"People will make all kinds of rationalisation to justify taking other peoples work for free." That's true, but they may in some cases be correct.
My favorite justification for taking other people's work for free is that I also provide work for free to various communities. My second favorite justification is because the authors and artists want me to enjoy use of their work based on the licensing terms they distribute with.
I'm not saying you should give all your work away for free, but if more creative communities could generate work that is free - the argument for stealing crappy, business produced music and movies would be lessened.
There's no reason why entertainers who supply music cannot be paid from general taxation based on the measured popularity of their products.
I also support socialism, but how do you accurately measure "popularity"? Other than that, I would be happy delivering a letter to my congressman to propose this new usage for taxes. If you could draft a letter and donate it to the "community", that would be a big help... because I'm not good at letter writing.
Yes, denying AT&T a monopoly on phones, and not creating an air monopoly means those companies (or potential companies) will be employing fewer people and they'd 'lose' a lucrative source of income.
Emphasis mine.
Splitting up AT&T meant renaming buildings to the 7 or 8 new regional companies. The payroll of the parent organization was cut by like 80%, but the amount of people working in the industry couldn't have changed that greatly from 1983 to 1985.
At the time of its breakup in 1984, AT&T had been in business for 107 years. As the largest company on earth, AT&T employed more than a million people. -- http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/att.htm
By today's comparison, the industry has been reduced to employ ~650,000 people (see AT&T competition profile). The reduced workforce of the industry is possible because many things in the industry are done automatically by computers these days. Thus, I think you are off-base saying that "adding regulation" to an industry reduces jobs. If anything, it creates them.
The point about air actually does make sense. Obviously nobody is employed at "Standard Air Corp", and that's because air isn't (nor can it be) regulated.
But your whole analogy is misguided. Comparing piracy of movies to regulation in the telecommunications and air industries is silly. The initial statement...
"If there was no way for piracy to take place, people would buy more movies." And if you were only allowed to buy telephones from AT&T, more people would pay more for AT&T phones. If you were only allowed to breathe metered air from Standard Air Corp, people would be spending a whole lot more for air.
...you compare things that are different.
One that is necessary for survival and cannot be regulated.
One that is non necessary for survival which can be regulated (phone companies control their physical infrastructure).
One that is non necessary for survival which cannot be regulated (can't control the digital flow of movies, even with DRM).
If you could shift your argument for deregulation away from AT&T (or make different arguments about AT&T), I think you would be able to convince more people. In other words, find a way to argue for deregulation of the entertainment industry without comparing apples to oranges.
Your IT staff are at that level. As with this school district, you need someone with the support of the management and some real drive to push the thing through, and persuade these people that it's worth learning new skills because they create new opportunities. But they have to be pushed and jollied along, because otherwise they will lapse into sloth.
Support of management is not so easy to get. You have to be an incredible champion of the technology that you want to promote *AND* have evidence why it is better. I think what the GP post is asking for is references to data that supports Linux adoption. He says they let him run a Ubuntu network inside his space, but won't let him network it with the rest of the school.
As for your accusations about MSCEs, I think you are jumping to conclussions. Some are probably as you describe, and I support an observation that any "technological certification" is only as good as the most incompetent person who can obtain it. However, people get hired because of these certifications... so your enemy would be the person setting the standards for what is expected of new hires. However, there are exceptions and if you search hard enough you'll eventually find a MSCE who is smart, talented, not willing to blindly follow rote procedure, and admits the Linux is better than Windows.
You seem to misunderstand me. Maybe I was too brief on my points. Maybe I should have elaborated on the parallels of why I think comparing King George to the RIAA/MPAA is appropriate.
I never mentioned anything on quality of life, so I don't know where you drew the conclusions that I thought things would be *worse* without the products of the RIAA/MPAA. Agreed, the world would not be as good a place without music, but music is as natural as the water we drink and the air we breath... it isn't going anywhere.
You may be suggesting the colonies went through monumental changes when they became the states, and improved the quality of life by an order of magnitude or more. I may not be a history buff, though I took the requisite classes within the past decade and have boned up on some of the essencial reading (of the revolutionary times) since then. My view is that the major changes occurred in the governing classes, and that the working classes (at least after the war was finished) continued on in a very similar fashion as before the revolution.
The parallel I was drawing was that the British were no more needed by the colonies than the RIAA/MPAA is needed by us. It doesn't make sense for so few to dictate the way of things for so many. The parallel is fairly clear in the following quote. In Common Sense, Thomas Paine wrote:
Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.
Moreover, regarding your "quality of life" accusations, I'm fairly sure that after the war was done, things returned to business as usual for most of the inhabitants of the new nation. I don't think they made things that much better (or worse) for themselves right away. Sure, the Stamp and Quartering Acts immediately became things of the past, but the *real* reason to declare war wasn't for improvement in the short term. The reason for war was for prosperity (i.e. future generations). Again, quoting Paine's pamphlet:
As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully.
