I get what you're saying, but the imposition of legacy business models on our open standards does not work. The only useful material is that which stays open.
Who uses copy-protected WMA? Everything everywhere is in MP3, the de-facto free-as-in-beer standard, unencrypted. Stores that impose any DRM are roadkill.
It's not the same for ebooks, because they've all been built with proprietary ecosystems in mind, only able to read their one own format. But the DAY someone has the balls to have all-readers built in China that can connect to all stores out-of-the-box, read everything, and PDFs all the files it gets for easy subsequent use, it will take about 100% market share overnight, right up until the day it's yanked out of the stores by panic-induced injunctions.
Some time soon, it will be so easy to make such devices that they will be inevitable. Progress cares not for regulation.
Nope. The whole of the computer/internet revolution is the ability to communicate anything to anyone at zero cost. Some evolutionary roadkills think that certain data must be protected against said replication. This is obviously counter-productive, because you can't go against evolutionary traits. And when those traits are an advantage, the group that stupidly tries to repress the advantageous behaviors loses ecological relevance against those that leverage natural human capabilities.
"Any sort of restriction on the free flow of information is a crime against humanity." I came up with that, but I'm certain I'm not the first one to think of it.
Direct democracy: it's the direction of history, the all-crushing unstoppable wall of ice.
Current governments have been completely isolated by walls made of money from the opinions of 99% of the people. But that means that we only need about 1,02% of the people to manage making their opinions known to their so-called representatives about every one issue. This would force the politicians to spend half their attention on what the people who don't own lobbyists actually think.
There is still the issue of the walls made of money. Each public issue would probably need more than 1,02% of the people to agree on what they tell their politicians, but drowning the voices of the lobbies under that of public participation is still the basic idea.
History will tell which system will have been able to crush the ridiculous idea that a popularity contest can designate leaders who will ensure a good life to the people they represent.
Representative democracy has been completely captured for a long, long time, and we're only now realizing how pervasively. It's time for humans to take reality back from fictitious social constructs such as "states" and "companies".
Re: Project management is also important, not just money
That is, transparency. Distributed, open project management is necessary. There will be enough swarm projects in the future to measure how efficient their models are, and which are the most resilient (mainly, to capture), efficient (fast and responsive), and open (everyone has the same rights).
Suppose a movie that costs $100M. The reasonable expectation is that it makes twice its budget back within the opening weekend, and if it doesn't, then the studio deems it a failure that doesn't warrant sequels.
Also, the theaters earn zero money on those opening weekend tickets, at least in the US. The distributors sell the rights to exploit the movie, that is, earn money on sweets and sodas, but the whole ticket price goes to the studio. Then in the following weeks, the theater operators may keep a fraction of the ticket price that increases over time.
This means that movies, with their possibly huge up-front cost, have been entirely paid for, and have paid for the work of everyone involved in making them within two days, but the studios demand to have their "precious work" protected by copyright for a century.
This is ridiculous. We the Internet KNOW this and act accordingly. Our "flat-rate media distribution service that allows unrestricted access to everything ever recorded" is called Bittorrent, and the (somewhat) flat access price is your ISP bill.
Producers have a right to make money, sure. Serve a market and you'll earn money, it's that simple. Compete. SELL THINGS. Sell "convenient access" to content, not "licenses to watch it once on one device within one day and without supplementary eyeballs". Disney doesn't need a hundred years long copyright, they need a new Mickey Mouse every two years to keep their mascot fresh.
There is no need for copyright, at all, for anything, ever. Ideas are naturally public property for anyone able to make any use of them, because humans' best evolutionary advantage is the ability to pass behaviors to other humans without having to breed them into the genes over hundreds of generations. This means that any sort of obstacle to the free flows of ideas is a crime against humanity. It also means that disagreeing with that amounts to deny evolution, or, insanely, trying to forbid using our most useful evolved trait.
It's terrifying, because it means that what companies own is more important to society than the fact that actual people are human. It belies a societal philosophy where citizens are companies, and people are commodities.
That future is "Life for Rent", individuals being nothing but money faucets to be swayed by propaganda saturation to direct the flow towards one or the other corporation, receiving overpriced, castrated, shiny gadgets (that you don't own and thus may not modify in any way) in exchange for subscriptions paid with compound-interest credits.
Big Data Analytics for extracting every nuance about individual users from real-time communications and stored data.
is interesting, because if THOSE results were opened up to everyone everywhere forever, then we would have a complete map of what everyone' opinion actually is.
