I would be willing to bet that most people do not know about bookmarks, and just search Google (or whatever their favorite search engine is) whenever they want to go to a website. There is probably a significant percentage of people who enter domain names into Google when they want to visit the website at that domain.
Except that investors routinely bet more than they have, and in fact, this is a fundamental tenet of a modern economy. This is how banks manage to make money; they loan out money they do not technically have, with the understanding that in most cases they will get it back with a profit. Many businesses operate in this way, taking out loans for periodically required large investments (like fertilizer and fuel for a farm), making enough of a profit to repay the loan, with interest, and pay their employees, but not enough of a profit to stop the loan cycle. In general, it is OK to take these risks...
The real issue is determining what level of risk is too high. If a bank issues too many loans, and there is a difficult economic year, the bank may find itself short of money to issue when you make a withdrawal; usually this means the bank will take a loan to cover its position, but if all the banks are in the same position, there is a financial crisis. The recent crisis happened, in part, because of the issuing of derivatives on loans -- contracts that amount to an insurance policy on loans -- which substantially magnified the impact of declining housing prices (because the insurance policies were being paid out too quickly, and the companies that issued them found themselves unable to cover their positions). If you are wondering how such a thing could happen in a country where the government decides the maximum amount of money banks can loan out, the answer is that the derivatives (credit default swaps) were not being regulated in any meaningful way.
The moral of the story? Relying on high risk investments as a major source of income is a stupid idea. High risk investments should constitute a small fraction of revenue, and should be backed up by lower risk investments.
Yes, I am sure that barring searching engines from listing your headlines will do wonders for your revenue. It's not like your competitors are allowing those results or anything like that! Everyone knows that your customers will go to your websites without any help from search engines!
As for fair use? Yeah, it's not like news websites ever make use of that doctrine.
My point was that it is very easy to be convicted of a "sexual offense" without actually doing something wrong, and that in some states that even includes "sex with a minor." The GP said he would be proud to murder sex offenders, and that he is not ashamed to call for their executions. My point was that the "sex offender" label is frequently misapplied, and that even if you look up the crime someone committed, the statutes have become so complex that it could be difficult to determine what the actual circumstances are.
It has nothing to do with being a man or a woman. It has to do with being a citizen in a society where "sex offender" means a mark for life, where people violently hate "sex offenders," and where teenagers who did nothing wrong can be convicted of "sex offenses." No, the laws do not apply to me, but I still have to live in a society where people are convicted under those laws.
Of course, what you libertarians fail to mention is that the banking sector was regulated for decades following the great depression, which had been largely caused by banks, and that we then deregulated the banks, which unsurprisingly led to this current catastrophe. The government has, once again, been forced to clean up after a bunch of private banks nearly ruined the entire country; yes, the government does a better job managing the banking system than the bankers themselves do. Nobody is talking about a complete takeover of the banks, just enough oversight and regulation to prevent them from destroying our economy.
The government regulates the energy sector, and look at what we have: a system that has not imploded on itself, the way the banks nearly did. Sounds like a pretty solid strategy to me -- and given the attacks in Brazil, it sounds like the government should add some new regulations to the list for energy companies, in the interest of national security.
The person who directed that virus to download child pornography probably just wanted to cover his ass and download some child pornography without getting caught by the feds. Not the brightest move, but someone was bound to try it.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, someone else will probably realize that by toning it down a bit (e.g. visit the sites at a more human rate), they could frame their enemies/rivals. This is sounding more and more like the plot of a south park episode.
So? We keep repeating that correlation does not imply causation because it really does not. People also eat breakfast before paying for hookers, so why not demand that breakfast be made illegal? Child abusers breath air before abusing children -- so should we claim that breathing is an indication that someone will abuse children?
"Legalising child porn legitimises child abuse,"
Nobody is talking about legalizing child pornography in general; the OP was talkign about legalizing the possession of child pornography. What your post conveniently ignores is the reality of our time: someone can obtain child pornography without encouraging its creation in any way. Someone can wind up obtaining child pornography without realizing it. Some teenagers unwittingly make pornographic images of themselves available on the Internet, and sometimes without encouragement. We live in an age where the simple possession of child pornography is not an indication that someone is dangerous or supports dangerous people, and certainly not an indication that they are abusing children.
