I'm not totally sure what you mean by this revision, but if you're wondering
I'm not "wondering". I'm *showing* you here, through the only means you're capable of understanding, why your "argument" (and I use the term loosely) applies just as well to physical property. Now, I am going to respond to your *new* attempt to patch up the holes in what you just said.
here's the difference between physical property and that dubious concept "intellectual property": To deprive you of physical property, I must do violence to you, but I and millions of other people could help ourselves to your "intellectual property" without you even being aware of it
Rubbish. It is *of course* possible to deprive me of physical property without doing violence to me, and that kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME. (It's a laugh riot for people who actually think about these things, that you would say otherwise.) Shoplifting is non-violent, for example. Or if I slipped into your home and pilfered your motherboard. You were aware of that, right? Of course, now you're probably going to stretch the concept of "doing violence to me" so that it covers whatever you say it covers.
And with that bit and the end, you're AGAIN revealing that you missed the point of my tu quoque. There are many kinds of *physical* property that someone might not be aware of upon theft, and that is precisely the kind of thing anti-physical-property cranks consider unjust, and precisely why your "argument" proved far too much. For example, if you stole a deer from hunting grounds I own, I may *never* learn of it. So I guess deer can't be property? (And if you additionaly promote animal rights crankism, switch out the deer with something like iron ore.)
The non-critical assumption that intellectual property is the same as other kinds of property is precisely why no state has bothered to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of copyright laws.
Actually, I think that's more proof that:
a) You haven't looked for government-affiliated research papers on IP. (They're out there. Really.)
b) They have better things to do than publicly try to convince others of something they already believe.
They just parrot on about how everyone "owns" everything she ever thinks, and you can't use those thoughts without her permission 'cause they're her property, and so on. It's a laugh riot for people who actually think about these things.
Actually, the opinion of the people who actually think about these things is that your trite little cutesy "proofs" do nothing to advance the debate.
I think the definition of the word *was* the point. Since you claim you know what the meaning is, it surprises me the distinction you made in your previous post.
It surprises me that you thought you needed to introduce me to the concept after having read my post. See below.
which isn't at all true in the context of rivalrous goods. Absolutely nothing is lost in the sharing of non-rivalrous goods.
True. But -- and here's the point you completely fucking missed because you're unwilling to entertain the notion that you might be wrong -- which good are we talking about? The enjoyment of the informational content -- which you were probably thinking about when the blood flowed into your dick -- is indeed a non-rivalrous good. And a lot of morons, like this one say that's the end of it -- the information isn't scarce, so there's no basis of rights. If, on the other hand, the relevant good is *that* the information be enjoyed/used, it's no longer non-rivalous. Let me spell it out for you, since before this post the concept didn't even exist in your mind: The artist's (or his agent's) desire to that only those who paid him a cut gain access to his work, and the desire of others to have a copy without paying him a cut for the work, cannot simultaneously be satisfied. That good (literally, the truth of whether people have a copy without payin royalties), is rivalrous. To you, however, it "doesn't count" because you adhere to the arbitrary rule that, "heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn a good is something you can touuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch, man, something you can feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel". Ridiculous -- adoration from one's lover is utterly non-tangible, but a good nonetheless.
Now, I'll accept your apology for the foot-in-mouth "rivalrous" post.
The problem is (imho & based on how I read your other posts) that you've bought into the false notion that intellectual monopoly is required to generate content and cause creativity. But this is clearly false. Humans created long before these artificial barriers to market were introduced, and will continue to innovate long after they've been dropped.
Actually, the *real* problem is that you are incapable of attacking anything save a strawman. I NEVER SAID OR IMPLIED that there would be no innovation/creativity without intellectual property rights. I was very careful to constrain my statements to FOR PROFIT PRODUCTION. You would have noticed that if you had read my posts. (Skimming isn't reading.)
So long as we're clear that the 'they' in this sentence is the recording industry: not the artist.
Oh geez.
You would be correct to say that perhaps they didn't change methods, adapt, etc. as necessary. But to claim that publishers literally contribute nothing? That's false, a result of a simplistic approach to this whole topic. No matter how good your music is, that does NOT guarantee that the people that will turn out to like it, will ever get a chance to hear it. Artists generally cannot marshall the resources necessary to persuade lots of people of the merit of their work, or to get it to the point where they hear it, even if they are very good. This is what the publisher attempts to accomplish. Has new technology changed the specific tasks the publisher has performed? Sure. Have many of the transaction costs decreased? Of course. But your attempt to paint this sharp dividing line between the "real" producers (who are artists) and the leeches who "merely" publish rings hollow. Great post on the matter.
Words of wisdom: a good that consumers are unaware of, is not a good. (I mean a good in the economic sense, not the hippie sense you're familiar with.)
Sure, and the original condition was a bargain between publishers and the public. A 17yr right to be the only
I'm perfectly willing to continue to pay for music in a format which does not restrict my ability to transfer between media for my own personal use. And who says I violate agreements? I simply don't MAKE them.
No, what you're buying -- as described by the default copyright law governing these transfers -- does not include those rights, and you agree to those in buying the intellectual work. Much of it is produced *on the precondition* that these rights will be enforced, and you want to unilaterally break them. And there may be good reason, I'd choose a pretense other than "freedom".
The position is quite simple: property rights are a state-granted monopoly on certain actions that would otherwise be perfectly licit. It is a truism that a certain kind and quantity of production is going to exist without property rights. The burden is on the state to demonstrate a interest in whatever kind of production requires property rights to exist. Then they have to demonstrate that the extent is cost-effective.
