The other benefit that people often overlook is that it's much easier to get energy to where it's needed in this form. Not only are you removing polluting cars from the roads (and enabling them to benefit from advances on the power production side), you're removing the polluting lorries that deliver the fuel - it all travels down a nice, convenient cable.
I think the theory goes that it's easier/more efficient to trap harmful emissions in a few centralised power plants than in millions of cars and when/if we ever move to cleaner fuels on the power station side of things it won't make any difference to our vehicles which don't care about the source of their charged battery. Besides, even taking none of that into account, it's still probably better to shift the pollution out of cities where it's currently a factor in the health of the entire population (not that I'll be rushing out to buy an electric car until the prices are more roughly comparable to diesel and the availability of charge points is vastly improved).
It's not even that the summary doesn't mention this - the summary does mention the Dragons' distribution rights explicitly - it says EA claims they're revoked. So either the page you linked to can expect a letter soon or the summary is just plain wrong or some spokes person for EA spoke out of terms.
The problem is they seem to be working on steps one and three and ignoring step two. It's like the chicken and egg situation with public transport (in the UK) - the government want more people to use public transport instead of cars, but instead of investing in good public transport, they focus on punishing car drivers. The car drivers have no real alternative so they continue to use their cars while fostering resentment. Give us sensible copyright laws first and then focus on punishing those who break them.
For the same reason people pay a premium to see a movie in the first run at the cinema instead of waiting for the DVD, or that they buy the DVD at release price instead of waiting 18 months and picking it up in a bargain bin? People like to see the latest movies, play the latest games, read the latest books, just because a few people are willing to wait to save money doesn't mean the majority won't continue to pay a premium to experience it early.
I think 2 years is too little - about 5-7 feels right - but if the protection ran for the entirety of develpoment/production plus two years it would protect movies/games that take a long time to be released and still give them the same opportunity to generate a profit. I'm not sure the TV show example works, after all, most shows are incredibly formulaic already, there's not much originality - the selling point is the quality of the production and the writing. I'm all for more competition in this arena (if another channel can write the same show better then it's clearly in my interests as a viewer to see that happen).
Ironically it's probably the emulator crowd that's helped to keep many of these old games alive in people's minds. If it wasn't for people preserving and giving an avenue for others to carry on playing said games, a load of them would have fallen into obscurity - now there's a demand for fun but technically unchallenging games for mobile devices, or browser-based play it's suddenly a revenue stream. Once money re-enters the equation all bets are off, but the industry should be giving a big thank you to the emulator crowd, not sending out threatening legal letters.
Nevertheless it's a pretty standard rule of engagement in war that you aim to minimise civilian casualties where possible. A protracted military engagement on the ground in Japan would have killed many more soldiers and far fewer civilians, but it would also have been costly and denied the opportunity to test a new weapon and demonstrate military superiority at the same time.
I'm not sure I follow your economic reasoning - most countries actively engage in some level of protectionism. This comes down to how much they think they can get away with - the reason China can get away with so much is because lots of companies want to do business with them - that's a willing partnership no matter how onerous it may seem, there's nothing stopping those businesses giving up the Chinese market and going elsewhere, so to that extent China is hardly forcing anything on anyone (and I suspect, as the standard of living increases there and pushes up the cost of doing business, they'll find their strong bartering position equally eroded as in the West).
I'm not sure what that backs up - if you're sending a million/billion dollar spacecraft on a flight to another celestial body and you want a reasonably good chance of it getting back in one piece, you send the best piloting team you've got. Anyone can collect rock samples, it doesn't really take a scientist on the scene, although it's obviously useful to have the additional perspective if you can afford the weight and skill trade-offs, but I don't think this was part of any "technology vs. science" hidden agenda.
It's more likely the agenda of big media driving this. Natural disasters are tragic and the news love to report a good tragedy, but there's nobody to blame but mother nature, and if media loves anything more than a good tragedy it's a good tragedy with someone to blame (in this case TEH EVIL NUKILLERS). So the focus is switched to something which is scarier to most people (nuclear being a hot topic right now - no pun intended - for other reasons) with someone they can scapegoat.
