What you didn't say is whether or not you would like such a law. Laws for protecting professionalism from amateurism should be where lives are at stake. For instance, electrical engineering, doctor, pilot etc. are 'protected' jobs by requiring not just the skills (as many amateurs may have), but also the right education background.
In music, there is never any harm done if some 'amateur' who performs badly struggles. Quality and/or clever branding will succeed.
I did, partly because I work in a research group that strives to automate part of the IR technology in the patent world. Patents almost look generated, using very typical language.
The first time I read part of a patent, I couldn't understand what the actual invention was, what its intended use was, etc.
Since 1994 i have been using forms of chat to communicate with all my friends.
Twitter is broadcast and personal at the same time. I see it used as announcement channel, where people announce what talks they'll hold, which congres gets their attention etc.
Also it is a form of diary and a form of (personal) marketing, and in that sense it can be great.
If someone is too noisy, I won't follow him/her; and I myself "tweet" less than once in a week.
"Perhaps more importantly, Apple doesn't own the copyright on iTunesDB. Each iPod makes its own iTunesDB file based on what files they put on their device. The copyright is unlikely to belong to Apple."
Interesting thought, because if it were the other way, then Microsoft would have the copyright of every excelsheet in the world!
The current scare-ruse the bbc sends out between programs is a flight over a computer motherboard, stating "your house, your tv, it's all in the database..."
In the Netherlands the tv-license fee was dropped in 1-1-2000 because you can safely assume everybody has a tv, and the normal taxes were raised by a fraction to compensate.
Amazons services are quite trivial, replacing them by some other solution should be relatively easy. S3 storage is much like webdav which could replace it. EC2 is exactly running Xen images. In communications Amazon is a bit cloudy, by using jargon like virtual cores, availability zones etc.
Amazon webservices is quite easy to replace by own hardware or by someone who'd like to compete with them.
In the Netherlands we have several roads where speed is verfied over a long trajectory. Take three miles of road with no exits, put numberplate-readers at the beginning and the end, and the software can easlily and (very) accurately compute your average speed.
And as a side-effect check those numberplates for other interesting side-information: like the number of traffic-tickets unpaid, whether the numberplate belongs to a vehicle which has been stolen etc.
As far as I know, Professor Bart Jacobs and his crew have already had a few free rides to prove that the system is broken. Trying to silence a university professor won't fix your problem. Also I do not know the laws of my country, the Netherlands, well enough to guess what they try to use as a legal means to their cause in the attempt to silence their neighbor. Radboud university and NXP are located in the same city.
As a company we make one-off software products or services for our clients. On request we will usually ship the sourcecode for it to said customers. This way they have the (feel of) flexibility of being able to go to a competitor; and some clients have done that.
The reason we can do this is that our service is not the sourcecode, it's helping clients to meet the softwareneeds for their businesscase.
For television, telephone and internet there are quite a few providers in the Netherlands, one of the smaller EU countries. We can choose from a dozen or so mobile providers, half a dozen cable companies and half a dozen phone operators. Internet, television and phone are quite often bundled, and rather cheap.
For instance, all providers for internet give unlimited access, for very reasonable pricing. Many of the mobile providers give unlimited mobile access to the internet as well for only about $12/mo.
In my opinion intellectual property is a whole lot different than physical property. Yes, it does cost quite a bit of creative energy to create a movie, a piece of music or some other work of art. So there is an investment.
However, IP is used for more than just works of art and the protection of the rights of reproduction. It is used as a legal force that causes many artists who would like to create deriviate works to not producing. IP is used as a means to stop people to examine what's happening inside a computer by forbidding reverse engineering. There are software companies trying to use IP-law to prevent other software writers to write software that closely resembles their work.
It is not just geeks wanting everything for free, it is about everyone being free to produce all kinds of works. The internet can make you famous, you do not need a recordcompany to achieve that these days. Silly Youtube clips for example are creative works that sometimes cause quite a stir.
Artists, maybe especially musicians, make much more money from concerts and goodies (t-shirts, mugs, whatnot) than they do by selling cd's through a recordcompany. The only ones getting rich from selling cd's are those companies. A cd may cost about $20, of which $5 is for the shop and VAT, $14 for the record company, $0.2 for the medium and $0.8 for the band. (well, this breakdown is just an educated guess..)
That is a business model in need of repair, that is keeping me from buying many cd's. Would I just have to pay the price for the album to the artist directly, the artist could get 5x as much for the same thing. Suppose: $4 to the artist, I get a copy of their work, I can buy 5 works for the current price of one, I can support 5 more artists 5 times better.
I personally find myself buying music directly from artists or from their own or specialized recordcompanies like http://www.spottedpeccary.com/ . I like these small record-companies a whole lot more than the big ones; they do give me value for money. They provide special podcast-editions in high quality to enjoy more music from their artists. I decide to buy full works of those artists, so s/he makes more money.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
What you didn't say is whether or not you would like such a law. Laws for protecting professionalism from amateurism should be where lives are at stake. For instance, electrical engineering, doctor, pilot etc. are 'protected' jobs by requiring not just the skills (as many amateurs may have), but also the right education background.