What I'm getting at is that that pile of data is a permanent voting mechanism. We could get rid of every last politician, just by doing what people want. With swarms of crowds to solve problems definitively, instead of perpetuating them with institutions.
Abundance. How much would it have cost to send the letters? How much is a day's delay worth?
I think there is not enough money in the world to pay for postage service to send all email as letters. As in, all of the money divided by all of the emails gives a result under letter-sending cost.
It's like the postal services everywhere whining that the Internet is killing them, when most of their work is to move Internet-ordered merchandise.
Happiness. To be happy, you need to see that you have the means to accomplish your goals. That is the formula, the recipe, the condition in which to put the human organism to get a result of happy. Give them what they need to do what they want to get done.
It's not like Africa is going to pony up for iPhones, so what are they gonna do, try to sell Android while censoring/throttling Google? That's just not going to happen.
Google has a very strong business case to tell them to forget it, in this case. The French might get somewhat swayed to iPhones if all their ISPs would begin throttling Google, but in Africa that's just not going to happen. And Android is pretty useless without Google, as there are services with hardcoded addresses in there. That would mean non-functioning apps, and even no Play Store. ISPs might get their own stores, but who would do you trust more, african ISPs, or Google? As far as app QA goes?
I'm wondering if the ISPs would really be so stupid as to half-brick all the smartphone market, leaving all the wireless connectivity money on the table.
This is begging for disruption so much, someone is bound to notice the piles of money that stupidity leaves on the table.
Real copyright thinking is not for the faint of heart or the feeble minded. Its complexity can be mind-numbing. Tim Cushing wrote a great post analyzing what country's law would apply to different combinations of activities according to the various locations of a copy source, the person copying, and a copy destination
What's not simple about "abolish the damn thing already", with the definitive, closing argument : "passing data is humanity's one greatest evolutionary advantage, therefore, anything that restricts the free flow of data is a crime against humanity". END.
No, really, this is priceless. Trying to push IP laws in China? The country where patents only means "don't do this thing outside China kthx" then goes "lol they had us pass law to prevent them from doing things, hurr durr". It's not like they enforce them in any way whatsoever internally.
It's the country where subcontractors will produce ten times the merchandise you ordered, to sell by themselves without giving you a cut.
The country where you need a local partner to set up a company, so that when it bankrupts, China keeps someone who knows how to run it.
Get this straight. So, US officials basically accuse Iran of preparing to attack their (laughably insecure) infrastructure, while attacking Iran's laughably insecure infrastructure.
Meanwhile, they also pass laws that make criminals out of anyone using a computer at all.
They pass laws to make it easier to blow the whistle on evil business, but destroy people doing it to themselves.
It's amazing how dysfunctional that is. It's like a person who would think of the worst things all the time, screaming and shouting how they're wrong, while hiding in their own shadow to commit those exact same crimes.
I will pay when there is a service for $10/mo, that I can't access from outside the U.S.
Fuck Netflix, Hulu and HBO. In my small European country, the only way to watch anything I want to watch is and will stay Bittorrent.
Wouldn't I love to have a device to watch or listen to anything ever recorder in the history of ever? Yes. Not going to happen legally.
Netflix and Hulu are Internet companies who serve only one country. This is so rock-fuck stupid I can't finish this sentence, it shuts my>/i> brain off.
Also, yeah, I'm not paying for any less than full access to everything ever recorded, for a flat rate of about $20/mo as a basic service, and that also needs to let me spend money on artists I like enough.
Kickstart the 3000 quid, release into public domain, with a "copyright note" that states the names of all donors in decreasing order of contribution amount. Embedded in the tags of the original files distributed by the project.
But 3000 pounds should cover everything, right? So, the masters should be openly distributed too. And the intermediary files, custom settings in the studio software, right? Everything that the choir could possibly have access to after having recorded the song, should be public domain, if the public pays a liberation fee to buy the song outright.
If the performers choose to one-time sell the song, it's a very good idea, in the first place. Songs do have a fixed cost, so it makes very much sense to sell them as "one product", with the natural right to share it once the product has been fully paid for.
Capitalism is the system where all products are supposed to end up priced at their marginal production cost. This choir may be doing something very, very right. Maybe someone could even reappropriate their song and make it a hit, earning millions by selling related, scarce stuff, just to show them how to make money from free.
On the post: Amazon, Publishers Sued For Antitrust Violations Over DRM By Angry Indie Bookstores
Re: Re:
Who uses copy-protected WMA? Everything everywhere is in MP3, the de-facto free-as-in-beer standard, unencrypted. Stores that impose any DRM are roadkill.
