>> Bas, sadly, while the information wants to be free, it's freeness harms the
>> ability for it to be made. It is a bit of a chicken and the egg thing, you
>> cannot have free information without having information first.
Do people get more information or less than before the internet? Has the information available for free increased or decreased as the internet has grown? The answers are more and increased, respectively. I guess there's no problem with getting information.
>> What will continue to be the long term problem is that the creation of high end content is done mostly through invested / seeded money.
High end doesn't automatically mean expensive, and funding changes over time. At one time the kind of content you are talking about was funded solely by wealthy benefactors. As businesses formed around selling such content it was funded by investors, and as a result increased in volume.
This change isn't taking place in a vacuum. It's the entire nature of entertainment, not just the cost to produce it, that's changing. So no, the funding model that worked in the 20th century doesn't any longer in the 21st. Likewise, a model from the 19th century wouldn't have worked in the 20th. It's called progress.
>> Most struggling artists just don't have the time to take off from their regular
>> job to work on their music, to produce product. Some do, most don't. The labels
>> have always been the investors, the ones who put the money up in form of up
>> front money to make it possible to produce the content in a reasonable time
>> frame, and to make it possible for that content to be delivered to the
>> potential audience in an organized form.
You're aware that most recording is already done without labels, and it was the standard way to operate before the internet came along, right? Not to mention, most of the really good musicians I know, and being a musician myself I know quite a few, either make their entire living playing or their day job is giving lessons. And it's not like labels were out combing the fields for part time musicians. In most places if you want a label to "discover" you it means a touring schedule (at least regionally) that makes it pretty much impossible to hold down another job.
But let's say your scenario has some basis in reality. Even if you have a great artist, even if you commit unlimited money to pay for an album or 10, even if you do everything right, success has more to do with being in the right place at the right time playing the right music in front of the right people. In the past artists needed labels for the exposure. Now many can get the same, or even more, exposure without them. They used to need them to provide a good recording environment and expensive recording equipment. Now you can set up a recording studio for a small fraction of the cost 10-20 years ago. And without either the label or producer sticking his hand in your pocket to take most of the profits. The label used to provide access to distribution chains. Internet distribution, even through the biggest outlets like iTunes, is available to everyone.
A label discovering you and paying to record, release and promote an album was never anything more than a small multiplier on your chances of hitting it big. It was never enough to come close to tipping the odds in your favor. Mostly what we are losing with the dominance of big labels is a handful of winning lottery tickets spread among millions of artists. For the average musician that means losing the dream of getting one of those winning tickets. For most it was a mirage anyway so what they've really lost is an illusion which like as not wasn't helping them in any way to begin with.
What we're really talking about is reducing artists to "just business men." I've got news for musicians who thought otherwise. Making art is about creativity. Making money is about business. Making money for your art is both.
In most cases, being a professional musician makes you a small business operator whether you want that or not. You can contract that part out or do it yourself, but in a professional sense you are a contractor. You need to look out for your own business interests, and winning the lottery is a poor business model.
>> When you take the economics away, when you make it into a zero income game, you
>> take away the ability for labels to invest. They won't intentionally make product
>> and put it online if they cannot get a return on it. If piracy reaches a point
>> where they no longer make enough to justify their investments, they will
>> just stop. Then you are back to your free information problem, as the lack of
>> information means there is nothing free.
Why stop with theory. This is a completely verifiable hypothesis. Are the economic rewards less on the internet for those who were very successful before? Absolutely. Has that resulted in any less content? Nope, more content than ever, and more of it is free as well.
The question isn't "Will it work?" It's "How will it work?"
>> I am sure we can all enjoy the wonderful amateur material that will come
>> out to replace it.
Ignoring the giant-sized strawman you are arguing against here, let's focus on the whole amateur vs professional quality debate. I'll stick to my first hand experience.
I've been playing music most of my life. At one time I was a full time professional musician. I'm now an amateur musician who occasionally plays with professionals, but I'm much more skilled now than I was 20 years ago. Which would you rather listen to, the inferior professional musician or the skilled amateur?
