How to gracefully handle cache expiration - <AUTHOR> http://alekseykorzun.com/post/49520668105/how-to-gracefully-handle-cache-expiration

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, this is probably the biggest technical blog post I wrote and I'm looking for some tips/feedback on how to improve my writing skills.

I'm also aware there are other ways to approach this problem, this post is aimed to people who are not very advanced when it comes to caching dynamic data.

Thanks!

<comment><USER2> The writing is easy to understand, but is there any reason why you're just not using memcache's add method? For the price of a network call, you'll automatically get the LRU cache logic and a more deterministic behavior.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

For which operation are you suggesting to use add() method? As far as I can see (and I just walked in so I might be overlooking something) you want to set data (overwrite) if it exist.

Add() will fail if key already exist (which should be the case under full load) and you will end up using set() anyways.</comment></comment></comment>


Proposed Mexican Telecom Law Would Be a Disaster for Internet Freedom - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/proposed-mexican-telecom-law-would-be-disaster-internet-freedom

<comment><USER2> Mexican here.

This is a big deal for us. The PRI party who was ousted in year 2000 after 70 years ruling Mexico, just regained power in 2012 after using all their corruption, media and populism machinery.

Our president is (or pretends to be) an idiotic ignorant who can't name three books he has ever read. His only opposition comes from social media, twitter and Facebook because he pretty much has all the traditional media in his pocket.

El PRI has an historic record of being trigger happy against their enemies even when these are unarmed students ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre)) so it is obvious that he wants to control, censor and shut-down the internet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately as a consequence to Carlos Slim's quasi-monopoly on telcos, Mexico has already the highest Internet access price in the world. I'm wondering if this law is not another attempt to lock down the system.

<comment><USER4> Slim's Telmex monopoly drove Mexico's voice telecom prices to the highest in the first world, though competition and regulation have now reduced them somewhat . Data and internet prices are pretty reasonable.

Home broadband connections can be had for about US$20-35 per month. Reliable 4G nationwide month-to-month absolutely no contract plans with 2GB+ data can be had for US$25 or less.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, those are better prices than I'd expect to see in the US (only experience: San Francisco comcast, or T-mobile for cell data). Broadband and cell data will substitute perfectly for "voice service"... what gives?

<comment><USER4> "Broadband and cell data will substitute perfectly for "voice service"... what gives? reply"

They substitute only if everyone you want to call has Skype or GVoice or something. If you want to call people with phone numbers, you need voice specific service. Telmex charges Skype &c big, big interconnect fees to access the regular telephone number voice market.

It's been worth enough to make Slim the world's richest man mostly on the charges for USA-Mexico voice interconnect fees. I used to talk to my US contacts on Skype.

<comment><USER5> > If you want to call people with phone numbers, you need voice specific > service

This isn't true. I use google voice and the GrooVe app to make and receive calls to and from land lines. They don't need GVoice; _I_ do. And I have it.

Then again, my GV calls connect to US numbers. On examination, the Google Voice rate to call mexico is indeed ridiculously high ($0.15 / minute -- compare the $7.14 / minute my parents' land line wanted in order to connect to China [GV rate: $0.02]).

But if the use case is talking to family members on a regular basis (seems likely when the cash cow is US -> mexico calls), it shouldn't even be difficult to tell them "if you use the internet, we can all talk for free". Your family seems especially likely to be willing to make some accommodations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately since Televisa and TV Azteca own a big stake in this bill, they won't give air time about it, and will go unnoticed by the general mexican public...

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems like the entire planet is headed inexorably toward a locked-down, oppressed future, both online and off.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if the level of violence in Mexico changes how people see these internet tracking and retention bills? If any government official could pull your blogging and twitter history, seems like it could have more consequences than in America. But it still seems like only a small portion of the population cares... guess all around the world everyone has life issues that limit their expression of political will.

<comment><USER9> I could see it both ways. If you believe the federal government is violently corrupt, you wouldn't want them to have any information on anything you said to disparage them.

If you see locals as corrupt and the federales as simply lacking ways to investigate and prosecute drug kingpins, then you might want much longer periods of data retention.

Of course, if you're plagued by violence, you might not really care about telecommunications regulation, you might have more important things to worry about, like whether or not the Knights Templar are going to accidentally kill your local preacher's kidnapped daughter before the community can rally to collect the ransom:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YKL8jFB...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YKL8jFBHRCsJ:online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303277704579349283584121344+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us) [cache because the original story seems to be broken on WSJ]

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The bill mandates that telecommunication companies retain all customers' communication data for 12 months. Do they really mean ALL the data? Everything I watch on Netflix, Crunchyroll & YouTube? All the games I download from Steam, PSN & the eShop? All the data from my ssh & scp sessions (which should be useless to anybody)? It seems to me that they do not understand what they are asking for.

</comment><comment><USER6> For those who don't know, between Azcárraga-Televisa (Sky/Megacable/Megared/Cablevision/Yoo/etc), and Slim (Telmex/Telcel/Dish), they account for 99.9% of Mexican internet access.

</comment><comment><USER11> You may be thinking "who cares I don't live in Mexico" but here is a relevant poem by Martin Niemöller.

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me."

This is relevant since citizens from all over the world must be involved with laws that affect the internet and if we don't care about other countries it may cause a domino effect until it reaches yours. We are all citizens of the Internet.

<comment><USER12> Except that, and all similar statements, are pretty much talking about a slippery slope within a single body politic. Because I'm not out protesting against North Korea's or China's policies, I'm contributing to the decay of civil liberties and internet freedom in the United States? I don't think so. Mexico is not a China or a North Korea, but there's political separation between any countries that can't be ignored.

I don't mind too much if EFF gives some support to Mexican organizations opposing this, but I think the main effort against it should originate from Mexico. Nothing makes conservative Americans more upset than hearing Central or South American leaders lecture the United States on policy. We should be cautious about lecturing or trying to influence other countries. Saving people from themselves is a noble goal, but it has a low success rate, is highly stressful and is not for everyone.

Political corruption and dissociation between the wishes of the people and the actions of government is a problem in most representative democracies, and I don't mean to trivialize that.

It's also seems plausible to me that Central and South American governments might pursue these sorts of policies partly as an evolution of surveillance against gang and drug crime, and therefore partly at the behest of certain U.S. political interests. Which would mean it's quite a political tangle.

Is Mexico's internet policy more significant than China's to the internet as a whole? Will lawmakers or courts of the U.S. or Europe look to Mexico to decide how to proceed on issues of civil liberties on the internet? In other words, is this the best place for freedom-minded technologists to put what little political muscle they have to work?

<comment><USER13> > Except that, and all similar statements, are pretty much talking about a > slippery slope within a single body politic.

Is it? Can it not ever apply beyond that? Did the poet make it clear that it only applies to a single body politic?

> Nothing makes conservative Americans more upset than hearing Central or > South American leaders lecture the United States on policy.

Is it that important when it upsets some people? Besides some of their lectures are valid especially the ones concerning narcotics legalization.

> We should be cautious about lecturing or trying to influence other > countries.

Looking at your previous example, I feel that you're confusing a non-profit organization with the US government.

> Saving people from themselves is a noble goal, but it has a low success > rate, is highly stressful and is not for everyone.

Are you saying that the EFF should just give up and quit because the challenge / problem is too difficult?

> Is Mexico's internet policy more significant than China's to the internet as > a whole?

Does this really matter? A victory is still a victory no matter how small. I also doubt that the EFF is expending as much resources for this as they would for a SOPA or TPP. Using this logic should people stop fighting for civil liberties in small towns since they're not as big or important as big metros?

<comment><USER12> > Is it? Can it not ever apply beyond that? Did the poet make it clear that it > only applies to a single body politic?

It _can_ be, of course, but there are political realities when _trying to influence public policy in another country_.

> Looking at your previous example, I feel that you're confusing a non-profit > organization with the US government.

Unlike governments, non-profits have no political pull in foreign countries other than to get citizens of those countries motivated to organize their own political blocs. Which the EFF should try to do, to a point. But U.S. citizens getting involved is, quite frankly, political interference. We can write all the rhetoric we want on the internet about how logging internet traffic is stupid, and how Mexico shouldn't do it (of course that's true), but is it going to change policymakers' minds in Mexico? I very much doubt it. And internet-using freedom-loving Mexicans willing to get politically involved probably don't need the U.S. based EFF to tell them about political machinations within Mexico.

