I agree with your analysis of the traditional view and the US Constitution. However, states have repeatedly ceded their authority to the Federal Government. I blame the Federal Income tax. My state taxes are roughly one half that of my federal taxes. If the situation were reversed, the federal gov't wouldn't have nearly as much power over the state governments.
Consider yourself lucky. In Australia, the federal government was took income tax powers a) as an emergency measure to fund WWII b) as a result of some delightful constitutional interpretation by the High Court of Australia, the members of whom were selected by, wait for it... the federal government (regardless of the left right preference of the justices, their centralist tendencies were rarely in doubt). The states were then beholden to the federal government because the delightful interpretation said that the states could tax anything they liked, it's just that the federal government got their slice first (this is known as the "First Uniform Tax Case" if anyone is interested) as a result every year the states go cap in hand to the federal government for their slice of the national income tax pie to fund such mundane services such as education and hospitals, both of which are the responsibility of the state government. It is a joke!
The only problem I see with this is that some people might not be able to come up with the deposit -- they could use the old, non-anonymous system.
Oh, so anonymity is the privilege of the wealthy, and not the right of the people? How equitable.
For anyone reading/., the replacement cost of a book as a deposit is no impediment to anonymity, but you are so right about the implication for those for whom the library is the key resource, those who almost certainly cannot find the deposit money. It is a very tricky problem, I see that it is actually two issues. First access to resources within the library premises. In this case a deposit really shouldn't be an issue since we should be able to "secure" the book/computer/whatever to the premises in an acceptable way whilst retaining anonymity. The second issue is when the user is to be granted permission to remove the item from the premises, the nice thing about this is that clearly browsing habits are not a part of this problem and so we are just worried about reading habits.
The library user goes into the system as having borrowed a book, the title is irrelevant, but the item has a due/popularity/price index that is used as the basis for calculating late fees and damages and this index is assigned to the non-anonymous part of the library users account. So in the event of lateness or default then the user can be charged but the actual book remains anonymous. The library can then use it's catlogue system to detect which books are missing from its deposit and replace them. The netting of the cash from the defaulting system and the cost of replacing books should be zero within reasonable tolerance.
This leaves one problem, borrowing a high index book and returning a low index book, wearing the fine and selling the high index book for a relative profit. Well, this is a bit trickier, but certainly the system could ensure that high index book borrowed == high index book returned which would help enourmously and you could go further by encoding the title of the book in a write only cypher with the borrower holding the key, that way the return could be managed exactly without identifying information about the borrower being available (this last bit is probably unnecessary given the way libraries actually work.
Using this approach, libraries can still record the statistics about borrowing habits from the catalogue, they just can't track who did what.
Admittedly the risk here is that the anonymous library user who legitimately loses or damages a high index book might be paying more to replace it (since the index would be inexact to protect correlation between price and title) but that _is_ a reasonable price to pay for anonymity since you know it to start with and it is only for exceptional cases.
"Music is not personal property, it is public property"
Well, actually there is confusion here. There is a legal doctrine called private property, I am willing to concede that is what was meant with "personal property", but what is public property? Regardless, it is still property and the problem with music requires us to think about the meaning of "necessary" and "sufficient" conditions. I choose not to decide what is sufficient for something to be property. That is a quite complex issue. However, one of the necessary conditions for the existence of property is the ability to "exclude" another from the enjoyment of the property. The problem with "media" based property is that by duplication (be it a paper book, or a recording or whatever) one does not exlcude the "owner" of the original. Hence the necessary condition is not met hence there is no property.
It is that simple. Just like other general issues, one does not need to worry about all the complex tests to prove sufficiency when one of the simple necessary conditions is not present.
There is something far more elegant about losing ones money to a pinball machine rather than a video game. The sensuality of hip and hand action beats any video game hands down:-). As for popping a pinnie, I am sorry but clocking a video game just won't cut it.
I quite like some of the modern pinball machines, but give me an open playfield and the cool physics of some late eighties old school anyday. It is truly sad about the decline of pinball. I think that they will come back, they just have to become cool again.
Maybe we just need to get them into a few cool films, can you imagine the irony of sliding some well placed pinnies into the Matrix sequels. Delicious.
Ob. Fav.: Black Rose - Queen of the Seven Seas. The cannon was superb.
Orwell was not foretelling a dystopian future world but describing a post war Britian in the year in which he wrote the book (1948).
It is not about predictive accuracy but the extent to which the criticisms implicit in 1984 were accurate/legitimate. Some argue that he is critiquing the rise of the socialist ethic in Britain by basing the book in the year of the centenery of the Fabian Society.
In this context, looking for "what he missed" is some what futile.
Relevance? Are you saying that nations above a certain size can survive only by denying civil rights to their citizens?
That is probably the most insightful thing you will say all year;-) Now don't get me wrong, I am not apologist for the Chinese, but your question is not so easily answered. Australia for example has enough internal wealth to ensure that every citizen has food and shelter and education and healthcare. And yet they don't. Which of those "elements" are not "civil rights". Might you argue that "freedom of speech" and "equality before the law" and "equal representation" are civil rights. I would probably agree with you, BUT, in the UK access to healthcare is a civil right, it may be crap (in many situations) but the access is there for everyone and so they have an expectation to the right to healthcare. So indeed does most of the EU.
The point I am making is that the set of social attributes laid down as "civil rights" varies from country to country and the determinatio of which attributes become civil rights are a function of many factors, history, development, wealth, neighbours _AND_ population. So, yes, the level of civil rights in china is affected by their population. Is it right for this to be so (ask an unborn female child), probably not, but then they do have a right to food, shelter, education and healthcare.