No state that I know of has ever got within a thousand miles of making such a demonstration. I bet that if one of them tried, short term possession rights would prove reasonable in our present technological situation.
Tu quoque: forcing people to actually think about what they say since before the fall of Rome.
Ah, so you're telepathic are you? You know my thoughts.
I know that your phrasing was misleading, and I have a hard time accepting that you didn't notice that.
No. It is easy to access digital information and it is trivially easy to increase the supply essentially to infinity. This is a simple fact. Because all digital information must at some point be made available to the consumer it must always be possible for a copy to be made and that means that it will always be possible to increase the supply of that information essentially infinitely. Therefore the economic value of that digital information will always tend to zero, property rights or not.
No, if (fifth time I've said this) there are strong social more against unauthorized copying, this would become extremely difficult to accomplish, on the same basis that distributing digital pedo material is still difficult.
I made no statement over whether that situation is preferable or not. It's a simple economic fact of the laws of supply and demand.
No, at most it's a physical fact, and this supposed simplicity only results from you shifting between different meanings and topics without noticing. You most certainly did make claims about what is preferable when you claimed that certain actions "attempting to control information" would be futile.
You seem to have a rather naive belief that it's possible to have a society where adherence to a set of rules is close to 100%, that is also known as a totalitarian society.
Er... no, just... no. I nowhere predicated anything on near 100% adherence to a set of rules. There is far less than 100% adherence to drug laws, yet one can correctly state that (for a large class of people), it is not "trivially easy" to get drugs, and yet (in the US), no one calls it a "totalitarian state" regarding drug laws. Okay, you'll make an exception to that. So replace "drugs laws" with "shoplifting" laws.
The idea that the act of copying a file would ever be thought of as anything more than trivial is risible.
And what would you say to someone who said "The idea that the act of stealing something the victim doesn't really need would ever be thought of as anything more than trivial is risible." ? Got it? Okay, take that argument, and apply it to what you said above.
I disagree. People are still going to buy books, cds and dvds...the difference would be that you'd have a choice of which company to buy it from, so they would be a lot cheaper.
Yes, they would still buy books, and yes they would be a lot cheaper. There also would be very little new content after you switched to such a system as people would write purely as a hobby and only be able to get it to you if they could *reach* you amidst the crap that's out there and could afford their production costs, because anyone can copy their works without compensating the author or his agent. (before you mention blogs, slashdot comments, etc., those exist with or without copyright. What would not exist is the kind of stuff that requires monetary compensation to get people to do, and is of the quality that people would spend their own money on.)
The difference I see is that if I have a car, and you take it from me, then I have lost a car. This is true whether there is a law against it or not. If, however, I buy some information from you and then give a copy to a friend, then it's only meaningful to say you've lost something if a law exists against my copying. If there's no law there, then you never had anything to lose in the first place. Does that make sense?
Well, let's compare apples to apples here. From your post:
with law against copying -> I "lost something" when you copied me. without law against copying -> I "lost nothing" when you copied me.
with law against theft -> I "lost something" when you stole my car. without law against theft -> I "lost something" when you stole my car. (! -- see below)
That is the distinction you make. But does the last hold? If there is no law against theft, you never "had" a car in the sense of owning it. You may have driven it. You may have located it in your garage or someone elses when not in use. But you didn't own it because the law granted you no higher claim on it than others. You lost nothing when I "stole" your car -- you *possessed* everything you could possess by force both before and after. You still have access -- you just have to (in violating no law) take it back.
So I don't see your distinction as holding up. If people generally recognize IP as being valid, I forgo opportunities in you misappropriating "my" idea. If people generally recognize physical property rights as being valid, I forgo opportunities in you misappropriating "my" car. (The above reasoning seems odd, but that stems from the definition of "lose" you were using in the context of ideas. If you carry that through, I believe your distinction vanishes.)
1: I'm not remotely dishonest, I did point out originally that all digital information is inherently valueless but the article is about music, hence my focus.
You realized your point applied to more than record companies, yet singled out record companies because they were the most reviled group in that set, when you should have used a term encompassing all intellectual-work-related goods.
2: They're not my rules. They are economic facts of life for all commodities.
No, like I've said in several posts you've tritely dismissed, what rules people adhere to certainly *does* affect the difficulty, and thus economic value, of acquiring specific goods. To the extent that you wanted people in society, and their law enforcers, to adhere to a *different* rule set, you were proposing "your rules", and so I mentioned "your rules" to refer to this. You seem to be deliberately confusing the very separate issues of:
1) whether it *is* easy to get access to intellectual works in digital form
2) whether it would be preferable for people to make certain attempts at access more difficult
I've already explained, regarding 1), that such difficulty is not inherent the class of (informational/intellectual) goods, but depends on what rules people will respect. I've already explaiend, regarding 2), that what is preferable affects what kind of system you should be advocating a transition toward. Whenever you're cornered on one, you switch to the other. I recommend waiting a minute or two after reading to make sure you got the poster's point.
Don't be dense. If, as I explained twice to you already in the posts of mine you did read, anyone distributing an unofficial copy of Mariah Carey's tune were regarded by almost everyone the way they currently regard pedophiles, YES, you would damn well have a difficult time distributing it (due to it being reported and shut down by the authorities), on the same basis that pedophiles have difficulty distributing their goods. If, as I explained twice to you already in the posts of mine you did read, nobody had any qualms about taking the property you're standing in front of with a big stick, the big stick wouldn't do you much good against the onslaught.
