But what about the authors’ IP rights?
IP Law, TechnologyBut what about the authors’ IP rights? Read Post »
The Petition to Stop Internet Censorship and the Great Firewall of America
IP Law, TechnologyThe looming threat of Internet censorship in the name of copyright is being opposed by an increasing number of groups, politicians, and companies. Ron Paul and others, for example, oppose it, although supporting the goal of stopping rogue websites and copyright “piracy.”1
As for companies, Dyn, for example, an Internet infrastructure/DNS/email delivery comany, has a strong statement opposing the horrible Stop Online Piracy Act/E-PARASITE (which emerged after the defeat of PROTECT-IP, aka “son of COICA” as it rose from the ashes of the defeated COICA) pending legislation that Big Media are trying to usher through Congress.2 Unfortunately, they also, like the politicians who are coming out against SOPA, water down their opposition by paying obeisance to the legitimacy of the statist protectionism known as copyright, by including the comment: “While online piracy is obviously bad …” However, the rest of Dyn’s statement is very good. A few excerpts are included below.
And as noted above, other groups and companies are coming out against SOPA, including the European Parliament and “more than 60 civil and human rights organizations”. Even the the Business Software Alliance, which represents IT companies including Microsoft, SAP, IBM, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, and which originally supported SOPA, has withdrawn its support for SOPA in its current form.3
Dyn urges people to sign this petition to oppose SOPA. It is a fairly strong opposition to the proposed legislation, even though it also implies there can be “reasonable copyright law.” There cannot be. Genuine rights cannot conflict; when statist positive law sets up rights that “conflict,” or laws that are “in tension” (such as the “tension” between antitrust and IP law), that’s a red flag that at least one of these laws is illegitimate. When people try to reconcile copyright with free speech, the result is inconsistency, and lack of a principled approach. Thus, you see people saying, sure, we need to stop piracy–but these laws go “too far”; we need to have a “reasonable” copyright regime, not one that results in “too much” censorship. Of course mirrors the content of the Constitution itself, which enshrines both copyright (which results in censorship) and free speech. Since most people are legal positivist and hold the fallacious view that the state is legitimate, they accept the Constitution as legitimate and try to square unsquarable things. The result is cognitive dissonance. (One could argue, by the way, that the First Amendment, ratified in 1791, overrules the Copyright clause, ratified along with the Constitution in 1789, since they are incompatible and later-ratified (legislation and) constitutional provisions implicitly overrule earlier (legislation and) constitutional provisions, just as the Twenty-first Amendment (1933) repealed the alcohol prohibition of the Eighteenth Amendment (1919).4
Here are some excerpts from Dyn’s statement: …
The Petition to Stop Internet Censorship and the Great Firewall of AmericaRead More »
SOPA Becoming An Election Issue: Challengers Highlighting Reps Who Want To Censor The Internet; Ron Paul Comes Out Against SOPA; Joins Other Elected Officials Saying No To The Great Firewall Of America. ↩
See Die, SOPA, Die. ↩
Business Software Alliance Withdraws Support for Stop Online Piracy Act; SOPA Needs Work to Address Innovation Considerations. ↩
For more on this argument, see my post Copyright Censorship versus Free Speech and Human Rights; Excessive Fines and the Eighth Amendment; also Judge Rules EA has “1st Amendment Right” to Depict College Football Players; Cato/Reason/CEO brief opposing medical diagnostic process patents as violating freedom of speech. ↩
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The Future of Books
Business, TechnologyBusinessWeek offers an interesting inside look to the bankruptcy of Borders. The perception that many people had was that this was a blow delivered by Amazon and ebooks, that there is no future to the bookstore. It might be true but the Borders case is not a good case in point, argues this article.
The piece points out that the store it is profiling here was actually very profitable, and increasingly so in the last few years. In fact, more than half the stores were in the black. The reason it closed was entirely due to the overall financial health of the company and a series of bad management decisions. It expanded insanely and wildly during the boom years, gobbling up ever more real estate as prices were soaring. When the bust hit, prices crashed and its investments in physical space suddenly looked stupid. This put massive pressure on the operation. It could no longer sustain its profitability expectations and its belief that the boom would last forever didn’t materialize. There were also a series of too-little-too-late decisions regarding digital media.
I find this account very persuasive. People without knowledge of the way business works always assume that any company that is going belly up was flopping, that people just weren’t buying the product. That is not usually the case. What it means is purely a matter of accounting: costs outran revenue and expected revenue. That can happen very easily with a few, small miscalculations. No matter how much success you are experiencing, it is the cost accounting that ultimately matters. This is true regardless of whether we are talking about a multinational with $5 billion in sales or the lemonade stand down the street. Every firm faces the same cost/revenue matrix.
Cost accounting rules, whether big or small, and this is true for everyone. This is the great egalitarianism of the market that is hardly ever noted or noticed by people who know nothing of business life.
To be sure, the book business must and will change, and dramatically. The old-line publishers will be buried. Laissez-Faire Books will be on the cutting edge. (Unpaid advertisement: please like Laissez-Faire Books FB page!)
