in linux, you can choose ) to run, the underlying operating system is extremely robust. Linux is not and will never be a windows clone. It is a robust, well designed operating system.
The problem with Windows is certainly not the fault of the applications that run on it. I wouldn't complain if all of those apps ran on Linux. The main problem with Windows is that the core operating system itself is unreliable.
With KDE and GNOME, the desktop is almost as easy as Windows. Will there be a time when there's no distinction?
Well, hopefully, there'll be no difference between Linux and Windows in terms of ease of use. However, there will always be a key difference -- in Linux, you can choose. You can run KDE, or GNOME, or the bloat-whiners like yourself can even run TWM and use Xterms.
Linux could end up just like Windows
No, it couldn't unless someone sabotaged the kernel.
BTW, I could go on and on about how QT/KDE is really better designed than Win32, but that's another topic in itself.
There is not such a clear distinction nowadays between instrumentalists and composers. Usually, the same person composes and performs the music. Often, live performance is nor practical ( for example, the same guy records half the tracks on the album )
Both can make good money if they are good at it.
Yes, thanks to copyrights.
I have no personal ambition to destroy, in my opinion, bad music. I mearly don't listen to it. Rather, it's destroying itself right now. Call it survial of the fittest if you want.
You can't have it both ways. Do you want everything for free, or do you want the artists to be paid ? Or do you just want other people to pay the artists so that you can freeload ?
I do think you realize that the value of something is defined by what other people are prepared to pay for it. What is the value of an mp3 song, you tell me?
You are confusing the value of a copy of a song with the value of the song itself. There is no such thing as an "MP3" song. MP3 is a medium of distribution, the song is just a song. The value of the song is the amount that the public is prepared to pay to get the song written. In other words, how much the public are prepared to hear the song. All that copyright does is enable a distributed payment system. The distributed payment system works quite well for the most part. It discourages freeloading, and each listener pays an equal share.
Perhapes I should state the obvious: I don't see the mp3 revolution as a way of getting things for free.
Well, thanks for stating it. No, it was not obvious. For a lot of people, the "MP3 revolution" really is about getting something for nothing. Hence the "raw communist" reference -- this term describes the forced redistribution of resources that takes place in the early phase of a communist revolution. Communsits don't really like "raw communism" either, rather it's seen as a necessary evil while capitalists would see it as an unnecessary evil.
And that's what scaring the major record companies. No, what's scaring the major record companies is the Rodney-King-rioters that are using this as an opportunity to freeload. I'd be scared too if I the same mob had their hands in my pockets.
This "civil disobedience" argument is a crock, and it's a crock because civil disobedience is about public protest, it is not about expediently redistributing resources ( whether they be tangible or other ) in ones own direction. Most of the people who are doing this are not expressing "civil disobedience", they are not public about their actions. They are simply making a quick grab at something that they are arguably not entitled to.
Yeah it is. The fact that you paid for your computer does not absolve you of your obligation to pay for other things you use. One might as well argue that riding the train without paying is not "freeloading" because you paid for your computer. A better example still would be theft of cable services. You paid for the TV, right ? And it was an expensive TV ?
Another raw communist who wants something for nothing. Why should all music be played live ? It's not always practical or feasible. For example, I might write some orchestral piece and record it on a decent synthesizer because I simply don't have the resources to hire a whole orchestra. Or I might write some music that uses so much sampling that it really is essentially studio music. I don't see why you desire to effectively destroy such music, and I don't see why producing creative work is not valuable in itself.
And that's a pretty decent living too. Remeber what a consert ticket usually costs? And the number of people at a consert with a good band playing.
SOunds like you're trying really hard to come up with a good reason why you should get something for nothing. Nice try.
Hate to burst your bubble, but that doesn't really follow. The problem is that the "cassette sales" may well not be a viable business proposition in a vacuum. However, given the existence of a CD sales operation, where you have already paid the marketting $$, the marginal cost of adding cassettes could be below the marginal revenue obtained from cassette sales.
