Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Dark RevenantX on October 29, 2012, 01:42:01 pm
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On Monday, the US Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that pits a major textbook publisher against Supap Kirtsaeng, a student-entrepreneur who built a small business importing and selling textbooks.
Like many Supreme Court cases, though, there's more than meets the eye. It's not merely a question of whether the Thai-born Kirtsaeng will have to cough up his profits as a copyright infringer; the case is a long-awaited rematch between content companies seeking to knock out the "first sale" doctrine on goods made abroad (not to mention their many opponents). That makes Wiley v. Kirtsaeng the highest-stakes intellectual property case of the year, if not the decade. It's not an exaggeration to say the outcome could affect the very notion of property ownership in the United States. Since most consumer electronics are manufactured outside the US and include copyrighted software in it, a loss for Kirtsaeng would mean copyright owners could tax, or even shut down, resales of everything from books to DVDs to cellphones.
"First sale" is the rule that allows owners to resell, lend out, or give away copyrighted goods without interference. Along with fair use, it's the most important limitation on copyright. So Kirtsaeng's cause has drawn a wide array of allies to his side. These include the biggest online marketplaces like eBay, brick-and-mortar music and game retailers, and Goodwill—all concerned they may lose their right to freely sell used goods. Even libraries are concerned their right to lend out books bought abroad could be inhibited.
John Wiley and Sons, the textbook publisher suing Kirtsaeng, has its share of backers as well, including the movie and music industries, software companies, and other book publishers. Those companies argue differential pricing schemes are vital to their success, and should be enforced by US courts. Nearly 30 amicus briefs have been filed in all.
Supporters of Kirtsaeng are mobilized, following an alarming—but not precedential—loss in an earlier case, Omega v. Costco. On a call with reporters this week, librarians and lawyers for pro-Kirtsaeng companies painted a stark picture of what might happen should he lose the case. If the appellate court ruling against Kirtsaeng is allowed to stand, they suggest copyright owners could start to chip away at the basic idea of "you bought it, you own it."
"This case is an attempt by some brands and manufacturers to manipulate copyright law, to control the distribution and pricing of legitimate, authentic goods," said eBay's top policy lawyer, Hillary Brill. "When an American purchases an authentic item, he shouldn't have to ask permission from the manufacturer to do with it what he wants."
Without "first sale" doctrine in place, content companies would be allowed to control use of their goods forever. They could withhold permission for resale and possibly even library lending—or they could allow it, but only for an extra fee. It would have the wild effect of actually encouraging copyrighted goods to be manufactured offshore, since that would lead to much further-reaching powers.
"When we purchase something, we assume it's ours," said Overstock.com general counsel Mark Griffin. "What is proposed by [the content companies] is that we change the fundamental notion of ownership rights."
Book publishers and their content-industry allies say those concerns are overblown. No assault on libraries and garage sales is forthcoming, they argue. These organizations simply have a right to set different prices abroad, without being undermined in the US by importation they say is illegal.
As an Engineering student, I do not look forward to having to pay even more for books than I do now. But that's probably the least of my worries.
I don't see how, with the current interpretation of the case, Wiley could win. Property ownership and the ability to sell what you own is a basic assumption (it's just short of a universal right), and removing that ability, even in a limited scope, is something I doubt the Supreme Court would uphold.
edit for link: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/a-supreme-court-clash-could-change-what-ownership-means/
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Book publishers and their content-industry allies say those concerns are overblown. No assault on libraries and garage sales is forthcoming, they argue. These organizations simply have a right to set different prices abroad, without being undermined in the US by importation they say is illegal.
If it were a lesser court decision, I might go along with their "no slippery slope" claim, but the fact that it made it to the Supreme Court means it's no longer about the specific case of "Wiley vs. Kirsaeng", it's about "first sale".
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it's a crapshoot. i no longer have an intrinsic expectation of the supreme court to uphold true justice. good luck to him in the fight though.
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So... Since the basic principle of our capitalist economy is: Work -> Get money for the goods you produce -> Use the money to buy other people's work -> Repeat... What would happen if Americans were to gather together and start suing those companies en masse, claiming that the money they paid for those goods wasn't PAID, but actually LICENSED, and so they should have a say in that money's use. So, for example, Americans could decide that THEIR money shouldn't be used to pay offshore workers since, well, they obviously prefer it to remain in THEIR economical system.
