I know he does, but that comparison doesn't work, as he shows in his own post. Scott supports two different positions on two different issues, and explains why they differ (physical damage \ no damage). As expected, comparing the two leads to wrong conclusions.
Posted again, as no one seems willing to address the practical side of this issue:
I understand that many people have philosophical objections to the entire notion of intellectual property, and I will admit that I unable to conceive of a solid philosophical argument to justify intellectual property laws. In this case, however, I believe we should be governed by pragmatism over principle. The same arguments can and are applied to patent law, and I seriously doubt many of you object to the existence of such forms of IP protection. Most people recognize the importance of patent law in fueling technological and economic progress, as patent law protects and rewards innovation. On the chance that you don't recognize this importance: who's going to invest millions in R&D if the competition can just steal the results of my research and sell it for half the price?
As someone who enjoys high quality, professionally produced media content, I am more than happy to help subsidize its creation. I agree that there will always be musicians making music, if for no other reason than the love of the art. But who's going to be producing 20 million dollar video games or 200 million dollar films, if no one is willing to pay for them?
If you object to copyright, fine. Then please provide an alternative means of funding high production value art. Don't admonish one system, without providing a suggestion for an alternative system.
You want to talk pragmatism? I can talk pragmatism. Check out this graph of box office revenues over time from 1986 through 2008.
That's right, 1986 through 2008. I don't even need a graph to show you that piracy of movies has increased dramatically over that time. Yet, you'll notice something. Movie revenues, way up? How can this be?
I also don't need a graph to show you that the video game market is growing like nuts. Every year the industry gets bigger and bigger and bigger, despite piracy also getting bigger.
Now, remember correlation does not equal causation. With this data I can not argue that increased piracy causes increased revenues. However, correlation does refute the inverse causation. You can't say that increased piracy causes you to lose money if increased piracy correlates with making more money.
For over 100 years copyright holders have tried to hold technology back. Be it the player piano, the gramaphone, the cassette tape, the VCR, Napster, or what have you, they yelled doom! Every time they were wrong. People pirated anyway, and they made more money anyway.
I believe the only actual effect of legalizing non-commercial sharing will be the elimination of ludicrous lawsuits, and nothing more.
If you would like to bring up the music or anime industries, and say they are examples of how piracy does kill sales, just try me.
Now, remember correlation does not equal causation. With this data I can not argue that increased piracy causes increased revenues. However, correlation does refute the inverse causation. You can't say that increased piracy causes you to lose money if increased piracy correlates with making more money.
You are correct when you say that correlation does not imply causation, but you are incorrect when you say that it refutes inverse causation. Who's to say that the recent growth these industries have experienced wouldn't be double what it has been, absent piracy? This is not, however, the point I wish to debate. I am not someone who believes that piracy is killing these industries, at least not yet. My point was that the completely open and unfettered sharing of formerly copyrighted content would mean the death of these industries, in a world absent any form of copyright.
I believe the only actual effect of legalizing non-commercial sharing will be the elimination ofludicrous lawsuits, and nothing more.
Despite the ease with which content is shared over bittorrent and usenet, there is still a modest barrier to entry, and the majority of the movie watching and video game sharing public is decidely non-technical. I'd wager that the majority of them are not even aware of the ease with which they could obtain the material they are currently paying for, for free. Mounting ISOs and installing mod chips into video game consoles is beyond the capacity of the average consumer. In a world in which even these modest barriers to entry were removed, how many of these current consumers would turn pirate? There are and will always be a small cadre of consumers willing to pay for content, if for no other reason than to support the content producer, but how many? I don't believe this small group of die hards could possibly support the kind of multi-million dollar productions we see today, and I don't think all that many people would be moved to part with their hard earned cash simply because these massive productions require massive funding. Most people require constraints in order to pay.
This is what I was referring to. Piracy is big, but it's still a fairly underground activity, even today. I was addressing a hypothetical world without any copyright protection at all, as many of you seem to be advocating.
You want to talk pragmatism? I can talk pragmatism. Check out thisgraph of box office revenuesover time from 1986 through 2008.
