He did. It was also available to download for free on the Internet.
"No IP" does not mean "You can't charge for things." Enough people would rather go to a movie theater than get on Bittorrent that he made his money back.
Side note: I was one of those people. I wear Pirate Bay tshirts around, I'd throw out all IP law if I was in charge... but I did pay money to go to the theater to see Avatar. Going to the theater and getting that crazy huge screen, great sound system, and (maybe) the 3D was totally worth it.
The fact that it worked for one movie does not mean that it would work any other movie.
The hook with Avatar was that it was a spectacle deliberately designed to be seen in 3D on the biggest screen possible, to the extent that there's very little point not seeing it in a movie theatre.
It's a unique example and its impact (and profitability) would be lessened by a) competition by similar movies and b) greater adoption of home 3D hardware.
In my mind, the answer is “better” if we also no longer need to worry about money (that is, a post-capitalist system). I’m not sure about the meantime.
Yes, capitalism is a pretty new concept also. The two go hand-in-hand.
But never before in history have we been able to copy media ad infinitum for practically zero time, cost and effort. It's always required time, an educated, talented person to copy, or resources that had a real cost.
In the case of the 3D printer the only real expense is the plastic used to print the object, which is awesome only for those who manufacture the materials.
Actually, it's pretty funny: the materials are the only place where they make their money. 3D printers are sold on a total razor and blade model, the machine manufacturers make 70% of their money from materials, and something like 5% on actual machines.
>Enough people would rather go to a movie theater then get on Bittorrent
True, but i guarantee that Movie theaters would rather get on Bittorrent rather than pay millions of dollars in fees to James Cameron. The only thing stopping them is IP laws.
I've spent more time explaining monads to HN than I have anything else. It comes up at least twice a day and I am tired of writing an explanation twice a day.
Sounds like the startup environment (I'm talking 1-8 employees) would be a better fit. I too interned at a big company. Don't let it ruin the industry altogether!
So moral absolutes apply to adults but not children? There is never a case when spying on an adult could save their life?
I'm not sure about your examples. If you suspect your child may be suicidal, talk to him or her. If you do NOT suspect bullying or cutting, how do you know that spying is justified? I think you're "begging the question."
That's a bit of a strawman, I'm pretty sure that's not what I said.
This much I know: an absolute right to privacy does not apply to children.
Like you I mean this in the ethical sense: there are (IMO) beyond doubt cases where it is ethical for a custodial parent to invade the privacy of a child, possibly without the child's knowledge or consent. But I suspect this is also a legal fact virtually everywhere, which suggests to me that this may not be a controversial perspective.
I'd be surprised to find and interested in understanding the perspective of a parent that disagrees.
This seems like a no-brainer to me: at some stage kids just aren't capable of managing their own lives. I would take action to stop my (hypothetical) 13-year-old child from cutting just as I would take action to stop my 3-year-old child from playing with knives. The actions would be different. Talking about it would certainly be a preferred option, probably the preferred option, in dealing with the 13-year-old. If it came to monitoring, telling the child that their communication will be monitored would be preferable to not telling them. But I certainly wouldn't just throw up my hands as say "c'est la vie" if those things didn't work and I certainly wouldn't hesitate to invade the child's privacy if I thought it would have a positive impact in the long run.
I did not and cannot make a universal statement about "moral absolutes", only about the "right to privacy".
Personally I'm not sure whether or not an absolute right to privacy applies to adults. You make one argument against it (for their own protection). Personally I disagree with that, I think that if you are a mentally competent adult eventually society has to give you the flexibility to harm yourself if you choose to, but I can understand where that argument is coming from. There are other arguments against an absolute right to privacy that I think are more widely accepted, such violating an adult's privacy for the protection of others, but that's a slippery slope to go down.
Also, re:
> If you do NOT suspect bullying or cutting, how do you know that spying is justified?
one of us must be misunderstanding the other. I'm in 100% agreement with you. If I did not suspect an issue that could be helped by "spying", I wouldn't be doing it.
An up-to-date iPhone is not trivial to jailbreak, especially if it isn't yours. Jailbreaking is a specific kind of rooting. It "ought" to be virtually impossible.
Then good luck hiding your trail, reassociating the Apple ID, hoping no apps broke due to the jailbreak (it's happened to me), keeping the device associated with the owner's iTunes, etc.
There are times when jailbreaking an up-to-date iPhone is not possible, but right now the latest firmware can be rooted in a few minutes with a very simple program. It does not affect your Apple ID, iTunes association or anything other apps. It just gives you root access and installs the jailbroken app store from which you can install OpenSSH, etc.
I'm not sure if there are any trojans available, but if there were, you could easily install them and then either delete the jailbroken app store or just hide it from SpringBoard.
This process could easily be done in 10-15 minutes as long as you have physical access to the phone.
Apple gets the press, but there is no Flash on 98% of cellphones in the wild. Or IE8 64-bit. Or Linux in 64-bit. What about people who only own a cell phone (VERY common in other countries)? What is Adobe offering them? Stop assuming everyone is a rich technophile.