Except, of course, that it is difficult to even define who is or is not a predator, pedophile, or criminal. Here is a perfect example for you: in my home state, New York, the law states that it is illegal to have sex with someone who is under the age of 17, and if you do, it is a misdemeanor if they are older than 15 if you are older than 18 but younger than 21, a felony if they are 15 or younger and you are 18 or older, a misdemeanor if they are 13 or older and you are younger than 18, and a felony if they are younger than 11 regardless of your age.
Man, that is complicated. If someone was convicted of felony statutory rape in New York, I would want to know which of the above was the actual crime before I even considered any punishment, let alone the death penalty. I do not even know what happens if the victim was 12 and the perpetrator was under 18; that is defined in a different section of the law. There is also the fantastic reality that if you have a 17 year old lover in New York, that is legal, but you cannot legally produce any erotic photographs or videos of your lover -- that would be a felony, again under a completely separate section of the law (and before you say, "well, people should not have 17 year old lovers," bear in mind that what I said applies to an 18 year old -- or do you think that is a death-penalty deserving crime as well?).
Before you jump to conclusions about sex offenders, perhaps you should first ask, "who is being classified as a sex offender?" In many cases, it is and absurd classification to carry, and worse yet, it is a classification that never gets removed from their record.
Of course, the GP used "innocent" to mean "person who does not pose any threat or danger to society, in any way," and not, "person who did not break the law." It is rapidly becoming impossible to avoid breaking the law, with so many laws on the books. Most people probably do not know more than 10 actual laws, let alone all of the more than 10000 federal statutes on the books (and thousands more at the state level); how could they be expected to avoid breaking laws they do not even know exist?
Oh, is that so? So, trust fund babies are the winners of the game, and hard working factory employees are the losers. Sounds like a great world to live in.
So you are basically saying that only the wealthy should have access to life saving procedures? That is, after all, how scarcity works -- if something is scarce and in high demand, only wealthier people are able to get it. Apply that principle to healthcare, and behold! Only wealthy people should have doctors saving their lives.
Yes, the markets work wonders for the medical practice.
Who produces more for society: a factory worker who puts cars together, or an investor who makes money by short selling and dealing in derivatives? Now, who is more likely to afford a heart transplant?
Idiocy is bad for society, as I am sure you have noticed. A world in which I need to get permission from the authors every time I was to read a book is not a world I want to live in. A world in which I am unable to share a book with a friend is not a world I want to live in. Those are the most mild affects of DRM -- Lulu even suggests that authors could use DRM to restrict the number of times you can read a book:
Maybe the US will finally join the rest of the industrialized world in actually providing medical care to its citizens, instead of taking the, "find your own care" attitude.
Sounds like a good time to find a new business model for books. You know, there was a sweeping technological change over the past 30 years, and technological changes usually force the marketplace for affected goods and services to change in turn?
"Now they have an extra option to offer people their work"
No, now they have an extra option to restrict access to their work. Instead of making the work more available to their readers, DRM makes it less available. That is a bad thing for society, and authors who care about such things should actively resist DRM -- by refusing to have Lulu be their publisher.
"Most people don't care about DRM at all, so what is the problem?"
Most people do not care about the Bald Eagle, so what was the problem with DDT? Most people do not care about anything at all: complete apathy is the norm these days. Just pointing to the fact that most people do not care about a problem does not make it any less of a problem.
Re:Making customers pay for DRM?
on
Lulu Introduces DRM
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Unless, of course, the DRM restricted version is the only one that is available. Then you do not see a price difference for difference versions of the book, you see a price difference for different books -- pretty standard -- and do not feel the hurt of the restrictions until after the sale.
