RE: [xml-dev] GPL and XML and Schemas

["Len Bullard" <cbullard@hiwaay.net>]

There is some truth to that.  It may not work out the way individuals want.
The theft of sheet music by Xeroxing didn't destroy the market where
musicians could read.  It dented the popular music market.  The religious
music market (say choral directors) kept going and that is where the high
quality music is anyway (Rock destroyed the American songbook for quality
songs in the pop market).  So it is not type, but the subtype and customer
class that determine quality, therefore, profit based on quality.  Churches
buy a lot of sheet music.

The effect you will notice will be ever increasing prices for the concert
tickets, movie tickets, really useful software, etc.  The DRM technique
where music is only playable on certain devices retards that market
eventually although iPods do reasonably well, Macs are still selling, etc.,
but the vendor begins to buy market share and that is never a good business
practice.  Note the announcements that first release movie tickets will now
be selling for three to four times the standard prices in the theatres.  As
the ownership society has taken more of the wealth, they are increasingly
the dominant target for the marketing department.  At some point,
competition in the lower tier is restarted by a new technology, a new
business model, or quality (note the safety standards of KIAs).  Then
slumming becomes trendy again.

The SecondLife CopyBot brouhaha is the new hot topic, but it is just one
group of technologists finding a value sink and tapping it the same way
people tapped the music market.  The only news value of that story is they
are stealing inside a virtual economy that was converting virtual dollars to
real dollars.  But it is value that makes anything worth stealing.  Ten
years ago, the theft inside the pioneering 3D communities was quite low
because it had no resale currency and it was so easy and cheap to make.  It
is the fact of the virtual-to-real currency economy that makes theft worth
doing just as the high prices of CDs made burners sell.

As to the amount of protection a society offers against theft: it absolutely
depends on *who* is being burgled, not what, why, how or when.   And so it
goes.

len


>IMHO, is really horrible and evile, but can have 1 nice side effect :
>may change the industry from hit -driven to quality driven. And this
>is a good thing.