A CD in the quantities that record companies produce probably costs WELL less than a buck in packaging. The artist I've heard gets around a buck. The rest of $14 goes to distributors, retailers, and marketing folk?
for f*ck's sake, do some research before whining about how CDs "cost too much". These companies are public and detailed financial info is widely available.
Clue 1 -- Markup is compounded exponentially -- one middleman marks up (X) %, the next middleman marks up another (X) %, etc etc. Sales taxes and/or import duties can also add another (Y)% to the price. The result is that the retail price could be much higher than the cost at which distributors attain the CD for.
Clue 2 -- It takes a lot of work to distribute those CDs. The artist just makes the album and then that's it, the job's done. The artist doesn't need to perform their job on a per-CD basis, the record distributors do. Sure, there's a lot of money "going to the rest of those people", because "the rest of those people" vastly outnumber the artist.
In conclusion, you have not shown that anything's overpriced. All you've shown us is that you want something for nothing, which is hardly surprising given the prevailing mentality here.
Maybe there would be -- but I bet that you'd lose all except the most "economically viable" musicians.
To sum it up, I agree that the patent system has obvious problems. The main objection to it is that they too often act as a force to suppress creativity, because they are too broad. Copyrights are sufficiently narrow that they really only protect the authors own work. Copyrights are narrow enough that you don't have to require the work to be original or creative. I could write an attrocious romance novel, and it wouldn't hurt anyone else if I copyrighted it.
However, it does not follow that our only means of accomplishing that end is for hard-workers to be granted residual property rights in the fruits of their labour.
Correct. However, this appears to be the best way to do it with creative works.
People can be rewarded for hard work by being paid for their time,
The problem with applying this model to creative works is twofold -- (a) a distributed payment system is needed, as no single buyer can afford to pay for the creative work, and (b) The creative work is produced before it reaches the market place, so the author cannot collect payment until after the work has been done.
by sharing profits
Yes, and how are the profits made in the first place ? How does one generate profits from the production creative work ?
by giving awards for productivity
How do we measure productivity without a market place for creative work ?
If what you say were true, auto workers would get royalties from the sale of cars, and would have some authority over their resale and subsequent use.
Well, they do !!! Yes, most automobile stocks are steady, low P/E dividend stocks. So if the employees get stock options, then they are indeed getting royalties on each car that is sold ! Not only is it a good idea, but it's an idea that is put into practice. However, the working class want a secure baseline, so what tends to happen is that there is a greater emphasis on a stable compensation package. OTOH, the execs get quite a lot of stock and dividend money.
Just because I work a little harder or I'm born with a higher IQ than you doesn't entitle me to greater *property rights*.
Copyright is more about rewarding the production of creative works than it is about "property rights". Certainly, everyone has the right to be rewarded for their work. And typically, those who are more productive are more heavily rewarded.
It is not talent that is rewarded, it's productivity. There's obviously a positive correlation between the two. You might argue that ...
Just because I work a little harder or I'm born with a higher IQ than you doesn't entitle me to greater property rights.
To which I'd counter -- if you don't reward hard work and productivity, there is simply no incentive for anyone to work hard. This is largely why communism isn't very practical. Social democracies like Sweden, Canada and Australia come closer to fulfilling Marx's vision than most communist countries. BTW, another way of looking at this is that someone who is more productive isn't obliged to subsidize those who are less productive.
Obviously, noone, not even the Americans, want to carry out "meritocracy" or capitalism to it's extreme.
I like the Japanese approach
I don't think you know very much about Japan. Big bad corporations, lots of IP and lots of patent gymnastics.
Doubt it. The warez crowd are hardly the types to give any kind of organised support. Even the genuine free software types don't have a terribly convincing track record as far as formal support is concerned.