I guess those big companies would have some nasty things to say about that, uh. :lol:
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That doesn't make any sense, and would be laughed out of court as quickly, or even more quickly than any of these first sale suits because it's entirely different. Even though I don't support Wiley in this case, it's pretty damned obvious what's a serious issue and what's deliberately satirizing it.
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That doesn't make any sense, and would be laughed out of court as quickly, or even more quickly than any of these first sale suits because it's entirely different. Even though I don't support Wiley in this case, it's pretty damned obvious what's a serious issue and what's deliberately satirizing it.
Humor, this is Scotty. Scotty, this is humor.
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We've seen enough moronic ideas presented here now that we can't tell when people are joking or being completely serious anymore. See: Poe's Law.
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We've seen enough moronic ideas presented here now that we can't tell when people are joking or being completely serious anymore. See: Poe's Law.
Oh, c'mon! He admitted himself that it was obvious that I was satirizing this whole ridiculous situation.
You know what, on a second thought, you're right. My bad. I'll add a laughing emoticon to that post so we can all move forward with the actual discussion.
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They are just making pirates look like the saviours of the universe.
And gaining huge numbers. Specially amongst the younger. Good luck with that.
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Yay! Pirate party ftw!
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Pirates++;
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They are just making pirates look like the saviours of the universe.
This has very little to do with piracy.
Well not unless you consider selling your Honda second hand as piracy.
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Well, considering the industry that's taken it to the Supreme Court (textbooks) is one branch of "Big Copyright", and the people who generally say "**** you" to Big Copyright are pirates and Pirates... it's relevant enough. Especially considering what that industry itself has contributed to the conversation.
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That's nonsense though. It's like saying Apple vs Samsung is about piracy cause Apple own iTunes and don't like piracy.
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Actually, better argument:
This is a case of publishers vs. people underselling them for an identical product.
Piracy is a case of publishers vs. people underselling them for an identical product. Or more often, giving it away for free.
In b4 "Herp derp, outrageous oversimplification"
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The key difference here, however, is that the people underselling the product actually bought the product first. That is a very important distinction.
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I said underselling, not underbuying :P The original uploaders bought it.
Also, people buying games after they pirated them, or pirating them to bypass DRM in a game that they bought... that's a thing.
I say "games" because that's what comes to mind, IDGAF about music/movies/tv/books (do people pirate books?)
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Yes but it's nothing to do with this topic. Even if it is a similar issue it's not the same one. Can you imagine Ebay getting involved in a case about piracy? Goodwill charities?
This isn't the same thing by a very, very long distance. Piracy always involves someone who had no right to the product. This is not about that.
And when you try to drag piracy into the issue you actually do a favour to Big Copyright as you call them. Because you help them cloud the issue without them even having to get their hands dirty.
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Oh, I think I see it now... you don't think this case has to do with intellectual property? Edit: nvm I have no idea what's going on in kara's head.
The whole reason the "let's get rid of first sale" idea sounds so absurd is because we're missing their side of the picture. They're trying to force people to buy directly from the publisher. "First sale" is just collateral damage.
Edit: They're trying to make the argument that the person buying second-hand "had no right to the product".
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Oh, I think I see it now... you don't think this case has to do with intellectual property?
It doesn't. This case is about the right of the producer of a good to set arbitrary restrictions on where his product ends up; in this case, regional editions of textbooks. If first sale holds true, then the producer has no control over his products after the first sale; if it doesn't, a producer has the right to restrict the flow of his wares from one arbitrarily defined area to another.
The whole reason the "let's get rid of first sale" idea sounds so absurd is because we're missing their side of the picture. They're trying to force people to buy directly from the publisher. "First sale" is just collateral damage.
They're trying to force people to buy their products only via channels approved by the producer. This means cutting off a whole lot of the disintermediating factors the Internet provides; the customer's ability to make sound economic choices by comparing offers from different vendors would be impeded. The producers in this case want the right to create regional monopolies, essentially. And we all know how good monopolies are for business.
Edit: They're trying to make the argument that the person buying second-hand "had no right to the product".
The argument they're making is that the reseller had no right to resell the goods he obtained in one region to people in another, thereby severely undercutting the producer's set prices for the region.
