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Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

locusmag.com

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Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#171

Post by disown »

andreilys wrote: post #121
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a world where a creator is not entitled to benefits from their invention This is a mis-statement of the anti-IP case. Given the abolishment of IP laws, creators are not prevented from benefitting from their invention. They merely no longer have the benefit of the state regulators in preventing others from following the inventor's example. > Including any monetary benefits if they so choose. The "monetary benefit" h…

So Disney can steal the work of amateur animators and not pay them a dime. Great.

Or you can "steal" disney's and not pay them a dime. Great.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#172

Post by rektide »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #53
breck wrote: post #36

We need to abolish IP Laws (aka "Imaginary Property" aka "Illogical Property" aka "Incongruent Property" aka "Invalidates Property Laws"—the other term is a big lie, don't repeat it). Not "reform". Not "compromise". Abolish. If 2020 taught me anything, it's that society can come close to the brink pretty quickly. I thought there was an inevitable trend toward freedom, but recently think it's perilous. We need ideas t…

I am genuinely interested in understanding how we could have innovation in a world where a creator is not entitled to benefits from their invention. Including any monetary benefits if they so choose.

> I am genuinely interested in understanding how we could have innovation in a world where a creator is not entitled to benefits from their invention. Including any monetary benefits if they so choose.

they are entitled to the benefits of their creation. by executing their idea better than others. and selling that execution competitively.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#173

Post by krebs_liebhaber »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #148

"As with Apple, the best way for Google to avoid being ordered to turn over data on its users is to not collect or retain that data in the first place. And, as with Apple, the next best thing is to give users the power to turn off that data-collection and data-retention altogether, something Google's gotten marginally better at in the past year." Google is very aggressive in its data collection. Its scope keeps incre…

> You will not see any ads if you do not use the Google-supplied Javascript video player. However avoiding data collection takes some effort on the part of the user.

I watch most of my YT videos through mpv, which (AFAIK) uses youtube-dl as a backend to get the video stream. Am I still vulnerable to tracking?

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#174

Post by wpietri »

andreilys wrote: post #120
losteric wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recipes do not have patent protection, yet there is plenty of innovation in restaurants. There are many paths to an innovation. I don't think the first person deserves such a monopoly. American IP law, in combination with the generally letigious society, has always seemed like a net source of innovation friction...

Creating a new recipe doesn’t involve billions of dollars in research as is the case in pharma. A company that spends billions of dollars in research assumes they will be able to recoup the cost by having a monopoly on the drug they developed. If however competitors can flood the market with the same drug, they cannot recoup the cost and will subsequently go bankrupt. Without the proper incentives you can’t expect co…

I'm fine with that. Funding drugs based on profit potential is hugely distorting. E.g., Oxycontin. Or the whole pharmaceutical sales and promotion apparatus. Or the way it's much easier to fund something that mitigates a problem instead of curing it.

We could publicly fund pharmaceutical research. Indeed, I suspect we'd be better off publicly funding it on cost terms alone. Global pharma research was $186 billion in 2019. [1] The US spends over $100 billion more on drugs compared with other countries' per-capita spending. [2] The current opioid crisis costs nearly $80 billion/year, [3] and was kicked off by a prescription opioid boom [4] driven by the promotion of Oxycontin. [5]

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/309471/randd-spending-sh...

[2] https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/what-makes-the-...

[3] https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/opioids/opioid-overdos...

[4] https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html

[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622774/

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#175

Post by kiliantics »

andreilys wrote: post #120
losteric wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recipes do not have patent protection, yet there is plenty of innovation in restaurants. There are many paths to an innovation. I don't think the first person deserves such a monopoly. American IP law, in combination with the generally letigious society, has always seemed like a net source of innovation friction...

Creating a new recipe doesn’t involve billions of dollars in research as is the case in pharma. A company that spends billions of dollars in research assumes they will be able to recoup the cost by having a monopoly on the drug they developed. If however competitors can flood the market with the same drug, they cannot recoup the cost and will subsequently go bankrupt. Without the proper incentives you can’t expect co…

It turns out that most funding for innovation actually comes from the government. Even the esteemed Mr Musk has benefited from about 5 billion dollars of non-private money for his profitable ventures.

