Apple Patent Reveals Gift-Giving Platform For NFC-Based iDevices 110
redletterdave writes "While downloading and storing digital media with online service providers has become commonplace — more so than purchasing DVDs and CDs at physical retail stores — it's not very easy to transfer digital files from one individual to another, usually because of copyright laws. Some digital distributors have systems for limiting usage and distribution of their products from the original purchaser to others, but often times, transferring a copyright-protected file from one device to another can result in the file being unplayable or totally inaccessible. Apple believes it has a solution to this issue: A gift-giving platform where users have a standardized way for buying, sending and receiving media files from a provider (iTunes) between multiple electronic devices (iPhones, iPads). The process is simply called, 'Gifting.'"
Please don't (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd feel guilty that the gift giver had funded what Apple is doing in the world. I'd be upset to receive such a gift.
Gifting is insightful (Score:5, Interesting)
It remains to be seen what actually comes from this, but it may address a central conundrum of ownership and copyright in the digital age. My feeling on the copyright issue is that if I have a book, I have one copy, but it is mine and I can give it or sell it or loan it to anyone I please. The key thing is that if I give my copy away then it is gone. I don't have it, and I can't give it to any more than one person at a time.
This satisfies the idea that the creator has control of the copy number (and hence meaning to the word copyright) and yet I have complete control over my copy including sharing it.
The problem is the digital age is how to transmit a copy to another person in such a way that I lose physical possession. You can think of a lot of complicated ways to do this. What is missing is a simple almost transparent and effortless way to do this. anything else either feels like a DRM trap or allows rampant distribution in violation of the creator's copyright.
If apple can solve this simplicity issue, then it bodes well for the industry and the consumer. Recall the pre 99 cent track days. by introducing that simple distillation it became less of a hassle to buy and share music across all your personal devices, for most people, this was simpler than hassling with trying to find it free somewhere.
I look forward to this to see if they implement it simply and equitably.
Re:Gifting is insightful (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes, social conventions become obsolete, and that obsolescence is always a one-way street. Copyright has become obsolete, and all the DRM and increasingly desperate laws being put on the books to try to protect copyright are doomed to failure. When it's so easy to make perfect copies at will, perfect copies will be made. The pro-copyright people cannot possibly win. They can make life shittier and more expensive, but they can never, ever win this one.
The winners will be the ones who figure out new models for making a living from their work. The losers will be the ones who continue to cling pitifully to an outmoded ideal. Copyright was pretty much a stop-gap measure to begin with. It was always doomed to fail.
And know what? People will continue to create, to innovate and to make great music/art/literature/movies, because that's what humans do. At some point, the people who only got into it for the money will figure things out and move on to some other money-making venture. Can you imagine what it'll be like when the only ones left in those fields are the ones for whom it actually means something besides money? It could well trigger another Golden Age.
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Sometimes, social conventions become obsolete, and that obsolescence is always a one-way street. Copyright has become obsolete, and all the DRM and increasingly desperate laws being put on the books to try to protect copyright are doomed to failure. When it's so easy to make perfect copies at will, perfect copies will be made. The pro-copyright people cannot possibly win.
This is not really true. Consider Sheet music. It's trivial reprint this. So this issue was around well before the digital age. Copyright still has full meaning because the creators need compensation. THe fact that it became even cheaper to copy only makes the argument better for copyright protection not worse.
No the new thing is not the "cheapness" of the copy process negating the need for copyright, but rather the problem of how to transmit a copyrighted work without creating a new copy inadvertently
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but rather the problem of how to transmit a copyrighted work without creating a new copy inadvertently.
How would this be possible without a locked-down platform? DRM hurts everyone, including paying customers. Actually, it doesn't even stop the pirates at all.
What they need to do is to stop getting innocents caught in the crossfire when they're trying to stop the 'enemy'. This means no nonsensical DRM.
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DRM hurts everyone, including paying customers.
Bad, restrictive DRM hurts everyone. What we need are good quality DRM that protects that publishers and the consumers balancing the two. Which is the sort of thing best handled by legislation.
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Bad, restrictive DRM hurts everyone.
