Comment Should info actually be free? (Score 1) 102
As far as I know the Renaissance was financed by wealthy individuals who commissioned works by the artists. The difference here is that the works were not easily distributed, that is, you only got one Mona Lisa. Under this model, there would only be one copy of Quicken and it would cost $14,000,000.00.
We need to find a way to reward people for creating, without granting them ownership of the idea. We need to allow people to stand on the shoulders of others and have a way to compensate them for trying.
The digital things that we are now creating, including software, books, music and movies, are not the same as the physical products of the industrial age, just as the mass produced products of that age were different than the one-off, hand crafted things that came before them. The difference this time around is greater, as are the ramifications. This is too big, the record companies and the Microsoft's will likely get run over as the new rules start establishing themselves. I don't know what those rules are, I am also sure that we don't get to create them. I'll point to Wall Street on this one, the markets are driven by these same forces, and nobody has ever gotten a handle that.
We need to find a way to reward people for creating, without granting them ownership of the idea. We need to allow people to stand on the shoulders of others and have a way to compensate them for trying.
The digital things that we are now creating, including software, books, music and movies, are not the same as the physical products of the industrial age, just as the mass produced products of that age were different than the one-off, hand crafted things that came before them. The difference this time around is greater, as are the ramifications. This is too big, the record companies and the Microsoft's will likely get run over as the new rules start establishing themselves. I don't know what those rules are, I am also sure that we don't get to create them. I'll point to Wall Street on this one, the markets are driven by these same forces, and nobody has ever gotten a handle that.
