English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

03:00

@Cerberus why would anyone give her money for a movie deal if they could just go ahead and make the movie without her input?

Cerberus

She could go readings and merchandising and lots of other things. She's quite the celebrity.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus You're begging the question. She's a celebrity BECAUSE of her success.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 They could give her money to give extra input for the film and her seal of approval, instead of scathing criticism after it comes out, which may harm cinema sales.

Etc.

The very fact that she is the author and people like her gives her economic power.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Come on. Lots of movies go forward without the author's seal of approval or in spite of their criticism. That is not relevant.

Cerberus

She is a celebrity because people like her books, not because she is now rich.

Sudhir

03:02

@Cerberus: There are beggars?

Cerberus

And, even if it were because she was rich, then I see no reason for the state to limit the freedom of others and sponsor that.

@Sudhir Yes. But not that many, and many of them spend their money on drugs, that's why they are poor. They get about, I don't know, € 900 a month from the state.

Maybe there are some foreign beggars who can't get money from the state and who have migrated here illegally.

Sudhir

It shows its highly developed.

In India about 22% live below BPL.

BPL=below poverty line

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I really think she could make money off supporting the film in some way. Her advertising the film would alone bring in plenty of cash for cinemas and hence for her.

Sudhir

@Cerberus:These kind of shoes (a) seem to be expensive (b) but they are relatively (c) easy to care for. (d) no error (e)

I'm confused kinds.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 If Tolkien had said, "don't go see the LotR films, they got several of the dwarven genealogies mixed up!!", would some people perhaps have gone and seen a different film? If, on the other hand, he had helped the script writer to correct some mistakes and add some bonus content specially for the film, and written a glowing approval in newspapers, and advertised the film om television and on his own website, wouldn't he have attracted some people who would otherwise not have seen it?

@Sudhir I would say these kinds of shoes. No errors in the rest.

Sudhir

03:08

Why?

What's the logic behind this?

Cerberus

Well, seem is plural (singular would have been seems), and so is these, so the subject has to be plural too, kinds.

You wouldn't say these *apple are delicious, would you?

Apples has to be plural.

Or you have to change everything into singular, this apple is delicious. That is also possible.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Who knows? Yet how is the world where movie studios can make LotR into film without consulting Tolkien better than the one where they have to at least pay him? Just because they might choose to pay him?

Sudhir

What about this kind of shoes?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Anyway so Android Device Manager is live now, and it finds two of my devices, ironically neither of them run Android 4.3

and it doesn't find my Nexus 4.

Cerberus

The world is better mainly because then information can be shared freely, which is the natural state of information: copying it basically benefits everyone who gets a copy, and it costs nothing. That the is the great advantage. The only disadvantage is the potentially lower income and hence incentive for writers; but Mike/Techdirt's point is that a.) there are many other ways in which writers can (and do) make money,

and b.) that many writers don't write merely for the money: they have other incentives.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

03:16

Many of those other ways that artists make money today only function properly in a world with copyright.

Cerberus

I have already given you a couple of other ways off the top of my head that don't require copyright.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

If there was no copyright, there would have been millions of Lord of the Rings toys by now, from dozens of shitty toy makers. There would be no merchandising incentive for the makers of the movies, because all that merch would be pre-exisitng.

So, one benefit would be that the world would've had LotR toys sooner. Downside: Miramax has less incentive to spend hundreds of millions on a movie, because one source of revenue is erased or diminished.

Cerberus

Look, the production of books has increased and increased exponentially century over century since the printing press. The advent of copyright did not cause this increase: it long predates copyright.

It is rather population size, prosperity, and literacy that have done the trick.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

In a world with no copyright, at all, everyone buys whatever copy of whatever thing they want. There is no such thing as a bootleg by definition. Sales of DVDs, etc, are thus hindered by the fact that anyone can make any kind of copy they want and sell it.

@Cerberus So do you think basing an economic system on increasing population is a good idea?

Cerberus

Remember what I said about how bands mike sizeable amounts of money off selling CDs?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

03:20

@Cerberus Yes. How does that work with movies?

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It is mainly prosperity and literacy, not population growth.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus well, literacy is asymptotically reaching 100%. Prosperity... I dunno.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Why can't they sell "original" DVDs, holograms, etc. etc., all signed and special and whatever people like? And why can't they use Kickstarter? Etc.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'm just saying copyright had nothing to do with the increased production of books. Surely you agree that the very, very large majority of books and websites make very little money, and yet they keep writing.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Be honest. In a world with no copyright, where the first guy who buys that special DVD can just upload it to the internet where you can download it for free, how much are you going to pay for that hologram?

@Cerberus I'm not saying the market isn't full of failures. That isn't the point. It's the potential for success that drives many people.