All DRM is restrictive. That is by design. If it wasn't, then you could freely do whatever you wanted with the data. In which case, it wouldn't really stop unwanted copying, now would it (not that it does anyway)?
Even Steam is a form of DRM. I've often wondered why you even need Steam to run the games rather than it just being a platform to download the games on.
What we need are good quality DRM that protects that publishers and the consumers balancing the two.
And the pirates will just get rid of that, too. What a waste of time. I know of no DRM that protects publishers or customers. That concept sounds l
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All DRM is restrictive. That is by design. If it wasn't, then you could freely do whatever you wanted with the data.
The goal of most content producers is to let you do what you want with your data. The more ways you have of using their content the more often you are going to be will to pay and the more you are going to willing to pay. At the same time they need to control who gets what content at what cost.
So I don't think it is accurate to say they want to control "what", they are interested in contro
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So I don't think it is accurate to say they want to control "what", they are interested in controlling "who" and what is just a mechanism.
But in the end, DRM always controls you, the customer, and what you can do with your own data. This is a fact. If it did not, cracking it wouldn't even be necessary.
Right now publishers believe they can beat pirates and the media world has continued to function.
And they obviously can't. We've seen them try, but they've failed. It takes ridiculous amounts of money just to shut down a single website, and pirates just move on to the next. In fact, sometimes they even waste taxpayer money on this nonsense. And for what? To stop a few people from copying data? Sorry if I don't think they're national heroes.
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But in the end, DRM always controls you, the customer, and what you can do with your own data. This is a fact. If it did not, cracking it wouldn't even be necessary.
Cracking it is only necessary to share to change the who. The additional restrictions are a function of the fact we aren't very good at DRM yet. But as a culture we are getting better quickly.
And they obviously can't. We've seen them try, but they've failed. It takes ridiculous amounts of money just to shut down a single website, and pirat
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Cracking it is only necessary to share to change the who.
No, it's not. If you have, say, music on one device and DRM that restricts it to that one device, cracking it could allow you to play it on all of your devices. That is just one example.
Please tell me more about this magical DRM that places absolutely no restrictions upon the paying customer; I'd love to know more.
I see a thriving movie business, a thriving television business, a thriving e-book business, a thriving digital magazine business, and even the music business is starting to recover.
That has nothing to do with stopping piracy. Most people just don't pirate, either due to ignorance or because they simply don't want to. You're assuming it's because they've shut down a few websi
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The proof of my views on the alternative is Asia. We have societies similar in technology to our own with widespread copyright infringement and a much weaker content creation industry as piracy has been normalized. Moreover it makes sense.
In terms of copying being less serious than jaywalking. Media represents hundreds of billions of dollars combined. The destruction of the US media industry would exceed many times the destruction on 9/11 in terms of economic value. It would exceed the worst natural di
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The proof of my views on the alternative is Asia.
How is that proof? That's no copyright enforcement at all. How about showing proof that your draconian laws and DRM are good things? What's especially funny is that I never said anything about no copyright enforcement. But if it is to be enforced, it must be done so in a way that doesn't violate people's rights or privacy. And guess what? There is no reason that you cannot enforce copyright in a way that doesn't violate people's privacy and freedom. This is done on a case-by-case basis. How you could ever t
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1) They might not even understand how to pirate to begin with.
2) They might think it's morally wrong, but not because a few websites got shut down.
So, yeah, your "anti piracy is working because most people don't pirate" is a nonsensical assumption. Rather than saying correlation is causation, prove that shutting down a few websites occasionally is responsible for most people not resorting to piracy.
And, you know, you have to be quite ignorant to think that "anti piracy" actions are working. It will literally take me about five seconds to retrieve a torrent file that I can use to pirate the latest game/movie/album. If I was a pirate, that is how easy it would be for me to do so.
Your claims that we're preventing piracy are absolutely removed from reality. It takes about five seconds to see that's not true. As such, the more likely explanation is something completely different (ignorance or the belief th
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How you could ever trust the government with such powers is beyond me.
