It's in the nature of bureaucracies to grow randomly and expand beyond their original intent. So instead of catching terrorists, you know, the nuts that might want to blow a plane up in the air, they catch GI Joe weaponry instead.
You'd think they'd work harder at coming up with something resembling a real terrorist, though, than a pilot with a butter knife. Then again, the GI Joe got to fly and not get put on the no fly list so maybe they're mellowing as time goes by.
Oh, and if I wanted to blow up a plane these days the last person I'd want to get on board with the stuff to do that is someone Arabic looking. I think more a handsome blond Nordic male or drop dead gorgeous blonde Nordic female with plenty of cleavage. Just think of all the distractions the woman would be to the mostly male scanning folk and what she'd get away with!
Funny thing about all of this "regulation is bad" stuff that gets picked up in an election is that more often than not the one saying it the loudest during a campaign has often turned out the be the one adding the most new stuff.
Oh yeah, one or two high profile best before date long expired regulations get tossed but then other things somehow start to creep in to replace them. Fees that never existed before that come with pages of what you need to do to comply and that sort of thing.
At least you got to get screwed for free before now you have to pay a fee first! (General not specific statement for you nitpickers out there.)
Until Romney or any other Republican says they are absolutely, clearly, completely, going to their grave sworn on their grandmother's gravestone against SOPA/PIPA I, for one, wouldn't believe it.
Re: Re: How Does Protecting Foreign Companies Help America?
You forget that they're enabling and linking to piracy, some how and some way that no one's quite acceptably explained get other than whinging on about Google ads.
Curiously all of this is happening to web companies.
Then again, everyone knows that if you SERIOUSLY want to infringe just watch usenet places like, oh, say alt.sex.fetish.copyright.sopasucks.whileweinfringeaway
but that's not the Web so they don't notice.
By that way as far as I know no such usenet group exists. Well, it may shortly after I hit the enter key here but to a bundle of AC's we're all about IP theft anyway.
And, no, protecting foreign companies does little to help America or Canada. But the big fashion guys who can fill campaign warchests are all European anyway. It's da money again.
You do sooooooooooo love to have it both ways don't you?
One one side your freetards, which must include everyone you disagree with here as we all must spend the night searching for torrents and other places to pirate the ohhhhhhhh so wonderful products the RIAA and MPAA come up with these days.
On the other hand you don't like it when outfits like Rightshaven go overboard in the other direction, at least after they've decided to cut and run after being just a touch shady. But if the *AAs of the world are gonna protect their copyrights then they're also gonna have to employ the lawyers you love so little.
Another nice knot you're tying of yourself.
It's just staggering how you keep it up day after day after day after day after day.
Some important supporting groups on the right. "Yeah we need stronger pro-copyright and pro-patent legislation and we need it now!"
The same groups now "Oh, THAT's what's in it? Why didn't the geeks in the tech industry tell us that? Quick, shift into reverse! I don't care we're doing 60 going forward, shift NOW!"
Grrrrrrrrinnnnnnndddddddd! Currrrunnnnnnchhhhh!
The sound you now here is a transmission falling onto the highway followed by another outfit Smith has to take off his list of supporters after he gets that transmission off his lap.
Re: Balderdash-- only crooks lost their ability to tell other crooks where to look
For example the insistence that search engines stop returning allegedly infringing sites names. I suppose you know that it's possible to look up local Hell's Angels clubhouses in the phone book in many towns. Does that make the publishers liable should someone join the HA and later commit a crime just because they were able to call them and find an address? That somehow they're an accessory to that crime?
It's not Google, Yahoo or Bing's fault if I find the name of an offending site when I search for it and then download something infringing. That's my fault and mine alone. All they do is provide the directory. And it's their fault somehow that I did that?
Don't be silly.
And it's interesting that the Bloomberg headline under Dodd said something about stealing ideas when neither copyright or patent law protect any such thing. They both protect certain expressions of ideas, not the ideas themselves.
Remember that we are talking two groups that have complained bitterly about every technological advance for the past hundred years that just might make copying easier or that might hurt them somehow. (For the latter see the introduction of television and the MPAA's whines that it would destroy their box office business.)
MLK and Zenger would have opposed bills like SOPA and POPA just because of their chilling affect on free speech. And, were they alive today, would have used the Internet and the web to spread their ideas far and wide. That said no one is abusing their memories or stature.