In the end, I think this will hinge on the whole "Licensing vs Ownership" thing that the producers of copyrighted goods have been on about for some time now. If you only buy a single, non-transferable license to a product, then reselling it is definitely forbidden; if you actually buy a single instance of a product with a full transfer of ownership rights from the producer to you, then reselling is definitely OK.
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Edit: They're trying to make the argument that the person buying second-hand "had no right to the product".
Yes but that still has very little to do with piracy. In Piracy no one has any right to even use the product.
It's like you're assuming embezzlement and grand theft auto are the same crime because they both involve taking something that isn't yours. It's a ridiculously over-simplified argument and it does nothing to help.
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Bleh...
I dislike anti-piracy because it reeks of entitlement... to arbitrary pricing, greater than the value the market actually puts on the product... and the expectation that they can control what people do with information after they've given them access to it.
I dislike this because it reeks of entitlement... to arbitrary pricing, greater than the value the market actually puts on the product... and the expectation that they can control what people do with goods after they've given them the goods.
And because you all should think the same way I do, it's got plenty to do with piracy :P
Clearly I have given up on trying to win the argument through reason
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i kinda think this is more about hard merchandise and the right to resale than intellectual property rights because of the substantially higher cost of the medium than the content. compare the cost of an ebook with a printed copy for example.
the publisher is clearly screwing the customer by gouging one group of people based on where they live, and practically giving it away to another group of people based on where they live. though you might say that the first world markets makes the less lucrative 3rd world markets possible. the reseller is only turning a profit from the publisher's asshattery. so the publisher is guilty for creating the re-import market in the first place by creating a large price differential. they could easily produce lower quality domestic copies similar to those sold overseas for the poor. like sell the low end copies at community colleges ant tech schools, while selling the high end copies to university students, you can actually broaden your market in this way. its like how some people prefer hard cover books despite the cost, while peasants can get by with paperbacks.
if the the publisher is creating ways for other people to make money then perhaps they need to rethink their marketing strategy to make such exploits impossible or at least much less lucrative. it would likely cost less than paying their legal department and throwing money at politicians to get the law changed and might actually increase their profits.
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I think this is yet another example of a company trying desperately to turn the clock back to an era before the Internet came in and kicked over their sand castles. Not by doing the sensible thing of trying to alter their business model to suit the needs of a changed world, but rather by crying about it in front of a judge in the hopes that he'll put the bad genie back into the bottle.
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if the the publisher is creating ways for other people to make money then perhaps they need to rethink their marketing strategy to make such exploits impossible or at least much less lucrative. it would likely cost less than paying their legal department and throwing money at politicians to get the law changed and might actually increase their profits.
The reseller making money doesn't hurt the publisher.
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If it were possible to fabricate arbitrary amount of copies from a single physical product and re-distribute them with no charge, THEN it would have analogies to piracy.*
As it is, however, it's simply the physical product changing ownership.
As far as I'm concerned, there should be no limitations to what people can do with what they own when they don't need it any more. Even if the product is a license for use of software, it should be transferable to another person as long as the original buyer no longer uses the product (since they have sold their license).
If the makers of these goods want them to not be re-sold, they should either:
-make sure that either their value to the original buyer doesn't diminish with time, OR
-make sure that people would prefer a new copy rather than used one.
To me it sounds like they're making the textbooks in too high print and pressing quality, making the textbooks last longer than their probable time of use is. The problem could be solved by making the text books so flimsy and crappy that they simply cannot be used after some pre-determined time. Of course, the first buyer should be aware of this before buying the book in the first place, but other than that I don't see any obvious legal requirement for books to be so long-lasting that they CAN be traded forward.
I can think of several solutions that could be used to make the value and usefulness of the book fall sharply after some time. They could make the press quality so flimsy that the book simply falls apart after being handled for some years.
They could use paper treated with acidic chemicals (like what most newspapers are printed on) that gets progressively yellower, more fragile, and eventually crumbles to dust when handled after prolonged time.
They could use ink that reacts with light and fades away (like the ink they use on most receipts). Or they could just make its composition time-sensitive - I'm sure there are chemicals that could remain stable for some years, then basically decompose and the ink's pigment could become faded.
Apart from this being a really crap thing to do, if they really wanted to do this I don't see why they couldn't. Unless there's some common law or legislation that dictates how long a product must remain useful...
If they really try to say you can't freely re-sell a thing you own, they're full of ****.