I by nature of government have to entrust government to forcibly move people and put them in captivity. I by the nature of government have to entrust them to kill people and expose Americans to life threatening situation. I by the nature of government have to make them responsible for the safety of our public infrastructure. The power and responsibility for enforcing copyright doesn't even compare. What's the worst that happens, I
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I by nature of government have to entrust government to forcibly move people and put them in captivity. I by the nature of government have to entrust them to kill people and expose Americans to life threatening situation. I by the nature of government have to make them responsible for the safety of our public infrastructure.
Which means what? They should be able to do whatever they please because they do other things, too?
What's the worst that happens
Censorship. Loss of freedom and privacy. A complete disregard for the spirit of the constitution.
A lesser evil is still an evil. The government should not be able to ban a single word simply because they don't like it. Let's say it was a lesser used word. A word many people don't use. The harm itself would be relatively small, but it would still be wrong to ban it.
I can't give you firm proof.
Then I sincerely hope you or people like you d
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I'll skip the political stuff. We just disagree too much on policy to even make headway. When I supported Libertarianism I at least wanted it to accomplish the good. I don't see any reason in supporting libertarianism for its own sake.
Because of the lack of DRM? If so, how do you know this? Why should I care?
Because either:
a) Teen music listening patterns drastically changed for some unknown reason
b) Teem music listening patters drastically changed because the market collapsed.
(b) is vastly more like
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I don't see any reason in supporting libertarianism for its own sake.
Neither do I. I want it to accomplish the good, too. That's why I'm anti-collective punishment, pro-freedom, and pro-privacy.
Because either:
Are there more options? But I guess, either way, it doesn't have anything to do with DRM or copyright.
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In terms of copying being less serious than jaywalking. Media represents hundreds of billions of dollars combined. The destruction of the US media industry would exceed many times the destruction on 9/11 in terms of economic value. It would exceed the worst natural disasters like Katrina many times over.
You people are dangerously insane. Feel free to spout more crazed drivel in response.
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Consider Sheet music. It's trivial reprint this.
Prior to the photocopy machine, it wasn't trivial. With the advent of scan-to-pdf, its even easier today.
Simply stating that copyright is meaningful because someone has a need, does hand waive away the elephant in the room that the GP was stating: Copyright of anything that can take digital form is doomed to failure.
The GP stated, quite insightfully, that a new societal concept is needed, one where authors and composers re-think the way they make their money.
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No they don't. Mother Nature has not in any way given us a "right" to hold a monopoly over our creations. The idea, like fire, is only ours so long as we keep it to ourselves. But once we share our idea or our flame with someone else, then it is public domain and can be spread around the world. In fact many of us work w/o any such compensation... I've written tens of thousands of messages over the years and NONE of them is my exclusive monopoly. They are freely-distributed all over the place, as part
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The grant of the copy monopoly was created in order to jumpstart a culture.
Not really.
Copyright was ALWAYS about protecting a stream of income for the author/creator/publisher. Even before it was codified into law, it was always about protecting a stream of income, and authors were not even protected at first. Only printers [wikipedia.org].
Jumpstarting a culture was a concept that never existed until recent times (in fact, I think you made it up), because people always had a culture. They lived it every day, and it was a communal culture, shared by stories and legend, written or oral.
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I'm sorry, but your view on this is entirely wrong, and totally out of keeping with the facts.
Go read the link I posted.
There was never even a pretense of benefit to society. It was always about preserving a revenue stream (and to a lesser extent, control of undesirable content.) It was always about granting the authors the ability to sell copies of their work and excluding others from doing so for a certain period of time.
That may still be a desirable goal. The subject is open to debate. But its gettin
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There was never even a pretense of benefit to society.
So that whole to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts [wikipedia.org] line actually means... what exactly?
Maybe copyright started out as securing income to certain groups of people, but your claim that it has always been about that seems shakey.
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There was never even a pretense of benefit to society.
So that whole to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts [wikipedia.org] line actually means... what exactly?
Maybe copyright started out as securing income to certain groups of people, but your claim that it has always been about that seems shakey.
Sigh....
Try not to be so US centered. Go read the link I posted. The US constitution's one liner, was pretty much an after thought, and the concept of copyrights had been in place for well over 400 years before the constitution was written.
