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bwana · 03-27-2010, 10:32 PM

I think we have to be sensible about the use of money. Unfortunately, there are ever smarter people who can use money to make even more of it. The intelligent management of money can generate more money than the intelligent management of people and resources in the short term. In economic terms, the marginal return of money is exceeding the marginal return of human labor. As a result, more money is invested in protecting and growing money than it is in people. DRM is just another way that money uses people to make more of itself. That people are enriched by reading is irrelevant to the pursuit of money.

It is in this spirit that I wrote the second paragraph of my original post-but I never expected that such hyperbole would be taken seriously. Issuing debt to newborns is something only the punitive society of '1984' or 'THX1138' might enact. When we apply taxes, license fees,etc to human activity-we are being blind to the added friction we place on beneficial social activities. We should encourage reading, writing, problem solving as fundamental activities like exercise, working out at the gym, and playing recreational sports. These activites should be integrated into the fabric of our daily life without the discouraging burden of taxes and federal laws with oversight.

Surely, the publishing companies deserve to make a profit on the books they print. But was the price of books ever determined by the worthiness of the text? The price of books is more closely related to their cost. And when a radically less expensive and more pervasive medium is introduced - why do we have to justify the old models? When the printing press was invented, the value of scribes declined but the collective literacy skyrocketed. As electronic distribution of text becomes ubiquitous, the use of DRM serves only to artificially maintain the prices of books.

When we make the argument that intellectual property needs to be 'protected'-we really mean only to allow profit to be derived from it. We disrespect ourselves and our intelligence. Only 2/3 of the planet is literate and only 20% of those speak English. Do we really want to push more people back into the stone age by raising more barriers to literacy? If a person has to choose between buying food or buying a book, that is not really a choice.

03-27-2010, 10:32 PM	#7
bwana Member Posts: 14 Karma: 10 Join Date: Mar 2010 Device: none	I think we have to be sensible about the use of money. Unfortunately, there are ever smarter people who can use money to make even more of it. The intelligent management of money can generate more money than the intelligent management of people and resources in the short term. In economic terms, the marginal return of money is exceeding the marginal return of human labor. As a result, more money is invested in protecting and growing money than it is in people. DRM is just another way that money uses people to make more of itself. That people are enriched by reading is irrelevant to the pursuit of money. It is in this spirit that I wrote the second paragraph of my original post-but I never expected that such hyperbole would be taken seriously. Issuing debt to newborns is something only the punitive society of '1984' or 'THX1138' might enact. When we apply taxes, license fees,etc to human activity-we are being blind to the added friction we place on beneficial social activities. We should encourage reading, writing, problem solving as fundamental activities like exercise, working out at the gym, and playing recreational sports. These activites should be integrated into the fabric of our daily life without the discouraging burden of taxes and federal laws with oversight. Surely, the publishing companies deserve to make a profit on the books they print. But was the price of books ever determined by the worthiness of the text? The price of books is more closely related to their cost. And when a radically less expensive and more pervasive medium is introduced - why do we have to justify the old models? When the printing press was invented, the value of scribes declined but the collective literacy skyrocketed. As electronic distribution of text becomes ubiquitous, the use of DRM serves only to artificially maintain the prices of books. When we make the argument that intellectual property needs to be 'protected'-we really mean only to allow profit to be derived from it. We disrespect ourselves and our intelligence. Only 2/3 of the planet is literate and only 20% of those speak English. Do we really want to push more people back into the stone age by raising more barriers to literacy? If a person has to choose between buying food or buying a book, that is not really a choice.