I have a bad feeling about this • Hacker News Board

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#111

Post by bwarp » Thu, Feb 09, 2012, 12:47 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #107

bwarp wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on how the person wishes to be rewarded (within reason) hence my previous comment about how "value" differs per person.

At a concrete, legal level, suppose that I as a software developer wish to be paid in money for my time working on software , and not on client projects, what do you propose? And if I write books? What is the legal framework you are proposing that would ensure that I would be paid a "fair" price for my work? What if my work is brilliant and millions love it? What if it's shit, and no one would pay me a dime for it? W…

Remove money from the picture entirely and ask yourself what you'd like to recieve in exchange for your work.

If there is not a "fair value" then it probably shouldn't be being done. If it's for personal interest, don't expect a fair value for it.

People expect and somehow manage to get money at the moment for shit which is the problem.

When you put something on the free market, you are opening it to opinion and other people deciding the value. Think carefully first.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#112

Post by rbanffy » Thu, Feb 09, 2012, 1:00 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #99

Every business likes to buy from perfect competition and sell as a monopoly. This keeps input prices low and output prices high. This model is so profitable that companies bribe politicians to maintain it. Donating to a SuperPAC is more cost effective than R and D and has anshoeter payback. I see 2 ways of fighting this: 1) Civil disobedience - Pirate everything and share while willingly accepting the consequences. 2…

> Great social change requires number 1.

Movie studios and the recording industry can, at best, delay the inevitable. Artificial scarcities are against the laws of thermodynamics.

Of all the money these industries make, only the tiniest fraction of it goes to the people who actually produced the good. Most of it is inefficiently applied in side operations such as promoting sales, manufacturing the physical support for the art, moving and storing it and selling it. All these operations can be reduced to a download and, perhaps, a payment.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#113

Post by davidw » Thu, Feb 09, 2012, 1:11 PM UTC

bwarp wrote: post #111

davidw wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a concrete, legal level, suppose that I as a software developer wish to be paid in money for my time working on software , and not on client projects, what do you propose? And if I write books? What is the legal framework you are proposing that would ensure that I would be paid a "fair" price for my work? What if my work is brilliant and millions love it? What if it's shit, and no one would pay me a dime for it? W…

Remove money from the picture entirely and ask yourself what you'd like to recieve in exchange for your work. If there is not a "fair value" then it probably shouldn't be being done. If it's for personal interest, don't expect a fair value for it. People expect and somehow manage to get money at the moment for shit which is the problem. When you put something on the free market, you are opening it to opinion and othe…

I want the things I can exchange money for: food, housing, gadgets, bicycles, cars, stuff for my family, vacations, and so on.

Edit: I'll add the most important one, too: time. I like my job, I like coding, but I also like to do things like ride my bike, spend time with my kids, and so on. The more money I have, the more I can choose to do those things (simplifying a lot).

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#114

Post by agentultra » Thu, Feb 09, 2012, 1:15 PM UTC

The new technology will always replace the old despite the attempts to safeguard the latter by those with vested interests. It happened to the scribes when the printing press arrived; To the telegraph when the phone came along; to radio, records, and even television. Big companies with a lot at stake tried their best to prevent new technology from invading their markets and putting them out of business.

The only one that I think is different is the development of the mobile phone and tablet computers. These are devices that are sold with locks on them and legislation that discourages tampering. I don't think we've seen this kind of thing happen before and it sets a bad precedent. I've got a Kindle and I don't really believe that I own it -- Amazon can remotely remove content from it and brick it if they wanted to. I've got a phone that that has the capability to spy on me. If I modify any of these devices to serve my interests I risk "bricking" them and voiding any warranties that they came with.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but afaik that's a first for us.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#115

Post by RyanMcGreal » Thu, Feb 09, 2012, 1:17 PM UTC

This is a beautiful, haunting essay brimming with sobering insights:

"At every point in the last forty years, wealth, health, and happiness in our economy have been built on the freedom to disrupt the entrenched powers, not the preservation of their rent-seeking monopolies."

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#116

Post by rbanffy » Thu, Feb 09, 2012, 1:21 PM UTC

seclorum wrote: post #98

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…

>I don't understand how politicians in the free enterprise countries, especially American republicans with their distaste of market regulation, could consider extremely long copyright protection to be a net benefit to the market/country. Copyright doesn't just protect entertainment content - it protects enlightening content, as well. Science and technology are the real industry markets that will 'benefit' from these…

What does society gain from extending the copyright of a dead artist? Will the artist then rise from the dead and start creating again, with such a powerful incentive?

