WMG's latest crime against humanity
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If it was an immediate rejection it probably was an automatic pattern matching script that pulled the trigger.
The latest nation. Procrastination.
possibly. but i doubt they'd rely on an automated system to make a conclusive determination. i think it'd be pretty easy to fool such a system.
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As an ex-professional musician, I can assure you that I find RIAA and their clumsy, heavy handed tactics to be an embarrassment to the brotherhood. That said, and unpopular though I know this perspective to be, I simply can't fathom how people think they have any rights at all to the property of others just because someone's connected a few computers together. If I decided to come over to your house, hotwire your car and drive it off for a joy ride because, well, you know, "transportation wants to be free," I suspect I'd be leaving amidst a hail of gunfire. It's your car. I have no rights to it whatsoever, unless you explicitly grant them to me. Here's a true story that just recently happened. I'm at someone's house, and he introduces me to a friend who's also a geek. The friend says to me, "Hey, great to meet you. You know, I downloaded a copy of The Career Programmer from [pirate site name deleted] a few weeks ago and I just wanted to tell you how much I'm enjoying it..." I could see our mutual friend bite his tongue in amazement, but I simply smiled and thanked this guy for the kind words. This was no bottom feeder, scum of the earth type. He's a nice person, very active in his church and from what I can tell a stand up kinda guy in general. And yet, he saw no moral dilemma whatsoever with looking the author of a book right in the eye and telling him he'd stolen a copy via a pirate site. He even added, "I guess I probably owe you some money, huh?" as a joke, meaning he knew very well that it wasn't his to take for free. Mind you, I can't get all worked up about the miniscule amount of money that didn't make it into my pocket from this transaction, and I've actually kept in touch with this guy & consider him a friend. I just mention this to point out how dramatically many people's ethics have degraded because they buy into the propaganda that "information wants to be free" and the implicit credo that if it's available on the Internet, it's free - whether the owner likes it or not. And of course it doesn't end there. Not only is the property belonging to those of us who create (a group which includes software developers, folks) assumed to belong by birthright to the entire world, for no compensation. We also get the treat of listening to the righteous indignation of those who steal from us. This is often accompanied by an impressive amount of twisted pretzel logic, of course, but is otherwise just a tirade about how unfair it is that anyone should so much as lift a finger to protect that which is
"information wants to be free" - whether you like it or not that's the bitter truth. The truth is that anything which is in digital format is going to be pirated and will eventually become free because the cost to reproduce it is zero. That's the difference between things in digital format and tangible items like a car. How many times have you seen posts in the lounge that goes like this: "I want a software to do ..... preferably free". Eventually, anything digital is going to be free whether or not we like it or not. What needs to be done is not to find ways to prevent it but to find ways to build business models around "Free". There have been lot of successful business models around Free. Musicians who get pirated the most also earn a lot in concerts and shows. Authors who released digital format of their books have also seen the sales of print format go
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"information wants to be free" - whether you like it or not that's the bitter truth. The truth is that anything which is in digital format is going to be pirated and will eventually become free because the cost to reproduce it is zero. That's the difference between things in digital format and tangible items like a car. How many times have you seen posts in the lounge that goes like this: "I want a software to do ..... preferably free". Eventually, anything digital is going to be free whether or not we like it or not. What needs to be done is not to find ways to prevent it but to find ways to build business models around "Free". There have been lot of successful business models around Free. Musicians who get pirated the most also earn a lot in concerts and shows. Authors who released digital format of their books have also seen the sales of print format go
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
"information wants to be free" - whether you like it or not that's the bitter truth.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
The truth is that anything which is in digital format is going to be pirated and will eventually become free because the cost to reproduce it is zero
That much is true, if you approximate storage/bandwidth costs to zero... The problem is that there IS a cost to CREATING these things, both in time and money, and the "free" model doesn't work universally. People need income to survive, and though there are amateurs like me, who write in their spare time and have a day job, there are a lot of others who focus full-time on creation. If all of the profit was stripped out of these things, those people would not be able to survive, financially. In my case (I'm a self-published sci-fi/fantasy author), I've actually considered doing just as you mentioned, releasing the electronic version for free... But as I said, I have a day job, so I'm not depending on my writing for income. In actuality, I'll probably never recoup the money I laid out to print it. Maybe we'll just go back to ye olden days of patronage, where writers, musicians, and artists would just be hired by rich people with too much money to throw around...