In music, there is never any harm done if some 'amateur' who performs badly struggles. Quality and/or clever branding will succeed.
have you ever read a patent text?
I did, partly because I work in a research group that strives to automate part of the IR technology in the patent world. Patents almost look generated, using very typical language.
The first time I read part of a patent, I couldn't understand what the actual invention was, what its intended use was, etc.
Twits and tweets
Since 1994 i have been using forms of chat to communicate with all my friends.
Twitter is broadcast and personal at the same time. I see it used as announcement channel, where people announce what talks they'll hold, which congres gets their attention etc.
Also it is a form of diary and a form of (personal) marketing, and in that sense it can be great.
If someone is too noisy, I won't follow him/her; and I myself "tweet" less than once in a week.
Apple doesn't own copyright on those database files
"Perhaps more importantly, Apple doesn't own the copyright on iTunesDB. Each iPod makes its own iTunesDB file based on what files they put on their device. The copyright is unlikely to belong to Apple." Interesting thought, because if it were the other way, then Microsoft would have the copyright of every excelsheet in the world!
It's all in the database...
The current scare-ruse the bbc sends out between programs is a flight over a computer motherboard, stating "your house, your tv, it's all in the database..."
In the Netherlands the tv-license fee was dropped in 1-1-2000 because you can safely assume everybody has a tv, and the normal taxes were raised by a fraction to compensate.
hardly any vendor lock-in with aws
Amazons services are quite trivial, replacing them by some other solution should be relatively easy. S3 storage is much like webdav which could replace it. EC2 is exactly running Xen images. In communications Amazon is a bit cloudy, by using jargon like virtual cores, availability zones etc. Amazon webservices is quite easy to replace by own hardware or by someone who'd like to compete with them.
See also the section about vendor lock-in this interview with werner vogels
Grammar junkies should see more daylight I guess. What are they fighting for other than their own egos.
Trajectory speed metering
In the Netherlands we have several roads where speed is verfied over a long trajectory. Take three miles of road with no exits, put numberplate-readers at the beginning and the end, and the software can easlily and (very) accurately compute your average speed.
And as a side-effect check those numberplates for other interesting side-information: like the number of traffic-tickets unpaid, whether the numberplate belongs to a vehicle which has been stolen etc.
after it's broken, it keeps that way
As far as I know, Professor Bart Jacobs and his crew have already had a few free rides to prove that the system is broken. Trying to silence a university professor won't fix your problem. Also I do not know the laws of my country, the Netherlands, well enough to guess what they try to use as a legal means to their cause in the attempt to silence their neighbor. Radboud university and NXP are located in the same city.
Making business creating open source software is possible
As a company we make one-off software products or services for our clients. On request we will usually ship the sourcecode for it to said customers. This way they have the (feel of) flexibility of being able to go to a competitor; and some clients have done that.
The reason we can do this is that our service is not the sourcecode, it's helping clients to meet the softwareneeds for their businesscase.
competition seems to actually work in europe
For television, telephone and internet there are quite a few providers in the Netherlands, one of the smaller EU countries. We can choose from a dozen or so mobile providers, half a dozen cable companies and half a dozen phone operators. Internet, television and phone are quite often bundled, and rather cheap.
For instance, all providers for internet give unlimited access, for very reasonable pricing. Many of the mobile providers give unlimited mobile access to the internet as well for only about $12/mo.
Re: why stop at intellectual property?
In my opinion intellectual property is a whole lot different than physical property. Yes, it does cost quite a bit of creative energy to create a movie, a piece of music or some other work of art. So there is an investment.
However, IP is used for more than just works of art and the protection of the rights of reproduction. It is used as a legal force that causes many artists who would like to create deriviate works to not producing. IP is used as a means to stop people to examine what's happening inside a computer by forbidding reverse engineering. There are software companies trying to use IP-law to prevent other software writers to write software that closely resembles their work.
It is not just geeks wanting everything for free, it is about everyone being free to produce all kinds of works. The internet can make you famous, you do not need a recordcompany to achieve that these days. Silly Youtube clips for example are creative works that sometimes cause quite a stir.
Artists, maybe especially musicians, make much more money from concerts and goodies (t-shirts, mugs, whatnot) than they do by selling cd's through a recordcompany. The only ones getting rich from selling cd's are those companies. A cd may cost about $20, of which $5 is for the shop and VAT, $14 for the record company, $0.2 for the medium and $0.8 for the band. (well, this breakdown is just an educated guess..)
That is a business model in need of repair, that is keeping me from buying many cd's. Would I just have to pay the price for the album to the artist directly, the artist could get 5x as much for the same thing. Suppose: $4 to the artist, I get a copy of their work, I can buy 5 works for the current price of one, I can support 5 more artists 5 times better.
I personally find myself buying music directly from artists or from their own or specialized recordcompanies like http://www.spottedpeccary.com/ . I like these small record-companies a whole lot more than the big ones; they do give me value for money. They provide special podcast-editions in high quality to enjoy more music from their artists. I decide to buy full works of those artists, so s/he makes more money.