Maybe it is all swings and roundabouts. I think not, but then I am a product of the "liberal democratic west" so what do I know:-)
Road pricing is an excellent idea. It enables goods and services delivered in areas where demand is high to be priced appropriately. Yes the rich will always be able to afford to travel on expensive roads, but for many reasons (particularly if one has to park once in the expensive area) these areas are off limits to less well off drivers anyway.
The advantage of road pricing (use whatever label you like, congestion charging included) is that it will build the coffers of the public transport infrastructure whilst establishing the correct barrier to entry to reduce the volume of traffic.
I have lived in central London (inside the proposed charging region) for many years and I know of only one person in my circle of friends who drives in central london and that's only because he thinks it important. I know of noone in my circle of professional acquaintances that drives into central london (and many of these are working in middle to upper management in the financial industry). It is just not sane to drive into central london. People who think they need to should be made to pay extortionately (with the obvious exception of PT and anyone who must for reasons they cannot control, disability for example). Because they don't really.
Two things in addition. The tube network is, in comparison to some of the cities I know, actually very good (when it works). The problem is the incredible volume of passengers compared to the infrastructure. Any subway system should be compared with moscow when looking at the path for improvement and London's problem is two fold. The way to increase passenger throughput is to increase the number of trains on any given line, but that requires massive changes to signalling infrastructure to ensure safety. Second, you have to get them on and off the trains and out to ground level in good time. And many of the busiest london stations are a nightmare in this regard. The solution requires funding and the funding source must be road pricing:-)
Secondly and this is my little bug bear. Is that it should be fscking illegal to drive a delivery truck into central london during business hours. All that stuff should be done at night. That would solve half the problems right away.
Don't even start me on digging up roads to lay cables.
Instead of spending money on this system why not giving free access to the public transport system to everyone who shows a valid ticket from a park&ride facility outside the city...
Because that would presuppose the existence of _even the idea_ of park and ride:-P
The SR71. I find it remarkable that the Japanese plan looks just like concorde (give or take). It's is amazing when something is designed right it just doesn't need to change all that much. Or it is so near optimal that improvement is only ever marginal.
Take a photo of yourself naked (do not post _please_). Weigh yourself. Get the flu badly. Don't eat for a week. Test your urine for ketones (or just look at it, it should be almost brown, yecch!).
You are in (and have been for a few days)ketosis. Look at the amount of weight you have lost. Now if your _really_ had the flu for a week, you did _no_ exercise and you ate no calories (well virtually none). Sure you would expect to lose weight but if you do the maths you will find that you have lost much more than that from the food you did not eat. Look at your old picture. Look at the difference. It is that simple.
Look, you can argue over the relative merits of long term low carb diets all you like, but the physiology of the human body is plain for all to see. No carbs == ketosis. Ketosis == "massive fat loss". It's just chemistry. It's not controversial.
What is controversial, and it is the subject of the article, is whether a long term strategy of low carbohydrate intake is a good thing or not. I am finding it more and more persuasive, it does seem to make sense to me from a chemistry/physics perspective that carbs aren't as good for the human metabolism as we might have thought. But regardless. Ketosis is a great way to lose fat.
Newspapers and books? How long will those be allowed to exist in their current forms? Paper?!?! How insecure! There will be e-books and e-paper, as in Minority Report. And you won't have control over those either.
Only insofar as the content creators allow their content to be used in the way that you invisage. The beauty of the now (excuse the MR pun) is that I can create content and set it free, and If you don't like mine, then find someone whose agenda you do like. It can be done. It is this genie from whom the owners of the bottle are running scared. And it is this genie that we ought to protect. So let them have their DRM, I shall not be so bound. Even if it precludes a large sector of the "enterntainment industry" from making a profit out of my entertainment pie chart. All the more for those that don't infringe on my freedom.
Let me preface my comments to say that I agree whole heartedly with the poster's comments about copyright dying, albeit with the kicking and screaming of those businesses that have relied on it for their existence.
However, when you say "Law based on past precidents rather than fairness and equitable behavior can't hope to keep up through such an incredible wave of advancement."
I think you are wrong on two counts. First the tradition of the common law does show that it copes extremely well with such innovation. I would argue that the industrial revolution was the last period when such radical changes to the nature of society occured and it was precisely the common law tradition that enable the creation of "Real Property" at that time, perhaps this can explain why it was in England and not the continent in which the revolution was founded since it was only England that had the common law approach to justice. Now I am not saying that CL is perfect, nor that it is necessarily optimal, but it is certainly not an impediment to the kind of advancement through which we are travelling. Further, I think that we have lost the common law tradition in this day and age of legislative activism where everything is codified in statute (much more like the roman/germanic tradition of the civil codes), to the extent that most of the failure we would identify in today's legal environment is the result of not enough Common Law.
But I said there were two objections. The second is that the concept of Equity is also very tightly tied to Common Law in that the Equity courts grew up hand in hand to deal with the failures of the CL to provide justice in some cases. Equity has a number of maxims that provide the sense of balance inherent in the Equity/Common Law mix. These include:
Equity will not suffer a wrong to be without a remedy.
He who seeks equity must do equity
He who comes into equity must come with clean hands
and my favourite: "Equity looks on that as done which ought to be done."
As you may be able to tell, I believe that this "outdated" system of civil justice is actually quite important. And I would close by suggesting that it is exactly _not_ the Common Law that is the cause of our common malaise wrt (in particular) copyright and intellectual property
As an aside. I actually think that IP as a whole is broken and broken largely because of a misapplication of the "looks like X, well then it must be X" rule that is at it's foundation. Largely because, well, IP may look like property, but that is only very superficial and the original poster has hit the nail on the head when they identify that one of the _necessary_ conditions for property, scarcity, is missing from IP, thus it cannot be property. (note also that scarcity is not sufficient to find property, just necessary)
For true live or "like live" (c'mon you _know_ what I mean), surely the best way to deal with this stuff is to send one packet that will eventually reach every node that has declared interest, ie true multicasting?
