I don't know about England, but I know for a fact that in Romania it is legal to download movies and music (and illegal to upload). I know that because I've been hit with a $7K fine by the BSA, for illegal software... but the police specifically told me they can't do anything about the movies and music I had on CDs (that I wrote myself), because they can't prove I had given them to anyone else.
Because, even assuming you're right, we would make ourselves poorer to do it. Since the future generations are by definitions going to be richer than us anyway (they have all the capital we had, plus what we and they produce), you're asking the poor to make the rich even richer. Which is dumb.
1) he invented this not because he was going to get a patent, but because he found the idea interesting. (I'm not saying that he wasn't hoping to get a patent - maybe he was - but getting a patent was not a requirement for invention, it was at most a nice-to-have bonus.)
2) Even after discovering that he can't patent the invention, he still advertises it. He didn't hide it or tried to patent it in some other country.
All this basically means that those who claims patents are necessary or we won't have new inventions anymore are full of it.
... is that you can easily prove that a program calculating the average of two numbers, a and b, by doing
result = (a + b) / 2
is correct. And then you run the program and it works, until a year later someone sets a and b to very large values, and the program crashes (or returns a negative value). That's why I prefer testing to proofs, even though I agree that proofs are theoretically better.
I was about to say the same thing. I suspect he is trying to build a case for invalidating EULAs. However, I had previously assumed that EULAs are not allowed to add more restrictions to those indicated by the law, only to lift them, so ridiculous demands in them are already invalid. (This is the case in my country, I thought it's the same in the US.) Eg, an EULA can say "you are allowed to make up to five copies and distribute them to friends"; it cannot say "you are not allowed to play this game if a friend or family is watching without paying an additional license".
Re: Re: Re: Is an ebook edition really less valuable than a paperback?
Ok, ignore my previous comment, he HAS to be trolling.
[1] First, the book is freaking free.
Indeed !
[2] If the value remains high, there is no reason for the price to come down (regardless of production cost) unless they can buy THE SAME THING cheaper elsewhere.
... is sorely lacking here apparently. That's ok - as Rothbard said, economics is a specialized field, you can't expect everyone to be familiar with it.
Worse, however, is that Griff believes that Amazon sets the price of the books. I had to read his comment three times to make sure it wasn't sarcasm. He really believes it.
Amazon is not the one publishing that book. News at eleven.
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Re: Re:
On the post: Forget Being Arrested For Filming The Police, Now They're Arresting People For Sitting
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And this is news how?
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Re: Re: Book Copyright
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Re: Words can hurt
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Re:
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Patents are required for innovation?
1) he invented this not because he was going to get a patent, but because he found the idea interesting. (I'm not saying that he wasn't hoping to get a patent - maybe he was - but getting a patent was not a requirement for invention, it was at most a nice-to-have bonus.)
2) Even after discovering that he can't patent the invention, he still advertises it. He didn't hide it or tried to patent it in some other country.
All this basically means that those who claims patents are necessary or we won't have new inventions anymore are full of it.
On the post: DailyDirt: Help Me, Software, You're Our Only Hope...
My problem with proof of correctness...
result = (a + b) / 2
is correct. And then you run the program and it works, until a year later someone sets a and b to very large values, and the program crashes (or returns a negative value). That's why I prefer testing to proofs, even though I agree that proofs are theoretically better.
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Re:
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Re: Charge the Author for my time
On the post: 'Economics In One Lesson' Apparently Doesn't Include Pricing; Kindle Version Most Expensive
Re: Re: Re: Is an ebook edition really less valuable than a paperback?
[1] First, the book is freaking free.
Indeed !
[2] If the value remains high, there is no reason for the price to come down (regardless of production cost) unless they can buy THE SAME THING cheaper elsewhere.
I rest my case.
On the post: 'Economics In One Lesson' Apparently Doesn't Include Pricing; Kindle Version Most Expensive
Economics knowledge
Worse, however, is that Griff believes that Amazon sets the price of the books. I had to read his comment three times to make sure it wasn't sarcasm. He really believes it.
Amazon is not the one publishing that book. News at eleven.
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