Let's see if on your fourth post you can respond to this point?
If you can't find a way to make a profit is it really the roll of the government to step in with draconian measures to create a market for you?
First of all, I don't think it's so much about "not being able to find a way to make a profit producing content" as much as "there is no way to make a profit producing content" (if there were no IP at all). And second, how is enforcement of regular property rights not equally "draconian"?
This is a real technical limitation, not an artificially-imposed one.
Really? Isn't there an optimal architecture they "could" have used? To the extent that they deliberately avoided doing so in order to have incompatible systems, wouldn't that count as a sort of DRM? A sort of "crippleware"?
Nice thinking inside the box there.. Here is what they should do 1) make all art copyrights last 7 years. 2) release all music/film / etc from greater than 7 years ago into public domain.
Okay, but that solution *still* involves copyright, and would *still* involve people violating it, and would *still* lead to record companies, etc. taking anti-piracy measures that you would *still* object to.
The drug companies dont seem to have a problem making billions of dollars on 7 year expiring patents.
True, if you mean 7 years after FDA approval. Since the clock starts ticking before the trials start, they need a longer patent to get seven years of (monopoly) sales.
Humans expressing themselves through art will not end because no one pays for it. Not to claim art, but these comments here are proof of that. No one is paying me to write on this fourm and yet I do it anyways. An artist needs to create as a slashdot poster needs to comment.
Wow, good thing I wasn't stupid enough to claim otherwise! (Except for the blanket claim that artists produce exactly the same amount, irrespective of any compensation they get -- that's just stupid. I know you didn't say that outright, but you're hinting at it with the bit that artists "need" to create -- even if true, it says nothing about how much.)
Yes, it does. Publishing companies, software houses.
Ah. So you agree then, it was a tad dishonest to portray the potential losers under your ideal rules as being merely "record companies".
The publishing companies still have some life in that it's still better to have and read a real physical book than it is to read an ebook.
Er, no. Publishers are filters for content as much as printers. Take away their right to the content, and they won't filter for it -- they'll just be printers for hire.
No sorry, they aren't. In terms of physical property, it is the limited supply which gives it value.
You're not listening. It's the limited supply AND THE FACT THAT YOU CAN ACTUALLY USE THAT SUPPLY that gives it value. Like I said in the previous post, if nobody respected physical property rights, physical goods would have near zero value because your ability to use them would be so tenuous.
There is no such thing as inherent value, there is only the market value which is the result of supply and demand.
I never professed or implied support for an intrinsic value theory.
It has nothing to do with respect for property rights whether they are intellectual or physical. People attempt to retain their value which is relatively simple with something which has a limited supply like a physical object, but impossible with information which has an infinite supply. Really you can try all you like, but as I said, you'll lose, and you'll waste a load of money in the process.
Please read my previous post again. Protecting the value of physical objects is only "relatively simple" because of the broad support for property rights in those physical goods... like I said last time. And protecting "intellectual property" is only difficult to the extent that there is not broad support for it... like I also said last time. Will you respond to this point the next time you post?
Yeah, but if those rivals would actually COOPERATE instead of trying to SCREW CUSTOMERS out of their fair use rights, the game disc would play on BOTH of them. They DELIBERATELY avoid this because they're EVIL, right?
Sorry, them's the breaks, the record companies lost the instant they started producing digital information.
Who's focusing on record companies? Your comment applies just as well to book-writers, programmers, etc etc etc.
Forget "should" and right or wrong, it's pure economics. It's like complaining about gravity or the speed of light.
Well...no. Concerns about what outcomes are acceptable, combined with knowledge of economics, is what you need in order to know what rules you ar comfortable with.
Digital information is trivially copyable, that's a simple statement of fact. All it takes is a single copy to be distributed exponentially. The cost or value of the bit of digital information essentially works out at zero. Copyrights, laws, even digital rights management systems don't change that economic fact of life. You can complain, threaten, sue, encrypt, legislate, tear at your hair as much as you like but you absolutely will lose to that economic reality.
Well... again, no. It all depends on how people in society regard those rights. If people viewed IP violators like pedophiles, it would not be a "trivially" easy to distribute copies. (Before you object with some simplistic remark like "huh huh, and if my aunt had balls...", think about what I'm actually trying to prove with the previous statement.) Similarly, if people had zero respect for physical property rights, physical goods would have no value, because people could, and would, swipe them without a second though. So these supposed economic realities you're referencing are far less absolute than you make them out to be.
The freedom parent is talking about violating is the freedom to *listen* to the music they just paid for in the way that they want. If they didn't buy the right to listen to the music (with the usual license stipulation about private use), then what the heck did they just buy? Copyright does not grant a company the right to technologically negate the fair use rights also included in the copyright bargain. If it did, then it is a license to sell snake oil that people can't even drink.
So do you think your rights are being violated when you can't play your GameCube games on your PS2?
What you seem to want is the right to copy it onto every format, even though you know this makes it difficult for them to then enforce their copyright.
I believe the way Google's approach differs from traditional "sign me up for telespamming" crap is that with Google, the telemarketers don't get your personal information and they have to route their calls through Google without knowing anything about you, so if you ask to be removed they really can't contact you anymore. Now, if you expect Google to sell out and betray your trust, *then* it could be a problem. (I don't think they would, as they have too much to lose.)
I think you made a lot of points better than I did, but you made one I deliberately avoided:
In addition, why should I pay into the fund when the music will be free anyway?
