341–350 of 405 posts
Richard Stallman spent the last 30 years telling us this would happen. As soon as books become computer files, you don't buy them anymore, you lease usage rights. As soon as tractors contain computer code, you don't own them anymore, you are granted a license to use them. When will it stop? More and more everyday objects are incorporating software and firmware in many different forms. I remember reading Stallman's sh…
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He does not get paid by the FSF, nor does he accept speaking fees (insofar as I am aware; I'm not sure if there are certain sponsors, but he insists that those be donated to the FSF, not himself); his time is donated. He received a MacArthur grant a while back, while he is able to live off of.
After a quick google, it seems he was granted $500,000 (paid over 5 years) in 1990. [1] This seemed like quite a lot until I divided it by the 25 years he's been living on it. £20k/year doesn't actually strike me as that much. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Fellows_Program
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"Look at the patron model, or commission based production, used for centuries." Here's a better idea: look at the actual work produced under this model. With a few notable exceptions, it's an endless parade of flattering portraits of rich people, glorified depictions the wars they won, politically slanted historic fictions used to justify their authority, and scenes from the religious stories they used to instill ter…
Your post was rude, misrepresented GP's argument, and did not contradict any assertion made in GP's post. GP correctly argued that artists have always created, whether or not they were granted rights under a system of copyright law. He did not focus on or advocate a return to the system of artist patronage from the 16th century.
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This is getting meta and no longer directly responsive to the article, which I don't wholly disagree with. A tractor and a book are different situations. Books are hard to copy, while files are easy to copy. Writers have to get paid, and people are cheap and don't want to pay them... even while they will pay the same for a fancy cup of coffee. Hence a scramble for some way to set up a toll booth that is hard to circu…
I'm getting tired of explaining why this kind of reasoning is wrong. Specifically, your statement about how "In his world, the creators of things starve." No, for the thousandth time, it's not true at all. There is nothing standing in the way of content creators selling GPL code, and even keeping it private until its been bought. Full stop. stop perpetuating this fallacious myth abouth FOSS, please. That being said,…
> There is nothing standing in the way of content creators selling GPL code, and even keeping it private until its been bought. Full stop.
You appear to be arguing that it is not expressly forbidden by the GPL, but this is not what api said. There is something standing in the way of content creators selling GPL code — practicality. When you can only sell one license to the software ever, it's really impractical to build a business around selling that software. In fact, I cannot think of any companies that create GPL-licensed software and actually make their money selling that GPL-licensed software.
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There are other monetization strategies. A popular one is to offer something for free and then use it to conduct mass surveillance and sell your customers to advertisers and governments.
Or the Patreon model, where people can be patrons of an artist whose work they appreciate!
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Such a great movie.
Shirow's vision of a post-digital society is extremely forward looking for 1990. Many of the themes he was interested in 25 years ago are only starting to come into focus now, which is pretty legit for a pop scifi author.
For my money, the best non Miyazaki piece of art the genre ever produced.
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The world probably needs less content creation. We're long past the point where there are too many useful books to read in one lifetime. Even in narrow fields, we're producing comedy television, historical fiction novels, or cat pictures faster than one person could consume them all. You could spend a lifetime just researching what's worth consuming. With this kind of overproduction, it's no surprise creators can't m…
Imagine a futuristic utopian human society. Are the people writing poetry, playing instruments and painting murals or are they assembling widgets in a factory? Humans are really good at creating things, that's what I think we are here to do, not "work".
Maybe in a future utopian society everyone is somehow above average, or there are radically fewer humans that just are really smart, but right now most of the people are not going to create top-tier "content". And there are enough people creating top-tier content, and enough top-tier content in the history of human art, that I don't need any more content. Who is going to pay them? Why should I? Why should the state? Why is this is a thing we should be buying? I can think of at least ten better uses for my money.
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This is getting meta and no longer directly responsive to the article, which I don't wholly disagree with. A tractor and a book are different situations. Books are hard to copy, while files are easy to copy. Writers have to get paid, and people are cheap and don't want to pay them... even while they will pay the same for a fancy cup of coffee. Hence a scramble for some way to set up a toll booth that is hard to circu…
> In his world, the creators of things starve. Why can't John Deere make money selling tractors? The company was founded in 1837. Hasn't running a business for 178 years demonstrated that it is possible to eat and produce? Or is your comment unrelated to the article?
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"Create less and have a real job." Wow. I see lots of this kind of sentiment when I bring this up, but yours deserves credit for being exceptionally honest.
The world probably needs less content creation. We're long past the point where there are too many useful books to read in one lifetime. Even in narrow fields, we're producing comedy television, historical fiction novels, or cat pictures faster than one person could consume them all. You could spend a lifetime just researching what's worth consuming. With this kind of overproduction, it's no surprise creators can't m…
This seems a rather arbitrary performance ceiling to strive for.