Re: Where from to download ViaVoice outloud

["Robert J. Chassell" <bob@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

   .... I made no reference at all to restrictions on being able to
   enter the market as a seller. What I was pointing out was the act
   of purchasing a product dows not give you any rights to copy,
   modify or re-distribute that item.

The two sentences are contradictory.  When a customer is forbidden to
re-distribute an item, that customer is forbidden to become a seller.

(It goes without saying that many customers will not become sellers
under any circumstances; but other customers are entrepeneurs.  Those
are the people who will enter a market as a seller if not banned from
it.)

    Robert> Copyrights, patents, and other such governmentally specified
    Robert> restrictions determine whether an entrepeneur may sell a CD
    Robert> with a song on it.  These restrictions reduce the freedom of
    Robert> competitors to enter a market.

   No, they restrict the freedom of competitors to take advantage of the
   work done by others without due compensation. 

The compensation is a higher monopoly price that is the result of a
governmentally specified restriction whose Consitutional purpose in
the US is

    To promote the progress of science and the useful arts

    [U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8]

(I know you are not in the US, but this is the country whose law I
know.)  Under the US Constitution, compensation is not intended to
reward a creator, or an investor for the creation, but is a form of
government decentralized planning to provide a profit motive to
inspire investors to promote "science and the useful arts".

Unlike hiring a contractor or organizing a government department to do
the job, this way of promoting progress does not appear as an
expenditure on the government books.

The question is whether this form of governmental economic engineering
achieves its purpose without costing the people in the society more
than they gain?

Or is the purpose better gained by adopting another mechanism for
compensation?  For example, in industries such as law and medicine,
the `products' have been freely redistributable (be they laws or
medical diagnoses), and industries have provided activities that
renumerate the practicioners:  lawyering, judging, legislating, and
doctoring.  `First efforts' have been funded by congresses, political
parties, courts, lawyers in the course of doing their job, or in
writing for law reviews, by clinicians, and by medical labs in
universities, hospitals, and other places.

As a practical matter, in order to succeed in imposing restrictions, a
government must create police and court systems to hinder people's
replication of items that are readily reproducable, such as words in
the English language, cooking recipes, quilt designs, or songs.

Moreover, to succeed in reducing reproduction and sharing, a
government must also encourage conventions against copying and
sharing, since most laws take effect through most people who abiding
by conventions.

However, in the US, according the the Recording Industries
organization, millions of young people have already committed
felonies.  I think the numbers are exaggerated, but even so, the
Recording Industries association despairs of persuading members of the
X generation to pay for what is now more or less gratis.  The RIAA
thinks it might have a chance with younger people and is, therefore,
pushing for major efforts by schools to discourage younger students
from cooperating with each other through teacher-led programs to teach
students to obey copyright licences.

But the Recording Industries association believes that their older
brothers and sisters have already learned to share.  It considers them
a lost generation.  Consquently, the RIAA not only seeks changes in
schooling, police, and courts, it also seeks to restrict how computers
are sold in the US through built-in DRM and the like.

-- 
    Robert J. Chassell                         Rattlesnake Enterprises
    http://www.rattlesnake.com                  GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
    http://www.teak.cc                             bob@xxxxxxxxxxx

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