Java and avoiding software piracy?

[Lew]

I addressed this in the text you did not quote.

You addressed it, but did not resolve it.

The argument is flawed in that it deems reproduction cost as the only cost
worthy of consideration. Basic accounting practices factor in the amortized
cost of development and overhead costs, like maintaining a physical plant,
that you conveniently ignored. There is also the desire side of the equation
- value is not merely a function of cost, but of desire on the consumer side.
You seem to feel that people should not pay for what benefits they receive,
and that not paying will benefit society. That latter is not addressed but
merely asserted in your post.

If people don't pay for the software, or other goods that have low
reproduction costs (but possibly high other costs), then how will those
corporations who are magically going to take care of the inventors going to
pay those inventors? This was not addressed in the "text did not quote",
but hand-waved as to where that revenue will arise for them to pay the inventors.

The rhetorical device of saying, "it will benefit society", is assertion of a
conclusion to support the argument, a.k.a. "circular reasoning". I disagree
that your plan to give away software will benefit society; I conclude that it
will harm society by reducing the feedback from sales of one's labors as a
psychological incentive to perform those labors. As the former Soviet Union
and the People's Republic of China's experiences indicate, arbitrary policies
of "this should benefit society, therefore it does, and we aren't going to pay
the worker" don't work. Capitalism does, even in its imperfect forms as
practiced today.

As support, I indicate that the most capitalistic economies produce the
largest amount of innovation and material well being. The profit motive
actually is a motive. The only examples I can find of your ideas lie in
political and economic ruin.

 

[Bent C Dalager]

You addressed it, but did not resolve it.

If I could resolve the socio-economic problems surrounding
remuneration for intellectual labour, I would be writing a thesis not
a Usenet post.

The argument is flawed in that it deems reproduction cost as the only cost
worthy of consideration.

It does not. I explicitly addressed the development cost.

Basic accounting practices factor in the amortized
cost of development and overhead costs, like maintaining a physical plant,
that you conveniently ignored.

This is all just part of the development cost, which I addressed.

There is also the desire side of the equation
- value is not merely a function of cost, but of desire on the consumer side.
You seem to feel that people should not pay for what benefits they receive,
and that not paying will benefit society. That latter is not addressed but
merely asserted in your post.

Indeed. Some products will not benefit society much if freely
available. Others will have some small or large benefit, and yet
others will have negative benefit. I am assuming that software that
could otherwise have generated revenue are more likely than not to
actually be useful and therefore have a good potential for benefiting
society if made freely available. One example would be IDE software,
another would be word processing software. Both make people (hobbyists
and professionals alike) more efficient at what they do and so they
will be able to do more of it.

If people don't pay for the software, or other goods that have low
reproduction costs (but possibly high other costs), then how will those
corporations who are magically going to take care of the inventors going to
pay those inventors? This was not addressed in the "text did not quote",
but hand-waved as to where that revenue will arise for them to pay the inventors.

It was addressed in the form of an example. For your benefit, here is
another one: game producers may move towards subscription-based models
a la WoW, wherein what they are selling is not the game software as
such but running development of the game world (and, incidentally,
appropriate patches/new versions of the game software).

The rhetorical device of saying, "it will benefit society", is assertion of a
conclusion to support the argument, a.k.a. "circular reasoning". I disagree
that your plan to give away software will benefit society; I conclude that it
will harm society by reducing the feedback from sales of one's labors as a
psychological incentive to perform those labors.

If the WoW designers and programmers can reliably create new
worthwhile content, the subscription dollars will keep ticking in. If
they fail to do this, they deserve to go out of business and they will
do so because people will stop paying for the non-service. Please
point out where you perceive the lack of feedback.

As the former Soviet Union
and the People's Republic of China's experiences indicate, arbitrary policies
of "this should benefit society, therefore it does, and we aren't going to pay
the worker" don't work. Capitalism does, even in its imperfect forms as
practiced today.

Trying to equate anything with which you disagree with communism is a
particularly desperate form of rhetoric. You would do yourself a
favour if you stopped doing so.

As support, I indicate that the most capitalistic economies produce the
largest amount of innovation and material well being. The profit motive
actually is a motive. The only examples I can find of your ideas lie in
political and economic ruin.

To my knowledge, there are no examples of information age societies
that did away with copyright.

Unless you are referring to fiction?

Cheers,
Bent D

 

[znôrt]

If it's sub-optimal, the system will tend to balance it.
You are free in an open market to create alternate business
models and try to make them sustainable.

Not at all. This aparent freedom is just fake. In the end it's just a matter of
dominance. Rules are very well set and here to stay, and they are designed
to perpetuate existing predominance and always will be adjusted to serve
dominant sectors. This is the game and the rules, although sounding good
and being written in nice golden capitals, are foul from the very start. Twisted
already told you about lobbies and about how the legislative corpus is
systematically coerced to benefit certain groups, at the expense of general
social progress. This is just the tip of the iceberg. His argument may be a
little overstretched, but he sure has a point. The point, I would say. This
shouldn't surprise you, it has always been that way. Globalization only
makes it more dramatic.

 

[Lew]

Bent C Dalager wrote:

If I could resolve the socio-economic problems surrounding
remuneration for intellectual labour, I would be writing a thesis not
a Usenet post.

And likely winning a Nobel prize.

I agree with some of what you say, but I think restricting the market to "free
distribution" as you say is a mistake, as forbidding free distribution would be.