The U.S. government could use some of its muscle and convince the Mexican government to shelve this proposal, but how well would that go over, when the NSA is selectively logging anything it wants _anywhere in the world_ (anywhere that it can get at and tap)?

<comment><USER13> > It can be, of course, but there are political realities when trying to > influence public policy in another country.

Yes, but what does that have to do with constricting the meaning of the poem?

> Unlike governments, non-profits have no political pull in foreign countries > other than to get citizens of those countries motivated to organize their > own political blocs.

The EFF is all about raising awareness. How does this hurt anyone? Why is it stupid to help raise awareness of an issue in another country?

<comment><USER12> To rephrase: Acting on the spirit of the poem, and other similar philosophy, without taking heed of certain caveats I elaborated upon, is political foolishness, and perhaps the primary reason enlightened liberals have a lot of trouble getting things done in the world.

> Why is it stupid to help raise awareness...

Take a look at the _only_ place I used the word "stupid". Hint: it has nothing to do with the EFF.

I'm attempting to inject some balance, and some political reality, into what I think is head-in-the-clouds liberalism.

I don't know that the EFF is doing anything that hurts people right now; this was but one press release on their website. But anyone, like the poster who started this subthread, who tries to make Mexico's issues the world's issues, has to contend with allocation of limited organization resources (opportunity costs). If organizations in the rest of the world put resources into interfering in Mexico's primarily internal policies, and get nothing out of it, when they could have been fighting policies that more directly affect those organizations' members, is that not harm?

<comment><USER13> > To rephrase: Acting on the spirit of the poem, and other similar philosophy, > without taking heed of certain caveats I elaborated upon, is political > foolishness

How is it foolish when the cost is low and what does this have to do with being a liberal (ftr I am not a liberal)? Of course let's not forget that your original point was that you felt the poem had a very limited scope.

> has to contend with allocation of limited organization resources > (opportunity costs).

Is the cost of writing and posting an article online expensive? What opportunity costs are they missing by writing a single article?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In wish EFF would be more impartial in its language and let then facts speak for themselves. They can make there case by spreading factual information and requesting an activist response. I don't trust anyone who tells me how I should feel.

<comment><USER13> > In wish EFF would be more impartial in its language and let then facts speak > for themselves.

The EFF is not a news agency. They're an advocacy group. They don't need to be impartial when it comes to civil rights and freedom just as the NRA doesn't need to be impartial when it comes to firearms.</comment></comment>


How New York's Skyline Is Changing to Give the Wealthy a Better View - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/14/nyregion/new-york-skyline-inequality.html <comment><USER2> A good view is part of real estate value. When do the wealthy not have a better view?</comment>


Ask HN: What have your learned from your failed startup? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> It is better to be too late to market than too early.

It is better to sell to early than too late.

It sounds cliche, but focus on building a great, easy to use product.

Don't let a single customer be too much of your revenue.

Disqualify quickly.

I wouldn't do remote teams.

Let the market dictate your product direction, not the engineering team.

Vital few is so insanely important.

Avoid shiny things syndrome.</comment>


What is medicine's 5 sigma? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736%2815%2960696-1.pdf

<comment><USER2> What a lot of nonsense. I would have hoped for more from a journal that facilitated one of the greatest and most harmful scientific frauds of all time when they published the Andrew Wakefield paper about autism and vaccination [1]. The Lancet also doesn't publish data except what they can stuff in a single PDF and sell their journal through the glorified academic extortion racket Elsevier. So yes, thanks for pointing out 'nobody is ready to take the first step to clean up the system.' Completely empty rhetoric.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield)

</comment><comment><USER3> Can we determine ,by looking at papers if a research is replicated ?

Can Google determine that ?

If so , adding a Google Scholar search filter for replicated, proven research could be useful, and might even make verified works more citable, hence improving incentives somewhat.

<comment><USER4> Cited does not equal verified.

Negative results often go unpublished, yet may be just as important to the working researchers.

Until financial rewards are divorced from citation rates, this will remain a problem.

<comment><USER3> Sure , cited doesn't mean verified, you need to read more deeply than that. But if a paper from a reputable source says - "We replicated X", or "X was replicated in Y" , those are useful data points with regard to an article being verified.

And if Google understand that and help find that, it's far easier to find verified research, so it makes it more likely that i'll base my research on that , and cite them.

And if it's more likely to be cited, maybe more verification work will be done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow. Disappointing. This is a like a tragedy of the commons , nobody is willing to take the first step. I think severely hard remedies measures are needed, "better peer review" is not going to cut it. For example, make it a requirement that a finding is reproduced in an independent lab before publishing.

<comment><USER6> such a journal exists.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_Syntheses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_Syntheses)

<comment><USER7> Interestingly, synthetic chemistry is a good example of a field that has policed itself well. I don't know if it's an official rule anywhere, but synthetic chemists follow an rule of performing a pretty good number of independent tests on any new chemical, such as IR, NMR, mass spectrometry, crystallography, and elemental analysis. Plus they need to have a plausible explanation of how the molecule was formed.

<comment><USER6> Fairly well. There's still Corey yield. The sezen/sames crisis happened too. I had a grad school friend who sent a sample to the crystallography service and got the structure he was looking for when he submitted salt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One thing is for sure, changing alpha is not the answer!

I thought the article was going to be about six sigma and Japanese theory of manufacturing. For a while the article was going there, with a mention of changing incentives and rewarding honest criticism.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, if there's anywhere I _don 't_ want to see using six-sigma alpha, it's medicine. That's a death sentence for hundreds of millions of people, at a minimum.

(Alpha is only part of the tradeoff with power and sample size; since we're not going to get sample sizes boosted into the millions for medical trials, six-sigma could only be achieved by trashing power to the point where they never reach any positive result at all.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article has at least one thing right, the practical incentives in much of science run counter to what we might reasonably agree are the right outcomes to target.</comment>


Bytedance spent –$1B advertising TikTok in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktoks-videos-are-goofy-its-strategy-to-dominate-social-media-is-serious-11561780861?mod=rsswn <comment><AUTHOR> I took the title from the techmeme.com link

> TikTok was splurging by spending nearly $1 billion on advertising for the > year</comment>


Heaven Can Wait; can a theist love an atheist? - <AUTHOR> http://www.themorningnews.org/article/heaven-can-wait

<comment><USER2> Yes, if both parties are sufficiently neurosis-free. That means the odds aren't good, but it's plausible. Also, this is one case where Betteridge's law of headlines is wrong. Unfortunately, the article is pretty fluffy.</comment>


Popcorntime is leaving GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://status.popcorntime.io/ <comment><USER2> I've not used popcorntime and didn't really believe it would work with a smooth experience (and when you've got Netflix why bother?).

But this: [https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-07-11-MPAA.m...](https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-07-11-MPAA.md) ... this is great marketing for popcorntime. It shows it working and giving an experience that looks very much like Netflix.

Seems like the MPAA have given popcorntime some free marketing.

Reading the DMCA notice though, does it really apply to a repo of code?

Their argument is that it can access infringed content (but so could a web browser, or network media player, etc) and that MGM vs Grokster means that "the distribution of a product can itself give rise to liability where evidence shows that the distributor intended and encouraged the product to be used to infringe". But if Github can be considered the distributor of the product (rather than just the hosting company for source code) then I'm not sure Github have ever intended or encouraged use of the product to infringe, or indeed whether Github have any interest in the use of code hosted in repositories by them.

Do Github just roll over on DMCA requests? Or will they challenge ones like this where an entity is requesting a takedown even though the code itself contains no infringed content and Github have not encouraged use of the code to infringe?

<comment><USER3> "and when you've got Netflix why bother?)"

Because Netflix takes forever to get the latest movies, and is filled with terrible straight to dvd movies! :)

<comment><USER4> And because Netflix contains wildly different content in different regions.