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#117

Post by davidw » Thu, Feb 09, 2012, 1:24 PM UTC

moonchrome wrote: post #109

davidw wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You seem to think that it's optimal if it puts money in to developers pocket. No, I'm saying that if no money flows to developers, it's suboptimal because consumers lose out too. It has to be a balance, and IP has been a pretty good, if imperfect, way of achieving that balance. That's not to say I don't think IP needs an overhaul. I do, however, think that IP is part of the solution and not just 'bad'.

>No, I'm saying that if no money flows to developers, it's suboptimal because consumers lose out too. But that's my point, Linux/Android, and by extension most of opensource, work mostly outside of IP protections and are able to match closed source and compete. I see no reason why Google wouldn't be able to use it's business model without IP. So even now it works, without IP the entire industry would be forced to res…

Open source is wonderful, provides a great deal of value, and it definitely works well. For some things. It seems to work quite well when the 'currency' of exchange is patches/bug reports/feedback and that sort of thing.

It seems to be a tougher proposition for more 'end user' types of things. OpenOffice, if you recall, was created as a proprietary project, and only later open sourced, just as one example.

What your examples point to is a world where IP producers are forced to cozy up to someone who actually controls a scarce resource in order to benefit, rather than do so on their own.

(I do agree, BTW, that software patents suck and are not good, and destroy value).

(Also, BTW, "it's" means "it is").

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#118

Post by HolyHaddock » Thu, Feb 09, 2012, 1:32 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #86

scott_w wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, even with copyright we still undoubtedly lose talented authors due to them being unable to make enough money from book publishing. Same goes for software development, musicians etc. You have merely stated your opinion as fact, and not provided anything that can back it up. The current proliferation of content producers (for want of a better word) can be just as easily put down to the larger audience granted…

That's an excellent point. My point was "less money goes into book in general -> we'll have less books". You're right that there are other factors at play here, which are all intermingled. For example: * It's easier to produce content now, bringing down costs. * It's easier to reach a wide audience. Both because of the internet, and because people have more time to spend on content. * Technological changes may make m…

"Less money into books -> less books" seems like "demand goes down -> supply goes down" and fits my unsophisticated understanding of economics. It's not necessarily clear that reduced copyright -> less money into books.

Authors have managed to produce novels while holding down demanding full time jobs (or in at least one bestsellers case, still in full time education) at the same time. It is not necessarily the case that the only way books get made is full time writing.

You could also argue that the reduction in books from reduced copyright would be balanced by an increase in currently unwriteable "remixes" of existing works. Copyright could be, for example, the only thing holding back an explosion of people making enough to live on publishing fan-fiction. Who speaks for them?

There's still scope for a sweeping reduction, in the States at least. Reducing the duration from "Year of Authors death + 70 years" down to, just "Authors death", for example, clearly couldn't lead to any given author producing fewer books.

I absolutely agree that if there is a forum on the scope and duration of IP, small-money authors should be represented. It doesn't seem like that will be happening any time soon though.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#119

Post by rbanffy » Thu, Feb 09, 2012, 1:33 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #69

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…

You are muddling the issue. You are confusing the current system of editors, publishers, printers, promoters, salesmen with literary content production.

Authors can distribute their works in electronic form, even sell them in such ways, with much lower overhead than ever possible. With that, authors who would never be published because they would never be commercially successful can publish now. If nothing else, with this advancement of technology, we should see an unprecedented boom in the diversity of published literature.

And it all happens independent of copyright restrictions. Is a copyright that lasts well beyond the lifetime of your descendants that much a powerful incentive to write and publish?

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#120

Post by randallsquared » Thu, Feb 09, 2012, 1:48 PM UTC

bwarp wrote: post #82

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…

Does value need a standard or a measure? No. Value is a different thing to different people. Money is not required for value to exist. There should be no intellectual property. There should be fair reward for positive contributions to society. Reward not protect. Provide an incentive rather than a pay off. At the moment, society is based on money not value. It's founded on providing as little value for as much money…

* Does value need a standard or a measure? No.

Value is a different thing to different people.*

So... yes, then? I mean, that's the whole point of money: allowing different people to express their preferences in a way that allows comparison. You don't need money to know whether you prefer apples or ice cream, but you do need to express your preferences in some way that lets stores know whether to stock more types of apple or more types of ice cream, and price is just the simplest way.