Both backed causes seen widely, in their day, of not really having legit complaints. It was only after they were active for a while that the public mood moved to supporting them. They stood up honourably and honestly for their causes and beliefs and both triumphed. So, while you may not consider concerns about free speech and the security of the Internet and not legitimate complaints I have to suggest that you are in the minority in that one.
The comparison is also idiotic but I won't call you that. DH already has and he does a far better job than I do at skewering :)
"But it's much easier to be happy when you've got so many responsibilities like Lamar Smith when you become delusional and ignore reality!"
You mean delusions like Friday lunches with Wills and Kate in London discussing copyright and technology while simultaneously sitting in the House of Representatives?
Not saying he has those but anything is possible when you're delusional! ;-)
It's all in how you define phrases such as "tiny percentage" or "vocal minority" or, for that matter, "silent majority".
If it's less than 50% it qualifies as the two former while the people who aren't counted in are the majority. Right?
See, that makes purrrfect sense!
The only problem with that is if you or I decide to factor in the notion that that representative 30% as far more likely to vote than the "silent majority" of 70%. Given the dismal turnout in elections held in all western democracies these days that would be more for Lamar Smith to lose his job, not to mention a few others.
Because in the States the RIAA and MPAA fill up election coffers of Congress Critters who support them.
Not much different in Canada where they fill up the coffers of the Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats and selected candidates as long as they tow the line.
And having less of an understanding of how the Internet works than the average granny these days, the politicians nod, smile and say "yes boss!".
It's not too comforting but that was, in many ways. the reaction established authority had to the explosion of moveable type printing in the 15th century up to and including censorship, seizure of property (the presses), arrest without warrants and so on. Or execution in some cases, if the printer was lucky.
The last is, so far, beyond the reach of the MPAA, RIAA and their Canadian branch plants though SOPA and PIPA place the rest well within thier reach.
"Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it."
This isn't about doing it "our" way or, if you prefer, Mike's way. It's about adaptation. Even you would agree that a business model that's failing is wrong, which is where the *AAs are at and now seeking legislative protection against. Not just in the United States either.
Even you'll admit that the business models that worked prior to the industrial revolution failed as that came in. Among them mercantilism and with no louder thud that the failure of the East India Company.
I don't know what will come next.
In pricing perhaps we're on the verge of returning to the bazaar. We need to keep in mind that fixed pricing is a new innovation, somewhat less than a century old. Before that people dickered. Outside of the West that's still what most people do.
The point you're still missing, and most do, is that "remix culture" is nothing new. You can find it all over symphonies. Pick one, listen and then find out about them. Filled with references or direct "steals" from folk music and the popular music of the day remixed into a symphony. Hymns used in churches were, and still are to an amazing degree, remixed popular music of the day. Of course these days things are licensed and churches pay a small amount to use the tunes but it's still a remix.
You're right when you say that sometimes we get distracted on the issue of the new business model. If the RIAA/MPAA don't want to go along with the notion that their way doesn't work anymore, well, that's up to them.
At least till they bankroll legislators to run through bad legislation such as SOPA and PIPA. As we have no business forcing a business model on the unwilling they have no business telling the citizenry of the United States, Canada or France or the UK or anyone else to protect them from the inevitable. They aren't "too big to fail", merely rich enough to convince Congress, Parliament or whatever that they are. Hiding, of course, behind copyright, or at least their reading of it. Follow the money. In politics never a phrase was ever truer.
So, what's to come? Dunno.
You are right that better service, better product and better, well, everything usually wins out. But not always. Look at what happened to most local grocers and local butchers who knew their customer base and, in the vast majority of cases, served it very well but were taken down by the economies of scale that supermarkets had.
But that's also been discussed here. Beating the big guys at their own game. And avoiding becoming like them in the process. It doesn't always happen. Just often enough it does to make it possible, and attainable. Linux took over the internet from the BSDs, Sun and Microsoft to the point where it's ubiquitous now on DNS and other core routers and servers. And often the OS that guards MS servers from attack behind them. It's everywhere but the desktop. So far. And no 2012 is not the year of the Linux desktop.