It does not. I explicitly addressed the development cost.

In one area, yes, but the larger part of the argument seemed to rest on the
notion that the only cost involved in distributing software is media cost and
shipping or downloading. I see now that you meant your alternative
remuneration model to allow recoupment of the investment.

It was addressed in the form of an example. For your benefit, here is
another one: game producers may move towards subscription-based models
a la WoW, wherein what they are selling is not the game software as
such but running development of the game world (and, incidentally,
appropriate patches/new versions of the game software).

For certain types of business it does seem to be a good model.

Trying to equate anything with which you disagree with communism is a
particularly desperate form of rhetoric. You would do yourself a
favour if you stopped doing so.

I wasn't equating anything you said with communism, not even as rhetoric,
desperate or otherwise. And what makes you think I "disagree" with communism?
I cited those examples as evidence that capitalism is more socially stable
than pure socialistic economic models. One failed to embrace that fact and is
gone, the other is introducing capitalism at a controlled pace and is
benefiting hugely. I wouldn't characterize the PRC as having abandoned its
communist ideals at all; they may well be a shining example of success at
implementing a communist political system.

Characterizing an objective point designed to illustrate an applied principle
as mere rhetoric would seem the more desperate tactic.

To my knowledge, there are no examples of information age societies
that did away with copyright.

The United States, in certain segments of the market. Illustrating that the
free software model, for which you actually argue rather cogently, can coexist
with the models you call restrictive, due to the advantages of an open market.

Of course it didn't "do away with copyright" but it allows individual
competitors to (effectively) do so, and they have.

Other examples abound - Where does Linus Torvalds live?

Unless you are referring to fiction?

You make good points, except for the "fiction" remark and the off-base
accusation of "desperate rhetoric".

 

[Oliver Wong]

Let's see. If I use a specific software program where a copy is
installed on my machine, what are the actual burdens I place on others
in so doing?

[List of burdens in answer to one's own rhetorical question]

So what? Just because the activity you wish to do "only minimally"
burdens other people does not necessarily mean that those other people
*must* grant you permission to perform those activities.

[...]

I do
object to being told what I can or cannot do with a copy once I've
gotten it.

Yes, I understand that. All I can say is "too bad for you", since
you're closing off a lot of opportunities to yourself.

It's true, if anyone can make more copies and spread them around, sell
them or give them away, the market will tend to force the price for
copies down to zero. This kind of thing happens all the time; it's
called "competition".

I guess it depends on your definition of "competition". In the context
of markets, economics, products, etc., "competition" to me means making a
similar, but different product, and trying to gain the marketshare of the
original product.

If you make a car, and then I make another car, and I claim my car is
better/faster/cheaper/whatever, then I am competing with you.

If you make a car, and then I put it in my magical "cloning" machine,
and generate millions of clones of your car, and give them all away for
free, then I'm not creating a "competing product".

Makers of all sorts of other products have to
put up with competitors producing identical or fully-substitutable
products and undercutting their price.

Notice that reasoning which applies to products which are mostly bits
of information might not apply to products which are mostly physical
matter. Actually, you ARE aware of this (you state the "marginal cost of
reproduction" argument over and over again), but you seem to ignore this
fact when it's convenient (such as in the above paragraph).

Red Hat sells software without restricting others from making and
selling or giving away copies, and it manages to prosper just fine.

Red Hat makes most of its money from support subscription from
enterprise companies. This business model is not applicable to all forms
of software. E.g. games.

And insisting on downstream control of use ultimately leads to Big
Brotherish evils.

So don't use their products. But don't stop other people from using
their products if those other people *like* their products.

In no other area besides software and entertainment, except maybe big
pharma and gene-engineered crops, do we see manufacturers collecting
margins of 99.9% on product sales.

Haha.

You make it sound like I should be filthy rich from my sales of
software. Yet, this doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe there's some flaw
in your theory...

[snip long text about cars, medicine, and other off topic stuff]

Risk's a part of the game. There's always less of it if you cheat, or
use coercion to make your market position unassailable, but that
benefits nobody else.

I guess you're working under the assumption that corporations are
trying to benefit other people? I think they're trying to benefit
themselves.

[...]

Seen Microsoft Windoze
lately?

Do you mean "Microsoft Windows"? You may be interested in
http://www.datasync.com/~rogerspl/Advocacy-HOWTO-6.html
<quote>
Refer to another product by its proper name. There's nothing to be gained
by attempting to ridicule a company or its products by using "creative
spelling".
</quote>

I'm using Windows right now, actually.

How long has Explorer has the bug that scrolls all your open
windows to the top spontaneously from time to time?

I wouldn't know. I've never seen this bug.

Or the one where
dropped files don't always go where you dropped them but sometimes to
the bottom of the folder instead?

I think you are assuming that the order in which the files appear in a
folder is persistent. It's not. Telling the folder to "sort by name", for
example, does not re-order the bits on the harddrive.

They've had 12 years now to fix
that, since Windows 95 debuted Explorer and these bugs, and they've
done nothing.

Did you submit a bug report? Personally, I'm pretty happy with the
progress Window has made, so I will probably continue to use their
products. I'm not happy with *everything* in the Windows series of OSes.
They have their flaws, just like every other OS I've tried, but so far, I
like them better than the alternatives (MacOSX, various flavours of Linux,
a couple flavours of BSD, QNX, etc.).

Recall once again that businesses are not ENTITLED to a profit; nor
even to recoup their R&D costs and break even.

