🚀 go-pugleaf

fred blogs wrote:

> Would you pay $1,000,000 for a $20,000 car?
> So why would you pay $25 for a 50c CD?
> 
> This is the root problem and the solution is to enforce
> competition.
> 
> Any technology that is the equivalent of a restraint
> of trade should be treated as such.
> 
> Low priced printers and expensive ink is a barrier
> to entry for new manufactures.
> 
> If I built a non IT product and gave it way at less than the cost of
> production with the intent to make it next to impossible for new
> manufactures to get a foot hold in the market, the ACCC would put a
> rocket up my arse. Yet this is the norm in many IT businesses.
> 
> Why are the IT industries allowed to get away with it? Why should we
> enshrine their right to do it in laws we will never be able to change?
> 
> Most IT patents are for the bleeding obvious after very little thought.
> The reality is that the IT and research industries as a group are grossly
> inefficient. There are thousands of IT companies and hundreds of drug
> companies doing exactly the same research. Hence each development costs
> thousands of times what it should. No amount of economic wanking can deny
> this. We don't get products a thousand times quicker, they are if anything
> slower since the talent is spread thiner, communicates less and goes
> repeatedly down the same dead ends. To aggravate this first past the
> post licensing and pure private profit is why 99% of effort goes to drug
> research when 99% of the good has come from inoculations.
> 
> Competition only works as a ruling economic theory if you can ignore the
> costs of failure and the hidden inputs (rape of the environment, blighted
> lives, another companies bankruptcy etc). Competition is good but ask any
> big IT company and their main concern is avoiding it.
> 
> Think of the M$ blight. Think of the enormous numbers of programmers
> engaged in wasted, brain damaging learning curve caused by one companies
> deliberate bastardization of standards.
> 
> The days of little old publishers needing protection is long gone. The
> cost of manufacture and distribution is now effectively insignificant.
> Record companies destroy old inventory rather than discount it.
> 
> They did not cry when the new technology enabled them to put thousands of
> musicians out of work. Why should we cry now when new technology prevents
> them from making megabucks for very little effort or risk. For the cost of
> a few thousand entertainment jobs new life could be injected to a part of
> social life that has gone from universal participation to near universal
> passive consumerism.
> 
> Personally I would rather see a thousand small movies than a few Megabuck
> monstrosities, see music back in the hands of individual bands instead of
> the pulp merchants, see book distribution based on merit not lowest common
> denominator.
> 
> Technology has marched on and the old empires should not be shored up with
> anticompetitive legislation. The point of critical mass was reached long
> ago. No copyright protection is required to keep a vibrant IT industry.
> Only the big boys need it and they are not supplying anything of
> importance. It is support, customization, individual development and a
> strong University based R&D system that is the future for the small IT
> businesses. Allow the current environment to continue to develop and
> small businesses (the bulk of the employers) will be wiped out.
> 
> Copyright should be designed to protect the hard work of individuals and
> give a social payback when the work goes relatively quickly into the
> public domain.
> 
> Now mainly massive corporations benefit and they are bribing anyone who
> listens to try to stop anything ever going public domain again.
> 
> The time has come to say that corporations should have less "Human
> Rights" than humans. At the moment they have infinitely more since very
> few people have the resources to fight back. Its not the rightness of your
> cause but the depth of your pockets that determine the outcomes of
> commercial litigation.
> 
> These is not a minor issues. They completely swamp any perceived value in
> the actual FTA. The Americans are currently trading in their personal
> freedoms wholesale for the illusion of an increase in security. This
> paranoia has to be fought, before they export that to us as well.
> 
> The history of the USA is full of tyranny, fascist puppet governments and
> support for terrorists. The exploitation of the weak and powerless is part
> and parcel of their social darwinist outlook. Thats why right wing
> religion fits so well with the Republican pary, Work Mach Frei and heaven
> once you are dead. Religion in America is the new slavery, self imposed
> and very cost effective crowd control. Dont think for yourself do
> what WE tell you and you will be rewarded in the after life (very very
> cost effective).
> 
> Might and christianity makes right, just ask any right wing arse hole with
> his finger on the button. I am far more scared of a Yank preacher with
> the bomb than I am of any Iraki. You wont be safe until a successfull
> Presidential canidate can publicly say she is an atheist.
> 
> If you think the courts or a piece of paper will protect your rights
> read a history book or two.
> 
> As one of the sensible contributers to this thread has already said, fight
> while you have the strength to fight. Lay back and wait until you
> have started to suffer and it will be far too late.
> 
> The FTA is just the thin edge of the wedge of the rank American outlook
> being enforced on the Australian public.
> 
> The only real difference between 1930s Germany and here and now is that we
> should know better, but it does not seem that we do.
> 
> Geoff Johnson


Summary  They whom ignore their history are condemned to
repeat it.
-- 
faeychild