A few years ago I started writing amateur technical guides which were offered for free (ad supported) on a website. I was once "paid" with a t-shirt, but that had nothing to do with why I wrote. I've since been hired to write professionally for that site and continue to do that today. The quality of my work, and more importantly, its value to my current employer, allowed me to become a professional.
While I'm certainly a better writer now than I was then, that's not because I'm a professional except in a tangential way. I'm better because I write more and have gotten more feedback on what I write. I'm also better at creating content specifically oriented to a particular audience, which is a direct result of being ad supported.
In other words I learned the same way writers have always learned. I write. Ask any professional writer for advice on being successful. The most common response will be to write. The second most common will probably be "don't," but that's always been the case as well. Writing has never been a particularly lucrative career for most.
There are 2 reasons your FUD is unwarranted. First, losing the old funding doesn't mean there won't be any at all, or even that there won't be enough. It means the funding will come from different sources, and as my employer shows, not necessarily that different. Newspapers and magazines have been ad supported for most of their existence.
Second, being an amateur doesn't mean you aren't good enough to be a professional or that you won't become one. Just as with the music industry, success is a crapshoot. You have to be talented and skilled, but you also have to be at least a little bit lucky.
There certainly has been, and will continue to be, an influx of amateurs. But that's a good thing. When I was 20 (in 1990) fewer people wrote or made videos as a hobby than today. Not that they didn't want to, but the barriers to entry made it too difficult for most talented people to bother when you either had to convince a gatekeeper to pay you or spend a substantial amount of money to get your work in front of the public. With those barriers gone, the number of amateurs learning to be professionals, or at least as good as most professionals, has increased geometrically.
In other words, the talent pool is much bigger and competition fiercer. That seems like the beginning of a strong market to me. Yes, it means the death of some old markets. And as a musician, writer, and recently also a videographer, let me just say good riddance to bad rubbish.
The Internet has already become an economically viable replacement for CDs. Just not on his side of the equation. If you add up just the entertainment related revenue built around the internet, lost CD sales don't amount to a drop in the bucket. Here's just a partial list off the top of my head.
eBooks
Blu-ray players
Streaming video services
Video appliances (aka internet connected set-top boxes)
Connected HDTVs
Game consoles
Video games (networking and downloading content)
Humor websites like The Onion or Cracked.com
DVD (not technically built around the Internet, but the Internet was instrumental in its level of success)
That doesn't count anything that's not specifically entertainment related, like home and mobile data connections, computers and related hardware, mobile phones and accessories, MP3 players, online shopping, or a multitude of other things.
The economic value of the internet has long since dwarfed the combined recorded and published music industries by several orders of magnitude.
This makes perfect sense in our current legislative and regulatory environment where the rules are all written by people being regulated.
In the same spirit I'd like to suggest similar reforms of consumer protection laws. If I buy a product and am not 100% satisfied with it, the manufacturer should be liable for damages up to the purchase price of the item, with a statutory minimum of $50,000.
The reason it's illegal is because, for the most part, government officials are ill informed about anything technical and unwilling to take the time to become informed. Being uninformed, the first people legislators turn to it comes time to make the rules are representatives of big companies. Like most people, they assume being the most successful means they must be the foremost experts. Plus they make big campaign contributions so it's good for the politicians all the way around.
With no understanding of the issues, they also have no way of recognizing when the so-called experts are giving them bad advice. All advice is assumed to be good and what's good for Sony (or whatever company) is assumed to be good for society.
Nothing about Sony's recent decline is particularly surprising. Decades ago they were the lean competitor taking on giant corporations which ultimately fell under the weight of their own hubris. Just like Sony today, those companies failed to recognize the future until it took their legs out from under them.
Once upon a time Sony was a company that learned from their failures. Even something as big as losing the VCR standards war could be salvaged. When Betamax lost to VHS, they adapted the technology to create the 8mm camcorder format. They eventually figured out they had tried to pound a square peg into a round hole and found a square hole that needed filling. Now they just look for a bigger hammer.