I've never forgotten that (and you say "once again" as if you've
brought up this point before; have you?) I think you should recall,
though, that you are not ENTITLED to free software either.

Here's what it sounds like you're saying to me: "Information should be
free. Any body who imposes restriction on my sharing files over the
internet is evil and oppressive. All software should be free."

Here's what I'm saying: "When people make you an offer, you can either
accept it or reject it. So for example, if someone offers to license you
software for a specific purpose, you can accept that deal, or you can
reject that deal. You can't force other people to do what you want. In
particular, you cannot force people to release their software for free, if
they don't want to do that. Otherwise, *YOU* are the one being
oppressive."

A "can't lose" business
model is a sure sign that someone is cheating, or the game itself is
rigged somehow.

Strawman. Nobody said anything about "can't lose" until you brought it
up.

[...]

When I was a child, people saved and invested. When I was a young
adult, people lived paycheque to paycheque and "got by" until they
could retire, but sometimes lost their jobs, couldn't find new ones,
and wound up poor, or committed suicide, or killed everyone in their
family and THEN committed suicide. Now, people are deeply in debt by
the time they enter the workforce, if they can find a job at all of
course, and a lot more wind up poor, or commit suicide...

That's a sad story. Is it relevant to... you know... whether or not
people should be allowed to not give their software away for free?

[...]

Everyone except the top executives in the game industry has reason to
be unhappy with that model. It benefits the few at the expense of
everyone else. As such it is doomed in the long term.

If that's true, then I guess you can just sit back and relax, as
you'll eventually get what you want.

It's called "breach of contract". There's no need for this "copyright"
BS, or any of the rest of it, since we have contract law anyway.

Yes, but you refute this argument in your next couple of sentences...

Of
course, contract law is somewhat weaker. If I breach the contract and
give someone a copy, that someone is not bound by any contract and
whatever it is is now freed. And mass-market transactions can't
generally require every customer read and sign something; that's OK
for rare, big-ticket purchases like cars and houses but nobody's doing
that for every CD they buy at HMV.

Right, so now we see the demand for copyright laws, and perhaps have a
bit of insight into why it was created in the first place.

This is exactly as it should be;
businesses can not easily bludgeon their way to riches with a business
model based more on inflating their prices massively and suing
everyone in sight and have to actually innovate to succeed that way.

With the exception of the RIAA, businesses typically won't sue you for
pirating if you don't actually pirate. I hope your argument isn't merely
"RIAA is evil, therefore everyone should give their software away for
free".

Everything experts have written about Vista indicates that it's a
steaming turd-pile.

That's factually false... unless, of course, *you* get to choose whom
the "expert" label applies and doesn't apply to: This guy doesn't like
Vista? Well, he must be an expert them. This guy does? Must be an idiot.

Why does the Vista feature list seem to be what
you'd expect if the RIAA and MPAA were the paying customers rather
than the Vista user-base?

Question is based on false premise, and is therefore nonsensical.
You're assuming that Vista's feature list is appears to *everyone* to be
what one would expect if RIAA and MPAA were the paying customers.

That is very interesting don't you think?

I don't find your question particularly interesting, no.

[...]

Given the shoddy quality of e.g. IIS, do you really think they are
trying to "compete" in any arena that doesn't involve either lawyers
or lobbyists?

Question is based on false premise, and is therefore nonsensical.
You're assuming that IIS is perceived to be shoddy by everyone.

These aren't "wrong" decisions, they are "brain-dead" decisions, which
anyone with a couple of neurons to rub together should have known
would backfire in some way. Pretexting scandals, private-info-leaks,
rootkits ... there seems to be another big scandal every fiscal
quarter and dozens of minor ones these days.

I think you're assuming that the corporations had, as part of their
"imperfect information", the knowledge that they'd get caught.

[...]

What about insatiable greed, an arrogant (over)confidence that they
won't get caught, and utter contempt for the peons in the streets
crawling like ants at the base of their grotesquely expensive new
highrise headquarters offices?

What about them?

Are you arguing that these traits (whether or not we agree that the
corporations actually have them) make it such that the "emotional
anthropomoprh" model is more accurate than the "rational utilitarian"
model?

Look at those towers and those huge penthouse corner offices for the
executives and tell me we're in a free-market capitalist democracy and
not some kind of crypto-plutocratic feudal society with an
identifiable aristocracy and identifiable peasants?

Is this a question, or an imperative statement?

It's at the meta-level that their rationality is lacking. A human has
only limited ability to change their core drives and motivations
(which tend to primarily involve self-fueling, reproductive
opportunities, and not getting dead). A corporation in theory can have
whatever motivations some board of directors decides it should have,
and the board could decide that it will be a good citizen and become
very rich that way, but by and large, none of them do.

Actually, I believe there exists a law which forces a corporation to
have exactly one motivation: maximize profits. Read "The Corporation" by
Joel Bakan (ISBN 978-0743247467)

Here are some quotes from the reviews (which are really mainly summaries
of the book) from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/cu...s=books&qid=1184687364&sr=8-2#customerReviews
<quote>
legislation REQUIRES companies to put shareholder financial interest, or
profit, above all other interests.
</quote>

<quote>
all that counts when managers make decisions is the cost vs the benefit of
those decisions. For instance, if a company makes more money by letting
people die, breaking laws, or spoiling the environment, managers have no
choice but to make those decisions in order to fulfill their legal
requirements towards shareholders.
</quote>

<quote>
It is against the law, not to mention the longstanding traditions of
western capitalism, for corporations to do anything but maximize profits
and shareholder value, with no regard whatsoever for the social,
political, or environmental consequences.
</quote>

etc.