Well the power is used every time Australia signs up to an external treaty, of which there are numerous examples. However, my point is constructed with reference to the fedearal government taking on powers not explicitly granted in s51 by signing up to an international treaty affecting the area. The centralists don't give a rats ass about this issue, but the classic one for me is Tas Dams. Here a sovereign state government added a wilderness area to a conservation list, a subsequent change in the state government (after going to the people with this policy in an election) wanted to dam the area and were denied the ability to remove the area from the conservation list since the federal government was entitled to legislate in this area to meets its international treaty obligations. I don't have any particular issue with stopping dams, on the whole I am indifferent to the conservation issue, but the centralist nature of the high court over it's history is well documented.
One of the best bits evidence is a comparative analysis of the Candian and Australian experience. Canada wanted strong central government and weaker states (to avoid the exeperience of their near neighbour with all those uppity states) whilst Australia was a bunch of autonomous states that wnated to get together to make the railway gauges the same (I know, it's a bit more than that:-) and so the framers of each consitution constructed the terms accordingly, however over the history of both countries, Australia has ended up with crippled states being run by a federal government and Canada has a crippled federal government being run roughshod by powerful states.
But the kicker for me is the weirdness that most constitutional lawyers say that there is no "reserved powers" doctrine in the Australian constitution, but I reckon that s107:
"107. Every power of the Parliament of a Colony which has become or becomes a State, shall, unless it is by this Constitution exclusively vested in the Parliament of the Commonwealth or withdrawn from the Parliament of the State, continue as at the establishment of the Commonwealth, or as at the admission or establishment of the State, as the case may be."
Pretty much looks like a reserved powers clause to me. Now I know I am in the minority, one of my best friends is one of the leading constitutional scholars in Australia, and a committed centralist t'boot, so we never agree:-) But I think that the way that the External Affairs power is used is a travesty of the intentions of the constitional convention.
This is not america and thankfully censorship here is not all present, you also need to be aware we do not have a constitution like the US (we do have one but not like yours) and no free speach amendments.
Well, sort of, and yes, and not quite. Australia's constitution is, err, well, an interesting document. The area of Australian constitutional law is very interesting as much because the shape of the nation is very different to the shape anticipated by the constitutional framers. In particular I have three words for you "External Affairs Power".
Anyway, the point about "free speech amendments" is that on which I wanted to comment. The US constitution has "free speech amendments" based on the passage of the "Bill of Rights" that made several (were they the first, I think so) amendments to the constitution. Now there is a school of thought (I don't know if it is one to which I subscribe) that there is a "bill of rights" implicit in the Australian constitution. This bill of rights is implicit due to the fact that the constitution is an enabling document and that which is not enabled by the document is that which cannot be legislated, particularly when viewed in conjunction with the liberties (and liberties is the key here) anticipated and enjoyed by the framers of the document.
The British constitution is not even written down, but the liberties of free speech (slander and libel notwithstanding) are enshrined in their constitution.
So just because there is no "free speech amendment" does not mean the same liberties are not enjoyed
Pool (and eight ball in particular) is a game designed for betting. the mechanics of the angles and the "english" (god, you americans kill me) are but an iota of the complexities of the process the is provided within the original games of billiards and particulalry snooker.
The irony of the statement of "it's just physics" to any given shot is that it is really simple to determine the correct shot (and the proof of this is in watching top snooker commentate on how they can see "no path for the cue ball back into baulk" when just looking at a table full of nigh on twenty balls) and yet the execution of a given shot is pretty tricky.
I have always wondered if you could build a robot* that could execute the most amazing snooker shots since it could provide exact precision on which of the nine cue target ositions and exact speed and follow through. I thinkn would be a machine that would be almost unbeatable (particulalry since it should be able to execute shots with force that no human could muster.
Anyway, the point is that the general level of excellence in snooker today (at the professional level) suggests that a tool such as this is really only the first step in creatingh the framework for training a player to "know" the techniques of excellent play and alone it is pretty useless.
*well at least some kind of rig that could be linked to a computer that had a concept of the current table configuration
So much effort and thought to avoid paying the author a few bucks....
Context suggests that it's not a troll so I will post.
On the contrary. I am _wholly_ in favour of paying authors. And indeed, the true evil of this stuff is not for us poor middle class souls who have to pay too much for "insert leisure item here". But the third world who are continually fucked over by the owners of IP on the materiel of sustenance and quality of life, power generation technology, higher yield grain crops, life saving/improving pharmaceutecals, or even vaccines. The consumption of these economies limted social surplus by paying for stuff that has already been developed (and the argument about whether or not it would be developed under some other paradigm I am taking as read) is immoral. It is simply a misallocation of resources. A market failure.
The cause of the misallocation is IP, no IP less misallocation. period.
Do you know why states heavily tax a Semi that uses a road?
Yes. Because the damage done to the road is an exponetional function of axle load. So? Once software is built you don't wear out the bits by using it more? How does you're analogy work?
The road analogy is poor because the itch that is scratched by a road requires the road to remain in the same state of repair at the time that it was created. Software is a different kind of itch and it is these qualitative difference with IP that make it sooo broken.