I'd also quibble the "decent documentaries" part, too. Panorama, our "grown up investigative journalism" programme almost always has a blatant agenda and skews all the information to support it, our "science programme" Bang Goes the Theory is like a dumbed down Mythbusters (if you can even imagine that), and everything else is just a CGI-fest, like a really expensive screensaver. Most truth on TV these days seems to come from satirical comedy shows like Mock the Week and Have I Got News for You, or else it's buried away on one of the non-mainstream channels (BBC3/4) where six people might watch it. </rant>
Whether it's illogical or not, the fact is that stations have to be careful what they air at times like this or face spending and/or losing real money as a consequence. It might not be logical for people to complain, but it's entirely logical for the stations to anticipate complaints and circumvent them in this way. Besides, we all have our own eccentricities - I would hope that, by being sensitive to the needs of others, it might encourage them to return the favour some day, it's not like it's costing you or hurting you in any way.
I'm not even sure, aside from a "look at what cool stuff we can do now" promo, why you would want a roll up laptop. Is it easier to carry a fat tube than a thin rectangle? Possibly. Is it going to be just one more hassle rolling and unrolling the damn thing every time you want to use it/carry it around? Definitely.
How much further away would you have to keep it, though, before the inconvenience of not being able to easily access it negated the minor risk of carrying it that way? I'm sure keeping my phone in my bag would negate some minor risks, but it would be a general annoyance every time I wanted to use it, even worse if it was ringing and I had to bug everyone around me until I could get to it and much worse if I wander off somewhere and forget I'm not carrying it. I don't carry mine on my hip anyway, just playing devil's advocate and pointing out that sometimes a minor risk is acceptable if it's a convenience.
It's not just that it's difficult to track the IP back to your household, but that that's not the full extent. What if it's a shared account in a student accomodation, or you're running your PC as a node on a TOR network (so in both cases the "infringing" traffic might look like it's coming from your IP but you aren't the one committing the act). With difficulty in ensuring the IP was assigned to you at the time it was used on one side, and then in proving that it was you downloading the file on the other (and that's assuming you don't have the right to do so, or that you initiated the act knowingly) it's an incredibly flaky way to "prove" anything.
Well we can probably learn from what has happened and build in additional safety measures, but I agree that the events leading up to this latest accident were pretty much unprecedented and yet it's been dealt with in a professional manner and largely contained (despite scaremongering in the media). Given the fact that new reactors are much safer, the chances of something that can smash even an old reactor are minimal and we're fast running out of options, I'd say it's a risk worth taking.
Whatever they're reason, it's just as easy to posit the counter argument that this is evidence of what some people claimed all along: give us relatively cheap, unencumbered, decent bitrate downloads and we'll gladly pay for them. Drop the price a little more and watch this swing even further - prices are currently hovering just above what I'd consider impulse buy territory, I think a drop of a couple of pounds on the average album and they'd reap some pretty big returns.
It's a pity there wasn't some way to take a short, playabale segment of the game and allow people to play that, so as to give a "demonstration", if you will, of what the full game is like.
Besides, even if monopoly money has little real world value, stealing 12 million of them from the company would be a removal of company assets that would likely land you in some trouble.
Just because something can be gifted, it doesn't mean that the thing has no value. If I get money in a birthday card as a "free gift", it doesn't suddenly negate the point of working to earn money, although in this case it's probably got more in common with a crack dealer giving out free samples to get people hooked...
Why not insurance against fraud? Ford don't charge a fee per mile driven so that they can cover the cost of accident repairs. At least with insurance you can spend more without being penalised - what, just because person A spends $10,000 more on their credit card than person B in a given year they're somehow more likely to be defrauded? Hell, the more I think about it the better it sounds. I like the idea of a no claims bonus for people who are actually careful about their card details. Put in some protections in case the card is compromised through a screw up on the credit card company's side but otherwise force people to actually make an effort, with appropriate rewards, to take better measures against fraud.