The undercutting line is just bull****. In free market economy, people can freely choose the price they ask for a product, even if that means they're not really making a profit from it. The goal of people that are re-selling their textbooks is to cut their losses and maximize the profit they can recover from their investment on them. Obviously, assuming they learned from the book means the investment is going to pay off at some point in the future when they get to apply those skills and knowledge in their field of work, but even so re-selling the book is economically more profitable than not re-selling them.
And no one would buy used goods at the price of originals.
As for an enterprise working by facilitating sales of used goods en masse, or a company buying used goods from people and then re-selling them at slightly higher price (but still less than the price of new goods), I can't see anything wrong with it. If people are willing to use a middleman used goods dealership agency to exchange some potential economical gains for convenience, it's between them and the used goods dealership agency.
The original manufacturer of goods shouldn't really have a say how their goods are used after they relinquish their ownership on them. Copying or re-fabrication (intellectual property, copyright or patent infringement) is not the same as transferring ownership of a product in a private transaction.
There are analogies to how the media industry is going after freedom of information to safeguard their profits instead of adapting to the changing world. However, while copyright as an idea is essentially just and right (although I do not approve of the way media industry is approaching the issue), this trade limitation thing is in no way defensible in a free market economy without being a massive hypocritical hoax.
What this is really about is trying to limit freedom of personal trading rights, when it threatens the profits of original manufacturers. Instead of allowing them to dictate legislation to preserve their profits, the Supreme Court should just tell them that they need to change their business model to adapt to the situation. I have, in this post, listed a few ways they could potentially do this.
Ugh I have spoken.
*When private citizens gain the ability to fabricate complicated statues, parts, machinery, even electronics, things will get really hairy really fast.
For example let's say you have machinery that can scan a product, refabricate identically functional parts, and you could then assemble a new version of original product.
So you buy one physical copy of some product - let's say a design item, glass dishes or table utensils, or perhaps a rare collector item, decorational or functional. This kind of thing would be relatively easy to refabricate as long as you had the raw materials - and many materials are cheap as **** and you can buy them quite easily. Then it's just a matter of scanning the product and waiting for a new one to pop out of refabricator.
Then you can hand out copies of it to your friends or family, as gifts or just because you can.
Theoretically it doesn't need to be limited to single-part items either - you could just as well refabricate much more complex things part by part and then re-assemble them... or, in the distant future, simply let the machine assemble a fully functioning copy of the original. Of course I expect identifiers to appear on electronic hardware that make it impossible to use copies or "children" of one product at the same time... but mechanical devices would work just fine!
Hell, with enough arbitrary refabrication capacity you could download a car and print it!
(http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/9203/downloadacar.png)
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Bleh...
I dislike anti-piracy because it reeks of entitlement... to arbitrary pricing, greater than the value the market actually puts on the product... and the expectation that they can control what people do with information after they've given them access to it.
I dislike this because it reeks of entitlement... to arbitrary pricing, greater than the value the market actually puts on the product... and the expectation that they can control what people do with goods after they've given them the goods.
And because you all should think the same way I do, it's got plenty to do with piracy :P
Clearly I have given up on trying to win the argument through reason
Can we have a like button?
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If some random guy can make a profit buying a book overseas and then selling it, a big publisher like Wiley can surely do better. If they really want to solve this matter as true capitalists, they would flood the market with cheaper books they would have bought at lower prices due to their scale advantages. They would make some honest money in the process too.
Instead they want to get paid whatever they feel like. Well... they shouldn't.
And this is why I love and hate capitalism. If everyone played by the rules it should work fine, but everyone is to busy bypassing the system.
Hell, with enough arbitrary refabrication capacity you could download a car and print it!
I like your example, but I'm sure that if I could print a car, Volkswagen could do it too and at a lower price. Big scale industrial production IS most cost-effective for most products. That allows them to offer you the same thing you could do at a lower cost and make a benefit out of it.
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Herra, while your post is a little in the TL;DR category for me right now, the image at the end is absolutely hilarious.
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*When private citizens gain the ability to fabricate complicated statues, parts, machinery, even electronics, things will get really hairy really fast.
For example let's say you have machinery that can scan a product, refabricate identically functional parts, and you could then assemble a new version of original product.
