MPAA sues Btefnet!

[DudeMiester]

50's era technology, sure. Give me a decade or two and a lot of money. A crude performance car that focuses on mechanical systems in lieu of comfort, electronics, etc.? Sure. But today's cars require scores of highly trained engineers, untold millions in computers, prototyping equipment, the prototypes themselves, test facilities, etc., etc., etc., and still required years of development time.

Well since in this hypothetical situation we have replecators, getting such equipment is easy. Since everyone can get all the things they need to live well, getting together a team shouldn't be very hard, as none of them have anything better to do.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

I think you are out of touch with reality. Badly so. :?

 

[epicstruggle]

If your market is large enough, you don't have to earn much money from each of your customers. Or even from all of them.

If you can replicate anything, you can make money by making a nice design, and offering it on the internet. If enough people like it, and some donate some money to you, you can have a good income, as long as the market is large enough.

lol

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

If anyone can make whatever they want using replicators, no one would actually need any money, as everyone can have everything they ever need. There would be no need for money, and no need to work. New designs would come from people wanting to make better things for everyone.

There's been much discussion about this on various nano-tech newsgroups/websites as it's a logical extension of the social impact of Drexler's replicator.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Yeah, I understand the motivations in that kind of society, and I would fully expect that many people would do their best to "make better things" within the bounds of the time they were willing to contribute. But technology has become so complex on many fronts that it takes massive amounts of people, not to mention organization and management of the people and the project, to pull off a new design.

Open source computer programs that take a few dozen people spread across the internet, sure. A nifty new television that makes entertainment even more enjoyable and requires a dozen or more highly educated engineers in direct contact... maybe. But you are talking about passion being the primary motivation.

Who is going to design more efficient toilets? Better vaccuum cleaners? More silent dishwashers?


Anyway, this thought experiment, though useful, is getting pretty far from the original analogy. We aren't talking about a replicator capable of copying anything... you copy mine, I'll copy yours, everything has everything they need and are happy. No, we're talking about a very selective replicator... one that only works on digitized information and hits the entertainment industry especially hard. You can copy their work, but they have no recourse in copying yours or anyone else's.

We don't have a new paradigm, a new economy, or a revolutionary shift in technology. We have a free means of widespread theft. When resurrecting people from the dead becomes possible, perhaps the penalty for murder will be changed. Until then, we have to judge the crime based on the current state of the world. Information theft, with today's economy and technology, is simply theft.

 

[Frank]

If anyone can make whatever they want using replicators, no one would actually need any money, as everyone can have everything they ever need. There would be no need for money, and no need to work. New designs would come from people wanting to make better things for everyone.

There's been much discussion about this on various nano-tech newsgroups/websites as it's a logical extension of the social impact of Drexler's replicator.

Yes, but you would probably still have something to "score points", which would have some kind of value. It might be nothing more than the amount of times your creations are downloaded and / or produced. It might be a lot more complicated. A new kind of money, not to buy material goods by themselves, but to keep track of status and to access scarce resources. Or win design contracts and stuff.

And there will still be a whole lot of distribution and transportation that needs to be done.

 

[Frank]

Btw. Designing and creating products like cars is actually becoming easier all the time. It would mostly depend in how far you want to make all parts by hand. If you just buy parts and fit them together, it is much easier to use electronics than mechanics to make them work, especially when you use microcontrollers and electric motors.

Edit: that is, the functional parts. I'm not talking about the looks.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Btw. Designing and creating products like cars is actually becoming easier all the time.

What? And you state this from your background in...?

By what criteria do assert that it is becoming "easier?" It takes less collective time to design a component of certain level of technological sophistication vs. what time it would have required a decade ago, but the level of expected sophistication rises to compensate. Whereas a hundred engineers and draftsmen used to design a car in three years, now a hundred engineers still accomplish the task in three years... but the car is three orders of magnitude more complex and advanced. You can buy parts and fit them together, but dozens or hundreds of people were involved in the design of those parts. Someone still has to do the work, and be motivated to do it.

As far as I'm concerned, every engineer would want to work on the final car design... the grand plan if you will... and not waste their volunteered time on designing the motor to drive the power seats that someone else outlined according to someone else's definition of the vehicle's ergonomics.

I still want to know who is going to volunteer to manage these hundred engineers, all of whom think they have every right to do things their way because they are volunteering their time, and try to steer a project which would dwarf today's management nightmares towards something productive... all because it is their passion.

 

[DudeMiester]

My point is that the advancement of technology will allow us to become closer and closer to that ideal replicator soceity. Trying to force technology to conform to the past, and its way of doing things, only hinders progress. Sure in the short-run there will be problems, but I think in the long-run it'll be better off. For example, one of the problems with explicit teams of people, is that they can become so focused on one particular design pattern, they will try to force it through even if it becomes unnecessary. The music industry is an example of that. Personally, I couldn't care less if any new music comes out at all, there's already enough good music out there to last multipule lifetimes. Issues like this would be resolved in an economy where you make things because you like making them, not just because "it's what you do". Overall, people will create much higher quality products with greater productivity.