It's no different than what the companies they dethroned all those years ago were doing, except for this. Thanks to the size of modern megacorporations, their hammers are made up of legislators, judges, and even heads of state. Ultimately it won't stop their demise, but it does mean their death throes will be far more damaging to society than their predecessors.
Sony's problem isn't their mistakes. It's that they forgot the importance of learning from those mistakes. That's the natural cycle of business.
>> You can't just hide in another country and intentionally break US law and get
>> away with it.
Really? Then explain to me how SlySoft and FengTao Software manage to sell DVD and Blu-ray ripping software to US customers, which would be a violation of the DMCA, with no repercussions.
>> Either way, though, it is a fascinating story about how such a "gray market"
>> came into being and changed markets over time.
You don't have to look any further than the US to see the affect of Chinese gray market products. DVD player sales didn't take off until cheap unlicensed Chinese players became available. It was around 2 years later when the Chinese government finally brokered a deal for manufacturers to pay (significantly reduced) royalties on DVD players. It's entirely possible that without those cheap players it would have taken many more years for DVDs to become mainstream technology. Or it might not have happened at all.
Why can't it be about both? As much as I have a problem with copyright law, lots of people use it to sue without going through this sort of legal maneuvering to outsource their liabilities. They are 2 separate issues and both are problems.
This is about nothing but corporate lawyering. First they create a legal fiction that Righthaven is buying copyrights so they can shield the actual players from liability for improper lawsuits. Then they code webpages with embedded evidence gathering code. Then they make a deal to outsource the actual legal process so they can increase the damages to cover expenses.
The whole thing reeks of "look what you can get away with by twisting the law." Who do you think worked this whole scheme out? The janitor?
Reading through that article it occurs to me that what the Stephens family is doing is practically money laundering. Or perhaps Liability Laundering would be more appropriate. Stephens gets to keep any revenue while all the liability stays with Righthaven.
Financial processes are certainly the easiest area to demonstrate the problem with business process patents, just because the monetary connections are obvious.
Imagine what would happen if someone were to invent the standard double entry accounting system under today's patent rules. It would almost certainly be locked up by a business process patent. Instead of everyone using the same accounting system, which we take for granted as essential for our economy to function, there would be 50 different bookkeeping systems. Imagine the chaos that would cause. You would have people getting PhDs in Bookkeeping Analysis just so they could fill out the tax return for a small business. It would take an army of accountants and a room full of supercomputers to figure out the value of a company and whether they're profitable.
The problem is these same issues apply to other business processes. It doesn't make any more sense to have 50 ways to turn a document into XML or place an online order using stored information than it does to have 50 bookkeeping systems. But as soon as you say the word computer, the typical judge or Congress critter's eyes glaze over and they stop hearing anything you say. You might as well be talking about turning lead into gold. As far as they're concerned, computers are powered by magic.
At the end of the day, financial and technological processes are more similar than different. The reason someone invents a method to scan checks, record financial transactions, convert documents to XML, or streamline the online checkout process is the same. Doing so makes your business more profitable. Anyone who needs an extra incentive to do that deserves to go out of business, and probably will whether they can patent processes or not.
I think Michael Crichton summed it up best in one of his speeches, which is unfortunately no longer available on his official website.
"Like a bearded nut in robes on the sidewalk proclaiming the end of the world is near, the media is just doing what makes it feel good, not reporting hard facts. We need to start seeing the media as a bearded nut on the sidewalk, shouting out false fears. It's not sensible to listen to it."
You can find the speech in its entirety on several websites. I do remember that his website clearly stated he didn't want people publishing it without permission so I won't post a link here. I'd hate to lose Techdirt to an ICE domain name seizure.
