I think Mike that while I agree that we are better off taking the moral argument out of it, it is not a choice which we can meaningfully make. The content industry is not actually trying to make the best choice possible. Therefore, whether the moral argument should be in the debate or not, they will include it in their sell to law makers and citizens because it is seductive. Of course, you cannot reply to a moral argument by using an economic argument. If something is "wrong" then it does not matter that it is also mutually beneficial. So those of us opposing copyright maximalists have to be willing to fight them on every front if there is to be any hope of winning. I for one am not willing to wait until the market has eradicated them. They have a lot of government support which will keep them alive well beyond their natural life-span.
I think that the argument that SteelWolf makes applies recursively to all consumers... Discovery and innovation as you have mentioned on a number of occasions Mike is not exclusively creation ab nihilo. In a very real way, the person who receives a piece of information has always "discovered" it. As such, they do have the same moral imperative as that of the "first" discoverer: They must share their infinite good for the benefit of humanity at zero cost for them. That being said, laws are meant to be followed as they represent (theoretically at least) the will of the democratic majority. And so you should not file share, though you should encourage file sharing to be legalized.
Honestly Mike I'm disappointed in your lack of research here. "Moral rights" are not about morality. It is simply the name given to non-economic intellectual property rights. Most importantly in my opinion, moral rights include the right to have your work not be plagiarized. Think about all the business models you have talked about Mike. Would any of them worked if people can just come along and claim your creation as their own? All of them depend on connecting with fans and at some point establishing a relationship between you, your creation and your fans. This is the kind of thing that moral rights protect. They recognize that content creators are more closely connected to the content they create than other products.
Let's see. I typed webmail in google and gmail was the fifth result. Google Map's API specifically directs you towards several geocoding services that directly compete with Google. Googling "Web Browser" you only get Google Chrome as the 5th result again this time with Opera an Firefox higher up. Google "Search Engine" and google is not on the first page. Bing, Yahoo, Altavista and Lycos are. I don't like what google is doing with Google voice but the guy at AT&T is just wrong.
"If people do things for a non-monetary reason, it's because they're receiving marginal benefits in some other manner, whether it's attention, pride, happiness, joy or "just because I want to." Those are all marginal benefits."
As much as I am a big fan of that line of reasoning Mike, I think there is a problem here which can lead to a lack of predictive power and if we go too far, the end of economics. Economics usually provides for exogenous preferences which honestly means it is easy to give in to temptation and just say: "they must like/dislike it that way" to account for any behavior. The problem is that when we do that, nothing comes of it. All we have done is repeated our assumption (actors are self-interested) in the context of a specific case. Pretty soon, we are going to have to start digging into preference formation and evolutionary game theory is where it's going to be at for heuristic research.
I think it's mostly going to be useless. I mean, the result is going to most likely be a standard disclaimer for all blogs. "We may or may not have received stuff/money from that company to tell you this." The end result is that everyone will ignore the disclaimer as with all standard disclaimers... The FCC will feel good though...
Well, a big issue of the studies on multitasking is that they only take into account your productivity given that you are working on something and that you are or not multitasking. I know that multitasking makes me more efficient because it makes it significantly easier for me to get to work. While without the option to multi-task I might procrastinate for extended periods of time, if I multi-task, I will reduce my procrastination time significantly. Of course if you keep a single task in the buffer and work on it constantly without adding the extra cost of task switching each task will be completed faster. But it misses the real point. The useful data is not how long it take you to finish a task from the moment you start it. The important data is how long it takes for you to finish a task from the moment you receive the task. And I agree that multitasking makes me a much happier person. Which most likely in the long run will make me more productive.
Actually, involving intent does not necessarily have the effect you imagine. The arsonist intended to commit an illegal act. The fact that that illegal act had more consequences than he imagined does not detract from the fact that those are consequences of his illegal act. So he should face consequences for that too. However, flip the cases around and see if that makes more sense. First case: an arsonist sets a building on fire. A person happens to be inside and died while the arsonist thought the building was empty. Second Case: An arsonist waits until someone is inside a building before he sets the building on fire killing the person. Don't you think the second arsonist should face a stronger punishment than the first? I mean, isn't killing someone intentionally worst than killing someone unintentionally?
