Xanthir 's Techdirt Comments
Latest Comments (90)
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On the post: Suddenly Snoozing Your Email Box Is The In Thing
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On the post: Understanding The Difference Between Price And Value; Product And Benefit
Xanthir ( profile ), 21 Aug, 2008 @ 07:16amRe: And your point is?
Let me get this straight, price and value are different but value affects demand which affects price? So in effect, value affects price. So they aren't as different as you make them out to be.
Let me explain this in very simple terms, because it's obvious that you have reading comprehension problems.
Price and value affect each other. Price and value are not identical.
See? That wasn't hard!
Yea, something may be priced lower than its value, but usually the price will rise to match its value. Basically this argument is just splitting hairs.
Wrong. In the presence of competition, price will lower to the marginal cost of producing the item (that is, the cost of making a copy). It is only when there is insufficient competition that price is allowed to rise until it hits the value ceiling.
This is easy to see. Let's say someone values a chocolate cake at $10 - that is, they'll pay up to $10 for it, but no more. There's only one company making chocolate cakes, and they charge $5 (the cost of making the cake). The person will buy a cake for this amount. The company tries out some price increases, raising it to $6, and the person still buys it. So the company continues raising the price until it exceeds $10. The person stops buying chocolate cake (it's gotten too expensive) and instead buys ice cream, so the company lowers the price back to $10 and equilibrium is achieved.
Now, you decide to start a company making chocolate cakes as well. You see that the other company has stabilized on $10 cakes, and you *could* copy them. Alternately, you could enter the marketplace charging $9 for a cake. People will flock to your cakes (assuming they are of equal quality), because they're cheaper. You make more money than the other company, even though you're charging less.
Of course, now the other company might decide that it needs that business, and drop their price to $8. In return you lower your price, and this continues until both of you either reach the marginal cost of making a cake ($5) or you both decide that it's not worth it to undercut the other (you stop directly competing). Of course, if you take the latter option, you're just opening up the market for a third company to come in and make even cheaper cakes, thus stealing the customers from both businesses.
As long as you can charge less and still make money, someone will charge less, because it gives them an easy upper hand. The price only ever rises above the marginal cost when competition disappears.
It is also used to argue that stealing music is ok but that is another issue.
There was absolutely nothing about infringing on the copyright of musical pieces in this post, and this blog has never said that infringing on the copyright of musical pieces is okay. Mike has specifically stated over and over again on this blog that he does not infringe on the copyright of musical pieces specifically because it is illegal. -
On the post: 30% Of Internet Users Admit To Buying From Spam
Xanthir ( profile ), 21 Aug, 2008 @ 07:02amRe: It's quite possible...
I'd agree that the surveys were very likely worded badly like that. Even among the large group of non-techies among my family and friends that I help out, I don't think a single one has ever actually bought anything from a spam.
Honestly, the most accurate way to gauge this would probably be just to ask whether they've ever enlarged their penis. ^_^ -
On the post: Why Treating Patents As Property Is A Bad Idea
Xanthir ( profile ), 12 Aug, 2008 @ 07:01amActually, go ahead and treat them as property
All intellectual property should be treated as real property. The problem is that no IP-promoters actually want that. They want to have the same legal powers you have to *defend* property, but otherwise want it to still work like something completely different.
If IP was just P like anything else, then this whole copying problem would just disappear. I, an artist, sell you, the consumer, some music. You, the consumer, now own that music, and can do whatever you want with it, just as you could with any other object I sold you.
This even clears up the issue of 'stealing' IP! If I have a song worked out in my journals that I haven't released yet or shown to anybody not contractually obligated to keep it secret, but somehow the lyric sheets end up on the internet, that's stealing. Someone has violated my right to privacy and taken my intellectual property without permission, which is straight-up theft.
The problem is that nearly all IP-as-property advocates want the second scenario to apply even when you have voluntarily sold or given your IP to another party. That's not how property works, people!