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You made a rather sweeping claim, that copyright has always been about securing income for certain groups of people. I provided a counter-claim, that in this one instance, maybe it wasn't. I am no more being US-centric than I'd be Canadian-centric if I used Canada as an example of universal healthcare done right in a reply
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Consider Sheet music. It's trivial reprint this
Sheet music is only a 1.1 billion dollar industry, and it's share of the total "music industry" pie has gone from nearly 100% to nearly 0%. Clearly the producers of sheet music have "lost" in the sense the grandparent was talking about. I imagine (but I'm guessing) that most sheet music sales are commercial in nature - perhaps that is inevitable and we should only apply copyright to commercial transactions?
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I would bet you that most sheet music sales are to students learning to play instruments or good quality song books sold to parents for things like sing alongs with the kids.
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Yeah I doubt those $5 sing-a-long books add up to a significant chunk of $1 billion, but I've had a hard time finding anything on google. I'm definitely being biased towards the US market - for all I know, there are countries where every household buys a bunch of sheet music every year.
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Lets take my daughter. I bought her about 2 of those books when she was young the more expensive one retailed at like $18. Since she's started playing an instrument I'm dropping over $50 / yr in sheet music. 20m people x $50/yr = $1b.
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Yeah, that seems reasonable. I just couldn't find how common it was for people to buy sheet music. Your number assumes 7% of all men, women, and children buy sheet music... I think that might be a tad high - but I am completely pulling gut-feel numbers out of my ass. :)
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I looked around some more and still can't add much. But it seems that royalties are typically 10% of total sales... so only $110 million is going to the author of the sheet music per year. Pop music, it seems the going rate is 12.5% - so it could be as high as $125 million.
Still, that's $125 million that the artists would not otherwise have, so the question becomes are we as a society getting a good return on our $1.1 billion investment?
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I'd love the link. I would guess that most of the money is going to the record companies and the music stores that carry the sheet music. Physical music stores are expensive but do add to my quality of life. I don't have a huge problem with them getting a few hundred million.
Record companies we get to the whole artists vs. publisher issue. And for pop I come down on the side of the publishers. I think you just have to look at genres that have good artists and don't have an entire industry of support: O
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The source for the royalties was a SFGATE piece [sfgate.com]. It seemed reasonable, but like me they very well could be pulling numbers out of their behind :)
I think that once you get to a 1:10 return rate on your money, you might as well just let the government directly subsidize or give tax breaks for commissioning an artist to make a public domain work. Government is horribly inefficient, but that number's just atrocious, and the product that they put out stays out of the public domain for 90 years.
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I agree with upping government subsidies for most music forms and I agree with shorter copyright.
But what I was saying is I don't think artists are the major component in popular / cultural music. I think it is the marketing guys and the cultural infrastructure (i.e. movie theaters or what used to be record stores). Artists by themselves don't create great music that impacts a culture.
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I certainly agree that there is some value added by the infrastructure (especially the venues). I think there is even a place for the marketing types. I just think it's a shame that we desire music, so we enact copyright, and then 90% of our money is going toward things other than music. It all seems rather roundabout and inefficient - though at least an argument could be made that it is responsive to demand.
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That's my point. I don't think we desire music in and of itself. Music in and of itself doesn't have large fan followings. What we seem to desire is the cultural experience connected with music: fandom, celebrity worship... a proxy religion. And that requires an infrastructure of which musicians are just a small part.
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What we seem to desire is the cultural experience connected with music: fandom, celebrity worship... a proxy religion.
Yeah, well, I guess I'm not interested in supporting that :)
I like music (and books, movies, etc) and so I buy into the copyright system to provide them. But when I see how inefficient it is and all of the additional burden it places on society, I have to wonder if copyright is the right way to achieve these goals.
Though I have to admit that I'm two-faced on this issue - I think there should still be commercial copyright in some form. I just think that a "Joe Consumer" shouldn't need to be a JD in order to
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Yeah, well, I guess I'm not interested in supporting that :)
I get that. But IMHO that's what's required to create the interest for musicians to be able to sell in large numbers. Again think about what genres that don't have the celebrity culture look like... One of my favorite groups is Blackmore's Night which is sort of a modern Renaissance folk, and they make their money playing small faires to thousands of fans. That IMHO is what the music business looks like without music companies.