My parents use Netflix and I recently got a request from them to set them up to access US Netflix. I didn't even know they were aware of the difference, but they are, and they're sick of the crap that shows up on our side of the boarder.

Not Netflix' fault, and I'm elated that they're pressing the ISP issue, but there are valid concerns about content as well.

<comment><USER5> Netflix adjusts to whatever region you're in, so getting "US Netflix" isn't going to work for your parents. You're going to need to set them up with something like www.unlocator.com which can spoof their region. Once they turn it on it will open up a lot of titles with their existing Netflix account.

<comment><USER6> I thought that was implied by his statement.

<comment><USER5> I read it as they wanted a "US Netflix account" which is really no different than having a "UK" or "Canadian" Netflix account. Netflix doesn't make the distinction between where the account is, only where your IP address is located. This is in contrast to a company like Amazon where purchasing something from amazon.ca or amazon.co.uk is much different than buying from amazon.com. I'm not sure how this effects watching Prime when you're traveling, though, and if it's also IP based.

At any rate, I don't think the implication is obvious.

<comment><USER7> amz is ip biased, as is google. apple is the only content provider i've found that works traveling abroad (minus vpns/tunnels) as they associate content to account based on cc billing address (though they have terms to indicate otherwise).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I look forward to their next DMCA notice to GitHub, to take down their takedown notice, since it contains copyrighted images.

I don't understand how playing an unlicensed torrent makes the source code to the software infringe on the DMCA. Shouldn't they also send pictures of the computers which are running Popcorntime to the computer manufacturers and tell them that they are infringing for enabling Popcorntime? And pictures of the running software to GNU for creating the compilers that compiled the code?

<comment><USER9> >I don't understand how playing an unlicensed torrent makes the source code to the software infringe on the DMCA.

Because when all you have is a hammer, all of your problems begin to look like nails.

The DMCA gives the MPAA a hammer to go after copyright infringement. It is significantly easier to just apply that hammer to the hosting company of the software to try to make the software go away than it is to apply that hammer to the actual copyright infringement (one application vs. thousands of applications). So they just apply the hammer to that which they can apply it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Note that github's dmca process explicitly states that takedown requests include an oath at risk of committing criminal perjury for knowingly false statements about copyright claims. We need to get a prosecutor to start trying these cases and putting people in jail to curtail the dmca mills and over- aggressive claimants.

[https://help.github.com/articles/dmca-takedown- policy](https://help.github.com/articles/dmca-takedown-policy)

</comment><comment><USER11> Likely as a result of the DMCA takedown request that has blocked access to their repo: [https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-07-11-MPAA.m...](https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-07-11-MPAA.md)

</comment><comment><USER12> Presumably Popcorntime could counter file and that would then free up Github from responsibility under the safe harbor clause.

When I first learned about Tor and the way it worked I always figured there would be a Tor equivalent of Github out there. The recipe for building such a site is pretty straight forward. Add a tor:// URI to git and there ya go.

</comment><comment><USER13> If GitHub didn't allow Popcorn Time to contest the DMCA notice, that's a pretty big black mark against GitHub. It's reasonable that Popcorntime wouldn't want to get involved in a legal dispute, but a simple "no, we own this code and all copyright to it" should be sufficient.

That end users of popcorntime can use it to violate copyright (although it's not a _circumvention tool_ per se) isn't Github or popcorntime's problem.

<comment><USER14> that isn't how the DMCA works. unless github wants to become liable for everything anybody uploads to their site, they have to take down whatever a DMCA notice tells them to take down. Popcorntime can contest it and github can restore the files if the takedown is ruled invalid, but until then github has no options here. The DMCA is very much a "guilty until proven innocent" mechanism.

<comment><USER13> Some providers don't allow free-tier customers to respond to DMCA to have service restored. It appears from GitHub's policy, they do ([https://help.github.com/articles/dmca-takedown- policy](https://help.github.com/articles/dmca-takedown-policy)).

The ideal, since notice can be email, is to notify the infringer of a DMCA complaint and let them counter respond very quickly, to minimize any service interruption.

There are _maximum_ response times, but no minimums. The entire process can be turned around from notice to "dude, you have DMCA" to "oh, hell no" inside an hour. (EDIT: Actually, this is incorrect. To do this requires various hacks, or accepting liability as the service provider.)

The secret is usually providers actually want to get rid of their DMCA- attracting clients for commercial/cost reasons, so they rarely are willing to make the process of response particularly efficient.

<comment><USER15> No, there is a minimum. The content has to remain down for at least 10 _business_ days AFTER the counter is received by the hosting provider, to give time for the purported copyright owner to go get an injunction or other relief.

(The counter also requires disclosure of intensive amounts of personal data, which the initial notification does not, but that's probably the smallest problem with the DMCA system.)

See 512(g)(2) B and C of the DMCA for cites.

<comment><USER13> Ah! The times when it's gotten restored immediately involved a change in hosting or pointing out defects in the original notice, or the hosting provider accepting liability because the counter seemed sufficiently strong to take a stand. I didn't remember there was an actual 10-14 day lag written into the law.

(Thankfully, I've never been the one to actually handle DMCA issues from the service provider side myself.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems like a good opportunity to use [Gitlab]([https://about.gitlab.com/](https://about.gitlab.com/)) and a perhaps even a hosted Gitlab install? I know there are commercial hosted Gitlab providers, I can't seem to recall any though - a cursory Google search isn't returning much ATM.

<comment><USER17> All this makes me wonder if there's a p2p form of Git based on torrents, a "block chain" or similar where there isn't a master server to take down.

<comment><USER18> My sarcasm detector is broken, so I can't tell if you're joking or not, but git is distributed by nature. It's only centralized when we insist on putting everything on a single host.

<comment><USER17> Yes, you're right of course. However seems like having a master git repository server is the best solution for using Git in teams. Especially large teams. Like, all open source project uses something like Github or Bitbucket these days. People aren't going to share patches via email to each other. In any case, you need a place to share code and it's easiest when that is a server that is owned by a single person or entity. Maybe this is where torrent tech could be useful. Magnet links need no central authority or server running to make a central copy accessible. There's just a group of machines running, no central place law enforcement could focus on. When you have thousands of machines across the world, DMCA is not practical.

<comment><USER18>
        > People aren't going to share patches via email to each other.

Why not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I had tried out the original popcorn client (for studying the latest techniques of evil hackers bent on destroying the meager livelihood of movie studios) but was only dimly aware of the open-source efforts. Looks like I need to study this open source project for examples of similar offenses now(* ).

(* ) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)

</comment><comment><USER20> Not a lawyer and dont know much about US's law. But i record there was an incident a long time ago about DVD Decrypter and Free Speech. The end was something that you can't hold the source code accountable.

I thought you cant distribute, or have a binary form of program to downloads for your users, but source code of it should be allowed.

Have I misunderstood the story or have things changed?

<comment><USER21> I think you misunderstood. This appears to be the case you were thinking about: [http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=5930508913825375...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=5930508913825375010)

It found that the source code _could_ violate the DMCA even considering free speech. The court forced him to take the DVD decryption source code down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was just thinking about some p2p distributed git, and then I figured we already have it:

Wouldn't it help to just publish a BitTorrent sync url somewhere and host the bare git in that that folder so that it always updates and syncs directly to the cloud?

[http://www.bittorrent.com/sync/](http://www.bittorrent.com/sync/)

<comment><USER23> Here you go... [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/612530753/gitchain](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/612530753/gitchain)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Gitchain to the rescue?

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/612530753/gitchain](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/612530753/gitchain)

</comment><comment><USER24> They won the battle, but they will never win the war!

<comment><USER25> To some extent popcorntime is self defeating. Once it become much better than netflix in every way,maybe people won't pay for content ?

<comment><USER26> Then maybe the MPAA will wake up and let Netflix improve, rather than keeping them as content-light as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I appreciate how they had to utilize PopcornTime to get those images; are all of those movies under their ownership?

<comment><USER28> I believe that is the case, those movies are under their ownership.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Looks like plex. I don't get the big deal.

</comment><comment><USER30> Disappointing that GitHub honored that request.

<comment><USER31> If they want Safe Harbor protection under the DMCA they have to honor the request. If the author of repository feels the notice is unfair, they could send a Counter Notification which would obligate Github to put the repository back online (and the MPAA's next step would have to be a lawsuit).