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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Paper they're obscure here, at least. no idea if they're well-known in Sweden
I have no idea who they are. :~ It could mean that I have no clue about the music produced here. I rarely listen to radio, so I am never really exposed to pop music. For all I know they could be the proverbial "shit". :)
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As an ex-professional musician, I can assure you that I find RIAA and their clumsy, heavy handed tactics to be an embarrassment to the brotherhood. That said, and unpopular though I know this perspective to be, I simply can't fathom how people think they have any rights at all to the property of others just because someone's connected a few computers together. If I decided to come over to your house, hotwire your car and drive it off for a joy ride because, well, you know, "transportation wants to be free," I suspect I'd be leaving amidst a hail of gunfire. It's your car. I have no rights to it whatsoever, unless you explicitly grant them to me. Here's a true story that just recently happened. I'm at someone's house, and he introduces me to a friend who's also a geek. The friend says to me, "Hey, great to meet you. You know, I downloaded a copy of The Career Programmer from [pirate site name deleted] a few weeks ago and I just wanted to tell you how much I'm enjoying it..." I could see our mutual friend bite his tongue in amazement, but I simply smiled and thanked this guy for the kind words. This was no bottom feeder, scum of the earth type. He's a nice person, very active in his church and from what I can tell a stand up kinda guy in general. And yet, he saw no moral dilemma whatsoever with looking the author of a book right in the eye and telling him he'd stolen a copy via a pirate site. He even added, "I guess I probably owe you some money, huh?" as a joke, meaning he knew very well that it wasn't his to take for free. Mind you, I can't get all worked up about the miniscule amount of money that didn't make it into my pocket from this transaction, and I've actually kept in touch with this guy & consider him a friend. I just mention this to point out how dramatically many people's ethics have degraded because they buy into the propaganda that "information wants to be free" and the implicit credo that if it's available on the Internet, it's free - whether the owner likes it or not. And of course it doesn't end there. Not only is the property belonging to those of us who create (a group which includes software developers, folks) assumed to belong by birthright to the entire world, for no compensation. We also get the treat of listening to the righteous indignation of those who steal from us. This is often accompanied by an impressive amount of twisted pretzel logic, of course, but is otherwise just a tirade about how unfair it is that anyone should so much as lift a finger to protect that which is
Christopher Duncan wrote:
hotwire your car and drive it off for a joy ride
But, see that's the difference... stealing a car or whatever leaves the owner with no car. Copying a car or whatever doesn't. So if someone were to put my car through a replicator and drive off with the copy, leaving me with my car unchanged, I'd have no problem.
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"information wants to be free" - whether you like it or not that's the bitter truth. The truth is that anything which is in digital format is going to be pirated and will eventually become free because the cost to reproduce it is zero. That's the difference between things in digital format and tangible items like a car. How many times have you seen posts in the lounge that goes like this: "I want a software to do ..... preferably free". Eventually, anything digital is going to be free whether or not we like it or not. What needs to be done is not to find ways to prevent it but to find ways to build business models around "Free". There have been lot of successful business models around Free. Musicians who get pirated the most also earn a lot in concerts and shows. Authors who released digital format of their books have also seen the sales of print format go
My mortgage payment wants to be free, too. I'm just having a little trouble getting the word out to the bank. :) Yeah, I don't disagree that if it's digital it's going to be pirated. And yet, I am not at all a fan of DRM, as it tends to hassle the very people who want to pay me, and that's just not right. I figure if someone buys a copy of a book, or a song, or a piece of software from me, I don't care how many devices they own. They should be able to buy it once, and put it on all of them so that it's convenient for them to use wherever they are (anyone remember Borland's No Nonsense Agreement?). Of course, that also means they can give it to a million of their close, personal friends, too but I just don't have a solution for that other than encouraging an ethical shift towards doing what's right. And the only way I know of to promote that is to treat those who do buy my stuff as well as I can, in hopes that they'll appreciate it and continue to do the right thing.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
There have been lot of successful business models around Free.