As for piracy, that people here oppose SOPA/PIPA and their copies in other nations doesn't automatically mean we're supportive of piracy. Free doesn't always mean as in beer (see Linux above) but free as in freedom like Creative Commons licensing of, wait for it, a valid copyright. And again while it seems to make sense that piracy costs the copyright holder lost sales and,therefore profit, nearly every neutral study made disagrees. At worst is may be a perpetually lost sale in which case, well, it was never going to ne made. At best it's a purchase delayed. Try before you buy, for example. It can also be valuable word of mouth.
Business models are as varied as the entities taking them on. The Business model for a small parish church is likely to be vastly different than Microsoft, for example. The parish would like to get to a small surplus rather than endless red ink while Microsoft wants to make every penny possible. Nothing evil or spectacularly good about either of them in that. Just what they do.
Like individuals they all want to take more in than the send out. The scale is different but, at the end of the day, that's the only business model there is.
All that said, I'm sad to lose you. May 2012 bring you, joy, happiness and inner peace.
For my part I agree to stop trying to make everyone else to do it my way as soon as the "everyone else", the **AAs in terms of this discussion stop trying to make me do it their way.(Then again, over 30 years in Alcoholics Anonymous has pounded it into my skull that my way often fails to I need to listen and learn from others. Even Anonymous Cowards!)
It's enlightening to go over the stories and, mostly, the comments. There's plenty to learn from that trove.
No, Dark Helmet, you get no do over, no chance for revision. If I don't, you don't. If you did then we'd probably lose your innate ability to puncture pompous asses who reply ad hominally, my spell checker wants to replace that probably invented work with with hormonally (ad hormonally??? that would work in most cases!), while failing to notice they've lifted off into the stratosphere because of the sudden escape of gasses. Probably toxic ones but I feel it's worth the chance.
I'm not at all surprised at the ability to identify a certain Anonymous Coward. The moment I see grifters I know how I'm reading. All I wonder is does this guy have a script on his browser called "Random Techdirt Post"?
I got the chance to practically beg Americans to hold onto that Bill of Rights and kick SOPA/PIPA/s collective ass to ensure it. Next is to go to work on smelly piles of poop like the Patriot Act. Do you guys realize that, as a country, your constitution is an invaluable gift to the world even if your government's behaviour often isn't???
Mostly it's been good to spend far too much time here when I've got better things to do. Like, ummmmmmmm, lemme see, ummmmmmmmm, nope. I'm sure there's something somewhere.
Happy New Year everyone! Including most of the AC's, even ootb and Unaverage Joe who make the place so interesting. And remind me all over again why I so mistrust homo truebeliever. See ya in 2012!
You kinda missed the entire point of what he said, didn't you?
To make it simple, he said he would not patronize a business who would then turn around and use that money (or the profit from his and others sales) to harm his rights.
He then goes through a list of options of how he might do that. "Piracy" was pretty low on his list but you jumped on it, of course. It was there, I presume, because of the monopoly copyright gives to a distributor, rarely an artist after all is aid and done and he wants it badly enough.
Or he'd do without.
Make it or do without was the choice my grandparents faced in the Great Depression. It's a choice increasingly faced by the shrinking middle class in America and elsewhere. It's the choice the poor have. To that he adds the concept of harm that may be promoted by the seller or manufacturer.
Nowhere does he say "I want it for free or else!". Just where you read that into his post I don't know but it's not there.
I'd disagree with the idea that time spent actually writing a book, screenplay, play or collection of poetry is always or ever a "sunk" cost.
For many authors it just is. It's who they are, what they do. Often something they're compelled to do in the same way a great gardener is compelled to head out in all kinds of weather to make sure that everything in the garden is where it should be and how it should be. Few would consider it sunk cost or time. It just is. Even if, at the end of the day, the gardener or author is working for pay. They're following their passion.
The ease and technology available now to self publish, right up the most extravagant that an author would like to help tell the story, alternate endings is there now and growing. This may mean an author needs to co-create with a visual artist but they're both, again, following their passion.
While they MAY absorb the costs of promotion they may just toss it out there, make a comment on their Facebook wall or tweet something, sit back and wait.
In the meantime both closed and open source tools for self-publishing increase to be available and increase to be easy to use. No need to master Photoshop, no need to master Poser. Well, unless you want to be on the high end of things.
