[OT] - does IP exist?

[Jussi Jumppanen]

bobef Wrote:

> Big corporations will push whatever laws they need 
> to force you too pay. Actually you said it in your 
> post. These laws are for the authors to make money, 
> not for freedom.

The copyright law doesn't force anyone to do anything, 
but rather it asks people not take what does not belong 
to them.

> Bottom line 2: as Yigal Chripun said we need to pay 
> for the service not for physical thing because this 
> is not physical thing.

I doubt very much that someone who is not prepared to 
pay $40-00 for software if going to then pay $40-00 per 
hour (i.e. a cost of $40.00+) for some sort of service. 

> Instead of this pointless discussions why don't 
> we discuss a better business model that could 
> benefit us as developers?

These better business models are already starting 
to appear. They include:

  1) Reducing the developers wages to counter the lost 
        sales revenue

  2) Reducing the number of developers to counter the 
        lost sales revenue

  3) Offshoring the entire business to greatly reduce 
        the costs of development

Companies have also started to add in greater levels of 
protection into their software through the use of:

  1) Encryption and software activation

  2) Moving critical parts of the software from the client 
      to the server and selling access to the server.

But these types of changes require very high levels of 
infrastructure and substantial ongoing running cost, so 
only the bigger software companies will be in a position 
to implement them.

Companies that fail to move this way will just end up 
loosing money on their software and will eventually
go out of business. 

Strangely enough the reduced competition will probably
make life even better for the bigger software companies 
that do survive.