Not only have they not done that in general (not without crippling the software in other ways, or not going far enough), they're quite happy to significantly drop prices further and even give software away for free when faced with direct competition from alternatives.
The new strategy involved a mix of commercial and open- source solutions deployed in three-year pilot programs in three regions of Russia, with plans for expansion into the wider national education system and possibly into other governmental sectors. Pushed by Ponosov and Alksnis, Linux played a role in these programs but not an exclusive one. A wide range of commercial software, including products by Microsoft, Adobe, Corel, and other US firms, were included in the discounted package of software deployed in the pilot programs. Microsoft agreed to include Windows Vista in this package at a 95% discount off the retail price, suggesting the degree of its commitment to the Russian market when open-source alternatives are seriously in play.
The war of maneuver with Microsoft and other vendors continues. In June 2009, the FAS opened an antitrust investigation of Microsoft for its withdrawal of Windows XP from the Russian market—and closed it three months later without filing charges. In March of 2010, Microsoft agreed to provide free copies of Windows 7 to 54,000 Russian schools, with licenses set to expire at the end of 2010. This date also marks the scheduled end of the First Aid program, when license negotiation and the possibility of more widespread open-source adoption will presumably be back on the table.
[...]
In all the countries examined in this report, price competition and service innovation come primarily from competition among domestically owned media industries. The multinationals, our work suggests, simply do not have the incentives to offer significant price cuts in low- and middle-income markets, for fear that these will impact pricing in their larger, more profitable markets. In the software sector especially, piracy assists this policy by providing the vendors a form of de facto price discrimination that generates positive network effects for commercial products, while locking out “free” open-source alternatives. The Ponosov case suggests the complexity behind this balancing act—as well as the pragmatism of the Russian government in angling for advantageous deals with multinationals. The government’s strong stated commitment to open source appears to be just one part of this larger strategy of hedging and dealmaking.
Well, I know I can sleep tonight knowing that that whatever it is they do for authors, they're administrating the Hell out of it.
There's nothing better than receiving 75p in the mail and knowing it's been checked, cleaned, checked again, cleaned in preparation for checking, checked in preparation for cleaning, cleaned and checked again for proper conformance with cleaning regulations.
Solove appears to have misconstrued or misrepresented certain comments, in particular from someone that had criticised a certain previous paper he'd written (and were aimed solely at the paper, not as arguments against privacy in general), which were responded to here:
The entertainment companies want copyright enforced. They have that right, by law.
Captain obvious is that you?
f you don't like it, ask your elected representative to get copyright off the books.
I wish you the very best of luck with that.
What do you think people are doing? Not only have you not presented any arguments that back up what you say, you absolutely refuse to do so, instead preferring to make obvious statements of fact that have no bearing on discussions of actual practicality, morality or really anything else.
When you can present an argument that morally justifies why copyright should last after an authors death, why piracy justifies spying and censorship with little to no oversight, or even present one that directly refutes John Perry Barlow in this very article (an artist on whose behalf you apparently speak) feel free to make one.
Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
DD: Every film that we have restored is completely different in its technical problems. Each one always has some unique problem that we have not come across before and that needs to be conquered. We find solutions by working with the best labs and archivists. . . Rights can be the most difficult hurdle to overcome. It took us 15 years to find the rights holder to Anthony Howarth’s People Of The Wind. Sometimes we have to give up on a dream film because the rights are impossible to find or too expensive to acquire.
Hollywood studios generally buy 10 times as many scripts as they make into movies, which means they currently own exclusive rights to a shitload of films that will never see production. And in most cases, they won't let anyone else have them. E.T., The Matrix, Pulp Fiction and Star Wars are all films that you never would have seen because the studios that owned them were content to sit on each forever. They were saved only because someone convinced another studio to re-buy them, usually at a higher price.
[...]
And finally, sometimes studios will sit on entirely completed movies. We've told you about the time a studio made an abysmal low-budget adaptation of The Fantastic Four it never intended to release, simply because it wanted to keep the rights. It turns out this sort of thing is more common than you'd expect: When legendary producer Harvey Weinstein was in charge of Miramax, he used to buy exclusive rights to foreign films and then push back their releases indefinitely as part of a scheme to get bonuses from Disney. He bought the rights to distribute Jet Li's movie Hero and then didn't, releasing it a full two years later only when Quentin Tarantino finally intervened.
Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
All of this brings us to what intellectual property law is really about - a reality that is simply obscured by analogies to other types of property. Intellectual property law is not about your right to control your copy of your idea - this is a right that we have just pointed out, does not need a great deal of protection. What intellectual property law is really about is about your right to control my copy of your idea. This is not a right ordinarily or automatically granted to the owners of other types of property. If I produce a cup of coffee, I have the right to choose whether or not to sell it to you or drink it myself. But my property right is not an automatic right both to sell you the cup of coffee and to tell you how to drink it.
[...]
So what is the contractual arrangement in current intellectual property law? The most significant feature is the agreement not to sell copies of the idea in competition with the person who sold you the idea. Outside of the area of "intellectual property" such an agreement would be called anti-competitive, and a violation of the anti-trust law. If you reach an agreement with someone else not to compete with them, not only would the courts refuse to enforce such a contract, but you would be subject to substantial civil and criminal penalties. "Intellectual property" in other words, is not about property at all, it is about legal monopoly.
It's not so much about linking as it is about sites that are dedicated to infringement. I don't think your hypo is persuasive. People aren't going to start having their Facebook accounts closed down for linking to YouTube videos. That's silly.
Yeah, it's totally silly that 80,000 innocent sites were taken down. It's a good thing we had due process right, like with those music blogs that were taken down based on music the labels themselves had sent? The standards for which are lowered further here, that'll turn out OK I'm sure.
Due process: Saviour of all, except where laws and enforcement are captured primarily by corporate interest, in which caOH MY GOD COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT!
P.S. I see you being disingenuous again in pointing to a lacking summary, when on Ars is this article:
Clearly the bill provides what can only be described as a censorship power in pressuring intermediaries like Google into doing the Governments work for them (stopping copyright infringement) by demanding they not even link to a site. How that isn't a definition of a broke internet I have no idea.
It would take a much longer post to unpack everything weird or wrong with this characterization of IP rights, beginning with the notion that remuneration of creators and social benefits are opposed. As usual, I don’t have enough patience to try and, as usual, BSA hasn’t released enough data to make these results particularly credible or worth the trouble from a research perspective. But the general agenda here is worth comment: like most of the other industry groups, BSA is very invested in proving that majorities of people approve of IP rights. This feeds into a larger industry belief that, in the long term, the problem of piracy is one of cultivating respect for IP and, relatedly, demonstrating popular support for stronger enforcement measures. Our view is that this notional ‘respect for IP’ is irrelevant in the face of (1) basic disconnects between high prices for media goods and low incomes, especially in developing countries, and (2) the ongoing rapid decline in the cost of digital technologies (that permit widespread copying, that need software, that facilitate music listening, and so on). The difference between what people think, in the abstract, about remunerating creators and what they actually do (reflecting issues of price and accessibility) begins to be better reflected in the BSA piracy rates chart…
And how about looking at the report Glyn Moody linked to?
The BSA’s annual estimate of losses to software piracy — US$51 billion in 2009 — dwarfs other industry estimates and has been an example of the commitment to big numbers in the face of obvious methodological problems regarding how losses are estimated.3 Widely circulating estimates of 750,000 US jobs lost and $200 billion in annual economic losses to piracy have proved similarly ungrounded, with origins in decades-old guesses about the total impact of piracy and counterfeiting (Sanchez 2008; GAO 2010).4
[...]
Our reservations about measurement extend to the BSA’s comparatively robust model of “rates” of piracy, which underpins the organization’s very precise claims about changes in levels of piracy from one year to the next. The BSA studies rely on the relatively small and stable (and therefore predictable) number of packaged software applications installed on an average computer—what it calls “average software load,” or ASL. ASL allows the BSA to estimate the total installed software base in a country and to compare that number to legal sales. The difference between the two is attributed to piracy. The model has no counterpart in music or film, where the size of personal libraries is subject to huge and growing variation. While solid in principle, however, the model is still very dependent on complicated inputs that the BSA’s research vendor, the IDC (International Data Corporation), does not share. Conflicting estimates of the size of retail markets, for example, are relatively common outside the United States and Europe, as is difficulty in establishing how many computers are in use in different countries. In the case of Russia, for example, where the BSA prominently cites a 16% decrease in the piracy rate between 2005 and 2009 as evidence of effective enforcement strategies, we were unable to independently reproduce those inputs.
[...]