<comment><USER30> > If they want Safe Harbor protection under the DMCA they have to honor the > request.

They shouldn't want safe harbor then.

<comment><USER32> Then they are the target, and will incur many costs. Fine once, maybe, but what about the tenth time? The hundredth? The thousandth?

It's like wanting Google to be the legal shield for everyone committing copyright infringement on their sites. It's not remotely economically feasible.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Our Marketing Team Spends Money Each Month - <AUTHOR> https://open.buffer.com/marketing-budget/ <comment><USER2> Most people are focussing on their advertising spend, but it looks like they've built their marketing team for inside sales rather than growth.

$3k/month on advertising means they're getting spending about $100/day. That's too low to properly target a SaaS audience for actual growth. My guess is that because they have 80k customers (according to their website), they focus most of their marketing plans around customer success and renewals rather than acquiring new leads. You can see they have a lot of budget tied to mailchimp...a sign that they spend a lot of time on lead/customer nurturing campaigns.

I don't think this blog post is meant to be useful for any company that doesn't already have mass traction.

<comment><USER3> Their advertising could be focusing on kickstarting their content marketing material. Spend big money creating good content, spend small (but smart) money promoting on niche targeted audiences, count on it to be further spread through word-of-mouth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see a lot of comments about people are amazed by $3k/mo advertisement spend and most goes towards salary.

I would say they have chosen wisely. HN is a forum for technical startups and people who work in the field. Yet here they are, without spending anything on advertising on the front page.

The blog post was written by the marketing director, and just by being here they are marketing buffer. This is lead gen.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not marketing professional here, but I'm surprised at how almost all of the budget went to payroll related expenses. I would have imagined higher percentage spent on advertising spot, online and offline.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, it's cool to see a budget. But then it's puzzling because I don't know what a marketing team _does_ besides advertise.

<comment><USER7> Pasting from another comment. Advertising is a section of marketing (You could get a degree in either one).

The rest of the team works on things like branding, identifying markets/customers, picking price points, running tables at events, writing content, working on the website, researching potential new products, understanding how current users use the products, analyzing web site traffic for insights, etc. At some places things like ui/ux fall under marketing - like making it easier for a user to purchase a product, writing manuals/user guides, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So to summarize, they have "10-Person Marketing Team" spending 93k/month total, with 2 major breakouts, 1\. Teammate Expenses (73,225 + 9,402 + 367) = ~83K 2\. Everything Else (or Actual Marketing) = ~10k

Why do they need 10 person team for $10k budget (actual money spent to bring customers in)? unless these guys are literally going door to door.

P.S. I'm not marketing professional.

<comment><USER7> Advertising is only a small portion of marketing. Probably 1/3rd of 1 persons job is spending that $3k media spend.

The rest of the team works on things like branding, identifying markets/customers, picking price points, running tables at events, writing content, working on the website, researching potential new products, understanding how current users use the products, analyzing web site traffic for insights, etc. At some places things like ui/ux fall under marketing - like making it easier for a user to purchase a product, writing manuals/user guides, etc.

<comment><USER9> I would do more sales...

<comment><USER10> May not be necessary for their kind of product and market. Looking at their company page, there doesn't seem to any salespeople at the company.

Would suggest that you check out Patrick McKenzie's post about SaaS companies. Buffer fits the 'Low-touch SaaS' description pretty squarely - which would mean that they don't necessarily require a dedicates sales unit.

[https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/business-of- saas](https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/business-of-saas)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While lots of folks may think the salary-to-advertising ratio here is way too high, I think it probably makes sense. I have to imagine that most of the Buffer marketing team is either creating marketing materials or promoting them in highly targeted ways. (I.e., they must be doing things that don't scale.) Moving that entire salary expense into ads would probably yield far less value to Buffer. What's more useful: an article from a well-read tech site talking about Buffer's cool features that came about from direct outreach, or some more easy-to-ignore Google ads?

<comment><USER12> but doing things that don't scale is a temporary move until you figure things out. The results of those experiments must yield something.

they must be doing something that will eventually scale.

<comment><USER13> You are thinking about doing things that don't scale as a feature of your service/product.

The non-scaling feature of Buffer would be something like if a customer queued something to post to their Instagram feed, then a human actually posted it for them.

Sure it doesn't scale, but you can probably do that for a while until the tech stack is built out.

GOOD Advertising is always much more hands on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Staggeringly low media spend, particularly on Google, which is the channel most likely to help drive sales within a suitable return on advertising spend threshold.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm always amazed at the amount of data Buffer makes transparent

<comment><USER16> It's as much part of their marketing as anything in the budget that they shared.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is it just me who finds odd they put advertising production and media buying all mixed into "adversiting", yet break it down by media channel?

It's usually: production + media

I read their advertising breakdown as media purchased, unless production is diluted in the value (which I doubt because you can use ads across social media channels for example, despite having different specs).

Or they just don't want to disclose it, which is completely fine :)

<comment><USER7> Its possible they do everything in-house and use free stock images. For facebook you don't necessarily need a designer, someone can easily write search ads, and they don't do any banner/video/etc advertising.

Not how I would run it, but I don't know much about them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I know it's not the main theme of the article, but I'm really interested in Buffer's laptop policies. How do you handle it if a laptop needs repair? or is stolen? What if the breakage is the employees fault, but they are not a repeat offender, so to speak? I'm curious how Buffer handles these things that I've seen problematic at other companies.

<comment><USER19> Good question. I lead the marketing team at Buffer, and we've had a couple cases where the computers have failed earlier than the renewal date (every 3 yrs). We reimburse a new laptop if it's needed. Otherwise, I really haven't experienced any "at-fault" scenarios or stolen laptops. My sample size is pretty small though (4 years, 10 marketing teammates).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amazing to me that their media budget is only $3,000. That is absolutely tiny! I'm curious why they don't do any programmatic (like display), and how they only spend $500 on search ads (I'd imagine brand-only terms would be over $500/mo).

</comment><comment><USER20> Yeah...I'm thinking you guys need to start spending on some advertising.

</comment><comment><USER21> What about rent?

<comment><USER19> Good one. Buffer is a fully remote/distributed team with no office.

That being said, expenses like Internet go to the admin budget and not marketing.

Thanks for the question. (I work at Buffer and wrote the budget article) :)

<comment><USER22> Not even a coworking type office for management or receiving mail/having an official company address?</comment></comment></comment>


Summing up – take a break - <AUTHOR> http://www.solipsys.co.uk/Writings/SummingUp.html?HN_20140629 <comment><USER2> It's refreshing to see a site with absolutely no styling.

Every once in a while I think about blogging about something but then lose interest while investigating different blogging platforms. Should just fired up an editor, wrote some html and scp'ed it to my one page personal website.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you be interested in a service that hosts single pages of text with minimal images, no styling, and no fuss? Would that be of value to people, do you think?

<comment><USER3> Github gists, pastie.org... there's plenty of free services out there already depending on what people need!

Aside from that, sites like Medium support very little actual styling beyond the content images.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't get it. Isn't it obvious that the last routine would be the fastest? What is the point of the other algos?

<comment><AUTHOR> _Added in edit: Why do you think the last version must be faster?_

In short, if you implement these things on multi-core machines, then no, it isn't obvious that the last algorithm will be the fastest. With modern experimental parallelizing compilers on suitable hardware, the exact algorithm matters, and these show significantly different results.

I spend most of my time working on "odd" hardware configurations, and as a result, sometimes these more "interesting" algorithms are the ones I immediately turn to rather than doing what others think of as instantly obvious.

<comment><USER5> That sure surprised me, I would have rooted for _reduce_. May be _lambda_ overhead is screwing it up. Could you try the reduction with

        from operator import add

I cannot try it out on Colin's version of Python, however on

        Python 2.7.6 | 32-bit |
        [GCC 4.1.2 20080704]

        from operator import add

        def sum1(l): return reduce(lambda a,b:a+b,l)

        def sum2(l): return reduce(add,l)

The times to compute _sum1(l)_ and _sum2(l)_ on xrange(3333333) are

        11.69s and
        6.38s

respectively.