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The other benefit that people often overlook is that it's much easier to get energy to where it's needed in this form. Not only are you removing polluting cars from the roads (and enabling them to benefit from advances on the power production side), you're removing the polluting lorries that deliver the fuel - it all travels down a nice, convenient cable.
I think the theory goes that it's easier/more efficient to trap harmful emissions in a few centralised power plants than in millions of cars and when/if we ever move to cleaner fuels on the power station side of things it won't make any difference to our vehicles which don't care about the source of their charged battery. Besides, even taking none of that into account, it's still probably better to shift the pollution out of cities where it's currently a factor in the health of the entire population (not that I'll be rushing out to buy an electric car until the prices are more roughly comparable to diesel and the availability of charge points is vastly improved).
It's not even that the summary doesn't mention this - the summary does mention the Dragons' distribution rights explicitly - it says EA claims they're revoked. So either the page you linked to can expect a letter soon or the summary is just plain wrong or some spokes person for EA spoke out of terms.
The problem is they seem to be working on steps one and three and ignoring step two. It's like the chicken and egg situation with public transport (in the UK) - the government want more people to use public transport instead of cars, but instead of investing in good public transport, they focus on punishing car drivers. The car drivers have no real alternative so they continue to use their cars while fostering resentment. Give us sensible copyright laws first and then focus on punishing those who break them.
For the same reason people pay a premium to see a movie in the first run at the cinema instead of waiting for the DVD, or that they buy the DVD at release price instead of waiting 18 months and picking it up in a bargain bin? People like to see the latest movies, play the latest games, read the latest books, just because a few people are willing to wait to save money doesn't mean the majority won't continue to pay a premium to experience it early.
I think 2 years is too little - about 5-7 feels right - but if the protection ran for the entirety of develpoment/production plus two years it would protect movies/games that take a long time to be released and still give them the same opportunity to generate a profit. I'm not sure the TV show example works, after all, most shows are incredibly formulaic already, there's not much originality - the selling point is the quality of the production and the writing. I'm all for more competition in this arena (if another channel can write the same show better then it's clearly in my interests as a viewer to see that happen).
Ironically it's probably the emulator crowd that's helped to keep many of these old games alive in people's minds. If it wasn't for people preserving and giving an avenue for others to carry on playing said games, a load of them would have fallen into obscurity - now there's a demand for fun but technically unchallenging games for mobile devices, or browser-based play it's suddenly a revenue stream. Once money re-enters the equation all bets are off, but the industry should be giving a big thank you to the emulator crowd, not sending out threatening legal letters.
Nevertheless it's a pretty standard rule of engagement in war that you aim to minimise civilian casualties where possible. A protracted military engagement on the ground in Japan would have killed many more soldiers and far fewer civilians, but it would also have been costly and denied the opportunity to test a new weapon and demonstrate military superiority at the same time.
I'm not sure I follow your economic reasoning - most countries actively engage in some level of protectionism. This comes down to how much they think they can get away with - the reason China can get away with so much is because lots of companies want to do business with them - that's a willing partnership no matter how onerous it may seem, there's nothing stopping those businesses giving up the Chinese market and going elsewhere, so to that extent China is hardly forcing anything on anyone (and I suspect, as the standard of living increases there and pushes up the cost of doing business, they'll find their strong bartering position equally eroded as in the West).
I'm not sure what that backs up - if you're sending a million/billion dollar spacecraft on a flight to another celestial body and you want a reasonably good chance of it getting back in one piece, you send the best piloting team you've got. Anyone can collect rock samples, it doesn't really take a scientist on the scene, although it's obviously useful to have the additional perspective if you can afford the weight and skill trade-offs, but I don't think this was part of any "technology vs. science" hidden agenda.
It's more likely the agenda of big media driving this. Natural disasters are tragic and the news love to report a good tragedy, but there's nobody to blame but mother nature, and if media loves anything more than a good tragedy it's a good tragedy with someone to blame (in this case TEH EVIL NUKILLERS). So the focus is switched to something which is scarier to most people (nuclear being a hot topic right now - no pun intended - for other reasons) with someone they can scapegoat.