While your other objections are true, the model the GP described actually partly circumvents the "free rider"/ no-marginal-benefit-to-marginal-contribution (that attaches to e.g. voting) in that every dollar you contribute slightly hastens the release date of the album, meaning your contribution does count.
If anyone could freely copy/use/alter digital music then much more value would be placed on *production* and *performance* of music than on *distribution* of music, which is as it should be.
Well, that isn't quite as it should be. Distribution is much more important than you make it out to be. Your favorite artist -- how did you hear about him/her? There is TONS of crap out there. How do you find the diamonds? You do not have the time to sift through all the garbage. And I think you're wrong about production -- if you can't draw a return from copyright, you can't capture any value off the production, only the easily copiable performance.
Artists would make money from concerts and sponsorships, as well as via commissions for new works. If Britney Spears promised to release a new album free to the world as soon as her fans had placed a minimum of $15 million into escrow, millions of teenage girls would put anywhere from $0.10 to $10 into the fund, the world would get more Spears (yeehaw...) and Spears would get $15 million.
I'm familiar with that idea, but sorry, but that's extremely wishful thinking. Most of them don't have their own money. Mommy will buy them a CD, but she won't make a contribution for them to that fund. Plus, I can imagine the geek reaction: "artist extorts money to produce next CD". I would point out it only works for artists that have *already* separated themselves from the chaff, but you anticipated that:
She'd have no distribution costs (sites would gladly trade bandwidth for eyeballs, not to mention the P2P channels), so the only thing she'd have to take out is production costs, which wouldn't be *nearly* as high as now.
What? Why would this affect production costs?
And she could proceed to trot around the nation doing concerts, just like she does now, and keep more of those profits too. Artists who are not Spears, or as popular as Spears, need to get popular by being good in concert and/or good in marketing, and/or willing to sign deals with the lesser devils that would replace the greater devils of today's industry. Variety would increase, live concerts would abound... what a wonderful world it would be.
Er, no. Wishful thinking is not an argument.
Look, there's a lot of stuff about copyright I don't like either, and I'm not really as pro-IP as I might have come off. But the consequencees of removing these rights is not insigificant, and anyone wanting to remove them should be aware of the costs.
I'd like to violate every agreement I make for short-term benefit too, but I don't justify such desires on grounds of "freedom".
They produce the music so they can make a profit. I'm sure it would be great if everyone worked for free, but they don't.
The produce it knowing that they can sell it with certain conditions attached. Then they sell it with those conditions attached. Then people start to claim their "freedom" is being violated, and that they have the right to unilaterally violate those conditions.
Sure, music companies "should" just "trust" people not to give it away to everyone, really, they can't.
So what should they do? Just not make music for profit? Or, you accept that the artist "deserves" a cut proportional to listeners, but that the "record companies" take "too much". Do you know how difficult, and what a crapshoot it is, to promote an artist?
I'm not trying to troll. What should an artist and record company do?
The purpose of publishing a paper is not to boost the authors' egos. It's to convey ideas to other people. A paper which does not communicate concepts clearly does not deserve to be published.
Bingo. That's exactly the problem. When I first started in grad school (mechanical engineering), I found the papers very difficult to understand, and I thought it was a problem in my knowledge. But then when I had someone else explain it to me, I was like, "uh, couldn't they have just said [simpler version]" and my adviser politely explained how something that looks too easy won't look novel and notable enough to publish.
In a lecture from a math professor (Erdos number 1), I heard exactly the same thing. He said it takes him a long time to review a submission, because he has to say, "er, okay, how did he get from here to here... why couldn't he just spell this part out stepwise instead of being so verbose" and also complained that if you make the proof too easy to understand, it won't get accepted.
You really have to wonder what this is supposed to accomplish. Are you less smart because you got more people to understand your idea? (I've always thought that if you can't explain what you did to a reasonably intelligent layman, given enough time, you don't understand it yourself.)
I was actually thinking about making a game like this, recently. I didn't know what the name for that class of games would be. I was thinking the right term would be "causal" (not casual -- read it again) games. That is, you can't do something that you wouldn't have known you could do.
Let me give an example: say in some game, there's some hidden treasure. But if you've beaten the game before, when you fire it up the first time, you go *right there* and get the treasure, since you know where it is. One way around this is for developers to make it so if you dig there before being told about it, nothing's there. But that strikes me as unfair.
So in a causal game, what would happen is that the treasure would be in a random, non-obvious spot. Every place you search, you have a miniscule probability of finding it. And every place you unsuccessfully dig, you "collapse the probability bubble" so that the only possible locations are now "somewhere else". And then here's the kicker -- if you actually do hit on the treasure, but reload without saving, and look there again -- it probably won't be there. (And obviously, the previous game's location of the treasure wouldn't help either.)
This could extend to plot elements -- maybe that guy betrays you this time, maybe he doesn't. Maybe taking his armor off before the big battle weakens you, maybe he was about to betray you and it was a good idea. Each game is genuinely different.
