Comments on Mad Analogy: Copyright Trolldom

That's a good article. Poor Google, from cutting-e...

2007-10-16T08:17:00.000-07:00

That's a good article. Poor Google, from cutting-edge to passé in one swell poop.

We're looking forward to Thanksgiving too. We would stay longer, but we'd rather leave you wanting more.

Here's an interesting article as well. I know you...

2007-10-16T06:11:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting article as well. I know you blogged about Facebook a while back. I think this just supports further what you were saying:

http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/15/technology/google_facebook.fortune/?postversion=2007101606

By the way... can't wait to see you guys for T-Giving. Wish you could stay longer, but understand time is limited.

Well said. You really cleared it up for me.

2007-10-16T05:51:00.000-07:00

Well said. You really cleared it up for me.

He sells books. It turns out that giving away tho...

2007-10-15T21:23:00.000-07:00

He sells books. It turns out that giving away those same books online is great advertisement, and many people who read the electronic copy buy the paper copy. I've done it myself – free downloadable PDFs don't make a very good birthday gift.

Bits are never going to get more difficult to copy. The information economy is not based on scarcity of information any more than the industrial revolution was based on the scarcity of machines. The machines made goods cheap and accessible, and information makes knowledge cheap and accessible. The information which was once scarce and dear is now free and easy to find.

So what do we do? We provide services that take advantage of that data. If you write software, you might think you're selling software. Guess what, that software is already commoditized and becoming increasingly worthless: it is the intelligent updating of that software that becomes valuable, and your expertise and knowledge of it is valuable.

You can't hoard information anymore and expect it to be worth anything. Hard-won experience is becoming devalued by inflationary time.

So, if I understand Cory Doctorow's career, he giv...

2007-10-15T03:53:00.000-07:00

So, if I understand Cory Doctorow's career, he gives away his literature under GNU-CC licenses. So how does he eat? I'm guessing he makes a pile at boingboing from the enormous ad revenue that they must generate. Plus, I'm guessing he does paid speaking tours, but can there be very much money there?

It's kind of my problem. I don't want to work. But I have to eat. So I work and I accumulate my wealth so that, one day, I can do what I really want to do--teach elementary school kids--and earn no money.