Also, the US really needs to reduce its sentences... It's ridiculous and useless. When someone commits a crime, they assume that they will not get caught. They don't calculate the expected value of their jail sentence and the expected value of the benefit from the crime comparing which is higher. Basically, if you present someone with a 20 year sentence, they will act almost the same way as facing a 30, 50, 100 year sentence... It's forever and they REALLY don't want it. However, your wallet feels the difference between keeping a guy fed, housed and guarded for 10, 20 or 100 years...
I think there should be a rule that if a patent is overturned, the examiner who approved it should be fired and pay a hefty fine for not doing his job right.
I think that this is very telling of the times we live in when it comes to IP. If I didn't think through my reaction to someone using something I made, I would be thrilled and ask them how it's working out for them, not offended and ready to sue. Why should suing be the first reaction? It reminds me of a recent conversation I had with a family member. I was preping for an interview with a software firm by putting together a little piece of software that would show off some of my skills. (Actually cleaning up something I had made in the past) I thought I would bring it over and give it to them to show off how I really do have the skills I am claiming. My family member's reaction was to warn me to copyright the thing first. Why? It was a piece of software I made which did not do a whole lot and there were plenty of equivalent Open Source and proprietary equivalents that did even more stuff... There was absolutely no reason for me to prevent people from using that. Also, if the company did "steal" it from me an marketed it with success, I could easily go to their competitors and say: "Look at what those guys are selling. I made it and I can make similar stuff. Hire me." It took a while for my relative to understand, but eventually, he said: "Oh... I guess you're doing it because it's not in the 'Linux' spirit." I gave up on explaining and just agreed. I think it's sad that everyone's instinct nowadays is to lock up IP as tight as possible. And those of us who feel there are better things to do with our time and feel we might benefit from the notoriety of writing software valuable enough to be "stolen" are just linux-loving idealists... I think that mentality is costing a lot of smart people money and is costing us their innovation.
Actually, I don't see why shield laws would not apply to national security cases. (even if there was a fair review process that determined if the case in question concerned national security) I mean, journalists either gain the info the gov't wants because they are contacted by the source in which case, if sources know shield laws won't apply, the source just won't contact the journalist and then the journalist won't have the info. Or journalists gain the info through investigation, in which case, the same investigation could be done by gov't agencies. I mean, this is basically saying that if the government says so, journalists suddenly become an investigative arm of the state. That's infringing on liberties and useless.
My university used to have a movie marathon during finals which was a really enjoyable way to relax. You knew that no matter the time of day or night, there would be a movie showing and a bunch of people to enjoy it with. However, we got letters from the MPAA with the result of a) someone springing for the public showing fees or b) everybody going to buy the movies we would have otherwise watched c) people moving away from movies as entertainment during that time? The answer was c.
"because I was brought up to obey the laws....most of them anyway haha."
"Anyway if you have nothing to hide, you obviously have nothing to fear. Though if they have nothing to convict then they need not be suspecting me either."
That's the point. We all have something to hide. If you think you have broken no laws on any one day, you are probably wrong. Picked up some change off the street recently? Did you report it on your taxes? Did you return the found property to the police station so it could be returned to its owner? And the list goes on.
Listen to this: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865#
You'll see what I mean...
I recently immigrated to the US and I can agree that it is a real pain in the behind. I can understand the desire to not have someone live off welfare, but it is ridiculous. Under my extended student visa I had a decent job which paid me enough to not live off anyone except myself. However, when I tried to get my green card based on marriage to a US citizen, it took a year so by the middle of the process, I had to quit my job. Now, normally, they give you a temporary work authorization while they consider your application which would have allowed me to resume work. However, because I was no longer working, my application was suddenly insufficient and I could not get my work authorization back and they were threatening to deny my application unless I got someone to sponsor me. Yes, that's right, I was not allowed to work because I was not making enough money to qualify for a work authorization... What kind of a stupid idea is that? By the time my work authorization came in, my company, had had to find someone else and was not interested in rehiring me. (Nor were many people given the economic crisis)
I mean, seriously... All I want is be able to work here, pay my taxes and live with my wife in her country of origin. Why was there a bureaucracy that stood in the way for a whole year? Not that I can complain too much given France's (my country of origin) current immigration policy.
