> So call me skeptical if after a decade or so they will all go back to what we had before.
The implicication of the article is that they won't have a choice. If your product doesn't meet the repairability standards then you won't be able to sell in the EU.
Currently it costs $400 to repair. If products become more repairable it also becomes cheaper to repair them (in theory at least).
This kind of legislation is likely to push up the initial purchase price but the overall cost should come down. So the $1000 Miele now costs $1200, but only costs $50 to repair.
I think you have your cause and effect the wrong way around there. The argument put forward is that Netflix is forced to use a subscription model because Facebook and Google have almost complete control of the advertising market.
In the specific case of Netlfix this probably isn't true as their business model is an online version of a business that already charged a subscription (cable TV).
However in businesses that traditionally relied on advertising e.g. the New York Times as mentioned in the article, the transition to the internet is leading to more upfront charging i.e. Paywalls because they aren't getting the ad revenue required to offer their services for free.
My personal take from the article isn't that all content use to be supported by ads (although I would suggest that a lot more of it was than most people realise). The issue is that the near duopoly Facebook and Google have on web advertising, mean those producing the content can no longer rely on advertising to fund themselves.
As a result we are seeing more and more paywalls being put up to fund these businesses. The potential end result of this is that finding content will continue to be free and probably even get easier. Finding content you can consume for free however, is likely to get a lot tougher.
Just a question, what's stopping NYT from using their own native ad experience embedded into their web page instead of relying on Google and Facebook? It's not like building an onsite tracking ad is secret stuff, is it? Rather, if ads are going to be better than those on Google and Facebook, they could charge a premium simply for eyeballs right?
I believe they do use their own ad platform. But I would guess that the pricing of ads on Facebook and Google mean that even if they could charge a premium, it wouldn't be enough to sustain the business.
There is only so much of a premium you can charge before no is willing to pay for your product.
Netflix's business is an online version of their old business, which was a mail-in version of Blockbuster.
No ads were involved in take-home videos, that I recall, other than late attempts at unskippable promos by the studios who released the movies themselves (that was after I gave up renting videos).
As I said in my second line, in the case of Netflix, I don't think this applies. Their business model has always been to charge users for content.
However when looking at the rise in the number of papers going behind a paywall like the NY times, there is an argument to be made that this is being driven by the fact it is no longer viable to run an ad supported business because Google and Facebook have control of too much of the market
I can actually see self driving making this worse. If the cars can drive themselves there is less need for parking in the city. Cars can drive themselves out of the city for cheaper parking. So on top of the trip in and out taken by the passenger to get to/from work, there is a second round trip for the car to park all day while it isn't needed by anyone.
I'm not a fan of Musk and am very skeptical of his vision of the future and self-driving cars in general but assuming these vehicles all have a low carbon footprint this seems like a possible net win considering the improvements to cities this could help drive.
Parking needs are a scourge on city density since office buildings and the like require parking structures increasing sprawl as well as the ability to build things like safe bike lanes, wider sidewalks, or pedestrian thoroughfares since street parking is needed for shorter term trips. Reducing parking inside cities would help make them more livable for those of us who do not own vehicles and would hopefully make that type of lifestyle more appealing to more people reducing the number of vehicles on the road.
All that of course would require a level of city leadership I'm also skeptical of but taken on its own the idea of cars being able to self-park further from city centers doesn't immediately strike me as a bad one.
> I can bet that in most big European cities, relying on public transportation + renting a car whenever you need is cheaper than the maintenance costs of car ownership (parking + insurance + gas).
That's already the case though. Having self driving cars doesn't really change the equation on that.
It changes the amplitude of the difference, it makes the contrast more and more clear and it expands the dimension of what we can consider a "city center".
I could live carless in Boston when I was living in Cambridge or downtown Boston. I could not make that if I wanted to live in Medford, even though that is a bare 10-minute drive from Cambridge. A fleet of self-driving cars could be spread around more efficiently in metro areas and suburbs.
Creating something without the intention of making money is different from creating something without the prospect of making money. The former is already covered by the likes of Creative Commons licensing or just not enforcing copyright.
But if I create something without expecting it to be successful why shouldn't that be protected on the off chance it does end up being successful?