So you buy one physical copy of some product - let's say a design item, glass dishes or table utensils, or perhaps a rare collector item, decorational or functional. This kind of thing would be relatively easy to refabricate as long as you had the raw materials - and many materials are cheap as **** and you can buy them quite easily. Then it's just a matter of scanning the product and waiting for a new one to pop out of refabricator.
Then you can hand out copies of it to your friends or family, as gifts or just because you can.
Theoretically it doesn't need to be limited to single-part items either - you could just as well refabricate much more complex things part by part and then re-assemble them... or, in the distant future, simply let the machine assemble a fully functioning copy of the original. Of course I expect identifiers to appear on electronic hardware that make it impossible to use copies or "children" of one product at the same time... but mechanical devices would work just fine!
Hell, with enough arbitrary refabrication capacity you could download a car and print it!
-snip-
this is already happening to a degree. home fabrication is booming right now. 3d printers, laser cutters and other cnc machines (like mills, lathes, and laser sintering machines that 3d print in metal) are coming down in price drastically because of the open source hardware movement. some people are producing metal castings based on 3d printed positive molds. home pcb manufacture is also booming. some people have even taken to making their own semiconductors (and before now you needed a multi-billion dollar fab to do that). not that you need them, you could just buy an fpga for a few bucks and roll your own cpu with it. home fabrication of open source cars is sure to follow.
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I always loved that media campaign by the MPAA. Who the **** wouldn't download a copy of a car if there was a physical way to do so? :D
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Love that.
Just need a feeew more years of 3D printing tech evolution... come ooooon
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*When private citizens gain the ability to fabricate complicated statues, parts, machinery, even electronics, things will get really hairy really fast.
For example let's say you have machinery that can scan a product, refabricate identically functional parts, and you could then assemble a new version of original product.
So you buy one physical copy of some product - let's say a design item, glass dishes or table utensils, or perhaps a rare collector item, decorational or functional. This kind of thing would be relatively easy to refabricate as long as you had the raw materials - and many materials are cheap as **** and you can buy them quite easily. Then it's just a matter of scanning the product and waiting for a new one to pop out of refabricator.
Then you can hand out copies of it to your friends or family, as gifts or just because you can.
Theoretically it doesn't need to be limited to single-part items either - you could just as well refabricate much more complex things part by part and then re-assemble them... or, in the distant future, simply let the machine assemble a fully functioning copy of the original. Of course I expect identifiers to appear on electronic hardware that make it impossible to use copies or "children" of one product at the same time... but mechanical devices would work just fine!
Hell, with enough arbitrary refabrication capacity you could download a car and print it!
-snip-
this is already happening to a degree. home fabrication is booming right now. 3d printers, laser cutters and other cnc machines (like mills, lathes, and laser sintering machines that 3d print in metal) are coming down in price drastically because of the open source hardware movement. some people are producing metal castings based on 3d printed positive molds. home pcb manufacture is also booming. some people have even taken to making their own semiconductors (and before now you needed a multi-billion dollar fab to do that). not that you need them, you could just buy an fpga for a few bucks and roll your own cpu with it. home fabrication of open source cars is sure to follow.
Isn't that what is called post-scarcity economy? The thing that would end up killing capitalism?
And isn't it the problem that without the research big companies usually do then it wouldn't be possible to have anything to copy? And how could that be solved?
Am I asking too much questions? :p
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Communism is inevitable comrades! :P
I for one welcome the post-scarcity economy.
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Isn't that what is called post-scarcity economy? The thing that would end up killing capitalism?
And isn't it the problem that without the research big companies usually do then it wouldn't be possible to have anything to copy? And how could that be solved?
Am I asking too much questions? :p
I think your second point is more often than not used as an argument against small, localized industry, which ranges from single entrepreneurs to various other small companies. I also think it's just as much a valid argument as it is an invalid argument. Greater freedom to access both information and education, with expanding access to manufacturing capacity should ideally bring more competition, development, and diversity into the market rather than the opposite. So while the corporations have the capital to push research along, and the infrastructure to bring the fruits of that research into market, individuals who now have similar prowess due to new technology have the potential to, in the future, turn the corporate model on its head. That is, if the world can somehow become a more free and just place.
And this case of finding a niche to make money in the market is a great example (as E already noted) of surpressing alternate forms of commerce. I'm not sure of what else to tack onto that.