Re:Just to start us off with a car analogy...
on
Lulu Introduces DRM
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· Score: 1
DRM is not a tool, it is an attempt to maintain the old way of life for publishers. You know, back in the days when the majority of people could not make copies of a creative works? Now we live in an age where anyone can make a copy of a creative work, spending very little money in the process; instead of finding a new business model that is appropriate for that new reality, publishers opted instead to make it harder than ever to share a creative work with a friend.
Instead of the Internet ushering in a golden age of information availability, it is beginning to be used to make information less available than it used to be, and DRM is fundamental to that trend. Remind me, how can DRM be used in a constructive manner?
If we followed that philosophy, we would not be making a stand against DRM. There is a big difference between passively resisting DRM as you suggested, and actively resisting by refusing to do business with a company that is promoting it.
There are other ways to make money. Unless, of course, you can prove to me that the only way to make money in the publishing world is to restrict the ability to read and share.
It is not just you, the headline is really bad. However, this is a good time to point out that McCartny and EMI are shooting themselves in the foot by not making the Beatles catalog available online. By actively fighting against all attempts to make a copyright friendly online distribution of the Beatles, they are just encouraging people to look at peer to peer for the music. If they do not get off their high horse and start adapting to the changing times, they are going to find themselves in a very bad position when everyone thinks that download from peer to peer is perfectly fine (almost there already) and forget that there ever was a time when people purchased music on discs (slowly getting there too; people are awfully forgetful).
Yes, I know that there are more issues at play here, but really, the copyright holders are at fault, and nobody else.
"PDF (not sure how "open" PDF really is but its pretty universal)"
PDF is very open -- although there are still extensions that are difficult to work with without proprietary software. As an electronic document medium, PDF is pretty much what I demand from people who send me formatted documents; it is, in my opinion, something of a lingua franca for formatted documents. There is also DVI, though it is not as popular, and if all else fails, Postscript (which can, in the worst case, simple be sent to a printer).
"There isn't a single thing that governments really need that isn't open or can be created for less cost than contracting it to proprietary vendors."
True, but sadly, it is not something we will see here in America. Proprietary software is so deeply ingrained in our government, and corporate interests are so powerful, that I would be very impressed if it could all be shaken off within my lifetime. Further compounding the problem is the level of understanding of technology that key decision makers seem to have, which is a level that can only be described as "complete ineptitude."
Funny, my Dell notebook has not failed me once since I bought it. Why should I pay inflated prices for (at best) equally reliable hardware from Apple? I do not personally want to run OS X (proprietary), but I know plenty of people who do and who really cannot afford the ridiculous prices Apple is demanding for its hardware. OS X is a decent operating system; why should people be forced to pay for a specially branded computer just so they can run that system?
I understand that Apple is trying to create an artificial market where it can thrive, but do not confuse that with "sensible." I know that Apple does not give a damn about people who do not want to spend money on the whole "Apple package," but those people do actually exist.
Declaring that loading booting up OS X on a non-Mac computer is copyright infringement is attacking hobbyists, and if the Apples wins the case, it will mean that hobbyists are engaging in illegal activity. What reason is there to believe that Apple would not attack these hobbyists? Have we already forgotten how TI attacked the graphing calculator hobbyists? Or how Apple attacked bloggers who speculated about Apple's future products? Attacking hackintosh hobbyists would not be unprecedented, and it would be completely unsurprising given Apple's history.
Your opinion of Apple's products is not really relevant to whether or not Apple's behavior is acceptable, ethical, or fair. I like some of the soft drinks Coca Cola makes, but guess what? Coca Cola engages in plenty of questionable, unacceptable, and completely unethical practices, and the quality of their products is in no way related to this practices. Apple's product quality is not related to whether or not they undermine hobbyists, attack hackintoshes, and try to stamp out companies like Psystar, and you can like Apple products and still agree that their legal actions against Psystar are uncalled for and unjustifiable.
No, what Psystar is doing is the equivalent of building a bookshelf that you can put your book on. A bookshelf that, incredibly, does not have Apple's logo on it! What a tragedy!