The funny thing is that the best way to make IP act as real property right now is to public domain it. -
On the post: Tiffany Still Confused About How Liability Works; Appeals eBay Decision
Xanthir ( profile ), 12 Aug, 2008 @ 06:46amRe: ebay dug their own hole
You repeatedly state that ebay shouldn't be liable for counterfeits on the site, but it is ebay that created the environment that makes them liable. They set a precedent years ago by pulling auctions from the site that did not comply with certain laws...that was their first mistake.
By doing so, they admitted that they were liable for those listings, or at least aware of them and their illegality. ...and chose to take some responsibility for policing the site against such listings. Then they began restricting what could and couldn't be listed in certain states and countries based on national and state laws...another step in implicating themselves in all future cases of illegal listings.
Did you actually read the post? Yes, Ebay filters out counterfeit stuff when it's brought to their attention, as they are legally required to do. Tiffany's is trying to make Ebay liable for the counterfeiting before anybody reports it.
Knowing your site, property, business etc. is used as a place to conduct illegal activity may not in itself necessarily imply liability. But, eBay actions to try and prevent the crimes on the site certainly starts to imply that they are liable. Add the fact that ebay continues to make tens of millions of dollars from counterfeit listings, Paypal scams, and other rip-offs and suddenly they look a whole lot liable.
I'm just curious at this point. Do you think Ebay should refund the listing money, etc. to counterfeiters when they pull down their listings? -
On the post: Nintendo Freaks Out That People Can Use Memory Card To Pirate Games
Xanthir ( profile ), 12 Aug, 2008 @ 06:37amHmm...
I never really looked into the value of the DS memory cards - I thought they were just for playing ROMs. Carrying around all my games on one card sounds *awesome*, though. Looks like I know what my next game purchase will be now. ^_^ Thanks, Nintendo!
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On the post: Microsoft Researchers Suggest Six Degrees Of Separation May Actually Be Accurate
Xanthir ( profile ), 05 Aug, 2008 @ 06:43amRe: The Secret
"The Secret" is a way of organizing your thoughts. No magic, no mystical stuff. Its very simple: When you think positive, your mind is clearer and it functions better. Period. You can believe all the hype and crap you want, but if you follow what they tell you in the Secret "write your goals down, visualize them, believe in yourself, don't let negativety tear you down, blah blah blah" your mind will simply function better, nothing will "magically" happen, but you WILL make better decisions and will live a whole lot more of a stress free life. Its not rocket science people for god's sake! its just the same old "self help" stuff repackaged!
And if that helps people, then why not?
Thinking positively is a good thing. The problem is that trying to claim "The Secret" is only about thinking positively is a bald-faced lie. It does make claims that you can exert magical powers through your thoughts, such as dissolving traffic jams merely by thinking that you won't be stuck in one (and conversely, *causing* a traffic jam by fearing that you'll be caught in one).
It's a vicious, evil philosophy that blames the victim for everything bad that happens to them, as they could have avoided it if they'd just thought positively enough. Cancer? Your fault! Rape? Your fault! Child abuse! Guess you should have thought more positively! At the same time, it tricks people into thinking that they can succeed without putting effort into things, that they can win the lottery and land promotions and get hot chicks just by thinking that they will. Again, it is certainly true that a defeatist attitude won't help many of these things (except the lottery - you can play it with a defeatist attitude and have the same chance of winning), and a positive attitude may, but if you read the book and listen to the actual words of the author on his blog and elsewhere, you see what he's really getting at. -
On the post: Rogers Looks For New Ways To Annoy Customers, Hijacks Failed DNS Lookups
Xanthir ( profile ), 24 Jul, 2008 @ 06:53amRe: Internet Explorer
The difference is somewhat technical, but important.
When IE (or most any browser) takes you to a search page after you type in a non-existent address, that's purely an action on the *browser's* part. It *tries* to go to the page, receives a 404 error, then instead puts you on a new page. It knows that the original request failed, though. (The normal 'page not found' error also works exactly like this, except that the page it sends you to is stored on your computer rather than being somewhere else out on the net.)