There are a couple of reasons I don't see phone numbers going away any time soon. The first is also the difference between personal and domain names. IP addresses and telephone numbers are both globally unique*, as are domain names. People's names, on the other hand, almost never are. In order to switch to another system you first have to map every phone (or identity) using some other system that is unique, like a Google account for Google Voice. That seems simple enough until you consider that it may be necessary to call someone whose Google identity you don't have. I may not care if someone can call me without knowing my Google name, but some people, and certainly almost all businesses, need a way to be found using their name. In other words a directory like we have for the phone system.
And of course we also need an underlying common system so people using Google Voice can connect to people using Skype or some other service. Since it's unlikely all the big players aren't going to agree on common standards, that means coming up with a separate network they could all connect to - like the phone system.
On top of all that, unless everyone in the world switches to the new technology immediately, any new system will still need to connect to the existing phone system anyway.
It's basically a situation where the current system is the worst possible solution - except for all the alternatives.
*Technically they are unique within their own context, but as long as we're talking about internet IP addresses and phone numbers you can call from the public telephone network global is the easiest way to describe it.
There is no small degree of irony in Apple's policies pushing developers to bypass the iTunes App Store with web apps. The reason no app store was launched with the original iPhone was Steve Jobs' decree that web apps were replacing local apps. Now his "vision" is becoming a tool for circumventing Apple's restrictions. It makes you wonder how it would have changed Apple's original plans with respect to HTML5 if he had understood the amount of control he would be ceding to developers.
>> I guess then that considering Assange is Australian, and he was operating from
>> Sweden, that the US CONSTITUTION NOT being an international law or
>> constitution (I bet you didn't know that), therefore who gives a flying rates
>> ass about the US constitution or the first amendment.
I would hope the US courts do. And since most of the legal issues surrounding Assange involve whether he should be charged and tried in the US that seems completely relevant.
>> (which states that CITIZENTS have a right to free speech against the
>> GOVERNMENT)..
>>
>> (I assume you did not know that either).
That's not what it says at all. It only relates to the government insofar as it forbids them from making laws restricting free speech. Nowhere does it say "free speech" only refers to speech against the government.
>> US Constitution = "the things your Government has 'allowed' you to do".
You really should read a document before you lecture others on what it says. The US Constitution lays out what the government is allowed to do, not the people. The first ten amendments, aka The Bill of Rights, were added to be more specific about things the government can't do because they are assumed to automatically violate rights of the people. They were added because some of the Founding Fathers didn't feel the original document went far enough in laying out the boundaries of government authority. In fact, the Tenth Amendment specifically states that anything not mentioned in the Constitution is outside the Federal Government's authority.
>> To be considered "press" you have to abide by a set out and specific "code of ethics" it has nothing
>> to do with the constitution or 'free speech' or freedom of press.
-snip-
>> The only person assange is interested in is himself...
Fortunately in the US we make no legal distinction based on prejudging someone's motives. The First Amendment isn't about protecting the pure of mind and heart. It's about preventing the government from interfering in something that we, the people, deem to be none of their business. What you're describing is a privilege. According to the US Constitution free speech, and the publication of that speech, is a right.
They're not being put out of business by the Creative Commons license. They're being put out of business by changes in the market they haven't adapted to. People aren't giving photos away because they choose the Creative Commons license. They're using the Creative Commons license because they want to give photos away.
While it sounds great to integrate Skype into the Windows Phone platform, that seems more harmful to Windows Phone than beneficial to Skype. The problem is Microsoft's position in the smartphone market. They're basically an also-ran right now. In the time since the launch of Windows Phone 7, iOS and Android marketshare has continued to rise, Symbian and Blackberry have continued to fall, and Windows Phone has pretty consistently gone nowhere. Apple, and to a lesser extent Google, are in a position to make demands of US mobile carriers. Microsoft, on the other hand, needs to ask politely.
I suspect they're more interested in some type of integration with Exchange Server and possibly Outlook. I'm just not quite sure how much money that's worth. It could potentially become a trump card for the mobile market. Apple and Google aren't too worried about Windows Phone features, but they do need to maintain a certain level of compatibility with Exchange Server to compete for business customers. Likewise, corporate customers have a lot more influence on mobile carriers than Microsoft. If they could get all three on their side, if somewhat unenthusiastically in the case of Apple and Google, maybe they're suddenly in a position to push Skype on mobile networks. That's a lot of ifs and maybes, but it also seems to match a lot of Microsoft's moves in recent years.