It's not the same for ebooks, because they've all been built with proprietary ecosystems in mind, only able to read their one own format. But the DAY someone has the balls to have all-readers built in China that can connect to all stores out-of-the-box, read everything, and PDFs all the files it gets for easy subsequent use, it will take about 100% market share overnight, right up until the day it's yanked out of the stores by panic-induced injunctions.
Some time soon, it will be so easy to make such devices that they will be inevitable. Progress cares not for regulation.
On the post: Amazon, Publishers Sued For Antitrust Violations Over DRM By Angry Indie Bookstores
Re:
On the post: Amazon, Publishers Sued For Antitrust Violations Over DRM By Angry Indie Bookstores
Re:
"Any sort of restriction on the free flow of information is a crime against humanity." I came up with that, but I'm certain I'm not the first one to think of it.
On the post: Amazon, Publishers Sued For Antitrust Violations Over DRM By Angry Indie Bookstores
Re:
On the post: Dead Kennedys Guitarist Joins Crusade Against Ad Networks & YouTube Despite Understanding Neither
Re: Re: Pure asshole
On the post: Crowdfunding The Push For A Federal Anti-SLAPP Law To Protect Free Speech
Re:
Current governments have been completely isolated by walls made of money from the opinions of 99% of the people. But that means that we only need about 1,02% of the people to manage making their opinions known to their so-called representatives about every one issue. This would force the politicians to spend half their attention on what the people who don't own lobbyists actually think.
There is still the issue of the walls made of money. Each public issue would probably need more than 1,02% of the people to agree on what they tell their politicians, but drowning the voices of the lobbies under that of public participation is still the basic idea.
History will tell which system will have been able to crush the ridiculous idea that a popularity contest can designate leaders who will ensure a good life to the people they represent.
Representative democracy has been completely captured for a long, long time, and we're only now realizing how pervasively. It's time for humans to take reality back from fictitious social constructs such as "states" and "companies".
On the post: Crowdfunding The Push For A Federal Anti-SLAPP Law To Protect Free Speech
Re: Project management is also important, not just money
On the post: Bollywood No Longer Worrying About Piracy As Studios Keep Setting New Records At The Box Office
One more proof
Suppose a movie that costs $100M. The reasonable expectation is that it makes twice its budget back within the opening weekend, and if it doesn't, then the studio deems it a failure that doesn't warrant sequels.
Also, the theaters earn zero money on those opening weekend tickets, at least in the US. The distributors sell the rights to exploit the movie, that is, earn money on sweets and sodas, but the whole ticket price goes to the studio. Then in the following weeks, the theater operators may keep a fraction of the ticket price that increases over time.
This means that movies, with their possibly huge up-front cost, have been entirely paid for, and have paid for the work of everyone involved in making them within two days, but the studios demand to have their "precious work" protected by copyright for a century.
This is ridiculous. We the Internet KNOW this and act accordingly. Our "flat-rate media distribution service that allows unrestricted access to everything ever recorded" is called Bittorrent, and the (somewhat) flat access price is your ISP bill.
Producers have a right to make money, sure. Serve a market and you'll earn money, it's that simple. Compete. SELL THINGS. Sell "convenient access" to content, not "licenses to watch it once on one device within one day and without supplementary eyeballs". Disney doesn't need a hundred years long copyright, they need a new Mickey Mouse every two years to keep their mascot fresh.
There is no need for copyright, at all, for anything, ever. Ideas are naturally public property for anyone able to make any use of them, because humans' best evolutionary advantage is the ability to pass behaviors to other humans without having to breed them into the genes over hundreds of generations. This means that any sort of obstacle to the free flows of ideas is a crime against humanity. It also means that disagreeing with that amounts to deny evolution, or, insanely, trying to forbid using our most useful evolved trait.
It's terrifying, because it means that what companies own is more important to society than the fact that actual people are human. It belies a societal philosophy where citizens are companies, and people are commodities.
That future is "Life for Rent", individuals being nothing but money faucets to be swayed by propaganda saturation to direct the flow towards one or the other corporation, receiving overpriced, castrated, shiny gadgets (that you don't own and thus may not modify in any way) in exchange for subscriptions paid with compound-interest credits.
On the post: Will The ITU's Increasing Focus On Control And Surveillance Split The Internet?
Interesting.
