Apple Patent Reveals Gift-Giving Platform For NFC-Based iDevices 110
redletterdave writes "While downloading and storing digital media with online service providers has become commonplace — more so than purchasing DVDs and CDs at physical retail stores — it's not very easy to transfer digital files from one individual to another, usually because of copyright laws. Some digital distributors have systems for limiting usage and distribution of their products from the original purchaser to others, but often times, transferring a copyright-protected file from one device to another can result in the file being unplayable or totally inaccessible. Apple believes it has a solution to this issue: A gift-giving platform where users have a standardized way for buying, sending and receiving media files from a provider (iTunes) between multiple electronic devices (iPhones, iPads). The process is simply called, 'Gifting.'"
Please don't (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd feel guilty that the gift giver had funded what Apple is doing in the world. I'd be upset to receive such a gift.
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
copying a bunch of ones and zeros that have no inherent value
I'm confused. Why would anyone copy a collection of ones and zeros that had no value?
Doesn't the very act of copying them prove that there is an inherent value in the mind of the person making the copy?
Re:Gifting is insightful (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes, social conventions become obsolete, and that obsolescence is always a one-way street. Copyright has become obsolete, and all the DRM and increasingly desperate laws being put on the books to try to protect copyright are doomed to failure. When it's so easy to make perfect copies at will, perfect copies will be made. The pro-copyright people cannot possibly win. They can make life shittier and more expensive, but they can never, ever win this one.
The winners will be the ones who figure out new models for making a living from their work. The losers will be the ones who continue to cling pitifully to an outmoded ideal. Copyright was pretty much a stop-gap measure to begin with. It was always doomed to fail.
And know what? People will continue to create, to innovate and to make great music/art/literature/movies, because that's what humans do. At some point, the people who only got into it for the money will figure things out and move on to some other money-making venture. Can you imagine what it'll be like when the only ones left in those fields are the ones for whom it actually means something besides money? It could well trigger another Golden Age.
Re:Gifting is insightful (Score:2, Insightful)
No they don't. Mother Nature has not in any way given us a "right" to hold a monopoly over our creations. The idea, like fire, is only ours so long as we keep it to ourselves. But once we share our idea or our flame with someone else, then it is public domain and can be spread around the world. In fact many of us work w/o any such compensation... I've written tens of thousands of messages over the years and NONE of them is my exclusive monopoly. They are freely-distributed all over the place, as part of the public domain of the Usenet/Internet.
As a writer, I have no more right to a monopoly than does Microsoft or Comcast or the East India Trading Company. When a monopoly is granted by the People to a person, it is a *privilege* and it is revocable at any time the monopoly is no longer beneficial to the People (society).
The grant of the copy monopoly was created in order to jumpstart a culture. Well we have that now. In fact we have too much of it (so many new works are produced for TV, radio, books that it's impossible to keep up). Culture is overflowing. It's the most-productive industry in the U.S. and there is no longer any reason to provide this incentive/subsidy, as it can stand on its own two feet without the artificial support.
Now being the type to compromise, I'd be willing to keep the authors' monopoly but only for a much shorter term. ONE generation, not six generations (115). That's more compensation than most people get (backwages for factory work only goes 3 years into the past). Give an author twenty years, and then the item becomes public domain for the benefit of all 7,000,000,000 humans, rather than just 1.
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
The work represented by the bits has value. Any particular copy of them does not.
Clearly any particular copy of them does hold value, or there would only be one copy. Someone took the time to make that additional copy. They did so because the second copy would have value. In fact it would have the same value as the first copy.
To suggest otherwise is to suggest mindless copying takes place almost at random and by accident.