So sum2 is about twice faster, which is expected. The timings are the minimum of 5 runs. Given Colin's reduce was about twice slower than his for loop, there is a fair chance that the updated reduce will beat the for loop occasionally.

I was surprised that trying the same on an _array_ turned out to be marginally slower than using an _xrange_. I would have expected the array to be faster. xrange is possibly faster because it can be held in cache whereas the array would definitely spill outside, although I expected locality to be a win.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> (slightly OT, motivated by the first paragraph) Here's some code to approximate images by (random) Voronoi disgrams. Might be interesting to add a genetic algorithm to that.

[https://github.com/amedeedaboville/voronoify](https://github.com/amedeedaboville/voronoify)</comment>


14 Things Happy and Content People Don't Do - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesvh.com/2013/08/14-things-happy-and-content-people-dont-do/ <comment><USER2> This list couldn't be more true.</comment>


Sandman Pricing - <AUTHOR> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2012/10/17/Sandman-Pricing

<comment><USER2> Someone replied to his Twitter post on this topic with an interesting point:

<https://twitter.com/b6n/status/258785250145087488>

The message "This price was set by the publisher" only appears when he's logged in. That message is a tipoff that the book is sold under the agency model, where the publisher sets the price and Amazon takes a cut off the top. Under the agency rules, Amazon had no choice but to sell at that price.

HarperCollins, the publisher of this book, was one of the three publishers that settled with the DoJ in the lawsuit that accused the publishers of colluding with Apple to use the agency model to impose price-fixing on ebooks. As part of the settlement they agreed to knock it off. [1] But obviously the DoJ does not have jurisdiction outside the USA, so they presumably would still be free to force that model elsewhere.

Tim Bray is based in Canada, so if he's logged in Amazon presumably would treat it as a Canadian sale, and still sell the book under the agency pricing?

edit to add: I tried going to Amazon.ca to see what they'd show a US-based customer, but they don't seem to show me Kindle versions of that book at all.

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/06/apple-ebooks- idUSL...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/06/apple-ebooks- idUSL2E8K6GI720120906)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the international price explains the difference:

Logged in as "me, US guy with US credit card, US registered Kindle, shipping address, etc..", I get $9.48.

With an anonymous browser window, here in Italy, I get: $14.27 includes VAT* & free international wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet.

</comment><comment><USER4> Tim works for Google who is widely known to test everything and show all sorts of different stuff to different people, how is he surprised that he sees different pricing based on his log-in status? He should also be clever enough to figure out the international/domestic difference (as a US customer I see the same pricing as he does when not logged in).

</comment><comment><USER5> The first screenshot says "includes applicable taxes", the second does not. And as mentioned by siblings, the first screenshot has the "price set by the publisher" disclaimer while the second does not.

I would imagine that if he attempted to check out as an anonymous user, as soon as he put in his address, the first price would be shown.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't know about other countries, but I'm fairly sure showing two different prices at the same time to two different customers is completely illegal in France.

<comment><USER4> Not when the customers are from different countries... He is logged in as a customer from another country (probably Canada) vs browsing as an anonymous US visitor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why does everyone claim that price discrimination is some kind of injustice when it's done by a computer?

<comment><USER8> It has little to do with the price being set by a computer or a person. He sees the price for everyone else is one third cheaper. He doesn't say it, but without making the connection to the price fixing anti-trust action, a reasonable conclusion would be that since the book is one in a series, and Amazon knows he bought the previous book, it has jacked the price for him since he's already "hooked." That to most people would be a questionable pricing strategy.

The anti trust action makes more sense, but he probably didn't make that connection.

<comment><USER7> Price fixing requires multiple sellers to collude to set prices. Who is the seller besides Amazon in this case?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Amazon also adds about $1-$2 to pay for WhisperSync for each Kindle eBook sale outside the limited countries where it's free. So books that cost $9.99 in the US cost $11.99 or so when bought from the Africa-specific Kindle store on Amazon.com.

I don't think that applies in this case, which seems to be as a result of either Canadian Value Added Tax and/or the agency model, but it's why prices in other countries might seem to differ from the price you see when you're just browsing Amazon.com.

</comment><comment><USER10> Our entire business is about giving ecommerce stores the ability to price discriminate algorithmically. Our servers aren't being malicious they are only charging you the most you are willing to pay.

If you don't like a product then don't buy it, the price will most likely come down. It might be hard for people to understand how cold the mathematics and economics are but it really does go both ways.

</comment><comment><USER11> For me it is slightly different: When I login "Indian guy with Indian credit card, Indian registered Kindle, Indian shipping address, etc..", I get $9.21. With an anonymous browser window, in India, I get: $9.48, no taxes and free international wireless delivery. I guess this is just third-world / first- world price discrimination.

<comment><USER12> It's probably also the local taxes. $9.74 here, when logged from IP in Poland, using Polish credit card.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hmm. Meanwhile, on amazon.co.uk I am offered £6.99 including VAT and told "This price was set by the publisher".

This is roughly the same as the $9.48 Amazon-set price that Tim sees, plus 20% VAT.</comment>


Pettiness in software development - <AUTHOR> http://www.as3dp.com/2010/01/13/thats-not-the-way-id-do-it-justifiable-homicide-in-32-states/

<comment><AUTHOR> Great article about a lot of the one-up-manship in the software world.</comment>


Ask HN: Hiring managers of HN, what do you look for in a candidates GitHub repo? - <AUTHOR> For those that use a candidate's GitHub profile as a factor in the hiring process, what things in their profile would make them more hirable (code quality, # of repos, followers, etc?) <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I don't need someone to have an active GitHub profile, and I wouldn't favor them over someone who didn't just because they did.

However, I would be only looking at the repo content -- I'm not concerned with popularity contests of stars or followers.

I'd bucket the repos into three categories:

1\. A fork of another project, which would be further divided into:

a. Just a copy, didn't contribute very much -- perhaps a minor doc submission, or just a fork so they could make some minor changes on their own that wouldn't be submitted back.

b. Used to make non-trivial amount of contributions to the original project, in which case I'd be looking at their Pull Requests.

c. Fork to revive/carry on a project that is dead/dormant. This is interesting and I'd want to see in the README why this fork exists, why it should be used instead of the original, etc.

2\. Personal projects that are either:

a. Throwaway/one-offs: where they wrote some example to play with a library or API; something for learning purposes, but isn't intended to be maintained or grow over time. These are somewhat interesting, but I wouldn't be paying too much attention to quality (e.g., tests) for these.

b. Projects for a very specific purpose that are maintained over time, but not meant for others to actively use or contribute to (that can be because it solves a very specific problem, or it's pretty complete and stable).

3\. A project that has outside contributions and a community built around it. This is going to be much more rare than any of the above, so I'd be giving it much more scrutiny: how long have issues and (especially) PRs hung around with no activity? Do they treat other people (contributors, those who file issues, etc.) well? How's the documentation and onboarding experience? Does the project explain why it exists instead of contributing to other projects that might do the same thing?

When I look at the code in any of the above cases (except for 2a), I'm looking for how easy is it to see why changes were made, or the size of commits and the clarity of commit messages. Does it have continuous integration set up?

If the candidate then comes in for an interview, and has anything non-trivial in their repo, it would become a topic for discussion. If not, there are other projects we'd talk about (or write).</comment>


The IRL fetish - <AUTHOR> http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-irl-fetish/

<comment><USER2> >* But as the proliferation of such essays and books suggest, we are far from forgetting about the offline; rather we have become obsessed with being offline more than ever before.*

Really? Because we bitch about not being offline enough from time to time?

> _We have never appreciated a solitary stroll, a camping trip, a face-to-face > chat with friends, or even our boredom better than we do now. Nothing has > contributed more to our collective appreciation for being logged off and > technologically disconnected than the very technologies of connection._

A bad idea milked for several paragraphs, and not true at that.

