Well, here's a little story: I live in an unincorporated county area. The sales tax here is around 8%.
The closest CITY to me has a .5% sales tax on top of the state tax. So let's call it 8.5%.
I am looking at cars right now. I've been told by several people that if I walk in to the car dealer with my driver's license that shows my county address, I will get the lower sales tax rate of 8%.
I've also been told that you should be able to do this at any retailer, but that most retailers either can't or won't adjust sales tax because the cashiers don't know how or because their registers aren't capable of charging different tax rates.
So I wouldn't be surprised or mind at all if one day I walked in to WalMart, they ask for my ZIP, and I end up paying half a percent less. That adds up to quite a bit of money over the course of a year.
I don't know how this law is written, but it would actually make more sense to charge the sales tax applicable at the place where the retailer is incorporated or has their headquarters.
Of course, this simply means that every etailer would move to Florida.
Seriously, though: I am sure that if this passes, we'll quickly see on-line databases of zip codes and sales tax amounts. For that matter, I'd be extremely surprised if there's not already some sort of streamlined system to collect sales tax in 50 states. If there's not, then there will be very soon. After all, if this is a huge burden, someone will gladly take retailers' money i order to make things simpler.
Sounds like they're going to stand up a guest network, so employees can use their iPads and laptops.
So in the end, this won't affect employees that much: if you work at a law firm and don't already have an expensive mobile device, something must be wrong with you. ;-)
Re: Re: Re: Re: So Masnick has taken a postion on copyright?
Copyright is concerned with the quantity of works produced, not the quality.
I would like to see something to back this up. I would argue that promoting the sciences and arts requires a certain level of quality. There is a fundamental assumption built in to the concept of monetizing artwork: if your work is crap, nobody is going to pay money for it.
I could spam out a hundred songs a day if I wanted to, but would those be worth buying?
Copyright isn't there just to get people to create endless tons of birdcage liners. Its goal is to promote culture, not just meaningless commerce.
All they need is the ZIP code of where I live. They send tax payments to the Franchise Tax Board of my state. Anyone that can figure out his income tax can figure out where to mail a tax payment.
And I'm willing to bet that your accounting program already has a "print and mail a sales tax check" feature built right in. If it doesn't, it will soon.
Has any game company actually gone out there and asked its USERS what THEY want?
It seems that before offering a product to the public, manufacturers should actually ask users if they want some sort of always-on DRM or if they want to be able to re-sell and buy used games.
Sure, "if you don't like it, don't buy it," but Capitalism really is a two-way street: you have to give the customers what they want, or they won't buy it. Isn't it far better to come out of the gate with something customers DO want, rather than stumble out with something they don't?
How, exactly, does this put an unfair burden on e-tailers?
Any good shopping cart should already be able to choose sales tax rates based on ZIP codes, and from there it's a simple matter to account for sales tax by state on the accounting side.
Yes, you mail an extra 49 checks a year, but any reasonably large e-tailer is already mailing out hundreds of checks a month, so I don't get how this is some huge burden.
Now if you're going to say that charging sales tax at all is a burden, and that we should get our products tax-free if we buy them from another state, I can't agree with that: I don't know how many other states have this particular bit of tax code, but mine certainly requires me to pay use tax on my tax return.
So, since all law-abiding citizens are already tracking their out of state purchases and paying their proper taxes at the end of the year, and collecting the taxes isn't exactly a logistics nightmare... where's the problem?
Re: Re: So Masnick has taken a postion on copyright?
I'd like to read up on just such a topic, actually, because I'm not entirely sure how the usual moral principles apply to things like independent invention.
From what I've learned, ethics are entirely based on the possibility of harm to other people. That harm can be physical, emotional, psychological, or financial. If an act does not harm another person, it is ethical by default. When an act harms another person, the ethics of that act are determined by things like a person's knowledge of the consequences of his actions, acting in defense of another, or whether the harm is the result of fair competition.
The difference between morality and ethics is that ethics are often explicitly defined within a profession, whereas the term "morality" adds personal opinion, religious views, and upbringing.
So how do you apply ethics to independent invention?
Case 1:
I write a fictional novel about an interesting historical event. Another person happens to write a similar novel over the same time span, and we both publish around the same time. There was no copying, but some of our dialog is nearly identical, since we both took information from the same historical sources.
Is it ethical that we both publish our books? Is either of us harmed by the others' publication? The potential harm would be due to loss of sales if our books compete in the same genre. But our society values competition, and since no copying took place, there were no unethical acts that lead up to the publication of both books.
Case 2:
Let's say that I develop a new battery system that finally gives us the ability to drive an electric car for 600 miles in between charges, and you can charge the battery in 10 minutes without danger of it exploding.
I go to patent it, only to find out that 5 years ago,someone else patented the exact same system but never produced it. So there's no way I could possibly have known about or copied his invention.
Legally, the other guy can actually prevent me from selling or using my invention, even though I discovered and implemented the device completely on my own.
But the ethics question is this: how is this second case different than the first case?
Re: Re: So Masnick has taken a postion on copyright?