On the other hand, what Rogers and some other ISPs are doing is redirecting you on the *server's* side, so that the browser never knows that it tried to access a bad address. Specifically, the error code that the browser is supposed to receive (404) never gets sent.
There's a third similar thing that can happen, actually. Individual sites can specify that 404 errors should bring up a specific page of their own (rather than the browser-specific page-not-found page). This can even be an ad-laden search page, just like what Rogers is doing. However, this practice *still* returns the proper error code as well, so that services which depend on that code to know that a link is bad will still work correctly. -
On the post: Amazing, But True: FTC Doesn't Want To Rush Into National Privacy Standards
Xanthir ( profile ), 23 Jul, 2008 @ 11:23amRe: Or you could just not regulate anything
Permeating the city with garbage smells isn't a necessary part of the infrastructure. It's simply that no one has felt it worth it to fix the issue - dealing with some bad smells once a week is cheaper than fixing it.
Same with inhaling exhaust when walking on the sidewalk - it's not necessary, it's just that nobody wants to spend the money and effort to fix it.
Spam can be solved in the same way, with money and effort. There are actually some very good ways to completely throttle spam that aren't very expensive or difficult, it's just that nobody's bothered to set them up yet, as they need network effects before they become really usable. -
On the post: How About Five Year Renewable Copyrights With A Use-It-Or-Lose-It Clause?
Xanthir ( profile ), 23 Jul, 2008 @ 09:17amRe: As a songwriter, I'm not sold on this
As a songwriter, I'm not sold on this idea. Just because the band I was in stopped gigging (and selling CDs) five years ago, why should I lose the rights to the songs I wrote?
Think about this from the public's point of view. A band has stopped selling CDs, and in fact stopped selling them 5 years ago. If they were popular you *might* still be able to find their CDs in big music stores, but otherwise you're forced to dig through indie music stores (if there are any in your area) or hit the reseller market (of which the indie music store is usually a part of anyway).
In other words, their music is probably impossible to find for the average person in the legal market. Why should it be illegal to hit up the infinite memory of the p2p sector to grab the songs then? The band is no longer making money off of them (remember, they stopped selling CDs, and aren't touring any longer either). Allowing the band to retain control over the songs is simply hurting the public.
Along with that I don't want the expense of renewing such rights every five years.
This is a legitimate criticism, but one must still consider just what's going on. The government is granting you a monopoly. This essentially becomes an every-5-years tax on that monopoly, to ensure that you're using it well.
I don't understand why copyright should ever expire, except perhaps upon the death of the creators.
If you're not making any money off of the monopoly, then why should you retain it? Remember, copyright is an artificial construct created and maintained through the government's will. It is given to you, the creator, as an incentive to create, and release your creations to the public. However, if you are not taking advantage of that incentive, it is correct for the government to remove what it had granted, and allow the public to benefit. -
On the post: Amazing, But True: FTC Doesn't Want To Rush Into National Privacy Standards
Xanthir ( profile ), 23 Jul, 2008 @ 07:33amRe: Re: spam regulation
Um, that would not work at all. A lot of spam is sent from bot-nets and zombie computers. So, you want to charge the average Joe for every email his trojan-infected computer sends? Plus, even if it is a company sending it out, how do you enforce a fee on a foreign company, which is the other major source for spam?
The solution I outlined just above in a previous comment addresses this. Individual email accounts are the ones who get charged, so an infected computer can't be charged unless their actual email account has been compromised (and the email providers would have heuristics to detect this and shut it down temporarily, at least after the first few high-profile people with enormous email bills; another idea would be the email providers capping the amount you are allowed to send unless you provide some human verification).