What this basically says is that we know in the present state of affairs that the RIAA/MPAA were always a temporary organization, and that ending their reign now is just. If we allow them to continue thier operations (and force the burden of change onto our children), then we are mean and pitiful.
Maybe I was wrong to say that digital download is the same as the declaration (especially with an emphasis on the *is* like I did last post), but there are some remarkable parallels if you let yourself think about it. Thus, my hope is that you can gain a little perspective.
Signing the Declaration of Independence was an act of treason. Now, downloading digital content isn't as noble as throwing off an oppresive empire in the hopes of starting a country based on freedom, but to assume something is bad because "it's illegal" is shortsighted.
Emphasis mine
Great Britan *or* The RIAA/MPAA?
govern an independent nation *or* enjoy culture?
war *or* piracy?
Downloading digital content *is* every bit as noble as signing the declaration of independence. The trouble is that the oppressive forces are corporations who tax us for something we want, why the Brits were taxing us for no good reason. Also, we'll never see the equivalent of the Boston Massacre from the RIAA/MPAA (unless lawsuits against single-mothers on welfare counts).
Re:This is what I HATE most about FOSS
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Thanks for clearifying what you meant. I'll meet you halfway and say that you didn't phrase what you said originally as well as you meant to, but that I should have thought more before deciding what you were trying to say.
I will say that many people don't understand the business aspects of the GPL license (whereas the business possibilities of BSD are easy to grasp). This misunderstanding could lead to FUD that running a business based on GPL code is impossible. The fact is that it is extremely possible to have a GPL business, but the business needs to add significant value to the community to stand a chance (whereas Microsoft adds negligible value to the proprietary world, except when it comes to being a de facto standard).
It's clear you don't like the RIAA, but your points are not clear. Since you state that you *are* an artist, I think it is particularly interesting to see what you are trying to do to make music, get paid, and enrich the culture of those around you.
Do you play shows on the weekend? Do you have music that I could download? Would you consider posting your work with a Creative Commons license at a site like ccmixter.org? Do you have the resources to make videos to post on YouTube or GoogleVideo and to make announcements on "yourbandname.com"? I would ask about your MySpace... but I think of NewsCorp's Online Community as a cesspool that should be avoided by respectable geeks.
My feelings are that playing shows is the way to go for any artist to earn their keep. Play a show, get a hundred people to come and charge them $5-10, while selling some merch that has your logo, and go home with $200-300. If you are good, the audiences will grow. If not, it was never meant to be.
I've never felt that the RIAA member orgs actually add much to the bands they sign these days, except the troubles of distribution (which the internet can do) and promotion (which is better accomplished through word of mouth).... The only thing I see the RIAA Companies doing is milking artists for the fruits of their labors.
When I onMouseOver the graphic on the Arizona page, it switches a broken image. I hope NASA imagery works a little better than the grad students from ASU.
Re:This is what I HATE most about FOSS
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The GPL on the other hand demands no money for your use of covered code.
I actually don't believe this is true. If you can reference a small section of the GPL that makes any demands on monetary exchanges not taken place, please reference it.
What I believe to be true is that you can distribute GPL'd code for any value between $0 - $10,000,000,000 (with $10 Billion being a practical maximium, since that's what Microsoft and Google seem to be playing for sw advertizing firms these days).
The caveat of GPL distribution is that you must provide a written offer to provide source code and buyer would have a right to publish the source code online and offer it for free. This makes selling software as GPL very hard for a business to pull off successfully, but other than the logistics (which makes perfect sense because GPL explicitly states that no warrenty is provided, so the developers can't be sued) there is nothing to prevent you from selling GPLd software.
In this way, you could fix bugs in the Fedora 7 distribution and name your price, to see if Red Hat can be extorted for the cash.
Re:This is what I HATE most about FOSS
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Grandparent:
Which is more 'free' a society where you can say whatever you like, and then someone in government can exercise their freedom to lock you up for ever. [=public domain] Or a society where you can say whatever you like, and the government is forced to protect your right to do so, even though you are infringing on someones freedom to lock you up forever. [=gpl]
Parent:
To fix your analogy, which is more free? Being able to build on existing works if and only if you agree with the established dogma [=gpl]? Or being able to build on existing works in any way you wish, even to the point of heresy [=public domain]?
This is an endless arguement about asking "which is more free?", because freedom means different things to different people.
Some people exclaim they need the freedom to develop a product which they can turn around to sell so they derive a financial benefit (I call people who would start with code written by others as their base (even BSD) greedy and selfish, but that is my own opinion and many would say I am wrong). Either way, this is "corporate freedom" because it is used to enhance business.
Other people need information to have freedom, so they can use, modify, and share it with others without restriction. This is a pie in the face of "corporate freedom", because it prevents the wholesale ownership of code. This is "individual freedom" because it is used to enhance the individual user of the codebase. Helping to enhance individuals has the added benefit of improving technological culture (and culture in general), because as more is added there is more that others can take away.