Nobody is stealing anything from Siegel & Shuster. They sold the property and they got paid. End of transaction.
Just because other people later made different deals doesn't mean that it's fair to try to retroactively change S&S's deal with the publishers of Action Comics.
I do agree that it would have been nice if they got a bigger piece of the pie, considering how popular Superman is... but that doesn't mean that anybody stole from them.
And my point is that when the platform is either open, or the game uses P2P servers, it's literally impossible to permanently shut down the game, since anyone can start their own server.
True, you might be starting at square one again, but the game itself will never go away (at least until every person who has a copy of it finally loses their copies.)
It's a pity that more MMO platforms don't have some sort of EOL plan that allows the platform to be opened up to the public after the game is no longer profitable. After all, if it's no longer profitable, then what's the point in not releasing it to the public?
In fact, I've seen companies like Id and Apogee do just that: open source their game engines after a few years. It has allowed people to do some pretty cool things with those older games, stuff that would have been impossible under the traditional closed-source model.
I think the difference here is that games like Doom were created by gamers, where games like Sims Social are created by business people.
To put it simply, DIVX was a DVD rental system were you got to keep the disc: you bought a movie for a low price, took it home and watched it, and the once the rental period expired, the disc was useless.
You could, if you wanted, pay to watch the disc again later, you could unlock it for permanent use, or you could throw it away.
The catch was that DIVX movies required a special DIVX DVD player, and people weren't interested in buying new DVD players just to rent videos. It also didn't help that DIVX discs were still more expensive than what Blockbuster and Hollywood were charging for rentals.
On the post: Senator Wyden Takes A Stand Against Overbroad Tax On Internet Transactions
Re: Re: Unfair burden?
I pay the STATE tax. I do not get charged county or city add-ons.
On the post: Senator Wyden Takes A Stand Against Overbroad Tax On Internet Transactions
Re: Re: Re: Re: Unfair burden?
The closest CITY to me has a .5% sales tax on top of the state tax. So let's call it 8.5%.
I am looking at cars right now. I've been told by several people that if I walk in to the car dealer with my driver's license that shows my county address, I will get the lower sales tax rate of 8%.
I've also been told that you should be able to do this at any retailer, but that most retailers either can't or won't adjust sales tax because the cashiers don't know how or because their registers aren't capable of charging different tax rates.
So I wouldn't be surprised or mind at all if one day I walked in to WalMart, they ask for my ZIP, and I end up paying half a percent less. That adds up to quite a bit of money over the course of a year.
On the post: Senator Wyden Takes A Stand Against Overbroad Tax On Internet Transactions
Re: Re:
On the post: Senator Wyden Takes A Stand Against Overbroad Tax On Internet Transactions
Re: Re:
In the case of on-line transactions, this is presumed to be the billing or shipping address of the buyer.
On the post: Senator Wyden Takes A Stand Against Overbroad Tax On Internet Transactions
Re: Re:
Of course, this simply means that every etailer would move to Florida.
Seriously, though: I am sure that if this passes, we'll quickly see on-line databases of zip codes and sales tax amounts. For that matter, I'd be extremely surprised if there's not already some sort of streamlined system to collect sales tax in 50 states. If there's not, then there will be very soon. After all, if this is a huge burden, someone will gladly take retailers' money i order to make things simpler.
On the post: You've Got (No) Mail! Major Law Firm Blocks Employee Email Access
guest network FTW
So in the end, this won't affect employees that much: if you work at a law firm and don't already have an expensive mobile device, something must be wrong with you. ;-)
On the post: YouTube Wins Yet Another Complete Victory Over Viacom; Court Mocks Viacom's Ridiculous Legal Theories
Re: Re: Re: Re: So Masnick has taken a postion on copyright?
I would like to see something to back this up. I would argue that promoting the sciences and arts requires a certain level of quality. There is a fundamental assumption built in to the concept of monetizing artwork: if your work is crap, nobody is going to pay money for it.
I could spam out a hundred songs a day if I wanted to, but would those be worth buying?
Copyright isn't there just to get people to create endless tons of birdcage liners. Its goal is to promote culture, not just meaningless commerce.
On the post: Senator Wyden Takes A Stand Against Overbroad Tax On Internet Transactions
Re:
On the post: Senator Wyden Takes A Stand Against Overbroad Tax On Internet Transactions
Re: Re: Unfair burden?
All they need is the ZIP code of where I live. They send tax payments to the Franchise Tax Board of my state. Anyone that can figure out his income tax can figure out where to mail a tax payment.
And I'm willing to bet that your accounting program already has a "print and mail a sales tax check" feature built right in. If it doesn't, it will soon.
On the post: Attention Game Developers And Console Manufacturers: 'Always On' Is NOT The Same As 'Always Connectable'
Has anyone ASKED the USERS
It seems that before offering a product to the public, manufacturers should actually ask users if they want some sort of always-on DRM or if they want to be able to re-sell and buy used games.
Sure, "if you don't like it, don't buy it," but Capitalism really is a two-way street: you have to give the customers what they want, or they won't buy it. Isn't it far better to come out of the gate with something customers DO want, rather than stumble out with something they don't?
