Of course I have something to hide! Credit card numbers, account balances, health history, favorite TV shows that I'm embarrassed about, half of what I did in college, that one paper on feminism, what I *really* think about George Bush....
Can you honestly tell me that you want a government who can't even keep a secret watch list *really secret at all* to have access to all your data? As if it wont instantly leak to criminals no matter how "secret" they think they're keeping it? More of that data is probably put to use by the Mob insiders than the Fed. Do you want the Mafia (name your favorite) to have all your conversations on record?
Label monopolies like encouraging other audio monopolies, like radio. They want to control your ears and air waves any way they can, so they can keep charging you their monopoly rents.
Did everyone else miss the fact that AT&T has basically admitted that they allowed the NSA to wiretap all their lines, and searched for immunity from prosecution for violating their customers' privacy. It took a whistleblower in their SF office to get that process started, but they haven't denied it. Or what about the story of the FBI tap at Verizon? Or have you heard the fact that wireless calls can be tapped indiscriminately just because they're wireless, so such a tap isn't considered "invasive." Have any of the related ACLU suits been resolved?
If you use a phone, or send anything over the Internet in plain-text, the government has full access to that data. The only question is what "keywords" they're using in their sweeping searches on all that data, and they'll never tell us that.
The main problem with this guy isn't any tin foil hats -- it's the fact that he's not alone. The question is who is NOT being watched.
In the U.S. originating documents, words like "people", "man", and "mankind" were short-hand for rich land owning white men. They were usually also slave-holders, though that was not required. They were expansive enough to allow rich white male owners of smaller lands without slaves too, though they were in the minority. Widows only counted in that they were married to a rich land owning white man once. Nobody else counted at all. So if you do the proper substitution, to translate to modern terms, it would look more like this:
A government of the rich white dudes, by rich white dudes, for rich white dudes. Everyone else can make me a sammich!
That last bit is obviously not part of the original text, but it's added to clarify "founders intentions."
"I thought it was always normal to negotiate treaties in secret so that the opposing parties can't leverage domestic pressures to use against our own negotiators."
If that is the case, why are they allowing "domestic pressures" from the *IAAs and content Unions??? Allowing pressure only from those with a money interest isn't Democracy, it's Oligarchy.
Good point -- you could almost attribute all of Disney's income ever to public domain. Can we also start adding up all the money we save individually, by avoiding Copyright license fees via "fair use", and little things like quotes and proper attribution? I could probably tally a few $K based on high school reports alone! College papers could put me in the millionaires club.
"exactly how many times do you think the editors for The Register went back to the author of the article, insisting that they must have mixed up Microsoft and China in the story"
This shows you haven't read The [UK] Register before. I think their primary name for Microsoft there is "The Beast of Redmond." They are probably still reveling in the irony, over beers at the pub. They love this kind of story, which is why I'm a fan.
"they're going to spend money fighting for their right to sell an 8 year old or so operating system in China"
They're probably simultaneously lobbying for China to adopt even more ridiculously long Copyright periods than the U.S. So yeah, I could see them fighting over an 8 year old OS easy. Call me in 90 years.
China doesn't have nasty limits on Copyright like "freedom of speech", so they shouldn't have any of those messy limitations like "fair use", or inability to monopolize little things like "math" or "statement of facts". They'll be sending Ballmer a license fee every time he sneezes, if a Chinese citizen copyrights the sound of sneezing first.
You would think Microsoft would start re-thinking their IP law stance, after being THE target for software patent trolls, getting caught using a download tool that violated the GPL, and now this. Some monopolists never learn -- there's always a bigger tyrant than you out there, somewhere, waiting for you to try to treat them like all your other boneheaded customers. Microsoft doesn't have nukes (yet), so they're way out of their league.
"if they listen to their music, they should expect to be paid."
How do I know if a musician is worth paying if I don't hear their music first? Do art collectors routinely collect paintings without seeing them first? Am I the only one who browses books in the book store, or gets them from the library, *before* buying?
Does the real world just sound like echoes to you in there?
"Dont worry everyone give it 15-20 years all these old farts will be dead and hopefully things will be better."