> But if I create something without expecting it to be successful why shouldn't that be protected on the off chance it does end up being successful?
Copyright is not meant to protect your profits. It's meant to encourage creative risk taking. If you're going to take the creative risk anyway, then copyright isn't necessary.
> Copyright is not meant to protect your profits. It's meant to encourage creative risk taking.
Copyright encourages creative risk taking precisely by protecting the economic interests (e.g., profits) of those creative risk takers.
> If you're going to take the creative risk anyway, then copyright isn't necessary.
People don't take risks when there's zero possibility of reward. Even people who create mainly for themselves would be demoralized by the idea that even if they were successful, anyone could just take and exploit their work.
There's no such thing as a free lunch. Processing registrations and maintaining a registry has significant costs. In 2019, the US Copyright Office made 547,837 registrations and received about $35 million in total fees. [0] In 2019, the Registrar of Copyrights asked Congress for a budget of $92.9 million. [1]
Currently, most works are only registered when owners have an actual infringer that they want to assert statutory damages against, or when a work is a commercial work that will certainly be infringed. If mandatory registration were enacted, the Copyright Office would need to handle hundreds or thousands of times as many registrations.
Even an impossible 1000x expansion of registration capacity wouldn't come close to being able to register everything that people would actually want to protect. For example, a user on Quora [2] estimated that 100 million photos are uploaded to Instagram every day. Even if registration were free and streamlined, the yearly capacity of a 1000x Office would be saturated by 5 days of Instagram photos alone.
If registration were mandatory, commercial producers of creative works would not be affected because they would quickly learn to register everything. Ordinary people who don't want their Instagram photos to be exploited by others for profit, however, would lose. Opportunists who want to use the works of others without paying would win.
So, even if mandatory registration didn't affect creative output, it would be ridiculously expensive and would upset who wins and who loses in a way that would be counter to the public interest. It's never going to happen.
Goals in copyright policy should be addressed narrowly. If you want more works to enter the public domain, then you adjust the copyright term. If you want people to be able to use apparently-abandoned works, then you make apparent abandonment a defense to a claim of copyright infringement. If you want to expand Fair Use, then you amend the statute. Mandatory registration, however, would be a dramatic change that would upset everything; it's not worth discussing and I regret spending so much time on this response.
I believe opinion is a defence against libel even in the UK. Accusing them of being a scam strays close to being a claim that requires proof. But I wouldn't have thought it would be that hard to lodge a defence that it was an honest opinion and the wording in question is used in the context of common language/slang where scam can also be considered to mean not worth the money.
>First, the defence of honest opinion. The Claimant submits that the defence of honest opinion cannot succeed in circumstances were the words used convey an allegation of fraud. Mr Bradshaw referred me to the case of Wasserman v Freilich [2016] EWHC 312 (QB), an unreported decision of Sir David Eady sitting as a High Court judge. At paragraph 16 of his judgment Sir David said:
> > "The common sting in the various natural and ordinary meanings, pleaded in paragraph 27 of the particulars of claim, is that the Claimant was dishonest. That has generally been regarded as a factual allegation. It has long been recognised that "the state of a man's mind is as much a fact as the state of his digestion": Edgington v Fitzmaurice (1885) 29 Ch D 459. Juries are deciding on every day of the week, as a matter of fact, whether a particular Defendant was, or was not, dishonest. Accordingly, it is an allegation which in the context of libel is readily understood as being susceptible to a plea of truth under s.2 of the 2013 Act (as was the case with justification). It is not thought to be a matter of opinion: nor can one convert an allegation of dishonesty (or, for that matter, of murder or rape) into a matter of opinion by merely inserting in front of it a formula such as "I believe ..." or "she thinks ...": see e.g. Hamilton v Clifford [2004] EWHC 1542"
>And at paragraph 22 of his judgment he said:
> > "An allegation of dishonesty, fraud or attempted fraud will usually fall fairly and squarely on the side of fact rather than opinion. The same is true also, as I have already mentioned, where the allegation is of "reasonable grounds to suspect". Accordingly, I cannot allow a pleading to go forward in the form of paragraph 19A. It must be struck out."
