What do you mean "people would lead objectively poorer lives"? By reducing energy consumption and waste?

As a bad analogy, some "poor" people are/stay poor because they can't manage their money. People grow rich by conserving and saving. Spending our energy and materials budget wisely makes us richer. Truly green products have a total cost (including externalities) of manufacture, maintenance, and disposal that is lower than non-green products. That is the definition of a green product. Reducing consumption means we can spend our energy and non-renewable materials on the most valuable and useful products.

I second Little Brother. For high school students I could see it being a great inspiration to pursue further scifi, learn about all the deeper aspects of how freedom and technology interact, and most importantly feel like they can get engaged and make a difference.

You don't need to have a hate on for video games to think that reading might be more valuable. While there is a lot of social interaction and fun to be had playing WoW, there is value that is missing from the experience that can be delivered by good stories. Good stories, in the words of Robert McKee, are "creative demonstrations of the truth". WoW can creatively demonstrate a bunch of truths about teamwork, social interaction, overcoming challenges, etc, but a diverse reading of good stories will deliver a broader set of truths. Playing WoW is more like reading the same story (farming) or writer (game designers) over and over.

Exactly! You prove the parents point. When large corporations "run unfettered" they will use the government to make laws that benefit only themselves. See copyright legislation for an example.

The big lesson for me was that big collaborations were the most successful.

In creating solutions for hard problems most of everything fails and is horribly difficult. No big surprise there. Kinda odd that was the quoted lesson...

I agree. That is why I'm excited about the Samsung CL65 that should be coming out soon:
http://www.samsung.com/us/consumer/photography/digital-cameras/compact/EC-CL65ZZBPBUS/index.idx?pagetype=prd_detail

Specs:
3.93" x 2.39" x 0.74"
x5 optical zoom
3.5" wide display with full touch screen panel
Wi-Fi (802.11 b / g), Bluetooth 2.0, GPS for Geo-tagging and Location Name

Hmm, I suppose according to RMS the parent post is messing with his work of testimony. I'm gunna claim fair use while I still have some rights left. :)

RMS actually makes a distinction between different types of information and how free it needs to be. At one of his talks he discussed 3 categories:

1) works of practical use (educational materials, software tools, etc):
        - should be free (GPL)

2) works of testimony (what people experienced or believe):
        - republishing with modification is misrepresentation,
        - commercial use covered by existing copyright

3) works of art and entertainment:
        - commercial use requires permission, personal use is fine

His position is nuanced, not stupid. I actually think the distinction is too difficult to make and it is best to error on the side of freedom, but there are certainly some tricky "moral rights" or artistic integrity issues for categories 2 and 3 with GPL-style freedom.

You miss his point. His works are available for other search engines to index because they are available at his site. No gatekeeper controls access to his work because it is all freely available at his own site: http://craphound.com/

I doubt that is how most election fraud is carried out. I suspect that individuals and small groups looking to be rewarded, or hoping to at least not be punished for losing the election in their district, commit election fraud. Since they are uncoordinated and concerned only for their own safety and/or power you get weird results like this that are obvious fabrications.

Software companies provide the service of creating games, but regardless, this leads to an Art vs Entertainment vs Industry argument that is off-topic. Only in industry could the case be made that the entire point of creation is to generate profit (and longterm profitability usually means this isn't the case for many shorter term projects... see Google).

There is obviously something unethical about making money in ways that harms other people. While the amount of harm caused by addiction would be hard to quantify and is different for each person, it would hard to prove that it causes no harm. Addiction gameplay is entirely unnecessary for profitability as numerous profitable games have been made without those mechanics. I don't think addition gameplay should be illegal, but only that serious game designers should abandon it for ethical reasons. Non-serious (i.e. profit is higher priority than the game) game designers and companies can create an profitable industry in the same manner as the candy, gambling, or tobacco industries.

For me there is also always an ethical choice about the priority levels that you set when creating things. I consider it a mistake to place personal profit above all else, since that makes too easy to make bad decisions that cause suffering and harm to others. Thus there is nothing wrong with running a for-profit business, or having a goal of being profitable, but it is wrong if profit is the only goal or the highest priority or your profit results in harm to others.