Most studies now also translate such numbers into job losses. This practice was pioneered by the BSA in 2007 when it developed a formula for converting future decreases in the rate of piracy into anticipated job growth—numbers that it calculated per country in an attempt to promote stronger local commitments to enforcement. Using his own version of this approach, Siwek calculated that global piracy cost the United States some 373,000 jobs in 2005 alone. Putting the Siwek method to work in the European Union in 2010, an ICC-funded study projected a cumulative loss due to piracy of between 611,000 and 1,217,000 jobs in Europe between 2008 and 2015 (BASCAP/TERA Consultants 2010).
Studies of economic effects are important but raise serious methodological challenges, of which we will highlight two:
• the difficulty of determining the substitution effects associated with piracy—that is, the likelihood that a pirated copy substitutes for a legal sale—and the importance of the price/income effects in that determination; and
• the importance of the countervailing benefits of piracy to both industry and consumers in any model of total economic impact and, consequently, the importance of treating piracy as part of the economy rather than simply as a drain on it.
Although a variety of studies now model substitution effects,14 we are aware of only one that has attempted to model countervailing benefits: “Ups and Downs: Economic and Cultural Effects of File Sharing on Music, Film, and Games” (Huygen et al. 2009), commissioned by the Dutch government. Among the industry studies, all now acknowledge that substitution rates are less than one, but none offer any account or even acknowledgment of countervailing benefits. Consistently, they model only one side of the market—the industry losses but not the corresponding consumer surplus.
[...]
The BSA position is often described as a claim of one-to-one correspondence because it calculates losses (or, beginning in 2010, what it calls the “commercial value of unlicensed software”) by multiplying the estimated number of pirated copies of tracked products by a “blended average price” of those products across the different distribution channels (retail, volume licensing, “free” open-source distribution, and so on). Although functionally one-to-one, the BSA insists that its reasoning is more complex and reflects the assumption that although less piracy would not directly produce an equivalent increase in sales, it would do so indirectly by expanding economic activity, which would lead to increased sales. According to the BSA, “The two countervailing forces seem to cancel each other out” (BSA/IDC 2003).15 As recently as 2009, the IDC argued that this effect “might even underrepresent” true losses to the industry (BSA/IDC 2009). In practice, they offer no account of substitution effects and, consequently, no account of consumer behavior.
1) When you sell something with marginal cost $20,000 for price $20,000 and make no profit, you had to spend $20,000 to do it, with no guarantee that you would ever sell it at all. This isn't equivalent to giving away something that cost $0 because obviously there's a difference between risking $20,000 and risking $0.
As far as I personally understand it:
The $0 cost of distribution is not the risk. The risk is the initial investment (the fixed costs) that you then hope to make back another way. The car happens to have a cost of £20,000 to make each new car, which you have to make back with profit to pay off both the fixed and marginal cost. In the film example, that cost to produce each new copy is effectively $0. Because of this you actually have an advantage over the car example, as now you can use this as part of a larger business model that doesn't hinge on selling copies.
The perfectly competitive scenario is what drives this home.
2) Most consumers would prefer to get something for free rather than paying for it.
That's already been undermined by the fact your distribution (marginal) costs have gone to 0. In exactly the same way as a $20,000 to build car that is forced to sell at $20,000 makes 0 profit, file/s (the movie, music, etc.) that cost effectively $0 to copy and is forced to sell at $0 makes 0 profit. The situations end up the same in both instances, regardless of the price the consumer paid in either example. It simply doesn't matter all that much that they didn't pay outside of your own ability to adjust your business model.
Scarcity in these instances is defined by the ability to reprint and copy and a work. Supply for a book is how many copies of it there are, who can produce such copies, etc.
An authors life time cannot be changed by any copyright-like law, and is generally irrelevant to the supply of a particular book except out of transferral of rights and any changes in policy in applying those rights once they've been transferred to the new owner.
As a matter of course, humans create by their very nature, so yes, technically supply of new content being produced is effectively unlimited.
I actually tried to find a straight answer on what domain names come under, and it seems it varies in a number of cases. Under some instances domain names are treated as property (including real property), in others they're not.
In the sex.com case the question was "can we treat a domain name as property for the purpose of a conversion claim" (conversion is the civil name for 'theft').
In other cases, such as the Umbro case in Virginia, the question was whether we can treat a domain name as property subject to seizure by a bankruptcy creditor. The VA Supreme Court was adamant that a domain name was an incident to a service contract, and thus was not property for that purpose.
The property is subject to seizure because any property used to commit or facilitate criminal copyright infringement is forfeitable under 18 U.S.C. 2323.