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Latest Thoughts on iPad
Business, TechnologyEarly last year, I posted Thoughts on iPad from a Slightly Disappointed Fanboi. I later posted a followup, Followup on Thoughts on iPad from a Slightly Disappointed Fanboi. In these posts I explained how initially I was hoping to replace my (then large and heavy MacBook Pro 15″) laptop with the iPad, and how I tried to do so, and eventually gave up, and then eventually my use of the iPad declined.
Since getting an 11″ MacBook Air several months ago, I take it everywhere–it is almost as portable as the iPad, and so much more useful for me. Since I have an iPhone and they now allow tethering, I can connect the Air to the Internet via the iPhone at any time. Now days go by without me using the iPad. Basically I use it only for reading books now. I have even considered switching to a Kindle for book reading, since it is lighter, smaller, and has better battery life. But I still prefer the iPad for books, over the Kindle, since the iPad (a) has touch; (b) smooth scrolling etc.; (c) color; (d) greater flexibility for book reading (I can read nook, PDF, iBook, etc. formats on it); and (e) it has email and browsing and apps and games and music and movies that can be used too, on occasion.
But the iPhone has amazing resolution now, with retina display, and the same processor and iOS as the iPad, so it can do almost everything the iPad can do; the main limitation is the smaller screen makes movies and book reading a bit worse than on the iPad–but not much. So the iPhone is basically a mini-iPad, and having it plus the Air is really all I need, especially at it permits the Air to tether. (Actually, a larger iphone would be ideal and an almost perfect iPad replacement, for me.) So, sometimes I do not even take the iPad along with me on vacation and trips, since I have my Air and my iPhone, and it’s a pain to carry a third device (plus, when wife or kid are traveling with me, they usually have their iPad so I can borrow theirs for movies or NetFlix or books–or just use my iPhone or Air). However, when I can, I do like it on long plane trips for movies and books, though, again, I can use the iPhone or Air for movies, and the iPhone for books, in a pinch, though the battery life of the iPad on plane trips is a plus (except that nowadays more and more planes are adding power for a laptop); sometimes I take a Hypermac external battery for the Air for long plane trips, meaning I have so many gadgets in my travel backpack, that the iPad is just extra.
So, for me, the bottom line is: the advent of the MacBook Air 11″ has given me the full computing power I need, in a near-iPad size. I would love to be able to replace the Air with an iPad since it is more portable and has better battery, does not crash or slow down, and is better for movies and books (and is cheaper), but my own usage just does not permit it. I doubt it ever will because of the limitations of the iPad form factor. Even as the software and apps improve over time and product generations, it will just be too limiting for the kind of uses I make (lots of document editing, cutting and pasting, multitasking, and heavy use of keyboard). If I had a lighter use case, I think I could use the iPad as my main portable machine–people that do not do a lot of text input or editing can make the switch, I think.
For example, as I noted in my last post, I have some friends for whom the iPad has almost replaced their laptops/notebooks. One of them uses it almost exclusively in his business. He has it linked in with his company’s computer systems, and he can check status reports, emails, etc., all with his iPad. It’s great for him. For a specialized use like this that does not require a lot of document editing, I can see this replacing a laptop. Another is a lawyer who takes it on business trips and vacations instead of a laptop–he uses it to surf, watch media, check emails, and display/read documents. He never likes to do a lot of heavy document editing on the road, so it does no bug him not to have a laptop. For people who are light computer users–say, my parents–I could see the iPad being their only or main computer, too.
I think the iPad is gorgeous and well-designed, especially iPad 2. I suspect it will be the best pad-type device for some time. But for heavy text-inputers/editors like me, it’s becoming less necessary. I doubt I’ll upgrade to the iPad 2 or even iPad 3, as the first model is fine for me for the book reading and occasional video use I make of it. If anything, I could see switching to a dedicated book reader instead of iPad, if it was as good as the iPad on flexibility of book format and movies. But I don’t see anything like that coming for a while.
Latest Thoughts on iPad Read Post »
Subscribe to the Libertarian Standard on Your Kindle
Admin Updates, Anti-Statism, TechnologyI’m pleased to announce that you can now subscribe to the Libertarian Standard on your Kindle ereader.
Simply follow the link to the product page or click on the ad-button below, in the sidebar, or at the bottom of each post.
Amazon sets the price, which is currently at $0.99/month, with a 14-day free trial.
We get a cut of 30%, which will go toward operating costs: domain registration, hosting, and the like.
If you have a Kindle ereader — not an app, sorry, but the physical device (the service is limited to them for the time being) — consider the advantage of subscribing to the Libertarian Standard. Posts will be delivered to your Kindle wirelessly (when you’re connected) when they’re published on the site. You’ll be able to read our commentary and analysis, as well as the syndicated Mimi & Eunice comics, at your leisure on a lightweight, very portable device, in sunlight, away from a decent wireless or 3G/4G connection. Good for commutes, plane flights, camping trips, and similar situations in which you’re not consistently connected to the world via the internet and can’t reach our site — particularly if you don’t own a 3G/4G-connected tablet pc and don’t like reading on a computer screen or lugging around your heavy laptop.
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