Disclaimer EDIT: After clicking the submit button on this post, I realized that it is the longest free flowing, single post thought that I ever seen posted to this board. It is slightly off topic, it is a rant and it may not interest anybody. Your time will never be refunded. Read at your own risk.
/disclaimer
It is a fascinating idea. A nice experiment and I am almost interested in the output / final product from this type of software. Hopefully somebody will give this guy a research grant to continue his work and it will develop someday into something truly useful.
However, the entire movement of "free information" has always been laughable. Its symbolic of its proponents' lack of understanding of how things work.
When somebody creates music, a piece of software, a painting, etc. They usually charge a fee for those who wish to use/listen/own it, etc. A great many people think "intellectual property" cannot really exist, because it is not tangible. They think that piracy is not stealing because they haven't taken anything away from anybody, they've simply made a copy of it. This is an infantile point of view symbolic of a man living in his parents house well into his 30's.
When a person dumps days / weeks / months into the creation of something for the enjoyment of others, that person is essentially making a profession of of that creative process. Saying that you enjoy that person's creations, just not enough to pay for it is fine. In that case, listen to it on the radio and let companies pay for your listening time with their commercials, or viewing time / reading time / etc with their ads. Piracy in a single instance can do nearly no harm. Piracy in wide scale can destroy a creative professional's ability to continue to operate.
If I am a programmer who has created a piece of software that is so (apparently) useful that millions of people use it and eventually begin to depend on its use, I should be compensated. I am providing value to a group of people, evidenced by their use of said software. If I am compensated monatarily for that, I can pay my bills, heat my home, pay for food, pay for my own entertainment, etc. If 90% of the people who use my product do not pay for it I have two avenues to persue.
First, charge those who 10% who do pay a fee that equates what it would take for me to continue to work on said product or future products. This will eventually make people look for an alternative, increase the number of people who turn to using my product without contributing monatarily, or penalise the honest 10% who have come to rely on my creative works for their function.
The second option is to quit what I'm doing and move on to something else, as I cannot pay my bills with the income of the 10% without pursuing option 1.
This is the way the world works. Sure, information should be free. Facts, historical accounts, etc are free. Information, as I would define it, which allows you to educate yourself on a trade, product, science, event, etc can be found in a plethra of places for free. Wikipedia.org if you want information. Information is provided for free by volunteers who take free time out of their day to make it available OR because government and charity organizations
pay people living wages to do research and make said information available.
That said,
why am I dropping this wall of text on your thread? Well, I've seen a lot of subtle "fuck the man" type anti-intellectual property rights posts from you in the past gig. I understand where your point of view comes from on these issues, and reading this (I'll admit, interesting descriptoin of a conceptual software product) triggered it.
I used to have a similar point of view. Why pay for it if I can copy it for free? It seems the opinion of you and others like you (especially LINUX nerds) seem to think there should be no such thing as intellectual property. (-And correct me if I'm wrong about you being in this group, as my rant is against this idea, not you personally-) This idea is spawned from ignorance and naievety. I will conceede one point: a lot of musicians, software companies, etc charge too much for their intellectual properties and a lof of them are over paid. However,
buying a computer game, CD, etc is my way of telling its creator I appreciate what you've done here, keep at it. Don't quit because you can't make enough money to pay your mortgage. Its a way of making a statement--this is worth supporting, your work is worth doing and I'm putting my money behind what I think is worthwile.
Now, I know the popular argument is that
"I wouldn't listen to it / watch it / play it / use it if I couldn't get it for free." In most cases this is pure bullshit. The fact is you would if you could afford to. Entertainment (which is what most intellectual property that is stolen is used for) is central to a person's enjoyment of life. All work and no play makes Jack a dick nose and what not. The fact is, people who follow this system of belief do pay for intellectual property when they're unable to rip it off. This is the hypocricy of this angle.
Another popular argument, particularly when pirating music, is
"Distributing the music for free will increase the artist's fan base and create higher demand for their live concerts, etc." I will concede a slight validity to this argument. It does have that affect. It is sort of a chicken and egg argument though.
What is the cost of the equipment and facilities used to record those tracks for distribution? What is the cost of distribution? It has certainly gotten a fuck of a lot cheaper with the birth of digital music libraries and portable players' prevailence. However, it isn't free... Making the live shows the only source of revenue for the recording and distribution of new tracks...which are the driving force for the fan base that makes the live shows financially viable.
On the topic of the vampiristic record industry, if not for those looking to suck the blood out of the recording artist, who pony up the money for the recording and distribution of the tracks, who would make that initial investment? The starving artist? Hmmm. Eventually, squeezing the recording industry out of the music business means one thing... Either today's artists who cut out the middle man and continue to reap the benefit of the lucrative live shows will have to begin seeding the next generation of artists' recording and distribution OR there will be a regression in talent discovery and we're going to be listening to the same shitty cold play tracks on the radio over and over. The age of the star will collapse over the course of a generation. I prefer to let the blood sucking vampire record execs stick around personally.
Anway, once you grow up and start to think about how you'll make your way, how you'll pay for your home, food, clothing, family's quality of life, etc you begin to realize it all costs money for a reason.
Sorry (sort of) for the rant in your thread. I just got done polishing off about 900 pages of free information on call center design and sometimes that crap sends me into rant mode... I just need a trigger.
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