And also, it's the initial success that drives people to try to succeed more.

Let's say I write the novel I'm always threatening to write.

If the novel is successful, I may write a second. If not, I probably won't.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Fans pay for original CDs, because of the warm fuzzy feeling of "authenticity", which is very important in our society, possibly even more so than ever, exactly because things can easily be copied. People pay millions for original paintings. Secondly, they want to support the author.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

03:25

@Cerberus forget CDs. I am talking about movies.

And as for "millions" for original paintings, you must admit that 1. Almost every single painter who painted a painting worth millions never saw that money, and 2. Almost nobody actually pays millions for anything.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 What drives you when you write? What motivates you to regale us with your wise impartations here?

Mahnax

@Cerberus Free snuggles and candy.

Mahnax out.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus The stuff I write is almost never the stuff that needs copyright protection.

This chat room is not a novel. It is not a creative work. It has no monetary value.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 And yet the production of books kept increasing exponentially before copyright and during weak copyright.

Same for patents and inventions/technology.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus copyright is old. So are patents. look at how much society has changed in the last 200 years compared to the previous 2000

Cerberus

03:28

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It is just an example of the power of authenticity in modern (Romantic, ergo Industrial and Post-Industrial) culture. Don't underestimate it.

@Mahnax Haha, yes, that he gets!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Don't forget that the production of books was not exactly democratic. You needed a printing press. Those weren't exactly everywhere. Not like computers are today.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Your blog? Why do you write it? And why should monetary value be related to creative/artistic value?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 No, just look at book production.

The improvements of the printing press probably also helped book production, yes.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Well, you brought patents into it. Fine, forget patents. Forget that knowledge used to be bound up in guilds that would violently suppress outsiders getting it. We won't go there.

Cerberus

Oh, please.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Book production: how long has book production been so easy that anyone can do it?

I mean, literally anyone.

Cerberus

03:31

There has been lots of research. Germany had weak or non-existent patents for a very long time, and it was a technological powerhouse in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

How long has the marginal cost of books been literally zero, like it is today with e-books

Cerberus

That is not the point. The point is that copyright did not increase the exponent of growth much, if at all.

The scare research that we have does not corroborate at all the hypothesis that copyright is necessary for or substantially improves the cultural output of a society.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Well, the fact remains that different kinds of creative works have different kinds of monetization potential and different outcomes in a world with no copyright.

Cerberus

I suppose.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Getting back to the original point: software benefits from copyright

at least somewhat

Cerberus

03:37

I have seen no evidence.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

because of the distinction between source code and binary code

Cerberus

I see mainly obstruction of the freedom to share information and improve upon the work of others.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

But but but headdesk

Cerberus

But I said I didn't want to have this discussion, hours ago!

You always tie me up in these kinds of discussions!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

the GPL, which is built on top of copyright, specifically provides the freedom to share information and improve upon the work of others! That's its whole point!

Without copyright, there could be no GPL!

Cerberus

03:39

If sharing is truly the purpose of copyright, couldn't the obfuscation of source code be discouraged instead?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

... sharing is not the purpose of copyright. Not exactly.

Cerberus

The alternative to copyright is not "keep doing things the exact same way, except without copyright".

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Well, sure. But we have already done the software experiment many times with different sharing/not-sharing rules.

Cerberus

The alternative is to truly encourage those effects of copyright that you deem beneficial to society in other, bespoke ways.

Joseph Weissman

Compelling open-source is actually something I've thought might work, at least in software, in terms of socializing the industry, guarding against wasted/redundant effort and re-work, etc

Cerberus

03:41

Yeah, it could be worth experimenting with?

Joseph Weissman

--But like with IP generally, it's hard to understand how it could be enforced at all, at least short of restricting general purpose computing.

Cerberus

We can always re-instate copyright if the world is destroyed and I break loose.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus wait. You're opposed to the government enforcing copyright monopolies on the basis of it restricts individual freedom, but you're okay with FORCING people to always be open-source.

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman Agreed, that is the second most important point about copyright. The first point, to me, is that copyright creates artificial scarcity and thereby deprives society of tons of stuff. Like making anything scarce through a monopoly. The second point, your point here, is that copyright is or has become basically unenforceable in a modern, computerised society, without severe and very destructive repression. Sharing cannot be stopped.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Not on that basis.

On the basis that it creates artificial scarcity.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

um... creating artificial scarcity is the whole point.

Cerberus

03:46

Of course this "forcing" would have to be very mild and only affect large companies or something, or it could be more like increasing the incentive to be open, in various ways.

Joseph Weissman

And all scarcity is artificial. That's also the whole point of capitalism :)

Stockpiling, profiting on the surfeit...

