Bill Gates: “There’s always a tricky issue when you get into stolen material or pornography...if you get notified that it's stolen materials or pornography or things like that...The laws for online publishing the same as for print-based publishing.”
Translated: Bill Gates has a talking points team that wants him to equate potential copyright violators with pornographers so he's sure to mention it twice. The term “potentional copyright violators” while correct, isn’t as forceful as “stolen material” so he repeats that as often as possible too. His last statement makes clear that to him online publishing = print publishing. In other words, intellectual property = physical property and should be treated as such in the eyes of the law, a concept so fraught with problems I won't even go into the ridiculousness of it all.
I'm pretty sure I’ve figured out what Bill’s problem is and it’s pretty simple: Gates is convinced that Microsoft’s version of DRM is the One True Path for MS domination of internet content, and he’s saying anything he can to promote it.
(...)
This isn't the One True Way, it Bill’s Last Chance. The last chance that MS has to try and make a ploy for control of all music, movies, photos, and text shared online from content companies by slapping some crappy rights-restricting wrapper on it all and taking a cut for MS.
A Whole Lotta Nothing: The point that I lost all respect for Bill Gates
“I came back for my own purposes,” said the Time Traveler, looking around my booklined study. “I chose you to talk to because it was . . . convenient. And I don’t want you to do a goddamned thing. There’s nothing you can do. But relax . . . we’re not going to be talking about personal things. Such as, say, the year, day, and hour of your death. I don’t even know that sort of trivial information, although I could look it up quickly enough. You can release that white-knuckled grip you have on the edge of your desk.” I tried to relax. “What do you want to talk about?” I said. “The Century War,” said the Time Traveler. I blinked and tried to remember some history. “You mean the Hundred Year War? Fifteenth Century? Fourteenth? Sometime around there. Between . . . France and England? Henry V? Kenneth Branagh? Or was it . . .” “I mean the Century War with Islam,” interrupted the Time Traveler. “Your future. Everyone’s.” He was no longer smiling. Without asking, or offering to pour me any, he ...
Comments
Post a Comment