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Don Marti
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2 months ago
in “Limited and Temporary?” on The Technology Liberation Front
The record companies finally got smart enough to let Amazon create a reasonably useful competitor to Apple's iTUnes -- why won't the publishing companies and authors' organizations want to do the same? Amazon is the logical second source here, too.
1 reply
Tim Lee
They might be able to, although it would be a little bit tricky to replicate the conditions that led to the Google settlement. But the more important question is why should the AAAP and the Authors' Guild get to decide who gets to index the millions of orphan works that weren't written by their members? I don't think that's an outcome to celebrate even if it doesn't create a literal monopoly.
4 months ago
in Shame on Mozilla on The Technology Liberation Front
How about we pick a date and Microsoft stops lobbying for "pro-trust" policies such as software patents and anticircumvention, and the rest of the industry stops lobbying for antitrust at the same time.
If you're going to get state power out of software competition, get it all the way out.
If you're going to get state power out of software competition, get it all the way out.
1 reply
MikeRT
Yeah. One down, thousands of more companies to go on that front. Big victory!
How about we pick a date and Microsoft stops lobbying for "pro-trust" policies such as software patents and anticircumvention
Yeah. One down, thousands of more companies to go on that front. Big victory!
5 months ago
in Sun’s McNealy Wants to Rain on Proprietary Software on The Technology Liberation Front
Is it "regulatory darkness" if the GSA mandates buying computer hardware using a competitive bidding process instead of signing a one-sided rent-to-own deal with Rent-A-Center? It's very fuzzy thinking to consider the
terms under which a vendor offers access to a product as an attribute of the product.
terms under which a vendor offers access to a product as an attribute of the product.
1 reply
bradencox
Don, we're on the same page I think. A competitive bidding processes should be driven by costs and features, not rhetoric from lobbyists or executives from companies that stand to profit (either Rent-A-Center or Sun). That's why McNealy's advocacy for mandates--requirements on government itself--struck me as very wrong...why should the government a priori place limits on itself as to the type of license that accompanies a product?
5 months ago
in Closing the Book on COPA? on The Technology Liberation Front
Congress isn't using all the clubs in its bag here. The obvious one is to limit the copyright subsidy: if a copyright holder places an indecent work online, or gives permission to do so, the copyright in that work expires one year from the date it went up.
1 reply
Adam Thierer
Don... I don't care if you limit copyright protection to 1 second, that isn't going to seriously limit the creation and posting of sexual material online. That's especially the case considering how much home-grown pornographic content is being upload to the Net these days. Copyright terms might have some incidental relationship to "professional" pornography, but it doesn't really have much impact on most of the sexually-themed material online today.
5 months ago
in Ahem. on The Park Paradigm
There's going to be political pressure for a special "Too Big to Fail Tax." If a company is big enough that its failure would require a bailout, make it pay into a bailout fund in advance. That of course would give a competitive advantage to companies small enough to be allowed to fail.
1 reply
parkparadigm
I hope you are right - this is long past due. In many ways this is yet another variation of exploiting the commons. Unless society is successful in appropriately pricing common resources capitalism will not function optimally. ie The incentives will be such that a profit-maximizing firm will very often (if not always) end up degrading the ecosystem in which it operates, whether this ecosystem is the natural environment (pollution of the atmosphere or oceans etc.) or the financial ecosystem underlying our economy. Just as coal-burning generation plants should take into account the externalities of emitting CO2 in judging their true economic benefit, so to should mega-financial institutions have to pay for the fact that they must be underwritten by the public. If this were the case, I think the market would then naturally find the optimal size point for a financial institution rather than the exisisting one-way march to enormity.
But if you thought pricing GHG was tricky, pricing an implicit call on the public purse is almost certainly more difficult by an order of magnitude...certainly an interesting question to ponder.
But if you thought pricing GHG was tricky, pricing an implicit call on the public purse is almost certainly more difficult by an order of magnitude...certainly an interesting question to ponder.
5 months ago
in I can copy my MP3, why not my DVD? on The Technology Liberation Front
The record cartel didn't get it until Steve Jobs became "the most powerful man in music." In a market with DRM, thanks to DMCA-enforced lock-in, the only record company that matters is the one that controls the DRM.
The movie business will get it when some online entrepreneur becomes "the most powerful man in movies."
The movie business will get it when some online entrepreneur becomes "the most powerful man in movies."
1 reply
cordblomquist
The most powerful man in movies could be Reed Hastings, the founder and CEO of Netflix. They're making so many set-top box deals it's crazy, and they'll soon be one of the biggest ways to distribute movies.
6 months ago
in At Chamber of Commerce Event, IP Attachés Take Hard-Line Position On Overseas IP Enforcement on The Technology Liberation Front
How dare other countries fail to subsidize the industries in which we're net exporters to them! It's un-American!
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MikeRT
Why not just make a practice of seizing their goods and redistributing them Soviet-style to poor Americans when they come to port? Why should we have to honor their internationally-protected property rights when they won't respect our internationally-protected intellectual property rights?
It's downright un-American that we have to protect the foreigners' property rights when they don't give us a dime for our hard work!
It's downright un-American that we have to protect the foreigners' property rights when they don't give us a dime for our hard work!
6 months ago
in Crowdsourced accountability project: Progress, but we still need help from developers on The Technology Liberation Front
How are bridges necessarily "infrastructure" when the most famous pork project of the past 4 years was the "Bridge to Nowhere?" Just throwing money at transportation is pretty porky -- look at Japan.
1 reply
Jerry Brito
True. That's why folks with local knowledge can use this tool to put the project in context. It's not going to be a perfect tool, but it will hopefully leave us at the end of the day with more information than we have now. Right now we just have to take the mayors' word that all $73 billion are worth spending.
