DISQUS

Adam,

The survey was taken among DVR owners, so of course it doesn't follow that "most people" think DVRs are indispensable. You're sampling the exact subset of the population who would say that DVRs are awesome... they spent the money on the gadget, after all!

Cheers,

Eduardo ya contesto el argumento desde el punto de vista económico: actúa como un impuesto, y no hay razón para pensar que no lo transferirán directamente a los usuarios.

Y no estoy seguro como calculaste ese 0.5%, pero dado que vas a tener que desarrollar tecnología e implementar un sistema de vigilancia de contenido a gran escala, no estoy muy seguro que no sea "un tremendo dineral".

Saludos

Ignace:

"Los proveedores dirán que si pagan derechos de autor tendrían que subir los precios, lo cual es impresentable considerando que en Chile se paga aproximadamente el doble que en otras partes por un mismo tipo de acceso."

.muy impresentable será, pero es "Economía 101": si uno cree que el hipotético aumento de las tarifas para rellenar las arcas de la SCD no serán transferidas a los usuarios, es hora de hacerse ver. Por un profesor de economía, si se puede.

Saludos,

Oops. Meant Sydnor.

I guess if Snydor were to read a book praising Iranian food he will conclude the author supports Ahmajinedad's call for the destruction of Israel.

Hi Morgan,

I'm afraid I don't know the details of the IRS-PDF decision, but I'm happy to accept your version of what happens. Of course, Adobe had a very different attitude when licensing the PDF specs than Microsoft ever had with their formats (until forced by the standarization PR war), which actually made their case to the IOS and government much stronger. Speaking of chicken and eggs!

Also, although it is in Microsoft's benefit to portrait this 'war' in terms of giant corporations battling each other (which also seems to fit your narrative that it is all about 'the market'), there are other actors here with interest in having an open, high-quality standard. Your IRS-PDF example, therefore, is not as apt as HTML is: certainly there were commercial interests pushing 'standard' HTML to take away power from the IE-dominated world, but nobody would claim that there weren't many other non-commercial interests that wanted that too. So this narrative of 'IBM' vs. 'Microsoft' just doesn't work. ODF was *not* created by IBM (although yes, they participated in the process and still support it).

Finally, you seem to be confusing 'applications' with 'formats'. But part of the point of having an open format is that anybody can build *applications* and compete with features ("a better product"). This is what happened with HTML, and here we are looking at a happy competition in the browser market.

Except, of course, that it is impossible to exchange and store documents both within governments and in the exchange with citizens withouth a explicit or implicit "mandate".

If you want to put a editable document online for people to download and fill out, what should the government do to "not mandate standards"? Maybe put the documents in all existings formats?

The truth is governments needs to make a choice. It just happens that until recently Microsoft's formats were the (monopolic) default. Hardly the result of market forces.

Hi Tim,

I guess I misspoke before. I think that imperfections in both the political and financial systems (lack of adequate information, for example) allow for corruption, and that both need some oversight.

And it seems to me there are plenty of examples of companies acting in the financial system in an analogous way to special interests in the political system: when a company uses loopholes to avoid paying taxes, isn't cheating us all, the same way as if it had got a special piece of legislation out of its favorite congressperson?(legality put aside, of course).

Hi Tim,

I think you're very much right about characterizing the political process as the clash of special interestets. But on the other hand, the mechanics of that clash are extremely important.

The particular details of how those special interests are able to have their voices heard by politicians should matter a huge deal, even if there's no silver bullet that will be able to solve the problem permanently.

Same is true, it seems to me, with the financial system: there are enormous incentives to cheat (tax loopholes, fantasy accounting, etc.). We don't just say about those things that they are a systematic part of the market economy and that we shouldn't do anything about them. Instead, we understand we need to be vigilant and act when necessary to correct the problems.

Why should the political process be any different?

Your last paragraph is interesting because I think the reason why libertarians weren't there first is that many of them are, because of economic reasons, on the right, and a lot of the good stuff going on with the internet has an element of struggle against the commercialization of life online that is more of a progressive thing. That's why Benkler and Wu were there 'first', I think.

One of the reasons I like TLF is that you're not one of those libertarians who seem to focuses solely on the economic side of libertarian thought, and that you can see elements of your beliefs in sections of society, even when that takes you closer to the 'lefties'. But I think you're quite lonely in that place.

my 2c.

