Walk the plank!
I totally forgot that Pirate Master was starting tonight and I never set a recording, so I only caught the last fifteen minutes of the first show. I don’t know how Christian Okoye did, except that he survived the first show. Yea.
I’m annoyed at the show, though. Every reality show has its own way of kicking people off. Survivor extinguishes people’s torches, the Apprentice fires people, and…. well, those are the only ones that I can think of right now. Pirate Master is a show about pirates, so naturally you’d think that they’d make people who are kicked off walk the plank, and it would be one of the most entertaining endings on television. But no, on Pirate Master you’re “cut adrift.” Very lame.
Tags: [pirate master, reality tv]How to gain support for net neutrality
A recent article on savetheinternet.com announced that Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has joined the net neutrality cause. During a conference call with some bloggers, someone asked Huckabee him for his position on net neutrality. According to the two accounts I’ve read (here and here), Huckabee did not understand what net neutrality was at first. After receiving an “explanation” of net neutrality from the questioner (who happens to be a net neutrality advocate), Huckabee supposedly gave his endorsement.
I have no idea what Huckabee actually said during the conference call, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he really offered his support. I can say this not because I know much about the man or his position on property rights, but because I’ve seen how net neutrality advocates explain their position. They talk about “fairness.” They say that they want a “free and open Internet.” They tell you that broadband companies are about to make your internet connection slower and more expensive. They say that we should “protect” the internet from “discrimination.” They want to save the internet. Those all sound like great things!
But those things are not what net neutrality is about. They won’t explain what they are for, so I will.
Net neutrality is the belief that the government must control how broadband companies handle data transmissions over any privately-owned networks connected to the Internet. The government must do this to ensure that all data is treated the same, regardless of the content or type. Net neutrality holds that it should be illegal for any broadband company to give any data packets priority over any other data packets (i.e. they can’t make content from one website move faster to you than content from another website). All data should be treated the same, or else the government will step in.
In other words, net neutrality is not just a position on computer network administration. It is also a position on whether the government should regulate private computer networks.
I know that talk about computer networks, data, and property rights might be boring, so let me explain it another way. Let’s pretend that someone came up to you to preach about the benefits of vitamin pills. He explains that they will provide your body with all of the vitamins it needs, and that everybody should eat one everyday to stay healthy. You’d probably agree with him. Now let’s pretend that he went one step further and asked you to support a law that would make it a crime for anybody not to eat a vitamin everyday. Would you agree with that? I hope not! Arguing that vitamins are good is one thing, but saying that the government should force everyone to eat them crosses a line. What is that line? Our individual rights.
There is a big difference between saying that someone should do something and that someone must do something. That’s where net neutrality goes wrong. In order to create their ideal internet, they want to use government power to force people to behave how they want.
I wish that net neutrality advocates would openly explain their position, but they know better than that. It is probably easier to get someone to sign an online petition or state that they want “fairness” on the internet (leaving it to the net neutrality advocates to explain what that means later) than it is to convince them that the government should seize control of someone’s private property. And it is your “support” that they after, not your actual agreement with their entire position. They claim to have over a million and a half signatures and the support of their first GOP presidential candidate, so why would they change anything now?
Tags: [government regulation, mike huckabee, net neutrality]Gas Gouging
I just read an excellent article by Holcberg of the Ayn Rand Institute titled “Who is Gouging Whom?” In it he argues that the high gas prices we face are caused by government interference in the market, not oil companies. He makes a great point that everybody who throws around the word “gouging” should consider:
Holcberg wrote:
To “gouge” means to extort, to take by force–something that oil companies and gas stations have no power to do. Unlike a government, which can forcibly take away its citizens’ money and dictate their behavior, an oil company can only make us an offer to buy its products, which we are free to reject.
and:
If we want to stop the irrational forces that have been driving up the price of gasoline and our cost of living, we must demand that our elected officials eliminate the regulations and excessive taxes that restrict the producers of oil and gas. It’s past time to stop gouging oil companies–and ourselves.
There is gas gouging going on, but it’s the government gouging the oil companies, not the other way around.
Tags: [gas gouging, government interference, oil companies]AllofMp3.com interview on p2pnet
AllofMp3.com is a Russia-based company that sells music at a fraction of the cost one would expect to pay from an online store in the United States. How do they save money? Well, in Russia, one apparently does not need the permission of the copyright owners to sell their music. That is what AllofMp3.com claims, at least. Russia’s refusal to respect copyrights is a large point of contention between itself and the United States, and AllofMp3.com is often the main example of legalized piracy in Russia.
