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[Silverblade The Ench]

Originally Posted by Dire Bare

Marvel Comics has already done something similar to this. For, I think, $10 a month you can view all of Marvel's digital titles unlimited. They don't have all of their comics "scanned" into the system yet, but they have an impressive list of both new and old titles, and it grows daily. I'd have signed up if I weren't a DC man myself. The titles are viewed over the web, and can't be downloaded (unless some enterprising hacker has already gotten past this). I wonder how well this is working for Marvel? I would LOVE to see something similar integrated into the D&D Insider package, it would rock!

SImple answer to all this, isn't it?


For those who are big against anti-piracy, to the point they'd jail folk who aren't selling downloaded stuff (selling is, IMHO another matter), think on this:

Star Trek "replicators" were thought of as things not to be seen for centuries, or a joke, right?
yet today we've already got computer displays, voices and communicators as science fact, as Star Trek predicted (sort of).
By end of this century, we could have replicators.

Ever seen a 3d printer work? A design in digital 3d is used to make an object, say a car prototype model for wind tunnel testing. Initially incredibly expensive, improved technology has reduced prices, improved quality, I could now make a 3D model in Rhino, send it away, get a solid object back in a week for $150.
That's just plastic though.

By end of the century, you could have nano-replictors in your house.
You'd buy "designs", say, for your TV, no longer would you waste effort, fuel, warehouse space with goods, you'd just have raw materials and a machine that turns blueprints into finished goods, for real.

What does this mean for copyright?

Ok, if you go by the insane and sometimes illegal EULAs attached to software (go check them!), you, a real human being, would own NOTHING, all your stuff would be "licensed to you" by the blueprint maker..seriously, that's what they'd try and do, going by today's laws.

So, Human Beings would own nothing, corporations would own everything, you would exist on their sufferance.

Anyone think that's "good" ?
Hence we need ot trash our current ideas on copyright and IP, and come up with something much better, before we end up in trouble by sticking to foolish, old ideas.

You cannot own electrons or ideas, but folk deserve respect and payment for their work. Corporations are not real, I've never ever met one, they don't exist, they should never ever have rights beyond a Human Being.
Thus copyright, IP should be limited to actual people, NEVER ficticious business entities, and for a specific, short time, depending on nature of item.
More folk involved = less time copyright lasts, as it cannot be one person's sole effort in that case, their sole income.

I'd suggest something like 2 years for therapeutic drugs, but there after, for their natural lifespans, original creators still get some royalties. Drugs are too vital to let folk contorl them, it's life or death. Make the researchers get well paid, not the damned pharma companies.

Print 15 years for group, 30 years for individual, there after, they must always get a minimal royalty for any item sold, for their life times. Point being, to encourage use of their work, by preventing total domination of selling (by a publisher who may actually greatly reduce what the artist could earn), but ALWAYS respecting their effort.
better to make 1% of a million sales, than 10% of 10,000!

Or some such system. What we have now is actually dangerous , the RIAA and manipulations of the USA government by lobbyists for copyright groups, show this very serious danger to civil liberties.
Copying a book or music for non-profit use, sans national security, should NEVER get you jailed for goodness sake!

Encourage folk to buy pdfs instead, sell them cheap, it's only electrons and server maintenance for goodness sake, not very heavy books (requiring logging, bleaching, printing etc). Folk know that anyone selling a pdf at same price as a book is ripping them off, it's common sense, thus, they get angry: so don't do it! Sell pdfs cheap

Encourage honest, paying users, don't criminalize folk or get dangerously greedy. The Internet = vaslty greater opportuinities for sale and higher profit margins by/for artists themselves, big companies don't want that!