Jezza! @jezza@qoto.org

@levisan aren't you Catholic? The Roman and Eastern churches put a great deal of stock in it. If nothing else, in the purely material context: would you rather use a new toothbrush, or be the most recent in line to use a communal one?

@levisan aren't you Catholic? The Roman and Eastern churches put a great deal of stock in it. If nothing else, in the purely material context: would you rather use a new toothbrush, or be the most recent in line to use a communal one?

@progo @levisan not entirely, which is how Steamboat Willie is finally in the public domain, and with it, Mickey Mouse.

@progo @levisan the argument works until you consider the revenue of the artists. For example, if you apply that to most games and movies, those companies need to more than break even to finance the next film or game. If harmlessly denying them profit is significant enough, it can collapse the organization and put the developers, artists, talent, etc. out of business.

This is the horrid reality that confronts the duplication argument.

That said, it doesn't really apply to the long tail of most films, music, and software. Pirating a copy of All the President's Men or Alpha Centauri doesn't effect anyone today.

@levisan @progo the biggest problems with copyright cut both ways: one, people are accustomed to subsidized media -- ad-supported media, for example. On the other, you have the Mickey Mouse copyright paradigm that maintains copyright for the better part of a century.

Underneath this is the fact that whether you build houses or paint mouses, you've got bills to pay.

The answers to this are varied, from state supported arts aned media (you pay whether you use it or not) to Copyright Term Extension Act (you pay long after the author is dead), and the DMCA (... and if you pick the lock, you pay bigly.)

In the first case, the issue is allowing the state or other organization to determine the value of other people's work, and the second case is maximizing rent-seeking for what amounts to privatized public culture.

The matter is complicated by the near infinite replicability of media, including the machines to render it as physical artifacts (printers, 3d printers.)

This may be one of those issues of eternal discourse with no "right" answers, or no final regime to moot the discourse.

The closest thing I have to an answer is to start with some basic copyright regime, pick a period of time (25 years?) and the allow purchases of extensions to a maximum of x (40? 50?) years at costs that go up on a logarithmic curve by year (and whose proceeds can be used to liberate currently owned culture to the public domain.)

"The past is a foreign country" becomes truer by the hour, and I'm beginning to suspect that I'm an illegal alien from that foreign country.

@levisan about 10,000 years ago.

@levisan https://www.payphone-directory.org/

@levisan the language count mostly refers to students. They're not citizens, they don't "live here" in any meaningful sense, and they certainly don't contribute to local "culture" in any meaningful sense (that is, it does not effect the locals except to irritate them when someone is attempting to do business through hand signals.)

It might be a more reasonable count if was restricted to people who properly lived here, but then the number goes down precipitously to something less impressive.

I think a reasonable measure would be how much other cultures contribute -- what habits brought in by X bleeed into the population. Not just at the dinner table, but in common speech and habits at home.

For example, do people adopt the bum gun when exposed to it? Do foreign phrases, even translated, become part of local vocabularies? (I picked up "office plankton" from Russians to describe the infinitely replaceable and mostly useless office workers that inhabit cubicles and reception desks.)

@levisan literally this. A lot of people here have the pretense that this town is a world cultural mecca, so when I ask for a few examples of how, inevitably the fact that several restaurants sell ridiculously overpriced rice and gravy comes up as a primary supporting argument. (Others might include, "look, a man in arab garb!" or in rhetorical form, "do you know how many languages are spoken here?!")

We need a term for this. Something like "Spice whores" but possibly nicer?

@levisan i'm pro flame-thrower, myself.

@levisan shooting or otherwise executing those responsible for the unjust option is probably a better choice.

@levisan it's a very slick, minimal presentation. Certainly caught my eye!

I'm more of a bliki type. I like dokuwiki as a base engine.

@levisan what's the software behind the digital garden?

@levisan goes back to the old Prussian higher education system. What's wild is this many smart people haven't figured out how to band together and overcome it. Perhaps because they're not actually that smart.

@levisan and cut into the profit margin that comes with being distantly compared to champagne? Imagine the consumer price difference expectation if they packaged it in cans...