If only they were so uniform. I know some old farts who are tired of these luddite Oligarch bastards ruining everything. My old farts will probably die faster, due to inferior access to health care. In their prime era they were fooled by the same Oligarchs, to think of things like cigarettes and leaded gasoline as perfectly healthy. Gasoline cleans your clothes, dontchaknow! I've got a headache from the fumes, but it's nothing a good smoke wont cure.
This is similar to when the U.S. declared telephone access a "right" via the "Universal Lifeline" direct subscriber tax and subsidy scheme. In a sense, U.S. telco regulation is also still structured around the "right" to 9-1-1 call access.
The main difference seems to be that, in the countries where this Internet access right is being granted, ISPs don't have the same monopolistic stranglehold on the Internet as the U.S. telco market has always had on our communications. In both cases, declaring basic communications access as an equal citizen right makes sense, but only in America can a such "right" unbalance the economy in favor of a few self-chosen monopolists. Instead of solving these equal access problems with Democracy, the U.S. solves everything with "the biggest lobby wins" style Oligarchy.
Genetics boils down to a sequence of a small set of known molecules, forming a small alphabet (GCAT). Any gene old or "new" (I'm unlikely to agree with you on what constitutes new) is just a sequence of these letters, like a long German word. It's a language, so Copyright should apply, not Patents. But since most genetic sequences are taken directly from nature, any such texts are just relating facts, which aren't even subject to Copyright. So the scientists should tell the lawyers to shove it.
Responding to this comment, as the one below seems like a double post...
"first, remove? as in perform massive-scale image editing to untold millions of images, on a much greater and more intrusive scale then blanking Lic# plates (which seems to be a matter of recognizing the shape of strings of numbers) and faces?"
Surprisingly, I think they *are indeed working on it.*
The main problem right now is that these services are very early in evolution, so they usually only have one picture of any one view to go on. Once they have some time and multiple shots per view, they can probably examine multiple shots to figure out what is solid vs. mobile, and eliminate the changed or mobile parts. Further, they are working on 3D mapping technology that plots points in images taken from multiple angles, into 3D coordinate space. They figure out all the corners, create a 3D mesh, and then apply normalized images as textures across the mesh. Then the problem becomes eliminating inconsistent 3D objects from underlying 3D mesh spaces.
Most of this work is in Google Earth R&D experiments, but I'm sure they could enhance Street View with it in the future. With O3D and other 3D web initiatives, the distinction between Google Earth and Google Maps may fade entirely -- it'll all be one big VR simulation of the Earth with pre- or real-time navigation functions, and limitless configurable camera angles. Add animations, and it might even offer real-time traffic simulation, where traffic data is available, and time-of-day and weather based lighting.
"I think everyone would agree here that it appears there is even more music being made now than ever before."
Prior comments show that you are wrong -- there is plenty of disagreement. Appearances can be deceiving -- perhaps there "appears" to be more music because you have more access to it, thanks to technologies like P2P file sharing, which to me is the modern equivalent to radio broadcasting. The RIAA doesn't hate P2P because it's any worse than radio in how it allows "free" distribution -- they just have less control over it, because its an egalitarian peer exchange instead of a top-down broadcast. They can work out payola schemes to control finite radio air time, and they can't do that with infinite P2P.
The word "liberal" has become meaningless now. It has lost all original meaning, and become synonymous with disagreeing with anything Faux Noose tells you to think. If Fox News calls you a "liberal", all that means is that you are sane, and you somehow got their attention.
I like the label "progressives" better, in part because it's less easy to confuse with those dumb Libertarians -- the luddite gold standard panacea idiots. It can also be used to imply one is *progressing* away from old idiotic belief systems, like fundamentalist Christianity. Speaking of, why isn't preaching about hell to little kids considered a form of terrorism? Evangelicals are the original terrorists -- they're just mad the fundi Islamists keep on one-upping them.
Rupert Murdoch and his cabal know nothing about how the Internet works. I just ran a traceroute to fox.com. Packets between my home and fox.com go through about 11 routers along the way. If any of them are store-and-forward type equipment, they are violating Fox's copyrights just as much as Google is.