I never said otherwise, I was trying to parse the language in its difference between saying you can seize based entirely on probable cause, or that it was saying you can seize only if you believe the property to be subject to forfeiture.
Note that those criteria you're citing only apply if there is NO WARRANT. The preamble to section you quoted says, "a seizure may be made without a warrant if . . . ." Those criteria are not applicable here since there is a warrant.
Then what would precisely apply in an instance with a warrent? Well, it seems these would, as far as I can tell:
(d)
(1) Real property may be seized prior to the entry of an order of forfeiture if—
(A) the Government notifies the court that it intends to seize the property before trial; and
(B) the court—
(i) issues a notice of application for warrant, causes the notice to be served on the property owner and posted on the property, and conducts a hearing in which the property owner has a meaningful opportunity to be heard; or
(ii) makes an ex parte determination that there is probable cause for the forfeiture and that there are exigent circumstances that permit the Government to seize the property without prior notice and an opportunity for the property owner to be heard.
(2) For purposes of paragraph (1)(B)(ii), to establish exigent circumstances, the Government shall show that less restrictive measures such as a lis pendens, restraining order, or bond would not suffice to protect the Government’s interests in preventing the sale, destruction, or continued unlawful use of the real property.
(e) If the court authorizes a seizure of real property under subsection (d)(1)(B)(ii), it shall conduct a prompt post-seizure hearing during which the property owner shall have an opportunity to contest the basis for the seizure.
(f) This section—
(1) applies only to civil forfeitures of real property and interests in real property;
(2) does not apply to forfeitures of the proceeds of the sale of such property or interests, or of money or other assets intended to be used to acquire such property or interests; and
(3) shall not affect the authority of the court to enter a restraining order relating to real property.
On the post: Microsoft Blaming 'Piracy' Rather Than Basic Economics For Its Struggles In China
Re:
What was that about piracy being the problem again?
On the post: Did Less Than 10% Of Access Copyright's Income Go To Authors Last Year?
There's nothing better than receiving 75p in the mail and knowing it's been checked, cleaned, checked again, cleaned in preparation for checking, checked in preparation for cleaning, cleaned and checked again for proper conformance with cleaning regulations.
On the post: John Perry Barlow Tells Copyright Maximalists That They've Got The Fundamentals Wrong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Is that why you completely changed the topic of discussion to plain insults?
Why are you so against against artists like John Perry Barlow who see copyright as having gone too far?
Why are you against personal privacy? Why do you find censorship so agreeable because a college student downloaded Avatar?
On the post: Privacy Is Not Secrecy; Debunking The 'If You've Got Nothing To Hide...' Argument
http://madisonian.net/2011/05/26/of-debunking-and-willful-distortions/
On the post: John Perry Barlow Tells Copyright Maximalists That They've Got The Fundamentals Wrong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Captain obvious is that you?
What do you think people are doing? Not only have you not presented any arguments that back up what you say, you absolutely refuse to do so, instead preferring to make obvious statements of fact that have no bearing on discussions of actual practicality, morality or really anything else.
When you can present an argument that morally justifies why copyright should last after an authors death, why piracy justifies spying and censorship with little to no oversight, or even present one that directly refutes John Perry Barlow in this very article (an artist on whose behalf you apparently speak) feel free to make one.
On the post: John Perry Barlow Tells Copyright Maximalists That They've Got The Fundamentals Wrong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Why do you keep changing the nature of discussion?
When will you stop asking vague questions in an attempt to avoid providing a clear basis for any of your claims?
On the post: John Perry Barlow Tells Copyright Maximalists That They've Got The Fundamentals Wrong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
And what about this:
On the post: John Perry Barlow Tells Copyright Maximalists That They've Got The Fundamentals Wrong
Re: Re: Re: Re:
What would an economist say?
On the post: Here We Go Again: Operation In Our Sites Round 4 Kicks Off With More Domains Illegally Seized
http://i.imgur.com/zJJ81.jpg
Well done ICE, great job. You showed those pirates a thing or two didn't you?
On the post: The PROTECT IP Act Is About The Old Media Industry Going To War With The Internet
Re: Re: Re:
Yeah, it's totally silly that 80,000 innocent sites were taken down. It's a good thing we had due process right, like with those music blogs that were taken down based on music the labels themselves had sent? The standards for which are lowered further here, that'll turn out OK I'm sure.
Due process: Saviour of all, except where laws and enforcement are captured primarily by corporate interest, in which caOH MY GOD COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT!
