Software, uniquely, is just a stream of bits. [1]
A stream of bits is basically just a Turing Machine. (Actually this is a bit too advanced for most Loons; but yes, it’s true. The whole point of a Turing Machine is that it’s a stream of bits. And all software, commercial or free, can be directly mapped on to a Turing Machine.)
I can make a stream of bits too, you know. It’s just one damn nought after another, except with the odd one in between.
Therefore it is a simple thing to copy, and if it is a simple thing to copy, then I don’t see why I should pay for it.
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Have I got the argument right?
So, let’s assume you are an uninteresting author (you can pick another field if you like) of love-struck crap poetry like Catullus. Now, I wouldn’t read it if you paid me. But apparently Catullus is worth shit-loads of money because it was really difficult to copy his stuff. (There’s no Value Added in the Land of Loon, you see. It’s all purely mechanical.)
Catullus wins by being a constant stream of piss, rather than being born in an age where he is merely a stream of bits.
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Even Stallman has a (slight, but not particularly diverting) problem with this. I forget what he argues for: I think it’s ten years copyright, or possibly it’s seventy two virgins, or it might be a friendly parrot.[2]
But seriously, does it matter whether or not you can express things as just a stream of bits?
I mean, somebody had to put the bits in the right order in the first place. And that ain’t cheap; nor, indeed, is the ability common.
I’ve just demonstrated that particular fact in this post, where the bits are all in the wrong order. But then again, I’m posting this under a BSD license, so you can suck them worthless bits up for free. (Oh, and you can also rearrange them! I grant you the Four Freedoms with these here bitz!)
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[1] Not uniquely at all, in fact, but I think you should let yourself go on this one. What cannot be represented as a stream of bits?
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[2] “This parrot is not friendly! It has ceased to laugh at my lame puns! etc”
You do tend to think that Richard picked on parrots (poor old parrots) simply because he has a need to seem lovably human.
Beautiful toe-jam, though.
Comments
I seem to remember a certain expression was thrown around a few days ago – skeuomorphism.
It was said that software does not need it, for it is wholly different from the physical world that surrounds it.
Well, I say, that the lack of skeuomorphism is the main problem – people always bought physical objects, that just happened to contain information (which just so happened to be the reason they wanted said object in the first place).
When information became sufficiently disjointed from its physical host it became impossible to justify purchase in the minds of many consumers.
I still remember all the expectations that books, music, movies and games will become cheaper as the medium gets smaller and then goes away altogether – in the minds of the consumers it’s the physical object (not the information itself) that holds value.
Yes, it’s crazy, but that’s how people think.
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And that is why people will pay $2000 for their uber-gaming rig, whilst pirating all of the games, that give reason and value to the ugly black box they overpaid.
Sadly we’re in the middle of a Loon-fest at the moment, what with Adam and the Sox and the Dread Pirate Kurkos and Kimtjik, a man who can throw something totally irrelevant (but actually quite interesting) into a conversation and then repeatedly fail to add attributions.
Oh, and IMGX64, who seems to have a one-eyed view on who is trolling whom. Sad, really. He seems like a normal guy with a very curable disease (ie the one we’ve all encountered).
So, I’d leave the analysis for a while and come back to it in a month or two. This is not the time. Dark spirits are upon us, young Frodo, etc.
Basically, I’d go for a slanging match if I were you. It seems to be what the populus wants.
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