As for enforcing fees on foreign companies: you don't. However, if they want to send you email, they have to opt-in to the escrow service (or get verified as a legitimate business sender) or else their mails get automatically returned. -
On the post: Amazing, But True: FTC Doesn't Want To Rush Into National Privacy Standards
Xanthir ( profile ), 23 Jul, 2008 @ 07:28amRe: spam regulation
now though,so many people,companies can send out a million or more spam e-mails at one time that i believe the only way to protect us all from inbox's with 200 spam emails everyday is to limit the amount of emails a person or company can send in a given time.if you exceed that # of e-mails, then you would have to pay the government a fee for every e-mail.i mean #'s like the average person or even small business owner would send in a month. maybe 50,000 emails and after that even a penny an email would stop these companies that send out millions of spam emails daily.i left my yahoo box unattended for 5 days and had to delete over 1000 spam emails 25 at a time.do the math of how long it took me.spam has become a plague to us average users.
A similar idea has been seriously considered by a lot of smart people, but without the nationalistic problems inherent in your idea. Rather than being a corporate-driven thing, it can instead be easily market-driven, and I think eventually something like the following will appear.
Basically, the responsibility has to be on your email provider. You would have a whitelist of email addresses that are allowed to send you mail normally. Any mails from addresses not on your whitelist would be automatically returned with an error message *unless* they deposited one cent (US$0.01) into an escrow account hooked up to you. You can then either approve the message (whitelisting the address and refunding the cent) or spam it (blacklisting the address and keeping the cent). After a certain amount of time has passed the cent is automatically returned, so you don't have escrow accounts sitting around collecting money for long periods of time. If you receive an email from someone not on your whitelist without the automatic deposit, it will automatically return the mail with an error message.
The reason this works even with the tiny, tiny deposit is that spammers start with absolutely miniscule margins. Only a tiny fraction of the emails sent out ever generate a sale, but they still come out on top because they can send out millions of spams per dollar. Note that a lot of spammers have gone out of business in recent years because antispam technology has gotten much better; if you used to successfully plant 1 million emails in inboxes per dollar, but now only 100 thousand of them successfully get through, that's a 90% drop in potential revenue.
A one cent escrow would drop this to 100 emails sent per dollar. Virtually zero spammers can make money with that sort of ratio, and the spam industry as a whole would come crashing down.
This solution, naively implemented, would of course also kill corporate mailings, which aren't necessarily spam (though they can be to individual people). This can be gotten around relatively easily. Just employ a trusted authority to verify that an email address is a real business, similar to what Verisign does for security certificates now. These addresses would be put on a semi-whitelist by cooperating email providers, allowing them to get to your mailbox without the escrow deposit. You would of course still be free to blacklist them if you like, and particular email providers could choose to ignore this list (allowing people to use them if they *really* don't want any corporate email).
If just the top 5 email providers got together and provided this sort of service, the collective weight would force everyone else to adopt it as well, and spam would be a thing of the past.
This same idea can obviously be applied to blog commenting systems as well, and really anything that has a problem with spam. CAPTCHAs are gradually becoming less and less useful as the spammers create smarter bots, and eventually there won't be anything left that (a) is easy for humans to solve but hard for computers and (b) is easy for computers to generate. -
On the post: EU Plans To Extend Copyright; Turns Copyright System Into Welfare For Musicians
Xanthir ( profile ), 17 Jul, 2008 @ 07:07amRe: Re:
To work as a contractor or work under a contract is a form of Work for Hire, In California for example the person or business who hire's then owns the property, physical or intellectual. Because the negotiation is handled upfront all party agree prior to any product or payment taking place.
your can't really compare a contract or work for hire with copyright in this case.
Actually, uh, you can. That was the point of Mike's post.
50 years ago, these artists worked for a negotiated price (well, pre-negotiated by the government, but still). The government said, "We'll give you copyright for 50 years if you make songs." The artists apparently considered that a good deal, and made their songs. That's the transaction. We received a good (music), they received their pay (ability to exclusively profit from their music), and that was that.