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I was just saying what my reason is for being against copyright. I know that is exactly the point behind it.

@JosephWeissman Not quite! Our means of production are limited, so certain things will be scarce because of that.

But, yes, many scarcities are in some ways artificial.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I don't understand how artificial scarcity is somehow intrinsically bad. scarcity creates value.

Cerberus

It only creates value for the sellers, the few; it takes away stuff from everybody else.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus No, it creates value for the buyers too, who now own the valuable scare thing.

Joseph Weissman

03:49

"Want" and "privation" are entirely artificial, I perhaps should have said. Scarcity in this sense.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

anyway dawn approaches and it's a school night.

So I must be off.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That is not economically sound reasoning. They have to invest more capital into it. And it isn't even saleable in many cases.

1 hour ago, by Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 So let's agree to disagree, or we'll be sitting her till the crack of dawn. Your dawn!

I knew it!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus yeah :) but I was joking. It's only midnight.

Cerberus

But...is your dawn really that early?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

jinx :)

Cerberus

03:51

Oh hehe.

Joseph Weissman

(So that capitalism is not actually about abundance, but allocating goods under manipulated conditions of artifical scarcity...)

Cerberus

I thought you had moved to the North Pole or something.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

well, I mean dawn is approaching.

In a literal sense.

Joseph Weissman

It is always approaching

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman Why "entirely"?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

03:51

But it isn't exactly near.

so I'm off!

Cerberus

If it isn't near, it isn't approaching yet.

Coming, perhaps.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Good dawn!

I mean, night.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

cya

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman I agree that it is about scarcity in that only scarce things have value...but why do they always have to be artificial?

Joseph Weissman

Hmmm. So we could go in a psychoanalytical direction, and critique a conception of desire as lack. But alternatively the danger of generalizing from capitalism's manipulations is that politics risks reduction to that means by which we allocate scarce resources.

(That inequality becomes ineradicable, impossibly remaining after any possible political operation.)

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman A conception of desire as lack, sure, why not?

Joseph Weissman

03:58

Well, it's basically the most ancient and reactionary conception of desire

Rather I think it's important to see the void as an operation, even an invasion.

> It is lack that infiltrates itself, creates empty spaces or vacuoles, and propogates itself in accordance with the organization of an already existing organization of production. The deliberate creation of lack as a function of market economy is the art of a dominant class.

> This involves deliberately organizing wants and needs amid an abundance of production; making all of desire teeter and fall victim to the great fear of not having one’s needs satisfied; and making the object dependent upon a real production that is supposedly exterior to desire (the demands of rationality), while at the same time the production of desire is categorized as fantasy and nothing but fantasy.

Cerberus

Yes, the power that capitalism gives to money/capital, which is in essence something arbitrary, a means, is problematic. A negative side effect. That's why capitalism is and should be reigned in, as Adam Smith already said, and as all states already do. The question is, how much, and how?

Joseph Weissman

That from Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari (p. 28 in mine)

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman Yes, certainly. Both historically and linguistically, the two go hand in hand. Desidero = to desire, to lack.

Joseph Weissman

This is maybe why it's more important to intensively separate and link differently.

It's not that they aren't connected, but the connection is precisely through capitalism, the infiltration of the void, class domination, hallucination.

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman This happens, of course; but isn't this mainly about situations where there are oligo- and monopolies?

The problem is that capitalism certainly inclines towards oligopolies, to be sure.

Partly through mergers, partly through lobbying politicians.

Joseph Weissman

04:05

@Cerberus Sure, but I suppose the suggestion is that these "excessive" dominations really just aggravate inequality further, right?

Cerberus

But is that really all that is capitalism?

@JosephWeissman They certainly do!

But isn't ideal capitalism a free market, with too many actors for there to be oligopolies?

Joseph Weissman

That's a great question, I think. I think that's in a way the point we need to reach. We haven't thought profoundly enough about the "freedom" of the market.

Perhaps :)

Cerberus

Well, we have anti-trust authorities...but they only seem to act against the very worst of excesses.

They could do more.

Joseph Weissman

Well, right. They're part of the internal regulatory apparatus.

Cerberus

Ideal communism is a society where everything that is naturally scarce is shared equally between everyone.

Joseph Weissman

04:08

Hmm, that's certainly one way to think of it. But this is something like an asymptotic limit.

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman Yeah, exactly. And, if you look at the long term, you see that anti-trust laws and consumer protection have increased significantly over the past century.

@JosephWeissman Perhaps both ideals are?

Joseph Weissman

Certainly. I mean to my mind it's about the individual and the common. The concern of "communisms" is the common, and its freedom and openness.

The concern of capitalism is me.