In addition, I noticed this was the final device touched in the route:
a72-247-242-217.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com
Akamai Technologies get paid to cache their client's web pages everywhere, so the site data gets to your browser faster than it would if it were coming all the way from the original website. I hope Newscorp realized this when writing up their contracts with Akamai, or they could be facing a copyright theft suit as well!
I hope they do cut Google off in their robot.txt files. I want that trash to stop showing up in my *news* searches, since all they offer is fake news.
One essential problem with all attempts legislating creative works, no matter what the term length, is that you cannot force or bribe anyone to be creative. Creativity requires inspiration, and all inspiration is derived from only two sources:
1. Nature.
2. Prior creative works.
Money has nothing to do with creativity -- it can only speed up or slow down the process of discovery and creation, dependent on context. Inspiration via number 2 is diminished when the sharing of prior creative works is suppressed. Number 1 is a lot more difficult to suppress, but all current human nature is partially derived from exposure to prior creative works, so the two factors are related. Therefore, any effort to increase creativity cannot by definition involve suppressing its distribution, once created. All IP laws that require suppression in distribution are counter-productive against their stated Constitutional goals, and should be abandoned. No monopolistic "rights" should involve the suppression of copying or distribution of creative works.
Requiring attribution with distributed works can create an incentive to refrain from hiding or keeping secret a work, once it is created. Anybody can take a priori credit for a public work, when all other versions or copies are hidden from the public. Only the first to file a work for attribution into the public domain can rightly claim original ownership. There is no way to prove any ownership of a work while it is secret, except to those few exposed to the secret. Attribution rights are therefore productive, toward the dual goals of public dissemination and eliciting inspiration in others, and should be enforced accordingly. Secrecy at the source withholds creative works from the public, even more than externally suppressing distribution does. Such secrecy should not be encouraged, and therefore not legally defended.
"Part of the battle here is to sensitise the public to the fact that there is a real issue involved. It is not simply a victimless crime...."
I wish just once a journalist would stand up to such claims and ask someone to prove this hyperbole at the moment they spout it, rather than let it go unchallenged.
Sharing data that was already released to the public, in any form, is the very definition of a victimless crime. In reality, no one loses. The perception of loss is completely made up -- a "lost sale" where no sale ever existed. In fact, the expanded public exposure to the data can lead to sales which would not have occurred otherwise.
The reality is that, without the barrier of government obstruction to data sharing, the original purchaser gets to share their purchase, and thereby increase its value to them, and to show others why it was a good purchase. If others agree, they can purchase the same data as well. If they disagree, they can just delete or archive the copy. If they agree but would rather support the originating data provider in some other way, they can find another way to get the data provider just as much or even more money than a direct purchase. If they don't have the money or will to contribute, they can share it with friends who do have the money and/or will, so sharing it with the poor or disinterested is no net loss. Such sharing is a currently defined as a "crime", but all loss is a complete fabrication, and the gains to all parties in the "crime" are much better defined. In fact, this is the opposite of a victimization -- it is a liberation. Suppressing sharing causes more definite harm, so that should be the crime.
Hulser is 100% correct -- the survey results fully depend on what parts of the development hierarchy they are talking to. Game programmers in particular seem better informed about all the issues with DRM, way more than producers. It's the publishers and producers you have to worry about -- they're the one lot I too often find myself explaining why walled-garden DLC shops feel claustrophobic, why gamers hate DRM restrictions (even if they never intend to go around them), and why first-sale doctrine is a GOOD thing in terms of perceived first-buyer value. Some of them don't even understand how rentals are a good form of advertising -- anything other than a full purchase is immediately regarded as a lost sale. They have one sales hammer, and every consumer is a nail, waiting for their first strike.
I rarely read the NY Times, and I think one big reason is that they seem very light on the links. If they have outside sources, they should link to them. The vast majority of links I see there are just to other unrelated articles containing the same highlighted keyword. They link to outside content so rarely its like they're afraid they'll lose you forever if every link doesn't start with "http://nytimes.com/...". Even so, they miss plenty of opportunities to link to other related articles on their own site. It's like they're trying to bring their print format to the web, which doesn't work at all.