David's comment was exactly spot on. You find an architect to build your house; he draws up some plans, you pay him, and everyone's happy. He's not allowed to come back 50 years later and demand that you pay him more for his work, just because he's run out of money from the original contract.
More specifically, the government shouldn't be allowed to *force* us citizens to pay the architect again 50 years later. He accepted the deal at the time, and there's no legitimate reason for him to demand more money now.
Same with the musicians. -
On the post: If You Block Your P2P App From Sharing Files, Are You Still Guilty Of Making Files Available?
Xanthir ( profile ), 15 Jul, 2008 @ 11:19amRe: Re: Re: without
What should people "with sense" who have Mac computers use instead of Limewire? Thanks for your expertise.
Seriously, people? You know, there's a thing out there we call a "search engine". It lets you just type in what you're looking for, and it searches the internet for you! Crazy, I know, but it's true, and lots of people use them every day.
Oh, what the hell, I'll do your work for you.
http://www.google.com/search?q=mac+torrent+software -
On the post: Entertainment Industry Continues To Try To Sneak Copyright Expansion Through ACTA
Xanthir ( profile ), 09 Jul, 2008 @ 07:28amRe:
I suspect that were this entire enterprise not underpinned and compelled by the greatest industrial looting in business history, it might be regarded differently. As it is, the pirates have little to blame but themselves. Stop buying and an industry fades.
Yes, this is true. If you stop buying from an industry, it goes away. However, there are two important points obscured by your rhetoric.
1) Just what industry are you talking about? You want us to assume that the "music industry" is the one fading. This is incorrect, as people are spending *more* money on music than ever before. The music industry is doing great, and is as healthy and vital as ever. The industry that is fading is the recording industry, that is, the industry of making and selling plastic discs.
2) Industries fading is a natural part of the business cycle. To pull out an old saw, the buggy whip industry isn't exactly an international powerhouse these days. Why? Because people stopped buying! And so it faded away. Industries must justify their existence by making things that consumers want to buy; they don't get a free pass that states that they must survive, unless they are truly a national necessity that would harm our economy to be without. You'd need a mighty convincing argument to make anyone believe that pressing plastic disks with patterns that correspond to music and movies is an industry of national importance.
Instead, they are 1) hurting artists far worse than any industry ever did, 2) creating the climate wherein the laws will virtually institutionalize these industries and worst of all 3) setting the stage for future ISP taxes that will cycle back to the industries, removing all risk and any future need for investment or innovation.
1) Please, justify this statement. Mike gives examples all the time of artists both big and small who are prospering under the new regime of digital sharing. Your statement is a bald-faced lie, and you should be ashamed of yourself for uttering it.
2 & 3) You almost sound like you believe if everyone just followed the law and acted like good little citizens, the industries would wither away on their own. I'm sorry, but "Sit down and shut up, 'cause I know what's good for you" has never resulted in anything good for the people on the receiving end.
The copyright industry (that is, the RIAA, MPAA, and related) aren't a bunch of charitable folks that want everyone to just get along. They are not just 'reacting' to the infringers. They are trying their very best to not only protect the status quo, but change it to benefit them further. They are trying to eliminate Fair Use. They already act like it doesn't exist, and argue that it doesn't in court. These are not the actions of a poor beleaguered industry just trying to defend itself, they're the actions of a fat, powerful industry trying to ensure that nothing can ever harm it, even and especially at the expense of the average consumer. After all, it's been said time and time again (because it's true) that DRM doesn't do a thing to a tech-savvy person, as they can just get around it or find a cracked version. All it does is harm the ability of the average consumer, who doesn't even know what a torrent is, to use the media they purchased the way they want to use it.
And the legacy of online piracy will be an online police state, because piracy gave the governments of the world little choice.
I'm sorry, infringing gave the governments of the world little choice? We see yet again the explicit conflation of "what's good for the industry" with "what's good for the country". Filesharing has no effect on the government of the United States or any other country whatsoever. If we end up with an online police state, it's because our governments are weak, filthy things that bow to the whims of their corporate donors rather than their people. Let me repeat this for emphasis: filesharing has no effect on the government of the United States or any other country whatsoever.
