I was not saying, that non-scarce goods have no value. I am saying that by the definitions of economics which I learned (I actually was unfortunate enough to study the subject for several years) economics concerns scarce goods. Economic systems fail when you try to apply them to non-scarce goods (for example the attempt to create a market for the emission of co2, expecting people to trade hypothetical co2 emissions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading)

Air for example, is amazingly valuable. But it does not have a market value, as it is not scarce. If you are on the moon, it has a market value, because it is scarce. It does not change in function though: I need air on earth just as much as I need it on the moon. The market value does not, and does not intend to, represent the utility a certain product yields.

*

wanderson - I get it. you are saying theft is theft, no matter how you twist and turn it.
I am saying that it is irrelevant whether it is theft or not, it is a fact. I am saying times are changing and people and laws need to adapt, rather than hang on to a system which is crumbling.

But I don't think we will come to an agreement. But that's ok. We are different generations, from different ends of the world, with probably very adverse upbringings ... if we would start talking regular politics you'd probably go away thinking I'm a communist :-D (which I am not). Its the way it is.

(don't want to shut off the discussion, but I feel like we are not really getting anywhere, because there seems to be absolutely no common denominator from which we can start understanding each others points...)

What makes air worthless is not the lack of scarcity, but rather the inability to control access.  Here is an example.  Postulate a space station with individual apartments. As part of your monthly rent, you receive a utility charge for the air consumed.  Fail to pay, the air is shut off...  All of a sudden the air has value and people will pay for it.  With music, movies, etc. have a means to force payment for consumption by controlling access.

And one other thing separates music, movies, from your example of air.  The former require the labor or one or more individuals to create.  Individuals whom have a right to compensation for their services.  Which is why the government is justified in controlling access to their products, where they would not be with air...

[unmet demand]

@ wanderson. I think you need to re-examine your definition of scarce good.

Nope, my definition is consistent with how scarcity is defined in an economic sense.  You seem to be interpreting it to mean that since the potential supply of an individual song is infinite, its individual value is zero.  The marginal cost (and hence value) only approaches zero for so long as their is an unmet demand for the item.

Under your definition, A copy of the Beatles, 'Sergeant Pepper' has the same value as my cousins rendition of 'Happy Birthday'...  clearly a mistaken premise on your part.

fkeel,

Neither you nor anyone else has established just how the music industry was incompetent.  Perhaps you reference the fact that they didn't create an online music sharing system.  Why should they?  If someone saw such an opportunity (which they did) they were free to do so.  Most did so, in a manner that simply stole the music, and hence were subject to the laws associated with such theft.  Others (ie Apple) saw the business opportunity and implemented it in a legal manner.  And now the industry has another means to deliver their product to market.  But what you may not be aware of is that they did such suits in the past (age of tape), indeed with each new technology and the ease with which it added to the ability to steal, they have gone through a series of such suits to enforce their ownership rights.  I am thinking specifically when audio tapes became readily available, prior to that the only technology was open reel-to-reel recording, which was expensive enough that thefts were all but non-existent.

Your examples are interesting.  And as you describe 'social'.  They are also, and have always been, illegal.  In many ways it reminds me of Oliver Twist, which was also about such 'social' theft.

Since the person giving a pirated CD has  done little (in most cases nothing) to add any value to the music, which they stole, how is that a gift?  It certainly doesn't seem to be a expression of how the giver feels--assuming they actually do care for the receiver.  Handmade gifts can show such emotion, but they do because the gift giver has actually worked to create that expression.  For most a stolen CD consists of a few minutes of clicking and less than a dollar for the media...  Hardly an expression of much care.

I also do not think 'making money' from the theft is the only way such theft is wrong/immoral.  In my opinion, the only theft that might conceivably be argued as moral/right is one which provides a basic need for which death is the likely outcome of not meeting that need.  Music/movies/software theft does not (and never will) meet that criteria.  Indeed even such 'harmless' theft can and will cause the creators/owners the potential to fail to meet their basic needs and therefore become subject to death.  I, personally, know many artists who produce/sell their own CD's.  Each theft hurts them directly.  A culture that condones such theft, hurts their ability to make a living at producing content.  And ultimately, if such a culture prevails, the creation of such content will fade.

Most current companies are trying to sell virtually limitless goods, in a system which is designed to deal with scarce goods. Forcing law suits on a bunch of individuals will never solve that problem - the only way to solve the problem is by changing the market strategy. Slowly people are catching on to that.)

Amen, brother!

And it seems to me that the music industry is changing, already CD sales are way down from their peak and sales of single songs through iTunes and other commercial sites are increasing rapidly. In the mean time to expect music rights owners to not try and protect their property rights from online illegal sharing is pretty silly in my opinion.

