Just found this interesting. And sad. The wikipedia page for the accused Norway terrorist Anders Behring Breivik includes in the infobox a portait of him obtained from his facebook profile. The photo has been uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons. Have a look at the sheer amount of time and intellectual energy wasted on discussion of whether or not this photo should be deleted due to copyright laws:
Seriously. Read through some of that. Absorb the nature of the arguments. Then scroll down and realize how long that discussion goes on. And realize this is just an example for one single photo. IP advocates argue that without their monopoly priviledges, the world would be poorer because no one would have any incentive to create anything. I argue the world is poorer because people aren’t creating anything because they’re too busy arguing over IP laws.
I compose piano music (amateur), I develop my own freelance software projects (non-paying) and I work on mathematical problems (again, amateur) just to keep myself sharp and focused. I don’t get paid for these things. And I know I won’t make money off whatever I release to the public. People who complain that they can’t create because they wouldn’t get paid are just whiny babies. Music artists complain that, without IP, they can’t make money selling copies of CD’s. I say get a real job, such as actually performing music at venues or as a janitor or dishwasher or something. Quit whining that everyone owes you money because they’re making copies of music you recorded and released to the public.
I feel sorry for the victim but I think this is going to have to happen a lot more before the general public wakes up to the monstrosity we’ve allowed to spawn within our society.
Being anti-IP doesn’t mean one should be glad that his work is being copied, there is no problem whatsoever if a video game company uses some DRM scheme that prevents people from copying its games, for example. I don’t understand this hostility towards the very fact of legitimately (respecting the NAP) trying to protect an intellectual work.
‘‘The country is living in debt. It is not living within its means, shifting the weight of responsibility on other countries and in a way acting as a parasite,’’ Putin told a group of pro-Kremlin youth in central Russia overnight.
also calling for dollar to lose reserve status… boy are US citizens in for a world of hurt..
it would be worth it if the politicians were to suffer like the rest of us - but they never do. it is depressing.
The cover of the New York Times has the same image of the starving Somali child. It’s disgusting that our media will shamelessly exploit Somali suffering in order to beat the (“humanitarian”) war drums. Take a look at the famine map at the bottom… what a joke! They have these detailed lines demarcating areas that are normal, stressed and famine - but note how the thatch-marks that mean “limited humanitarian access due to violence” covers over highly detailed demarcations between stressed, emergency, famine and normal areas! This is a miraculous map! I hope the miraculous technology with which this information was compiled (ESP?) will be shared with the rest of the world so - for one thing - Somali children don’t have to starve any longer. Also note how the regions surrounding Nairobi, Addis and Djibouti (all proper capitols with “functioning governments”) are shaded “normal”, the least distressed. But the region worst-affected happens to be precisely around the capitol of Somalia - what a coincidence! The famine could have happened 100 miles north or south but, remarkably, it happened right around Mogadishu. Yet the miracle-map clearly demarcates the areas that are merely experiencing emergency conditions against those that are experiencing famine despite limited humanitarian access due to violence. One last miraculous detail: the “emergency” area almost exactly corresponds to the territory occupied by ethnic Somalis. People don’t realize that the colonial borders were drawn by white men with a map and straight-edge… backed up by cannons and muskets. So, the political boundary between Somalia and Ethiopia or Somalia and Kenya is almost meaningless. Also note how Somalia is drawn as a monolithic entity even though Mogadishu hasn’t exercised the slightest influenced over Somaliland and Puntland (northern Somalia, not marked on the map) for two decades since the end of the Barre regime.
Get ready to start hearing lots of political news out of Somalia. al-Shabab = al-Qaeda is already being drummed through the media. Now, US rules + al-Shabab = preventing aid from reaching famished Somalis. So, the US has to permit aid to go to Somalia and this aid will be used by the Somali Transitional Federal Government as a PR bludgeon against al-Shabab… any Shabab that shoots at any TFG soldier is now “holding up humanitarian aid to starving Somalis.”
The cartoon that Nielsio posted employs the kind of hostility I was referring to, I don’t even know why you are asking me that, as it is clear that whoever drew that cartoon thinks that people should be glad their work is being copied and profits are not a legitimate thing to expect from an intelectual work.
Of course you are not entitled to profits from “intellectual work”. You can charge people money only in exchange for your property. “Intellectual work” is not property, hence, it cannot be exchanged.
Selling a game on a DRM-protected gaming platform is not a sale of “intellectual property”, it is best thought of as a sale of a particular SKU of the gaming platform. Of course, the number of possible SKUs is exponential with the number of games available on that platform so no business would ever track it that way, but for the purposes of understanding the property issue at hand, this is how it should be understood. When you purchase a new game title, you are simply paying the game company to upgrade your gaming platform to a higher SKU.