Profits exceed costs means "it ain't broke" so "don't fix it".

That's not what "profits exceed costs" to me, and I suspect there was
a miscommunication here, so let me rephrase point (1).

(1) The profits from outsourcing support (in the form of reduced
support costs) exceeds the cost of outsourcing support (in the form of
lower customer satisfaction).

Anyone who doesn't know that outsourcing is bad for the job economy,
bad for the customer base, and eventually bad for your own bottom line
isn't suffering from "imperfect information" but from "I've lived in
this cave in the woods for the last 17 years and then despite by
woeful lack of qualifications I somehow managed to bag this high-
responsibility job that happens to make me a seven-figure annual
salary and somehow avoid being quickly fired for incompetence; lucky
me!".

I disagree.

[...]

Why do my predictions about their behavior better fit observed reality
than yours, then?

Please tell me what your predictions are, and what you think my
predictions are.

Ads? Informed? Are you out of your cotton-picking mind?! Ads do not
inform; they present biased or just outright-wrong "information" to
try to persuade you to buy something

This next part is said toungue-in-cheek, because this really is a
minor, silly sub-argument (to me, at least), but there seems to be some
misunderstanding, so I felt I should clarify:

I am arguing that Microsoft is trying to promote IIS over Apache. By
arguing against me, I guess you are implying that you believe Microsoft is
NOT trying to promote IIS over Apache (or maybe that you just like
arguing). I cite the existence of advertisement as evidence for my
argument that yes, Microsoft is trying to promote IIS over Apache. You
counter with the fact that you've never seen such an add, adding that you
have an adblocker installed.

Therefore, I conclude that I am right and you are wrong, and I am
crediting my being right to the fact that I was able to see the ads.

What false premise? That Vista is a downgrade?

More or less. I would phrase it as "That Vista is perceive universally
(by everyone) to be a downgrade".

[...]

Please check out
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm
before making any more lengthy followups to this thread.

Sorry, I haven't read it yet, though I did glance through it. It's on
my TODO list.

In the meantime, here's something for you to ponder: What exactly is
your goal with this thread? Are you trying to convince all the programmers
here to release their software for free? Are you trying to convince people
that copyright is bad? Are you trying to convince people that corporations
are evil? Are you trying to convince people that corporations are
emotional? Are you trying to convince people that the pharmaceutical
industry is harming the poor? Are you trying to convince people that Vista
is bad?

There are all separate goals, and you're sort of going all over the
place. I think because of this, you might be falsely assuming that when I
disagree with you on one point (e.g. that all software should be given
away for free), then I also disagree with you on all your other points
(e.g. that corporations are "evil").

A lot of what you write seems to me like non-sequitur. I might write,
for example, that corporations can be modeled as "rational utilitarians"
and then see you reply of "Look at how evil they are!" to which I'm
wondering "So what?" The tone of your message makes it sound like some
sort of rebuttal, but the content seems to indicate that you're just
bringing in completely unrelated topics.

- Oliver

 

[Roedy Green]

Wrong. With the subscription, he can laugh all the way to the bank.
Maybe he's locked you into an N-year contract.

Purchasing is 100 year contract with a guarantee the product will
fail.

The whole point of rental is to avoid locking in. In any system I
have seen the worst you are on the hook for is one year.

 

[Oliver Wong]

game producers may move towards subscription-based models
a la WoW, wherein what they are selling is not the game software as
such but running development of the game world (and, incidentally,
appropriate patches/new versions of the game software).

I find it interesting that:

(1) I am arguing in this thread against the viability of making
profits from games via a subscription model.
(2) I have "sworn off" MMORPGs (or, as a matter of fact, any type of
game) which cost a monthly fee to play.

I wonder whether this is coincidental, or if (2) caused (1), or if
there is some other causal chain.

<digressions inReferencedToPoint="1">
One of the main complaints of copyright law and intellectual property,
from what I can see from Twisted's link to
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm is that it takes
power away from society and places it in the hands of a few already-rich
individuals.

MMORPGs that are financially successful are apparently extremely expensive
to make (I've seen development cost figures in the hundreds of millions of
US dollar thrown about for WoW, EverQuest II, etc.), so it seems to me
that pushing all games towards MMO would worsen things in this aspect.

non-MMOs with regular updates are very rarely successful. Diablo is the
one example that comes to mind. Total Annihilation is an example of a
company which tried to do regular updates, but abandoned this goal about 1
month after the game release, because it was just too expensive to do.
</digressions>

<digressions inReferencedToPoint="2">
A new, retail, pay-once game usually costs around $60. MMO subscriptions
are typically on the order of $20 per month. I'm a relatively busy person,
so I don't have too much time to play games. I might be able do a
"serious" gaming session (i.e. longer than 5 minutes) maybe 2 days out of
a given month.

That's about 6 days of play in an MMO versus an potentially infinite
amount of play for a typical retail game. Now given, most retail games get
boring after a while, but the good ones tend to be more fun than merely 6
day's worth.