The original poster's point about marginal cost is important. Other posters have talked about all kinds of issues, monopolies etc etc. Well they are all distracted by red herrings. There are such things as natural monopolies, so son't worry too much about the existence of monopolies per se. Worry about the marginal cost of the next copy of product X if it is zero then being able to charge for it _is a failure in the market_ it is really that simple. But even that is an unnecessary simplification, because it is being able to charge more than the marginal cost even where that marginal cost is non zero that is the problem. In capitalism, only under conditions of market failure does that ever happen. Now the market fails _all the time_ in losts of different ways, but in general what goes around comes around so we don't care about it too much, but when there is a structural failure then we have a huge problem and the ability to charge extraordinary (in a techincal sense) prices for software/CDs/DVD/Video is an example of such structural problems. So look for the cause. No matter how hard you try the answer will always be the simple existence of IP. That's it.
Copyright is necessary as incentive for the creation of new works
No, No, No, No, No. Copyright is not necessary as an incentive. An incentive is necessary as an incentive (obviously). There are so many ways of creating incentive, that do not involve the broken restrictions of copyright. Further, I contend that it is the entire spectrum of IP that is broken and we need none of it to to provide the incentive to produce creative works. (I choose not to criticise your distinction between those creating software and those creating other kinds of creative works).
1. There is a whole class of cretaive work that is by definition immune from this issue and that is the work as instance, for example a specific painting, or sculpture, an installation, even a print (in the lithographic sense) is probably immune. They have no need for copyright since they cannot be copied without telling a lie (ie fraud, a sufficiently serious offence to abrogate the need for property rights to get involved). That is, one cannot make a legitimate and faultless (or indetectibly faultless:-) copy of the original and pass it off as the original Note the phrase "pass off" we will return to that later.
2. An artiste will gain repute throught the excellence of their work and the demand for their future work will grow with this repute. In the case of performers, they can gain wealth by performing and can gain repute by the wide distribution of their recorded works that in turn increases demand for their limited performances.
3. Patronage, as the role of independently wealthy patrons, state funded organisations (or endowments), or even some form of ad hoc or organised collection of individuals.
4. Catharsis. Ask any artist worth their salt how much the revenue they will get modifies the output of their artistic "urges". Given food and shelter most will still produce and that will bring us back into the cycle of (2).
These are some simple examples, none of which require copyright (or IP) as an incentive to produce creative work. The complete fallacy of the argument that IP is _required_ as an incentive is proven by the plethora of creative work that existed before IP existed and the existence of ancient wrongs (such as fraud or passing off) to protect the integrity of a producer of creative works' reputation. Further, your couching of the issue in terms of American constitutional doctrine ought to prompt the question of why doctrine is required here at all, these things are far more "natural" than any such doctrine requires.
Because for 0.x% of my monthly salary I can set up "whatUlikey.com" and present any "legal" material I like. And as far as editorial content goes, _even_ more unrestricted, (although perhaps only as long as one is small enough or "in the US" to some extent:-).
Now if/when corporate control means that I can, truly, no longer do this then we do have a problem, but this is _NOT_ the same as corporate control of content. The legislation that gets passed that fetters my rights in this area is the cause for concern, that one has some institutional (be it the US consitution or common law or whatever) protection in the "liberal west" makes it very different from a) China and b) the corporate dystopia that the poster is suggesting already exists.
There was a set of rules given in a novel, Dune I believe, by which people can be opressed. Amongst their number, and paraphrasing, are "Never let the oppressed realise there is an alternative to their opression", "Never let them create their own leaders". I would argue that there is some truth in these rules and that the Soviet Union collapsed when both of the above "rules" were broken. McDonald's helped, but was not sufficient.
I know a lot of Russian (and I mean Russian) ex Soviet citizens and the level of contempt they have for Gorbachev is remarkable, despite any failings I hope the courage (and vision) of that man is judged fairly by history. As someone who grew up in the west (Oz) as a teenager in the 1980's, the "inevitable" collapse of the Soviet Union was not particularly evident to me, and to some extent the speed of the collapse was extraordinary.
What has this to do with China, well they have the two edged sword of 1.2 billion people. The social surplus that a middle class of even 10% of the population could generate is mind boggling. But even that would leave a subsistence class of over a billion people. I think that whilst it may be true that the genie is out of the box to some extent wrt the internet, there is an additional inertia that will impede China's progress to a "liberal" (take that to mean what you will) society.
This scenario was predicted exactly be Frank Herbert (I am pretty sure) in a short story of his (the name of which escapes me). The grunt who discovers the ability to "activate the free radicals" in propellants (and hence explosives) at a distance thinks of the end to all war (much like the king of england did when first spying the crossbow:-). But the military see the true implication; Nerve agents, bows and arrows, mechanical storage of energy etc, a change in the paradigm of combat that just makes things much nastier all round
It is quite possible that this kind of thing might make things worse rather than better. But I think I like the idea of no firearms since bullets are much less discriminating than arrows (or even compressed air guns' projectiles)
Admittedly the novella did the deed through some kind of "beam" weapon, but the prescience of the work is still remarkable.
To some extent I agree with you, but... access to a channel like the imternet lets people like ourselves dies by the sword by which we would live. We can create the good content oursleves and bypass the AAs. The sponsorship for producing the great eye candy content is not yet possible (unless you are the grateful dead or someone with an established reputation) but that channel will come. Sooner or later and to start it will fund only "poor" imitations of the blockbusters, but that to will change. PAtientce is a virtue and without radical upheaval (which I cannot endorse for lots of reasons) we must let the underground grow slowly. This point clearly defines our battlefield. We must stop the AAs removing the access to the tools for the libre creation and distribution of content. Let them have their DVD and DRM but let them not enforce them on me when I do not want their content. (one of the real bummers is that I do like some of their content and it burns that I have to go without)
Slashdot Mirror
I am just waiting 'til my mum dies and I can use hers. (I only have sisters :-)
I agree with your analysis of the traditional view and the US Constitution. However, states have repeatedly ceded their authority to the Federal Government. I blame the Federal Income tax. My state taxes are roughly one half that of my federal taxes. If the situation were reversed, the federal gov't wouldn't have nearly as much power over the state governments.