I'm not sure I'd agree with this. There have been some successes built around free, but the Internet is a classic example of the fundamental difficulty inherent in this approach. Gazillions of developers have been desperately trying to make a buck on the web only to find that it's extremely difficult to convert free to profit. I think most of that line of thinking is more of the pretzel logic, trying to rationalize a bad situation after the fact rather than just calling a pig a pig. With no offense intended toward swine in general, of course. :)
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
"information wants to be free" - whether you like it or not that's the bitter truth.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
The truth is that anything which is in digital format is going to be pirated and will eventually become free because the cost to reproduce it is zero
That much is true, if you approximate storage/bandwidth costs to zero... The problem is that there IS a cost to CREATING these things, both in time and money, and the "free" model doesn't work universally. People need income to survive, and though there are amateurs like me, who write in their spare time and have a day job, there are a lot of others who focus full-time on creation. If all of the profit was stripped out of these things, those people would not be able to survive, financially. In my case (I'm a self-published sci-fi/fantasy author), I've actually considered doing just as you mentioned, releasing the electronic version for free... But as I said, I have a day job, so I'm not depending on my writing for income. In actuality, I'll probably never recoup the money I laid out to print it. Maybe we'll just go back to ye olden days of patronage, where writers, musicians, and artists would just be hired by rich people with too much money to throw around...
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
Ian Shlasko wrote:
Maybe we'll just go back to ye olden days of patronage, where writers, musicians, and artists would just be hired by rich people with too much money to throw around...
Hey, when you get there, save me a seat, would you? :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
"information wants to be free" - whether you like it or not that's the bitter truth.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
The truth is that anything which is in digital format is going to be pirated and will eventually become free because the cost to reproduce it is zero
That much is true, if you approximate storage/bandwidth costs to zero... The problem is that there IS a cost to CREATING these things, both in time and money, and the "free" model doesn't work universally. People need income to survive, and though there are amateurs like me, who write in their spare time and have a day job, there are a lot of others who focus full-time on creation. If all of the profit was stripped out of these things, those people would not be able to survive, financially. In my case (I'm a self-published sci-fi/fantasy author), I've actually considered doing just as you mentioned, releasing the electronic version for free... But as I said, I have a day job, so I'm not depending on my writing for income. In actuality, I'll probably never recoup the money I laid out to print it. Maybe we'll just go back to ye olden days of patronage, where writers, musicians, and artists would just be hired by rich people with too much money to throw around...
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
Ian Shlasko wrote:
the "free" model doesn't work universally
The problem is that the "Stop Piracy" model does not work either and I think there are less chances of getting the "Stop Piracy" model to work rather than the "Free" model.
Ian Shlasko wrote:
If all of the profit was stripped out of these things, those people would not be able to survive, financially.
I am not saying that you need to strip the profit out. You just need to realize where the profits are. The profits may not be with distribution but with other things. For example, People who contribute articles at Code Project even though freely apart from getting accolades and fame, do land up in contract jobs and may be better jobs. So there is the profit.
Ian Shlasko wrote:
Maybe we'll just go back to ye olden days of patronage, where writers, musicians, and artists would just be hired by rich people with too much money to throw around...
Believe it or not it is becoming true. Musicians in India whose music is practically free due to piracy are being hired for corporate events and conferences. The paradox is that giving things away for free does not mean no profit.