I'm not saying MMOs objectively suck and we should ban them. I'm saying
for my specific situation, paying-once makes much more sense that
subscription model. I also claim that there are many other people in my
situation (many of my friends, for example), and that this is pretty
representative of my demographic in general (young adults who played lots
of videogames back in school, having recently become full-time employed,
still want to play, but have much less free time to do so).
</digressions>

- Oliver

 

[Roedy Green]

Wrong. With the subscription, he can laugh all the way to the bank.
Maybe he's locked you into an N-year contract.

One problem with buying is you don't know how long your software will
run. The vendor is under no obligation to keep it working after he
gets your money. I have an expensive copy of TopStyle gathering dust
that won't work under vista.

When rental, it is very clear just how long your program will continue
to work.

What really burns me is vendors who try to SELL me an upgrade to fix
BUGS. He should be paying ME to apologise!

 

[Bent C Dalager]

In one area, yes, but the larger part of the argument seemed to rest on the
notion that the only cost involved in distributing software is media cost and
shipping or downloading. I see now that you meant your alternative
remuneration model to allow recoupment of the investment.

The salient point is that there isn't one single remuneration model
for all, there are several - not all models are suitable for all
markets or software types. I cannot possibly hope to cover all such
models here, in part because we have only discovered a few of them so
far and in part because it takes brighter/more desperate brains than
mine to discover more.

I wasn't equating anything you said with communism, not even as rhetoric,
desperate or otherwise.

Very well. In that case, I must point out that it is the copyright and
patent regimes that are the closest to a planned economy and that free
copying is the closest to a free market system.

And what makes you think I "disagree" with communism?
(...)
Characterizing an objective point designed to illustrate an applied principle
as mere rhetoric would seem the more desperate tactic.

If you did indeed cite communistic states as serious counterpoints
rather than for emotional appeal, I withdraw my objection.

The United States, in certain segments of the market. Illustrating that the
free software model, for which you actually argue rather cogently, can coexist
with the models you call restrictive, due to the advantages of an open market.

Of course it didn't "do away with copyright" but it allows individual
competitors to (effectively) do so, and they have.

Free/open source software and open standards have done us a world of
good over the last 20+ years. My suggestion is that if all software
was this free, it would do us an order of magnitude more good.

I concede that this poses a problem of finding models to cover
development costs, but I do not think that this is an insurmountable
problem.

You make good points, except for the "fiction" remark and the off-base
accusation of "desperate rhetoric".

The fiction remark wasn't entirely flippant. Since we have little or
no experience with copyright-less regimes, fiction might provide the
more interesting illustrations of how such a regime might actually
work in practice.

Cheers
Bent D

 

[Bent C Dalager]

I find it interesting that:

(1) I am arguing in this thread against the viability of making
profits from games via a subscription model.
(2) I have "sworn off" MMORPGs (or, as a matter of fact, any type of
game) which cost a monthly fee to play.

I wonder whether this is coincidental, or if (2) caused (1), or if
there is some other causal chain.

I haven't followed your arguments (or if I have I can't remember
them), but I would like to point out one consequence of my model that
may not be immediately obvious:

Without the copyright regime, anyone will be able to establish WoW
servers running their own WoW-compatible worlds. Certainly, they will
first have to reverse-engineer the protocols (and this needs to not be
illegal) and this poses something of a problem but is unlikely to be
excessively difficult. Once this has happened, competition would arise
for WoW-players' subscription money. Most likely, the original vendor
will have a considerable advantage for a number of reasons but if they
turn out to be incompetent, or if you find some niche server somewhere
that interests you for some obscure reason, you can quite happily
switch content supplier. Or run with both for that matter.

MMORPGs that are financially successful are apparently extremely expensive
to make (I've seen development cost figures in the hundreds of millions of
US dollar thrown about for WoW, EverQuest II, etc.), so it seems to me
that pushing all games towards MMO would worsen things in this aspect.

While I don't actually know much of anything about this, I am guessing
that a large part of this cost is in artwork, motion capture, voice
acting, musical scores, etc. These are all things that are largely
unnecessary for a great many fun game concepts and I can easily
imagine MMO games that offer considerably simpler - stylized perhaps -
graphics etc. and still find a decent market.

In choosing to go for the 100mill+ model, a game developer is saying
that he is pushing the envelope and that he wants his game to be right
there on the bleeding edge. This approach is, I believe, incredibly
expensive for what you get in return and it is not a necessary
approach to make a popular game.

non-MMOs with regular updates are very rarely successful. Diablo is the
one example that comes to mind. Total Annihilation is an example of a
company which tried to do regular updates, but abandoned this goal about 1
month after the game release, because it was just too expensive to do.

There is definitely work still to be done in exploring these business
models. But note that a business model that didn't work two years ago
may very well be a huge hit two years down the line when technology,
infrastructure and social development have caught up with it.

A new, retail, pay-once game usually costs around $60. MMO subscriptions
are typically on the order of $20 per month. I'm a relatively busy person,
so I don't have too much time to play games. I might be able do a
"serious" gaming session (i.e. longer than 5 minutes) maybe 2 days out of
a given month.

That's about 6 days of play in an MMO versus an potentially infinite
amount of play for a typical retail game. Now given, most retail games get
boring after a while, but the good ones tend to be more fun than merely 6
day's worth.

I am not convinced that this is much of a problem. For a large number
of people, $60 just isn't a whole lot of money. Neither is $20. And
neither is $20 a month. The latter is somewhere around the amount that
people really don't bother much with at all. (Obviously, it varies
with wealth levels, but I think this is common enough.)