I really don't think the industry is changing at a fundamental level (nor do I think they need to).  In my opinion, the only thing changing is the medium (digital delivery versus physical).  To me this mirrors the change CD's themselves brought about, when their cheaper production costs shifted more people to purchasing whole albums, rather than singles (what were called 45's in my day).  

This physical costs for producing CD's are much, much lower than LP's.  Indeed most of the 'costs' associated with producing music are now with the original production of the very first recording.  Even electronic delivery hasn't lowered the industry's costs very much--in fact I would say the need for additional legal actions that the ease of theft such methods afford could be said to offset any potential savings.

[demand for the goods]

wanderson: if they are making tons of money, why do they have to sue a couple of individuals for huge amounts of money? Netflix is a great example. With Netflix its less of a hassle to legally download than to pirate. I believe its a model we will be seeing a whole lot more of. Last.fm is similar - you also pay, and get to listen to a huge database of music. I am sure there is a lot more stuff around, and imo thats the best way to prevent piracy. Make it more convenient, not to pirate, than to pirate.

They are suing because those folks are stealing from them.  That isn't affected by how much they make, nor should it be.  The fact that Netflix and other related services are available hasn't seemed to curtail the theft of those products.  That just serves as proof that folks will steal this stuff because they can, it doesn't matter what the price is.

(dont know if you read the beginning of this thread, but this was my initial point: Most current companies are trying to sell virtually limitless goods, in a system which is designed to deal with scarce goods. Forcing law suits on a bunch of individuals will never solve that problem - the only way to solve the problem is by changing the market strategy. Slowly people are catching on to that.)

I did read your comment, but found its logic faulty.  The goods (all goods) are inherently limited, either by the supply available or the demand for the goods.  In the case of music and movies, it is the demand that provides the limits (scarsity) for the goods.  By committing personal theft and/or distributing illegal copies the perpetrator is harming the owner of the items--that is theft.  They deserve to be held accountable.  These lawsuits will solve the problem, in the same way the other consequences for crimes control the crime problem.  It is a question of limiting the problem, rather than eliminating it.

As an illustration of my point.  First degree murder is a crime in Texas.  One which is subject to the Death Penalty.  A pretty severe consequence, yet we still have a number of (albeit relatively small number) individuals who commit that crime.  Those criminals share at least one characteristic with Tennebaum and other such thieves; they thought they could get away with it.

Despite what some claim are exorbitant fines in the Tannenbaum case, it is certain that the plaintiffs will have spent far more than they will ever see in return for the action of suing Tannenbaum.  As I expect will be the case with every subsequent case (including those that settle).  Yet they will continue, because it is necessary to protect their property.  I applaud them, because it makes it easier for those of us who don't have the financial wherewithal to prosecute such thefts to have a chance to obtain some remedy.

Hi wanderson,
thank you for your answers.
BASCOM is the only commercial product being actively supported. FastAVR is no more developed since 2006 at my knowlege.
As for my compiler, it will be FREE for arduino, completely freeware.
Later we will enhance it to add support for all AVR chips and we will sell it as commercial product, but arduino version will remain Freeware !

More power to you; however, since one such product ceased production, I doubt there will be enough of a market to pay for your development costs. much less make any kind of profit, particularly if you offer Arduino versions for free.  In my opinion, the Arduino market is the one most likely (and not very, IMO) to be interested in such a product.

Sorry, but the first two links are to commercial compilers, both of which claim to produce fast optimized code. 

I have no dog in this hunt, but the questions you should ask yourself before continuing to put effort into what appears to be a commercial venture is what will your product offer that these don't.  And more importantly will that be enough to capture a big enough market to make the development costs worthwhile, particularly given the existence of free options (Arduino/GCC) for those chips and their accessibility to even beginners (the traditional market for basic)?

There are already a few options for those who want to program AVR's in basic, some open source.

http://microcontrollershop.com/product_info.php?products_id=352
http://www.fastavr.com/
http://code.google.com/p/dk-basic/
http://www.seanet.com/~karllunt/klbasic_main.html
http://www.jcwolfram.de/projekte/avr/chipbasic32/main.php


Given several options already exist some free other inexpensive, and yet you don't see many AVR projects that use them I don't think there is much of a market for a new version.

It was just saying on the UK news that response in the States has been very muted. The reporter says that he was too modest for many modern Americans. Is that what you see is happening?

I don't think the muted response was due to his modesty.  In my opinion the passing of any of our older (>50) folks pass without much comment, unless they were rock stars or others who appealed to the youth oriented culture so common here.