As far as business vs individual is concerned... as more GPL software is developed it competes more-and-more with stalwart businesses who historically had technological advantages that gave them huge pricing power so they can run their business. By itself, Windows wasn't treatened by Linux. But with OpenOffice, Firefox, GIMP, Apache, GCC, Eclipse, and others there is a strong threat to MS Office, Internet Explorer, Photoshop (yes, I realize is not MS), IIS, VisualStudio, and others). RMS, bless his soul, understood the threat of proprietary software very early on and using the FSF has fortified a strong camp to protect important freedoms of individuals. Using GPL, the corporate world doesn't have a prayer in the long term unless they add some truly VALUABLE FEATURES to their products that OSS cannot reproduce. This competition is good for everybody, but it is my opinion that this competition will ultimately strike a fatal blow to proprietary software shops and they will need to rethink their ways.
Microsoft understands this. Apple understands this better. Google understands this best. All three use different ways to protect their proprietary code. Microsoft has litigation and patents. Apple has valuable features and integrated hardware. Google has a webplatform that it doesn't distribute and offers strong support for OSS.
As far as business vs individual is concerned... I think a lot of people get pissed off because they feel that they need the "business" aspect to be there so they can earn a living. This is a flawed belief that highlights the fact that many people are too scared to think outside-the-box and imagine a different (better) way of living.
Re:The next "One major danger"...
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One major danger that GPLv5 will block is in-houseation.
The garbage that gets developed in-house can stay locked away. If it is any good, it will spread as employees jump ship and take the ideas of the useful in-house code with them. Eventually, worthy in-house development can go GPL (i.e. Eclipse from IBM), but unworthy code should never be forced into the open.
Similarly, in-house code that is available under a public license can be tough, too. I've worked on adopting Mozilla's Tinderbox project for use in my company and they definiately hardcode way too many "mozilla.org" URLs into that beast (though after taking a couple days/weeks to understand it, it is easier to adopt than writing from scratch).
You are defending corporate freedom over individual freedom. For shame, Tivo shill.
And you confused a point of the GPL. You or Tivo can change any GPL software however the hell you want. You can even sell a product based entirely on a GPL software suite that you didn't even contribute anything too (which is what Tivo does!!!). The restricted freedom is that when you distribute the GPL product, you must include the source code or a written offer to provide the source that is valid for a minimium of three years (according to the latest GPLv3 draft).
This lack of a written offer of source is what burned the FSF when Tivo used Linux as a base system. They wrote a separate program that was served on a layer above the base system, and thus protected the proprietary nature of their product. The caveat of GPLv3 is that this isn't allowed, and it has been my understanding that in addition to MSFTs hardware DRM to degrade HD video signal, Tivo's usage of GPLv2 was a major reason for the changes in the FSFs license model.
That said, BSD *is* more free than GPL to a business, but if you argue that GPL is less free for an end user, you are sorely mistaken.
Robbing is certainly worse than sending sending an unsolicited e-mail. That's a dumb comparision.
But you forgot the other charges which were, "identity theft, money laundering, and mail, wire, and e-mail fraud".
These charges center around the fact that this spammer is a *dishonest* scumbag. If I were to compare somebody who lied to me to somebody who stole something from me, I would say the thief is better than the liar (who is better than the pest [i.e. the innocent spammer who you approve of]).
You can only do so much damage stealing things. Dishonesty, on the other hand, leads down much darker roads.
You get to pack 4x more information on HD/Blu Discs. (I believe) DVD is perfectly capable of playing High Def, but it would only fit about 30-45 minutes of content.
On the other hand, you could fit a standard def version of the entire Matrix Trilogy on a single HD/Blu disc.
I agree with you though... big freaking deal. It isn't worth replacing your movie collection over. I don't even think it is worth upgrading. By the time they stop making DVDs, storage will be so cheap that the medium of choice will be downloadable films... and you'll play them through a direct connection into your TV from your computer or over something like AppleTV.
A better (and significantly more concise) read on the aims of what the revolutionaries were thinking is Thomas Paine's Common Sense. It is about 20 pages, and while half of it relates to religion and King George - the rest is significantly relevant. I like this quip, which relates to security:
Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expence and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
And unlike the Google Book you posted, it is in plain-text... which is easier to deal with.
It would sure as heck seem that Jefferson said that. The internet can't lie, can it? The internet always says what's true, just like the Ministry of Truth.
=P Sorry to both discredit you, and cast a shadow of doubt over my discreditation - but neither of us have heard Franklin or Jefferson orate about freedom, so we have no way of truly knowing who said what. We can only go by what has been attributed to them - and that suggests Jefferson did say what you claim was misrepresented.
complex distributed system of human judgement and adaptibility into a largely mindless and rigid monstrosity.
I offer that a short and simple list of things not to do would work well if it could be perfectly enforced.
Obviously not perfectly enforced or even rationale... but Moses' 10 Commandments are clear, understandable, and to the point. Moreover, people can be indoctinated with simple "rules to live by". Don't bare false witness... oh, it would be a happy day if SCO or MSFT could be stricken down by the high courts, guilty as sin and made to legally and honestly conduct business.