What I'm getting at is that that pile of data is a permanent voting mechanism. We could get rid of every last politician, just by doing what people want. With swarms of crowds to solve problems definitively, instead of perpetuating them with institutions.
On the post: Iceland: Going From Protecting Free Speech Online... To Setting Up Their Own Great Firewall?
When are next Icelandic elections?
On the post: Should We Be Measuring Happiness As An Economic Measure?
Re: Value
I think there is not enough money in the world to pay for postage service to send all email as letters. As in, all of the money divided by all of the emails gives a result under letter-sending cost.
It's like the postal services everywhere whining that the Internet is killing them, when most of their work is to move Internet-ordered merchandise.
Happiness. To be happy, you need to see that you have the means to accomplish your goals. That is the formula, the recipe, the condition in which to put the human organism to get a result of happy. Give them what they need to do what they want to get done.
On the post: Copyright Insanity: School Policy Requires Students Hand Over Copyright On All Work
Re: Re: Re: Common.
On the post: Rep Zoe Lofgren Continues To Improve 'Aaron's Law' Via Reddit
Replace Congress with Reddit
I think I remember that that system is called "democracy".
On the post: Google Decides Smartphone Market Share Is More Important Than Net Neutrality
This is ridiculous
Google has a very strong business case to tell them to forget it, in this case. The French might get somewhat swayed to iPhones if all their ISPs would begin throttling Google, but in Africa that's just not going to happen. And Android is pretty useless without Google, as there are services with hardcoded addresses in there. That would mean non-functioning apps, and even no Play Store. ISPs might get their own stores, but who would do you trust more, african ISPs, or Google? As far as app QA goes?
I'm wondering if the ISPs would really be so stupid as to half-brick all the smartphone market, leaving all the wireless connectivity money on the table.
This is begging for disruption so much, someone is bound to notice the piles of money that stupidity leaves on the table.
On the post: Andrew Bridges Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Blindingly obvious copyright solution
What's not simple about "abolish the damn thing already", with the definitive, closing argument : "passing data is humanity's one greatest evolutionary advantage, therefore, anything that restricts the free flow of data is a crime against humanity". END.
On the post: USTR Pushing Excessive SOPA-Style Liability In China
ROTFLMAO
It's the country where subcontractors will produce ten times the merchandise you ordered, to sell by themselves without giving you a cut.
The country where you need a local partner to set up a company, so that when it bankrupts, China keeps someone who knows how to run it.
On the post: Cyber War: A One-Sided Battle Against A Trumped Up Enemy
Hysterically hilarious hypocrisy
Meanwhile, they also pass laws that make criminals out of anyone using a computer at all.
They pass laws to make it easier to blow the whistle on evil business, but destroy people doing it to themselves.
It's amazing how dysfunctional that is. It's like a person who would think of the worst things all the time, screaming and shouting how they're wrong, while hiding in their own shadow to commit those exact same crimes.
On the post: Dear HBO, Disney, Netflix Et Al: Fragmenting Online TV Lets Piracy Keep Its Biggest Advantage
Not concerned
Fuck Netflix, Hulu and HBO. In my small European country, the only way to watch anything I want to watch is and will stay Bittorrent.
Wouldn't I love to have a device to watch or listen to anything ever recorder in the history of ever? Yes. Not going to happen legally.
Netflix and Hulu are Internet companies who serve only one country. This is so rock-fuck stupid I can't finish this sentence, it shuts my>/i> brain off.
Also, yeah, I'm not paying for any less than full access to everything ever recorded, for a flat rate of about $20/mo as a basic service, and that also needs to let me spend money on artists I like enough.
On the post: Confusing Value And Price, Choir Demands £3000 Per Download
Obvious answer is obvious
But 3000 pounds should cover everything, right? So, the masters should be openly distributed too. And the intermediary files, custom settings in the studio software, right? Everything that the choir could possibly have access to after having recorded the song, should be public domain, if the public pays a liberation fee to buy the song outright.
If the performers choose to one-time sell the song, it's a very good idea, in the first place. Songs do have a fixed cost, so it makes very much sense to sell them as "one product", with the natural right to share it once the product has been fully paid for.
Capitalism is the system where all products are supposed to end up priced at their marginal production cost. This choir may be doing something very, very right. Maybe someone could even reappropriate their song and make it a hit, earning millions by selling related, scarce stuff, just to show them how to make money from free.
On the post: Open Letter To Human Synergistics International In Response To Your Accusation That Techdirt Is Infringing
Re: Re: Re:
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