In general: if you don't hyperlink your sources in your article, I wont trust anything you are writing. This makes print a dead format to me -- I can't trust any of it.
"Without patents, would Ford and Toyota just followed down the road Honda started down originally?"
Without patents, they would have been free to improve upon Honda's path without interference. In the current thicket of patent monopolies, we become entirely dependent on Honda to improve that path, even if another company can do better.
If Honda didn't show an obviously optimal path, the natural tendency would be to experiment with a different path, in order to establish brand differentiation, which is a much bigger driver of "parallel" invention than patents ever were.
"Would we be seeing the refining (one-uppping) of each other down a single, narrow path?"
No, because they would be competing using all available options, rather than depending on their own little areas of patent hegemony. The assumption that one path is the most profitable is your own assumption, and not based in reality at all. A valid business assumption tends toward either path differentiation, or faster improvement along the most fruitful path for a given company's current circumstances, which might vary widely from that of all other competitors. The usefulness or profit potential of any invention depends a great deal on its unique market context.
"What would happen if that path turned out to be the wrong one?"
Then a newer or more nimble competitor is free to come in and take all the market share with the "right" path. The patent thicket is their main roadblock, currently.
The assumption that any of these hypothetical scenarios is helped by patent monopolies at all is ridiculous. Competition is intrinsically stifled by monopolies of all forms, so all these scenarios would benefit from the abolition of patents.
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Re: Re: Of course you are being watched! This is news? (as Fred McTaker)
"Do you have anything to hide?"
Of course I have something to hide! Credit card numbers, account balances, health history, favorite TV shows that I'm embarrassed about, half of what I did in college, that one paper on feminism, what I *really* think about George Bush....
Can you honestly tell me that you want a government who can't even keep a secret watch list *really secret at all* to have access to all your data? As if it wont instantly leak to criminals no matter how "secret" they think they're keeping it? More of that data is probably put to use by the Mob insiders than the Fed. Do you want the Mafia (name your favorite) to have all your conversations on record?
Monopoly begets more monopolies (as Fred McTaker)
Label monopolies like encouraging other audio monopolies, like radio. They want to control your ears and air waves any way they can, so they can keep charging you their monopoly rents.
Of course you are being watched! This is news? (as Fred McTaker)
Did everyone else miss the fact that AT&T has basically admitted that they allowed the NSA to wiretap all their lines, and searched for immunity from prosecution for violating their customers' privacy. It took a whistleblower in their SF office to get that process started, but they haven't denied it. Or what about the story of the FBI tap at Verizon? Or have you heard the fact that wireless calls can be tapped indiscriminately just because they're wireless, so such a tap isn't considered "invasive." Have any of the related ACLU suits been resolved?
If you use a phone, or send anything over the Internet in plain-text, the government has full access to that data. The only question is what "keywords" they're using in their sweeping searches on all that data, and they'll never tell us that.
The main problem with this guy isn't any tin foil hats -- it's the fact that he's not alone. The question is who is NOT being watched.
Re: (as Fred McTaker)
In the U.S. originating documents, words like "people", "man", and "mankind" were short-hand for rich land owning white men. They were usually also slave-holders, though that was not required. They were expansive enough to allow rich white male owners of smaller lands without slaves too, though they were in the minority. Widows only counted in that they were married to a rich land owning white man once. Nobody else counted at all. So if you do the proper substitution, to translate to modern terms, it would look more like this:
A government of the rich white dudes, by rich white dudes, for rich white dudes. Everyone else can make me a sammich!
That last bit is obviously not part of the original text, but it's added to clarify "founders intentions."
Re: (as Fred McTaker)
"I thought it was always normal to negotiate treaties in secret so that the opposing parties can't leverage domestic pressures to use against our own negotiators."
If that is the case, why are they allowing "domestic pressures" from the *IAAs and content Unions??? Allowing pressure only from those with a money interest isn't Democracy, it's Oligarchy.