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its not that open source hardware looks to give away free gadgets to everyone. you still have to pay for the materials, though the designs are totally free and made available to anyone who wants them, and you are allowed to derive other things from it and sell those. so its not quite the same as free open source software, where supply is near infinite due to cheap data transfer. problems like sourcing parts, assembly and manufacture all require money to solve, and so your still producing and selling goods. you just aren't hiding any trade secrets from your competition. someone else can turn around and create a competing product without the duplicated effort of parallel r&d. businesses are therefore liberated from needing to hold on to what they have and success instead hinges on innovation.
there are industries that revolve around huge r&d budgets. like aerospace, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, energy, etc. and those will not be easily replaced by open source equivalents, though society in general would benefit greatly if they were. established industries that aren't really dependent on cutting edge technologies on the other hand will be the first to be replaced by the open source production model. assuming said model turns out to be more successful than the established model.
of course this is kind of on a tangent away from the original topic. if the company's business model fails to work as a result to changes in society, then its the business's responsibility to look at what they are doing wrong and fix it. its not the government's job make free enterprise more free to the company with the most money.
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its not that open source hardware looks to give away free gadgets to everyone. you still have to pay for the materials, though the designs are totally free and made available to anyone who wants them, and you are allowed to derive other things from it and sell those. so its not quite the same as free open source software, where supply is near infinite due to cheap data transfer.
Yes, but if those materials become so cheap it's laughable, then the analogy holds true.
Here I am wondering if the workers who extract and process those basic materials would then unionize and become the new ruling elite of the world. [/delusional, uninformed rambling]
Anyway, is any actual economist going to jump on the discussion at this point and enlighten us? I'm pretty sure it's not really as simple as I think.
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A fair number of resource extractors are already unionized. The petroleum and mining sectors are primarily operated by unionized labour in developed nations.
Resources can't become all that cheap - virtually all resources are in finite supply and the costs of getting to the harder-to-get-at stuff increase exponentially rather than in linear fashion, which is why you often only see major novel exploration and extraction techniques when prices rise as a result of speculation on high demand / limited supply.
Petroleum and precious metals are two excellent examples of this.
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its not that open source hardware looks to give away free gadgets to everyone. you still have to pay for the materials, though the designs are totally free and made available to anyone who wants them, and you are allowed to derive other things from it and sell those. so its not quite the same as free open source software, where supply is near infinite due to cheap data transfer.
Yes, but if those materials become so cheap it's laughable, then the analogy holds true.
Here I am wondering if the workers who extract and process those basic materials would then unionize and become the new ruling elite of the world. [/delusional, uninformed rambling]
Anyway, is any actual economist going to jump on the discussion at this point and enlighten us? I'm pretty sure it's not really as simple as I think.
even with foss, supply is technically not infinite, because things like web hosting and throughput are not free, neither is hosting the software or the codebase, etc. i figure it would cost me $4 to download a linux iso, based on what my internet connection costs, what my monthly throughput allotment is and the size of the disc image, and infinitesimal costs of power for running the computer/router/etc that allowed me to complete the download. a lot of people have unlimited transfer and so these costs are significantly lower. plus thats only my cost for using it, the people who rolled that distro had additional costs associated with it, hosting and so on. thats why i refer to intellectual property as a near infinite supply, because if you look at all the numbers, duplication of data is technically not 100% free.
now with hardware the costs are not so infinitesimal. i found that i can order almost any kind of electronics part from china usually for about a $1, often for passive components you get more than one for $1. most general ics its usually a buck each with some exceptions. high end parts are up from there. getting parts from a more reputable supplier is slightly more expensive. i found a place on ebay that sells pcb material dual sided 8x10" for about $5 a sheet. a package of transfer paper cost me $3. my etching supplies cost me about $10 (im not really using professional grade chemicals, im using stuff you can find at a grocery store). so yea, the costs add up. im also only doing through hole construction. if i wanted to use surface mount construction i would need more expensive soldering tools, possibly a reflow oven, better chemicals (probibly using a photo-resist method instead of a toner transfer method, adding developer, tinning agents and solder paste to my inventory), and other things like solder masks and silkscreening supplies. the costs add up. unit price goes down when you build a batch of things.
other oshw areas include 3d printing, laser cutting, and other cnc machines are not cheap. the former needs filament which is right now $50/kg, laser and other cnc machines require stock materials, and all require maintenance, cleaning, replacement parts, tooling, etc. thing is when you buy open source hardware your essentially paying for the cost of the materials and production. where as if you buy a closed source piece of hardware, there are often artificial costs added to the actual production cost ("licensing fees"). oshw merely cuts out the artificial costs.