That's right, 1986 through 2008. I don't even need a graph to show you that piracy of movies has increased dramatically over that time. Yet, you'll notice something. Movie revenues, way up? How can this be?
increased movie ticket prices, and a broader selection of movies to pick from (one could say almost too many). If you actually look into what movies have had the most tickets sold you'll still find that the older movies from 1986 and before have all the top spots except for Titanic. This is mainly due to the shorter run times in theaters. Tickets sold. 1 Gone with the Wind 283,100,000 2 Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs 225,300,000 3 Star Wars Fox 176,900,000 4 E.T. 158,000,000 5 101 Dalmatians 143,100,000 6 Bambi 140,800,000 7 Titanic 130,900,000 8 Jaws Universal 128,600,000 9 The Sound of Music 119,300,000 10 The Ten Commandments 117,800,000
and when you adjust for inflation check this out.
1 Gone with the Wind MGM $1,450,680,400 $198,676,459 1939^ 2 Star Wars Fox $1,278,898,700 $460,998,007 1977^ 3 The Sound of Music Fox $1,022,542,400 $158,671,368 1965 4 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial Uni. $1,018,514,100 $435,110,554 1982^ 5 The Ten Commandments Par. $940,580,000 $65,500,000 1956 6 Titanic Par. $921,523,500 $600,788,188 1997 7 Jaws Uni. $919,605,900 $260,000,000 1975 8 Doctor Zhivago MGM $891,292,600 $111,721,910 1965 9 The Exorcist WB $793,883,100 $232,671,011 1973^ 10 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Dis. $782,620,000 $184,925,486 1937^
As no one seems interested in discussing the topic I raised this thread for, I'm bailing.
You've done little to nothing to guide the conversation. You can't just pose a question to the internet and expect anything other than Godwin's Law to manifest itself.
As no one seems interested in discussing the topic I raised this thread for, I'm bailing.
I made an effort on the very first page to continue Rym's discussion, but it fell on deaf ears. We can split off the people arguing with Scott into a different thread. EDIT: New Thread
Copy of my previous post, to redirect the thread:
How is your future scenario different from the options now, other than exact numbers? We already have an overwhelming amount of material available for free (public libraries, internet, some museums) or very low cost (Netflix, subscription services, other museums). Yet we continue to produce movies, TV, books, art, music, and many other things. When people are no longer willing to pay for something, it stops being produced. If people stop being willing to pay for "truly new" things, which I very much doubt will happen because we are consumer whores, then truly new things will stop being produced. We might have trouble recognizing what is truly new versus what is a crappy knockoff, but that is a different issue. However, if we have come to the point that no one wants the new things anymore, then the lack of production can hardly be seen as a travesty.
The core thing that Rym is missing is that of media as an aspect of culture, not a product to be consumed. As the Internet has grown, the rate at which people are producing content has grown enormously. One might argue that this is just the result of technology, but then, don't Rym and Scott themselves keep going on about how quickly technology grows? In fact, here's a quick math counter to Rym, though I agree that the assumptions are arguable: 1) The growth of technology is exponential 2) Our ability to produce and distribute media is proportional to our level of technology Hence our ability to produce and distribute media is proportional to the amount of media currently available - we can keep pace with the past. (I resisted the temptation to use a differential equation )
Even without technology in the mix, I think that it's evident that having a greater pool of media only enables peoples' creativity. This also seems to justify an exponential growth pattern.
I think that the trend is indeed that the presence of more media only accelerates the production of media. Sure, the nature of the media must change, but it will continue to be produced, and by greater and greater fractions of the populace. As we approach Ghost in the Shell levels of technology, everyone will be able to produce art trivially. It won't magically make them able to produce good art - most of it will still suck; in fact, as a proportion, more of it will suck than now - and yet great art will be produced in greater quantity than ever before. Of course, past the GitS horizon, monetization of art will be completely ridiculous, but Rym's claim that the new will drown in a sea of the old is plainly false.
However, I completely agree with Rym's main point - even without piracy, all forms of art will continue to become cheaper and cheaper over time.
Our ability to produce and distribute media is proportional to our level of technology Hence our ability to produce and distribute media is proportional to the amount of media currently available - wecankeep pace with the past.
Keeping pace with the past won't help: you're still increasing the total number of entertainment options. The more options there are, the less incentive there is to pay for any one of them over another one. Also, fidelity reaches an effective limit. The difference in superficial quality between new media and old media decreases as the diminishing returns of increased fidelity continue to diminish.