Re: (as Fred McTaker)
Good point -- you could almost attribute all of Disney's income ever to public domain. Can we also start adding up all the money we save individually, by avoiding Copyright license fees via "fair use", and little things like quotes and proper attribution? I could probably tally a few $K based on high school reports alone! College papers could put me in the millionaires club.
Re: Chinese IP (as Fred McTaker)
"exactly how many times do you think the editors for The Register went back to the author of the article, insisting that they must have mixed up Microsoft and China in the story"
This shows you haven't read The [UK] Register before. I think their primary name for Microsoft there is "The Beast of Redmond." They are probably still reveling in the irony, over beers at the pub. They love this kind of story, which is why I'm a fan.
"they're going to spend money fighting for their right to sell an 8 year old or so operating system in China"
They're probably simultaneously lobbying for China to adopt even more ridiculously long Copyright periods than the U.S. So yeah, I could see them fighting over an 8 year old OS easy. Call me in 90 years.
China doesn't have nasty limits on Copyright like "freedom of speech", so they shouldn't have any of those messy limitations like "fair use", or inability to monopolize little things like "math" or "statement of facts". They'll be sending Ballmer a license fee every time he sneezes, if a Chinese citizen copyrights the sound of sneezing first.
You would think Microsoft would start re-thinking their IP law stance, after being THE target for software patent trolls, getting caught using a download tool that violated the GPL, and now this. Some monopolists never learn -- there's always a bigger tyrant than you out there, somewhere, waiting for you to try to treat them like all your other boneheaded customers. Microsoft doesn't have nukes (yet), so they're way out of their league.
Re: (as Fred McTaker)
"if they listen to their music, they should expect to be paid."
How do I know if a musician is worth paying if I don't hear their music first? Do art collectors routinely collect paintings without seeing them first? Am I the only one who browses books in the book store, or gets them from the library, *before* buying?
Does the real world just sound like echoes to you in there?
Re: o.O (as Fred McTaker)
"Dont worry everyone give it 15-20 years all these old farts will be dead and hopefully things will be better."
If only they were so uniform. I know some old farts who are tired of these luddite Oligarch bastards ruining everything. My old farts will probably die faster, due to inferior access to health care. In their prime era they were fooled by the same Oligarchs, to think of things like cigarettes and leaded gasoline as perfectly healthy. Gasoline cleans your clothes, dontchaknow! I've got a headache from the fumes, but it's nothing a good smoke wont cure.
Universal Lifeline (as Fred McTaker)
This is similar to when the U.S. declared telephone access a "right" via the "Universal Lifeline" direct subscriber tax and subsidy scheme. In a sense, U.S. telco regulation is also still structured around the "right" to 9-1-1 call access.
The main difference seems to be that, in the countries where this Internet access right is being granted, ISPs don't have the same monopolistic stranglehold on the Internet as the U.S. telco market has always had on our communications. In both cases, declaring basic communications access as an equal citizen right makes sense, but only in America can a such "right" unbalance the economy in favor of a few self-chosen monopolists. Instead of solving these equal access problems with Democracy, the U.S. solves everything with "the biggest lobby wins" style Oligarchy.
Shouldn't genetic sequences fall under Copyright? (as Fred McTaker)
Genetics boils down to a sequence of a small set of known molecules, forming a small alphabet (GCAT). Any gene old or "new" (I'm unlikely to agree with you on what constitutes new) is just a sequence of these letters, like a long German word. It's a language, so Copyright should apply, not Patents. But since most genetic sequences are taken directly from nature, any such texts are just relating facts, which aren't even subject to Copyright. So the scientists should tell the lawyers to shove it.
Re: Re: "i dont understand why.." (as Fred McTaker)
Responding to this comment, as the one below seems like a double post...
"first, remove? as in perform massive-scale image editing to untold millions of images, on a much greater and more intrusive scale then blanking Lic# plates (which seems to be a matter of recognizing the shape of strings of numbers) and faces?"