The publishing industry will continue to exist as well. But not with the power and influence it has now. In the same way that the RIAA and MPAA member companies, well some of them, will continue to exist without the power and influence they have now.
What will replace them, I hear someone ask. I don't know. I don't care. Perhaps something will along the lines of what we have now, though I think that's unlikely. Perhaps books and e-books will become a collection of cottage industries. That's still to come. Whatever it is it probably won't be what we have now or recognizable as such.
Perhaps it will be a successor document to the Statute of Anne that takes into account the new reality as that law establishing copyright in England was a reaction to the new reality of the movable type printing press.
In the meantime economic phrases such as "sunk" costs won't mean much. Humans both as individuals and groups don't respond to a stimulus rationally as the dictates of economics have pre-supposed. People are treading something of a new road. Retrofitting pre-industrail and industrial era notions of economics and the now discredited notion that humans react in groups logically which has been the basis for economics won't work.
Let's find out what does. I find that, all by itself, fascinating and exciting.
Actually, while he writes his opinion pieces he does link to the source stories where the "fact" you refer to are cited, people from both sides are spoken to and so on. It's simple, really. Click the links.
Now, while you're at it please explain what you mean by "legitimate" new music, new videos, new movies and, I suppose, new poetry, prose, photography and so on.
I'm assuming you mean something that doesn't infringe on someone's copyright, somewhere. While that MAY be getting harder it's not impossible as people do it all the time. Every day.
If you mean the RIAA/MPAA way then, well, I guess them cannibalizing their own stuff is allowed along with grabbing stuff in the public domain and stuffing it full of their copyright. (Luckily what they do is rarely, if ever, as good as the original work in the public domain.)
Anyway, Techdirt is as good a jumping off point as any. Better than your almost total lack of references or citations.
Do have a good day and we'll continue this, no doubt, in 2012.
In the meantime, please explain what you mean by "legitimate" music, video, movies and all that stuff. I'm really, really curious about what that is.
If you don't like it don't read it. He's still a twit. You don't need to lower yourself to that level. We disagree on lots of things but you're far better than that.
If you expect me to answer that question dispassionately you're very, very wrong.
The reason for government "interference" in the first place is that drug companies too often released medications that weren't properly tested, whose side effects were known but hidden, and whose dangers weren't explained at all, if the drug company made them known, to clinicians and patients.
One huge one was Thalidomide which occurred with the FDA and other drug agencies on watch, supposedly. Another was the introduction of a mood altering, addictive drug, amphetamine, also known as speed. The source of the Rolling Stones' song Mother's Little Helper. As in "speed kills" in reference to the drug, which applies to it's current street form methamphetamine.
You have to trust that the drug companies will come clean on this stuff, do the tests they ought to do, make sure their products are safe and fully explained to clinicians who can then explain it to their patients. The history of the drug industry is that it doesn't. Because they don't do those tests because, according to them, it cost money.
Then came extended drug patents. Mostly after legislators the world over fell for Big Pharma's sob story about needing extended patents because they couldn't, actually wouldn't, compete with generic companies.
Kinda what's driving stuff like SOPA/PIPA now though I'll admit that on the patent drive Big Pharma did actually come up with actual evidence of the "harms" they were suffering.
So pick your poison. Cheap untested drugs (again) or mostly safe fully tested ones (sometimes) that cost more.
He is saying that developing countries DO lack the clinical environments to use these drugs properly and well as well as insufficient demand (dollars to J&J) due to WHO not listing them. WHO is reluctant to approve patented drugs at all much less ones where the owner of the patent is reluctant as J&J appears to be to license their patent to generic makers in those countries or regions.
I'm sure MSF would challenge this on every point. I'm more inclined to believe MSF on this one than the PR laden statement from Mr Stevens on this designed to fog rather than illuminate what J&J's true stance is. (Make all the money they can as quick as they can on this one.)
And yes, Big Pharma can be as crass and insensitive as the statement indicates J&J are being and just as dumb from a business standpoint. All too often, particularly around HIV they've been exactly that.
Hey, they're just a bunch of Africans. Who cares? That's the bottom line. Again.
