I see your point. I'd also like to see bands use an internet-based mail-order system to bypass record companies. I'm not really in favour of bands signing away copyrights to record companies either, IMO, it goes against the spirit of what copyrights were intended for.
Taxes rape the hell out of you when you go from minimum to a 'real' salary.
If you're in the US, that's not really true. $6- per hour is about 12K if you're full time, and the tax would be next to nothing ( less than 1K). The marginal tax rate at 12K is still low , and probably doesn't jump much by 30K. You should be taking home about double the money you earned at MacDs.
Producing CDs costs them pennies yet the CD prices have stayed at $14-18 for the past few years.
This is, simply put, a load of cr*p. A record companies operating costs greatly exceed the cost of printing the CDs. The record companies are public, so you can go check on them, and if you actually have some facts, post them. It's funny how unable / unwilling the freeloaders and their sympathisers are to come up with any hard data on the operating costs of the record industry when the pertinent information is publically available. Instead, there are a lot of whining noises about music being "too expensive". In the absence of any evidence to substantiate the argument, I guess this is a confession that you guys are cheap freeloaders.
Good for them if they can make money via the internet. But let them decide whether or not they want to take that route.
And secondly, check out Schneier and Kelsey's Street Performer Protocol. This thing might actually work (although I still haven't heard of anyone using it yet).
I wonder why no-one's using it ? The problem is that no one wants to buy vapourware, and noone wants to pay in advance. so a distributed payment system that says "pay first" is not going to work. Another problem is that most bands simply will not be able to get enough support for this model to work.
I don't think this model is a complete waste though. Alternative radio stations already employ a similar model ( they are funded by subscriptions ) and they have some degree of success. But a radio station has the advantage that it can address a much larger audience than a band, and also, it gets free airtime to plug itself.
No one will enter a field where they don't have a chance of making a good living? What about fast food workers? What about ditch diggers? What about sewer workers? All of these are low paying bad jobs yet they never lack for people to enter them.
The people who are in these jobs do them because they can't get anything better. I'd hate to see a world where (a) musicians commanded as little respect as a sewer worker, and (b) where the only people who became musicians were those who were otherwise unemployable.
Classical composers used to write variations on each others work all the time. It was considered a very valuable learning tool. Beethoven and Dvorak both stole the "Ode to Joy" melody note-for-note from the public domain. Yet if I were to quote a Beatles refrain in a pop song of my own, I would face a lawsuit.
AFAIK, stealing a riff or a few chords is unlikely to put you in court. BTW, IMO, there's a difference between performing another artists work and simply copying it. IMO, the former should be allowed if you don't claim it as your own work -- because re-interpreting is defensible as a creative act. So is plagiarising a riff. However, electronic copying certainly is not.
BTW, scatterbrain wrote a whole song consisting of plagiarised riffs. Frank Zappa also stole other people's riffs ( largely for satirical purposes )
It's also possible they may experience greater profit from the increased knowledge of the author's work
Sure, this kind of drivel is something that the freeloaders and their sympathisers spout constantly. However, while a limited amount of freeloading may not be that harmful, the consequences of removing copyright law altogether ( effectively encouraging freeloading ) is a different kettle of fish altogether.
Your jumbling different ideas here. Copyright is "awarded at conception", but one doesn't copyright an "idea" or a "thought", one patents it. Your comment is irrelevant to the preceding debate.
THat's a logical argument, but not a very compelling one. You'd be hard pressed to find many people who've written more than say 1000 lines of python and *still* have a major problem with its syntax.
I think we too quickly dismiss looking into Perl alternatives because people seem to feel that Perl is "good enough."
Huh ? I do look into and even use perl alternatives as indicated in my post. For example, python because IMO it has better OO. However, I don't use an alternative unless it does something better than the tools that I'm already using. I haven't really seen the pike boosters make a compelling case for pike. OTOH, the perl and python crowds certainly make good cases for those languages.
Just thoughtlessly claiming that Perl is the best language there is or ever will be is totally counterproductive
He didn't claim "perl was the best". But one certainly wonders why move to pike when there's perl and python. What can one do in pike that one can't do in perl or python ?
Or, it could be that people who find the indentation policy objectionable won't stay around long enough to write at least 50 lines of Python.