Slashdot Mirror
I would be willing to bet that most people do not know about bookmarks, and just search Google (or whatever their favorite search engine is) whenever they want to go to a website. There is probably a significant percentage of people who enter domain names into Google when they want to visit the website at that domain.
Except that investors routinely bet more than they have, and in fact, this is a fundamental tenet of a modern economy. This is how banks manage to make money; they loan out money they do not technically have, with the understanding that in most cases they will get it back with a profit. Many businesses operate in this way, taking out loans for periodically required large investments (like fertilizer and fuel for a farm), making enough of a profit to repay the loan, with interest, and pay their employees, but not enough of a profit to stop the loan cycle. In general, it is OK to take these risks...
The real issue is determining what level of risk is too high. If a bank issues too many loans, and there is a difficult economic year, the bank may find itself short of money to issue when you make a withdrawal; usually this means the bank will take a loan to cover its position, but if all the banks are in the same position, there is a financial crisis. The recent crisis happened, in part, because of the issuing of derivatives on loans -- contracts that amount to an insurance policy on loans -- which substantially magnified the impact of declining housing prices (because the insurance policies were being paid out too quickly, and the companies that issued them found themselves unable to cover their positions). If you are wondering how such a thing could happen in a country where the government decides the maximum amount of money banks can loan out, the answer is that the derivatives (credit default swaps) were not being regulated in any meaningful way.
The moral of the story? Relying on high risk investments as a major source of income is a stupid idea. High risk investments should constitute a small fraction of revenue, and should be backed up by lower risk investments.
Yes, I am sure that barring searching engines from listing your headlines will do wonders for your revenue. It's not like your competitors are allowing those results or anything like that! Everyone knows that your customers will go to your websites without any help from search engines!
As for fair use? Yeah, it's not like news websites ever make use of that doctrine.
My point was that it is very easy to be convicted of a "sexual offense" without actually doing something wrong, and that in some states that even includes "sex with a minor." The GP said he would be proud to murder sex offenders, and that he is not ashamed to call for their executions. My point was that the "sex offender" label is frequently misapplied, and that even if you look up the crime someone committed, the statutes have become so complex that it could be difficult to determine what the actual circumstances are.
It has nothing to do with being a man or a woman. It has to do with being a citizen in a society where "sex offender" means a mark for life, where people violently hate "sex offenders," and where teenagers who did nothing wrong can be convicted of "sex offenses." No, the laws do not apply to me, but I still have to live in a society where people are convicted under those laws.
Of course, what you libertarians fail to mention is that the banking sector was regulated for decades following the great depression, which had been largely caused by banks, and that we then deregulated the banks, which unsurprisingly led to this current catastrophe. The government has, once again, been forced to clean up after a bunch of private banks nearly ruined the entire country; yes, the government does a better job managing the banking system than the bankers themselves do. Nobody is talking about a complete takeover of the banks, just enough oversight and regulation to prevent them from destroying our economy.
The government regulates the energy sector, and look at what we have: a system that has not imploded on itself, the way the banks nearly did. Sounds like a pretty solid strategy to me -- and given the attacks in Brazil, it sounds like the government should add some new regulations to the list for energy companies, in the interest of national security.
The person who directed that virus to download child pornography probably just wanted to cover his ass and download some child pornography without getting caught by the feds. Not the brightest move, but someone was bound to try it.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, someone else will probably realize that by toning it down a bit (e.g. visit the sites at a more human rate), they could frame their enemies/rivals. This is sounding more and more like the plot of a south park episode.
"People download porn and pay for hookers"
So? We keep repeating that correlation does not imply causation because it really does not. People also eat breakfast before paying for hookers, so why not demand that breakfast be made illegal? Child abusers breath air before abusing children -- so should we claim that breathing is an indication that someone will abuse children?