An executive at AllofMp3 participated in an interview at p2pnet.net. If you want to read how the anti-IP crowd treats issues like this, read it and see. The article and interview is supposed to be sympathetic to AllofMp3’s side, but I think it’s a great example of the problems with their arguments. On the page you will see paragraph after paragraph of talk about all of the good AllofMp3 does for copyright owners and its legality, there is only one sentence that actually pertains to the issue at hand:
AllofMp3.com:
The Russian Copyright Law provides non-profit Russian Licensing Societies with a right to grant licenses and to collect royalties for the use of music without necessarily obtaining permission from the copyright owners.
Like every other intellectual property debate today, the two sides split depending on their answer to one question: Should a artist be able to own and control what he creates? If the answer is yes, then companies like AllofMp3.com should be shut down. If not, then it really doesn’t matter what the copyright owner wants and any talk of the “benefits” that cheap or free music might bring to copyright owners is irrelevant.
Tags: [allofmp3, intellectual property]Piracy has no place in a free market
Jerry Kirkpatrick wrote an article titled “The Market Function of Piracy” and posted it at his blog and at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. In it, he argues that pirating copyrighted products brings a marketing benefit to the sellers of those products. He compares pirated copies to “free examples” and tries to explain how those samples can help to increase knowledge and interest. He also states on his site that he believes in laissez-faire capitalism (for economic and moral reasons) and that his interest is in applying them. I think that his positions on the “market function” of stealing property is not consistent with his stance on capitalism, and I’ll explain why. It might be easier to start by explaining what some of the terms in question mean.
A free market is a market where individuals can sell or purchase products only by mutual, voluntary consent. The “free” in “free market” means that all people are free to exercise their own judgment, and that no individual has the right to force another individual to do something without his consent. A seller offers a product for a price that he chooses, and a potential buyer’s only options are to meet the seller’s price or walk away. In a free market, no individual may be forced to do anything against his own will.
Piracy is a term usually used to identify the theft of intellectual property. For example, if you download or upload a movie or song illegally on a p2p network, you’re “pirating” that product. Piracy is stealing.
Just looking at what these two terms mean, it’s obvious that the two can’t go together. Theft has no place in a free market. A free market depends on individuals being free to set their own prices for their own property, and piracy is the theft of someone’s property without their consent. A “pirate” does not want to meet the creator’s terms for the products they want, so they take it and run.
So how do people get around these obvious contradictions? Based on what I’ve read from Kirkpatrick’s article and others, I’d say that most people seem to change the definition of “piracy” to something that boils down to “a harmless act of sharing movies and music between a small minority of people.” Some people believe that it is harmless because the creators of the music and movies never had the right to own them, while others believe that it is harmless because it doesn’t really cause the creators to lose any money. And some in the latter group, like Kirkpatrick, believe that the piracy might even be beneficial to the creators. He wrote:
The pirated product functions as a free sample that the innovator does not have to fund.
Treating a stolen copy of a product as a “free sample” ignores the owner’s right to that product. A free sample is a product that is offered voluntarily by someone, while a stolen copy of a product is a copy of a product that was taken from the owner involuntarily. Kirkpatrick may be trying to get around this by claiming that the stolen copy “functions” as a free sample, but his wording does not change the fact that it is a a stolen copy that was taken without permission from the owner by means of force. I think that a requirement for any advocate of laissez-faire capitalism (which I consider myself) is a zero-tolerance policy on theft.
He also wrote (emphasis mine):
Knock-offs are pirated products. Because they are usually cheaper than the original, knock-offs tend to appeal to a more price-conscious segment of the market; that is, the buyers of pirated products are probably not legitimate prospects for the innovative new product, either because they cannot afford, or do not want to pay, the higher price. Message to the innovative marketer? Either drop the price of the new product or produce a cheaper version—or be the first to exploit a new technology, something the movie and recording industries chose not to do.[2] Many, including these two industries, would rather sue than practice good marketing.