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Resources can't become all that cheap - virtually all resources are in finite supply and the costs of getting to the harder-to-get-at stuff increase exponentially rather than in linear fashion, which is why you often only see major novel exploration and extraction techniques when prices rise as a result of speculation on high demand / limited supply.
At some point it'll probably wind up being cost-effective to go back to all our old landfills and dig up all the useful reusable materials that are just lying there.
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its not that open source hardware looks to give away free gadgets to everyone.
Combine open source hardware with a (very) good 3d printer though and you can do anything on your own.
Want a graphics card? Print it and install it. Done. And so on.
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I think it will take some time before 3D printers can actually print stuff as complex as a graphics card. Circuit boards, sure, no problem, but actual chips?
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I was not speaking tomorrow. More like 30 years or 40 years from now, since the conversation was getting pretty much abstract.
Of course, in 40 years time, "graphics card" will be such an outdated concept. However, I believe it could be possible that in 2050 people just print their own computers if they need one, despite the fact that they may not be as fast or powerful as the latest nvidia chips they'll have that day, running in half-an-atom sized transistors. Or smth.
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despite the fact that they may not be as fast or powerful as the latest nvidia chips they'll have that day, running in half-an-atom sized transistors. Or smth.
Yeah... no. I think it'll be a bit longer than "30 or 40 years" before we start manipulating subatomic particles like we do electricity.
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As someone pointed out on the previous page, anything that the consumer can manufacture can be manufactured more cheaply in bulk; whilst blatant profiteering would become a lot less effective (you can't easily overprice something when people can print it themselves for less money) it would not mean the end of industrial manufacturing.
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they have already been some open source graphics cards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Graphics_Project), from the specs they suck though. mostly built around low end fpgas.
you still need a multibillion dollar fab to produce chips that can compete on the semiconductor market. open source hardware is still pretty much confined to using off the shelf chips, most of which are not open source, though many have open specs, and open source drivers and the like, but they are not exactly going to share the details of their manufacturing process with you, though some people have cracked transistor fabrication (http://hackaday.com/2010/05/13/transistor-fabrication-so-simple-a-child-can-do-it/) which is a good start.
fpgas are the promising tech right now. intel is supposedly turning out fpgas for several companies with a 22nm process. fpgas are nice because you can configure it as whatever kind of processor you can think of. some can even be configured as high performance chips like gpus. the open source hardware community is quite fond of them, as it can turn anyone with a vhdl manual into a chip architecture designer, without the trouble of needing a fab to realize your designs. ive been wanting a dev board for some time now, but they are a tad pricy.
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Some of you are talking like we're going to be able to "print" just about any physical object at home. There are still the matters of capital cost for equipment (since these printers will be similar to very complicated CNC machines, especially if they're multipurpose) and ongoing costs of materials. Refined elemental ores and minerals aren't cheap, and are yet very necessary for a number of consumer electronics, to name just one thing. Even specialty plastics and other synthetic materials can be relatively expensive if you're not manufacturing or ordering them in large bulk quantities.
I can see 3D printers in niche applications, but it's going to be pretty damn difficult for home setups to replicate the cost efficiency of what can be done on an industrial scale.
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I'm going to just go ahead and spit this out here.
3D Printers are NOT a substitute for traditional machining processes.
That's right, even though 3D printers are pretty cool in the fact that you can construct almost anything by using an additive process, it has the following limitations:
1. It's slow. If your opting to make a mass number (hundreds/thousands/etc) of these per week, a 3D printer is not going to cut it.
2. It's imprecise. This is potentially fixable by improving the quality of the positioning servos and giving the printer head a nozzle that could adjust its diameter on the fly. But, keep in mind that the more precise the nozzle is the slower it will go. A CNC machine could zip and cut a piece in perhaps half the time of a printer and still have high precision.
3D printers should be geared more towards the prototyping phase of manufacturing and not replace the manufacturing process for most parts.
Now, concerning open hardware and resale, I do not see 3D printers as a major threat to patent holders if the commercial market is not being a derphard and actually has reasonable prices. The only real thing patents do now-days is prevent the mass-production and sale of your intellectual property.