(The one thing that really surprises me is that MMOGs seem to be
charging for the "first dose", i.e. the game box. I can only conclude
that this is to cover the cost for putting boxes on shelves and so
it's basically a marketing cost. In a mature online MMOG market, I
would expect the game software to be downloadable for free, with some
free initial playing time thrown in, just to get people hooked.)

I'm not saying MMOs objectively suck and we should ban them. I'm saying
for my specific situation, paying-once makes much more sense that
subscription model. I also claim that there are many other people in my
situation (many of my friends, for example), and that this is pretty
representative of my demographic in general (young adults who played lots
of videogames back in school, having recently become full-time employed,
still want to play, but have much less free time to do so).

I don't think that MMOG-style subscription is the one and only model
for selling games under a copyright-free system. What the others would
be is a little difficult to say though since the lack of necessity has
led to them not being developed.

Cheers
Bent D

 

[Bent C Dalager]

So what? Just because the activity you wish to do "only minimally"
burdens other people does not necessarily mean that those other people
*must* grant you permission to perform those activities.

The question is rather why a bunch of people that aren't affected by
my actions should have the right to veto what I'm doing.

I guess it depends on your definition of "competition". In the context
of markets, economics, products, etc., "competition" to me means making a
similar, but different product, and trying to gain the marketshare of the
original product.

The competition in this case is for the most desirable method of
distribution/delivery. The problem of distributing a product is
separate from the problem of developing it (or manufacturing it, but
that is something of a non-issue in this case).

If you make a car, and then I make another car, and I claim my car is
better/faster/cheaper/whatever, then I am competing with you.

If you make a car, and then I put it in my magical "cloning" machine,
and generate millions of clones of your car, and give them all away for
free, then I'm not creating a "competing product".

But of course you are. How would this not compete with the original,
presumably expensive-to-make, cars?

Red Hat makes most of its money from support subscription from
enterprise companies. This business model is not applicable to all forms
of software. E.g. games.

So they must find a different one.

So don't use their products. But don't stop other people from using
their products if those other people *like* their products.

The suggestion isn't to stop people from using the products, it's to
ensure that /more people/ get to use the products (if they like).

Here's what I'm saying: "When people make you an offer, you can either
accept it or reject it. So for example, if someone offers to license you
software for a specific purpose, you can accept that deal, or you can
reject that deal. You can't force other people to do what you want. In
particular, you cannot force people to release their software for free, if
they don't want to do that. Otherwise, *YOU* are the one being
oppressive."

Of course you can force people to release their software for free
(well, you can't force them to release it but you can force them to do
it for free if they do choose to release it). This is as simple(*) as
removing the government-granted copyright monopoly.

* - to the extent that this is simple, which it isn't because it's
firmly entrenched in a considerable number of international treaties
and trade agreements.

Cheers
Bent D

 

[Twisted]

(What the HELL is going on with GG? The post I'm replying to appeared
at the text-only read-only NNTP host I use for reading and checking
propagation almost as soon as I'd posted it but did not appear on GG
itself for a full hour! How can it be injected at GG but make it to
some obscure server in Eastern Europe an hour sooner than to Google's
own server? It's not logically possible. They must have some bug that
is causing the GG post-viewing interface to show a heavily out-of-date
version of what's actually on their news spool. It's probably an HTTP
cache in their load-balancing infrastructure that's not managing
timestamps properly. Given the nearly exact 1 hour difference, I'm
guessing they had to reload a machine somewhere and its clock wound up
on standard instead of daylight time, perhaps because they restored a
config file from a backup made during the winter. Too bad there's no
obvious way to give them a heads-up about it. It's probably a five-
minute fix once they realize what's gone wrong.)

It's even more horribly broken today. Postings dated 9 AM my time on
the NNTP server are missing on GG nearly 12 hours later. GG shows
nothing at all new for the last day in the "usb dongle" thread, which
I know to be a lie.

Effectively, I've got one hand tied behind my back. There are postings
I know are out there but I'm being denied the right to respond to
them, and for no apparent reason.

I want whoever is responsible identified and I want their head on a
pike!

Give me a google feedback address with all of the following
properties:
* If I send email there it will not bounce.
* And it will be read by an actual human being.
* Within one business day.
* And they will fix whatever the **** they broke immediately; it
should be as simple as rolling back some ill-advised change to some
server's configuration.
* After this, the aforementioned head-ka-bob will be shipped priority
next-day by USPS or Fed Ex to the P.O. box of my choice.

Or else give me all of the information (e.g. a server address or web
address) needed to use an NNTP server:
* To post news.
* For free.
* Without having to expose an email address if I don't want to.
* Without any pernicious "posting limits", awful propagation, gobs of
spam, terrible retention, or other such problems.
* And which will not change in any of these respects for quite a long
time.

I want one of these or the other in a followup to this posting
immediately. I've had it with fucking Google Groups.

 

[Twisted]

The beauty of capitalism is that its "Invisible Hand" balances all these forces.

The beauty of capitalism is that the "invisible hand" balances things
out -- as long as there's no serious forcible restraint of trade going
on, or undermining of peoples' rights in their physical possessions
(such as discs and computing hardware).

Copyright (and patent) create exactly the kinds of restraint of trade
that hamstrings the "invisible hand" and distorts the market. The
result is to favor incumbent big businesses at everyone else's
expense, of course.

 

[Twisted]

Indeed. The current system, however, does not. It encourages inventors
to invent one single thing and then spend the rest of their lives in
court trying to squeeze money out of various businesses that may or
may not be using their invention.