You could practice this on a small scale, with e.g. the card game hearts. The computer doesn't actually "decide" which opponent has which cards until it plays them, and it only has to be consistent with its previous revelations. (i.e., if it did't play a club when you led a club, it won't play a club on any later turn.)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not totally sure what you mean by this revision, but if you're wondering
I'm not "wondering". I'm *showing* you here, through the only means you're capable of understanding, why your "argument" (and I use the term loosely) applies just as well to physical property. Now, I am going to respond to your *new* attempt to patch up the holes in what you just said.
here's the difference between physical property and that dubious concept "intellectual property": To deprive you of physical property, I must do violence to you, but I and millions of other people could help ourselves to your "intellectual property" without you even being aware of it
Rubbish. It is *of course* possible to deprive me of physical property without doing violence to me, and that kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME. (It's a laugh riot for people who actually think about these things, that you would say otherwise.) Shoplifting is non-violent, for example. Or if I slipped into your home and pilfered your motherboard. You were aware of that, right? Of course, now you're probably going to stretch the concept of "doing violence to me" so that it covers whatever you say it covers.
And with that bit and the end, you're AGAIN revealing that you missed the point of my tu quoque. There are many kinds of *physical* property that someone might not be aware of upon theft, and that is precisely the kind of thing anti-physical-property cranks consider unjust, and precisely why your "argument" proved far too much. For example, if you stole a deer from hunting grounds I own, I may *never* learn of it. So I guess deer can't be property? (And if you additionaly promote animal rights crankism, switch out the deer with something like iron ore.)
The non-critical assumption that intellectual property is the same as other kinds of property is precisely why no state has bothered to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of copyright laws.
Actually, I think that's more proof that:
a) You haven't looked for government-affiliated research papers on IP. (They're out there. Really.)
b) They have better things to do than publicly try to convince others of something they already believe.
They just parrot on about how everyone "owns" everything she ever thinks, and you can't use those thoughts without her permission 'cause they're her property, and so on. It's a laugh riot for people who actually think about these things.
Actually, the opinion of the people who actually think about these things is that your trite little cutesy "proofs" do nothing to advance the debate.
I think the definition of the word *was* the point. Since you claim you know what the meaning is, it surprises me the distinction you made in your previous post.
It surprises me that you thought you needed to introduce me to the concept after having read my post. See below.
which isn't at all true in the context of rivalrous goods. Absolutely nothing is lost in the sharing of non-rivalrous goods.
True. But -- and here's the point you completely fucking missed because you're unwilling to entertain the notion that you might be wrong -- which good are we talking about? The enjoyment of the informational content -- which you were probably thinking about when the blood flowed into your dick -- is indeed a non-rivalrous good. And a lot of morons, like this one say that's the end of it -- the information isn't scarce, so there's no basis of rights. If, on the other hand, the relevant good is *that* the information be enjoyed/used, it's no longer non-rivalous. Let me spell it out for you, since before this post the concept didn't even exist in your mind: The artist's (or his agent's) desire to that only those who paid him a cut gain access to his work, and the desire of others to have a copy without paying him a cut for the work, cannot simultaneously be satisfied. That good (literally, the truth of whether people have a copy without payin royalties), is rivalrous. To you, however, it "doesn't count" because you adhere to the arbitrary rule that, "heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn a good is something you can touuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch, man, something you can feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel". Ridiculous -- adoration from one's lover is utterly non-tangible, but a good nonetheless.
Now, I'll accept your apology for the foot-in-mouth "rivalrous" post.
The problem is (imho & based on how I read your other posts) that you've bought into the false notion that intellectual monopoly is required to generate content and cause creativity. But this is clearly false. Humans created long before these artificial barriers to market were introduced, and will continue to innovate long after they've been dropped.
Actually, the *real* problem is that you are incapable of attacking anything save a strawman. I NEVER SAID OR IMPLIED that there would be no innovation/creativity without intellectual property rights. I was very careful to constrain my statements to FOR PROFIT PRODUCTION. You would have noticed that if you had read my posts. (Skimming isn't reading.)
So long as we're clear that the 'they' in this sentence is the recording industry: not the artist.
Oh geez.
You would be correct to say that perhaps they didn't change methods, adapt, etc. as necessary. But to claim that publishers literally contribute nothing? That's false, a result of a simplistic approach to this whole topic. No matter how good your music is, that does NOT guarantee that the people that will turn out to like it, will ever get a chance to hear it. Artists generally cannot marshall the resources necessary to persuade lots of people of the merit of their work, or to get it to the point where they hear it, even if they are very good. This is what the publisher attempts to accomplish. Has new technology changed the specific tasks the publisher has performed? Sure. Have many of the transaction costs decreased? Of course. But your attempt to paint this sharp dividing line between the "real" producers (who are artists) and the leeches who "merely" publish rings hollow. Great post on the matter.
Words of wisdom: a good that consumers are unaware of, is not a good. (I mean a good in the economic sense, not the hippie sense you're familiar with.)
Sure, and the original condition was a bargain between publishers and the public. A 17yr right to be the only
I'm perfectly willing to continue to pay for music in a format which does not restrict my ability to transfer between media for my own personal use. And who says I violate agreements? I simply don't MAKE them.
No, what you're buying -- as described by the default copyright law governing these transfers -- does not include those rights, and you agree to those in buying the intellectual work. Much of it is produced *on the precondition* that these rights will be enforced, and you want to unilaterally break them. And there may be good reason, I'd choose a pretense other than "freedom".
The position is quite simple: property rights are a state-granted monopoly on certain actions that would otherwise be perfectly licit. It is a truism that a certain kind and quantity of production is going to exist without property rights. The burden is on the state to demonstrate a interest in whatever kind of production requires property rights to exist. Then they have to demonstrate that the extent is cost-effective.
No state that I know of has ever got within a thousand miles of making such a demonstration. I bet that if one of them tried, short term possession rights would prove reasonable in our present technological situation.
