Quote:
Originally Posted by jasonkchapman
No matter what business model is devised, it will devolve into an arms race between rights holders and rights violators--between those who create and those who want the benefits of that creation without paying for it (good grief, I'm sounding all Objectivist, here).
Hell, I gave people free access to a novel and still had the copyright violated. Why was it violated? Because reading on the Web just wasn't convenient enough for some folks.
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Every person that gets to enjoy a digital thing won't be paying for it. THAT is the reality we face.
Like Objectivism, Capitalism...and all other "isms"...your exclusive distribution rights, as well as mine for that matter, only work "on paper" in the digital realm.
This is the way it is now. There is effectively and realistically NOTHING that can be done about it.
Technology is one of history's most efficient culling devices. As new technologies have emerged they have left the destruction of some old way of doing things in their wake.
It has happened before. Now its our turn.
Unlike many of you guys, I have spent many hours (many) thinking of how to either modify the behavior or *exploit* it...because it is just not going to stop.
If you want to make and manufacture a product that cannot be mass reproduced with little to no effective overhead than you *don't do what we do*...
The first time i found a crack for one of our apps..I was LIVID. I mean I paid people to work on it, I sacrificed countless hours, etc.
So, as typical, I went on a tear, sending out DCMA takedown notices...wasted good man hours coming up with DRM schemes that were always defeated and irritated the people that actually DID pay for the stuff instead of making improvements (well, they came slower because the time was divided)...rinse/lather/repeat.
And this has been going on in the software field since the 70s....hasn't even remotely gotten better over time, as technology makes it easier still.
So you can do what we do and get what we get...or...not.
If you think the world is going to collapse because there isn't a fiction market...I assure you it will not. Someone will always do it. And someone will always read it without paying a dime.
This WILL NOT END...as surely as war, murder and savagery have not.
There is no "arms race"...if absolute control is the "win"...we've lost, long ago.
The DMCA is a perfect example of the complete and utter failure of this thinking. The Kindle...sigh. Another fracture.
We have to think about the problem as it exists as opposed to how we wish it were or how it ought to be...because it just isn't.
And what of the future? The policy makers of tomorrow come out of the pool of people we are talking about. Do you think they are going to seriously protect these "archaic" interests?
I know a young guy...brilliant guy. He worked with a team of people to solve a problem in software. They were ready to bring this to market are were slapped with a software patent violation suit for essentially...math. They didn't cheat. They didn't steal. They worked...hard. They were denied.
He's about to graduate from Cornell University. He hasn't forgotten it.
He's not alone. The leaders of the content fields are causing such a backlash that I actually wonder if in 20 years the entire landscape won't be razed and replaced with something else.
There will always be things to read, songs to sing and pictures to look at. I don't think tho, that the businesses that have grown around these things will be able to exist in their current forms.