Or maybe Microsoft doesn't have any idea what to do with Skype and just wants to keep them away from Google and Facebook. With most companies I'd probably say the simpler answer makes more sense. In Microsoft's case it seems like more of a toss up.
Sorry Mike, but the courts got this one right. Becoming a cheerleader is a textbook example of voluntarily surrendering some of your free speech rights. Had she been kicked off the squad for telling other students not to cheer for the guy outside of her cheerleading duties you would have a point.
Even if we assume he got away with raping her, that doesn't alter her legal standing with respect to the school. The 2 are completely separate issues.
Having said that, if it were one of my daughters I would fully support her decision to protest in this way. At the same time, I make sure she understands that moral justification and the law are 2 separate things.
On the post: Music Exec Says Too Many Silly Things To Put In This Headline
Re: Re: Re:
>> ability for it to be made. It is a bit of a chicken and the egg thing, you
>> cannot have free information without having information first.
Do people get more information or less than before the internet? Has the information available for free increased or decreased as the internet has grown? The answers are more and increased, respectively. I guess there's no problem with getting information.
>> What will continue to be the long term problem is that the creation of high end content is done mostly through invested / seeded money.
High end doesn't automatically mean expensive, and funding changes over time. At one time the kind of content you are talking about was funded solely by wealthy benefactors. As businesses formed around selling such content it was funded by investors, and as a result increased in volume.
This change isn't taking place in a vacuum. It's the entire nature of entertainment, not just the cost to produce it, that's changing. So no, the funding model that worked in the 20th century doesn't any longer in the 21st. Likewise, a model from the 19th century wouldn't have worked in the 20th. It's called progress.
>> Most struggling artists just don't have the time to take off from their regular
>> job to work on their music, to produce product. Some do, most don't. The labels
>> have always been the investors, the ones who put the money up in form of up
>> front money to make it possible to produce the content in a reasonable time
>> frame, and to make it possible for that content to be delivered to the
>> potential audience in an organized form.
You're aware that most recording is already done without labels, and it was the standard way to operate before the internet came along, right? Not to mention, most of the really good musicians I know, and being a musician myself I know quite a few, either make their entire living playing or their day job is giving lessons. And it's not like labels were out combing the fields for part time musicians. In most places if you want a label to "discover" you it means a touring schedule (at least regionally) that makes it pretty much impossible to hold down another job.
But let's say your scenario has some basis in reality. Even if you have a great artist, even if you commit unlimited money to pay for an album or 10, even if you do everything right, success has more to do with being in the right place at the right time playing the right music in front of the right people. In the past artists needed labels for the exposure. Now many can get the same, or even more, exposure without them. They used to need them to provide a good recording environment and expensive recording equipment. Now you can set up a recording studio for a small fraction of the cost 10-20 years ago. And without either the label or producer sticking his hand in your pocket to take most of the profits. The label used to provide access to distribution chains. Internet distribution, even through the biggest outlets like iTunes, is available to everyone.
A label discovering you and paying to record, release and promote an album was never anything more than a small multiplier on your chances of hitting it big. It was never enough to come close to tipping the odds in your favor. Mostly what we are losing with the dominance of big labels is a handful of winning lottery tickets spread among millions of artists. For the average musician that means losing the dream of getting one of those winning tickets. For most it was a mirage anyway so what they've really lost is an illusion which like as not wasn't helping them in any way to begin with.
What we're really talking about is reducing artists to "just business men." I've got news for musicians who thought otherwise. Making art is about creativity. Making money is about business. Making money for your art is both.
In most cases, being a professional musician makes you a small business operator whether you want that or not. You can contract that part out or do it yourself, but in a professional sense you are a contractor. You need to look out for your own business interests, and winning the lottery is a poor business model.