This will create a situation where there are effectively infinite entertainment options across all media, the majority of which are cheap or free. The only incentive to pay will be where immediate access is more desirable than all other options, including simply waiting. We are more and more a time-shifted society as it is, and I only see this trend continuing.
To paraphrase a mantra from the television networks in the '90s (when reruns were really picking up): "If I haven't seen it, it's new to me!" There was a long period where reruns of Seinfeld were beating new content even in prime time (or near-prime) slots.
I realised your main point was mostly about the fact that prices must fall, to essentially zero, which I said I agree completely with. Indeed, if the growth is exponential, the price will fall to essentially zero very, very quickly.
However, I think that the reason we are becoming more and more a time-shifted society is because a lot of the traditional media outlets have failed, and are continuing to fail, to adapt to modern society and technology. The key to applying technology is not to continue to spend the same ludicrous amounts of money to achieve incrementally better superficial quality, it is to use the technology to continue to drop the production costs. At the Ghost in the Shell horizon, there will be a lot of old media that is pretty much free - but it will also cost pretty much nothing to produce new media as well.
At the Ghost in the Shell horizon, there will be a lot of old media that is pretty much free - but it will also cost pretty much nothing to produce new media as well.
And at that point, copyright will be moot. But, there will be a long period where there is near-infinite old media, but where there are still high costs associated with high-production-value new media.
Copyright gave us a brief "golden era" of high-production-value media. However, now that we are well and truly into the Information Age, we're basically waiting for Youtube to catch up.
At the Ghost in the Shell horizon, there will be a lot of old media that is pretty much free - but it will also cost pretty much nothing to produce new media as well.
And at that point, copyright will be moot. But, there will be a long period where there is near-infinite old media, but where there are still high costs associated with high-production-value new media.
You are assuming that the means of production get cheaper faster than the scope and detail of any media product grows. I can foresee a future where personalized "universes" can take up just as many production resources as you want.
You are assuming that the means of production get cheaper faster than the scope and detail of any media product grows. I can foresee a future where personalized "universes" can take up just as many production resources as you want.
But if you look at the direction technology is headed, many many things can be procedurally generated as opposed to manually authored.
Keeping pace with the past won't help: you're still increasing the total number of entertainment options. The more options there are, the less incentive there is to pay for any one of them over another one.
While this may be true in a broad sense not every niche is growing at the same pace. Take online porn for example, if all you want is straight sex videos you can get them free all over the web. Where people still pay for porn is stuff that caters to the more extreme ends of porn. Why should this be any different with other categories of media?
There may be a ton of sci-fi media out there to consume but if your interest is narrow enough the broad growth of media does not help you. If anything it may actually increase the price of extreme niche media due to its increasing rarity when compared to the media market as a whole.
Where people still pay for porn is stuff that caters to the more extreme ends of porn. Why should this be any different with other categories of media?
Eventually, you run out of extremes. Also, the porn industry is floundering as more and more people are savvy enough to get their fix from free sites. From what I can gather, the margins have been dropping for the last decade.
Though, I'd seriously doubt the quality of such works.
For now. Eventually there will be a machine that spits out works greater than Shakespeare. What will be even scarier will be when it can spit those works out at an exponential rate, making billions, or even trillions of new books per SECOND, or even faster.
For now. Eventually there will be a machine that spits out works greater than Shakespeare.
You say that as if it were a fact. I have my doubts that anything procedurally generated could ever be passed off as anything but. That said, surely theres a finite number of patterns that words can assume, before they start to repeat themselves. If such a machine existed, it would soon write every possible book that could ever be writtern. Perhaps in this hyphothetical future we could consume these books at an exponential rate as well. But why limit it to books, soon we would view every painting, hear every song, play every game, experience every experience, and eventually, think every possible thought.
We are already rapidly running out of songs. Also, you may have noticed rampant sequel-itis in all major entertainment mediums. You also might notice the extensive genre-rehashification going on in many mediums as well.
You say that as if it were a fact. I have my doubts that anything procedurally generated could ever be passed off as anything but.
I fully expect procedural content indistinguishable from human-created content within the next 100 years. I'd even wager (at somewhat worse odds) that we'll see it in our lifetimes. Procedural content generation goes hand-in-hand in some ways with AI research, and it's a very hot topic across a number of fields. We're making crazy leaps and bounds already.
Mark my words. Someday, computers will paint as beautifully as people. We'll probably have them passing an art-based Turing test long before we have them pass an interaction-based one.
