I doubt he understood that he was doing speculative, risky investing.
Mid-bubble, I can't count how many people told me that the market can only go up, or who looked at me like I was insane when I said I was watching month-over-month sales to try to avoid getting creamed when the bubble inevitably burst.
Or perhaps copyright is a valid idea, and is not going to be abandoned.
Perhaps the government will simply increase the costs and risks associated with breaking that law until they are so extreme, and the risk of getting caught so high, that large-scale piracy will cease to be a worthwhile endeavor.
I know that HN is fond of the view that IP will be abandoned, but I see no compelling reason to believe your vision is more likely than mine.
I believe the institutional costs to ensure the practical security of digital IP always and everywhere would be all but indistinguishable from a police state.
One would have to outlaw user-customized hardware, non-corporate software development and build user spying capabilities into every device.
Large-scale piracy is very different than ensuring "the practical security of digital IP always and everywhere". Putting a _practical_ stop to services such as the Pirate Bay would be incredibly simple if it were enacted by national governments. If it turns out that in practice it's not enough there's numerous other easy, cost effective measures that could taken.
A solution doesn't have to stop 100% of piracy to be effective.
I specifically said 'large-scale piracy' because I agree that a sufficiently dedicated individual will always be able to steal intellectual property.
That said, an IP market doesn't need perfect government protection to survive. It just needs to be good enough that those who wish to steal additional copies incur substantive risk and/or cost.
I'm not arguing it's the best or only way to proceed, simply that it is a possible and seemingly viable way to do so, and as such, people would do well to recognize that the future is not guaranteed to be copyright and patent-free.
I'm not a fan of creating atificial scarcity, as in DRM on bits that cost nothing to duplicate
I'm a fan of creating artificial scarcity, if it is what the seller prefers. I'm disturbed by the number of Hackers who would prefer to strip individuals of their rights to do business as they please, selling products on their on terms.
The marginal costs couldn't be more irrelevant to the discussion.
I'm not quite sure why they still have county lockouts (except for the potential marketing release dates, but still).
Its fascinating though to see such consistently strong numbers for increase in downloads due to the removal of DRM. We'll see if dollars incent publishers to ease their usage of DRM in the future.
I see this as a scape goating of the quants. Not the mismanagers who hired and profited from the quants. The culpability of the mismanagerial classes are being whitewashed away.
I feel the same way. They make it sound like quants are these high falutin half-Gordon Gekko/half-Charlie Epps figures who use their sheisty siren call of maths to seduce the otherwise noble and innocent investors into foolish endeavors. That's simply not the case: it was the other way around.
The OP source is one of the organs of record for a specific political set and this is probably the outlines of the (official) emerging sacrificial goat theory for the collapse. The "anti-intellectual" aspect is likely incidental beyond its nice fit with a strategy designed to deflect the certain anger and energy of the ripped off population.
It hadn't occurred to me before, but I refer to myself as a businessman in most contexts, and describe only my unproven activities as 'entrepreneurial'.
Mid-bubble, I can't count how many people told me that the market can only go up, or who looked at me like I was insane when I said I was watching month-over-month sales to try to avoid getting creamed when the bubble inevitably burst.