IOW, they were too inflexible and narrow minded to give it a fair go.
In other words, I've become very accustomed to the idea that whitespace belongs to the programmer and not the programming language.
In other words, you've got this preconceived notion that there's "one true way" ( ie braces ) to do syntax. Well that's not really true. Python's syntax might not be the worlds best, but it's certainly not bad enough to justify running away and screaming in horror ! I find it amazing that people who are willing to put up with the syntax used in languages like C and perl are so frightened of python.
Why should he even bother investigating unless someone can explain what it has that other languages don't ?
Python offers alot of OO features but has a limitation I can't deal with:
Looks like you haven't tried very hard.
it considers indentation as syntax. Pike might make a better language for OO scripting than Python given its syntax.
If it really doesn't have anything over python except a different style of syntax, I don't think I'll even bother. "Like Python but with different syntax" doesn't cut it, especially when pythons syntax works just fine for those that actually use it.
So anything you would consider playing under Windows on your TNT is probably playable on Linux now at similar performance levels. And since Loki distribute demos, you can try before you buy.
Well that's assuming you can set the stupid drivers up properly in the first place ! I'm just about tearing my hair out trying to get Quake II to work. And there's SFA documentation out there.
Secondly, once gaming under linux becomes a sizable market, companies will do their own port, like what they are doing for mac and consoles.
Yeah, but will they ? If the developers from Loki can do the port cheaper, faster, and more effectively, then why would they want to do it internally ? I mean, if company (X)'s developers have never used Linux before, then would it be cheaper for them to port say a Direct3D game, or would they hire the experts ? And Loki are certainly making a name for themselves as experts when it comes to porting games.
Anyone know how many boxes Loki games have been selling ? I certainly hope they do well. Hell, I might just buy one to show my support ( probably a strategy game since my TNT doesn't seem that well supported )
There appears to be no relevant difference between authorship and other public goods. You have certainly had opportunity to point one out, but have failed.
I have pointed it out. The difference is that in the case of authorship, the standard that should be met is that it should be almost impossible to independently produce the same work.
Applying copyright-like treatment to other public goods shows its absurdity as a right applying to all public goods
Yes, because with other public goods, it's more difficult for anyone to legitimately claim any sort of ownership or right to control -- because it's possible, and often probable, that two parties could independently produce the same public good. Take for example, an algorithm -- it's highly probable that two people could independently come up with the same algorithm, so giving one of those parties a monopoly would clearly be arbitrary and unfair. This is my main objection to applying copyright-like treatment to other public goods.
If there is some reason people should be believed to have a right to monopoly over the benefits of their public good, you have not listed it.
I believe that someone who produces a creative work has more right to profit from it than someone who didn't produce that work. It boils down to the basic idea that there should be a marketplace for intangible assets, whether or not those intangible assets are what you would call "public goods".
Explain the criteria for deciding whether a public good should be compensated by government through forced taxation and direct payment.
I guess I could concede that ultimately, the criterion for deciding any law is whether society will benefit. The specific legislative choices one makes boil down to what you believe is good for society. The reason that we have "rights" in the first place is to create the foundation for a civilised society.
I do not believe that "direct payment" constitutes "compensation by the government", it is merely a legislative device which recognises ownership of the right to payment for a the copying of a creative work, ie it is an extension of the notion of property.
As for your question of deciding whether the benefits should be monopolized by the author, I would suggest that the only case they should be is in the case where the thing in question is really "the authors"; that which is now covered by copyright. You cannot "own" an idea in any reasonable sense of the word "own", because it is plausible and indeed likely that someone else could independently have the same idea. However, copyrighted works do not have this problem -- you are not going to independently produce a precise duplicate of a Metallica recording without copying it.
I think it's probably better to use the PDF encryption functionality, though the PGP option is also intrigueing. I agree with your other point -- you ultimately have to assume that your paying customers are reasonably honest.
HTML is attrocious for printing, and you really don't get much control over the formatting. PDF like HTML results in fairly lean files. I do not see any tangible advantage of using HTML.
You can publish PDF using TeX. The advantage of PDF is that everyone has a PDF viewer ( in fact most users use the same PDF viewer ) and all PDF viewers seem to support hypertext. DVI is fine if you're just distributing to UNIX geeks, but I don't think that was his intention.