>> When you take the economics away, when you make it into a zero income game, you
>> take away the ability for labels to invest. They won't intentionally make product
>> and put it online if they cannot get a return on it. If piracy reaches a point
>> where they no longer make enough to justify their investments, they will
>> just stop. Then you are back to your free information problem, as the lack of
>> information means there is nothing free.
Why stop with theory. This is a completely verifiable hypothesis. Are the economic rewards less on the internet for those who were very successful before? Absolutely. Has that resulted in any less content? Nope, more content than ever, and more of it is free as well.
The question isn't "Will it work?" It's "How will it work?"
>> I am sure we can all enjoy the wonderful amateur material that will come
>> out to replace it.
Ignoring the giant-sized strawman you are arguing against here, let's focus on the whole amateur vs professional quality debate. I'll stick to my first hand experience.
I've been playing music most of my life. At one time I was a full time professional musician. I'm now an amateur musician who occasionally plays with professionals, but I'm much more skilled now than I was 20 years ago. Which would you rather listen to, the inferior professional musician or the skilled amateur?
A few years ago I started writing amateur technical guides which were offered for free (ad supported) on a website. I was once "paid" with a t-shirt, but that had nothing to do with why I wrote. I've since been hired to write professionally for that site and continue to do that today. The quality of my work, and more importantly, its value to my current employer, allowed me to become a professional.
While I'm certainly a better writer now than I was then, that's not because I'm a professional except in a tangential way. I'm better because I write more and have gotten more feedback on what I write. I'm also better at creating content specifically oriented to a particular audience, which is a direct result of being ad supported.
In other words I learned the same way writers have always learned. I write. Ask any professional writer for advice on being successful. The most common response will be to write. The second most common will probably be "don't," but that's always been the case as well. Writing has never been a particularly lucrative career for most.
There are 2 reasons your FUD is unwarranted. First, losing the old funding doesn't mean there won't be any at all, or even that there won't be enough. It means the funding will come from different sources, and as my employer shows, not necessarily that different. Newspapers and magazines have been ad supported for most of their existence.
Second, being an amateur doesn't mean you aren't good enough to be a professional or that you won't become one. Just as with the music industry, success is a crapshoot. You have to be talented and skilled, but you also have to be at least a little bit lucky.
There certainly has been, and will continue to be, an influx of amateurs. But that's a good thing. When I was 20 (in 1990) fewer people wrote or made videos as a hobby than today. Not that they didn't want to, but the barriers to entry made it too difficult for most talented people to bother when you either had to convince a gatekeeper to pay you or spend a substantial amount of money to get your work in front of the public. With those barriers gone, the number of amateurs learning to be professionals, or at least as good as most professionals, has increased geometrically.
In other words, the talent pool is much bigger and competition fiercer. That seems like the beginning of a strong market to me. Yes, it means the death of some old markets. And as a musician, writer, and recently also a videographer, let me just say good riddance to bad rubbish.
On the post: Music Exec Says Too Many Silly Things To Put In This Headline
Mission Accomplished!
eBooks
Blu-ray players
Streaming video services
Video appliances (aka internet connected set-top boxes)
Connected HDTVs
Game consoles
Video games (networking and downloading content)
Humor websites like The Onion or Cracked.com
DVD (not technically built around the Internet, but the Internet was instrumental in its level of success)
That doesn't count anything that's not specifically entertainment related, like home and mobile data connections, computers and related hardware, mobile phones and accessories, MP3 players, online shopping, or a multitude of other things.
The economic value of the internet has long since dwarfed the combined recorded and published music industries by several orders of magnitude.
What was his point again?
On the post: Copyright Holders Claim That They Should Get To Decide Any Copyright Exceptions
In the same spirit I'd like to suggest similar reforms of consumer protection laws. If I buy a product and am not 100% satisfied with it, the manufacturer should be liable for damages up to the purchase price of the item, with a statutory minimum of $50,000.