Amen, Brother.

The answer to your question is: it sucks. I like to believe I'm a good 'alien' and that I'm a contribute in positive way to the US research community. And the people who surround me certainly make me feel that way. But boy, there's nothing like being photographed and fingerprinted every time I go home to make me feel welcome.

This kind of measure, together with the new surveillance system for foreign students/researches that has been set up by the goverment (which is at least partially paid for by new fees on visa applications), is making a dent on the US's ability to recruit people from overseas.

Best Regards.

Jim,

Thanks for the explanation. Never heard that term before. I thought you meant 'expert' in a more academic setting, and tend to think myself of bloggers and the such as 'uber-consumers', but I see what you mean.

Cheers

Blocking port 25 is definitely a common practive, Tim. See, for example:

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/KB_/_Email_/_POP3/IMA...

Cheers.

"Expert agitation" as a market force? That's a new one in my book.

This is actually quite amazing, because there's very little question that the lack of copyright in cooking has not impaired innovation at all, and most likely the opposite. Same is true for other industries like fashion.

If copyright becomes the rule in the cooking world, Stallman is going to be quite upset because he sure likes the analogy between software development and cooking.

Cheers,

oops. erratum:

is that the apalling -> shows the appalling
to create article -> to create the article

Hi Tim,

Great article. Also (although kind of beside the point) is that going to the Britannica article (don't get me started with the printed version) is that the apalling lack of links to other relevant articles or even the references used to create article in the Britannica version makes the article way less useful and highlights that using metrics like the length by itself is overly simplistic.

All the wonderful linking in Wikipedia allows to see that Homer and the Flinstones are connected (as most things in life) by less than 6 degrees:

- The Home article links to an article on the Iliad
- Which links to an article on Troy, the 1994 movie starring Brad Pitt.
- Which links to Warner Bros. the distributor of the movie.
- And the article on Warner links to The Walt Disney Company, who owns ABC.
- And the ABC article has a link to a nice article on The Flinstones.

Yes, it turns out The Flinstones originally aired on ABC. I didn't know that until today. Thanks, Homer!

Tim:

The link to Matt's post is pointing to TLF.

(despite the above correction, your op-ed was excellent).

Cheers.

Mark,

The GPL does not restrict any user from using propietary software (including video drivers), and that won't change with v3. I think we can all agree on that. It doesn't matter much that Stallman calls propietary software anti-ethical or Ballmer calls linux a "cancer".

As for the GPL being a impediment to cooperation between propietary and open source developers, it is hardly cooperation if you take GPL code and put in some propietary piece of sofware. You seem to be missing the very basic point that the GPL-based development model is based on sharing of the code (this is Torvalds' very pragmatic stand on this). By the way, this works both ways: one could say that propietary companies are impeding cooperation by not allowing their developers to publish their work online.

Truth is, they are not compatible as development models. You can't have it both ways.

It's worth remembering that software patents and DRM were completely absent from the discussion when GPLv2, and that GPLv3 is simply trying to protect the same four freedoms in a new legal/technical environment.

Also, you're misrepresenting the Novell-MS deal. The only gave special privileges to SUsE developers, and even within that group, to commercial ones. That is to say, they only provide protection against patents to part of the community. GPLv3 simply goes after the idea that contributing to a FOSS project should put one kind of developer into legal dire straits when others are safe. Again, this is just securing the four freedoms.

Finally, while Linux developers might be reluctanct to move to GPLv3 (although read Torvalds' recent statements about it), the whole set of GNU software will, as many others, including Sun's Java, SAMBA, etc. This is not the first time people have tried to portray the FSF has anti-business and anti-IP. In fact, the whole FOSS movement rest on the fact that Copyright exists, and it can be enforced.

Cheers

Hi Robert,

Have you seen feevy (http://feevy.com)? It allows to put a blogroll (say, your link blog) on your wordpress sidebar. It will get updated automatically as you share more stuff.

Cheers,
Carlos

Cada loco con su tema, pero no me parece tan buena idea. Las pantallas de los iPods son bien fragiles y ademas, despues de un usarlo un resto, que pasa con todas las huellas digitales?

Supongo que van a empezar a vender iPaños para limpiar la pantalla :)