I think that the ebook should be publishable in multiple editions. For instance, my short story on Amazon, The Aristotelian, has a nice cover. But I would have preferred to include several illustrations inside. Yeah, maybe it would have a facsimile of my signature, or even a personalized message, but what would really be nice would be a number of beautiful illustrations of the English countryside, an embarrassed Holmes brother, dangling feet of the body hanging in the locked room, and so on.
ebooks enable the production of "coffee table" editions that can be as richly illustrated as a web page. In a perfect world, I'd like to sell a Kindle ebook edition at $0.99, a richly illustrated edition for more, another edition with personalized message for more, and a paper version printed on glossy stock with hardback covers for an even higher price.
When Moses Came Down from Mt. Sinai, the two tablets included: no stealing. Every object of economic value at that time was tangible. If I steal a coin from you, you no longer possess it. Copyright infringement does not deny the owner possession of his property. If morality is predicated upon the Decalogue, you must prove copyright infringement is theft.
The value of copyrighted works is predicated upon artificial scarcity. Is the creation and sustenance of an artificial scarcity a moral act? I think it is not. I'd like to hear any counter-arguments to this point.
Copyright is a legal construct. Though the US Constitution includes copyrights, at that time they did not extend at that time to the absurd lengths that Disney, et alia, have purchased from the US Congress. Nor do the restrictions on free speech (e.g. publication of DRM circumvention mechanisms), appear to be consistent with the Bill of Rights. (We wait for protectors of "the little man" in either party to do anything about this.)
Thus, I think morality is indeed a question in copyright, but the question may have unexpected answers.
OK, I buy a CD. I like the tunes. Instead of ripping them into MP3s myself, I find someone else with a better encoder made MP3s and I download the files for TUNES I ALREADY OWN. Is this a fair use? On the other hand, I know my friends don't have as nice an MP3 encoder as I do. So, I encode MP3s of my CD collection and share them on a file-sharing network... Don't tell me this is taking any money out of the artists' pockets. Most artists have more to risk from obscurity than piracy.
what i'd like to see invented is a decent science fiction force field. with that gizmo, we could have practical fusion reactors. that's my 2nd invention I want, Mr. Fusion that turns coffee grounds, banana peels, skanky beer into 1.21 gigawatts of electricity. my 3rd invention would be a practical "gravity planar" that reflects or redirects gravitational force. i want to drive a car that doesn't depend upon tire traction to accellerate. (remember cornering is a form of accelleration.) bonus points for a replicator that doens't make tea earle gray, but duplicates CDs at an atomic level. Maybe let you "edit" the replicated thang to fix cracks/damage in the original. i break off a bolt on my lawnmower, recover the broken bits, edit out the damage, and instantly fab a new bolt. Oh, and i'll edit out the softness of the steel that contributed to the break. Let's try this in titanium...
I recall reading a couple years back that a significant number of the British clergy, that's clergy mind you, didn't think the Ten Commandments were normative. Why be surprised they have no problem buying sermons.
interesting that an article claiming that economics doesn't apply to software goes to such lengths showing that it does. i think we can all agree that Excel is not a Chevrolet and it's silly to think the two economically commensurate by tweaking some parameters. Same for tunes versus bagels. If I eat your only bagel, you go hungry, but in the economics of Software Theft, all that is lost is an increment of scarcity. Others have argued better than I that in Free Software you have an inverse-Tragedy of the Commons. In the Glorious Future, we'll probably see a lot of software that solves individuals' problems get repurposed increasing its constituency beyond the parochial interests of lone-wolf developers who are out to solve Their Own Problems. The Garage Tinkerer paradigm. I wonder if we'll ever see patronage-funded software? IBM seems to be doing something like that these days. Mitch Kapor's Chandler project may be analogous to what the local billionaires did for the local museum. And we've seen the Mormon Church put together a lot of geneological software. I guess what I'm rambling about is that commercial enterprises are not the only way to produce software.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by stevepoling.
i think another form of personalization is needed
I think that the ebook should be publishable in multiple editions. For instance, my short story on Amazon, The Aristotelian, has a nice cover. But I would have preferred to include several illustrations inside. Yeah, maybe it would have a facsimile of my signature, or even a personalized message, but what would really be nice would be a number of beautiful illustrations of the English countryside, an embarrassed Holmes brother, dangling feet of the body hanging in the locked room, and so on.
ebooks enable the production of "coffee table" editions that can be as richly illustrated as a web page. In a perfect world, I'd like to sell a Kindle ebook edition at $0.99, a richly illustrated edition for more, another edition with personalized message for more, and a paper version printed on glossy stock with hardback covers for an even higher price.