Tu quoque: forcing people to actually think about what they say since before the fall of Rome.
I know what "rivalrous" means, asshole. If you have a point, why don't you grow some balls and make it?
And yes, I know what you're going to say, and yes, I have a response. But I'm not going to make your arguments for you. You're a big boy.
Ah, so you're telepathic are you? You know my thoughts.
... no, just ... no. I nowhere predicated anything on near 100% adherence to a set of rules. There is far less than 100% adherence to drug laws, yet one can correctly state that (for a large class of people), it is not "trivially easy" to get drugs, and yet (in the US), no one calls it a "totalitarian state" regarding drug laws. Okay, you'll make an exception to that. So replace "drugs laws" with "shoplifting" laws.
I know that your phrasing was misleading, and I have a hard time accepting that you didn't notice that.
No. It is easy to access digital information and it is trivially easy to increase the supply essentially to infinity. This is a simple fact. Because all digital information must at some point be made available to the consumer it must always be possible for a copy to be made and that means that it will always be possible to increase the supply of that information essentially infinitely. Therefore the economic value of that digital information will always tend to zero, property rights or not.
No, if (fifth time I've said this) there are strong social more against unauthorized copying, this would become extremely difficult to accomplish, on the same basis that distributing digital pedo material is still difficult.
I made no statement over whether that situation is preferable or not. It's a simple economic fact of the laws of supply and demand.
No, at most it's a physical fact, and this supposed simplicity only results from you shifting between different meanings and topics without noticing. You most certainly did make claims about what is preferable when you claimed that certain actions "attempting to control information" would be futile.
You seem to have a rather naive belief that it's possible to have a society where adherence to a set of rules is close to 100%, that is also known as a totalitarian society.
Er
The idea that the act of copying a file would ever be thought of as anything more than trivial is risible.
And what would you say to someone who said "The idea that the act of stealing something the victim doesn't really need would ever be thought of as anything more than trivial is risible." ? Got it? Okay, take that argument, and apply it to what you said above.
I disagree. People are still going to buy books, cds and dvds...the difference would be that you'd have a choice of which company to buy it from, so they would be a lot cheaper.
Yes, they would still buy books, and yes they would be a lot cheaper. There also would be very little new content after you switched to such a system as people would write purely as a hobby and only be able to get it to you if they could *reach* you amidst the crap that's out there and could afford their production costs, because anyone can copy their works without compensating the author or his agent. (before you mention blogs, slashdot comments, etc., those exist with or without copyright. What would not exist is the kind of stuff that requires monetary compensation to get people to do, and is of the quality that people would spend their own money on.)
The difference I see is that if I have a car, and you take it from me, then I have lost a car. This is true whether there is a law against it or not. If, however, I buy some information from you and then give a copy to a friend, then it's only meaningful to say you've lost something if a law exists against my copying. If there's no law there, then you never had anything to lose in the first place. Does that make sense?
Well, let's compare apples to apples here. From your post:
with law against copying -> I "lost something" when you copied me.
without law against copying -> I "lost nothing" when you copied me.
with law against theft -> I "lost something" when you stole my car.
without law against theft -> I "lost something" when you stole my car. (! -- see below)
That is the distinction you make. But does the last hold? If there is no law against theft, you never "had" a car in the sense of owning it. You may have driven it. You may have located it in your garage or someone elses when not in use. But you didn't own it because the law granted you no higher claim on it than others. You lost nothing when I "stole" your car -- you *possessed* everything you could possess by force both before and after. You still have access -- you just have to (in violating no law) take it back.
So I don't see your distinction as holding up. If people generally recognize IP as being valid, I forgo opportunities in you misappropriating "my" idea. If people generally recognize physical property rights as being valid, I forgo opportunities in you misappropriating "my" car. (The above reasoning seems odd, but that stems from the definition of "lose" you were using in the context of ideas. If you carry that through, I believe your distinction vanishes.)
I'm not sure I can reply without copying what I've said before. You can't really be serious. No one is this dense.
1: I'm not remotely dishonest, I did point out originally that all digital information is inherently valueless but the article is about music, hence my focus.
You realized your point applied to more than record companies, yet singled out record companies because they were the most reviled group in that set, when you should have used a term encompassing all intellectual-work-related goods.
2: They're not my rules. They are economic facts of life for all commodities.
No, like I've said in several posts you've tritely dismissed, what rules people adhere to certainly *does* affect the difficulty, and thus economic value, of acquiring specific goods. To the extent that you wanted people in society, and their law enforcers, to adhere to a *different* rule set, you were proposing "your rules", and so I mentioned "your rules" to refer to this. You seem to be deliberately confusing the very separate issues of:
1) whether it *is* easy to get access to intellectual works in digital form
2) whether it would be preferable for people to make certain attempts at access more difficult
I've already explained, regarding 1), that such difficulty is not inherent the class of (informational/intellectual) goods, but depends on what rules people will respect. I've already explaiend, regarding 2), that what is preferable affects what kind of system you should be advocating a transition toward. Whenever you're cornered on one, you switch to the other. I recommend waiting a minute or two after reading to make sure you got the poster's point.
Don't be dense. If, as I explained twice to you already in the posts of mine you did read, anyone distributing an unofficial copy of Mariah Carey's tune were regarded by almost everyone the way they currently regard pedophiles, YES, you would damn well have a difficult time distributing it (due to it being reported and shut down by the authorities), on the same basis that pedophiles have difficulty distributing their goods. If, as I explained twice to you already in the posts of mine you did read, nobody had any qualms about taking the property you're standing in front of with a big stick, the big stick wouldn't do you much good against the onslaught.
