I think it all boils down to price. You know a physical copy is expensive to print and deliver. So there is much less sticker shock. For virtual subscriptions you need internet access and a computer so you provide the delivery and pay for it. So at $150 - $200 a year (depending on the exchange rate) it's just a rip off.

On the other hand if The Times charged $25 - $35 a year I think a lot more people would consider it.

If there was sufficient sheet music available out of copyright in the public domain I highly doubt that this artist would be arguing with this teenager. Quite simply people who could not afford to pay would have other options. You cannot separate this cases from copyright law in general.

(If copyright law existed for 7-14 years with more reasonable fair use exceptions and this composer still had problems I would of course take an entirely different attitude.)

One last point. Even Jason Robert Brown is not so innocent. He first performed 'Songs for a New World' in 1995. (14 years are up on that.) He still collects royalties on that. Don't the people paying royalties for that in 2010 deserve their money back? Isn't he now the 'thief'? We cry wolf saying he is being ripped off when he is doing the same to others simultaneously.

You call copying 'outright theft'. The concept of copyright is an abstraction. Its length and terms are very arbitrary and have historically varied from 7 to 100 years as have the its conditions. The basis for it is that it enables a societal good of an increase in creative works. So it's a law with a reason that does something very unusual. It takes away people's liberty much in the same way as requiring everyone's house in a neighborhood to be painted a specific color.

In the same way as violating such a zoning law in NOT vandalism similarly violating copyright law is not theft. If the law is in place where its reason d’être does not apply it can hardly be called immoral. There have been numerous studies showing that both the length and the terms of copyright are far too onerous. 7 - 14 years justifies the original purpose of copyright. No more. And the ridiculous extremes to which copyright is extended also need to be trimmed. In fact when the justification for copyright does not apply then preventing people from copying things is utterly tyrannical and evil.

So in fact if there is any thievery it is some person collecting fees on a work 45 years later after it was created. By forcing people to pay for something that they ought no longer to pay for (eg a Beetle's song) the artist/corporation is in fact doing the stealing. They just have legalized it by donating tones of money in campaign contributions to various politicians and have bought them off. Ooh and guess where that money came from - from regular folk being stolen from! And I hope you aren’t saying that it was theft to copy something after 50 years in 1960 when that legal. Or does the law determine theft so that if the terms of copyright get longer then what is ‘theft’ changes too? If copyright terms were lengthened to 10,000 years would copying an ancient Greek play also be theft?

Third, the process of copyright itself is full of abuses. You don't get to negotiate what to pay with each artist to play a song on the radio. No, it's fixed by statute. Ever heard of anti trust? Has it occurred to you that these set prices are too high? Or would you say that any price no matter how high is morally justifiable? What about the fact that if you stream it on internet radio it's way more money? Now that is really theft! Why after paying copyright fees to broadcast it on the radio must a hairdresser pay again to have a radio for their customers? They are double paying. How comes the copyright owners never admit this is theft? hmmm?

Finally by talking about how it’s so obvious that the use of copyrighted materials is theft you forget that there are other values that need also to be balanced. Just because you own a piece of land with a river running through it does not give you the right to pollute the river without limit similarly there are limits to the moral right of any intellectual property. People have a right to enjoy the exchange of ideas, images and sounds as part of their cultural heritage. Now we may place limits on it but only for the further propagation of such works. But they key point is that if teenagers cannot get access to such things because they cannot afford it (likewise poor people) then we have wronged them. And given the recent extremes of IP (like the author’s life + 70 years) this is truly the case. So don't pretend that rights don't live in isolation of each other. They need to be balanced with each other.

Now that Starbucks has free wifi it should do better. I do wish though, that they would have comfy chairs. The hard wooden ones hurt my butt. Indie stores often have very comfy ones.

I also wish that Starbucks would use more variety in their color scheme. They all look the same and after a while it's quite boring. I hope they would consider having different stores in different colors.

This proposal was clearly written by people with households living on above $100,000. They forget about average Americans who live on far less. And I bet that some parents deemed to 'rich' to have it paid for by the school will slip through the net in the same way that financial aid for college screws the middle class.

Also the idea that you have to have a mac is crazy anyway. In the real world you are going to really need a PC. And all of this is also silly. Too many students lack basic math, reading, writing, critical thinking and basic knowledge about the world. And if you want to really help gifted kids why not concentrate on preparing them for more AP exams and giving them a shot at getting a 4 and 5 in them. That is going to help them far more in college. The whole laptop thing is a gimmick.