I mean, I see why people are afraid of immigrants. They might steal your jobs and your women. But guess what... The job market is not a pie that you have to split. When new people show up, (especially, college educated or experienced people) the pie grows and everyone benefits.
This has nothing to do with people being fools. There is WAY too much information and decisions to be made for us to actually be rational actors and base all our decisions on all the information available. Our brains just cannot handle such a load. So instead, we use heuristics: Rules of thumb or shortcuts which are easy to apply and most of the time work well. One such heuristic is that we assume that price = value. So if someone tells us something is worth $10 by setting the price at $10 we'll tend to assume it's true until something comes along to change our mind. If something is given away, we tend to assume it does not have a very high value until proven otherwise. And guess what? Most of the time, it works great! When someone gives something away for free, it tends to be a crappy pencil. When there are two brands, one being more expensive, the more expensive one is usually the higher quality one. And that's really helpful, because nowadays, if you had to compare the prices and quality ratings for every alternative whenever you buy a can of beans or a steak, you would never do anything else. So suddenly charging can increase the perceived value, (is there any other kind?) but there is no guarantee that the increase in value will be sufficient to make up for the increased price.
To be fair Mike, if you put a price tag on something, people do perceive it as having additional value. (There is a number of psych studies about that) However, it's not enough to make people buy the thing. You also have to make the thing actually have value.
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(as PrometheeFeu)
I think Mike that while I agree that we are better off taking the moral argument out of it, it is not a choice which we can meaningfully make. The content industry is not actually trying to make the best choice possible. Therefore, whether the moral argument should be in the debate or not, they will include it in their sell to law makers and citizens because it is seductive. Of course, you cannot reply to a moral argument by using an economic argument. If something is "wrong" then it does not matter that it is also mutually beneficial. So those of us opposing copyright maximalists have to be willing to fight them on every front if there is to be any hope of winning. I for one am not willing to wait until the market has eradicated them. They have a lot of government support which will keep them alive well beyond their natural life-span.
I think that the argument that SteelWolf makes applies recursively to all consumers... Discovery and innovation as you have mentioned on a number of occasions Mike is not exclusively creation ab nihilo. In a very real way, the person who receives a piece of information has always "discovered" it. As such, they do have the same moral imperative as that of the "first" discoverer: They must share their infinite good for the benefit of humanity at zero cost for them. That being said, laws are meant to be followed as they represent (theoretically at least) the will of the democratic majority. And so you should not file share, though you should encourage file sharing to be legalized.
(as PrometheeFeu)
Yeah... If Redbox came out and offered money for DVDs, I would go to wherever and purchase DVDs then resell them to Redbox for a small profit...
(as PrometheeFeu)
Honestly Mike I'm disappointed in your lack of research here. "Moral rights" are not about morality. It is simply the name given to non-economic intellectual property rights. Most importantly in my opinion, moral rights include the right to have your work not be plagiarized. Think about all the business models you have talked about Mike. Would any of them worked if people can just come along and claim your creation as their own? All of them depend on connecting with fans and at some point establishing a relationship between you, your creation and your fans. This is the kind of thing that moral rights protect. They recognize that content creators are more closely connected to the content they create than other products.
(as PrometheeFeu)
Let's see. I typed webmail in google and gmail was the fifth result. Google Map's API specifically directs you towards several geocoding services that directly compete with Google. Googling "Web Browser" you only get Google Chrome as the 5th result again this time with Opera an Firefox higher up. Google "Search Engine" and google is not on the first page. Bing, Yahoo, Altavista and Lycos are. I don't like what google is doing with Google voice but the guy at AT&T is just wrong.
(as PrometheeFeu)
Hey, we don't have "feds" in France. It's a republic, not a federal republic...
(as PrometheeFeu)
"If people do things for a non-monetary reason, it's because they're receiving marginal benefits in some other manner, whether it's attention, pride, happiness, joy or "just because I want to." Those are all marginal benefits."