NOOOOO. Not the Pachelbel Rant! That video has been around for years and every time I hear it, it becomes an ear wig and I can't not hear it! Nooooooooo!
Singularity Hub? Ray Kurzweil would be proud. Can't wait for the magical intelligence explosion that will turn us all into floating sentient orbs of light. According to Ray, that shouldn't be more than a decade or two from now.
Singularity Hub? Ray Kurzweil would be proud. Can't wait for the magical intelligence explosion that will turn us all into floating sentient orbs of light. According to Ray, that shouldn't be more than a decade or two from now.
I have always wanted to be Buzz-Buzz from Earthbound...
I fully expect procedural content indistinguishable from human-created content within the next 100 years. I'd even wager (at somewhat worse odds) that we'll see it in our lifetimes.
So when can I get my prosthetic body, if we're going on these predictions?
You are assuming that the means of production get cheaper faster than the scope and detail of any media product grows. I can foresee a future where personalized "universes" can take up just as many production resources as you want.
But if you look at the direction technology is headed, many many things can be procedurally generated as opposed to manually authored.
The question is not one of manual labor being involved but simply one of complexity and entropy. Even procedurally generated content needs to be calculated, stored, transmitted and displayed. All of these consume energy (even for energy lossless state transitions there is an entropy cost associated with rearranging bits) and thus a real world cost will be incurred due to the finite amount of energy available á la "Last Question".
The question is not one of manual labor being involved but simply one of complexity and entropy. Even procedurally generated content needs to be calculated, stored, transmitted and displayed. All of these consume energy (even for energy lossless state transitions there is an entropy cost associated with rearranging bits) and thus a real world cost will be incurred due to the finite amount of energy available á la "Last Question".
I don't think you understand the amounts of energy that are involved. If you are content with a crappy simulation, sure, then you can pay it out of your electricity bill. Ultimately though, high fidelity simulation of any system will require the same amount of energy as the information content of that system.
If the system you want to simulate is e.g. the solar system, my back-of-the -envelope calculation puts your energy consumption at 10^50 GWh (give or take a few orders of magnitude). Scaling back to just simulating Earth still leaved more gigawatt-hours than I can afford!
Comments
Scott supports two different positions on two different issues, and explains why they differ (physical damage \ no damage). As expected, comparing the two leads to wrong conclusions.
I understand that many people have philosophical objections to the entire notion of intellectual property, and I will admit that I unable to conceive of a solid philosophical argument to justify intellectual property laws. In this case, however, I believe we should be governed by pragmatism over principle. The same arguments can and are applied to patent law, and I seriously doubt many of you object to the existence of such forms of IP protection. Most people recognize the importance of patent law in fueling technological and economic progress, as patent law protects and rewards innovation. On the chance that you don't recognize this importance: who's going to invest millions in R&D if the competition can just steal the results of my research and sell it for half the price?
As someone who enjoys high quality, professionally produced media content, I am more than happy to help subsidize its creation. I agree that there will always be musicians making music, if for no other reason than the love of the art. But who's going to be producing 20 million dollar video games or 200 million dollar films, if no one is willing to pay for them?
If you object to copyright, fine. Then please provide an alternative means of funding high production value art. Don't admonish one system, without providing a suggestion for an alternative system.
That's right, 1986 through 2008. I don't even need a graph to show you that piracy of movies has increased dramatically over that time. Yet, you'll notice something. Movie revenues, way up? How can this be?
I also don't need a graph to show you that the video game market is growing like nuts. Every year the industry gets bigger and bigger and bigger, despite piracy also getting bigger.
Now, remember correlation does not equal causation. With this data I can not argue that increased piracy causes increased revenues. However, correlation does refute the inverse causation. You can't say that increased piracy causes you to lose money if increased piracy correlates with making more money.
For over 100 years copyright holders have tried to hold technology back. Be it the player piano, the gramaphone, the cassette tape, the VCR, Napster, or what have you, they yelled doom! Every time they were wrong. People pirated anyway, and they made more money anyway.
I believe the only actual effect of legalizing non-commercial sharing will be the elimination of ludicrous lawsuits, and nothing more.
If you would like to bring up the music or anime industries, and say they are examples of how piracy does kill sales, just try me.