So here's my question -- do 3d games work reasonably well now ( with my TNT card ) ? I'd love to see some more benchmarks with the different video cards at different resolutions. I just got HG2 for Windows, largely because I have no idea if I'd be paying more for much lower performance if I got it for Linux.
I have little doubt that XF4.0 is going to make games somewhat snappier, but I'd like to see how much.
first, I'd suggest using PDF format if you want it to be readable on any platform.
As for "cutting out the middleman", by all means go for it -- but here's a question -- why not release through a publisher *AND* online ? Of course, you'll need to insist that the publisher allow you to distribute it online.
As for copy protection, I don't know. You could use some kind of encrypt/decrypt thing, or you could just send it by email if the file isn't too big. There comes a point though when you simply have to be prepared to assume that your customers are reasonably honest.
t's not *used* for radio stations. Radio stations are based on advertisements, who pay based on ratings.
Have you heard of "member supported" radio stations ? These radio stations basically get their income by panhandling for donations from subscribers, who are usually the listeners. Such radio stations typically offer a more diverse selection of music, and do a better job at catering to niche markets.
The point is that your previous justification of copyright applies also to the discovery. In order for you to be consistent, you must support the ability of the scientist to prevent other people to use his discovery for their own benefit.
No, I don't "have to" support this. The problem with this is that the protections the scientist would enjoy are considerably more far reaching, and indeed could serve as an obstruction to scientists working independently. So in this case, the "protections" given to the scientist could infringe on the rights of other scientists.
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The artist cannot control how their music is distributed, but at least they can control the way honest and decent people distribute their music.
If you're in the US, that's not really true. $6- per hour is about 12K if you're full time, and the tax would be next to nothing ( less than 1K). The marginal tax rate at 12K is still low , and probably doesn't jump much by 30K. You should be taking home about double the money you earned at MacDs.
This is, simply put, a load of cr*p. A record companies operating costs greatly exceed the cost of printing the CDs. The record companies are public, so you can go check on them, and if you actually have some facts, post them. It's funny how unable / unwilling the freeloaders and their sympathisers are to come up with any hard data on the operating costs of the record industry when the pertinent information is publically available. Instead, there are a lot of whining noises about music being "too expensive". In the absence of any evidence to substantiate the argument, I guess this is a confession that you guys are cheap freeloaders.
Good for them if they can make money via the internet. But let them decide whether or not they want to take that route.
I wonder why no-one's using it ? The problem is that no one wants to buy vapourware, and noone wants to pay in advance. so a distributed payment system that says "pay first" is not going to work. Another problem is that most bands simply will not be able to get enough support for this model to work.
I don't think this model is a complete waste though. Alternative radio stations already employ a similar model ( they are funded by subscriptions ) and they have some degree of success. But a radio station has the advantage that it can address a much larger audience than a band, and also, it gets free airtime to plug itself.
The people who are in these jobs do them because they can't get anything better. I'd hate to see a world where (a) musicians commanded as little respect as a sewer worker, and (b) where the only people who became musicians were those who were otherwise unemployable.
AFAIK, stealing a riff or a few chords is unlikely to put you in court. BTW, IMO, there's a difference between performing another artists work and simply copying it. IMO, the former should be allowed if you don't claim it as your own work -- because re-interpreting is defensible as a creative act. So is plagiarising a riff. However, electronic copying certainly is not.
BTW, scatterbrain wrote a whole song consisting of plagiarised riffs. Frank Zappa also stole other people's riffs ( largely for satirical purposes )
Sure, this kind of drivel is something that the freeloaders and their sympathisers spout constantly. However, while a limited amount of freeloading may not be that harmful, the consequences of removing copyright law altogether ( effectively encouraging freeloading ) is a different kettle of fish altogether.
Huh ? I do look into and even use perl alternatives as indicated in my post. For example, python because IMO it has better OO. However, I don't use an alternative unless it does something better than the tools that I'm already using. I haven't really seen the pike boosters make a compelling case for pike. OTOH, the perl and python crowds certainly make good cases for those languages.
He didn't claim "perl was the best". But one certainly wonders why move to pike when there's perl and python. What can one do in pike that one can't do in perl or python ?