But yeah, "perfectly enforceable" is only possible when all privacy is removed and that'll happen over my dead body. I don't mind running the risk that my neighbor can kill me and get away with it. Having that possibility gives me an incentive to pleasantly say hello in the morning and not be a complete jackass who is "protected by the law". Also, covetting his wife... I don't see why this is wrong if her husband approves. There is no reason to indoctrinate sexual close-mindedness.
If I were to offer simple rules, (a) Don't be greedy, (b) Don't lie. Follow those two, and you'll lead a good life.
The point was that creative works are not created equally, and some require a heck of a lot more time to develop than others. If you had read further, you'd have seen me take the position that authors shouldn't be so rabid about protecting their copyright. I was just making a point that the effort to produce a novel, biography, or other piece of literature tends to be pretty large.
Music and art tend to scale towards the "low end", but there are certainly exceptions. Lord knows the Mona Lisa wasn't painted overnight - but then again - Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Can probably was.
Similarly, books and movies are frequently projects that span close to a year or more - but if you've ever seen the Blair Witch Project, you know that they can be pulled off in way less time.
maybe the right thing would instead be to press for differential terms?
As a creator, I really just want a fair value for my work, and after that I'd be perfectly happy with releasing with a Creative Commons-style license (with my CC-of-choice being Attribution, ShareAlike (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)). The question becomes, what is a "fair" value? That's open to interpretation, but I feel that enough to cover my costs of living for a year would be perfectly acceptable... which is ballpark $50-75k.
What complicates matters is that there are a significant amount of writer's whose work is controlled by the publishing industry. Similarly to the RIAA member company's, the purpose of publishers is to make money and squeeze every dime of profit from the works they own which are successful. Thus, you end up paying $25 for a hard cover and $8 for a trade paperback - when the "production costs" are closer to $10 and $3, respectively (numbers based on limitted research that I did into self-publishing - I do not work for a publisher, so these numbers shouldn't be trusted and used to reference a fact). Also, you end up with a company who isn't satisfied with getting a "fair" share. Basically, the publishing company has to protect what it owns, and it does with ever extending copyrights.
Instead of "pressing for different terms", we can press to enable musicians, artists, authors, filmmakers, photographers, and everybody else that adds to the collective "culture" to make a living for themselves without succombing to the powers of mass industry who aim to simply take ownership and profit. Musicians can earn a living from booking concerts and selling CDs at them, and they can advertize on NetRadio, MySpace, YouTube, and by releasing albums through BitTorrent. Artists can sell there work in cute little shops and display there work in galleries (not easy, but doable).
When the original producers of creative work have full ownership of their work, I think there will be much less greed than for the companies that end up buying control.
musicians (classical and pop), painters, photographers, etc there is way less of this mentality of locking everything down and severely punishing anyone who steps out of line.
Have you ever written a versed poem or strummed out a couple of chords of a guitar? Can you combine these two things and find somebody to tie it together with a couple of beats from the percussion? Congrats... you are a musician, and you've got a song.
Have you ever made a picture? Watercolor, oils and canvas, or maybe a collage on a brick wall in some coffee shop? Congrats... you are a painter, and you've got a picture.
How about travelling to somewhere amazing with a nice camera and *click*, you've got a photograph.
I don't mean to discredit the work of musicians, artists, or photographers... but compared to composing a compelling story across several hundred pages of text - their job is a walk in the park.
I think, to answer your question, authors claim copyright because it is damned hard to crank out a good book. It takes time, innovation, and a heck of a lot of logical progression of ideas.
As an attempted author, I've found one hour per page to be a pace that can be maintained while writing. I've found one hour per five pages to be a pace for an initial revision. By the time the story is basically set, it still needs a bunch of eyes to catch the rest of the minor errors. Thus, with a 300 page novel, it costs 300 hours + 60 hours of revison = 360 hours (9 weeks, at 40 hours per week) of straight work... and you still have to get 3 or 4 friends to read and make comments and find places where the text isn't easy to understand. Of course, this assumes that there aren't major rewrites or writer's blocks.
I recall reading that when Stephen King began writing, one book a year was a "norm". He was able to work fast, and was capable of easily churning out two books a year. That is, the best full time writer can reasonably publish a book every 25 weeks.
Now, I am not out to defend copyrights. I just wanted to answer the question of why authors would be so rabid about defending them.
On the contrary, I work as an engineer and I am writing a novel "as a hobby". I have animosity towards the publishing industry for taking away "author's rights" in exchange for "publisher's rights"... and since I have a "day-job" I am not in the position where I need to "sell" my work to a publisher to put food on the table.
However, I am hesitant to release under a Creative Commons-like license and let the community decide the worth of my novel with no ability to make a financial gain from what I've done. In fact, I would love to quit the day job and try my hand at writing full-time.... and that won't happen unless I earn something from my work.
I guess my point is that I am somebody who warmly embraces Openness, but as an author there is the fact that what I writing has value. I am conflicted... and would warmly embrace some kind of middle ground.