On the post: Sony Continues Suing People Who Help Others Modify Their PS3s
Re: I don't understand companies today
With no understanding of the issues, they also have no way of recognizing when the so-called experts are giving them bad advice. All advice is assumed to be good and what's good for Sony (or whatever company) is assumed to be good for society.
On the post: Sony Continues Suing People Who Help Others Modify Their PS3s
Once upon a time Sony was a company that learned from their failures. Even something as big as losing the VCR standards war could be salvaged. When Betamax lost to VHS, they adapted the technology to create the 8mm camcorder format. They eventually figured out they had tried to pound a square peg into a round hole and found a square hole that needed filling. Now they just look for a bigger hammer.
It's no different than what the companies they dethroned all those years ago were doing, except for this. Thanks to the size of modern megacorporations, their hammers are made up of legislators, judges, and even heads of state. Ultimately it won't stop their demise, but it does mean their death throes will be far more damaging to society than their predecessors.
Sony's problem isn't their mistakes. It's that they forgot the importance of learning from those mistakes. That's the natural cycle of business.
On the post: US Trying To Extradite UK TVShack Admin Over Questionable Copyright Charges?
Re: Re:
>> away with it.
Really? Then explain to me how SlySoft and FengTao Software manage to sell DVD and Blu-ray ripping software to US customers, which would be a violation of the DMCA, with no repercussions.
On the post: Did Cheap Chinese Knockoff Phones Lead To The Arab Spring?
>> came into being and changed markets over time.
You don't have to look any further than the US to see the affect of Chinese gray market products. DVD player sales didn't take off until cheap unlicensed Chinese players became available. It was around 2 years later when the Chinese government finally brokered a deal for manufacturers to pay (significantly reduced) royalties on DVD players. It's entirely possible that without those cheap players it would have taken many more years for DVDs to become mainstream technology. Or it might not have happened at all.
On the post: Denver Post Sued Over Righthaven Connection
Re: Not a victory
On the post: Denver Post Sued Over Righthaven Connection
How is it not about lawyers?
The whole thing reeks of "look what you can get away with by twisting the law." Who do you think worked this whole scheme out? The janitor?
On the post: Denver Post Sued Over Righthaven Connection
Is it any surprise people hate lawyers so much?
On the post: Congress Happy To Knock Out Patents That Impact Financial Institutions... But Everyone Else?
Imagine what would happen if someone were to invent the standard double entry accounting system under today's patent rules. It would almost certainly be locked up by a business process patent. Instead of everyone using the same accounting system, which we take for granted as essential for our economy to function, there would be 50 different bookkeeping systems. Imagine the chaos that would cause. You would have people getting PhDs in Bookkeeping Analysis just so they could fill out the tax return for a small business. It would take an army of accountants and a room full of supercomputers to figure out the value of a company and whether they're profitable.
The problem is these same issues apply to other business processes. It doesn't make any more sense to have 50 ways to turn a document into XML or place an online order using stored information than it does to have 50 bookkeeping systems. But as soon as you say the word computer, the typical judge or Congress critter's eyes glaze over and they stop hearing anything you say. You might as well be talking about turning lead into gold. As far as they're concerned, computers are powered by magic.
At the end of the day, financial and technological processes are more similar than different. The reason someone invents a method to scan checks, record financial transactions, convert documents to XML, or streamline the online checkout process is the same. Doing so makes your business more profitable. Anyone who needs an extra incentive to do that deserves to go out of business, and probably will whether they can patent processes or not.
On the post: Are There More Hacks & Breaches This Year... Or Is It Just Shark Attack Week?
"Like a bearded nut in robes on the sidewalk proclaiming the end of the world is near, the media is just doing what makes it feel good, not reporting hard facts. We need to start seeing the media as a bearded nut on the sidewalk, shouting out false fears. It's not sensible to listen to it."
You can find the speech in its entirety on several websites. I do remember that his website clearly stated he didn't want people publishing it without permission so I won't post a link here. I'd hate to lose Techdirt to an ICE domain name seizure.
On the post: How Long Until Phone Numbers Are A Historical Relic?
