The Death of D. (Was Tango vs Phobos)

[Jb]

"Yigal Chripun" <yigal100 at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:g87t4r$1uq6$1 at digitalmars.com...
> My major issue with what you wrote is this:
> 60 years or so ago women didn't have the right to vote in the US. let's
> go even before that to the time when black people in America were
> considered property and didn't have any rights. In that period of time a
> white person could claim that the law states that his black slave is his
> property and it is entirely legal and moral to treat him as such. Today,
> you'd of course disagree. Just as that man would claim according to the
> law that black people where not really people and didn't have any
> rights, you now claim that we are not entitled to the right of freedom
> of information.

One of the consequences of the abolition of slavery was that those people 
now had the right to paid for their work, whereas previously they didnt.

So your crass analogy actualy works against you.


> besides that, you talk in metaphors of infinitely copyable chairs (just
> like in star trek..). I can compare that with the philosophical question
> of "what if a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there, does it
> make a sound?" BUT, elementary physics tells us that the tree does make
> a sound regardless. And I'll tell you: The chairs are *not* infinitely
> copyable. What if I had three legs? well, I don't. So please stick to
> the reality that chairs are not the same thing as software.

I think he was making the point that when you buy a physical product you are 
not just paying for materials, but also for the labour, whether production 
line labour or the labour in development and design.

If you take the actual cost of materials out of the analogy with a chair you 
are left with a similar situation we have with software, where the cost of 
the product is almost all labour costs.


> There are no inherit rights that allow the author to control
> distribution. The way it actually works is this:

There are no inherent rights to anything in this world. Human rights, or 
copyrights, or civil rights, all of these are human creations.

So when we talk about such rights, it only makes sense to do so in that 
context. What rights has our society / social group decided we have.


> a) you came up with new exciting idea/poem/article/software/etc..
> b) either you keep it to yourself or you publish it.
> c) once it was published it is in the public domain. you cannot tell me:
> I have an idea such as <some idea> BUT since I just told you my idea it
> is mine alone and you cannot use it. If you do not want me to use your
> idea just keep it for yourself and don't tell anyone about it. This is
> what Coca-Cola does with its secret recipe. (it's secret!)

You dont copyright ideas, you patent ideas. Copyright is for protecting 
works, artistic or otherwise, not for protecting ideas.

If you read a book for example you are free to tell people about the ideas 
in the book. Nobody is trying to stop you doing that.

But you are not usualy free to make a copy of the book and give that to 
them.


> Your entire analogy to chairs and such is plain false. This is not about
> evil me trying to prevent the hard working artist/software developer
> from earning his [well deserved] keep. With your method it is illogical
> for a creator to give away his creation freely and yet get paid for his
> hard work. That is, companies like Red hat simply cannot exist since you
> can freely [and legally] download all their products on their website.
> Yet, fact is that Red hat is a very financially successful company.

Straw man. He never said you cant do whatever business model you want, he 
simply said the "software is a product" business model is a valid one.

That some companies do well with "software as a service" doesnt mean we 
should force all companies to be like that. Or that we should rigidly 
confine our idea of what software is in such a way.


> Another example would be music artists which distribute their music
> freely online and yet do get paid for their hard work - the more people
> listen to their music online the more will want to come to a live
> performance [and pay for the ticket]. many artists already realized
> this. They do not need the record companies to be successful. on the
> contrary, the more they give for free, the more fans they have and the
> more they earn.

>From what I've read the majority of bands / artists who are actualy doing 
well with such models are ones who have already climbed up music industry 
ladder and were already world famous before going independant..


> When I wanted to buy a book about Java I went and bought "Thinking in
> Java" which the author publishes a free online version of on his site.
> I did download and read the online version and that convinced me it to
> pay for the paper version. Not only that but I also recommend this book
> and other books by the author, Bruce Eckel, to all my friends.

If that's his choice of business model good for him. If he makes a living 
that way great.

But if it isnt he shouldnt be forced to adopt that business model by people 
like you.

Dont get me wrong, i like such ways of doing things, i like free software, 
and such try before buy busniess models. But i dont think I have a right to 
it. I dont have the right to force you to do business in a way that suits 
me.


> One last thing: history teaches us that once the freedom of information
> is lost all the other rights will soon follow. happened numerous times
> all over the world. we all know that when someone burns books the next
> thing he'll burn will be people.

You're very confused. Freedom of information is about cencorship, government 
control of information, and about such information being *freely 
accessible*.

It's not about information being free as in free beer.

And again i find your analogy with book burning somewhat crass. The 
situation we are talking about here is nothing like that. No-one is trying 
to erase certain ideas / artistic works from history. We are in fact trying 
to do the exact oposite. We are trying to create an enviroment where ideas 
and artist works flourish.