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Parent: What did you reference to Neil Stephenson refer to?
You forget something... they "Solved" the problem of having the $70 bill by purchasing the more economically friendly "Unlimited Plan". Not a moment too late, too. Little daughter could easily double the usage, but going forward, the charges will be a perfectly affordable $15.
Slashdot Mirror
They can't sue you for that, your slander/speculation has to be realistic for the courts to give a crap.
If you retract the point about MSFTs TCO, they may have a case, though.
My favorite justification for taking other people's work for free is that I also provide work for free to various communities. My second favorite justification is because the authors and artists want me to enjoy use of their work based on the licensing terms they distribute with.
I'm not saying you should give all your work away for free, but if more creative communities could generate work that is free - the argument for stealing crappy, business produced music and movies would be lessened.
There's no reason why entertainers who supply music cannot be paid from general taxation based on the measured popularity of their products.I also support socialism, but how do you accurately measure "popularity"? Other than that, I would be happy delivering a letter to my congressman to propose this new usage for taxes. If you could draft a letter and donate it to the "community", that would be a big help... because I'm not good at letter writing.
Emphasis mine.
Splitting up AT&T meant renaming buildings to the 7 or 8 new regional companies. The payroll of the parent organization was cut by like 80%, but the amount of people working in the industry couldn't have changed that greatly from 1983 to 1985.
At the time of its breakup in 1984, AT&T had been in business for 107 years. As the largest company on earth, AT&T employed more than a million people. -- http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/att.htmBy today's comparison, the industry has been reduced to employ ~650,000 people (see AT&T competition profile). The reduced workforce of the industry is possible because many things in the industry are done automatically by computers these days. Thus, I think you are off-base saying that "adding regulation" to an industry reduces jobs. If anything, it creates them.
The point about air actually does make sense. Obviously nobody is employed at "Standard Air Corp", and that's because air isn't (nor can it be) regulated.
But your whole analogy is misguided. Comparing piracy of movies to regulation in the telecommunications and air industries is silly. The initial statement...
"If there was no way for piracy to take place, people would buy more movies." And if you were only allowed to buy telephones from AT&T, more people would pay more for AT&T phones. If you were only allowed to breathe metered air from Standard Air Corp, people would be spending a whole lot more for air....you compare things that are different.
If you could shift your argument for deregulation away from AT&T (or make different arguments about AT&T), I think you would be able to convince more people. In other words, find a way to argue for deregulation of the entertainment industry without comparing apples to oranges.
I call Godwin's Law. Arguement over. You lose.
Support of management is not so easy to get. You have to be an incredible champion of the technology that you want to promote *AND* have evidence why it is better. I think what the GP post is asking for is references to data that supports Linux adoption. He says they let him run a Ubuntu network inside his space, but won't let him network it with the rest of the school.
As for your accusations about MSCEs, I think you are jumping to conclussions. Some are probably as you describe, and I support an observation that any "technological certification" is only as good as the most incompetent person who can obtain it. However, people get hired because of these certifications... so your enemy would be the person setting the standards for what is expected of new hires. However, there are exceptions and if you search hard enough you'll eventually find a MSCE who is smart, talented, not willing to blindly follow rote procedure, and admits the Linux is better than Windows.
JacksB,
You seem to misunderstand me. Maybe I was too brief on my points. Maybe I should have elaborated on the parallels of why I think comparing King George to the RIAA/MPAA is appropriate.
I never mentioned anything on quality of life, so I don't know where you drew the conclusions that I thought things would be *worse* without the products of the RIAA/MPAA. Agreed, the world would not be as good a place without music, but music is as natural as the water we drink and the air we breath... it isn't going anywhere.
You may be suggesting the colonies went through monumental changes when they became the states, and improved the quality of life by an order of magnitude or more. I may not be a history buff, though I took the requisite classes within the past decade and have boned up on some of the essencial reading (of the revolutionary times) since then. My view is that the major changes occurred in the governing classes, and that the working classes (at least after the war was finished) continued on in a very similar fashion as before the revolution.
The parallel I was drawing was that the British were no more needed by the colonies than the RIAA/MPAA is needed by us. It doesn't make sense for so few to dictate the way of things for so many. The parallel is fairly clear in the following quote. In Common Sense, Thomas Paine wrote:
Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.Moreover, regarding your "quality of life" accusations, I'm fairly sure that after the war was done, things returned to business as usual for most of the inhabitants of the new nation. I don't think they made things that much better (or worse) for themselves right away. Sure, the Stamp and Quartering Acts immediately became things of the past, but the *real* reason to declare war wasn't for improvement in the short term. The reason for war was for prosperity (i.e. future generations). Again, quoting Paine's pamphlet:
As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully.What this basically says is that we know in the present state of affairs that the RIAA/MPAA were always a temporary organization, and that ending their reign now is just. If we allow them to continue thier operations (and force the burden of change onto our children), then we are mean and pitiful.