Secondly, the reseller of binary-only GNU (for instance) software might not be as knowledgable as the original author. How many programmers out there have written programs that others would have a hard time understanding? Quite a few, certainly.
Varies -- depends on how good the programmer is and how good the toolkits are. I've seen some very clean code and some code that is totally incomprehensible. There's certainly a lot of code that one could "steal".
But I also think that people would very quickly learn NOT to buy binary-only products and download software or purchase it at marginal cost
I disagree. Ordinary end users do not even know what "open source" is let alone why it's a good thing. They're more interested in quality support.
If, for instance, I decide to contribute to a Free Software project, I do so knowing full well that someone may profit from my work although I do not.
This is not the philosophy behind the GPL. If you really want your software to be free, use the artistic or BSD license.
People don't stop playing the guitar just because someone steals a riff from them.
Stealing a riff is somewhat different to outright unauthorised copying of software, because the person who steals the riff can still re-interpret it. Ditto with playing covers. Actually, I have no problem with stealing riffs, or performing covers ( provided the artist playing the cover doesn't try to pass the work of as their own )
When I say the "warez" version, I am referring to an unauthorised copy of a copy-protected work. By unauthorised, I mean unregistered. My point is that even if you did manage to reverse engineer the software in question, the "cracked" version would be unsupported and hence less popular.
You could certainly have companies profiteering off binary-only derivatives of GPL'd works, so the GPL is certainly necessary to protect "free speech".
This is not a trivial task. The seller could still make quite a lot of money. Who'd support the sleazy warez version ? A bunch of teeny warez punks ? Do you think that the big corps would go for the real thing or the cheap warez version ? And do you think the home users would use what they use at work, or would they go poking around for the warez version ?
Without copyrights, it would be possible to profiteer from binary-only derivatives of GPL'd work. The question is not "if", it's only "how much".
While you might like the idea of dispossesing software authors of the fruits of their labour, your claim is bogus. Without copyright, authors could use draconian methods to restrict access to software. This would put you in a position where a lot of people would just pay up because the security measures, while maybe imperfect would be at least difficult to circumvent. Hell, they could even profit off binary derivatives of GPL'd works.
BTW, it's not true that the only viable software model would require "freedom as in speech", you would at best get "freedom as in beer". I know that the freeloading scumbags really only care about the latter, but the GPL is about the former.
sure you could. You could just sell activation keys. you might not make as much, but you could still make some. BTW, I thought the GPL was about "free as in speech", not "free as in beer". You have only established that without copyrgihts you'd always be able to get free beer, which is less than what the GPL and its philosophy demands.
Nice idea, but your cost analysis is certainly less than rigorous. BTW, "a buck to ship" is not feasible, even if you're direct-selling by mail order. And if you're not, distribution costs more still.
By their own admission the RIAA has deduced that the marketing is the most valuable part of a CD.
Well, you could always start up your own "plain-label label" that doesn't do any advertising. In fact such things already exist, though they usually release classics as opposed to the works of signed artists.
You could still breach your contract and sue. They'd have to countersue for breach of contract. My bet is that they'd end up getting the worst of it, and would prbably just try to settle it.
No, they wouldn't. One could still release binary-only derivatives with technical measures to protect against using the software for free. There would be no gaurantee that you could see the source.
If you find the terms of the license "morally incorrect", the only morally defensible thing to do IMO is simply refuse to use the artists work.
Yep, provide more services and get more back, that's definitely a good business model. Of course, there's nothing stopping a record company from providing lower services and lowering the CD price, other than the fact that it's not a terribly smart business strategy.
BTW, the record companies do NOT get $15- revenue per CD -- did it occur to you that retail market, and depending on the country, import/export taxes and middleman fees kick the price up a few notches ? Most probably, the retail outlets will get the CD for about $8- or so.
Your budget does not even include a salary for yourself. At this point I rest my case. Your cost assesment is completely naive and misses my point altogether -- the printing /pressing costs don't even come close to the total costs of distribution.