Normally, I'd be horrified. Under these cowardly and loathsome conditions created by the filesharers themselves, I'm okay with this now.
...
Hope you're happy with your petabyte of contraband. You traded your liberty for it.
You trade your liberty to protect the recording industry. You accept and embrace horrifying intrusions of the government into our private lives at the request of the recording industry. You refuse to speak up and say "That's not right" because you assure yourself that as soon as everyone just stops filesharing the recording industry will stop all these silly lawsuits.
It won't stop. The recording industry is engaged in one of the most powerful erosions of privacy and personal liberty in the history of America, and the world is following suit. You won't get those rights back when this is finished. It'll be law, actual law taught to judges and lawyers and written in big books, and it won't easily change. Look at what's being done. Look at how the recording industry is trying to remove "innocent until proven guilty" because they don't have the ability to search our computers deeply enough to find sufficient legal proof. Look at how the recording industry is trying to make it legal for them to search your computers deeply enough, not so they can find the proof they want, but so they can find even more partial 'evidence' against you for further 'crimes'. Look at how they choose to recoup their losses by suing millions of ordinary, innocent people. Look at how they are so sloppy and indiscriminate in their methods that they send cease-and-desist notices to networked laser printers.
The recording industry doesn't care about you. They don't care about what they're doing to you. They don't care about what the laws they are pushing will mean in the future when an FBI agent can enter your house at any time and demand you allow him to search your computer, demand that you give him any encryption keys or you go to jail, demand that you allow him to install government-sponsored spyware on your computer to monitor your actions online. This is not crazy conspiracy-mongering, it is exactly what the RIAA wants to be able to do. The recording industry doesn't care about what the laws they are pushing mean right now, where it may be illegal to watch the DVD you just bought on your computer, or cut a ringtone from music you own, or get that computer game you bought working again after you installed new hardware (because you've already used up your 'allowed' registrations on previous hardware upgrades) or just because the game company folded and isn't running their authentication servers anymore.
They don't care about you. -
On the post: Trent Reznor's Path To Accepting And Embracing New Business Models
Xanthir ( profile ), 09 Jun, 2008 @ 01:33pmRe: Re: Re:
Other people have hit this comment already, but I feel it bears extra emphasis.
This still seems to me like an admission that content creators need to just deal with a shitty reality: no one will pay you solely for your content anymore.
They still pay for content. What they won't pay for are digital copies of that content, since, well, digital copies are free to make. We consumers aren't stupid; we realize that if we can share content without paying anything, you can too, and trying to charge for something that costs you literally nothing is sort of dishonest.
Behind this is still the unstated implication that content, in and of itself, isn't worth paying for, and neither is the work that goes into its creation. Whether people are admitting that or not.
As many have stated before, price and value are two very different things. Air is free, and water is dirt cheap, but those are probably the two most valuable things in the world. Digital reproductions of content are valuable (otherwise we wouldn't care about them), it's just the price that drops to zero. -
On the post: U2's Manager Lashes Out Yet Again: Blames Absolutely Everyone For Not Making U2 Even Wealthier
Xanthir ( profile ), 07 Jun, 2008 @ 03:45pmRe: Re: DanC
I'm not sure you actually understand your own position, edjay.
You started by sarcastically suggesting that Mike should create a copyrighted work and give it away for free (implying that Mike wouldn't, because he uses copyright to make money like all the musicians).
It was then pointed out that the very blog post you are commenting on is a copyrighted work given away for free. Mike practices exactly what he preaches - he gives away an infinite good (copies of his posts over the internet) for free, and uses them as advertising for his main business, the TIC. Even within the TIC he sticks to his guns, as he allows the people who commission him to do whatever they want with the information he provides them, even give it away to other people.