Clips4sale or L
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That IMHO is what the music business looks like without music companies.
I'm comfortable with that...
Clips4sale or Lifetime Television is what the movie business would like without the studios.
No Transformers movie??? LOL, I think our society would survive...
Now, I want to be clear that I'm not advocating the total dissolution of copyright. I would be quite happy with shorter terms (perhaps along the lines of patent law). I'd be even happier with commercial-only copyright law. I was just musing about how wasteful the system is.
iUniverse where selling 200 copies of a book to very interested readers and the authors losing money is what the book business would look like without the publishers.
I kind of disagree here... there are already some very successful self-published authors selling ebooks. I think the publishers are in for a wil
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Consider wikifonia.org.
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>>>The pro-copyright people cannot possibly win.
They can win if they are reasonable in their demands. Example: Movies. Most movies are released for $25 on disc, but five years later after interest has waned, you can find them in the bargain bin for $2.
In twenty years they are so old, they have virtually no value (except for a few rare gems) and they are given away for free views on TV or the net. Ditto songs and books. --- So why not make the copyright term 20 years, and let these works be enr
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Maybe, but reasonable is no longer part of corporate culture.
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Copyright has become obsolete
Not really, we still are heavily focused on rewarding content creators based on copies sold. We don't have a situation where most content is created by the state, nor a model where most content is funded by rich people as vanity projects which are the two major alternatives.
Before computers we still faced a world where people would play movies without compensating studios, transfer movies to video, play music without licensing, pirate music onto "mix tapes", sell illegally r
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If apple can solve this simplicity issue, then it bodes well for the industry and the consumer.
Actually, this issue can't be solved by Apple. All it can do is monopolize their proprietary solution, and tie you even tighter to their ecosystem. As long as Apple has to agree that you own a book or a song, you have no ownership. (Apple won't be around for ever). Ownership of digital media is an illusion. You really only have a book keeping entry on an Apple computer. Nothing more. Same for a Barns & Noble ebook. Its just an entry in a computer database.
A real solution for digital ownership wou
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>>> (Apple won't be around for ever). Ownership of digital media is an illusion. You really only have a book keeping entry on an Apple computer.
On the flip side:
It would be impossible to own tens of thousands of books in the past. Eventually you would need to throw some of them away, or else run out of room in your house. So even with physical books, nobody kept them forever.
The invention of the e-book now makes it possible to own 10,000+ without any problem. (E-books also make it possible to ge
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Actually a real solution would be government regulation of online digital content which requires transfer in the case the library is taken down and has something like an insurance company that has an additional copy. This is what was done with records we do care about like stock certificates or deeds for centuries.
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This satisfies the idea that the creator has control of the copy number (and hence meaning to the word copyright) and yet I have complete control over my copy including sharing it.
Complete control? And what about those of us with no iTunes account, no iPhone, and no iPad. Could you really give me or sell me your purchased music (assuming you really wanted to for some reason)?
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And a generation ago if you didn't have a tape player I couldn't give you cassette tapes. If you don't have the technology, nor a transference system you can't get transference.
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>>> gift giver had funded what Apple is doing in the world
Your opinion of Apple offends me, especially since I spend $2000 every other year upgrading to a new Mac, and you make me feel foolish. Therefore I will mod it down:
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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Since the G5 sold for $2K new and now sells for $250, I take umbrage with your definition of "almost as much as you paid for it."
(FYI, you can find dozens of G5s on eBay for ~$150, which seems to be the approximate price that all computers stop depreciating at, regardless of manufacturer)
Hope you get indignant... (Score:2)
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...for every other gift you receive with origins you might disagree with, be it sneakers from overseas or any form of plastic.
As a matter of fact, sometimes I do. The degree to which I bite my tongue varies. Most people avoid the whole thing by giving me things like seeds, tools, hand crafted items, vintage clothing and scotch whiskey.
Integrity is real, you know.
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We have given 7 iPads to friends and relatives as gifts. But we made sure they would appreciate them before we gave. Thank you for reminding us that.