Cerberus

(We are currently climbing out of a temporary dip in anti-trust laws and regulation of capitalism in general, which commenced in the 80s and culminated in the banking crisis of 2008.)

(But consumer protection is still increasing and has been doing for for a long time.)

@JosephWeissman I suppose...but they are not wholly opposites.

Joseph Weissman

Definitely, but it's about directionality. The left and the right.

The right appreciates oneself first; then my family; then my country; then my species and so on. The left is the reverse: first the world or universe, then the species, then the country, and the community and the family and the individual.

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman In terms of the distribution of wealth by the state, yes.

Joseph Weissman

04:13

The same segments, sure; but the way up is not the way back. There's a critical change in perspective.

Mahnax

Oh boy, I leave one freshly overturned can of worms and come back to another.

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman You could say that; and capitalism says the ultimate result and goal behind it is that the incentive to work for myself only will ultimate increase the happiness of all. Conversely, communism wants to promote society as a whole because the ultimate goal and result will be that every person living in this society will be better off. Society itself is just a lifeless thing.

Joseph Weissman

Hmmm. I guess I'm trying to say society is a response to scarcity. A way of organizing against its invasion.

Cerberus

@Mahnax It's not exactly a can of worms...it is merely the same can of friendly...critters stirred up a little bit.

@JosephWeissman True.

I am not disagreeing with your point about the individual versus society, btw.

Mahnax

@Cerberus I'm just joking!

Cerberus

04:17

@JosephWeissman True, idealist capitalism sees the individual as a way to improve society for all; communism takes a more direct approach by working with society immediately.

@Mahnax squirms

Mahnax

@Cerberus Are you a worm, or…?

Cerberus

Or, wait, I am a worm, aren't I?

Haha.

Joseph Weissman

Even the lowliest will turn, being trodden on... :)

Cerberus

Turn? What is that from?

Revolution?

Joseph Weissman

Henry VI

Even a worm will turn

Even a worm will turn is an expression used to convey the message that even the meekest or most docile of creatures will retaliate or get revenge if pushed too far, and that circumstances can bring a change of fortune. The phrase originates from William Shakespeare's play Henry VI, Part 3. The original phrase was uttered by Lord Clifford, killer of Rutland as, "To whom do lions cast their gentle looks? Not to the beast that would usurp their den. The smallest worm will turn being trodden on, And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood." References

Cerberus

04:32

Ah!

turns

MετάEd

05:30

Ask not for whom the worm turns. It turns for thee.

@Cerberus Look, write-only code!

Cerberus

@MετάEd Are you calling me write-only code?? I am so much more!

But, yes, it was only I who wrote it. And you can't write my code, I'm sorry.

There is something satisfying about Regex. Is it because it, as a language, doesn't pretend to make sense? Other systems always seem to assume you will know x means y and it makes "sense" to put one thing in quotation marks another another thing in capitals.

> Religion - Atheism and very serious about it

MετάEd

@Cerberus You should learn APL.

Then INTERCAL.

Cerberus

I see this on a presumed dating website. Oh, irony, where art thou?

@MετάEd That sounds nice and nondescript.

MετάEd

@Cerberus There exist atheist churches. Atheism as religion is not as far fetched as it might seem.

Cerberus

@MετάEd I think you mean positivist churches?

Of course there was the Museum of Atheism in Petersburg...

The former Our Lady of Kazan, I think.

Or whatever its restored name is.

MετάEd

05:41

@Cerberus I mean atheist churches, such as this: churchoffreethought.org

Cerberus

Interetsing.

> Our aim is to offer atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, and freethinkers all the educational, inspirational, and social and emotional benefits of traditional faith-based churches. We do this by preaching Freethought, a rational approach to religious questions of life, love, meaning, and happiness.

I'm not sure they're serious enough about atheism, though.

Allowing too many semi-heretical sects.

But I suppose they will have to count.

MετάEd

@Cerberus They're obviously a religion. They've even had a schism, which proves it.

And with that, my work here is done.

Cerberus

06:30

@MετάEd Haha, that I cannot argue with.

> Using figures of SPOT [15] and Statistics Netherlands [16] for 2008, we estimated that the Dutch population spent about 2.7 billion hours browsing the web. Since every hour of web browsing requires 2.5 Wh for the advertisements, this amounts to 6.8 billion Wh used for web ads.

> According to ECN, the average electric energy consumption of a Dutch household was 3558 kWh in 2008 [8]. Thus, the total energy used for displaying web advertisements is equivalent to the total yearly electric energy consumption of 1891 Dutch households.

The Hidden Energy Cost of Web Advertising

Average household size is 2.2 for 2012.

So that would be the total energy consumption of 4160 Dutchmen could be saved by having the entire population use Adblock.

David Wallace