As much as I am a big fan of that line of reasoning Mike, I think there is a problem here which can lead to a lack of predictive power and if we go too far, the end of economics. Economics usually provides for exogenous preferences which honestly means it is easy to give in to temptation and just say: "they must like/dislike it that way" to account for any behavior. The problem is that when we do that, nothing comes of it. All we have done is repeated our assumption (actors are self-interested) in the context of a specific case. Pretty soon, we are going to have to start digging into preference formation and evolutionary game theory is where it's going to be at for heuristic research.
(as PrometheeFeu)
I think this applies to you Mike: http://xkcd.com/386/
(as PrometheeFeu)
I think it's mostly going to be useless. I mean, the result is going to most likely be a standard disclaimer for all blogs. "We may or may not have received stuff/money from that company to tell you this." The end result is that everyone will ignore the disclaimer as with all standard disclaimers... The FCC will feel good though...
(as PrometheeFeu)
Well, a big issue of the studies on multitasking is that they only take into account your productivity given that you are working on something and that you are or not multitasking. I know that multitasking makes me more efficient because it makes it significantly easier for me to get to work. While without the option to multi-task I might procrastinate for extended periods of time, if I multi-task, I will reduce my procrastination time significantly. Of course if you keep a single task in the buffer and work on it constantly without adding the extra cost of task switching each task will be completed faster. But it misses the real point. The useful data is not how long it take you to finish a task from the moment you start it. The important data is how long it takes for you to finish a task from the moment you receive the task. And I agree that multitasking makes me a much happier person. Which most likely in the long run will make me more productive.
Re: Not always necessary (as PrometheeFeu)
Actually, involving intent does not necessarily have the effect you imagine. The arsonist intended to commit an illegal act. The fact that that illegal act had more consequences than he imagined does not detract from the fact that those are consequences of his illegal act. So he should face consequences for that too. However, flip the cases around and see if that makes more sense. First case: an arsonist sets a building on fire. A person happens to be inside and died while the arsonist thought the building was empty. Second Case: An arsonist waits until someone is inside a building before he sets the building on fire killing the person. Don't you think the second arsonist should face a stronger punishment than the first? I mean, isn't killing someone intentionally worst than killing someone unintentionally?
Also, the US really needs to reduce its sentences... It's ridiculous and useless. When someone commits a crime, they assume that they will not get caught. They don't calculate the expected value of their jail sentence and the expected value of the benefit from the crime comparing which is higher. Basically, if you present someone with a 20 year sentence, they will act almost the same way as facing a 30, 50, 100 year sentence... It's forever and they REALLY don't want it. However, your wallet feels the difference between keeping a guy fed, housed and guarded for 10, 20 or 100 years...
(as PrometheeFeu)
I think there should be a rule that if a patent is overturned, the examiner who approved it should be fired and pay a hefty fine for not doing his job right.
(as PrometheeFeu)
I think that this is very telling of the times we live in when it comes to IP. If I didn't think through my reaction to someone using something I made, I would be thrilled and ask them how it's working out for them, not offended and ready to sue. Why should suing be the first reaction? It reminds me of a recent conversation I had with a family member. I was preping for an interview with a software firm by putting together a little piece of software that would show off some of my skills. (Actually cleaning up something I had made in the past) I thought I would bring it over and give it to them to show off how I really do have the skills I am claiming. My family member's reaction was to warn me to copyright the thing first. Why? It was a piece of software I made which did not do a whole lot and there were plenty of equivalent Open Source and proprietary equivalents that did even more stuff... There was absolutely no reason for me to prevent people from using that. Also, if the company did "steal" it from me an marketed it with success, I could easily go to their competitors and say: "Look at what those guys are selling. I made it and I can make similar stuff. Hire me." It took a while for my relative to understand, but eventually, he said: "Oh... I guess you're doing it because it's not in the 'Linux' spirit." I gave up on explaining and just agreed. I think it's sad that everyone's instinct nowadays is to lock up IP as tight as possible. And those of us who feel there are better things to do with our time and feel we might benefit from the notoriety of writing software valuable enough to be "stolen" are just linux-loving idealists... I think that mentality is costing a lot of smart people money and is costing us their innovation.