We appreciated solitary strolls, camping trip, face-to-face chats with friends, alright in the 90s and the 80s too. Actually, even more so, because they weren't interrupted every other bloody minute by looking on our phone and checking the latest texts and tweets...</comment>


Ask HN: Easy software to host a static website on Amazon S3? - <AUTHOR>

What would you give your mum to use, to host a website on Amazon S3?
I'm looking for a way someone who's mastered dragging and dropping files into a FTP program can use, who occasionally uses directories to organise files (but still has over 5k images in one folder) can use to upload his hand-built website onto S3.
At present he's using FTP to one of my old servers, but I'm decommissioning it next month. Cheap shared hosting works out cheaper (due to the bandwidth this image-heavy site uses) but I'm curious if any startup's solved this use-case with Amazon S3? <comment><USER2> Currently I'm using WordPress with a static site plugin ( [http://leonstafford.com/wordpress-static-html-output- plugin/](http://leonstafford.com/wordpress-static-html-output-plugin/) ) -- which is not simple (too many gotchas involved) -- and uploading the result using Cyberduck ( [http://cyberduck.io/](http://cyberduck.io/) ) -- which is EXACTLY like using an FTP program.

So my recommendation is something easier to use to generate the files, then uploading with Cyberduck. I'd love to hear what other people would recommend to generate the site.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cactus for Mac deploys to S3. [http://cactusformac.com/](http://cactusformac.com/)</comment>


What if there were a war of programming languages who would you support and why? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Programming-Languages/What-if-there-were-a-war-of-programming-languages-who-would-you-support-and-why

<comment><USER2> Perl, for the ease of doing things in it and because there is more than one way to do it.

</comment><comment><USER3> What value does a silly conversation in Quora bring to HN?

If it is Quora stuff then leave it there.</comment>


Gmail Add-On EmailOracle Just Destroyed Your Inbox Overload Lie - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/11/emailoracle <comment><USER2> Unless, of course, your email client defaults to not displaying images. Like GMail.</comment>


Time Warner Cable Expands Metered Billing To Four More Cities - <AUTHOR> http://consumerist.com/5192997/time-warner-cable-expands-metered-billing-to-four-more-cities?skyline=true&s=x

<comment><USER2> Frontier DSL, which also serves communities around Rochester, NY has also been talking about a bandwidth cap -- at a ludicrously low 5 GB/month.

Frontier serves a number of rural areas where they're the only option people have for service: they've backed off on their threats when customers threatened to take their cases to their state PUCs.

</comment><comment><USER3> For me, the caps are way too low and the bandwidth cost too high. I think a cap in the 200GB range makes a lot more sense (since 243GB is full utilization of a fractional T1). Then additional bandwidth at $0.30/GB (in the range of what you'd pay from a hosting company) would work nicely. To put the 200GB in perspective, streaming Hulu 100% of the time for the whole month wouldn't hit 200GB of usage.

It's one thing to go after those who have decided that they can saturate their 10Mbps connection all day and all night, but with the top cap at 40GB, that's going to catch a decent amount of casual users.</comment>


Working Productively in Bash's Vi Command Line Editing Mode (with Cheat Sheet) - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/bash-vi-editing-mode-cheat-sheet/?search=vi <comment><USER2> awesome... I never new that bash could do this.

<comment><USER3> Why not? I old you it could.</comment></comment>


As predicted music A.I. startup original business fails - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20160313061624/https://www.jukedeck.com/pricing <comment><AUTHOR> The original Prediction:

"This is a business I know well. Jukedeck is an example of how founders and investors do not conduct appropriate market research. There is a limited market demand for low-cost royalty-free music for videos. One could argue there is an oversupply* of royalty-free music relative to buyers. The quality is not good enough to disrupt the billion dollar Production music industry that is top heavy, a relative small amount of creators at the top get the majority of the money, the rest compete for the little that is left. Jukedeck has raised enough money ($3million #) to be around for a few years if they control their burn rate. But Jukedeck in its current form, is just another music startup destined for the Deadpool." -rockarage see: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10706203](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10706203)

Jukedeck now:

"Our state-of-the-art technology uses artificial intelligence to dynamically shape music to different situations." [https://www.jukedeck.com/](https://www.jukedeck.com/)

if it sounds familiar see: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10707389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10707389)

Why is this important to note?

"While it's not easy to hear, I got one such advice once on a company I started, and in true entrepreneurial spirit ignored it and kept iterating away. It was 100% spot on. I wish people were more frank about what they think of start-ups, and I wish there was an acceptable way of doing that without insulting people." -dvirsky

-[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10709835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10709835)

This is an on going problem, founders and investors do not conduct appropriate market research or investigate constructive criticism. Therefore their business and business models will continue to fail until there is a change.</comment>


Show HN: Cue Me - Simple e-mail reminders - <AUTHOR> http://cueme.in

<comment><USER2> That's a nice application idea. I have some feedback:

* The email subject is labeled "name of your reminder" on the input form and "title" on the confirmation page. I recommend using the term "subject" in both places because that's what people are used to seeing in their email clients.

* I recommend changing "Execution date" on the confirmation page to something less geeky like "Send time".

* The confirmation page should have an edit link.

How will you prevent people from using the application to send spam?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey,

1 & 2 You're right. It was 3am and I wasn't paying much attention to that kind of details :p

3\. Yes.

Regarding spam: it's not really useful for spammers because they'd have to send one message at a time. Although they could build bots, Rails 3's security methods offer primary defense against this. Not that it couldn't be circumvented.

I thought about sending a confirmation e-mail, but I deemed that to be an unnecessary layer of complexity - I wanted to build the simplest e-mail reminder service around.

I guess I would edge towards daily IP based limits?

<comment><USER2> The problem is not so much bulk sending of mail, but sending of unwanted mail from one user to another. Amazon might shut you down if you have a large number of recipients marking these unwanted messages as spam. Perhaps you should record enough information about sender (ip address, unique cookie) so that you can bulk delete and blacklist a problem sender. You can identify problem senders from the unsubscribe link that should be included in the messages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The night before last night, I couldn't sleep so I decided to take Amazon's new SES service for a spin and this is what I came up with.

Let me know what you think!

<comment><USER3> One of the problems with software that changes how you work is that it changes how you work! There is a lot of resistance to such things--- the user has to see clearly that there is something to be gained with this modification. I like the idea, but I am at a loss to fit it in to how I work...

<comment><AUTHOR> Would something like a bookmarklet with a popup make it better?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, I suppose on any OS you can find a similar application with Mac's iCal which will send you as many notifications as you want, at the hour you want, without the danger of spam emails.

On Windows there is MonoCalendar and I'm sure on Linux you will find more than one app that will do the same job.

It seems a bit strange to use an Internet application to send you emails ...

</comment><comment><USER5> * You should definitely label these input fields.

* Why do I have to type in this example by myself? Link it

<comment><AUTHOR> I have HTML5 placeholders in, but you're right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks nice, but the time zone has to be set correctly for the user, CST means nothing for me.

Probably best to determine it with javascript, and then give the user an option to change if required.</comment>


Why You Should Sell First Then Give It Away For Free - <AUTHOR> http://tech.li/2012/02/why-you-should-sell-first-then-give-it-away-for-free/

<comment><USER2> Giving _it_ away for free, even for a limited time, can make future sales an uphill battle, not to mention ticking off the clients who already paid for it in the "sell first" phase.

Giving _something_ away for free should work, as long as it is valuable and related to the product. I think that was the case in the example given, though it is not immediately clear.</comment>


Who inherits your iTunes library when you die? - <AUTHOR> http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-08-23/finance/33336852_1_digital-content-digital-files-apple-and-amazon <comment><USER3> Since I'm most of the way done with the work of being the executor for my mother's estate (she died about a year ago), hopefully I can provide some perspective here.

As a practical matter, a laptop and any software purchased for it gets put as a single line item on an estate appraisal for personal effects. Our appraiser certainly didn't want to boot up the laptop and examine its contents for valuable files. The only times I've turned on that laptop in the past year have been to look for clues about financial documents, look for pictures to use at her funeral, and to make sure I had a backup of her phd thesis.

Personally, I'm thankful that digital assets are non-transferrable because in my case, no one would have wanted them, and it allows me to feel no guilt about not putting them on an estate tax return.

Also, digital media are not the only non-transferrable assets that can potentially belong to an estate. Season tickets to sporting events and vehicle registrations come to mind, but I'm sure there are others.