Consider yourself lucky. In Australia, the federal government was took income tax powers a) as an emergency measure to fund WWII b) as a result of some delightful constitutional interpretation by the High Court of Australia, the members of whom were selected by, wait for it... the federal government (regardless of the left right preference of the justices, their centralist tendencies were rarely in doubt). The states were then beholden to the federal government because the delightful interpretation said that the states could tax anything they liked, it's just that the federal government got their slice first (this is known as the "First Uniform Tax Case" if anyone is interested) as a result every year the states go cap in hand to the federal government for their slice of the national income tax pie to fund such mundane services such as education and hospitals, both of which are the responsibility of the state government. It is a joke!
The only problem I see with this is that some people might not be able to come up with the deposit -- they could use the old, non-anonymous system.
/., the replacement cost of a book as a deposit is no impediment to anonymity, but you are so right about the implication for those for whom the library is the key resource, those who almost certainly cannot find the deposit money. It is a very tricky problem, I see that it is actually two issues. First access to resources within the library premises. In this case a deposit really shouldn't be an issue since we should be able to "secure" the book/computer/whatever to the premises in an acceptable way whilst retaining anonymity. The second issue is when the user is to be granted permission to remove the item from the premises, the nice thing about this is that clearly browsing habits are not a part of this problem and so we are just worried about reading habits.
Oh, so anonymity is the privilege of the wealthy, and not the right of the people? How equitable.
For anyone reading
The library user goes into the system as having borrowed a book, the title is irrelevant, but the item has a due/popularity/price index that is used as the basis for calculating late fees and damages and this index is assigned to the non-anonymous part of the library users account. So in the event of lateness or default then the user can be charged but the actual book remains anonymous. The library can then use it's catlogue system to detect which books are missing from its deposit and replace them. The netting of the cash from the defaulting system and the cost of replacing books should be zero within reasonable tolerance.
This leaves one problem, borrowing a high index book and returning a low index book, wearing the fine and selling the high index book for a relative profit. Well, this is a bit trickier, but certainly the system could ensure that high index book borrowed == high index book returned which would help enourmously and you could go further by encoding the title of the book in a write only cypher with the borrower holding the key, that way the return could be managed exactly without identifying information about the borrower being available (this last bit is probably unnecessary given the way libraries actually work.
Using this approach, libraries can still record the statistics about borrowing habits from the catalogue, they just can't track who did what.
Admittedly the risk here is that the anonymous library user who legitimately loses or damages a high index book might be paying more to replace it (since the index would be inexact to protect correlation between price and title) but that _is_ a reasonable price to pay for anonymity since you know it to start with and it is only for exceptional cases.
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" -- Isaac Newton 1676
Goedel, Turing, Von Neuman, Dijkstra, all giants to whom we owe whatever view we have.
Ok, lets start with your "premises".
"Music is not personal property, it is public property"
Well, actually there is confusion here. There is a legal doctrine called private property, I am willing to concede that is what was meant with "personal property", but what is public property? Regardless, it is still property and the problem with music requires us to think about the meaning of "necessary" and "sufficient" conditions. I choose not to decide what is sufficient for something to be property. That is a quite complex issue. However, one of the necessary conditions for the existence of property is the ability to "exclude" another from the enjoyment of the property. The problem with "media" based property is that by duplication (be it a paper book, or a recording or whatever) one does not exlcude the "owner" of the original. Hence the necessary condition is not met hence there is no property.
It is that simple. Just like other general issues, one does not need to worry about all the complex tests to prove sufficiency when one of the simple necessary conditions is not present.
There is something far more elegant about losing ones money to a pinball machine rather than a video game. The sensuality of hip and hand action beats any video game hands down :-). As for popping a pinnie, I am sorry but clocking a video game just won't cut it.
I quite like some of the modern pinball machines, but give me an open playfield and the cool physics of some late eighties old school anyday. It is truly sad about the decline of pinball. I think that they will come back, they just have to become cool again.
Maybe we just need to get them into a few cool films, can you imagine the irony of sliding some well placed pinnies into the Matrix sequels. Delicious.
Ob. Fav.: Black Rose - Queen of the Seven Seas. The cannon was superb.
Orwell was not foretelling a dystopian future world but describing a post war Britian in the year in which he wrote the book (1948).
It is not about predictive accuracy but the extent to which the criticisms implicit in 1984 were accurate/legitimate. Some argue that he is critiquing the rise of the socialist ethic in Britain by basing the book in the year of the centenery of the Fabian Society.
In this context, looking for "what he missed" is some what futile.
Relevance? Are you saying that nations above a certain size can survive only by denying civil rights to their citizens?
That is probably the most insightful thing you will say all year ;-) Now don't get me wrong, I am not apologist for the Chinese, but your question is not so easily answered. Australia for example has enough internal wealth to ensure that every citizen has food and shelter and education and healthcare. And yet they don't. Which of those "elements" are not "civil rights". Might you argue that "freedom of speech" and "equality before the law" and "equal representation" are civil rights. I would probably agree with you, BUT, in the UK access to healthcare is a civil right, it may be crap (in many situations) but the access is there for everyone and so they have an expectation to the right to healthcare. So indeed does most of the EU.
