Quote:
Originally Posted by bill_mchale
Ok, a couple of points here....
1. It is not a forced monopoly. Ideally it is a limited term monopoly that is granted by the state over a work to allow the creator of that work a chance to profit from it. Since the very notion of copyright is written into the United States Constitution, it is hardly a forced monopoly but one granted by the social contract that all American citizens are a part of.
2. There is no need to have a monitor in every computer. Any decent web server software already keeps a log of all attempts to access it and through what computer it was accessed. It would be relatively easy to monitor for downloads and report the number of unique downloads (not necessarily whose doing the downloading) to determine how the creators of works are to be paid.
--
Bill
|
And why should I pay for a downloaded book, if I don't read it?
In the paper world, I buy a copy, which is physical, and I have to pay for it..
Part of the price I pay is for the hardware, and part is for the content.
Since it's not possible to part content from container, I have to pay every copy I buy.
In the world of pbooks, the "per-copy" model can work.
In the digital world it can't.
First of all, because the simple act of downloading a book produces at least 6 copies itself (on the serve's disk, on the servers RAM, in other computers in the network, in my RAM, in my disk cache, and eventually in my hard disk).
And then, how do you deal with people with mirrored RAID disks? Do they have to pay more because they've got more "copies"?
Another POV: whenever I buy one copy of a p-book, you can't have it.
If I buy a "digital" copy, billions of people can have an identical one.
Wherever you look at it from, a "copy-based" model in digital business, is a complete nonsense.
Now think about books, and imagine that the street price is divided into its components: the price of the content, and the price of the container.
You can buy content without container, of course, from the author himself. Since then, you''l have to pay containers (being files, prints, audiocd's...) every time you pay a copy.
It's like to have a lifetime license to get access to a book, no matter how many copies you own.
You pay for the hard work behind production when you buy paper, but you don't have to pay the author twice, if you already have.
It can work.
The hard part is to make people understand the immateriality of files, and to make Disney understand we will not feed their greed for a long time...