(as PrometheeFeu)
Actually, I don't see why shield laws would not apply to national security cases. (even if there was a fair review process that determined if the case in question concerned national security) I mean, journalists either gain the info the gov't wants because they are contacted by the source in which case, if sources know shield laws won't apply, the source just won't contact the journalist and then the journalist won't have the info. Or journalists gain the info through investigation, in which case, the same investigation could be done by gov't agencies. I mean, this is basically saying that if the government says so, journalists suddenly become an investigative arm of the state. That's infringing on liberties and useless.
(as PrometheeFeu)
My university used to have a movie marathon during finals which was a really enjoyable way to relax. You knew that no matter the time of day or night, there would be a movie showing and a bunch of people to enjoy it with. However, we got letters from the MPAA with the result of a) someone springing for the public showing fees or b) everybody going to buy the movies we would have otherwise watched c) people moving away from movies as entertainment during that time? The answer was c.
(as PrometheeFeu)
Sounds amazing... If you get prestige from an article on a site nobody knows, think how much prestige you get on a site everyone knows...
Re: Re: (as PrometheeFeu)
"because I was brought up to obey the laws....most of them anyway haha."
"Anyway if you have nothing to hide, you obviously have nothing to fear. Though if they have nothing to convict then they need not be suspecting me either."
That's the point. We all have something to hide. If you think you have broken no laws on any one day, you are probably wrong. Picked up some change off the street recently? Did you report it on your taxes? Did you return the found property to the police station so it could be returned to its owner? And the list goes on.
Listen to this: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865#
You'll see what I mean...
Re: (as PrometheeFeu)
I think the main issue is that your car is your property and so placing something in it without your consent is a violation of your property rights.
(as PrometheeFeu)
I recently immigrated to the US and I can agree that it is a real pain in the behind. I can understand the desire to not have someone live off welfare, but it is ridiculous. Under my extended student visa I had a decent job which paid me enough to not live off anyone except myself. However, when I tried to get my green card based on marriage to a US citizen, it took a year so by the middle of the process, I had to quit my job. Now, normally, they give you a temporary work authorization while they consider your application which would have allowed me to resume work. However, because I was no longer working, my application was suddenly insufficient and I could not get my work authorization back and they were threatening to deny my application unless I got someone to sponsor me. Yes, that's right, I was not allowed to work because I was not making enough money to qualify for a work authorization... What kind of a stupid idea is that? By the time my work authorization came in, my company, had had to find someone else and was not interested in rehiring me. (Nor were many people given the economic crisis)
I mean, seriously... All I want is be able to work here, pay my taxes and live with my wife in her country of origin. Why was there a bureaucracy that stood in the way for a whole year? Not that I can complain too much given France's (my country of origin) current immigration policy.
I mean, I see why people are afraid of immigrants. They might steal your jobs and your women. But guess what... The job market is not a pie that you have to split. When new people show up, (especially, college educated or experienced people) the pie grows and everyone benefits.
Re: Well, it worked for kittens (as PrometheeFeu)
This has nothing to do with people being fools. There is WAY too much information and decisions to be made for us to actually be rational actors and base all our decisions on all the information available. Our brains just cannot handle such a load. So instead, we use heuristics: Rules of thumb or shortcuts which are easy to apply and most of the time work well. One such heuristic is that we assume that price = value. So if someone tells us something is worth $10 by setting the price at $10 we'll tend to assume it's true until something comes along to change our mind. If something is given away, we tend to assume it does not have a very high value until proven otherwise. And guess what? Most of the time, it works great! When someone gives something away for free, it tends to be a crappy pencil. When there are two brands, one being more expensive, the more expensive one is usually the higher quality one. And that's really helpful, because nowadays, if you had to compare the prices and quality ratings for every alternative whenever you buy a can of beans or a steak, you would never do anything else. So suddenly charging can increase the perceived value, (is there any other kind?) but there is no guarantee that the increase in value will be sufficient to make up for the increased price.
(as PrometheeFeu)
To be fair Mike, if you put a price tag on something, people do perceive it as having additional value. (There is a number of psych studies about that) However, it's not enough to make people buy the thing. You also have to make the thing actually have value.