"Legalising child porn legitimises child abuse,"
Nobody is talking about legalizing child pornography in general; the OP was talkign about legalizing the possession of child pornography. What your post conveniently ignores is the reality of our time: someone can obtain child pornography without encouraging its creation in any way. Someone can wind up obtaining child pornography without realizing it. Some teenagers unwittingly make pornographic images of themselves available on the Internet, and sometimes without encouragement. We live in an age where the simple possession of child pornography is not an indication that someone is dangerous or supports dangerous people, and certainly not an indication that they are abusing children.
Except, of course, that it is difficult to even define who is or is not a predator, pedophile, or criminal. Here is a perfect example for you: in my home state, New York, the law states that it is illegal to have sex with someone who is under the age of 17, and if you do, it is a misdemeanor if they are older than 15 if you are older than 18 but younger than 21, a felony if they are 15 or younger and you are 18 or older, a misdemeanor if they are 13 or older and you are younger than 18, and a felony if they are younger than 11 regardless of your age.
Man, that is complicated. If someone was convicted of felony statutory rape in New York, I would want to know which of the above was the actual crime before I even considered any punishment, let alone the death penalty. I do not even know what happens if the victim was 12 and the perpetrator was under 18; that is defined in a different section of the law. There is also the fantastic reality that if you have a 17 year old lover in New York, that is legal, but you cannot legally produce any erotic photographs or videos of your lover -- that would be a felony, again under a completely separate section of the law (and before you say, "well, people should not have 17 year old lovers," bear in mind that what I said applies to an 18 year old -- or do you think that is a death-penalty deserving crime as well?).
Before you jump to conclusions about sex offenders, perhaps you should first ask, "who is being classified as a sex offender?" In many cases, it is and absurd classification to carry, and worse yet, it is a classification that never gets removed from their record.
Of course, the GP used "innocent" to mean "person who does not pose any threat or danger to society, in any way," and not, "person who did not break the law." It is rapidly becoming impossible to avoid breaking the law, with so many laws on the books. Most people probably do not know more than 10 actual laws, let alone all of the more than 10000 federal statutes on the books (and thousands more at the state level); how could they be expected to avoid breaking laws they do not even know exist?
Oh, is that so? So, trust fund babies are the winners of the game, and hard working factory employees are the losers. Sounds like a great world to live in.
So you are basically saying that only the wealthy should have access to life saving procedures? That is, after all, how scarcity works -- if something is scarce and in high demand, only wealthier people are able to get it. Apply that principle to healthcare, and behold! Only wealthy people should have doctors saving their lives.
Yes, the markets work wonders for the medical practice.
Who produces more for society: a factory worker who puts cars together, or an investor who makes money by short selling and dealing in derivatives? Now, who is more likely to afford a heart transplant?
Idiocy is bad for society, as I am sure you have noticed. A world in which I need to get permission from the authors every time I was to read a book is not a world I want to live in. A world in which I am unable to share a book with a friend is not a world I want to live in. Those are the most mild affects of DRM -- Lulu even suggests that authors could use DRM to restrict the number of times you can read a book:
http://www.lulu.com/en/help/drm/?cid=us_ebk
The idiocy of the authors and of Lulu is detrimental to society -- and should be opposed as vigorously as possible.
Maybe the US will finally join the rest of the industrialized world in actually providing medical care to its citizens, instead of taking the, "find your own care" attitude.
"diminishing the profits from their hard work"
Sounds like a good time to find a new business model for books. You know, there was a sweeping technological change over the past 30 years, and technological changes usually force the marketplace for affected goods and services to change in turn?
"Now they have an extra option to offer people their work"
No, now they have an extra option to restrict access to their work. Instead of making the work more available to their readers, DRM makes it less available. That is a bad thing for society, and authors who care about such things should actively resist DRM -- by refusing to have Lulu be their publisher.
"Most people don't care about DRM at all, so what is the problem?"
Most people do not care about the Bald Eagle, so what was the problem with DDT? Most people do not care about anything at all: complete apathy is the norm these days. Just pointing to the fact that most people do not care about a problem does not make it any less of a problem.
Unless, of course, the DRM restricted version is the only one that is available. Then you do not see a price difference for difference versions of the book, you see a price difference for different books -- pretty standard -- and do not feel the hurt of the restrictions until after the sale.