Surprisingly, I think they *are indeed working on it.*
The main problem right now is that these services are very early in evolution, so they usually only have one picture of any one view to go on. Once they have some time and multiple shots per view, they can probably examine multiple shots to figure out what is solid vs. mobile, and eliminate the changed or mobile parts. Further, they are working on 3D mapping technology that plots points in images taken from multiple angles, into 3D coordinate space. They figure out all the corners, create a 3D mesh, and then apply normalized images as textures across the mesh. Then the problem becomes eliminating inconsistent 3D objects from underlying 3D mesh spaces.
Most of this work is in Google Earth R&D experiments, but I'm sure they could enhance Street View with it in the future. With O3D and other 3D web initiatives, the distinction between Google Earth and Google Maps may fade entirely -- it'll all be one big VR simulation of the Earth with pre- or real-time navigation functions, and limitless configurable camera angles. Add animations, and it might even offer real-time traffic simulation, where traffic data is available, and time-of-day and weather based lighting.
Re: Re: You can't legislate or bribe creativity (as Fred McTaker)
"I think everyone would agree here that it appears there is even more music being made now than ever before."
Prior comments show that you are wrong -- there is plenty of disagreement. Appearances can be deceiving -- perhaps there "appears" to be more music because you have more access to it, thanks to technologies like P2P file sharing, which to me is the modern equivalent to radio broadcasting. The RIAA doesn't hate P2P because it's any worse than radio in how it allows "free" distribution -- they just have less control over it, because its an egalitarian peer exchange instead of a top-down broadcast. They can work out payola schemes to control finite radio air time, and they can't do that with infinite P2P.
"Liberal" has become meaningless (as Fred McTaker)
The word "liberal" has become meaningless now. It has lost all original meaning, and become synonymous with disagreeing with anything Faux Noose tells you to think. If Fox News calls you a "liberal", all that means is that you are sane, and you somehow got their attention.
I like the label "progressives" better, in part because it's less easy to confuse with those dumb Libertarians -- the luddite gold standard panacea idiots. It can also be used to imply one is *progressing* away from old idiotic belief systems, like fundamentalist Christianity. Speaking of, why isn't preaching about hell to little kids considered a form of terrorism? Evangelicals are the original terrorists -- they're just mad the fundi Islamists keep on one-upping them.
Store and forward (as Fred McTaker)
Rupert Murdoch and his cabal know nothing about how the Internet works. I just ran a traceroute to fox.com. Packets between my home and fox.com go through about 11 routers along the way. If any of them are store-and-forward type equipment, they are violating Fox's copyrights just as much as Google is.
In addition, I noticed this was the final device touched in the route:
a72-247-242-217.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com
Akamai Technologies get paid to cache their client's web pages everywhere, so the site data gets to your browser faster than it would if it were coming all the way from the original website. I hope Newscorp realized this when writing up their contracts with Akamai, or they could be facing a copyright theft suit as well!
I hope they do cut Google off in their robot.txt files. I want that trash to stop showing up in my *news* searches, since all they offer is fake news.
You can't legislate or bribe creativity (as Fred McTaker)
One essential problem with all attempts legislating creative works, no matter what the term length, is that you cannot force or bribe anyone to be creative. Creativity requires inspiration, and all inspiration is derived from only two sources:
1. Nature.
2. Prior creative works.
Money has nothing to do with creativity -- it can only speed up or slow down the process of discovery and creation, dependent on context. Inspiration via number 2 is diminished when the sharing of prior creative works is suppressed. Number 1 is a lot more difficult to suppress, but all current human nature is partially derived from exposure to prior creative works, so the two factors are related. Therefore, any effort to increase creativity cannot by definition involve suppressing its distribution, once created. All IP laws that require suppression in distribution are counter-productive against their stated Constitutional goals, and should be abandoned. No monopolistic "rights" should involve the suppression of copying or distribution of creative works.
Requiring attribution with distributed works can create an incentive to refrain from hiding or keeping secret a work, once it is created. Anybody can take a priori credit for a public work, when all other versions or copies are hidden from the public. Only the first to file a work for attribution into the public domain can rightly claim original ownership. There is no way to prove any ownership of a work while it is secret, except to those few exposed to the secret. Attribution rights are therefore productive, toward the dual goals of public dissemination and eliciting inspiration in others, and should be enforced accordingly. Secrecy at the source withholds creative works from the public, even more than externally suppressing distribution does. Such secrecy should not be encouraged, and therefore not legally defended.