Maybe I was wrong to say that digital download is the same as the declaration (especially with an emphasis on the *is* like I did last post), but there are some remarkable parallels if you let yourself think about it. Thus, my hope is that you can gain a little perspective.
Emphasis mine
Great Britan *or* The RIAA/MPAA?
govern an independent nation *or* enjoy culture?
war *or* piracy?
Downloading digital content *is* every bit as noble as signing the declaration of independence. The trouble is that the oppressive forces are corporations who tax us for something we want, why the Brits were taxing us for no good reason. Also, we'll never see the equivalent of the Boston Massacre from the RIAA/MPAA (unless lawsuits against single-mothers on welfare counts).
Thanks for clearifying what you meant. I'll meet you halfway and say that you didn't phrase what you said originally as well as you meant to, but that I should have thought more before deciding what you were trying to say.
I will say that many people don't understand the business aspects of the GPL license (whereas the business possibilities of BSD are easy to grasp). This misunderstanding could lead to FUD that running a business based on GPL code is impossible. The fact is that it is extremely possible to have a GPL business, but the business needs to add significant value to the community to stand a chance (whereas Microsoft adds negligible value to the proprietary world, except when it comes to being a de facto standard).
trippeh,
It's clear you don't like the RIAA, but your points are not clear. Since you state that you *are* an artist, I think it is particularly interesting to see what you are trying to do to make music, get paid, and enrich the culture of those around you.
Do you play shows on the weekend? Do you have music that I could download? Would you consider posting your work with a Creative Commons license at a site like ccmixter.org? Do you have the resources to make videos to post on YouTube or GoogleVideo and to make announcements on "yourbandname.com"? I would ask about your MySpace... but I think of NewsCorp's Online Community as a cesspool that should be avoided by respectable geeks.
My feelings are that playing shows is the way to go for any artist to earn their keep. Play a show, get a hundred people to come and charge them $5-10, while selling some merch that has your logo, and go home with $200-300. If you are good, the audiences will grow. If not, it was never meant to be.
I've never felt that the RIAA member orgs actually add much to the bands they sign these days, except the troubles of distribution (which the internet can do) and promotion (which is better accomplished through word of mouth).... The only thing I see the RIAA Companies doing is milking artists for the fruits of their labors.
When I onMouseOver the graphic on the Arizona page, it switches a broken image. I hope NASA imagery works a little better than the grad students from ASU.
I actually don't believe this is true. If you can reference a small section of the GPL that makes any demands on monetary exchanges not taken place, please reference it.
What I believe to be true is that you can distribute GPL'd code for any value between $0 - $10,000,000,000 (with $10 Billion being a practical maximium, since that's what Microsoft and Google seem to be playing for sw advertizing firms these days).
The caveat of GPL distribution is that you must provide a written offer to provide source code and buyer would have a right to publish the source code online and offer it for free. This makes selling software as GPL very hard for a business to pull off successfully, but other than the logistics (which makes perfect sense because GPL explicitly states that no warrenty is provided, so the developers can't be sued) there is nothing to prevent you from selling GPLd software.
In this way, you could fix bugs in the Fedora 7 distribution and name your price, to see if Red Hat can be extorted for the cash.
Grandparent:
Which is more 'free' a society where you can say whatever you like, and then someone in government can exercise their freedom to lock you up for ever. [=public domain] Or a society where you can say whatever you like, and the government is forced to protect your right to do so, even though you are infringing on someones freedom to lock you up forever. [=gpl]Parent:
To fix your analogy, which is more free? Being able to build on existing works if and only if you agree with the established dogma [=gpl]? Or being able to build on existing works in any way you wish, even to the point of heresy [=public domain]?This is an endless arguement about asking "which is more free?", because freedom means different things to different people.
Some people exclaim they need the freedom to develop a product which they can turn around to sell so they derive a financial benefit (I call people who would start with code written by others as their base (even BSD) greedy and selfish, but that is my own opinion and many would say I am wrong). Either way, this is "corporate freedom" because it is used to enhance business.
Other people need information to have freedom, so they can use, modify, and share it with others without restriction. This is a pie in the face of "corporate freedom", because it prevents the wholesale ownership of code. This is "individual freedom" because it is used to enhance the individual user of the codebase. Helping to enhance individuals has the added benefit of improving technological culture (and culture in general), because as more is added there is more that others can take away.
As far as business vs individual is concerned... as more GPL software is developed it competes more-and-more with stalwart businesses who historically had technological advantages that gave them huge pricing power so they can run their business. By itself, Windows wasn't treatened by Linux. But with OpenOffice, Firefox, GIMP, Apache, GCC, Eclipse, and others there is a strong threat to MS Office, Internet Explorer, Photoshop (yes, I realize is not MS), IIS, VisualStudio, and others). RMS, bless his soul, understood the threat of proprietary software very early on and using the FSF has fortified a strong camp to protect important freedoms of individuals. Using GPL, the corporate world doesn't have a prayer in the long term unless they add some truly VALUABLE FEATURES to their products that OSS cannot reproduce. This competition is good for everybody, but it is my opinion that this competition will ultimately strike a fatal blow to proprietary software shops and they will need to rethink their ways.