Let's see if on your fourth post you can respond to this point?
Er, that was my point. Read it again.
If you can't find a way to make a profit is it really the roll of the government to step in with draconian measures to create a market for you?
First of all, I don't think it's so much about "not being able to find a way to make a profit producing content" as much as "there is no way to make a profit producing content" (if there were no IP at all). And second, how is enforcement of regular property rights not equally "draconian"?
This is a real technical limitation, not an artificially-imposed one.
Really? Isn't there an optimal architecture they "could" have used? To the extent that they deliberately avoided doing so in order to have incompatible systems, wouldn't that count as a sort of DRM? A sort of "crippleware"?
Nice thinking inside the box there.. /film / etc from greater than 7 years ago into public domain.
Here is what they should do
1) make all art copyrights last 7 years.
2) release all music
Okay, but that solution *still* involves copyright, and would *still* involve people violating it, and would *still* lead to record companies, etc. taking anti-piracy measures that you would *still* object to.
The drug companies dont seem to have a problem making billions of dollars on 7 year expiring patents.
True, if you mean 7 years after FDA approval. Since the clock starts ticking before the trials start, they need a longer patent to get seven years of (monopoly) sales.
Humans expressing themselves through art will not end because no one pays for it. Not to claim art, but these comments here are proof of that. No one is paying me to write on this fourm and yet I do it anyways. An artist needs to create as a slashdot poster needs to comment.
Wow, good thing I wasn't stupid enough to claim otherwise! (Except for the blanket claim that artists produce exactly the same amount, irrespective of any compensation they get -- that's just stupid. I know you didn't say that outright, but you're hinting at it with the bit that artists "need" to create -- even if true, it says nothing about how much.)
Yes, it does. Publishing companies, software houses.
... like I said last time. And protecting "intellectual property" is only difficult to the extent that there is not broad support for it ... like I also said last time. Will you respond to this point the next time you post?
Ah. So you agree then, it was a tad dishonest to portray the potential losers under your ideal rules as being merely "record companies".
The publishing companies still have some life in that it's still better to have and read a real physical book than it is to read an ebook.
Er, no. Publishers are filters for content as much as printers. Take away their right to the content, and they won't filter for it -- they'll just be printers for hire.
No sorry, they aren't. In terms of physical property, it is the limited supply which gives it value.
You're not listening. It's the limited supply AND THE FACT THAT YOU CAN ACTUALLY USE THAT SUPPLY that gives it value. Like I said in the previous post, if nobody respected physical property rights, physical goods would have near zero value because your ability to use them would be so tenuous.
There is no such thing as inherent value, there is only the market value which is the result of supply and demand.
I never professed or implied support for an intrinsic value theory.
It has nothing to do with respect for property rights whether they are intellectual or physical. People attempt to retain their value which is relatively simple with something which has a limited supply like a physical object, but impossible with information which has an infinite supply. Really you can try all you like, but as I said, you'll lose, and you'll waste a load of money in the process.
Please read my previous post again. Protecting the value of physical objects is only "relatively simple" because of the broad support for property rights in those physical goods
Yeah, but if those rivals would actually COOPERATE instead of trying to SCREW CUSTOMERS out of their fair use rights, the game disc would play on BOTH of them. They DELIBERATELY avoid this because they're EVIL, right?
Sorry, them's the breaks, the record companies lost the instant they started producing digital information.
Who's focusing on record companies? Your comment applies just as well to book-writers, programmers, etc etc etc.
Forget "should" and right or wrong, it's pure economics. It's like complaining about gravity or the speed of light.
Well...no. Concerns about what outcomes are acceptable, combined with knowledge of economics, is what you need in order to know what rules you ar comfortable with.
Digital information is trivially copyable, that's a simple statement of fact. All it takes is a single copy to be distributed exponentially. The cost or value of the bit of digital information essentially works out at zero. Copyrights, laws, even digital rights management systems don't change that economic fact of life. You can complain, threaten, sue, encrypt, legislate, tear at your hair as much as you like but you absolutely will lose to that economic reality.
Well... again, no. It all depends on how people in society regard those rights. If people viewed IP violators like pedophiles, it would not be a "trivially" easy to distribute copies. (Before you object with some simplistic remark like "huh huh, and if my aunt had balls...", think about what I'm actually trying to prove with the previous statement.) Similarly, if people had zero respect for physical property rights, physical goods would have no value, because people could, and would, swipe them without a second though. So these supposed economic realities you're referencing are far less absolute than you make them out to be.
The freedom parent is talking about violating is the freedom to *listen* to the music they just paid for in the way that they want. If they didn't buy the right to listen to the music (with the usual license stipulation about private use), then what the heck did they just buy? Copyright does not grant a company the right to technologically negate the fair use rights also included in the copyright bargain. If it did, then it is a license to sell snake oil that people can't even drink.
So do you think your rights are being violated when you can't play your GameCube games on your PS2?
What you seem to want is the right to copy it onto every format, even though you know this makes it difficult for them to then enforce their copyright.
So, it should be impossible for anyone to actually make money from producing this content that is then distributed for near-zero cost?
I believe the way Google's approach differs from traditional "sign me up for telespamming" crap is that with Google, the telemarketers don't get your personal information and they have to route their calls through Google without knowing anything about you, so if you ask to be removed they really can't contact you anymore. Now, if you expect Google to sell out and betray your trust, *then* it could be a problem. (I don't think they would, as they have too much to lose.)