The point I am making is that the set of social attributes laid down as "civil rights" varies from country to country and the determinatio of which attributes become civil rights are a function of many factors, history, development, wealth, neighbours _AND_ population. So, yes, the level of civil rights in china is affected by their population. Is it right for this to be so (ask an unborn female child), probably not, but then they do have a right to food, shelter, education and healthcare.
Maybe it is all swings and roundabouts. I think not, but then I am a product of the "liberal democratic west" so what do I know :-)
Road pricing is an excellent idea. It enables goods and services delivered in areas where demand is high to be priced appropriately. Yes the rich will always be able to afford to travel on expensive roads, but for many reasons (particularly if one has to park once in the expensive area) these areas are off limits to less well off drivers anyway.
:-)
The advantage of road pricing (use whatever label you like, congestion charging included) is that it will build the coffers of the public transport infrastructure whilst establishing the correct barrier to entry to reduce the volume of traffic.
I have lived in central London (inside the proposed charging region) for many years and I know of only one person in my circle of friends who drives in central london and that's only because he thinks it important. I know of noone in my circle of professional acquaintances that drives into central london (and many of these are working in middle to upper management in the financial industry). It is just not sane to drive into central london. People who think they need to should be made to pay extortionately (with the obvious exception of PT and anyone who must for reasons they cannot control, disability for example). Because they don't really.
Two things in addition. The tube network is, in comparison to some of the cities I know, actually very good (when it works). The problem is the incredible volume of passengers compared to the infrastructure. Any subway system should be compared with moscow when looking at the path for improvement and London's problem is two fold. The way to increase passenger throughput is to increase the number of trains on any given line, but that requires massive changes to signalling infrastructure to ensure safety. Second, you have to get them on and off the trains and out to ground level in good time. And many of the busiest london stations are a nightmare in this regard. The solution requires funding and the funding source must be road pricing
Secondly and this is my little bug bear. Is that it should be fscking illegal to drive a delivery truck into central london during business hours. All that stuff should be done at night. That would solve half the problems right away.
Don't even start me on digging up roads to lay cables.
$0.02
Instead of spending money on this system why not giving free access to the public transport system to everyone who shows a valid ticket from a park&ride facility outside the city...
Because that would presuppose the existence of _even the idea_ of park and ride :-P
The SR71. I find it remarkable that the Japanese plan looks just like concorde (give or take). It's is amazing when something is designed right it just doesn't need to change all that much. Or it is so near optimal that improvement is only ever marginal.
$0.02
Take a photo of yourself naked (do not post _please_). Weigh yourself. Get the flu badly. Don't eat for a week. Test your urine for ketones (or just look at it, it should be almost brown, yecch!).
You are in (and have been for a few days)ketosis. Look at the amount of weight you have lost. Now if your _really_ had the flu for a week, you did _no_ exercise and you ate no calories (well virtually none). Sure you would expect to lose weight but if you do the maths you will find that you have lost much more than that from the food you did not eat. Look at your old picture. Look at the difference. It is that simple.
Look, you can argue over the relative merits of long term low carb diets all you like, but the physiology of the human body is plain for all to see. No carbs == ketosis. Ketosis == "massive fat loss". It's just chemistry. It's not controversial.
What is controversial, and it is the subject of the article, is whether a long term strategy of low carbohydrate intake is a good thing or not. I am finding it more and more persuasive, it does seem to make sense to me from a chemistry/physics perspective that carbs aren't as good for the human metabolism as we might have thought. But regardless. Ketosis is a great way to lose fat.
Newspapers and books? How long will those be allowed to exist in their current forms? Paper?!?! How insecure! There will be e-books and e-paper, as in Minority Report. And you won't have control over those either.
Only insofar as the content creators allow their content to be used in the way that you invisage. The beauty of the now (excuse the MR pun) is that I can create content and set it free, and If you don't like mine, then find someone whose agenda you do like. It can be done. It is this genie from whom the owners of the bottle are running scared. And it is this genie that we ought to protect. So let them have their DRM, I shall not be so bound. Even if it precludes a large sector of the "enterntainment industry" from making a profit out of my entertainment pie chart. All the more for those that don't infringe on my freedom.
Let me preface my comments to say that I agree whole heartedly with the poster's comments about copyright dying, albeit with the kicking and screaming of those businesses that have relied on it for their existence.
However, when you say "Law based on past precidents rather than fairness and equitable behavior can't hope to keep up through such an incredible wave of advancement."
I think you are wrong on two counts. First the tradition of the common law does show that it copes extremely well with such innovation. I would argue that the industrial revolution was the last period when such radical changes to the nature of society occured and it was precisely the common law tradition that enable the creation of "Real Property" at that time, perhaps this can explain why it was in England and not the continent in which the revolution was founded since it was only England that had the common law approach to justice. Now I am not saying that CL is perfect, nor that it is necessarily optimal, but it is certainly not an impediment to the kind of advancement through which we are travelling. Further, I think that we have lost the common law tradition in this day and age of legislative activism where everything is codified in statute (much more like the roman/germanic tradition of the civil codes), to the extent that most of the failure we would identify in today's legal environment is the result of not enough Common Law.
But I said there were two objections. The second is that the concept of Equity is also very tightly tied to Common Law in that the Equity courts grew up hand in hand to deal with the failures of the CL to provide justice in some cases. Equity has a number of maxims that provide the sense of balance inherent in the Equity/Common Law mix. These include:
As you may be able to tell, I believe that this "outdated" system of civil justice is actually quite important. And I would close by suggesting that it is exactly _not_ the Common Law that is the cause of our common malaise wrt (in particular) copyright and intellectual property
As an aside. I actually think that IP as a whole is broken and broken largely because of a misapplication of the "looks like X, well then it must be X" rule that is at it's foundation. Largely because, well, IP may look like property, but that is only very superficial and the original poster has hit the nail on the head when they identify that one of the _necessary_ conditions for property, scarcity, is missing from IP, thus it cannot be property. (note also that scarcity is not sufficient to find property, just necessary)
For true live or "like live" (c'mon you _know_ what I mean), surely the best way to deal with this stuff is to send one packet that will eventually reach every node that has declared interest, ie true multicasting?