I guess the question comes down to: if Apple allowed you to buy transferable licenses to music in the iTunes store at $1.50/song and non-transferable licenses at $1.00/song, which would you buy? I suspect the overwhelming majority of Americans would choose the $1.00 non-transferable license. Also, I suspect estate planning would almost never enter into that decision making process.

Thankfully, at least with iTunes music, this is not an issue of DRM. If there had been any music on my mom's laptop that I wanted, it would have been easy to transfer it.

<comment><USER4> > Thankfully, at least with iTunes music, this is not an issue of DRM. If > there had been any music on my mom's laptop that I wanted, it would have > been easy to transfer it.

With iTunes music sure. What about TV shows and movies? Books?

<comment><USER5> I would simply have the probate judge order Apple to transfer the DRMed files to the party inheriting the files.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem once again is copyright. If copyright hadn't been in the way, there would no DRM, and plenty of neutral services to solve this problem.

Right now, if you can't even freely share stuff between the living in your own household, you don't really "own" it, and you can forget about a way to pass it on to your heirs.

You don't own stuff you merely rent, and you can forget about passing it on.

<comment><USER7> Why would anyone put in years to write a novel if a big printing house could just copy the text and sell it for their own profit, cutting out the author. This would be the world without any copyright at all.

This is clearly a problem that needs to be worked on, and people are working on it. But the answer is not the elimination of copyright.

<comment><USER8> You could swap `book' and `author' with `code' and `programmer' and you get the open source model.

What about passion? Sense of accomplishment?

Perhaps the author could make money on book signing, interviews, or even donations. Writing a good story could open doors to writing a movie scenario...

To be honest I don't really care how the authors can get some revenues, nor the programmers.

Data must be free, and this is far more important than how someone can make money on it.

<comment><USER9>
        You could swap `book' and `author' with `code' and `programmer' and you get the open source model.

Except that typically programmers write open source code which they then use directly themselves to do other things they want to do. An author probably doesn't get much pleasure or utility out of reading their own book.

        Writing a good story could open doors to writing a movie scenario...

Except that presumably you want that to be given away for free too.

        Data must be free, and this is far more important than how someone can make money on it.

A book is not "data".

<comment> k-mcgrady Can't agree with this enough. I think most people believe that there is a need for copyright in some form. In it's current form, especially because of the ridiculous cases of people being sued for millions because they downloaded a few songs, it's just gotten a bad reputation.

The comparisons to open source software never do much to convince me. Many people think that it is a good model and make money through it sure, but I believe commercial software makes more money and that money is easier made (for example money from a sale instead of money from support seems much easier to do and scale).

The digital music space has been improving (iTunes has been DRM free for a while now) and it's hopefully going to get better - probably as more of the old media people retire and the companies enter the control of people who have grown up with digital content. The only way things will move forward is if both sides compromise but the mentality some people have of 'I want it now, I want it in the format I want, and I want it free' doesn't do much to convince music/movie/book companies. It makes them want to lock things down tighter, not open them up.

<comment><USER8> " Many people think that it is a good model and make money through it sure, but I believe commercial software makes more money and that money is easier made..."

Making money out of it is irrelevant.

Whether or not you can copy a file is a moral question, and this has a higher priority than how to make a business model out of it.

You can't argue about if something is good by checking if you can easily build a business around it.

I will take an extreme example here (just so we get out of the copyright environment): What if I want to make money by kidnapping children? I believe I could make a descent living out of it (especially if I have some kind of law on my side). However this 'business' aspect is never considered, because it doesn't pass the morality check, and thus is irrelevant.

I know it's an extreme example, but this shows there's a hierarchy when we need to determine if something is acceptable. Making money ISN'T among the firsts.

I'm not saying you can't make money without copyrights, but it simply can't be an argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The problem isn't with laws dealing with a person's estate, it is with the TOS/EULA of the devices & stores that play & sell digital media. According to Amazon, simply giving someone my Kindle does give them the "right" to read the books contained in it. This is just too hard to enforce for the Amazons and Apples of the world to do anything about it (right now).

Are people only realizing now that the game has changed? This was obvious from day one: stores selling digital goods have it in their best interest to keep you buying the same thing over and over again, whether you buy the Playstation game you already own on PSN, or you have your buddy "buy" an album on iTunes because you can't let him borrow the CD.

Theoretically, this loss of convenience/utility should lower the price for the consumer. It is really up to the market to decide if they want to save a few bucks, or retain the right of first sale (or gift, in this case).

</comment><comment><USER11> Another point to consider: Let's say a CD weighs half an ounce, or, roughly 30 CDs per pound. 10,000 CDs would weigh over 330 lbs (feel free to correct me). Storing and transferring 330 lbs of CDs -and- keeping them in good condition, -and- justifying that if you've already ripped them to MP3 seems like a pain in the ass, especially over 20, 30, 40, or 50 years. And on the same note, ripping 10,000 CDs or even a portion of that would take weeks. And that's assuming CDs are still relevant in 20 years.

So if you're like my and consider CDs to be unreasonable, what other options do we have? If I have kids someday, I would certainly want to be able to pass down my music collection.

And, for the last point: What happens to our licenses if/when Amazon or Apple cease to exist?

(Side note: I'm comparing 10k CDs to 10k Books, because 10k Songs is vastly smaller than 10k Books.)

<comment><USER12> Buy CDs and rip them.

<comment><USER11> Right, but you still have to keep the CD as proof that you own it.

<comment><USER13> No you don't.

<comment><USER11> So, lets say I bought 100 CDs, ripped them, destroyed the CDs, and then somehow the RIAA says that I don't legally own those MP3s.

What happens?

<comment><USER14> It's up to them to prove you did anything wrong, which they won't be able to. The RIAA only targets people who illegally distribute digital media (something they can prove).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Unless you are currently very old or very ill I seriously doubt that even you yourself will be able to access your iTunes library by the time you're on your deathbed. The funny thing is that you probably won't care either.

As successful as iTunes and Apple currently are, media distribution is still undergoing massive disruption. It's likely that something completely new and utterly amazing compared to any current online media store will win out in the end. Distribution services that provide a sub-par experience on the majority of hardware out there are doomed to fail even sooner. i.e. iTunes does not provide a good user experience under anything but OSX, and even there it's love/hate. Amazon and Google Play are serious contenders despite the artificial iOS obstacles Apple is heaping in their paths.

One might argue that iTunes will live on even if other stores win out, but legacy support only goes so far. Once iTunes stops making Apple money they'll wait a respectful period of time and then quietly shut everything down.

I know many will disagree with me on iTunes' fate, but all I have to do is to live long enough and I'm virtually guaranteed to have the last laugh!

</comment><comment><USER16> Where does you library go when you change devices? Aren't tunes licensed to a particular device? Which would make it different from Kindle for instance, where your license is in the cloud, and content accessible from any authenticated device.

<comment><USER11> As far as I know, both iTunes and Amazon files are DRM-free, which would inherently imply that they aren't tied to a machine.

iTunes: m4a, has your name and email address encoded

Amazon: mp3, has Amazon's unique song id in the ID3 comments

And in terms of the cloud:

iTunes: $25/yr for iTunes Match, which is completely optional

Amazon: Free storage for songs you purchase from Amazon + 5gb extra

The important issue is to keep your music backed up, since both Amazon and iTunes offer limited options if your harddrive fails.

Anyway, to address your point, Dropbox or a manual file transfer would be your best bet for multi-device support.

<comment><USER17> It's true for music, which is now DRM free, but not so for E-books and digital video. Those are all DRM'd. (for both Amazon, Apple, and I'm going to guess for the Google Play store as well.

<comment><USER18> It's what's keeping me from joining the ebook revolution. I'd love to be able to impulse buy a book and have it 'delivered' instantly, but instead I'm stuck buying the physical version and waiting for it to be delivered.

<comment><USER19> I was in the same boat until last fall, when I finally caved and bought a Kindle. I hate DRM too, but at least Kindle's DRM is easy to crack, so you have a way out of Amazon's walled cesspool if you need it. (I haven't needed it so far, since the Kindle is my favorite mobile reading device and Kindle Cloud Reader works in Linux. But if Kindle's DRM were stronger, I never would have bought one.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The problem here is that the content industry wants to have their cake and eat it too (quelle surprise).