I’ll see if I can explain this correctly: People steal movies and music because they want the product without paying for it. Who is to blame? The music and movie industry, because they didn’t market their product to the pirate segment of the population properly. This segment offers a unique marketing challenge in that if they don’t like your terms they’ll take your product anyway, but hey, that’s the industry’s problem. The industry needs to reach out to these thieves to persuade them to purchase the product legally.
Tags: [intellectual property, piracy]Nigerian Nightmare
A new show called “Pirate Master” is starting this week on CBS. I don’t know if the show will be worth watching, but I’ll still catch at least the first few shows to root for the hometown hero: Christian Okoye. He played for the Kansas City Chiefs for a few years, and even lead the league in rushing for one season. He played before my time so I haven’t seen much of hum, but from what little video and pictures I’ve seen it looks like he was a monster. I hope it works out for him.
Tags: [No Tags]Aynrand.org ear-drum warning
As reported at Noodlefood, ARI has posted a ton of new content for registered users. The new content includes interviews and lectures by Ayn Rand, including her Ford Hall lectures, and the ARI lecture series. It’s great stuff, and all you have to do to listen is to sign up for an aynrand.org account.
Small complaint, though. At the very end of every recording I’ve listened to, there is a loud ear-splitting buzz. It sounds like that noise I’ve heard when plugging in a guitar to an amp, just held out. It’s not that big of a deal, but if you’re listening to the recording with headphones and the volume turned up a bit, you’re going to get it.
Tags: [ari, ayn rand]SoundExchange concession
Recently, SoundExchange made an offer to allow small webcasters to broadcast music an alternative to the massive rate increased that are supposed to go into effect in July. SaveNetRadio quickly rejected the offer as not enough, because they feel that larger webcasters should have the same breaks.
And I thought this campaign against SoundExchange being all about the little guy?
Of course, it’s not. The campaign to “save net radio” is not about actually protecting people’s ability to play music online, it’s about using government power to force content providers to sell their music for less than what they feel they are entitled to. I think it is a shame that SoundExchange feels that it even has to make these types of concessions, if it is doing to to try to deflect more government attention. The only issue the RIAA (or anybody working in any industry) should have to concern themselves with when setting the prices for their product is the demand for that product. It’s sad that today’s political climate allows people to use the government to shake down others for their property.
What this concession does do, however, is eliminate all of the sob-stories about amateur webcasters who were going to go into personal bankruptcy over the royalty rate increases. All of you small webcasters, now you won’t have to shut down your internet radio stations. You’ll be able to continue on, content in the fact that government intervention allows you to play somebody else’s music without their permission. Your pressure has saved “net radio” from the people that created the music.
Tags: [government intervention, internet radio, net radio, riaa, soundexchange]Yaron Brook on Dennis Miller - Audio
As I reported earlier, Yaron Brook was interviewed on the Dennis Miller show on Tuesday, May 22nd. The podcast of the show is available for free here on the show’s website. You can also listen to the show through the website without downloading it. If you jump ahead somewhere around 1:10 you’ll catch some opening Ayn Rand quotes from Dennis Miller, and Brook comes on sometime after that.
Rather than starting on politics or the war, Miller asked a few opening questions about Objectivism itself. Afterwards the conversation moved on to talk about the war, and Brook explained that the war was against Islamic totalitarianism, not terrorism, and that Bush has fumbled it all. Miller defended Bush’s actions, openly admitting that he was a little more “pragmatic” about it.
Unfortunately, Miller’s comments took over the last part of the interview, taking away time that I would have preferred to be spent allowing Brook to speak. Still, it was a good opportunity for Brook to give some good ideas to those that would listen, and he took advantage of it.
Tags: [ari, yaron brook]Clinton tax quote context
Yesterday, Media Matters criticized the media for “ignoring the context” of a statement Hillary Clinton gave a few years ago. For those that might not immediately remember the quote, here it is as reported on that site:
Clinton said:
We’re saying that for America to get back on track, we’re probably going to cut that short [ed. Bush’s tax cuts] and not give it to you. We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.
Media Matters reported that the Clinton’s statement was given to a crowd of people that she thought were “well enough off,” as if that fact makes it any better. The problem is not who Clinton made the statement to, it is the statement itself. The purpose of the government is not “to take things away from you on behalf of the common good,” it’s to protect individuals from people who would want to do so. I don’t think Clinton was blasted hard enough for this statement of hers back then, and I hope it comes out more as she goes further along the presidential race.
Tags: [clinton, politics]