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I have a bad feeling about this

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#61

Post by Kroem3r »

shingen wrote: post #54

It's always curious when someone rails about a big government and its encroachment on freedom. Then in the same statement, talks about the use of big government to target specific companies to damage them instead. As though you can really have your cake and eat it too when it comes to a big government. Big enough to break up AT&T, regulate IBM and Intel and Microsoft - big enough to take your freedom, silence your sp…

There's nothing about the size of the government that limits or enhances it's power to act in the best interest of its citizenry. (You've thrown a red herring in there.) What we clearly see is that government's determination that it's simply more efficient to deal with significant (read corporate) power structures than feebly citizenly ones. This is where the limit comes from.

So perhaps I'm wrong: Perhaps a larger government is more able to engage with diverse and fine-grained interests while a small government is more likely to be trapped leveraging corporate power.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#62

Post by sliverstorm »

moonchrome wrote: post #58
jlarocco wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why is money the sole metric of wealth. How much value does open source provide - take linux for eg. which is used in pretty much every aspect of computing these days - from cell phones to super computers - how much value has it provided to the consumers and allowed developers/researchers/manufacturers to produce ?" What unit would you use to measure the value it provides, if not money? "Apply that to every major op…

>What unit would you use to measure the value it provides, if not money? I'm against quantifying it at all because, while useful, price is a very limited metric. There are numerous cases where you can increase the transaction sum and achieve 0 value increase, eg. monopolistic pricing in a market with inelastic demand or bad investing (destroying capital) or externalities, etc. >I don't understand the point you're mak…

creating artificial scarcities to sustain someones business model is ridiculous

I read your words, but all I hear you saying is "I want free media".

Do you fundamentally disbelieve in the concept of paying someone for the use/enjoyment of IP they produced?

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#63

Post by moonchrome »

sliverstorm wrote: post #62
moonchrome wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What unit would you use to measure the value it provides, if not money? I'm against quantifying it at all because, while useful, price is a very limited metric. There are numerous cases where you can increase the transaction sum and achieve 0 value increase, eg. monopolistic pricing in a market with inelastic demand or bad investing (destroying capital) or externalities, etc. >I don't understand the point you're mak…

creating artificial scarcities to sustain someones business model is ridiculous I read your words, but all I hear you saying is "I want free media". Do you fundamentally disbelieve in the concept of paying someone for the use/enjoyment of IP they produced?

>I read your words, but all I hear you saying is "I want free media".

All the media I consume nowdays is free, news, learning resources, youtube vids etc. Apart from going to cinema (but even that started to suck), and music from local bands that I pay for to support the artist. So nope, I don't want any media.

>Do you fundamentally disbelieve in the concept of paying someone for the use/enjoyment of IP they produced?

Do you pay for broadcast TV program or radio ? They are funded by advertising. Same thing with software, I don't mind paying for it, but if you expect people not to copy it - keep it on a private server and expose it as a service, or find some other model.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#66

Post by gurkendoktor »

Helianthus wrote: post #35
twainer wrote: post #32

Sorry, but this post is based on a false notion that intellectual property is a beneficial crutch propping up only corporations and piggybacks on the idea that destruction of entrenched interests is always regenerative. That second point is likely so - but the battle isn't about finding new corporate captains to pay creative individuals - it's about how not to pay creative individuals. I find the irony very sad that…

You're saying that we should play by the rules. Part of the game, though, is that we can change the rules. Intellectual property is more or less dead. This is not a willy-nilly urge, nor a selfish catharsis. It's the outcome of a generation growing up with instant access to their culture, and once such freedom is granted it is not easily revoked.

> Intellectual property is more or less dead.

> culture

IP is a huge game, but culture is a tiny speck on the landscape of it. Try selling Äpple computers or Nyke shoes on the street of any Western-ish country, and don't even get me started on patents.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#67

Post by yxhuvud »

jlarocco wrote: post #52
jjude wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for me, discretionary time is real wealth

Arguing against money as a unit of value seems utterly silly to me. The monetary value of "discretionary time" is the amount of money you could have made if you did something else instead.

Value is not the same thing as wealth.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#68

Post by FourSquareToo »

alain94040 wrote: post #60
kayman wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. GOod luck enforcing IP rules in China. Your only choice is to out-innovate, not out-sue

Actually your more likely choice is to copy ( http://blog.foundrs.com/2012/01/02/apple-vs-samsung-the-trol... ). We won't be necessarily better off in a world with no IP protection.

It's fascinating to imagine what the tech world might look like with no (or radically different) IP laws. I doubt it would be anywhere near as simple as the blog author makes out.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#69

Post by edanm »

redstripe wrote: post #24

The BBC commissioned a study [1] that claims the Charles Dicken's brand brings in about £280m/year to the UK's economy. This from a public domain "brand". Meanwhile companies like Disney lobby for perpetual copyright to protect their own interest at the cost of all the lost opportunities that will never exist. I don't understand how politicians in the free enterprise countries, especially American republicans with th…

Your mistake is thinking about brands like Charles Dickens and Disney. Of course they make money, and of course they would continue producing work if copyright was only 20 years.

What you have to think about is the author who is not famous, but who makes his living off of selling books. Not the millionaires, the ones with a regular salary. They often sell old stories to short-story collections, for example, for a few thousand dollars. If this happens often enough, they can continue the life of book-writing. If not, we'll have less authors.

At the end of the day, if less money goes into writing books, we're going to lose some authors who won't be able to afford writing. Some great authors will also never be discovered, because they couldn't afford to keep writing for long enough.

It's a balance, and I'm not saying that the balance is right at the moment. But it's very disingenuous to say "Disney will still make movies", because they're not the only ones around.

Note: I talk about books, but the same is true for indie bands, indie software developers, etc.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#70

Post by barrkel »

jlarocco wrote: post #52
jjude wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for me, discretionary time is real wealth

Arguing against money as a unit of value seems utterly silly to me. The monetary value of "discretionary time" is the amount of money you could have made if you did something else instead.

I have to disagree with you. The price of something is a function of supply and demand; monetary value is determined through price discovery in a market. But not all things are traded, nor are supply and demand perfectly elastic. You will get distorted prices for things through lack of markets and market inefficiencies.

More specifically, you can't always do something else revenue-generating instead, and nor would you want to. What's the value of spending time with your children? Can you see how some people would not accept any amount of money to displace all of that time, whereas some others may would (in cases of paid-for adoption / slavery)?

I think your outlook is lacking in a specific economic concept: utility.

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