IOW, they were too inflexible and narrow minded to give it a fair go.
In other words, I've become very accustomed to the idea that whitespace belongs to the programmer and not the programming language.
In other words, you've got this preconceived notion that there's "one true way" ( ie braces ) to do syntax. Well that's not really true. Python's syntax might not be the worlds best, but it's certainly not bad enough to justify running away and screaming in horror ! I find it amazing that people who are willing to put up with the syntax used in languages like C and perl are so frightened of python.
Why should he even bother investigating unless someone can explain what it has that other languages don't ?
Python offers alot of OO features but has a limitation I can't deal with:
Looks like you haven't tried very hard.
it considers indentation as syntax. Pike might make a better language for OO scripting than Python given its syntax.
If it really doesn't have anything over python except a different style of syntax, I don't think I'll even bother. "Like Python but with different syntax" doesn't cut it, especially when pythons syntax works just fine for those that actually use it.
Well that's assuming you can set the stupid drivers up properly in the first place ! I'm just about tearing my hair out trying to get Quake II to work. And there's SFA documentation out there.
Yeah, but will they ? If the developers from Loki can do the port cheaper, faster, and more effectively, then why would they want to do it internally ? I mean, if company (X)'s developers have never used Linux before, then would it be cheaper for them to port say a Direct3D game, or would they hire the experts ? And Loki are certainly making a name for themselves as experts when it comes to porting games.
I have pointed it out. The difference is that in the case of authorship, the standard that should be met is that it should be almost impossible to independently produce the same work.
Applying copyright-like treatment to other public goods shows its absurdity as a right applying to all public goods
Yes, because with other public goods, it's more difficult for anyone to legitimately claim any sort of ownership or right to control -- because it's possible, and often probable, that two parties could independently produce the same public good. Take for example, an algorithm -- it's highly probable that two people could independently come up with the same algorithm, so giving one of those parties a monopoly would clearly be arbitrary and unfair. This is my main objection to applying copyright-like treatment to other public goods.
If there is some reason people should be believed to have a right to monopoly over the benefits of their public good, you have not listed it.
I believe that someone who produces a creative work has more right to profit from it than someone who didn't produce that work. It boils down to the basic idea that there should be a marketplace for intangible assets, whether or not those intangible assets are what you would call "public goods".
Explain the criteria for deciding whether a public good should be compensated by government through forced taxation and direct payment.
I guess I could concede that ultimately, the criterion for deciding any law is whether society will benefit. The specific legislative choices one makes boil down to what you believe is good for society. The reason that we have "rights" in the first place is to create the foundation for a civilised society.
I do not believe that "direct payment" constitutes "compensation by the government", it is merely a legislative device which recognises ownership of the right to payment for a the copying of a creative work, ie it is an extension of the notion of property.
As for your question of deciding whether the benefits should be monopolized by the author, I would suggest that the only case they should be is in the case where the thing in question is really "the authors"; that which is now covered by copyright. You cannot "own" an idea in any reasonable sense of the word "own", because it is plausible and indeed likely that someone else could independently have the same idea. However, copyrighted works do not have this problem -- you are not going to independently produce a precise duplicate of a Metallica recording without copying it.
I have little doubt that XF4.0 is going to make games somewhat snappier, but I'd like to see how much.
As for "cutting out the middleman", by all means go for it -- but here's a question -- why not release through a publisher *AND* online ? Of course, you'll need to insist that the publisher allow you to distribute it online.
As for copy protection, I don't know. You could use some kind of encrypt/decrypt thing, or you could just send it by email if the file isn't too big. There comes a point though when you simply have to be prepared to assume that your customers are reasonably honest.
Have you heard of "member supported" radio stations ? These radio stations basically get their income by panhandling for donations from subscribers, who are usually the listeners. Such radio stations typically offer a more diverse selection of music, and do a better job at catering to niche markets.
The point is that your previous justification of copyright applies also to the discovery. In order for you to be consistent, you must support the ability of the scientist to prevent other people to use his discovery for their own benefit.
No, I don't "have to" support this. The problem with this is that the protections the scientist would enjoy are considerably more far reaching, and indeed could serve as an obstruction to scientists working independently. So in this case, the "protections" given to the scientist could infringe on the rights of other scientists.