On the post: The TSA Posts Its 'Top Good Catches Of 2011' List, Not One Of Which Is An Actual Terrorist
You'd think they'd work harder at coming up with something resembling a real terrorist, though, than a pilot with a butter knife. Then again, the GI Joe got to fly and not get put on the no fly list so maybe they're mellowing as time goes by.
Oh, and if I wanted to blow up a plane these days the last person I'd want to get on board with the stuff to do that is someone Arabic looking. I think more a handsome blond Nordic male or drop dead gorgeous blonde Nordic female with plenty of cleavage. Just think of all the distractions the woman would be to the mostly male scanning folk and what she'd get away with!
On the post: Did Mitt Romney Just Come Out Against SOPA/PIPA?
Oh yeah, one or two high profile best before date long expired regulations get tossed but then other things somehow start to creep in to replace them. Fees that never existed before that come with pages of what you need to do to comply and that sort of thing.
At least you got to get screwed for free before now you have to pay a fee first! (General not specific statement for you nitpickers out there.)
Until Romney or any other Republican says they are absolutely, clearly, completely, going to their grave sworn on their grandmother's gravestone against SOPA/PIPA I, for one, wouldn't believe it.
Even from Ron Paul
On the post: ICE Propaganda Film Pats Itself On The Back For Censoring The Web; Promises Much More To Come
Re:
/sarc off
On the post: ICE Propaganda Film Pats Itself On The Back For Censoring The Web; Promises Much More To Come
Re: Re: How Does Protecting Foreign Companies Help America?
Curiously all of this is happening to web companies.
Then again, everyone knows that if you SERIOUSLY want to infringe just watch usenet places like, oh, say alt.sex.fetish.copyright.sopasucks.whileweinfringeaway
but that's not the Web so they don't notice.
By that way as far as I know no such usenet group exists. Well, it may shortly after I hit the enter key here but to a bundle of AC's we're all about IP theft anyway.
And, no, protecting foreign companies does little to help America or Canada. But the big fashion guys who can fill campaign warchests are all European anyway. It's da money again.
On the post: NinjaVideo Admin Phara Gets 22 Months In Jail, 500 Hours Of Community Service & Has To Pay MPAA $210k
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
One one side your freetards, which must include everyone you disagree with here as we all must spend the night searching for torrents and other places to pirate the ohhhhhhhh so wonderful products the RIAA and MPAA come up with these days.
On the other hand you don't like it when outfits like Rightshaven go overboard in the other direction, at least after they've decided to cut and run after being just a touch shady. But if the *AAs of the world are gonna protect their copyrights then they're also gonna have to employ the lawyers you love so little.
Another nice knot you're tying of yourself.
It's just staggering how you keep it up day after day after day after day after day.
On the post: Huge Supporter Of Stronger Copyright Law, Grover Norquist, Backing Away From SOPA
The same groups now "Oh, THAT's what's in it? Why didn't the geeks in the tech industry tell us that? Quick, shift into reverse! I don't care we're doing 60 going forward, shift NOW!"
Grrrrrrrrinnnnnnndddddddd! Currrrunnnnnnchhhhh!
The sound you now here is a transmission falling onto the highway followed by another outfit Smith has to take off his list of supporters after he gets that transmission off his lap.
On the post: MPAA Boss Chris Dodd Denies That Copyright Law Today Has Created Any Free Speech Issues
Re: Balderdash-- only crooks lost their ability to tell other crooks where to look
It's not Google, Yahoo or Bing's fault if I find the name of an offending site when I search for it and then download something infringing. That's my fault and mine alone. All they do is provide the directory. And it's their fault somehow that I did that?
Don't be silly.
And it's interesting that the Bloomberg headline under Dodd said something about stealing ideas when neither copyright or patent law protect any such thing. They both protect certain expressions of ideas, not the ideas themselves.
Remember that we are talking two groups that have complained bitterly about every technological advance for the past hundred years that just might make copying easier or that might hurt them somehow. (For the latter see the introduction of television and the MPAA's whines that it would destroy their box office business.)
MLK and Zenger would have opposed bills like SOPA and POPA just because of their chilling affect on free speech. And, were they alive today, would have used the Internet and the web to spread their ideas far and wide. That said no one is abusing their memories or stature.