I'd also quibble the "decent documentaries" part, too. Panorama, our "grown up investigative journalism" programme almost always has a blatant agenda and skews all the information to support it, our "science programme" Bang Goes the Theory is like a dumbed down Mythbusters (if you can even imagine that), and everything else is just a CGI-fest, like a really expensive screensaver. Most truth on TV these days seems to come from satirical comedy shows like Mock the Week and Have I Got News for You, or else it's buried away on one of the non-mainstream channels (BBC3/4) where six people might watch it. </rant>
I'm easily offended, you insensitive clod!
Whether it's illogical or not, the fact is that stations have to be careful what they air at times like this or face spending and/or losing real money as a consequence. It might not be logical for people to complain, but it's entirely logical for the stations to anticipate complaints and circumvent them in this way. Besides, we all have our own eccentricities - I would hope that, by being sensitive to the needs of others, it might encourage them to return the favour some day, it's not like it's costing you or hurting you in any way.
I'm not even sure, aside from a "look at what cool stuff we can do now" promo, why you would want a roll up laptop. Is it easier to carry a fat tube than a thin rectangle? Possibly. Is it going to be just one more hassle rolling and unrolling the damn thing every time you want to use it/carry it around? Definitely.
How much further away would you have to keep it, though, before the inconvenience of not being able to easily access it negated the minor risk of carrying it that way? I'm sure keeping my phone in my bag would negate some minor risks, but it would be a general annoyance every time I wanted to use it, even worse if it was ringing and I had to bug everyone around me until I could get to it and much worse if I wander off somewhere and forget I'm not carrying it. I don't carry mine on my hip anyway, just playing devil's advocate and pointing out that sometimes a minor risk is acceptable if it's a convenience.
It's not just that it's difficult to track the IP back to your household, but that that's not the full extent. What if it's a shared account in a student accomodation, or you're running your PC as a node on a TOR network (so in both cases the "infringing" traffic might look like it's coming from your IP but you aren't the one committing the act). With difficulty in ensuring the IP was assigned to you at the time it was used on one side, and then in proving that it was you downloading the file on the other (and that's assuming you don't have the right to do so, or that you initiated the act knowingly) it's an incredibly flaky way to "prove" anything.
Well we can probably learn from what has happened and build in additional safety measures, but I agree that the events leading up to this latest accident were pretty much unprecedented and yet it's been dealt with in a professional manner and largely contained (despite scaremongering in the media). Given the fact that new reactors are much safer, the chances of something that can smash even an old reactor are minimal and we're fast running out of options, I'd say it's a risk worth taking.
Whatever they're reason, it's just as easy to posit the counter argument that this is evidence of what some people claimed all along: give us relatively cheap, unencumbered, decent bitrate downloads and we'll gladly pay for them. Drop the price a little more and watch this swing even further - prices are currently hovering just above what I'd consider impulse buy territory, I think a drop of a couple of pounds on the average album and they'd reap some pretty big returns.
It's a pity there wasn't some way to take a short, playabale segment of the game and allow people to play that, so as to give a "demonstration", if you will, of what the full game is like.
So you just make it "capture the president" or something. Of course, then you switch the argument from sexism to racism.
Besides, even if monopoly money has little real world value, stealing 12 million of them from the company would be a removal of company assets that would likely land you in some trouble.
Just because something can be gifted, it doesn't mean that the thing has no value. If I get money in a birthday card as a "free gift", it doesn't suddenly negate the point of working to earn money, although in this case it's probably got more in common with a crack dealer giving out free samples to get people hooked...
Why not insurance against fraud? Ford don't charge a fee per mile driven so that they can cover the cost of accident repairs. At least with insurance you can spend more without being penalised - what, just because person A spends $10,000 more on their credit card than person B in a given year they're somehow more likely to be defrauded? Hell, the more I think about it the better it sounds. I like the idea of a no claims bonus for people who are actually careful about their card details. Put in some protections in case the card is compromised through a screw up on the credit card company's side but otherwise force people to actually make an effort, with appropriate rewards, to take better measures against fraud.
I have a credit card and a debit card. I enjoy all of the above with my debit card without a per transaction fee.