There is research that solidly backs this up. Taxpayers are bankrolling the industries but it's the shareholders who are reaping the rewards. It's further support for the argument that IP should not be private but rather commonly shared.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#176

Post by opportune »

f430 wrote: post #19
SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #7

"There is no way for us to defend ourselves: even skilled technologists who administer their own networked services are no match for the bandits. To keep bandits out, you have to be perfect and perfectly vigilant, and never make a single mistake. For the bandits to get you, they need merely find a single mistake that you’ve made." Ooof. What a boot-to-the-face reminder. Despite my use of a Tor Router, three ubikeys a…

If what you are communicating needs to be guaranteed to never be crackable, you only need to use the oldest and most secure way of communicating before the days of internet and computers: short wave transmitted one time pad codes. The reason that number stations continue to operate is that it really is the best way to communicate/order under surveillance which almost certainly is happening in every embassy in non-fri…

Let’s take a step back here.

Everybody has a different standard of privacy they want. There are different levels of trade offs they can make as they become more secure. What you’re describing is the top level of security but it’s not very convenient to use. It also uses private keys which makes establishing a new connection challenging.

There are as I see it a few main security modes: stopping automated surveillance and hacking, stopping low effort surveillance and hacking, and being “perfectly” secure from the most motivated adversary.

Being perfectly secure on a networked computer is basically impossible. Governments likely have access to back doors and 0days that can compromise anyone (and keep in mind if the person on the other end has bad opsec, you’ve already lost). But they’re probably not going to unleash the fire and fury on Joe Schmo, and would probably be reluctant to target someone security-minded who might identify how they got pwned and publicize the vulnerability unless they have a damned good reason.

Most people don’t need never-crackable, they just need to be reasonably assured that only a very motivated adversary could crack them.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#177

Post by zepto »

cageface wrote: post #135
zepto wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“you're still just trusting them to protect you and hoping they don't take advantage of it” That is exactly what Apple’s customers are doing. It actually a pretty normal feature of modern society to trust institutions or businesses not to take advantage of particular powers they have. It’s really bizarre to call a business a ‘warlord’. The converse, where we can’t trust any institution or business and we must all be…

It actually a pretty normal feature of modern society to trust institutions or businesses not to take advantage of particular powers they have. The problem here is that Apple disallows user override, as the article explains. It's like asking that you trust your government but also allow yourself to be physically constrained from rising up and rebelling against it. And you're not only trusting Apple you're trusting wh…

Google allows overrides, so nobody is forcing you to do anything you don’t want to do.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#178

Post by jl6 »

mwcampbell wrote: post #5
jl6 wrote: post #2

The chaos and banditry is caused by software churn. Nothing is ever finished, so nothing is ever secure, so you must ally yourself with a powerful warlord. This is why I am in the process of migrating my website from HTML to PDF/A.

> This is why I am in the process of migrating my website from HTML to PDF/A. With tags for accessibility, I hope.

Yes. I use LibreOffice Writer to export Tagged PDF/A-2b.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#179

Post by cageface »

zepto wrote: post #177
cageface wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually a pretty normal feature of modern society to trust institutions or businesses not to take advantage of particular powers they have. The problem here is that Apple disallows user override, as the article explains. It's like asking that you trust your government but also allow yourself to be physically constrained from rising up and rebelling against it. And you're not only trusting Apple you're trusting wh…

Google allows overrides, so nobody is forcing you to do anything you don’t want to do.

This is exactly why I use an Android phone.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#180

Post by jl6 »

mxuribe wrote: post #28
jl6 wrote: post #2

The chaos and banditry is caused by software churn. Nothing is ever finished, so nothing is ever secure, so you must ally yourself with a powerful warlord. This is why I am in the process of migrating my website from HTML to PDF/A.

>...migrating my website from HTML to PDF/A. I'm genuinely curious as to how having an online presence (like a website) implemented as PDF is advantageous? Do PDFs offer some security or authenticity of content that html lacks? Not bashing, really just want to learn.

Thank you to the sibling content for quoting the headlines from my polemic, but yes, validated PDF/A is guaranteed to contain only static content with no tracking malfeatures and a vastly reduced attack surface compared to HTML5.

It’s hilariously impractical if your goal is to build a web application, so a direct comparison to HTML5 isn’t fair, but if you just want to publish information, PDF/A is state of the art.

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