>Here Mr Bradshaw submits that the allegation of dishonesty made that the Defendant is that it is "a scam solicitor", has the plain meaning that the Claimant is dishonest and fraudulent. The Defendant seeks to present this as an opinion. Mr Bradshaw argues this is impermissible, the Defendant is putting forward the Claimant's dishonesty as a matter of fact and cannot simply say by way of defence "this is my opinion". In the circumstances I accept the law is as stated in Wasserman v Freilich and am satisfied Mr Bradshaw's submission is correct, with the result the defence of honest opinion should be struck out.
IANAL but the judgement seems to saying, you can't just use prepned an actualy allegation of fraud with "It is my opinion" to claim it is opinion.
My argument isn't that, it's to challenge the idea that calling something a scam can ONLY mean I'm accusing them of fraud.
>First, the defence of honest opinion. The Claimant submits that the defence of honest opinion cannot succeed in circumstances were the words used convey an allegation of fraud.
The foundation of this argument is to challenge the assumption the words actually convey an allegation of Fraud.
It would get pretty deep into the evolution of language/multiple meanings and slang and probably isn't worth fighting, but I still think it's a valid (or at least interesting) defense.
In US law this idea is called defamation per se. [0] If a statement is defamation per se, then the court can skip analysis of whether the statement is defamatory. Defamation per se statements are divided among several categories, one of which is stating that the plaintiff is unfit to practice his or her profession. Accusing an attorney of being "a scam solicitor" falls into that category.
Is that the standard syntax? I've always been led to believe square brackets are used to insert words that don't exist in the quote.
> "go home and bite my [his] pillow."
To me makes way more sense. If I was to read "go home and bite [his] pillow." I would assume the person being quoted had said ""go home and bite pillow." which makes almost no sense.
Yes, it is standard. Search the thread for MLA or manual. Academic papers are done this way and have been for a long time, and it's not hard to understand.
I've not seen a paper with it yet, and doing it introduces an ambiguity into an otherwise clean, parsable syntax. And frankly, doing that is completely unnecessary. Adds pretty much zero value, and is presumptuous.
I am quite sure you can show me one too, and the point being this isn't in broad use just yet. Should not be.
Frankly, this reminds me of the one space after sentence mess. Similar reasons have been given. It reads better! It flows better! You get the idea here.
But, ever notice how often your mobile device gets capitalization wrong?
This is why!
The same people who thought cleaning up that one space made sense did not think through the parsing implications. One space means we no longer have a way to differentiate an end to a sentence from an abbreviation.
That nice, clean space has already cost untold human hours spent on hobbled user input. Your phone literally has no way to capitalize in a more effective, assistive way. (same goes for any code assistant depending on that information, which is lost in the one space after sentence scenario.)
Here we have a similar thing. If the brackets are allowed to overwrite quoted material, then we lose the ability to differentiate some of how brackets are used, which means we've made our language and grammar more ambiguous, and for what?
The example given in the article highlights this perfectly!
Given the use: go home and bite [his] pillow
Did Corky say, "go home and bite pillow" , or was something else said, and if something else was said, what was it, and why was it not simply quoted?
MLA is a standard, not the only standard. Just becase a significant portion of universities/academic instituitions have adopted it as their standard doesn't make it the worldwide standard at all. It doesn't even make it the standard for all academia.
Further Esquire is not an acadmic journal so should probably conform to a more widerly used understanding of how quotes are recorded/put in context.
Or you could use a standard card machine that has an included transaction buffer. I remember having these in my retail gig 15 years ago for the odd time the network went down (happened pretty much every christmas season)
Serious question. What is the business case for trustless financial products? If there's money involved 90% of people are going to need to trust something in the process, whether that's the counter party or the middleman.
Do you always need to trust something in the process, for every product? You have a secure trustless mechanism for consensus, and can assess counterparty risk for a given product by auditing the smart contract (e.g. for Compound, borrowers have to deposit collateral).
A simple business case might be interest earned by lending. Could you use traditional banking for this? Can any lay person lend? Is traditional banking accessible to anybody in the entire world with just an Ethereum wallet? This is just the beginning of defi and deposits have gone from ~0 to $30B in a year. Not much, in the grand scheme, but there's clearly demand for the products.