We'll know the results soon enough anyways, since there really is no way to stop file sharing. No matter what monkey wrench you try to throw in its gears, it will just re-invent itself overnight. The crackers and filesharers are always one step ahead, and that's probably because they embrace these new ideas rather then reject them. So you can say it's a terrible thing all you want, but nothing can stop the masses when they find a united purpose.

EDIT: As for your above post, there are lots of open source projects like Linux that seem to handle that issue well enough. The fact is in this world there are leaders and followers, some people will by their very personality serve someone they regard as a leader. I don't think it's such a serious issue. You just won't be able to wave money around to compensate for being a bad leader.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Yet your argument belies an implied condition: people have to be passionate about the project. Linux works as a team effort because everyone is passionate about the project. Do you really think there are people passionate about everything that has value to our society? I don't see many open source cars being designed. Not to mention that comparing the programming of an OS like Linux to the management of the design of something like a commercial airliner is quite a stretch.

But even assuming that you are correct about people being passionate about creating things, what about the service industries? Passionate janitors that do it out of their love for cleanliness? Or do you imagine that there will be a large enough group of people that have been just dying to design an automated janitorial robot? Buger flippers that just wake up every day excited about saying "you want fries with that?" People cutting the grass along highways because they love the natural beauty?

Do you suppose that there will be a technological solution (created by a group of volunteers, mind you) for every service need? Give the maintenance of our lives over to servant robots so that we can paint, sing, or create more technology out of our love for it?


The reality is that this is a dream. We are a loooooonnnnnggg way from such a society. We certainly can't see the light at the end of the tunnel yet. We can't even see the tunnel. Hell, we're not even remotely sure if the tunnel exists.

The point being that our economy simply doesn't remotely resemble that kind of utopia. We still operate on a compensated basis, and will continue to do so for a long time to come. The only two stable options are to compensate on a voluntary basis through the purchase of a product or service, or to compensate on a compulsory basis in the form of a regulated tax (or whatever catch name you want to give it). If you steal and remove the first option, you force the second.

Hopefully we can crack down on the theft, or find another voluntary compensation business model (which I would certainly be in favor of, as would likely you and most others here). I for one don't like taxes when they can be avoided.

 

[DudeMiester]

I don't see how this issue affects service industries. You can't use a replicator to make a copy of a service, since a service is an immaterial thing. If anything, service industries will become all the more important. If you can have anything you want, you'll probably also want someone to help you use those things. This means a lot more jobs for the service industry as there are a lot more things to be serviced.

Furthremore, design itself can be a service for creating unique items for people. This will still be do-able, since the client can just not allow anyone access to their item in order to copy it. Of course, this only works with unique items really, since as soon as you start distributing en mass, someone is going to release it publicly. Then again, you can charge a fair bit more for that unique item, since it is unique, and hence still make quite a bit of money. Once it's delivered to the client, it's no big deal if he releases it, you've already made your money. The client just looses the uniqueness factor. Anyways, like I said design can be a service, and hence live on sortof like it does now.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

And why would someone need to work and get paid when they can replicate everything they need? Why wash clothes... replicate new ones. Why fix a car? Make a new one. Computer broke? Who cares.

Still, the analogy has gone too far. We don't live in a society remotely close to that. We won't in our lifetimes. And today, in the real world, music and movie piracy is simple thievery.

 

[Frank]

And today, in the real world, music and movie piracy is simple thievery.

Yes, we know. You said so about ten times already. Get a life.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Don't go sticking your fingers in your ears or anything.

If discussing the issue and/or the truth bothers you that much, don't read it. The adults here seem to be able to handle it.

 

[DudeMiester]

Under the context of the current laws, yes it's stealing, but that does not mean the laws are right. imho, they need to be changed, and you can't change them by being complacent with them.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

And you can't change the laws without paradigm shifts in the way our market system operates. I mean really huge changes.

Is that what you are suggesting? Do you want the government setting "social entertainment taxes?"

Please say no. I know that some liberals are morons, but I didn't think anyone would want social programs to go that far.

 

[Frank]

Well, we need to change the current model. That will happen in any case. Time compensation and taxes are so twentieth century. The world has changed, it has become a global community. And information has started to be much more valuable than products.

I don't think the people living in the old, Western societies can compete with products for much longer. They don't have much choice than develop a new model that makes them bucks by distributing information. And as long as you prohibit that, you keep recessing.

The new, successful production countries might beat us on both fronts, if we try to enforce the old and obsolete model for much longer.

 

[Frank]

Please say no. I know that some liberals are morons, but I didn't think anyone would want social programs to go that far.

Btw. Here in the Socialistic Netherlands, run by liberals and with social programs for just about anything, we do have a positive trade balance. We make money.

8)

 

[epicstruggle]

Please say no. I know that some liberals are morons, but I didn't think anyone would want social programs to go that far.

Btw. Here in the Socialistic Netherlands, run by liberals and with social programs for just about anything, we do have a positive trade balance. We make money.

8)

Thats very easy when you steal other peoples hard work.

epic

 

[epicstruggle]

woot elitetorrents was taken down. /dance Plus it looks like some people are going to jail.