This is what I was referring to. Piracy is big, but it's still a fairly underground activity, even today. I was addressing a hypothetical world without any copyright protection at all, as many of you seem to be advocating.
Tickets sold.
1 Gone with the Wind 283,100,000
2 Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs 225,300,000
3 Star Wars Fox 176,900,000
4 E.T. 158,000,000
5 101 Dalmatians 143,100,000
6 Bambi 140,800,000
7 Titanic 130,900,000
8 Jaws Universal 128,600,000
9 The Sound of Music 119,300,000
10 The Ten Commandments 117,800,000
and when you adjust for inflation check this out.
1 Gone with the Wind MGM $1,450,680,400 $198,676,459 1939^
2 Star Wars Fox $1,278,898,700 $460,998,007 1977^
3 The Sound of Music Fox $1,022,542,400 $158,671,368 1965
4 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial Uni. $1,018,514,100 $435,110,554 1982^
5 The Ten Commandments Par. $940,580,000 $65,500,000 1956
6 Titanic Par. $921,523,500 $600,788,188 1997
7 Jaws Uni. $919,605,900 $260,000,000 1975
8 Doctor Zhivago MGM $891,292,600 $111,721,910 1965
9 The Exorcist WB $793,883,100 $232,671,011 1973^
10 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Dis. $782,620,000 $184,925,486 1937^
EDIT: New Thread
Copy of my previous post, to redirect the thread: The core thing that Rym is missing is that of media as an aspect of culture, not a product to be consumed. As the Internet has grown, the rate at which people are producing content has grown enormously. One might argue that this is just the result of technology, but then, don't Rym and Scott themselves keep going on about how quickly technology grows? In fact, here's a quick math counter to Rym, though I agree that the assumptions are arguable:
1) The growth of technology is exponential
2) Our ability to produce and distribute media is proportional to our level of technology
Hence our ability to produce and distribute media is proportional to the amount of media currently available - we can keep pace with the past.
(I resisted the temptation to use a differential equation
Even without technology in the mix, I think that it's evident that having a greater pool of media only enables peoples' creativity. This also seems to justify an exponential growth pattern.
I think that the trend is indeed that the presence of more media only accelerates the production of media. Sure, the nature of the media must change, but it will continue to be produced, and by greater and greater fractions of the populace. As we approach Ghost in the Shell levels of technology, everyone will be able to produce art trivially. It won't magically make them able to produce good art - most of it will still suck; in fact, as a proportion, more of it will suck than now - and yet great art will be produced in greater quantity than ever before. Of course, past the GitS horizon, monetization of art will be completely ridiculous, but Rym's claim that the new will drown in a sea of the old is plainly false.
However, I completely agree with Rym's main point - even without piracy, all forms of art will continue to become cheaper and cheaper over time.
This will create a situation where there are effectively infinite entertainment options across all media, the majority of which are cheap or free. The only incentive to pay will be where immediate access is more desirable than all other options, including simply waiting. We are more and more a time-shifted society as it is, and I only see this trend continuing.
To paraphrase a mantra from the television networks in the '90s (when reruns were really picking up): "If I haven't seen it, it's new to me!" There was a long period where reruns of Seinfeld were beating new content even in prime time (or near-prime) slots.
However, I think that the reason we are becoming more and more a time-shifted society is because a lot of the traditional media outlets have failed, and are continuing to fail, to adapt to modern society and technology. The key to applying technology is not to continue to spend the same ludicrous amounts of money to achieve incrementally better superficial quality, it is to use the technology to continue to drop the production costs. At the Ghost in the Shell horizon, there will be a lot of old media that is pretty much free - but it will also cost pretty much nothing to produce new media as well.
There may be a ton of sci-fi media out there to consume but if your interest is narrow enough the broad growth of media does not help you. If anything it may actually increase the price of extreme niche media due to its increasing rarity when compared to the media market as a whole.
I'm not saying it would be impossible. Though, I'd seriously doubt the quality of such works.
What a horrible future this will be!
Mark my words. Someday, computers will paint as beautifully as people. We'll probably have them passing an art-based Turing test long before we have them pass an interaction-based one.
If the system you want to simulate is e.g. the solar system, my back-of-the -envelope calculation puts your energy consumption at 10^50 GWh (give or take a few orders of magnitude). Scaling back to just simulating Earth still leaved more gigawatt-hours than I can afford!