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My mortgage payment wants to be free, too. I'm just having a little trouble getting the word out to the bank. :) Yeah, I don't disagree that if it's digital it's going to be pirated. And yet, I am not at all a fan of DRM, as it tends to hassle the very people who want to pay me, and that's just not right. I figure if someone buys a copy of a book, or a song, or a piece of software from me, I don't care how many devices they own. They should be able to buy it once, and put it on all of them so that it's convenient for them to use wherever they are (anyone remember Borland's No Nonsense Agreement?). Of course, that also means they can give it to a million of their close, personal friends, too but I just don't have a solution for that other than encouraging an ethical shift towards doing what's right. And the only way I know of to promote that is to treat those who do buy my stuff as well as I can, in hopes that they'll appreciate it and continue to do the right thing.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
There have been lot of successful business models around Free.
I'm not sure I'd agree with this. There have been some successes built around free, but the Internet is a classic example of the fundamental difficulty inherent in this approach. Gazillions of developers have been desperately trying to make a buck on the web only to find that it's extremely difficult to convert free to profit. I think most of that line of thinking is more of the pretzel logic, trying to rationalize a bad situation after the fact rather than just calling a pig a pig. With no offense intended toward swine in general, of course. :)
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
Well said, Chris. I'm going much the same route with mine. I chose a publisher that doesn't wrap any DRM into the digital copies of my book... Just a plain old PDF. It might be a little easier for authors than it is for musicians, as readers tend to be of a different demographic than the consumers of popular music... At least for the most part. Oddly, though, I've had a number of people buy my printed book, but only two digital sales... No love for the Kindle/E-Reader/whatever, apparently.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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I have no idea who they are. :~ It could mean that I have no clue about the music produced here. I rarely listen to radio, so I am never really exposed to pop music. For all I know they could be the proverbial "shit". :)
i like them. they sound like old-school punk. like Joy Division meets Big Black.
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
hotwire your car and drive it off for a joy ride
But, see that's the difference... stealing a car or whatever leaves the owner with no car. Copying a car or whatever doesn't. So if someone were to put my car through a replicator and drive off with the copy, leaving me with my car unchanged, I'd have no problem.
You've lost nothing, but the car companies have lost a potential sale. Remember, they put a lot of money into developing the cars... If they can't sell as many, because people are replicating, they can't afford to spend as much on R&D. Either that, or the price of cars will have to go up. It may not harm YOU, if your car is copied, but if this happens on a massive scale, it impacts the industry itself.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
"information wants to be free" - whether you like it or not that's the bitter truth.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
The truth is that anything which is in digital format is going to be pirated and will eventually become free because the cost to reproduce it is zero
That much is true, if you approximate storage/bandwidth costs to zero... The problem is that there IS a cost to CREATING these things, both in time and money, and the "free" model doesn't work universally. People need income to survive, and though there are amateurs like me, who write in their spare time and have a day job, there are a lot of others who focus full-time on creation. If all of the profit was stripped out of these things, those people would not be able to survive, financially. In my case (I'm a self-published sci-fi/fantasy author), I've actually considered doing just as you mentioned, releasing the electronic version for free... But as I said, I have a day job, so I'm not depending on my writing for income. In actuality, I'll probably never recoup the money I laid out to print it. Maybe we'll just go back to ye olden days of patronage, where writers, musicians, and artists would just be hired by rich people with too much money to throw around...
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
Have you seen the racket that is the modern music industry? Seriously. A person downloading a free cd costs the band that made that CD some stupidly low number. why? Let's look at this legal slavery called the music industry. First, you sign a contract that allows them to own your music, lyrics and that album plus a number of others. If you suck, they can get out of the contract but if you do well, you are stuck with the terms. Prince hated it and changed his name since they owned the rights to "Prince" and the moment the contract was up, he changed back. Now you are given money to make the album. This loan has interest and is for making the CD using their prices and equipment. It also is to cover your expenses as you make it. They then get to take this money out of your royalties. Which begs the question, why are they charging the musicians and setting the price for something they should be doing as part of their cut? They then get their cut, AND get to charge for promotional costs (again, apparently the musician should pay for this even though they could do it themselves otherwise) and when you get all this over some of the most successful albums end up with the artists never having seen a penny past the intial amount. Otherwise they get such a small percentage of the gross it is almost a joke. The musicians make money from the tours. The ticket sales (again, a company has managed to make life hell for the musician and takes the lions share of all proceeds) and the merchandise and CDs sold at the concerts are where the real money is. Producing a CD does have a cost as does sending it out to stores, but the fact that the music industry jacked up the prices and the artists never saw any gain in their own profits or the fact that not a single dime from all the illegal filesharing settlements has ever touched an artists pockets tells us all where the system has broken down. All this and they pretty much control what gets played on air so unless you use them you won't get popular and won't get the tours means that we have an entrenched system that is designed not to encourage artists, but to rob them blind. Books may be different, but the music industry is not something we should be proud to support.