In the last few years as AT&T's customer base was expanding their capital spending actually went down. To claim they suffered because of an "onslaught of data usage" misses the point. They only had issues because they were too cheap to build a proper network to begin with.

I worry about this ever getting better. Airwave frequencies are auctioned off in such a way that it perpetually prevents further competition. The federal government does not insist that the wireless operators rent out their equipment to other competitors like in POTL - long distance. So the number of carriers will remain small indefinitely. Secondly, because these auctions command very high prices the carries have to charge users a fortune just to make back that money. Essentially it's a very high tax that all cell phone users have to pay.

Of course this issue could be solved by allowing more operators access to the spectrum and not auctioning it off. That would bring in a lot more competition as well as lowering the wireless companies fixed costs and enable us consumers to get lower prices.

Finally a voice of common sense.

It's also true that Verizon has outspent AT&T on investment in its wireless infrastructure over the last few years. AT&T's wireless network's capital expenditures from 2006 through September 2009 totaled $21.6 billion, versus $25.4 billion for Verizon and $16 billion for Sprint (including Sprint's investments in WiMax operator Clearwire). Per subscriber: Verizon - $353, AT&T - $308

But despite this, Verizon's 'high speed service' is not real high speed. It's a shame that AT&T has been so stingy in its investment. But had the iPhone come out on Verizon it would have been a disaster with no real high speed anywhere.

All your links mostly either comment upon news generated by journalists or or link to primary data sources. They do little news gathering themselves. Rather they comment on the news. This is fine (and an important part of a free society) but someone has to do news reporting and it's a very expensive business. Without newspapers these blogs would have very little to comment on to begin with.

The issue is that those sites are not nearly as in depth as the New York Times. CNN is a joke beyond a few big headlines and the The daily Mail is more a propaganda machine than newspaper. There really aren't many newspapers that compare. Maybe thee WSJ (which already charges), the Financial Times (which has a metered approach), the Washington Post (still free) and maybe the Guardian (also free but very ideologically driven to the left).

I think the whole situation is ironic. Quite often when I hear stories about immigrants with degrees getting jobs in the USA, people go ballistic about how they are stealing Americans' jobs and depressing wages.

When they go back to their home country, people then complain about a brain drain and about how they should make a 'contribution' to the country that educated them (never mind that they paid highly inflated tuition and quite often even their graduate education was paid for by moneys outside of the USA + grad students essentially work for $10 an hour - slave wages).

So they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Arguments like that boggle the mind. What is wrong with people actually experiencing pleasure? Do you have data that suggests that 'unearned' pleasure is ruinous as opposed to merely hypothesizing about what someone may do to your daughter? (BTW Perhaps your daughter can decide for herself what is appropriate for her.)

We know Combat stress reaction aka Shell shock does huge amounts of harm, so do traumatic childhood experiences and so does torture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_stress_reaction

They really cause mental illness, crime, lower workplace productivity and generally f*ck up society.

Of course its always the right wingers who love Jesus, who somehow think that pleasure = bad, torture = good and somehow use seriously fu**ed up reasoning to justify it.

And of course the earned pleasure of bankers who earn $150 million a year - that's SO TOTALLY earned. And those drug companies and health care lobbyists who use all there nice 'earned' money which was so rightfully earned to begin with. That's all pleasure that is morally right, sitting in their private yachts and jet-setting around in private planes. That' all OK, especially as its earned on the backs of the uninsured. Cause Jesus thinks it's MUCH MORE IMPORTANT that people not get too much pleasure and die cause they don't have health insurance. Good old moral values!

But god forbid some poor person who makes $8 an hour living on the poverty line who actually IS making an economic contribution by actually 'Working', if they want to get high - that is just SO bad. Can't have hard working and underpaid people enjoying life- no that's just for the rich. Cause the bible told me so.

We don't get to live for that long in the grand scheme of things - 70 - 90 years. Cant we just enjoy what little life we have?

Yeah the cops get free reign. They also don't seem to care about the ill effects of being beaten up by a cop - really nasty health consequences there.

Why can't the government get out of my business??? If I choose turn the volume too high - its MY problem. Leave ME alone!!!

It's just like religion, opposition to abortion and stem cells on the political right - if you don't want to have an overly loud mp3 player, then turn down the volume (for yourself). Leave everyone else alone.

Another example of the destruction of personal liberty.

The price mechanism is a form a rationing. It determines who gets what and how much of it people get. The problem is that you can't just not get health care or get very crappy care. You can live in a studio appartment with a roommate and have just the bare essentials of life and get by on $10.00 an hour. But you can't just get bare essentials of health-care.