P.S. I see you being disingenuous again in pointing to a lacking summary, when on Ars is this article:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/senate-bill-gives-feds-power-to-order-pi racy-site-blacklisting.ars
Clearly the bill provides what can only be described as a censorship power in pressuring intermediaries like Google into doing the Governments work for them (stopping copyright infringement) by demanding they not even link to a site. How that isn't a definition of a broke internet I have no idea.
On the post: BSA 2010 Piracy Report: It's Back And It's Just As Wrong As Before
Re: Let's get the facts right
http://piracy.ssrc.org/adobe-logic/
http://piracy.ssrc.org/the-software-enforcement-dan ce/
http://piracy.ssrc.org/overinstaller-awareness-day/
And how about looking at the report Glyn Moody linked to?
Would you like to hear more facts?
On the post: iPhone & iPad Recording Your Every Move
Re:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/04/how-apple-tracks-your-location-without-your-consen t-and-why-it-matters.ars
The data is stored lengths of time in no way explained by caching for what should be temporary purposes.
On the post: Saying You Can't Compete With Free Is Saying You Can't Compete Period
Re: Interesting point of view but...
As far as I personally understand it:
The $0 cost of distribution is not the risk. The risk is the initial investment (the fixed costs) that you then hope to make back another way. The car happens to have a cost of £20,000 to make each new car, which you have to make back with profit to pay off both the fixed and marginal cost. In the film example, that cost to produce each new copy is effectively $0. Because of this you actually have an advantage over the car example, as now you can use this as part of a larger business model that doesn't hinge on selling copies.
The perfectly competitive scenario is what drives this home.
That's already been undermined by the fact your distribution (marginal) costs have gone to 0. In exactly the same way as a $20,000 to build car that is forced to sell at $20,000 makes 0 profit, file/s (the movie, music, etc.) that cost effectively $0 to copy and is forced to sell at $0 makes 0 profit. The situations end up the same in both instances, regardless of the price the consumer paid in either example. It simply doesn't matter all that much that they didn't pay outside of your own ability to adjust your business model.
On the post: Discussions About Scarcity vs. Abundance In Copyright From A Century Ago Sound Just Like Those Today
Re:
An authors life time cannot be changed by any copyright-like law, and is generally irrelevant to the supply of a particular book except out of transferral of rights and any changes in policy in applying those rights once they've been transferred to the new owner.
As a matter of course, humans create by their very nature, so yes, technically supply of new content being produced is effectively unlimited.
On the post: Focusing On The Copy Part Of Copyright Doesn't Make Much Sense In Today's World
Re:
On the post: Defending The Indefensible: Lawyers Who Love Loopholes Ignoring Serious Constitutional Issues In Domain Seizures
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Cached version of said link:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jXaXEXE05ucJ:seo.pn/domain-names/is-yo ur-domain-name-property-or-just-a-service/03/04/2010/chrismcelroy+is+your+domain+name+property+or+ju st+a+service&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&source=www.google.co.uk
Direct link to the case not already referenced here that was included in the article:
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20100302_creditor_domain_name_registry_location_office_dep ot_zuccarini/
On the post: Defending The Indefensible: Lawyers Who Love Loopholes Ignoring Serious Constitutional Issues In Domain Seizures
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
http://www.dnforum.com/f26/help-please-2-thread-272351.html#post1355013
http://www.dnforum.com/f26/help-please-2-thread-272351.html#post1355238
http://www.doma innamenews.com/legal-issues/are-domain-names-considered-property-or-not/2917
http://seo.pn/domain -names/is-your-domain-name-property-or-just-a-service/03/04/2010/chrismcelroy
So it's not actually as straight forward as that.
On the post: Defending The Indefensible: Lawyers Who Love Loopholes Ignoring Serious Constitutional Issues In Domain Seizures
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exigent_circumstance_in_United_States_law
On the post: Phone Calls Are So Last Century
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xXSw07zrio
On the post: Defending The Indefensible: Lawyers Who Love Loopholes Ignoring Serious Constitutional Issues In Domain Seizures
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I never said otherwise, I was trying to parse the language in its difference between saying you can seize based entirely on probable cause, or that it was saying you can seize only if you believe the property to be subject to forfeiture.
Then what would precisely apply in an instance with a warrent? Well, it seems these would, as far as I can tell:
T hose exigent circumstances would come back again to the standards mentioned previously, it would seem.
Next >>