Not going away any time soon
And of course we also need an underlying common system so people using Google Voice can connect to people using Skype or some other service. Since it's unlikely all the big players aren't going to agree on common standards, that means coming up with a separate network they could all connect to - like the phone system.
On top of all that, unless everyone in the world switches to the new technology immediately, any new system will still need to connect to the existing phone system anyway.
It's basically a situation where the current system is the worst possible solution - except for all the alternatives.
*Technically they are unique within their own context, but as long as we're talking about internet IP addresses and phone numbers you can call from the public telephone network global is the easiest way to describe it.
On the post: Music Service Simfy Files Complaint Over Apple Blocking Its iPad App
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: US Constitution not International law.
>> Sweden, that the US CONSTITUTION NOT being an international law or
>> constitution (I bet you didn't know that), therefore who gives a flying rates
>> ass about the US constitution or the first amendment.
I would hope the US courts do. And since most of the legal issues surrounding Assange involve whether he should be charged and tried in the US that seems completely relevant.
>> (which states that CITIZENTS have a right to free speech against the
>> GOVERNMENT)..
>>
>> (I assume you did not know that either).
That's not what it says at all. It only relates to the government insofar as it forbids them from making laws restricting free speech. Nowhere does it say "free speech" only refers to speech against the government.
>> US Constitution = "the things your Government has 'allowed' you to do".
You really should read a document before you lecture others on what it says. The US Constitution lays out what the government is allowed to do, not the people. The first ten amendments, aka The Bill of Rights, were added to be more specific about things the government can't do because they are assumed to automatically violate rights of the people. They were added because some of the Founding Fathers didn't feel the original document went far enough in laying out the boundaries of government authority. In fact, the Tenth Amendment specifically states that anything not mentioned in the Constitution is outside the Federal Government's authority.
>> To be considered "press" you have to abide by a set out and specific "code of ethics" it has nothing
>> to do with the constitution or 'free speech' or freedom of press.
-snip-
>> The only person assange is interested in is himself...
Fortunately in the US we make no legal distinction based on prejudging someone's motives. The First Amendment isn't about protecting the pure of mind and heart. It's about preventing the government from interfering in something that we, the people, deem to be none of their business. What you're describing is a privilege. According to the US Constitution free speech, and the publication of that speech, is a right.
On the post: Off The Deep End: People Claiming That Supporting Creative Commons Is Being Anti-Creator
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Off The Deep End: People Claiming That Supporting Creative Commons Is Being Anti-Creator
Re:
As a previous poster noted, it's basic logic.
On the post: How Many Times Will Skype Be Acquired For Too Much Money By Big Tech Companies With Little Strategic Synergies?
Re: Re: Re: I know why!
I suspect they're more interested in some type of integration with Exchange Server and possibly Outlook. I'm just not quite sure how much money that's worth. It could potentially become a trump card for the mobile market. Apple and Google aren't too worried about Windows Phone features, but they do need to maintain a certain level of compatibility with Exchange Server to compete for business customers. Likewise, corporate customers have a lot more influence on mobile carriers than Microsoft. If they could get all three on their side, if somewhat unenthusiastically in the case of Apple and Google, maybe they're suddenly in a position to push Skype on mobile networks. That's a lot of ifs and maybes, but it also seems to match a lot of Microsoft's moves in recent years.
Or maybe Microsoft doesn't have any idea what to do with Skype and just wants to keep them away from Google and Facebook. With most companies I'd probably say the simpler answer makes more sense. In Microsoft's case it seems like more of a toss up.
On the post: Cheerleader Told To Pay School She Sued After Being Kicked Off Squad For Refusing To Cheer Guy Who Assaulted Her
Even if we assume he got away with raping her, that doesn't alter her legal standing with respect to the school. The 2 are completely separate issues.
Having said that, if it were one of my daughters I would fully support her decision to protest in this way. At the same time, I make sure she understands that moral justification and the law are 2 separate things.
On the post: EMI Dumps ASCAP For Digital Licensing
Re: Re: Re:
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