Well put.

At best, they have an incentive to invent until they get one solid hit
and then retire and live on the royalty cheques that start rolling in.

Stephen King's novels give a good counterargument to copyrights.
Without copyrights, so the theory goes, he would never have written
his numerous novels.

Yeah, right. First, what happened once Stephen King got a solid hit
and was starting to rake in money? *He kept writing*. So much for his
writing being financially motivated. Creativity is quite often its own
reward. The good writers don't do it for the money but for less
tangible rewards, and don't need financial motivation. Writers that do
it purely for the money are, by and large, BAD writers. Not
subsidizing them might be a blessing. (Most are ad copy writers,
though, and will still get paid without copyrights. )

Second, I hear all the left-wing* pro-state-sanctioned-monopoly* nuts
screaming that Stephen King would not have written all that he has if
he'd had to keep a day job; while the royalty money rolling in didn't
motivate his subsequent writing, it did free him to write full-time.

I don't buy that one either. With proven writing talent he could still
market the skill and make money at writing. Signed/special editions
could be sold at a premium, copyright or no copyright. Free electronic
pdfs of his books everywhere and cheap knockoff paperbacks by various
unaffiliated publishers wouldn't diminish the market for such
collectibles one iota. Fans of his "dark tower" stories endlessly
awaiting the next one would have been motivated to donate money if it
would get it written any faster. Writing often maintains its own
timetable anyway, depending on inspiration and assorted such factors.
A day job may actually help a writer subconsciously grind on the
current problems in their writing while keeping their conscious mind
distracted, and they find they're full of ideas after the end of the
shift. Certainly with fame comes the ability to charge for appearances
and speeches. There's also the sugar-mommy option -- fame attracts
women as much as money does, and some women are wealthy.

It's also worth noting that prolific writers existed pre-copyright.
Shakespeare comes to mind. Many of them did not have any kind of
patronage either, or necessarily truly copious spare time.

Inventions, software, and usable tools are an even stronger case
against copyright and patents than entertainment. For example,
something may be developed because the developer himself has a use for
it and it will increase his productivity at something else down the
road. This is worth some up-front investment in development.

Finally, it's worth noting that free copies of stuff for people who
couldn't afford to pay anyway enriches them without impoverishing
anyone else. The vendor makes the same amount of money off those
people that they would have anyway -- zip, zero, zilch.

Consider drugs in third-world countries. They should have them
available at marginal cost. Why don't they? Big Pharma has a patent.
Why doesn't Big Pharma generously license it really cheaply to the
poor? Because they'd make twice what they use and sell the rest to the
West and undercut Big Pharma's domestic pricing. Sometimes deals are
actually cut that allow a country to make cheap generics but not
export them.

In short, Big Pharma want price discrimination so as to charge the
rich more than the poor.

If that's at all valid, it means patents and copyrights should be
replaced with appropriate inventor/pharma/whatever R&D subsidies and
an income tax hike in the upper brackets, which has the same effect
without attacking property rights and free speech or denying cheap
generics to the poor. (And the poor *in the West* would get cheap
generics too, not just in the third world.)

* Those pushing for stronger "IP" rights are definitely pushing for
state-enforced monopoly powers, and for government marketing meddling
on the pretext of fixing perceived market failures. Government
meddling in the market and especially state-supported monopolies are a
characteristically socialist type of policy. Those pushing for
information freedom are right-wing; they push for less government
meddling and more free-market individualism. That's small-c
conservative leaning towards right-libertarian. Of course, I'm
something of an odd duck, since unlike the typical libertarian I
support progressive taxes like income tax, though not regressive
taxes. I consider sales taxes other than on luxury and bad-for-your-
health items, along with copyright and patent royalties, to be
regressive taxes in effect. Taxes on items that have negative
externalities on the health-care system, environment, or what not I
have no problem with. So by all means, tax alcohol, tobacco,
incandescent light bulbs, and SUVs, but let us have cheap basic
necessities -- food, fluorescent bulbs, software, shelter,
utilities...also unlike the typical libertarian I think there's a
place for state monopolies in certain classes of infrastructure, from
roads to health care, and state-provided basic services in education.
Education good enough to get entry level jobs in most careers really
should be available for free; a society that spends tax money on that
is making a long-term investment that will pay off tremendously.
Cutting the educational fat by better focusing later years of
curriculum and starting to focus on an eventual vocational skill-set
earlier also makes sense. Grade school should teach basic life skills
-- some, but not as much repetition of, basic math and grammar type
stuff; enough to balance a checkbook and read and write decently,
certainly; and a lot more of other stuff either ignored or rarely
considered. High school should remain the social cauldron it is now,
but with more participatory student government of some sort to hands-
on teach civics, and with college-like focus towards specific possible
career paths. Dropping frivolous arts requirements and other stuff to
optional status cuts costs. Getting rid of extortionate copyright-
inflated pricing of books and tuition and software obviously goes a
long way too. As for health care, one-tier universal please. Anything
else abrogates the right to equal opportunity from birth. Money can be
had from taxing everything from cigarettes and alcohol to food with
trans fats to other recreational drugs (if you legalize some) and
making cosmetic type stuff (other than to reverse disfigurement) non-
free and tax that too. Yeah - let the Hollywood actresses' nose jobs
and tummy tucks pay for curing AIDS and giving everyone access to
basic health maintenance.