Microsoft understands this. Apple understands this better. Google understands this best. All three use different ways to protect their proprietary code. Microsoft has litigation and patents. Apple has valuable features and integrated hardware. Google has a webplatform that it doesn't distribute and offers strong support for OSS.
As far as business vs individual is concerned... I think a lot of people get pissed off because they feel that they need the "business" aspect to be there so they can earn a living. This is a flawed belief that highlights the fact that many people are too scared to think outside-the-box and imagine a different (better) way of living.
The garbage that gets developed in-house can stay locked away. If it is any good, it will spread as employees jump ship and take the ideas of the useful in-house code with them. Eventually, worthy in-house development can go GPL (i.e. Eclipse from IBM), but unworthy code should never be forced into the open.
Similarly, in-house code that is available under a public license can be tough, too. I've worked on adopting Mozilla's Tinderbox project for use in my company and they definiately hardcode way too many "mozilla.org" URLs into that beast (though after taking a couple days/weeks to understand it, it is easier to adopt than writing from scratch).
You are defending corporate freedom over individual freedom. For shame, Tivo shill.
And you confused a point of the GPL. You or Tivo can change any GPL software however the hell you want. You can even sell a product based entirely on a GPL software suite that you didn't even contribute anything too (which is what Tivo does!!!). The restricted freedom is that when you distribute the GPL product, you must include the source code or a written offer to provide the source that is valid for a minimium of three years (according to the latest GPLv3 draft).
This lack of a written offer of source is what burned the FSF when Tivo used Linux as a base system. They wrote a separate program that was served on a layer above the base system, and thus protected the proprietary nature of their product. The caveat of GPLv3 is that this isn't allowed, and it has been my understanding that in addition to MSFTs hardware DRM to degrade HD video signal, Tivo's usage of GPLv2 was a major reason for the changes in the FSFs license model.
That said, BSD *is* more free than GPL to a business, but if you argue that GPL is less free for an end user, you are sorely mistaken.
You sir, have either been badly burned by dishonesty in the past or are a chronic liar.
In any case, you seem to have some serious trust issues.
Robbing is certainly worse than sending sending an unsolicited e-mail. That's a dumb comparision.
But you forgot the other charges which were, "identity theft, money laundering, and mail, wire, and e-mail fraud".
These charges center around the fact that this spammer is a *dishonest* scumbag. If I were to compare somebody who lied to me to somebody who stole something from me, I would say the thief is better than the liar (who is better than the pest [i.e. the innocent spammer who you approve of]).
You can only do so much damage stealing things. Dishonesty, on the other hand, leads down much darker roads.
He is telling Microsoft not to do something they haven't done yet. As far as I can tell, that's ethically fine (legally, I have no idea).
It isn't about commercials... it is about EXTRA SPACE.
See the comparison done on Wiki.
You get to pack 4x more information on HD/Blu Discs. (I believe) DVD is perfectly capable of playing High Def, but it would only fit about 30-45 minutes of content.
On the other hand, you could fit a standard def version of the entire Matrix Trilogy on a single HD/Blu disc.
I agree with you though... big freaking deal. It isn't worth replacing your movie collection over. I don't even think it is worth upgrading. By the time they stop making DVDs, storage will be so cheap that the medium of choice will be downloadable films... and you'll play them through a direct connection into your TV from your computer or over something like AppleTV.
A better (and significantly more concise) read on the aims of what the revolutionaries were thinking is Thomas Paine's Common Sense. It is about 20 pages, and while half of it relates to religion and King George - the rest is significantly relevant. I like this quip, which relates to security:
Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expence and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.And unlike the Google Book you posted, it is in plain-text... which is easier to deal with.
The main link to Common Sense.
copy/paste into Google...
http://www.google.com/search?q=The+man+who+would +choose+security+over+freedom+deserves+neither.&st art=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.m ozilla:en-US:official
It would sure as heck seem that Jefferson said that. The internet can't lie, can it? The internet always says what's true, just like the Ministry of Truth.
=P Sorry to both discredit you, and cast a shadow of doubt over my discreditation - but neither of us have heard Franklin or Jefferson orate about freedom, so we have no way of truly knowing who said what. We can only go by what has been attributed to them - and that suggests Jefferson did say what you claim was misrepresented.
I offer that a short and simple list of things not to do would work well if it could be perfectly enforced.
Obviously not perfectly enforced or even rationale... but Moses' 10 Commandments are clear, understandable, and to the point. Moreover, people can be indoctinated with simple "rules to live by". Don't bare false witness... oh, it would be a happy day if SCO or MSFT could be stricken down by the high courts, guilty as sin and made to legally and honestly conduct business.
But yeah, "perfectly enforceable" is only possible when all privacy is removed and that'll happen over my dead body. I don't mind running the risk that my neighbor can kill me and get away with it. Having that possibility gives me an incentive to pleasantly say hello in the morning and not be a complete jackass who is "protected by the law". Also, covetting his wife... I don't see why this is wrong if her husband approves. There is no reason to indoctrinate sexual close-mindedness.