Well the power is used every time Australia signs up to an external treaty, of which there are numerous examples. However, my point is constructed with reference to the fedearal government taking on powers not explicitly granted in s51 by signing up to an international treaty affecting the area. The centralists don't give a rats ass about this issue, but the classic one for me is Tas Dams. Here a sovereign state government added a wilderness area to a conservation list, a subsequent change in the state government (after going to the people with this policy in an election) wanted to dam the area and were denied the ability to remove the area from the conservation list since the federal government was entitled to legislate in this area to meets its international treaty obligations. I don't have any particular issue with stopping dams, on the whole I am indifferent to the conservation issue, but the centralist nature of the high court over it's history is well documented.
:-) and so the framers of each consitution constructed the terms accordingly, however over the history of both countries, Australia has ended up with crippled states being run by a federal government and Canada has a crippled federal government being run roughshod by powerful states.
:-) But I think that the way that the External Affairs power is used is a travesty of the intentions of the constitional convention.
One of the best bits evidence is a comparative analysis of the Candian and Australian experience. Canada wanted strong central government and weaker states (to avoid the exeperience of their near neighbour with all those uppity states) whilst Australia was a bunch of autonomous states that wnated to get together to make the railway gauges the same (I know, it's a bit more than that
But the kicker for me is the weirdness that most constitutional lawyers say that there is no "reserved powers" doctrine in the Australian constitution, but I reckon that s107:
"107. Every power of the Parliament of a Colony which has become or becomes a State, shall, unless it is by this Constitution exclusively vested in the Parliament of the Commonwealth or withdrawn from the Parliament of the State, continue as at the establishment of the Commonwealth, or as at the admission or establishment of the State, as the case may be."
Pretty much looks like a reserved powers clause to me. Now I know I am in the minority, one of my best friends is one of the leading constitutional scholars in Australia, and a committed centralist t'boot, so we never agree
This is not america and thankfully censorship here is not all present, you also need to be aware we do not have a constitution like the US (we do have one but not like yours) and no free speach amendments.
Well, sort of, and yes, and not quite. Australia's constitution is, err, well, an interesting document. The area of Australian constitutional law is very interesting as much because the shape of the nation is very different to the shape anticipated by the constitutional framers. In particular I have three words for you "External Affairs Power".
Anyway, the point about "free speech amendments" is that on which I wanted to comment. The US constitution has "free speech amendments" based on the passage of the "Bill of Rights" that made several (were they the first, I think so) amendments to the constitution. Now there is a school of thought (I don't know if it is one to which I subscribe) that there is a "bill of rights" implicit in the Australian constitution. This bill of rights is implicit due to the fact that the constitution is an enabling document and that which is not enabled by the document is that which cannot be legislated, particularly when viewed in conjunction with the liberties (and liberties is the key here) anticipated and enjoyed by the framers of the document.
The British constitution is not even written down, but the liberties of free speech (slander and libel notwithstanding) are enshrined in their constitution.
So just because there is no "free speech amendment" does not mean the same liberties are not enjoyed
Pool (and eight ball in particular) is a game designed for betting. the mechanics of the angles and the "english" (god, you americans kill me) are but an iota of the complexities of the process the is provided within the original games of billiards and particulalry snooker.
The irony of the statement of "it's just physics" to any given shot is that it is really simple to determine the correct shot (and the proof of this is in watching top snooker commentate on how they can see "no path for the cue ball back into baulk" when just looking at a table full of nigh on twenty balls) and yet the execution of a given shot is pretty tricky.
I have always wondered if you could build a robot* that could execute the most amazing snooker shots since it could provide exact precision on which of the nine cue target ositions and exact speed and follow through. I thinkn would be a machine that would be almost unbeatable (particulalry since it should be able to execute shots with force that no human could muster.
Anyway, the point is that the general level of excellence in snooker today (at the professional level) suggests that a tool such as this is really only the first step in creatingh the framework for training a player to "know" the techniques of excellent play and alone it is pretty useless.
*well at least some kind of rig that could be linked to a computer that had a concept of the current table configuration
So much effort and thought to avoid paying the author a few bucks....
Context suggests that it's not a troll so I will post.
On the contrary. I am _wholly_ in favour of paying authors. And indeed, the true evil of this stuff is not for us poor middle class souls who have to pay too much for "insert leisure item here". But the third world who are continually fucked over by the owners of IP on the materiel of sustenance and quality of life, power generation technology, higher yield grain crops, life saving/improving pharmaceutecals, or even vaccines. The consumption of these economies limted social surplus by paying for stuff that has already been developed (and the argument about whether or not it would be developed under some other paradigm I am taking as read) is immoral. It is simply a misallocation of resources. A market failure.
The cause of the misallocation is IP, no IP less misallocation. period.
Do you know why states heavily tax a Semi that uses a road?
Yes. Because the damage done to the road is an exponetional function of axle load. So? Once software is built you don't wear out the bits by using it more? How does you're analogy work?
The road analogy is poor because the itch that is scratched by a road requires the road to remain in the same state of repair at the time that it was created. Software is a different kind of itch and it is these qualitative difference with IP that make it sooo broken.