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
hotwire your car and drive it off for a joy ride
But, see that's the difference... stealing a car or whatever leaves the owner with no car. Copying a car or whatever doesn't. So if someone were to put my car through a replicator and drive off with the copy, leaving me with my car unchanged, I'd have no problem.
PIEBALDconsult wrote:
So if someone were to put my car through a replicator and drive off with the copy, leaving me with my car unchanged, I'd have no problem.
Except that you wouldn't have a car. Why? Well, because no one could afford to make one (and that's the maximum they'd ever sell, 1) because everyone else would be driving copies. Which means that it would be so expensive that they probably wouldn't even sell the 1. So you still wouldn't have a car for others to copy. No problem!
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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My mortgage payment wants to be free, too. I'm just having a little trouble getting the word out to the bank. :) Yeah, I don't disagree that if it's digital it's going to be pirated. And yet, I am not at all a fan of DRM, as it tends to hassle the very people who want to pay me, and that's just not right. I figure if someone buys a copy of a book, or a song, or a piece of software from me, I don't care how many devices they own. They should be able to buy it once, and put it on all of them so that it's convenient for them to use wherever they are (anyone remember Borland's No Nonsense Agreement?). Of course, that also means they can give it to a million of their close, personal friends, too but I just don't have a solution for that other than encouraging an ethical shift towards doing what's right. And the only way I know of to promote that is to treat those who do buy my stuff as well as I can, in hopes that they'll appreciate it and continue to do the right thing.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
There have been lot of successful business models around Free.
I'm not sure I'd agree with this. There have been some successes built around free, but the Internet is a classic example of the fundamental difficulty inherent in this approach. Gazillions of developers have been desperately trying to make a buck on the web only to find that it's extremely difficult to convert free to profit. I think most of that line of thinking is more of the pretzel logic, trying to rationalize a bad situation after the fact rather than just calling a pig a pig. With no offense intended toward swine in general, of course. :)
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
Christopher Duncan wrote:
There have been some successes built around free,
There have been a lot of successes built around free. This site is one very quick example.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Gazillions of developers have been desperately trying to make a buck on the web only to find that it's extremely difficult to convert free to profit.
It really depends on what you consider a profit as I stated in my reply to Ian. There might not be direct profits but sure there are lot of indirect profits (talk at conferences, contract jobs) etc.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
trying to rationalize a bad situation
What are your alternatives? Keep crying about the bad situation or understand that bad situation is bad and find ways to make it into a "good" situation.