A Holy Grail of Prank Hacks . . . (Score:1)
1) Hack the platform.
2) "Rick roll" every iOwner on the planet.
3) Profit . . .
4) . . . for Rick.
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but now they can make sharing a digital copy just as inconvenient as sharing a physical one. All by the magic of near field communication, you'll have to actually meet up with the person to gift it.
Of course just wait until the content cartels get wind of this!
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but now they can make sharing a digital copy just as inconvenient as sharing a physical one. All by the magic of near field communication, you'll have to actually meet up with the person to gift it.
Of course just wait until the content cartels get wind of this!
Way to Not read the article.
Email gifting is also covered in the patent. (As if Apple ever thought that up first).
Awesome! (Score:4, Funny)
That's totally easier than just downloading a DRM-free copy of the work and giving someone a copy via email or even sneakernet...
Oh, right, we're still pretending that there's something morally wrong with copying a bunch of ones and zeros that have no inherent value and convey no rights to the purchaser regarding First-Sale doctrine...
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
copying a bunch of ones and zeros that have no inherent value
I'm confused. Why would anyone copy a collection of ones and zeros that had no value?
Doesn't the very act of copying them prove that there is an inherent value in the mind of the person making the copy?
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
The work represented by the bits has value. Any particular copy of them does not.
Clearly any particular copy of them does hold value, or there would only be one copy. Someone took the time to make that additional copy. They did so because the second copy would have value. In fact it would have the same value as the first copy.
To suggest otherwise is to suggest mindless copying takes place almost at random and by accident.
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Shh! No reason to bring thoughtful rationality into this circlejerk.
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I don't think that's right. Is a hard drive with 100 copies of a song more valuable than a hard drive with one copy of that song? I would say no, in which case the only value the additional copies can have is zero.
Interesting point.
If a runaway script fills your drive with the same song a hundred times each additional copy would not have value.
But a hundred copies of a song on a hundred different people's hard drives seems to make each copy as valuable as the first.
(given similar taste in music).
But the main point here, is that if someone goes to the trouble of copying a song, clearly the copy has value to that person.
That people intentionally spend time doing something is a dead giveaway that they value the result.
T
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Doesn't the very act of copying them prove that there is an inherent value in the mind of the person making the copy?
No, I do stupid shit all the time that has no inherent value beyond the entertainment factor, like copying others' posts on the internet.
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No, I do stupid shit all the time that has no inherent value beyond the entertainment factor, like copying others' posts on the internet.
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No, I do stupid shit all the time that has no inherent value beyond the entertainment factor, like copying others' posts on the internet. [messagebase.net]
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I'm confused. Why would anyone copy a collection of ones and zeros that had no value?
They do have value. They have no inherent value, which was the distinction the OP made. Just like a coin, which has an inherent value (the value of its component metals) much lower than it's actual value (the price of goods people are willing to exchange for it).
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Oh, right, we're still pretending that there's something morally wrong with copying a bunch of ones and zeros that have no inherent value
If they have no inherent value, why would you want to copy them?
NFC is merely an option (Score:2)
Reading the story you find that the NFC part of this is merely an optional part of a much broader patent-grab. Other options include email, which is already well established as a gifting mechanism.
The real attempt here is to monopolize a method of transferring licensed media from one person to another. Of course, they require a server to be involved, to validate that the gifted media is removed from one person's account as it is added to another. Nook already had lending of ebooks, and by extension gifti
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At least it's NFC. When Jobs was still around they were talking about a proprietary technology. This whole thing is just a way to lock people into the iTunes ecosystem. If they open it up so it can be used with any device, and across multiple hosting providers I'd be interested.
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WTF is NFC? Both authors and editors should keep in mind that all acronyms used in the headline (or story) should be defined in the story.
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And people who read slashdot should understand they are using the internet, and it takes less long to search the term NFC [google.com] than it takes to post the question.
Come on, with an /. number that low, this can't be news to you.
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/wink
Indeed I do realize that. I came to this story only to post that comment and make that point. I didn't care about the story enough to look it up on my own, which I do realize is trivial, but I do care (just barely) enough about Slashdot to put in a snipe about how to do a good job as an editor. I take your chiding in turn, but please in the future use LMGTFY.com instead of Google.com.