I don't know what to call the above. Politically it isn't any kind of
"ism" I ever heard of, other than maybe "common-senseism"?

 

[Lew]

It's even more horribly broken today. Postings dated 9 AM my time on
the NNTP server are missing on GG nearly 12 hours later. GG shows
nothing at all new for the last day in the "usb dongle" thread, which
I know to be a lie.

This is the wrong newsgroup for that issue. This one is about Java
programming issues.

 

[Joshua Cranmer]

It's also worth noting that prolific writers existed pre-copyright.
Shakespeare comes to mind. Many of them did not have any kind of
patronage either, or necessarily truly copious spare time.

What was the literacy rate in Shakespeare's time? Shakespeare was writing
plays to be performed by a specific performin group, from which he
derived money. IIRC, playwrights in those days tended to try to keep
their playscripts to themselves.

Inventions, software, and usable tools are an even stronger case against
copyright and patents than entertainment. For example, something may be
developed because the developer himself has a use for it and it will
increase his productivity at something else down the road. This is worth
some up-front investment in development.

Finally, it's worth noting that free copies of stuff for people who
couldn't afford to pay anyway enriches them without impoverishing anyone
else. The vendor makes the same amount of money off those people that
they would have anyway -- zip, zero, zilch.

Consider drugs in third-world countries. They should have them available
at marginal cost. Why don't they? Big Pharma has a patent. Why doesn't
Big Pharma generously license it really cheaply to the poor? Because
they'd make twice what they use and sell the rest to the West and
undercut Big Pharma's domestic pricing. Sometimes deals are actually cut
that allow a country to make cheap generics but not export them.

Big Pharma is rather the exception than the rule. The research needed to
create drugs is quite expensive (machinery for research alone propels the
costs into the millions, costs of chemicals for tests is well into the
tens or hundreds of thousands, and then there are several dozen tests
that need to be done before the drug can make it to market); to recoup on
this huge upfront cost, Big Pharma relies on a few blockbuster drugs. In
any case, the Big Pharma model is totally unsustainable. For more
information, see The Economist*, several issues in the past two or so
years deal with the woes of Big Pharma.

In short, Big Pharma want price discrimination so as to charge the rich
more than the poor.

There are more factors: distribution is slightly harder in poor
countries. I don't have the exact article, but this point is refuted in
another recent issue of The Economist*.

If that's at all valid, it means patents and copyrights should be
replaced with appropriate inventor/pharma/whatever R&D subsidies and an
income tax hike in the upper brackets, which has the same effect without
attacking property rights and free speech or denying cheap generics to
the poor. (And the poor *in the West* would get cheap generics too, not
just in the third world.)

* Those pushing for stronger "IP" rights are definitely pushing for
state-enforced monopoly powers, and for government marketing meddling on
the pretext of fixing perceived market failures. Government meddling in
the market and especially state-supported monopolies are a
characteristically socialist type of policy.

But without goverment meddling, trains would have double-digit crash
rates, automobiles would get about ten miles to the gallon, and Arizona
would be devoid of water.

Also unlike the typical libertarian I think there's a place
for state monopolies in certain classes of infrastructure, from roads to
health care, and state-provided basic services in education.

So you are admittedly socialist, which seems to be a status that you
abhor (given your rather harsh tone).

Money can be had from taxing everything from cigarettes and alcohol to
food with trans fats to other recreational drugs (if you legalize some
and making cosmetic type stuff (other than to reverse disfigurement)
non- free and tax that too. Yeah - let the Hollywood actresses' nose
jobs and tummy tucks pay for curing AIDS and giving everyone access to
basic health maintenance.

I don't think that sin taxes are a good idea -- they start imposing one
person's morality onto another.

I don't know what to call the above. Politically it isn't any kind of
"ism" I ever heard of, other than maybe "common-senseism"?

Seems to me to be a mixture of socialism with a fair mix of compassionate
conservatism. How about calling it "every-position-but-the-center-ism"?

Finally: as long as there exists some cost to making something, that
something is going to start having a cost to you (cf. Economic Principle
#1: There is no such thing as a free lunch). Since everything has
opportunity costs, you will always have to pay. Get over it.

* Economist articles past a certain time can only be accessed on their
website's archive with a subscription, but given that you seem to be sure
on your position on economic theory, I thought it prudent to assume that
you are an avid of this publication, so that it wouldn't be a problem.

 

[~kurt]

The development cost certainly has to be covered somehow. It does seem
incredibly suboptimal, however, to charge per copy, or per seat, or
per minute, etc. In order to maximize benefit to society, a different
model should be found to cover the development cost of useful
software.

Most commercial software is not developed to maximize the benefit to
society. It is written to maximize profit to the entity that owns it.
There is nothing wrong with that.

- Kurt

 

[Bent C Dalager]

Most commercial software is not developed to maximize the benefit to
society. It is written to maximize profit to the entity that owns it.
There is nothing wrong with that.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. It is not my position that
businesses should not be working towards maximizing their own profits
- my position is that they should do so under a copyright-less regime.

Cheers
Bent D

 

[Lew]

It is not my position that
businesses should not be working towards maximizing their own profits
- my position is that they should do so under a copyright-less regime.

I can only desperately say that that is a hopelessly socialist position.

 

[Bent C Dalager]

I can only desperately say that that is a hopelessly socialist position.

You have yet to explain how the /removal/ of government granted
monopolies is in any way a socialist development.

Cheers
Bent D