Sharing IS a victimless "crime" (as Fred McTaker)
"Part of the battle here is to sensitise the public to the fact that there is a real issue involved. It is not simply a victimless crime...."
I wish just once a journalist would stand up to such claims and ask someone to prove this hyperbole at the moment they spout it, rather than let it go unchallenged.
Sharing data that was already released to the public, in any form, is the very definition of a victimless crime. In reality, no one loses. The perception of loss is completely made up -- a "lost sale" where no sale ever existed. In fact, the expanded public exposure to the data can lead to sales which would not have occurred otherwise.
The reality is that, without the barrier of government obstruction to data sharing, the original purchaser gets to share their purchase, and thereby increase its value to them, and to show others why it was a good purchase. If others agree, they can purchase the same data as well. If they disagree, they can just delete or archive the copy. If they agree but would rather support the originating data provider in some other way, they can find another way to get the data provider just as much or even more money than a direct purchase. If they don't have the money or will to contribute, they can share it with friends who do have the money and/or will, so sharing it with the poor or disinterested is no net loss. Such sharing is a currently defined as a "crime", but all loss is a complete fabrication, and the gains to all parties in the "crime" are much better defined. In fact, this is the opposite of a victimization -- it is a liberation. Suppressing sharing causes more definite harm, so that should be the crime.
Re: (as Fred McTaker)
Hulser is 100% correct -- the survey results fully depend on what parts of the development hierarchy they are talking to. Game programmers in particular seem better informed about all the issues with DRM, way more than producers. It's the publishers and producers you have to worry about -- they're the one lot I too often find myself explaining why walled-garden DLC shops feel claustrophobic, why gamers hate DRM restrictions (even if they never intend to go around them), and why first-sale doctrine is a GOOD thing in terms of perceived first-buyer value. Some of them don't even understand how rentals are a good form of advertising -- anything other than a full purchase is immediately regarded as a lost sale. They have one sales hammer, and every consumer is a nail, waiting for their first strike.
NY Times lacks links (as Fred McTaker)
I rarely read the NY Times, and I think one big reason is that they seem very light on the links. If they have outside sources, they should link to them. The vast majority of links I see there are just to other unrelated articles containing the same highlighted keyword. They link to outside content so rarely its like they're afraid they'll lose you forever if every link doesn't start with "http://nytimes.com/...". Even so, they miss plenty of opportunities to link to other related articles on their own site. It's like they're trying to bring their print format to the web, which doesn't work at all.
In general: if you don't hyperlink your sources in your article, I wont trust anything you are writing. This makes print a dead format to me -- I can't trust any of it.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: (as Fred McTaker)
"Without patents, would Ford and Toyota just followed down the road Honda started down originally?"
Without patents, they would have been free to improve upon Honda's path without interference. In the current thicket of patent monopolies, we become entirely dependent on Honda to improve that path, even if another company can do better.
If Honda didn't show an obviously optimal path, the natural tendency would be to experiment with a different path, in order to establish brand differentiation, which is a much bigger driver of "parallel" invention than patents ever were.
"Would we be seeing the refining (one-uppping) of each other down a single, narrow path?"
No, because they would be competing using all available options, rather than depending on their own little areas of patent hegemony. The assumption that one path is the most profitable is your own assumption, and not based in reality at all. A valid business assumption tends toward either path differentiation, or faster improvement along the most fruitful path for a given company's current circumstances, which might vary widely from that of all other competitors. The usefulness or profit potential of any invention depends a great deal on its unique market context.
"What would happen if that path turned out to be the wrong one?"
Then a newer or more nimble competitor is free to come in and take all the market share with the "right" path. The patent thicket is their main roadblock, currently.
The assumption that any of these hypothetical scenarios is helped by patent monopolies at all is ridiculous. Competition is intrinsically stifled by monopolies of all forms, so all these scenarios would benefit from the abolition of patents.