10-09-2007, 12:36 PM | #136 | ||
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All that was in 1981. Windows 3.1 wasn't released for another 11 years, in 1992. By that time, MS-DOS already "ruled the world" and was shipped with basically every computer sold. If you haven't read it already, try to read Robert X. Cringely's wonderful book "Accidental Empires", which is the story of how all this stuff happened. |
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10-09-2007, 12:41 PM | #137 | ||
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I also find that the DRM used by Sony while slightly better then that used by Mobi is still just as bad. Both only allow so many devices. And after that, you are SOL. Let's say I wanted to give a reader to my mom, my wife's mom, & we have readers. That's 4 readers. We need at the minimum 3 computers. That's 7 devices and one device too many. Mobipocket is even more restrictive with 4 devices. But at least one doesn't have to be the computer. |
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10-09-2007, 01:09 PM | #138 | ||
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So, I had them start using PDF files for many communications, and upgraded most of their machines running Office 97 to the latest OpenOffice. Problems solved, and people were commenting on how much better everything worked with openOffice <G>. Spreadsheets were running much faster than under Excel, etc. |
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10-09-2007, 02:23 PM | #139 | |
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Dale |
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10-09-2007, 02:26 PM | #140 | |
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I think it was in 1989 that I bought a couple of Dell's with Dell UNIX pre-installed, so at that time M$ hadn't coerced all of the manufacturers to buy into their OSs. The nice thing today is that there are great alternatives to M$. And more and more people are switching to them. I have to work with M$ software, but honestly- if I was forced to use their OSs for my personal computing, I would not own a computer. |
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10-09-2007, 02:34 PM | #141 |
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Well, it certainly IS coercion when one is forced to buy M$ Windows on any PC they purchase. Before M$ tactics forced computer manufacturers to sell computers with ONLY a M$ OS, the consumer had choice. If he wanted UNIX from Dell instead of Windows, he could get it. If he already had an OS license, he didn't have to pay for an OS, period. Hopefully M$ will never be allowed to coerce the customer like this again.
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10-09-2007, 02:48 PM | #142 | |||||||||
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A surprising amount of software is done this way - it's written not because someone is going to make money off of selling copies of it, but because it's needed for some hardware, or because someone needs software that does something specific, that doesn't exist yet. They don't care about exclusive access, just that the software exists. I admit I'm having trouble figuring out how this would map to fiction books. But I'm really just trying to throw out ideas for *possible* business models besides "write the work for free, sell the copies". Quote:
EDIT: Oh, however... I don't know if you've attended a classical music concert recently or not, but most of those seem to run basically on the patronage model. They charge ticket fees, obviously, but every second thing is paid for by some generous grant from some rich family or corporation. So there's a possibility. "Funding for _Revenge of the Octopus Galaxy_ generously provided by the McClosky family". Quote:
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Although of course, there are major problems with this possibility, as well. I'm not sure "Naked Lunch" or "Lady Chatterly's Lover" could have been written as government-sponsored books. Quote:
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Last edited by bingle; 10-09-2007 at 03:18 PM. |
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10-09-2007, 03:12 PM | #143 | ||||
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As far as your second statement goes, I think you misunderstand me. I'm not saying that people create for the good of society, but that it is in the interests of society to have people creating. A subtle distinction, but important - much like people don't spend money for the good of the economy, they do it for their own reasons. However, it's in the interest of the economy and society as a whole that people do spend money. Quote:
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Another, more germane to software, is the US military. They often fund basic engineering research and development, and they do it simply so that they can have the result. They don't care if the IP is owned by the government, they have a goal in mind and set out to solve it by giving grants and sponsoring contests. To go back to my earlier analogy - the US Federal Reserve doesn't force people to spend money. But it implements policies that encourage people to spend money, for the good of the economy. Recently, the British government backed Northern Rock not because they're communist, but because a run on banks is bad for society. Quote:
I don't know how this problem will shake out, but I do think that holding on to the existing paradigm with both hands is just going to lead to sinking along with it, and doing damage to society in the form of unjust laws in the meantime. |
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10-09-2007, 03:39 PM | #144 | |
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You're probably right, those aren't nearly nasty enough to get NEA funding. |
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10-09-2007, 04:49 PM | #145 | ||
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10-09-2007, 04:50 PM | #146 |
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10-09-2007, 05:02 PM | #147 | |
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But my point is that copyright laws are ineffective. They don't prevent people copying information any more. They only really worked when copying things was difficult and expensive.
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And I was actually thinking of the vast number of movies you can download, for free, on the Internet. The movie studios, and the musicians, and the authors, are going to have to deal with that reality. Copyright law doesn't cut it anymore, and the genie isn't going back in the bottle. There's already a generation of people who are seeing every form of their entertainment be free. They won't want to buy a DVD or a CD when they can download it. Content creators can be unhappy about that, but I don't think they can change it. The world is changing, and they have to adapt - cursing the darkness isn't going to achieve anything. |
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10-09-2007, 05:51 PM | #148 | |
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If I'm (finally) understanding what you're getting at, you're saying that copyright laws (mostly) worked when copying required a lot of infrastructure to do on any sort of scale, because only a few fairly large players could do it in enough quantity to make an impact, and those few were relatively easily tracked down if they got out of line. But now, copying is so simple, cheap and easy, and distribution the same plus largely anonymous, which makes enforcement next to impossible because there are a multitude of small, more or less invisible "operations" which can have a great impact, individually and collectively. So it's not so much that the copyright laws have stopped working as it is that the paradigm has shifted in such a way that what was enforcible, no longer is enforcible. Am I following/extrapolating more or less correctly what you mean, bingle? If that is what you're saying ... then I have to agree you have an excellent point (which we all seem to have been missing rather badly). I also don't see any flaws in that reasoning. If we consider a situation where IP laws are not enforced simply because it is no longer physically possible to do so, that could be a ... significant market force toward changing the way we do things. The two responding approaches I see are try to create some new way to enforce the laws which is possible (though DRM is already failing rather badly), or try to find a totally new approach to realizing gain for the IP generators' efforts. Which of course brings us back full circle. |
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10-09-2007, 07:27 PM | #149 |
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The democratization of copying technology is a huge sea-change. It's the next step after the development of the printing press-- effectively putting one in every home. Given that the old laws don't seem to work that well in the current situation, and DRM seems to have failed miserably by both reducing usability and enraging a portion of the user base, the only option is to look at new revenue models.
One option is through advertising: we're already seeing this in games. I've a downloaded copy of Far Cry on this machine that was completely free. Whenever I start it up, I see an ad, and another when it shuts down. That's one model. Another model is product placement. That's already showing up in some games and may show up in more. Another model is Baen's where what you're really paying for in many cases is time. Buy the eArc and you get it before it's out in hardcover. After that you pay the webscriptions price until x amount of time after the paperback release and then it moves into the Free Library. They aren't doing this for all books, but it's the model Eric Flint follows and it's working very successfully for him. However, it's not really paying for the content-- that you can eventually get for free. It's paying for getting it now. We'll have to see what ends up working in the long run. |
10-09-2007, 07:28 PM | #150 | ||
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Also, I don't think this paradigm shift is negative (which is the main difference, I think, between my view and others). It's change, surely, but I think it brings greater benefits than it does costs. Quote:
My other point, which I didn't make quite as much, is that I think approach one is impossible and/or too harmful. DRM will be broken, and more laws will merely reduce our freedoms while not stopping the flow (unless we go so far as to no longer be a free society). So the only option for anyone who wants to see IP generation continue is approach two. I put out a few ideas about how that would work, but there are problems with all of them. I honestly don't know the way forward. |
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