On the post: Senator Wyden Takes A Stand Against Overbroad Tax On Internet Transactions
Unfair burden?
Any good shopping cart should already be able to choose sales tax rates based on ZIP codes, and from there it's a simple matter to account for sales tax by state on the accounting side.
Yes, you mail an extra 49 checks a year, but any reasonably large e-tailer is already mailing out hundreds of checks a month, so I don't get how this is some huge burden.
Now if you're going to say that charging sales tax at all is a burden, and that we should get our products tax-free if we buy them from another state, I can't agree with that: I don't know how many other states have this particular bit of tax code, but mine certainly requires me to pay use tax on my tax return.
So, since all law-abiding citizens are already tracking their out of state purchases and paying their proper taxes at the end of the year, and collecting the taxes isn't exactly a logistics nightmare... where's the problem?
On the post: YouTube Wins Yet Another Complete Victory Over Viacom; Court Mocks Viacom's Ridiculous Legal Theories
Re: Re: So Masnick has taken a postion on copyright?
From what I've learned, ethics are entirely based on the possibility of harm to other people. That harm can be physical, emotional, psychological, or financial. If an act does not harm another person, it is ethical by default. When an act harms another person, the ethics of that act are determined by things like a person's knowledge of the consequences of his actions, acting in defense of another, or whether the harm is the result of fair competition.
The difference between morality and ethics is that ethics are often explicitly defined within a profession, whereas the term "morality" adds personal opinion, religious views, and upbringing.
So how do you apply ethics to independent invention?
Case 1:
I write a fictional novel about an interesting historical event. Another person happens to write a similar novel over the same time span, and we both publish around the same time. There was no copying, but some of our dialog is nearly identical, since we both took information from the same historical sources.
Is it ethical that we both publish our books? Is either of us harmed by the others' publication? The potential harm would be due to loss of sales if our books compete in the same genre. But our society values competition, and since no copying took place, there were no unethical acts that lead up to the publication of both books.
Case 2:
Let's say that I develop a new battery system that finally gives us the ability to drive an electric car for 600 miles in between charges, and you can charge the battery in 10 minutes without danger of it exploding.
I go to patent it, only to find out that 5 years ago,someone else patented the exact same system but never produced it. So there's no way I could possibly have known about or copied his invention.
Legally, the other guy can actually prevent me from selling or using my invention, even though I discovered and implemented the device completely on my own.
But the ethics question is this: how is this second case different than the first case?
On the post: YouTube Wins Yet Another Complete Victory Over Viacom; Court Mocks Viacom's Ridiculous Legal Theories
Re: Re: Re: So Masnick has taken a postion on copyright?
People are concerned with the parts that are broken, so that's what people like Mike focus on.
I don't see the problem there.
On the post: YouTube Wins Yet Another Complete Victory Over Viacom; Court Mocks Viacom's Ridiculous Legal Theories
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: So Masnick has taken a postion on copyright?
The fact that a bunch of politicians say something doesn't make it true.
On the post: YouTube Wins Yet Another Complete Victory Over Viacom; Court Mocks Viacom's Ridiculous Legal Theories
Re: Re: So Masnick has taken a postion on copyright?
Just because other people later made different deals doesn't mean that it's fair to try to retroactively change S&S's deal with the publishers of Action Comics.
I do agree that it would have been nice if they got a bigger piece of the pie, considering how popular Superman is... but that doesn't mean that anybody stole from them.
On the post: EA Shuts Down Social Media Games Without Refunding Money
Re:
The game is no longer making money. The primary reason to keep source code private is to make the company money.
So how can it hurt anyone to simply open-source the platform and let people host their own servers?
On the post: EA Shuts Down Social Media Games Without Refunding Money
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: EA Shuts Down Social Media Games Without Refunding Money
Re: Re:
True, you might be starting at square one again, but the game itself will never go away (at least until every person who has a copy of it finally loses their copies.)
It's a pity that more MMO platforms don't have some sort of EOL plan that allows the platform to be opened up to the public after the game is no longer profitable. After all, if it's no longer profitable, then what's the point in not releasing it to the public?
In fact, I've seen companies like Id and Apogee do just that: open source their game engines after a few years. It has allowed people to do some pretty cool things with those older games, stuff that would have been impossible under the traditional closed-source model.
I think the difference here is that games like Doom were created by gamers, where games like Sims Social are created by business people.
On the post: EA Shuts Down Social Media Games Without Refunding Money
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX
To put it simply, DIVX was a DVD rental system were you got to keep the disc: you bought a movie for a low price, took it home and watched it, and the once the rental period expired, the disc was useless.
You could, if you wanted, pay to watch the disc again later, you could unlock it for permanent use, or you could throw it away.
The catch was that DIVX movies required a special DIVX DVD player, and people weren't interested in buying new DVD players just to rent videos. It also didn't help that DIVX discs were still more expensive than what Blockbuster and Hollywood were charging for rentals.
On the post: EA Shuts Down Social Media Games Without Refunding Money
Re: Movies
It failed miserably.
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