Both backed causes seen widely, in their day, of not really having legit complaints. It was only after they were active for a while that the public mood moved to supporting them. They stood up honourably and honestly for their causes and beliefs and both triumphed. So, while you may not consider concerns about free speech and the security of the Internet and not legitimate complaints I have to suggest that you are in the minority in that one.
The comparison is also idiotic but I won't call you that. DH already has and he does a far better job than I do at skewering :)
On the post: Rep. Lamar Smith Decides Lying About, Insulting And Dismissing Opposition To SOPA Is A Winning Strategy
Re:
You mean delusions like Friday lunches with Wills and Kate in London discussing copyright and technology while simultaneously sitting in the House of Representatives?
Not saying he has those but anything is possible when you're delusional! ;-)
On the post: Rep. Lamar Smith Decides Lying About, Insulting And Dismissing Opposition To SOPA Is A Winning Strategy
Re: Re: Re: Re: Theoretically...
If it's less than 50% it qualifies as the two former while the people who aren't counted in are the majority. Right?
See, that makes purrrfect sense!
The only problem with that is if you or I decide to factor in the notion that that representative 30% as far more likely to vote than the "silent majority" of 70%. Given the dismal turnout in elections held in all western democracies these days that would be more for Lamar Smith to lose his job, not to mention a few others.
Not only is he lying, he's in denial about this.
On the post: RIAA: We Must Take A Shoot First, Ask Questions Later Approach To Censorship
Re:
Because in the States the RIAA and MPAA fill up election coffers of Congress Critters who support them.
Not much different in Canada where they fill up the coffers of the Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats and selected candidates as long as they tow the line.
And having less of an understanding of how the Internet works than the average granny these days, the politicians nod, smile and say "yes boss!".
It's not too comforting but that was, in many ways. the reaction established authority had to the explosion of moveable type printing in the 15th century up to and including censorship, seizure of property (the presses), arrest without warrants and so on. Or execution in some cases, if the printer was lucky.
The last is, so far, beyond the reach of the MPAA, RIAA and their Canadian branch plants though SOPA and PIPA place the rest well within thier reach.
"Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it."
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: Re: Re:
They're so good at the balance sheet stuff. Not so good on PR. Or on uncensored internets :)
On the post: Techdirt Writers Favorites Of The Week... And Year
Re:
And, sincerely, happy new you, AC. Have a great 2012.
On the post: New Year's Message: From Optimism And Innovation... To The Power To Make A Difference
Re:
Even you'll admit that the business models that worked prior to the industrial revolution failed as that came in. Among them mercantilism and with no louder thud that the failure of the East India Company.
I don't know what will come next.
In pricing perhaps we're on the verge of returning to the bazaar. We need to keep in mind that fixed pricing is a new innovation, somewhat less than a century old. Before that people dickered. Outside of the West that's still what most people do.
The point you're still missing, and most do, is that "remix culture" is nothing new. You can find it all over symphonies. Pick one, listen and then find out about them. Filled with references or direct "steals" from folk music and the popular music of the day remixed into a symphony. Hymns used in churches were, and still are to an amazing degree, remixed popular music of the day. Of course these days things are licensed and churches pay a small amount to use the tunes but it's still a remix.
You're right when you say that sometimes we get distracted on the issue of the new business model. If the RIAA/MPAA don't want to go along with the notion that their way doesn't work anymore, well, that's up to them.
At least till they bankroll legislators to run through bad legislation such as SOPA and PIPA. As we have no business forcing a business model on the unwilling they have no business telling the citizenry of the United States, Canada or France or the UK or anyone else to protect them from the inevitable. They aren't "too big to fail", merely rich enough to convince Congress, Parliament or whatever that they are. Hiding, of course, behind copyright, or at least their reading of it. Follow the money. In politics never a phrase was ever truer.
So, what's to come? Dunno.
You are right that better service, better product and better, well, everything usually wins out. But not always. Look at what happened to most local grocers and local butchers who knew their customer base and, in the vast majority of cases, served it very well but were taken down by the economies of scale that supermarkets had.
But that's also been discussed here. Beating the big guys at their own game. And avoiding becoming like them in the process. It doesn't always happen. Just often enough it does to make it possible, and attainable. Linux took over the internet from the BSDs, Sun and Microsoft to the point where it's ubiquitous now on DNS and other core routers and servers. And often the OS that guards MS servers from attack behind them. It's everywhere but the desktop. So far. And no 2012 is not the year of the Linux desktop.