I think you made a lot of points better than I did, but you made one I deliberately avoided:
In addition, why should I pay into the fund when the music will be free anyway?
While your other objections are true, the model the GP described actually partly circumvents the "free rider"/ no-marginal-benefit-to-marginal-contribution (that attaches to e.g. voting) in that every dollar you contribute slightly hastens the release date of the album, meaning your contribution does count.
If anyone could freely copy/use/alter digital music then much more value would be placed on *production* and *performance* of music than on *distribution* of music, which is as it should be.
Well, that isn't quite as it should be. Distribution is much more important than you make it out to be. Your favorite artist -- how did you hear about him/her? There is TONS of crap out there. How do you find the diamonds? You do not have the time to sift through all the garbage. And I think you're wrong about production -- if you can't draw a return from copyright, you can't capture any value off the production, only the easily copiable performance.
Artists would make money from concerts and sponsorships, as well as via commissions for new works. If Britney Spears promised to release a new album free to the world as soon as her fans had placed a minimum of $15 million into escrow, millions of teenage girls would put anywhere from $0.10 to $10 into the fund, the world would get more Spears (yeehaw...) and Spears would get $15 million.
I'm familiar with that idea, but sorry, but that's extremely wishful thinking. Most of them don't have their own money. Mommy will buy them a CD, but she won't make a contribution for them to that fund. Plus, I can imagine the geek reaction: "artist extorts money to produce next CD". I would point out it only works for artists that have *already* separated themselves from the chaff, but you anticipated that:
She'd have no distribution costs (sites would gladly trade bandwidth for eyeballs, not to mention the P2P channels), so the only thing she'd have to take out is production costs, which wouldn't be *nearly* as high as now.
What? Why would this affect production costs?
And she could proceed to trot around the nation doing concerts, just like she does now, and keep more of those profits too. Artists who are not Spears, or as popular as Spears, need to get popular by being good in concert and/or good in marketing, and/or willing to sign deals with the lesser devils that would replace the greater devils of today's industry. Variety would increase, live concerts would abound... what a wonderful world it would be.
Er, no. Wishful thinking is not an argument.
Look, there's a lot of stuff about copyright I don't like either, and I'm not really as pro-IP as I might have come off. But the consequencees of removing these rights is not insigificant, and anyone wanting to remove them should be aware of the costs.
I'd like to violate every agreement I make for short-term benefit too, but I don't justify such desires on grounds of "freedom".
They produce the music so they can make a profit. I'm sure it would be great if everyone worked for free, but they don't.
The produce it knowing that they can sell it with certain conditions attached. Then they sell it with those conditions attached. Then people start to claim their "freedom" is being violated, and that they have the right to unilaterally violate those conditions.
Sure, music companies "should" just "trust" people not to give it away to everyone, really, they can't.
So what should they do? Just not make music for profit? Or, you accept that the artist "deserves" a cut proportional to listeners, but that the "record companies" take "too much". Do you know how difficult, and what a crapshoot it is, to promote an artist?
I'm not trying to troll. What should an artist and record company do?
The purpose of publishing a paper is not to boost the authors' egos. It's to convey ideas to other people. A paper which does not communicate concepts clearly does not deserve to be published.
... why couldn't he just spell this part out stepwise instead of being so verbose" and also complained that if you make the proof too easy to understand, it won't get accepted.
Bingo. That's exactly the problem. When I first started in grad school (mechanical engineering), I found the papers very difficult to understand, and I thought it was a problem in my knowledge. But then when I had someone else explain it to me, I was like, "uh, couldn't they have just said [simpler version]" and my adviser politely explained how something that looks too easy won't look novel and notable enough to publish.
In a lecture from a math professor (Erdos number 1), I heard exactly the same thing. He said it takes him a long time to review a submission, because he has to say, "er, okay, how did he get from here to here
You really have to wonder what this is supposed to accomplish. Are you less smart because you got more people to understand your idea? (I've always thought that if you can't explain what you did to a reasonably intelligent layman, given enough time, you don't understand it yourself.)
I was actually thinking about making a game like this, recently. I didn't know what the name for that class of games would be. I was thinking the right term would be "causal" (not casual -- read it again) games. That is, you can't do something that you wouldn't have known you could do.
Let me give an example: say in some game, there's some hidden treasure. But if you've beaten the game before, when you fire it up the first time, you go *right there* and get the treasure, since you know where it is. One way around this is for developers to make it so if you dig there before being told about it, nothing's there. But that strikes me as unfair.
So in a causal game, what would happen is that the treasure would be in a random, non-obvious spot. Every place you search, you have a miniscule probability of finding it. And every place you unsuccessfully dig, you "collapse the probability bubble" so that the only possible locations are now "somewhere else". And then here's the kicker -- if you actually do hit on the treasure, but reload without saving, and look there again -- it probably won't be there. (And obviously, the previous game's location of the treasure wouldn't help either.)
This could extend to plot elements -- maybe that guy betrays you this time, maybe he doesn't. Maybe taking his armor off before the big battle weakens you, maybe he was about to betray you and it was a good idea. Each game is genuinely different.
You could practice this on a small scale, with e.g. the card game hearts. The computer doesn't actually "decide" which opponent has which cards until it plays them, and it only has to be consistent with its previous revelations. (i.e., if it did't play a club when you led a club, it won't play a club on any later turn.)