Adobe Stock Images pays photo $0.18 for using his photo

On Tuesday, December 19, 2017 at 12:11:27 AM UTC+1, Mayayana wrote:
"sobriquet" wrote

| I wouldn't go around talking about it if I were you.
|
| Well, we've had long discussions about the morality of copyright
| vs the morality of sharing information, so you know how I feel
| about the issue (i.e. all numbers belong to the public domain).
|

I wasn't making a moral statement. Just
practical. It's not wise to advertise that you're
breaking the law. Adobe has a lot more lawyers
and congressmen than you do. That's just how
it works.

Lawyers and congressmen are irrelevant. They can't make
pigs fly or make water running uphill instead of downhill.
So they can pretend that numbers can be owned and sold
like tangible commodities, but the reality of the
situation will always be that people share numbers
indiscriminately, since numbers inherently have this
property of not being scarce.


| In the near future all work can be done by robots anyway and
| at that point when there is such an abundance of material wealth
| it no longer makes sense to use money (since monetary value
| indicates relative scarcity).
|

People actually thought that back in the 50s
and 60s. Technology would mean less work to do.
We'd all get a break. One Juliet Schor wrote an
interesting book about it called The Overworked
American. She made a fascinating claim: That the
microwave is the only appliance that's reduced
work time. For instance, we used to have to scrub
our clothes clean, but we didn't wash them nearly
so often. As our lives became easier we found ways
to make them harder -- manufacturing sense of
purpose.

She also talked about the popular idea that technology
would make our lives easier. People expected we could
all move to 3-day work weeks. But it's not that simple.

* We make our lives more busy for sense of purpose.
People get bored and most people get into trouble if
they have free time.

* Economic changes have resulted in a greater imbalance
between rich and poor. There's less work to do, yet the
standard of living has gone down. Plutocrats have bought
the gov't in many countries, including, increasingly, the US.
This week's tax bill is intended to widen that gap.

* The great reduction in the need for housework and
manual labor has meant that women can now do most
jobs and often have free time. That's resulted in profound
gender role changes. The current sexual harassment
craze is part of that, as we try to work out functional
roles and standards for child-raising with the nuclear
family no longer being critical to survival. Will we
socialize child-raising? Will women take it over, with
taxes to support them? Right now it's becoming a
pastime for the rich. Upper middle class women have
children, with or without a husband, and pay low-wage
helpers to raise them. The helpers, in turn, can't
afford to have kids.

* Changes in technology also bring changes in costs.
Cars are more expensive due to improved safety. Houses
are more expensive due to complicated permitting,
safety regulations, etc.

That's just scratching the surface. But basically, we've
already arrived in the Golden Age of leisure and it turns
out to be not all it's cracked up to be. Lots of people
doing pointless work. Lots of poverty. Lots of planned
obsolescence. We yak about the environment yet we've
created an economy that's increasingly dependent on
disposable items. From diapers to windows -- nothing's
designed to last. Use it and throw it away.
I grew up in the 60s and early 70s. Life was much
easier then. A janitor could own a house and raise a
family. These days a janitor will probably need to share
rent on a 4-bedroom apt with 3 other people.

In a very basic, practical sense we no longer need to
work nearly so much. But that just hasn't panned out
in practice.

Ok, so we're actually engineering artificial misery and
artificial scarcity.
Hopefully we will come to our senses soon before we ****
up the whole environment with our collective stupidity.

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

Soubriquet talks of 100,000 down loads but I wonder how many of them
get to be used. I know several people who have tried bootleg PS and
given it up because they couldn't understand it. I suspect that many
of these downloads have been made simply because they could.
Then what ... ?

yep. a lot of piracy is downloading something for the sake of
downloading it, just to brag that you have it, whether or not you use
it.

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

On Mon, 18 Dec 2017 14:34:42 -0800 (PST), sobriquet
wrote:
....snip...


You are a contemptible leech upon society.

yep.

On Mon, 18 Dec 2017 14:34:42 -0800 (PST), sobriquet
wrote:

and if you barely have enough money to afford a computer and
an internet connection, you can download all software (cracked
or public domain) for free.

Yep, software is free, as is rationalization of just about anything.

"Eric Stevens" wrote

| Soubriquet talks of 100,000 down loads but I wonder how many of them
| get to be used. I know several people who have tried bootleg PS and
| given it up because they couldn't understand it. I suspect that many
| of these downloads have been made simply because they could.
| Then what ... ?

You might be right. I imagine it's mostly kids and
people in poor countries. For anyone else the
risks are not worth it and the technical knowledge
is not there.

Back when a disk just came with a key, at most,
people thought it was normal to pass it around to
friends. No one thought of it as stealing. But if that
no longer works and the software has to be "activated"
then the majority of people stop sharing. At that
point it becomes active law-breaking.

In article , Mayayana
wrote:

Back when a disk just came with a key, at most,
people thought it was normal to pass it around to
friends. No one thought of it as stealing.

many thought that.

don't you remember this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Copy_That_Floppy

But if that
no longer works and the software has to be "activated"
then the majority of people stop sharing.

yep.

what's really sad is that some people will pirate 99 cent ios/android
apps.

software developers also hang out on the pirate sites to get the
bootleg serial numbers, which are then deactivated, sometimes even
immediately (depending on how it's validated).


At that
point it becomes active law-breaking.

it was active lawbreaking before.

"Eric Stevens" wrote

| So filesharing kind of levels the playing field and affords
| everybody an equal opportunity to enjoy an abundance of
| software/content, regardless of their socio-economic status.
|
| You are a contemptible leech upon society.

He's a utopian socialist. Probably doesn't have
to work for a living. The sad part is that the
socialists usually turn out to be the most selfish
capitalists once they get used to having a job.

He does have a point, though. Not everyone
agreed in the early days that software should
be copyrightable. I found it very inspiring, back
in the 90s, that so many people were setting
up websites and just offering whatever they
could to "chip in". Lots of free information and
software. I did the same thing. Set up a website
and gave away things that others might find
useful. I still do. And most of the software I use
is free, written by someone who does it for the
love of it. Also, I get free information almost daily,
often provided by some anonymous person who
was just trying to be helpful.

nospam called me a "mooch" for using wikimedia,
but that's what it's there for. Thousands of generous
people have made it possible. The same is true of
wikipedia. And Craigslist. They're all great examples
of sharing and improving peoples' lives with the Internet.
One could just as well say it's mooching to get free
info online. Yet we all do that.

Which is not to say I think PS should be free. The
GIMP and Linux are good examples of the limits of free.
Free products are not so likely to be polished and
user-friendly, because the authors don't need to
satisfy customers.

In article , Mayayana
wrote:


nospam called me a "mooch" for using wikimedia,

i never said any such thing, you lying sack of ****.

"nospam" wrote

| nospam called me a "mooch" for using wikimedia,
|
| i never said any such thing, you lying sack of ****.

-----------------------------------------------------
Personally I usually find what I need for things like
website work at wikimedia.

in other words, you mooch off of other people's hard work.
------------------------------------------------------

Someone seems to be using your pen name.
Interestingly, the impostor is very convincing. They
insult constantly, just like you. They talk in
circles, just like you do. They even have the same
keyboard with the broken shift key. Maybe it's
an alternate reality version of you.

In article , Mayayana
wrote:

| nospam called me a "mooch" for using wikimedia,
|
| i never said any such thing, you lying sack of ****.

-----------------------------------------------------
Personally I usually find what I need for things like
website work at wikimedia.

in other words, you mooch off of other people's hard work.
------------------------------------------------------

oh yea, but that was one specific instance, not an forever
classification.

you still can redeem yourself.