DRM is not a tool, it is an attempt to maintain the old way of life for publishers. You know, back in the days when the majority of people could not make copies of a creative works? Now we live in an age where anyone can make a copy of a creative work, spending very little money in the process; instead of finding a new business model that is appropriate for that new reality, publishers opted instead to make it harder than ever to share a creative work with a friend.
Instead of the Internet ushering in a golden age of information availability, it is beginning to be used to make information less available than it used to be, and DRM is fundamental to that trend. Remind me, how can DRM be used in a constructive manner?
If we followed that philosophy, we would not be making a stand against DRM. There is a big difference between passively resisting DRM as you suggested, and actively resisting by refusing to do business with a company that is promoting it.
There are other ways to make money. Unless, of course, you can prove to me that the only way to make money in the publishing world is to restrict the ability to read and share.
It is not just you, the headline is really bad. However, this is a good time to point out that McCartny and EMI are shooting themselves in the foot by not making the Beatles catalog available online. By actively fighting against all attempts to make a copyright friendly online distribution of the Beatles, they are just encouraging people to look at peer to peer for the music. If they do not get off their high horse and start adapting to the changing times, they are going to find themselves in a very bad position when everyone thinks that download from peer to peer is perfectly fine (almost there already) and forget that there ever was a time when people purchased music on discs (slowly getting there too; people are awfully forgetful).
Yes, I know that there are more issues at play here, but really, the copyright holders are at fault, and nobody else.
"PDF (not sure how "open" PDF really is but its pretty universal)"
PDF is very open -- although there are still extensions that are difficult to work with without proprietary software. As an electronic document medium, PDF is pretty much what I demand from people who send me formatted documents; it is, in my opinion, something of a lingua franca for formatted documents. There is also DVI, though it is not as popular, and if all else fails, Postscript (which can, in the worst case, simple be sent to a printer).
"There isn't a single thing that governments really need that isn't open or can be created for less cost than contracting it to proprietary vendors."
True, but sadly, it is not something we will see here in America. Proprietary software is so deeply ingrained in our government, and corporate interests are so powerful, that I would be very impressed if it could all be shaken off within my lifetime. Further compounding the problem is the level of understanding of technology that key decision makers seem to have, which is a level that can only be described as "complete ineptitude."
Funny, my Dell notebook has not failed me once since I bought it. Why should I pay inflated prices for (at best) equally reliable hardware from Apple? I do not personally want to run OS X (proprietary), but I know plenty of people who do and who really cannot afford the ridiculous prices Apple is demanding for its hardware. OS X is a decent operating system; why should people be forced to pay for a specially branded computer just so they can run that system?
I understand that Apple is trying to create an artificial market where it can thrive, but do not confuse that with "sensible." I know that Apple does not give a damn about people who do not want to spend money on the whole "Apple package," but those people do actually exist.
Declaring that loading booting up OS X on a non-Mac computer is copyright infringement is attacking hobbyists, and if the Apples wins the case, it will mean that hobbyists are engaging in illegal activity. What reason is there to believe that Apple would not attack these hobbyists? Have we already forgotten how TI attacked the graphing calculator hobbyists? Or how Apple attacked bloggers who speculated about Apple's future products? Attacking hackintosh hobbyists would not be unprecedented, and it would be completely unsurprising given Apple's history.
Your opinion of Apple's products is not really relevant to whether or not Apple's behavior is acceptable, ethical, or fair. I like some of the soft drinks Coca Cola makes, but guess what? Coca Cola engages in plenty of questionable, unacceptable, and completely unethical practices, and the quality of their products is in no way related to this practices. Apple's product quality is not related to whether or not they undermine hobbyists, attack hackintoshes, and try to stamp out companies like Psystar, and you can like Apple products and still agree that their legal actions against Psystar are uncalled for and unjustifiable.
No, what Psystar is doing is the equivalent of building a bookshelf that you can put your book on. A bookshelf that, incredibly, does not have Apple's logo on it! What a tragedy!