If you get cancer and need chemotherapy and you don't have insurance - you die. Health-care is a necessity that everyone needs quite a bit of. So we need to distribute it in a rather 'equal' manor as opposed to everything else where distributing it unequally doesn't mean people suffer and die.

I very much agree with the tenure of you arguments. Is there a thinktank, set of articles, or a blog that articulates you idea in greater detail?

I have two concerns. Firstly income in the USA is very unevenly distributed at the moment. For a family of 4 earning $120,000 it's totally affordable to be financially responsible for most health care needs (in a cheaper commoditized market). But what about the bottom 50% who are earning less than $50,000. And what about the bottom 32% earning less than $30,000 a year. And what about people earning $8.00 an hour? You may be able to bring the cost of seeing a physician down to $25. But what about an MRI? It currently costs between $900 and $5000 depending on what is being done. Because of the significant capital costs you are not going to be able to bring the cost below $500. So how do you deal with the fact that $500 is simply money that the bottom 30% does not have?

They may run up bills of $2000 in a single (unlucky) year and be financially ruined. Or they may simply may be shut out of getting care. Or what about a hernia repair operation? If you include all docs fees, hospital fees, drugs fees etc the whole thing costs between $5000 and $13,000. Even if you could get the price down to $2000 that is still very high for the bottom 50%.

Secondly how do you deal with the cost of prescription drugs. The generics are cheap. But the non generics and even a few generics can cost between $200 and $800 for a 1 months’ supply. Again this is money that the bottom 50% simply does not have.

So I could go with you plan with the following adjustments:

1. Nurse practitioner’s have similar patient outcomes to GPs. In other words doctors are over qualified and over trained. And it costs us a fortune as a result. This is a consequence of the fact that you need an undergrad degree, normally 2 years spent in addition to getting a long list of pre reqs (and the list keeps on growing) + getting volunteer experience. The average age of just starting med school is 26. Then 4 years of med school. Then 3 - 10 years residency. It’s a huge waste if resources.
http://pt.wkhealth.com/pt/re/jcn/abstract.00004471-200902000-00016.htm;jsessionid=LvVTpv7L1qJW3Lgt2D62GJ6bhy9Sv6pTCM9HnYWJ7PPMmgL2Wmpr!713630137!181195628!8091!-1

Too maximize efficiency I would suggest 2 levels of physician:

        Level i – This would involve a 6 year undergrad degree with internships and residencies during the summers. It would be a competitive program (not as much as med school is, though) and provide the equivalent of a nurse practitioner’s degree and would be paid for upon graduation so such people would not graduate with college debt. They would also choose a specialty within their program. You can think of it as similar to a physician’s assistant.

Level ii – This would be essentially what we have now except that medical school would get rid of silly pre reqs that waste people’s time like organic chemistry and be more scientific. (So for those in med school the anachronistic step 1 exam would be entirely rewritten and evidence based medicine would be brought to the fore). Also there would be some rigorous education in the use of statistics and engineering techniques. Again med school (and undergrad) would be paid for by the taxpayer so doctors would have no debt to pay off.

  You would first see a level I doc. For 90 – 95% of patients – that would be enough. The difficult cases would be to level ii. And there would no silly laws requiring only doctors to carry out certain procedures when a nurse is just as good (because the AMA lobbied the state legislature). Some types of surgery would require only level ii. Other more common types could use a level I with another 2 years of additional training.

2. For those in the bottom 30% (those households earning less than $32,000 a year) there would be some program that would significantly subsidize the cost of most health care. Eg – so that an MRI which now costs $2500 and with the private market would in the future cost $650 would have a $550 subsidy so that the out of pocket cost would be $100 (and an even higher subsidy for those earning $8.00 an hour).

For those above the 30th percentile there would be an out of pocket limit of 15% of income after which some kind of government program would kick in.

Republicans only care about less government when that means lower taxes and the government not providing services to it's citizens - especially the poor ones. But when it comes to a police state, defense spending and going to war they don't give a crap about liberty.

There really is no option (with respect to a viable political party) for someone who believes in liberty in all areas. The democrats want to take away economic liberty.

And both major parties don't seem to have common sense, eg we cant run deficits year after year since 2001 without severe consequences, IP is out of control and the gini coefienient is way too high. And except for a few on the hard left, there seems to be serious brain damage in the American political system when the majority of people think that you can have an effective health care system delivered by the free market. The free market doesn't work for health care.