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Well said, Chris. I'm going much the same route with mine. I chose a publisher that doesn't wrap any DRM into the digital copies of my book... Just a plain old PDF. It might be a little easier for authors than it is for musicians, as readers tend to be of a different demographic than the consumers of popular music... At least for the most part. Oddly, though, I've had a number of people buy my printed book, but only two digital sales... No love for the Kindle/E-Reader/whatever, apparently.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
Actually, in some ways musicians may have it better. At least popularity can lead to more live gigs, and since that's what musicians do, there's no doubt that the publicity helps. Of course, there are those who think that live performance should be the only way musicians are paid, and as you might imagine I take exception with that perspective. Even so, if you can deliver non digital product whose sales are increased by the promotional effects of piracy, then you're still getting screwed, but you at least have the chance to stay alive. With authors, unless you do speaking gigs or sell other (non digital) spinoff products, you don't reap the same promotional benefits. Your eBook gets passed around, everyone loves it, so even more people steal it. Not an encouraging model. That said, your observation about digital sales mirrors my own experience. Very few digital sales in contrast to paper ones, and that doesn't surprise me. I'm not going to sit in the bathroom balancing a laptop on my knees if I want to do some reading. Paper books are much easier to use (and if the book sucks, well, you can also reuse the paper). The Kindle/Nook/etc. trend isn't there yet. In fact, DRM is probably one of the reasons why. However, I find it incredibly disturbing that I could buy a book from Amazon one day and discover they've deleted it the next (there was a flap about 1984 a few months back where this happened). Of course, you're a much braver creature than I am. Writing non-fiction isn't nearly as tough a gig as trying to land book deals & build readership in the fiction world. If you've been able to make a go of it, you're on my list of heroes. :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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Have you seen the racket that is the modern music industry? Seriously. A person downloading a free cd costs the band that made that CD some stupidly low number. why? Let's look at this legal slavery called the music industry. First, you sign a contract that allows them to own your music, lyrics and that album plus a number of others. If you suck, they can get out of the contract but if you do well, you are stuck with the terms. Prince hated it and changed his name since they owned the rights to "Prince" and the moment the contract was up, he changed back. Now you are given money to make the album. This loan has interest and is for making the CD using their prices and equipment. It also is to cover your expenses as you make it. They then get to take this money out of your royalties. Which begs the question, why are they charging the musicians and setting the price for something they should be doing as part of their cut? They then get their cut, AND get to charge for promotional costs (again, apparently the musician should pay for this even though they could do it themselves otherwise) and when you get all this over some of the most successful albums end up with the artists never having seen a penny past the intial amount. Otherwise they get such a small percentage of the gross it is almost a joke. The musicians make money from the tours. The ticket sales (again, a company has managed to make life hell for the musician and takes the lions share of all proceeds) and the merchandise and CDs sold at the concerts are where the real money is. Producing a CD does have a cost as does sending it out to stores, but the fact that the music industry jacked up the prices and the artists never saw any gain in their own profits or the fact that not a single dime from all the illegal filesharing settlements has ever touched an artists pockets tells us all where the system has broken down. All this and they pretty much control what gets played on air so unless you use them you won't get popular and won't get the tours means that we have an entrenched system that is designed not to encourage artists, but to rob them blind. Books may be different, but the music industry is not something we should be proud to support.
I agree, but you haven't disputed my point. Are the record companies, by corporate standards, "evil?" Yes, I think so. But does that give you the right to steal, setting aside the distinctions between theft and copyright infringement? No. It's illegal and unethical. The ethical alternative, since you hate the industry so much, is to not buy/download/copy the music AT ALL. Listen to unsigned musicians instead, and buy CDs directly from them (At concerts, or via their websites).