When Moses Came Down From Mt. Sinai...
When Moses Came Down from Mt. Sinai, the two tablets included: no stealing. Every object of economic value at that time was tangible. If I steal a coin from you, you no longer possess it. Copyright infringement does not deny the owner possession of his property. If morality is predicated upon the Decalogue, you must prove copyright infringement is theft.
The value of copyrighted works is predicated upon artificial scarcity. Is the creation and sustenance of an artificial scarcity a moral act? I think it is not. I'd like to hear any counter-arguments to this point.
Copyright is a legal construct. Though the US Constitution includes copyrights, at that time they did not extend at that time to the absurd lengths that Disney, et alia, have purchased from the US Congress. Nor do the restrictions on free speech (e.g. publication of DRM circumvention mechanisms), appear to be consistent with the Bill of Rights. (We wait for protectors of "the little man" in either party to do anything about this.)
Thus, I think morality is indeed a question in copyright, but the question may have unexpected answers.
sounds like a bradbury novel
it's simple to understand why firemen want to read your email. It's to findout if you've got any books so that they can torch them at Farenheit 451.
we can only hope
we can only hope that RIAA manages to litigate against 51% of the electorate. if that happens, the price of buying copyright laws will go way way up.
fair use?
OK, I buy a CD. I like the tunes. Instead of ripping them into MP3s myself, I find someone else with a better encoder made MP3s and I download the files for TUNES I ALREADY OWN. Is this a fair use?
On the other hand, I know my friends don't have as nice an MP3 encoder as I do. So, I encode MP3s of my CD collection and share them on a file-sharing network...
Don't tell me this is taking any money out of the artists' pockets. Most artists have more to risk from obscurity than piracy.
force fields, gravity planar, etc.
what i'd like to see invented is a decent science fiction force field. with that gizmo, we could have practical fusion reactors.
that's my 2nd invention I want, Mr. Fusion that turns coffee grounds, banana peels, skanky beer into 1.21 gigawatts of electricity.
my 3rd invention would be a practical "gravity planar" that reflects or redirects gravitational force. i want to drive a car that doesn't depend upon tire traction to accellerate. (remember cornering is a form of accelleration.)
bonus points for a replicator that doens't make tea earle gray, but duplicates CDs at an atomic level. Maybe let you "edit" the replicated thang to fix cracks/damage in the original. i break off a bolt on my lawnmower, recover the broken bits, edit out the damage, and instantly fab a new bolt. Oh, and i'll edit out the softness of the steel that contributed to the break. Let's try this in titanium...
makes sense
I recall reading a couple years back that a significant number of the British clergy, that's clergy mind you, didn't think the Ten Commandments were normative. Why be surprised they have no problem buying sermons.
it seems economics does apply to software
interesting that an article claiming that economics doesn't apply to software goes to such lengths showing that it does.
i think we can all agree that Excel is not a Chevrolet and it's silly to think the two economically commensurate by tweaking some parameters. Same for tunes versus bagels. If I eat your only bagel, you go hungry, but in the economics of Software Theft, all that is lost is an increment of scarcity.
Others have argued better than I that in Free Software you have an inverse-Tragedy of the Commons.
In the Glorious Future, we'll probably see a lot of software that solves individuals' problems get repurposed increasing its constituency beyond the parochial interests of lone-wolf developers who are out to solve Their Own Problems. The Garage Tinkerer paradigm.
I wonder if we'll ever see patronage-funded software? IBM seems to be doing something like that these days. Mitch Kapor's Chandler project may be analogous to what the local billionaires did for the local museum. And we've seen the Mormon Church put together a lot of geneological software.
I guess what I'm rambling about is that commercial enterprises are not the only way to produce software.