Sounds like a great way for Apple to make money... (Score:1)
"Gifting" a file is about as silly as "purchasing" one, in my book.
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Nothing wrong with purchasing one, as long as you are then allowed to do anything at all that you want with it once you have. What is unacceptable is the current state of affairs where the media cartels refuse to clarify if you are buying of licensing, trying to get the best of both worlds
They say it's only a license to do something very specific any time you try to do something else with it (ie they claim it was only licensed for your home computer, and you shouldn't be allowed to move it to an MP3 player
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Good point about them not doing either. Again this is the sort of thing regulation could easily handle.
It is not so much a question of DRM as it is a question of a lack of agreed upon standards and mechanisms. Amazon for example does allow you to download again and again. Apple with applications does. With songs they've stopped using DRM so it has become a purchase.
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It has not become a purchase. not until you are allowed to do anything you want with it. something current copyright law doesn't allow.
You want more regulation to stop it. I want less. reduce copyright law and let the free market take care of it. The only reason for the current mess is too much regulation in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
It has not become a purchase. not until you are allowed to do anything you want with it. something current copyright law doesn't allow.
Well wait a minute. Under the copyright system you couldn't do anything you want with a book, at the same time they wouldn't replace a lost / stolen / damaged book free of charge or even for cost of media.
You want more regulation to stop it. I want less. reduce copyright law and let the free market take care of it.
The free market regulates the desirability of contracts
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Not paying someone the amount they ask to be compensated for their work sounds silly to me. Nobody is forcing me to use or be entertained by that content, so if I don't want to pay for it, I don't have to purchase it.
Expecting people to keep making you nice things after it no longer provides them a livelihood because you want it without paying for it... that sounds silly to me. But maybe I'm just being naive.
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It seems to me that part of the problem is that you have to pay for it before you really know what you're buying. So personally, I feel shafted rather a lot.
But people made lots of art before there was copyright, and currently you'll see a lot of bands promoting themselves on the pirate bay (check their front page) quite voluntarily.
I think you do not realize that there is a box you are thinking inside of
That's "Giving", not "Giving" (Score:3)
What Apple offers is a way to buy something and have it delivered to someone else, al the while keeping it within Apple's steely grip.
Somehow that doesn't feel like "giving".
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Even if you are tied up with your pants around your ankles and a ball gag in your mouth the word "giving" is still syntactically correct. It's not something I'd want my friends to give me though.
Hm. (Score:2, Interesting)
Where's the patent (Score:1)
"Wherein one agent (e.g a person) transfers an item (the "gift") to another agent..."
What about promoting progress (Score:1)
This disturbs me in a number of ways...
Shouldn't a patent promote progress in some way... Apple is trying to involve NFC and make the whole gift giving experience a bit more interactive.
Wait, this really seems geared toward making sure that gifts that include DRM are going to work... um, really... Shouldn't DRM be fixed or removed if it's not doing what it should be... why do we need another patented technology just to make it work like it should in the first place.
I'm guilty of not reading through the enti
it used to be shit easy, called bluetooth OBEX (Score:2)
it was so easy to transfer programs to your friends. just obex them over, several programs came in with built in sharing, no need for internet access either. it's just amazing how much s60 1.2 did better than any of the modern versions, including indeed modern incarnation of s60.
you know why it had to die? appstores and content control - that the operators and manufacturers didn't manage to create unified appstores untill recently doesn't mean they were actively dumping money into it since 2002. and what do
Then why couldn't I do it? (Score:2)
I don't want to get into the rights and lefts of it all, one of my personal frustrations with Apple is that while I've given my granddaughter "songs" any number of times ("gift this song,") when I thought she'd enjoy a funny little application called "The Moron Test," the Apple Store wouldn't let me. Took me days of slow email-like exchanges with Apple for them to finally get back to me and say "It can't be done."
They control the platform, they set the rules, you can do it with a song, why not an app? If th
That's "Giving", not "Gifting" (Score:1)
what they should really do (Score:1)
Never such before. (Score:2)
Why is such true ?