I mean, if you want to change your position now, you can, but it's pretty clear that your original post was a stunningly stupid comment. Even your changed position isn't very intelligent, as Mike has never advocated copyright infringement on the part of the users (as he says over and over and over again), but rather implores the *artists* to free their copyrights and use the infinite goods for their own benefit. -
On the post: When Ideas Are Easy And Execution Is Hard… It Makes Sense To Share Your Ideas
Xanthir ( profile ), 04 Jun, 2008 @ 09:01pmRe: Trying to Avoid Strawmen
Heh, I'll try to answer for Mike. I've been following his words on this sort of thing for some time. Let his own words be definitive, of course.
1) Of course they should have the potential. As long as your business isn't illegal or something similar, you should always have the potential to succeed. Of course, potential doesn't put food in your mouth, if you waste it.
2) Yes; ethically, you should support those who make things you find worthwhile. Note, though, that I don't believe ethics requires you to support them financially in the manner or degree to which *they* request - if someone said they deserved $1000 from everyone who listened to their music, I'd rightfully tell them to fuck off.
3) Not that it *should* (that's an ethical imperative), but that it *will*. The cost of any good drops to the cost of producing it over time, as people learn how to undercut their competitors and still make money. When something is free to produce, then, the price will generally drop to free as well. One can still try to charge, but there is no guarantee that people will want to pay when they have other providers all around giving away something similar. One can see this operating in the music market right now - iTunes kicked things off with $.99 downloads, but newer legal offerings are charging less than that just because they can. It's not a loss leader, because the price isn't below cost - they can just operate at a lower margin.
4) When you say 'a work of art... as itself', what exactly are you referring to? With something like a painting, the original is certainly a scarce good - by definition, there's only one. Physical reproductions are scarce, because they cost money to make. The actual content is infinite, because you can reproduce it for (effectively) free. It seems like you're trying to refer to the abstract concept of the artwork, which isn't an actual thing that can be sold. -
On the post: Bad Ideas: Instituting Artificial Scarcity To Annoy Fans Into Buying Now
Xanthir ( profile ), 04 Jun, 2008 @ 07:16amRe: I Don't Want to Compete
This hypothetical of yours changes everything. Why do Mike and the others here at Techdirt advocate giving music away for free and making it up elsewhere? Because piracy exists, or more specifically, because the technology that enables piracy exists.
Business models don't exist in a vacuum. If there were no cars, the buggy whip industry would probably still be a decent place for a young person to work in. However, they do, and so it isn't.
Same with music (and other industries, of course). High bandwidth and easy filesharing change the shape of the marketplace such that giving things away for free is a good idea (if you don't, it's going to happen anyway). If you eliminate this, you basically just rewind the industry 15 years or so, when CDs were still the best bet. -
On the post: ASCAP's Bill Of Wrongs
Xanthir ( profile ), 01 Jun, 2008 @ 01:47pmRe: And I have the right...
Well, almost. You have the right to do what you wish with things that are sold or freely given to you, unless you agree to special terms limiting your freedoms in a formal contract. Shrinkwrapped EULAs don't count, and luckily the courts are starting to realize this.
When I am sold a CD, I own it. I won't buy a plastic disc for $14.99, as I can get several hundred for that price. If I'm paying that sort of money, it's for the content. I'm buying the music. If the artist wishes to attempt to engage me in a formal contract whereby I limit my rights to redistribute my property after I buy it, they are free to, but I'm free to refuse as well. Luckily, I've never had any of them do that. All I ever see are transparent attempts to try to ram a contract down my throat by stealth via EULAs.
In the meantime, I will take my (intellectual) property as my own, and do what property law has always allowed me to do with my own property - share it with others.
Gmail's had it for a bit
Gmail added a feature similar to Outlook's a while back in their 'experimental' settings. Hit the "Take a Break" button, and your entire gmail window gets grayed out and unusable, with a timer counting down for 15 minutes before it lets you in again.