If I were to offer simple rules, (a) Don't be greedy, (b) Don't lie. Follow those two, and you'll lead a good life.
The point was that creative works are not created equally, and some require a heck of a lot more time to develop than others. If you had read further, you'd have seen me take the position that authors shouldn't be so rabid about protecting their copyright. I was just making a point that the effort to produce a novel, biography, or other piece of literature tends to be pretty large.
Music and art tend to scale towards the "low end", but there are certainly exceptions. Lord knows the Mona Lisa wasn't painted overnight - but then again - Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Can probably was.
Similarly, books and movies are frequently projects that span close to a year or more - but if you've ever seen the Blair Witch Project, you know that they can be pulled off in way less time.
maybe the right thing would instead be to press for differential terms?As a creator, I really just want a fair value for my work, and after that I'd be perfectly happy with releasing with a Creative Commons-style license (with my CC-of-choice being Attribution, ShareAlike (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)). The question becomes, what is a "fair" value? That's open to interpretation, but I feel that enough to cover my costs of living for a year would be perfectly acceptable... which is ballpark $50-75k.
What complicates matters is that there are a significant amount of writer's whose work is controlled by the publishing industry. Similarly to the RIAA member company's, the purpose of publishers is to make money and squeeze every dime of profit from the works they own which are successful. Thus, you end up paying $25 for a hard cover and $8 for a trade paperback - when the "production costs" are closer to $10 and $3, respectively (numbers based on limitted research that I did into self-publishing - I do not work for a publisher, so these numbers shouldn't be trusted and used to reference a fact). Also, you end up with a company who isn't satisfied with getting a "fair" share. Basically, the publishing company has to protect what it owns, and it does with ever extending copyrights.
Instead of "pressing for different terms", we can press to enable musicians, artists, authors, filmmakers, photographers, and everybody else that adds to the collective "culture" to make a living for themselves without succombing to the powers of mass industry who aim to simply take ownership and profit. Musicians can earn a living from booking concerts and selling CDs at them, and they can advertize on NetRadio, MySpace, YouTube, and by releasing albums through BitTorrent. Artists can sell there work in cute little shops and display there work in galleries (not easy, but doable).
When the original producers of creative work have full ownership of their work, I think there will be much less greed than for the companies that end up buying control.
Have you ever written a versed poem or strummed out a couple of chords of a guitar? Can you combine these two things and find somebody to tie it together with a couple of beats from the percussion? Congrats... you are a musician, and you've got a song.
Have you ever made a picture? Watercolor, oils and canvas, or maybe a collage on a brick wall in some coffee shop? Congrats... you are a painter, and you've got a picture.
How about travelling to somewhere amazing with a nice camera and *click*, you've got a photograph.
I don't mean to discredit the work of musicians, artists, or photographers... but compared to composing a compelling story across several hundred pages of text - their job is a walk in the park.
I think, to answer your question, authors claim copyright because it is damned hard to crank out a good book. It takes time, innovation, and a heck of a lot of logical progression of ideas.
As an attempted author, I've found one hour per page to be a pace that can be maintained while writing. I've found one hour per five pages to be a pace for an initial revision. By the time the story is basically set, it still needs a bunch of eyes to catch the rest of the minor errors. Thus, with a 300 page novel, it costs 300 hours + 60 hours of revison = 360 hours (9 weeks, at 40 hours per week) of straight work... and you still have to get 3 or 4 friends to read and make comments and find places where the text isn't easy to understand. Of course, this assumes that there aren't major rewrites or writer's blocks.
I recall reading that when Stephen King began writing, one book a year was a "norm". He was able to work fast, and was capable of easily churning out two books a year. That is, the best full time writer can reasonably publish a book every 25 weeks.
Now, I am not out to defend copyrights. I just wanted to answer the question of why authors would be so rabid about defending them.
On the contrary, I work as an engineer and I am writing a novel "as a hobby". I have animosity towards the publishing industry for taking away "author's rights" in exchange for "publisher's rights"... and since I have a "day-job" I am not in the position where I need to "sell" my work to a publisher to put food on the table.
However, I am hesitant to release under a Creative Commons-like license and let the community decide the worth of my novel with no ability to make a financial gain from what I've done. In fact, I would love to quit the day job and try my hand at writing full-time.... and that won't happen unless I earn something from my work.
I guess my point is that I am somebody who warmly embraces Openness, but as an author there is the fact that what I writing has value. I am conflicted... and would warmly embrace some kind of middle ground.
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Parent: What did you reference to Neil Stephenson refer to?
You forget something... they "Solved" the problem of having the $70 bill by purchasing the more economically friendly "Unlimited Plan". Not a moment too late, too. Little daughter could easily double the usage, but going forward, the charges will be a perfectly affordable $15.
We, the constituancy of slashdot, have two words for that:
Sausage Fest.