There are potentially serious ethical issues when creating games whose design is closely linked revenue generation. For monthly subscription style games, there is a strong incentive for developers to make the game more addicting, using all the known human "vulnerabilities" (reward schemes, etc) to keep people paying. This is where I think game designers can be called to task, or at least the relationship between the design and the revenue model.

It is a path towards "evil":
1) Make the game more addictive for the players and encourage them to recruit more players.
2) Charge subscription for access to the game.
3) Profit!

I call most MMORPG's gambling games rather than role-playing games... MMOGGs I suppose. The game designers can be held even more culpable for the ethics of their designs then those that design traditional gambling games, since the central (addictive) mechanic of gambling is staking a wager and potentially receiving rewards but the central mechanics of MMORPGs certain don't have to be self-serving addiction mechanics.

It would be completely possible to make WoW and other MMORPGs without leveling, drops, and other addiction mechanics and instead focus on overcoming challenges/monsters, socializing, role-playing and competition (PvP). Certainly the latter gameplay can be addicting, but I think you can make a clear distinction between mechanics that give the illusion of reward (items, XP, basically anything that just changes a number) and those that are intrinsically rewarding (defeating a monster or other player, making friends, etc).

In my eyes Blizzard has gone from a respected developer of a classic like Starcraft to an ethically challenged producer of a gambling game. However, it has been the fault of all game designers and game players to not bring up the issue more clearly and widely. We failed to talk about games in a serious way to help designers avoid falling into the trap of equating fun with addiction. Hopefully in the future addiction gameplay will be avoided by any designers who take games seriously and be relegated to a "sleazy" profit-centric industry more similar to the gambling industry.

Where do creators get the right to deny others from copying their work?

Indeed, after a certain period of time creators lose that right, they are only granted it temporarily. Copyright law is just an arbitrary legal mechanism, not a "natural law" whose purpose is to help creators get paid (enough times, not every time) for their work (so that creators have the time and incentive to create). If there were other mechanisms available that ensured that creators got paid (as well or better then they are currently) that didn't restrict distribution or copying - we'd use them.

Many /.ers feel that alternate mechanisms are here or very close and, more importantly, that creative work should be a service rather than product-based industry. Many people, like Clay Shirky, understand that we've developed better solutions (digital networks and P2P, etc) to the manufacturing and distribution problems that copyright and copyright industries evolved to solve. What TPB is doing is legally dubious, but there is a great deal of sympathy for them because using TPB feels like what will be mainstream, legal practice in the future. The is no escaping the reality of digital networks and the shift to digital work as a service.

This change is inevitable because the freedom to distribute and copy is so immensely valuable to the world as a whole (this is already recognized even for physical goods which is why creators control over copying is already limited). In industries like software development where creative work generally results in valuable tools it has already been recognized that more freedom is (on the whole) more valuable then any temporary monopoly rights. i.e. Freedom to use/access/modify every other tool is more valuable then charging for access to your tools, especially when you are trying to make another tool. (*ahem*)

Obviously, tools != entertainment/cultural work but as the great Hans Rosling (http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/hans_rosling.html) said, "Culture is what makes life worth living." Applying similar freedoms to cultural work should see different but equal or greater value for all of us.

It isn't the end of the world to shift from products to services, and in the bargain you get freedom to (access, modify, redistribute) every digital tool that helps you create new tools and every digital cultural work that makes your life worth living...
1) Get paid for your services
2) Freedom to (access, modify, redistribute) everything digital
3) Profit!

This assumes that people are lazier then they are competitive. Without intellectual property new inventions or "forks" / modifications of existing inventions would happen anytime someone thinks there is a better way to do things. Unlike you I assume that people often disagree about what is the right/best way to do things which creates the diversity needed to explore the landscape of potential solutions.

The free software community has shown that diversity and experimentation are natural even if there are no copyright/patents forcing people to try another approach. We need nothing to force us to disagree. :)