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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As an ex-professional musician, I can assure you that I find RIAA and their clumsy, heavy handed tactics to be an embarrassment to the brotherhood. That said, and unpopular though I know this perspective to be, I simply can't fathom how people think they have any rights at all to the property of others just because someone's connected a few computers together. If I decided to come over to your house, hotwire your car and drive it off for a joy ride because, well, you know, "transportation wants to be free," I suspect I'd be leaving amidst a hail of gunfire. It's your car. I have no rights to it whatsoever, unless you explicitly grant them to me. Here's a true story that just recently happened. I'm at someone's house, and he introduces me to a friend who's also a geek. The friend says to me, "Hey, great to meet you. You know, I downloaded a copy of The Career Programmer from [pirate site name deleted] a few weeks ago and I just wanted to tell you how much I'm enjoying it..." I could see our mutual friend bite his tongue in amazement, but I simply smiled and thanked this guy for the kind words. This was no bottom feeder, scum of the earth type. He's a nice person, very active in his church and from what I can tell a stand up kinda guy in general. And yet, he saw no moral dilemma whatsoever with looking the author of a book right in the eye and telling him he'd stolen a copy via a pirate site. He even added, "I guess I probably owe you some money, huh?" as a joke, meaning he knew very well that it wasn't his to take for free. Mind you, I can't get all worked up about the miniscule amount of money that didn't make it into my pocket from this transaction, and I've actually kept in touch with this guy & consider him a friend. I just mention this to point out how dramatically many people's ethics have degraded because they buy into the propaganda that "information wants to be free" and the implicit credo that if it's available on the Internet, it's free - whether the owner likes it or not. And of course it doesn't end there. Not only is the property belonging to those of us who create (a group which includes software developers, folks) assumed to belong by birthright to the entire world, for no compensation. We also get the treat of listening to the righteous indignation of those who steal from us. This is often accompanied by an impressive amount of twisted pretzel logic, of course, but is otherwise just a tirade about how unfair it is that anyone should so much as lift a finger to protect that which is
Well and truly deserving of a 5. I continue to be amazed at how much people just steal stuff nowadays, and because it's easy and because nothing physical is stolen, they don't get that it's stealing at all.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
hotwire your car and drive it off for a joy ride
But, see that's the difference... stealing a car or whatever leaves the owner with no car. Copying a car or whatever doesn't. So if someone were to put my car through a replicator and drive off with the copy, leaving me with my car unchanged, I'd have no problem.
That's just stupid. The fact is that the analogy is flawed because you CAN steal a book or a CD without taking the original, but the person stealing it, gets it full benefit without paying for it. That's why some people are retarded enough to not see that they are stealing.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
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Ian Shlasko wrote:
the "free" model doesn't work universally
The problem is that the "Stop Piracy" model does not work either and I think there are less chances of getting the "Stop Piracy" model to work rather than the "Free" model.
Ian Shlasko wrote:
If all of the profit was stripped out of these things, those people would not be able to survive, financially.
I am not saying that you need to strip the profit out. You just need to realize where the profits are. The profits may not be with distribution but with other things. For example, People who contribute articles at Code Project even though freely apart from getting accolades and fame, do land up in contract jobs and may be better jobs. So there is the profit.
Ian Shlasko wrote:
Maybe we'll just go back to ye olden days of patronage, where writers, musicians, and artists would just be hired by rich people with too much money to throw around...
Believe it or not it is becoming true. Musicians in India whose music is practically free due to piracy are being hired for corporate events and conferences. The paradox is that giving things away for free does not mean no profit.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
The problem is that the "Stop Piracy" model does not work either and I think there are less chances of getting the "Stop Piracy" model to work rather than the "Free" model.
Agreed, but the "free" model isn't workable yet on a large scale... I don't know what the solution is, but there needs to be some kind of compromise.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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PIEBALDconsult wrote:
So if someone were to put my car through a replicator and drive off with the copy, leaving me with my car unchanged, I'd have no problem.
Except that you wouldn't have a car. Why? Well, because no one could afford to make one (and that's the maximum they'd ever sell, 1) because everyone else would be driving copies. Which means that it would be so expensive that they probably wouldn't even sell the 1. So you still wouldn't have a car for others to copy. No problem!
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
If we could replicate the car for free. Someone would make it for free. You really think no one would jump at the chance to make the only car everybody drives? "Where's the motivation if you can't make a profit?" Um, fame? Maybe the fact that everybody is driving the "RagnrocknRoll" Model A. Or maybe the fact that I made the car and I have the best possible knowledge of how it works and so when it breaks down, I can charge more than other folks to fix it? Or any of the dozens of related service industries I can build around my free car. But you folks are right, there aren't any working models of people just handing out their product for free and still making money. Not like Red Hat makes a ton off of training people to use and maintain their OS, or anything like that. Heck, it's not like Radio Head made any money off of their "pay whatever you want" album. And Reznor was a complete fool to do the same. I'm not saying steal everything. I am saying being in the outmoded way of thinking that it must come with an up front cost and there is no way to make a profit if you don't charge is not seeing how things are changing.