As for piracy, that people here oppose SOPA/PIPA and their copies in other nations doesn't automatically mean we're supportive of piracy. Free doesn't always mean as in beer (see Linux above) but free as in freedom like Creative Commons licensing of, wait for it, a valid copyright. And again while it seems to make sense that piracy costs the copyright holder lost sales and,therefore profit, nearly every neutral study made disagrees. At worst is may be a perpetually lost sale in which case, well, it was never going to ne made. At best it's a purchase delayed. Try before you buy, for example. It can also be valuable word of mouth.
Business models are as varied as the entities taking them on. The Business model for a small parish church is likely to be vastly different than Microsoft, for example. The parish would like to get to a small surplus rather than endless red ink while Microsoft wants to make every penny possible. Nothing evil or spectacularly good about either of them in that. Just what they do.
Like individuals they all want to take more in than the send out. The scale is different but, at the end of the day, that's the only business model there is.
All that said, I'm sad to lose you. May 2012 bring you, joy, happiness and inner peace.
For my part I agree to stop trying to make everyone else to do it my way as soon as the "everyone else", the **AAs in terms of this discussion stop trying to make me do it their way.(Then again, over 30 years in Alcoholics Anonymous has pounded it into my skull that my way often fails to I need to listen and learn from others. Even Anonymous Cowards!)
Take care.
On the post: Techdirt Writers Favorites Of The Week... And Year
It's enlightening to go over the stories and, mostly, the comments. There's plenty to learn from that trove.
No, Dark Helmet, you get no do over, no chance for revision. If I don't, you don't. If you did then we'd probably lose your innate ability to puncture pompous asses who reply ad hominally, my spell checker wants to replace that probably invented work with with hormonally (ad hormonally??? that would work in most cases!), while failing to notice they've lifted off into the stratosphere because of the sudden escape of gasses. Probably toxic ones but I feel it's worth the chance.
I'm not at all surprised at the ability to identify a certain Anonymous Coward. The moment I see grifters I know how I'm reading. All I wonder is does this guy have a script on his browser called "Random Techdirt Post"?
I got the chance to practically beg Americans to hold onto that Bill of Rights and kick SOPA/PIPA/s collective ass to ensure it. Next is to go to work on smelly piles of poop like the Patriot Act. Do you guys realize that, as a country, your constitution is an invaluable gift to the world even if your government's behaviour often isn't???
Mostly it's been good to spend far too much time here when I've got better things to do. Like, ummmmmmmm, lemme see, ummmmmmmmm, nope. I'm sure there's something somewhere.
Happy New Year everyone! Including most of the AC's, even ootb and Unaverage Joe who make the place so interesting. And remind me all over again why I so mistrust homo truebeliever. See ya in 2012!
On the post: Even In The Age Of Abundance It's Quality, Not Quantity, That Counts
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To make it simple, he said he would not patronize a business who would then turn around and use that money (or the profit from his and others sales) to harm his rights.
He then goes through a list of options of how he might do that. "Piracy" was pretty low on his list but you jumped on it, of course. It was there, I presume, because of the monopoly copyright gives to a distributor, rarely an artist after all is aid and done and he wants it badly enough.
Or he'd do without.
Make it or do without was the choice my grandparents faced in the Great Depression. It's a choice increasingly faced by the shrinking middle class in America and elsewhere. It's the choice the poor have. To that he adds the concept of harm that may be promoted by the seller or manufacturer.
Nowhere does he say "I want it for free or else!". Just where you read that into his post I don't know but it's not there.
On the post: Even In The Age Of Abundance It's Quality, Not Quantity, That Counts
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For many authors it just is. It's who they are, what they do. Often something they're compelled to do in the same way a great gardener is compelled to head out in all kinds of weather to make sure that everything in the garden is where it should be and how it should be. Few would consider it sunk cost or time. It just is. Even if, at the end of the day, the gardener or author is working for pay. They're following their passion.
The ease and technology available now to self publish, right up the most extravagant that an author would like to help tell the story, alternate endings is there now and growing. This may mean an author needs to co-create with a visual artist but they're both, again, following their passion.