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Some of you are talking like we're going to be able to "print" just about any physical object at home. There are still the matters of capital cost for equipment (since these printers will be similar to very complicated CNC machines, especially if they're multipurpose) and ongoing costs of materials. Refined elemental ores and minerals aren't cheap, and are yet very necessary for a number of consumer electronics, to name just one thing. Even specialty plastics and other synthetic materials can be relatively expensive if you're not manufacturing or ordering them in large bulk quantities.
I can see 3D printers in niche applications, but it's going to be pretty damn difficult for home setups to replicate the cost efficiency of what can be done on an industrial scale.
Freedom rings! Freedom rings!
Look, home printers allow you to print what goddamn thing you want to. Yeah, centralized "printers" are more efficient than home printers, but I don't see people printing their letters and so on in a local factory. Also, what you say is entirely true in medium-term future. And I'd say, utterly untrue in long-term future (30 years +).
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But the thing is that people write their own letters. They do not design their own CPUs or toasters. Whilst personalised manufacturing would certainly be very useful, it's still going to be less efficient than centralised, specialised manufacturing for the foreseeable future. It's also not really comparable to the current state of digital distribution so I'm not sure why the discussion really turned this way?
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But the thing is that people write their own letters. They do not design their own CPUs or toasters. Whilst personalised manufacturing would certainly be very useful, it's still going to be less efficient than centralised, specialised manufacturing for the foreseeable future. It's also not really comparable to the current state of digital distribution so I'm not sure why the discussion really turned this way?
Why can't people design their toasters? And if by "less efficient" you mean the difference between it costing 10 bucks and 15 bucks, people might just choose their own personalized version. Idk too, I'm brainstorming as well. Considering everything that has been said, I also think that printing CPUs might be one of the last things people will do with their 3d printers in the future.
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Dunno about you but I'm perfectly happy to delegate the design of my toaster and CPU to someone who has years of theoretical and practical expertise rather than wasting time and resources on doing it myself and making something that will set fire to my toast or my computer. Also I think you're understating the margin between a bespoke and mass-produced thing; economy of scale is a pretty basic property.
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So, how is the actual lawsuit going? You know, the one this discussion is about.
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Cursory attempts to find recent news don't reveal anything.
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Dunno about you but I'm perfectly happy to delegate the design of my toaster and CPU to someone who has years of theoretical and practical expertise rather than wasting time and resources on doing it myself and making something that will set fire to my toast or my computer. Also I think you're understating the margin between a bespoke and mass-produced thing; economy of scale is a pretty basic property.
Think FOSS. Think Modding communitites. Think basic modelling software aided by AIs.
Or, in a reversed perspective, think how a 1950s person would say about printing home letters by yourself "what, ou'd have your own printer? And you'd write your own letter in digital form? Ah! The skill you must have as a programmer just isn't worth the effort!"
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Considering they already had typewriters in the 50s I'm guessing the idea of a printer would go down pretty easily with them. And even in open-source and modding communities the people designing the 'product' are only a small fraction of the ones using it; very few people would actually want a custom design of toaster, and using your own CPU architecture is actually clinically recognised as extreme masochism.
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Yeah, substitute it for something a kid is now able to do with computers that would sound magical for people in the fifties.
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I'm not saying it wouldn't be used by hobbyists or others, or that there's no unforeseen but incredibly useful application as happened with computers. But as far as supplanting mass production of everyday objects? I think that's as silly as those who saw robots being used for domestic chores.
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Fair enough.
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http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57547748-1/nasa-3d-printing-parts-for-its-next-rocket-headed-for-mars/?part=rss&subj=cnet&tag=title&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cnet%2FNnTv+%28CNET+River+RSS%29
Related to the current topic of 3D printing.
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The Supreme Court has just punched regional price-fixing in the face:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/03/scotus-first-sale-decision/
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And now to wait for 'the industry' to do some crazy bull**** with licensing.
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...Did we mull the announcement over that Wiley lost the case due to April Fools?
I thought this would be pretty big news.
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while i'm happy that guy won and gets to keep his business, and corporations have lost a tiny bit of their power to abuse consumers, in the end i don't think it makes a difference in the big picture. except an increase in the payroll for copyright lobbyists.
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It like, sets precedent or something.
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so we got rid of a bucket of ****, unfortunately we still live in the sewer.