Has anyone here (other than me) purchased from the refurbished store...
http://shop.usa.canon.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/subCategory_10051_10051_-1_29252

I haven't, but it was mostly because the model/price range I wanted wasn't available on that site at the time.

Interesting, I guess that lots of buttons and modes come of well in magazine comparisons where as a professional uses a more selective criteria to judge a camera.

Its still all marketting, probably the same insides in a lot of them ?

Duane B

rcarduino.blogspot.com

I am by no means a professional photographer, but I did learn on equipment that was designed for professionals... after all the older cameras were made for professionals who were the only ones (mostly) buying them at the time.  Which is why I suspect I learned to appreciate the differences a good camera UI could bring to the party.  I suspect that if you offered the typical camera consumer a choice between the prosumer UI and the consumer UI for the same price, most would select the consumer UI since it is the most familiar to them (the same gestalt is used in lots of electronics).

However, I will say that the manufacturers appear to put their latest and greatest technology inside their highest end cameras first.  After that it appears that it depends upon whichever (prosumer vs consumer) are next in line for production as to which gets the upgrades first.  In my case, those latest upgrades appeared in the consumer version since the prosumer version was at least another year before it was upgraded (the 50d)...

Well, when I purchased my last digital slr, I chose the latest 'prosumer' model at the time a Canon 40D.  At the time I purchased, the consumer version actually had a more recent (and higher res) CCD chip, but the 'prosumer' version had a much better user interface.  The Rebel (the consumer version) required using a lot of buttons and menus to change common controls, while the 'prosumer' version had dedicated dials for changing those same functions.  Coming from using older cameras, I was more interested in the user interface than the wiz bang under the hood (anything over 8MP has more resolution than was obtainable on 35mm film).  I still have and use that camera more than four years later.

I really wish the cheaper cameras were designed for photographers, rather than techies... I would much prefer to spend less...

I also have been seeing this in the photography world.  My take is that it translates to: "This isn't item has basically the same technology as our next generation cheaper consumer items; however, we actually invested a little time in the user interface for this item, which we will withhold from those cheaper items..."

In my opinion, the current pricing structure for such things is pretty reasonable; however, I believe the argument is fundamentally flawed.  We are not talking about something that is truly a need.  No one lives or dies if they can't get a hold of a song or a movie.  I do not believe the motivation for the thefts are based upon financial considerations.  Otherwise, how could one explain how many people 'stole' try it before you buy it items like songs and software?

I'm not condoning theft, what I am suggesting is a different approach to the one currently used that may make the industry more money than the traditional business model it had become comfortable with. All the energy aimed at making a small number of infringers unhappy may be better spent coming up with a better distribution model. So far, the only ones making the big bucks will be the law firms being engaged.

I don't know, the music companies seem to be making tons of money with the existing system.  Don't think they have any incentive to change it.  And when one considers that individual songs can be purchased for less then a dollar online, I don't see how making it any cheaper would prevent the theft. 

Indeed as an Amazon Prime member, I can freely watch an extensive collection of movies and tv shows (ie rent), and they presumably cover whatever small fee (must be extremely small) is required...  Same goes for Netflix, etc...

[in fact all 800 of the song files were in this shared folder.]

  Perhaps after a few more such thieves are made destitute, the practice of such piracy will cease...

Thats the plan. Doesn't seem to be working. Apparently suing college students and single moms thieves for millions of dollars doesn't win you many fans .

My proof is the lawsuit. If they could have sued him for more than 31 songs, they would have. Thankfully, our court system still has to at least make it look like they care about justice.

Well since you didn't want to look through the transcripts yourself, here are a few relevant sections;

When MediaSentry first caught sublimeguy14 [Tennenbaum], this user had over 800 song files on his computer, 800 song files, and that's what in those screen shots, and we will show those to you.

These songs were distributed from sublimeguy14 to MediaSentry, and my clients later listened to those songs and verified that they are the copyrighted recordings, and we will play some of those songs for you
today.

Well that seems to be the answer to the mystery of why they only charged him with 30 odd violations, that was all they bothered to download from his machine on a single day, thereby verifying what he stole...

Also note, that performed that download more than six months after he was sent the first cease and desist letter...

We know, however, and we will prove to you that there were many more than the handful distributions that MediaSentry was able to make on August 10th, 2004. The reason we know that is because all 30, in fact all 800 of the song files were in this shared folder.

[/b]

Hence why he was found guilty (and that verdict later confirmed) of violating the copyright in a willful manner.  What you seem to insist upon misrepresenting, is that he was only liable for the damages he was, because he met the standards for willful conduct.  If he had simply copied a friends cd, or made digital copies of a friends mp3's he would have been fined at most a few thousand dollars...