No doubt this market will be regulated in due course, but I think this bell can't be un-rung.
All of those business cases already exist in a reasonably accessible form.
>A simple business case might be interest earned by lending. Could you use traditional banking for this?
That is the basic business model of most retail banks. You lend the bank your money and they lend it out in bulk. In modern situations your "interest" is the relative security and ease of use you get from the bank storing your money instead of under your mattress. For a more explicit example: A term deposit is you lending your money to the bank and earning interest.
Banking in the developing world is definitely a problem, personally I'm not sure using a pretty volatile currency like ethereum is as compelling as using the likes of M-Pesa.
> That is the basic business model of most retail banks.
Right
> All of those business cases already exist in a reasonably accessible form.
Disagree. I live in a wealthy EU country and payments from my bank account have been frozen many times for several days because, e.g., I sent a modest amount via Western Union. I essentially had to say "sorry, wont happen again" to get access to my own money. I am unable to get certain credit from my bank because of my employment contract (i.e. rolling yearly contract) even though I have a good income and savings. And what's the interest rate on deposits in the developed countries, 0-1%? Negative interest rates are being applied to certain deposit accounts in my country.
I see DeFi lending as a different business case just by way of its global nature and overall accessibility. Another commenter mentions that its just used to buy crypto, i.e., it's a house of cards. That some people currently use it for leverage is irrelevant. Middlemen have been completely removed from lending and exchange via DeFi and it can't be undone now. Even with strict KYC/AML and regulation at crypto off-ramps it can't be undone.
> Banking in the developing world is definitely a problem, personally I'm not sure using a pretty volatile currency like ethereum
You can lend/borrow stablecoins (USDc), even if you're in the developing world.
> I am unable to get certain credit from my bank because of my employment contract (i.e. rolling yearly contract) even though I have a good income and savings.
That's purely a risk appetite decision by the bank. If you looked around you would probably find the type of credit your after. You just might not like the interest rate.
In terms of frozen accounts/money, I don't really see a fully developed DeFi helping much with this. Your transactions would have triggered KYC/AML warnings in the bank who are then obliged to freeze your account (and not actually tell you why). If a DeFi were to be big enough they would fall under similar legislation or quickly become an avenue for money laundering or terrorism finance.
>Middlemen have been completely removed from lending and exchange via DeFi and it can't be undone now. Even with strict KYC/AML and regulation at crypto off-ramps it can't be undone.
I get the concept, I don't really get the business model. Are we talking P2P lending? If so how many people are comfortable with doing the risk analysis required for lending in this scenario?
From my perspective that is what the middlemen are for. I could loan money to someone who needs it (locally at least) right now. But I don't have the time or the skill set to gauge 1) How likely they are to just cut and run with my money. 2) How long it is likely for them to pay it back. 3) How realistic it is that what they need the money for will produce the required income to pay me back in full. I have to use these factors to then calculate an interest rate on the money I lend but also make sure said interest rate isn't so punitive they don't want the loan. Or I could provide my money to someone else (the bank in this case) and they can do all of that analysis and deal with collection/enforcement, legal contracts.
As to making it a global function, that just ramps up the profile even more. I now need to research what, if any, rights I have to recover my potential losses in another country.
> You can lend/borrow stablecoins (USDc), even if you're in the developing world.
Sure, but what advantages does this have over the existing solutions in the developing world e.g. M-Pesa.
The business case is that people will buy their tokens/invest on their platform which will increase in value which will cause more people to buy in etc. If you look closely enough just about every successful blockchain project is a ponzi scheme on some level.
As far as I can tell, any defi project that isn’t an outright scam is just providing credit to people to speculate on cryptocurrencies. I’d be curious to see any counter examples. Otherwise it’s just turtles all the way down.
> providing credit to people to speculate on cryptocurrencies ... turtles
People do use it for leverage but who cares. It doesn't undermine the contracts, and certainly doesn't make the concept worthless. You can securely lend/borrow stablecoins globally with zero middlemen. What you do with the credit/interest is your own business.
The implicication of the article is that they won't have a choice. If your product doesn't meet the repairability standards then you won't be able to sell in the EU.