Oh my. I can see you've been brainwashed. Let me explain: Up to this point, my entire life has been dedicated to being musician and a producer of software. I produce nothing physical. When I am gone, the only things that will be left behind to prove my existence will be my ideas. But at at no point am I under the illusion that my ideas are property, that I have the sole right to disseminate my ideas, or especially that my ideas have inherent monetary value.

The idea of copyright in a democracy is analogous to walking into a crowded room, with people carrying on vibrant conversations, on a topic which you introduced, and shouting at the top of your lungs, "Hey everybody! Shut up! Stop doing this thing that you're doing that benefits you, and instead let me be the bottleneck for distribution of this idea, at sole benefit to me personally. That's right, sacrifice the common good for my own personal benefit. And while you're at it, if you don't, please flagellate yourself. Also please beat anyone you see doing otherwise. Impose this situation on yourselves. After all, this is _my_ idea you're talking about." If you actually did this, you'd expect to be run out of the room.

So how do poor artists like myself make a living? Its like I said, its up to you to figure it out. I am not so naive or egotistical as to think that the crowd will sacrifice itself for me, or that my work-- my ideas have monetary value in isolation. There is no intellectual property. You have no rights to your ideas once they are communicated. The value of your work is the money people give you willingly for it. People willingly give money in exchange all the time. If people aren't willing to give you money for what you're offering, its no one's problem but your own. If you believe otherwise, you are either intellectually lazy or a crook. Which are you?

You're confused. Just because people would prefer everything to be free does not mean that nobody wants to pay for anything. Technically speaking, every time you engage in a mutually beneficial exchange transaction, you 'want' to pay. Although you lament narrowing your options, you wind up with something that you value more highly than those little green pieces of paper.

That whole 'mutually beneficial' thing is the key. The reason for the transaction being 'mutually beneficial' has to be legitimate. I have too many apples, you have too many oranges, so we trade. That's legitimate. I pay for a car instead of stealing it just because it's worth _that_ much to me to not live in anarchy. Still legitimate. I pay for the software because if I don't, you'll sic the government on me? Not legitimate. Not in a democracy, at least. It ultimately won't work.

Your job, as an author, intellectual, and general member of society is to make people want to pay for what you have to offer. Don't expect the legal system to do this for you. That's not what the legal system is for. If you want to sell ideas, you'd better spend some time thinking up a way to get people to want to give you money for them. Copyright is going away because it was not originally intended for this purpose, and doesn't suit it well. Your business model is nobody's responsibility but your own. You come up with it. You make it work. There's no magic formula. If there were, basic economics says that it would be arbitraged away.

In short, this is a question that you need to answer for yourself. If someone else answers it for you, then they'll be the one making money.

I attended his talk at UT Austin last week. He opened by talking about the ethics of only using free (open source, free to copy and modify) software, went on to spend most of his time railing against copyright, and finished with a seemingly reasonable, though half-assed compromise solution on copyright.

It was interesting, but also clear that he hasn't quite unraveled a few key issues in his own mind, or felt like it would be too difficult to explain things in the time allotted. Mainly, his choice to immediately make a moral argument left him on weaker ground than he ought to be, especially because he seems to have put himself at odds with fairly basic economics.

Of course, most products we buy don't come shrink-wrapped with their engineering schematics. Nor should they, as this would be inefficient. However, in an unfettered economy, free of monopolies and government interference, cheap, reliable, open-source, freely modifyable, interoperable products produced by transparent companies should dominate, because these qualities are those favored by consumers. There should be no need for a moral stance.

All the trouble arises from the government doing the opposite of what it should be doing: 1. Providing copyright as an aid to specific industries. This is mucking with a complex adaptive system (the economy) and as such is a recipe for failure. 2. Not busting monopolies, which do stifle innovation and profit at the expense of society.

Both of these problems are an extension of having a government that has obviously been captured by special interests. Traditionally, societies have waited until their children are starving before making an issue of that particular problem. And with today's technology, that day may not come for a long, long time.

Whether or not filesharing hurts or helps unsigned artists or indie labels does not change the following fundamental point:

_The Legal System Does Not Exist To Make Your Broken Business Model Work_

This is equally true for small and large record labels. If you run a business, it is your responsibility alone to make people *want* to give you money. If you were really using your head, you'd be advertising on TPB by now.

No. No it is not.

It is not the government's role to make Nintendo's business model work. Nor is it the role of the government to make any other individual business or industry's business model work. The government is not prescient, and lacks both the knowledge and the resources to do those kinds of things effectively.

The role of the government is to do things that facilitate all businesses. This includes things like assuring contracts will be upheld and there is an effective system of transportation to move goods.

Copyright and patent are both incentives that have been offered to encourage creativity throughout the economy. Lets get this straight: There are no indelible rights to the ownership of one's ideas or intellectual creations. Under no circumstances is copying the same thing as stealing. This is implicitly obvious, even to a child, and only swindlers and the brainwashed assert that they are the same. Copyright and patent are economic perks that have been offered to creators in the past and are now much abused. For example:

Record companies, whose business is to sell an obviated product (the record), now seek to leverage IP law to stay in business.
Patent trolling businesses which exist not to produce (as was the intent of the law), but to skim profits form companies that do, have emerged.
Many artists, who are supposed to be spurred by copyright law, instead produce less work and expect enormous profitability due to copyright.

The point is that these laws bring more trouble than good to 'the people'. Since 'the people' are supposed to be responsible for the laws in the first place, copyright and patent should be going away. Also of note is that plagiarism and copyright are conceptually separate, but have been legally convoluted. Perhaps we might experiment by replacing them with some law that curtails plagiarism only, as this is would probably benefit all businesses.

In short, litigating and lobbying one's way to profitability is not acceptable under any circumstance. As a business, you must make people want to give you money.

Sure. There's a pretty simple explanation:

Somebody decided to offer these products and services, and one way or another, some other people decided to buy them.

Of course, we could (and do) make regulations that proscribe certain products and services... but our track record in doing this demonstrates less than stellar results. i.e. A lot of the stranger derivatives exist solely to circumvent regulation.

I think, very generally, 'the economy' adapts and optimizes against any regulations that are imposed on it. And unfortunately, the more effective regulation is, the more inefficiency it creates.

So before anybody proposes how the system should be manually 'tweaked', they have the burden of proving that an economy can be effectively regulated -at all- over the long term.

This is probably just wishful thinking, but I wonder if enough slashdotters sent an email here: mailto://nbcolympicsfeedback@nbcuni.com

...perhaps this story might get a TV spot.