The original poster's point about marginal cost is important. Other posters have talked about all kinds of issues, monopolies etc etc. Well they are all distracted by red herrings. There are such things as natural monopolies, so son't worry too much about the existence of monopolies per se. Worry about the marginal cost of the next copy of product X if it is zero then being able to charge for it _is a failure in the market_ it is really that simple. But even that is an unnecessary simplification, because it is being able to charge more than the marginal cost even where that marginal cost is non zero that is the problem. In capitalism, only under conditions of market failure does that ever happen. Now the market fails _all the time_ in losts of different ways, but in general what goes around comes around so we don't care about it too much, but when there is a structural failure then we have a huge problem and the ability to charge extraordinary (in a techincal sense) prices for software/CDs/DVD/Video is an example of such structural problems. So look for the cause. No matter how hard you try the answer will always be the simple existence of IP. That's it.
Copyright is necessary as incentive for the creation of new works
No, No, No, No, No. Copyright is not necessary as an incentive. An incentive is necessary as an incentive (obviously). There are so many ways of creating incentive, that do not involve the broken restrictions of copyright. Further, I contend that it is the entire spectrum of IP that is broken and we need none of it to to provide the incentive to produce creative works. (I choose not to criticise your distinction between those creating software and those creating other kinds of creative works).
1. There is a whole class of cretaive work that is by definition immune from this issue and that is the work as instance, for example a specific painting, or sculpture, an installation, even a print (in the lithographic sense) is probably immune. They have no need for copyright since they cannot be copied without telling a lie (ie fraud, a sufficiently serious offence to abrogate the need for property rights to get involved). That is, one cannot make a legitimate and faultless (or indetectibly faultless :-) copy of the original and pass it off as the original Note the phrase "pass off" we will return to that later.
2. An artiste will gain repute throught the excellence of their work and the demand for their future work will grow with this repute. In the case of performers, they can gain wealth by performing and can gain repute by the wide distribution of their recorded works that in turn increases demand for their limited performances.
3. Patronage, as the role of independently wealthy patrons, state funded organisations (or endowments), or even some form of ad hoc or organised collection of individuals.
4. Catharsis. Ask any artist worth their salt how much the revenue they will get modifies the output of their artistic "urges". Given food and shelter most will still produce and that will bring us back into the cycle of (2).
These are some simple examples, none of which require copyright (or IP) as an incentive to produce creative work. The complete fallacy of the argument that IP is _required_ as an incentive is proven by the plethora of creative work that existed before IP existed and the existence of ancient wrongs (such as fraud or passing off) to protect the integrity of a producer of creative works' reputation. Further, your couching of the issue in terms of American constitutional doctrine ought to prompt the question of why doctrine is required here at all, these things are far more "natural" than any such doctrine requires.
Because for 0.x% of my monthly salary I can set up "whatUlikey.com" and present any "legal" material I like. And as far as editorial content goes, _even_ more unrestricted, (although perhaps only as long as one is small enough or "in the US" to some extent :-).
Now if/when corporate control means that I can, truly, no longer do this then we do have a problem, but this is _NOT_ the same as corporate control of content. The legislation that gets passed that fetters my rights in this area is the cause for concern, that one has some institutional (be it the US consitution or common law or whatever) protection in the "liberal west" makes it very different from a) China and b) the corporate dystopia that the poster is suggesting already exists.
There was a set of rules given in a novel, Dune I believe, by which people can be opressed. Amongst their number, and paraphrasing, are "Never let the oppressed realise there is an alternative to their opression", "Never let them create their own leaders". I would argue that there is some truth in these rules and that the Soviet Union collapsed when both of the above "rules" were broken. McDonald's helped, but was not sufficient.
I know a lot of Russian (and I mean Russian) ex Soviet citizens and the level of contempt they have for Gorbachev is remarkable, despite any failings I hope the courage (and vision) of that man is judged fairly by history. As someone who grew up in the west (Oz) as a teenager in the 1980's, the "inevitable" collapse of the Soviet Union was not particularly evident to me, and to some extent the speed of the collapse was extraordinary.
What has this to do with China, well they have the two edged sword of 1.2 billion people. The social surplus that a middle class of even 10% of the population could generate is mind boggling. But even that would leave a subsistence class of over a billion people. I think that whilst it may be true that the genie is out of the box to some extent wrt the internet, there is an additional inertia that will impede China's progress to a "liberal" (take that to mean what you will) society.
This scenario was predicted exactly be Frank Herbert (I am pretty sure) in a short story of his (the name of which escapes me). The grunt who discovers the ability to "activate the free radicals" in propellants (and hence explosives) at a distance thinks of the end to all war (much like the king of england did when first spying the crossbow :-). But the military see the true implication; Nerve agents, bows and arrows, mechanical storage of energy etc, a change in the paradigm of combat that just makes things much nastier all round
It is quite possible that this kind of thing might make things worse rather than better. But I think I like the idea of no firearms since bullets are much less discriminating than arrows (or even compressed air guns' projectiles)
Admittedly the novella did the deed through some kind of "beam" weapon, but the prescience of the work is still remarkable.
To some extent I agree with you, but... access to a channel like the imternet lets people like ourselves dies by the sword by which we would live. We can create the good content oursleves and bypass the AAs. The sponsorship for producing the great eye candy content is not yet possible (unless you are the grateful dead or someone with an established reputation) but that channel will come. Sooner or later and to start it will fund only "poor" imitations of the blockbusters, but that to will change. PAtientce is a virtue and without radical upheaval (which I cannot endorse for lots of reasons) we must let the underground grow slowly. This point clearly defines our battlefield. We must stop the AAs removing the access to the tools for the libre creation and distribution of content. Let them have their DVD and DRM but let them not enforce them on me when I do not want their content. (one of the real bummers is that I do like some of their content and it burns that I have to go without)