91–100 of 150 posts
Nice and creative use of a restrictive system. While most people will just use it for piracy, I'm sure a good few will end up contributing to Wikipedia as well. How many of today's hackers got interested in computers through pirated content first?
Oh, this is so true. Get free access to Wikipedia, use it to download the latest popular movies. This is going to make them really clever.
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Would you express the same cultural relativistic sentiments about the validity of purpose if a small group decided to repurpose your Wiki? It's very damaging to trade with the developing world if we start accusing companies of "attempting to colonize" because they have the temerity to expect people granted subsidised access to their website to actually play by the same rules as everyone else. I mean, if we start assu…
> play by the same rules as everyone else Actually, your "everyone else" who play by the Western rules, is probably less than half of the world population.
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There is a difference between the value of information and the price of that information. Using value to determine undercompensation ignores that markets work on price, and often things of low intrinsic value are priced higher than others with high intrinsic value. An encyclopedia with broad coverage clearly has greater intrinsic value than a Star Wars Blu-ray, yet the market has priced Star Wars Blu-rays as more exp…
There is no such thing as intrinsic value. All value is subjective. Any item has no value unless an observer is present to value it. An, unsurprisingly, different observers will value the object differently, often wildly so. Price is an extremely rough heuristic on the median or average valuation of an object. However, the majority can often be short-sighted at times, leading those who are looking more longer term to…
If the outcome of long view -- ie, valuing education and information over watching star wars -- is less poverty, more self-reliance, the ability of a population to provide better for basic biological needs like food and water and shelter, then what you're really looking at isn't a subjective difference of value systems, but a question of delaying gratification.
That is, sure the price of "star wars" is higher because people would rather watch star wars most of the time than put in two hours towards, say, a 500-hour education project that's going to benefit them in the long run. Yet those same people would rather live in the future where they did have those skills.
In that sense, there is such a thing as intrinsic value, and its basis is shared human biology and universal needs. Asking what behaviors and choices ultimately provide for those needs can be objective, at least to a degree.
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And the rampant profiteering entity that is Wikipedia? Are you seriously arguing the Wikimedia Foundation's intentions can't possibly be benevolent because they won't let Angolans turn their server space into a repository of pirated content?
That is a gross distortion of what I said but it's sure easier to argue against!
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Amen. The reason that I am able to use Photoshop effectively (enough) today is split up rar files in AOL emails and Hotline (:
That's been Adobe's business model for a long time, and a very clever one at that. Let Photoshop be pirated all over schools and unis, reap the enterprise benefits when the graphics designers who only learned Photoshop are getting hired.
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Amen. The reason that I am able to use Photoshop effectively (enough) today is split up rar files in AOL emails and Hotline (:
That's been Adobe's business model for a long time, and a very clever one at that. Let Photoshop be pirated all over schools and unis, reap the enterprise benefits when the graphics designers who only learned Photoshop are getting hired.
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The colonialism is attempting to enforce Western mores and laws about copyright on the Angolan population. As well as Wikipedia's own culture which is pretty Western itself. While Wikipedia may be attempting to colonize Angola with some of its community conduct values, the population there has another view of Wikipedia's purpose which might be equally valid.
Would you express the same cultural relativistic sentiments about the validity of purpose if a small group decided to repurpose your Wiki? It's very damaging to trade with the developing world if we start accusing companies of "attempting to colonize" because they have the temerity to expect people granted subsidised access to their website to actually play by the same rules as everyone else. I mean, if we start assu…
Well, I do have a wiki farm now, so I feel compelled to reply. Yes, I would have the same relativistic sentiments. I would just impose the banhammer nonetheless.
That's kind of the thing about the DMCA -- it turns us all into enforcement agents. It doesn't really matter how I feel about the rules, because if I don't follow them I get shut down.
How I feel about the core of the issue is that copyrights and patents are imperialism. Imperialism in every culture. The poor and middle class can't afford to enforce their own copyrights, and the are subject to the whim of the the rich. They've created a place where the only culture of the past available is the one they want to sell. Only a few organizations like the EFF stand in the way of this madness, but the IP system is madness anyway.
I have an uncle who served as US Border Patrol for 20 years. He never believed that all of the illegals need to go back, but it's a job. Someone needs to watch the border and deal with problems or it would be complete anarchy. You can have valid reasons for enforcing rules you don't entirely believe in.
So I'll follow the DMCA because I'm the little guy. And I'll do nothing about the IP laywer who I believe has infringed about a hundred of my own copyrights and has acknowledged and then took no action a DMCA takedown notice from me. Because I cannot afford to go against him in a rigged system. And I understand why Angolans want to work against a system that's rigged against the them.
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That's been Adobe's business model for a long time, and a very clever one at that. Let Photoshop be pirated all over schools and unis, reap the enterprise benefits when the graphics designers who only learned Photoshop are getting hired.
I always wondered why MS, which benefited from a similar modus operandi , abandoned it so drastically. When the internet got good enough that sharing software became feasible, they introduced online activation, basically pushing people towards alternatives.
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Oh, this is so true. Get free access to Wikipedia, use it to download the latest popular movies. This is going to make them really clever.
90% of your comments are just snark. You need to fix your attitude.
However, this isn't just gratuitous. Here the issue is similar with the sci-hub one: there's a fairly legitimate motivation for piracy, so there's a lot of comments over "free knowledge so copyright is theft", and a bit of "piracy is theft". But not all piracy is equal, and sharing knowledge (research papers, etc) is useful and participate into making people more informed, but the bulk of piracy is part of the problem.
1) It's diverting considerable effort that could go into free software. If you had to either pay for Photoshop or use a free solution, Gimp and Krita would get insanely more resources. In other words, piracy is a key element in closed-software dominance.
2) Popular movies and TV shows are made to keep people as uneducated imbeciles. So sharing research papers is not the same thing as what commonly falls under the "piracy" moniker.
That's what that snark meant.
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That's strange, as I got several emails from Amazon telling me about the upgrade.
Huh ... interessting. They probably ran out of e-mails...