While they MAY absorb the costs of promotion they may just toss it out there, make a comment on their Facebook wall or tweet something, sit back and wait.
In the meantime both closed and open source tools for self-publishing increase to be available and increase to be easy to use. No need to master Photoshop, no need to master Poser. Well, unless you want to be on the high end of things.
The publishing industry will continue to exist as well. But not with the power and influence it has now. In the same way that the RIAA and MPAA member companies, well some of them, will continue to exist without the power and influence they have now.
What will replace them, I hear someone ask. I don't know. I don't care. Perhaps something will along the lines of what we have now, though I think that's unlikely. Perhaps books and e-books will become a collection of cottage industries. That's still to come. Whatever it is it probably won't be what we have now or recognizable as such.
Perhaps it will be a successor document to the Statute of Anne that takes into account the new reality as that law establishing copyright in England was a reaction to the new reality of the movable type printing press.
In the meantime economic phrases such as "sunk" costs won't mean much. Humans both as individuals and groups don't respond to a stimulus rationally as the dictates of economics have pre-supposed. People are treading something of a new road. Retrofitting pre-industrail and industrial era notions of economics and the now discredited notion that humans react in groups logically which has been the basis for economics won't work.
Let's find out what does. I find that, all by itself, fascinating and exciting.
On the post: Will Politicians' Support For Draconian IP Laws While Ignoring Civil Liberties Issues Come Back To Bite Them?
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Now, while you're at it please explain what you mean by "legitimate" new music, new videos, new movies and, I suppose, new poetry, prose, photography and so on.
I'm assuming you mean something that doesn't infringe on someone's copyright, somewhere. While that MAY be getting harder it's not impossible as people do it all the time. Every day.
If you mean the RIAA/MPAA way then, well, I guess them cannibalizing their own stuff is allowed along with grabbing stuff in the public domain and stuffing it full of their copyright. (Luckily what they do is rarely, if ever, as good as the original work in the public domain.)
Anyway, Techdirt is as good a jumping off point as any. Better than your almost total lack of references or citations.
Do have a good day and we'll continue this, no doubt, in 2012.
In the meantime, please explain what you mean by "legitimate" music, video, movies and all that stuff. I'm really, really curious about what that is.
On the post: Is A Naked Danica Patrick Working To Quell GoDaddy Boycott Efforts?
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Truth.
If you don't like it don't read it. He's still a twit. You don't need to lower yourself to that level. We disagree on lots of things but you're far better than that.
If you expect me to answer that question dispassionately you're very, very wrong.
On the post: Johnson & Johnson Refuses To License Three HIV Drugs To Medicines Patent Pool; Invites Patent Override
Re: The Real Culprit
One huge one was Thalidomide which occurred with the FDA and other drug agencies on watch, supposedly. Another was the introduction of a mood altering, addictive drug, amphetamine, also known as speed. The source of the Rolling Stones' song Mother's Little Helper. As in "speed kills" in reference to the drug, which applies to it's current street form methamphetamine.
You have to trust that the drug companies will come clean on this stuff, do the tests they ought to do, make sure their products are safe and fully explained to clinicians who can then explain it to their patients. The history of the drug industry is that it doesn't. Because they don't do those tests because, according to them, it cost money.
Then came extended drug patents. Mostly after legislators the world over fell for Big Pharma's sob story about needing extended patents because they couldn't, actually wouldn't, compete with generic companies.
Kinda what's driving stuff like SOPA/PIPA now though I'll admit that on the patent drive Big Pharma did actually come up with actual evidence of the "harms" they were suffering.
So pick your poison. Cheap untested drugs (again) or mostly safe fully tested ones (sometimes) that cost more.
On the post: Johnson & Johnson Refuses To License Three HIV Drugs To Medicines Patent Pool; Invites Patent Override
Re: "no urgency"?
I'm sure MSF would challenge this on every point. I'm more inclined to believe MSF on this one than the PR laden statement from Mr Stevens on this designed to fog rather than illuminate what J&J's true stance is. (Make all the money they can as quick as they can on this one.)
And yes, Big Pharma can be as crass and insensitive as the statement indicates J&J are being and just as dumb from a business standpoint. All too often, particularly around HIV they've been exactly that.
Hey, they're just a bunch of Africans. Who cares? That's the bottom line. Again.
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