Take ebooks as a much simpler example. The distribution costs of a single ebook are essentially zero. Even if you, as a publisher, pay Apple/Amazon 30% you're better off than retail and retail typically has a higher markup, means printing books, storing them in warehouses, shipping them across the country/world, etc.

On top of this ebooks are basically nontransferable whereas paper books can of course been sold secondhand. The latter is such a "problem" that the textbook industry, as just one example, will keep changing editions each year or two just to kill the secondhand market.

It should come as no surprise that ebooks are nontransferable either.

Given all these restrictions and lower costs of production it seems logical that ebooks should be cheaper than their dead tree equivalents. But oh no, they're typically the same price or even more expensive. This is nothing but greed. What's more, publishers are shooting themselves in the foot (long term) here because they should be encouraging a system whereby you can buy a given textbook, it can't be sold secondhand and the original owner keeps getting updates (people don't typically rebuy later editions of the same textbook I would guess).

Music isn't really that different. CDs, which are transferable, have the same costs of printing, storage, distribution and retail markup, even against the 30% (is this confirmed for music?) margin Apple/Amazon take yet I don't think you'll be saving any money by buying whole MP3 albums vs CDs (more often than not).

If electronic media were cheaper _like it should be_ I think consumers would have an easier time accepting the nontransferability aspect. People, on the whole, have an innate sense of _fairness_ (IMHO).

As far as iTunes accounts and the like go, on a practical level you can simply take over the account. Apple has a facility to change the Apple ID. I can't see any barriers to this.

EDIT: From [1]:

 _Traditional publishing has a traditional formula for calculating the retail list price, the price printed on the book. That list price is typically about eight times the cost of manufacturing. In clothing retail terms, that translates into a markup of about 88% between publisher and reader._

 _There are several reasons for the big percentage. Not only does the actual bookseller require a markup, but often there are two "middlemen" between the publisher and the bookstore: a distributor and a wholesaler who must each get a piece of the action. And of course the publisher wants to make a profit and better not sell merely for the cost of manufacturing._

which basically confirms the 12% figure. But I was referring to the retail markup and costs of distribution (distributor/wholesaler).

[1]: [http://bookmakingblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/prices- discounts-...](http://bookmakingblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/prices-discounts- markups.html)

<comment><USER21> I think you overestimate the physical cost of books. From <http://michaelhyatt.com/why-do-ebooks-cost-so-much.html>, "Second, physical manufacturing and distribution expenses cost less than you think. Some people assume that these two items represent the bulk of a book's costs. They don't. Together, they account for about 12% of a physical book's retail price."

<comment><USER22> Aye. I'm publishing a book soon. By using Lightning Source to list on Barnes and Noble, I can make amazon discount my book, which doesn't affect my createspace royalty. I should be able to have the book sell at $26, and keep $21.

<comment><USER23> I'm not so sure that you'll get the results you're aiming for there. Do you have links to a source that has successfully carried off this plan?

<comment><USER22> Aaron Shepherd's Plan B (an update to POD for profit).

Selling to B and N with a 55% discount from lightning source should make the books appear with a 40% discount off the list price. Amazon generally matches those discounts.

The list price will be $44. 44 * 0.6 = 26.4

Using the Createspace royalty calculator, $44 with a 300 page book produces a royalty of ~$22.

Amazon discount don't reduce Createspace royalties. I may be overlooking something, or some part of the plan might fail of course.

<https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What is intellectually interesting about this is contemplating the ways in which these issues may interface with the politics surrounding inheritance in the United States. I suspect to see some strange bedfellows on both sides of these issues over the long term.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is Apple (or Amazon or Google) really interested in enforcing this? While the rules might say that kids can't inherit ebooks or songs, I have trouble believing that they'd actually try to enforce it.

It does raise the broader issue of households, though. When I have a family, shouldn't I be able to give them access to ebooks I've read and songs I've enjoyed? That's trivially easy with the physical versions (if sometimes annoying that someone else is reading a book you want to read) but how will companies handle the digital equivalent of sharing within a family?

<comment><USER26> Amazon gives you a way to do this, lend an ebook to someone for x days. Problem is that the publisher set the terms for lending, meaning they can disable it altogether and they can set other limitations such as time limits and that you can only lend them out once etc. Which is kind of sickening.

[http://www.cio.com/article/696062/How_to_Share_Amazon_Kindle...](http://www.cio.com/article/696062/How_to_Share_Amazon_Kindle_Ebooks_)

But I can understand what they are afraid of, in a digital world it would be trivial to set up a lending service letting users automatically borrow books from each other. But really, I should be able to lend out to my family, friends and colleagues for as long and often I want (that I can't read it myself while it is borrowed and that I can only lend it out to one person at a time are very reasonable limitations that mimics physical books).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Great article, but i'm not really surprised by the outcome. I mean if kim dot com is being sued why would you ever expect to be able to save your digital content for someone else after death?

</comment><comment><USER28> Is this surprising to anyone who has an iTunes account?

> "I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family > would be OK with > losing a collection of 10,000 books and > songs," says Evan Carroll, co- > author of "Your Digital > Afterlife."

And I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family will be fighting Apple to transfer Britney Spears' last CD from grandpa's account to his favorite granddaughter's account. Or that cool Angry Birds iPhone app he paid 99 cents for back 20 years ago.

<comment><USER29> _And I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family will be fighting Apple to transfer Britney Spears' last CD from grandpa's account_

I realise young folk think they are immortal, but people don't just die from old age. And the problem is, digital media companies like Apple and Amazon don't implement a concept of a "household" account.

I am sure I don't live in the only household where the kids watch stuff from an iTunes library populated from the account of one parent. Granted if a parent died the kids' first thought would not be "Drat, no Backyardigans" but it is definitely an issue beyond bequeathing media that nobody else is interested in.

An iTunes library may very well be an asset worth hundreds of dollars to survivors. Even if you know each others' passwords, technically it is still illegal to keep using the dead person's account.

<comment><USER28> The example you give is a good point to consider. If the wrong parent dies, all of the family's digital books, music, movies, tv shows, season passes (year-long tv subscriptions) get potentially locked up. It's one of the hidden costs of "renting" our entertainment digitally instead of owning it physically. I think this needs to be solved - transferable iTunes accounts or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> As other posters have pointed out, the problem with many DRM schemes is that there's no guarantee the company will stay in business, or will continue to host the DRM servers.

In fact, if the DRM'ed stuff you've bought is a one-time purchase (as opposed to a subscription of some kind), then it's in the provider's economic best interest to drop support as soon as possible. There's not going to be any more money coming in from the user once he's made his purchase, but there's going to be money going out to pay the DRM servers' costs because they consume physical space, power, bandwidth and technical expertise on an ongoing basis (as well as hardware that wears out and needs to be replaced).

I personally support as little DRM-crippled content as possible. I only purchase e-books in open formats, use GamersGate instead of Steam (avoiding DRM-crippled products), and buy a fair number of physical books and DVD's. I've actually walked away from imminent purchases, both online and in stores, when I discovered that the product I was about to purchase had aggressive DRM.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is why I don't buy any digital books other than programming books (that will be irrelevant in decades) and books that, in general, will not survive the test of time. In other words, none of the library will be of value in a few decades.

Anything else I still buy physical: books I care about, music, etc. As an example, if I was after a design-patterns book, I'd buy a physical copy. Algorithms book? Physical. PHP programming book: digital. The latest "how to launch your startup book"?: digital. I own CD's for all of my music.

As an electrical engineer I have had the experience of collecting hundreds of physical data books only to throw them all away years later. That world has changed completely with the availability of freely downloadable PDF data sheets and data books. The same is the case with most mechanical components catalogs and product information books. Open and free websites and/or PDF files have replaced the world of hard-copy manuals, books and catalogs.

And so the question might very well be: What are other book genres going to look like in ten, twenty, thirty or fifty years? It could very well be that book authors discover that they can earn a lot more money if their book is published digitally and made available openly while being supported by advertising or donations. While most would reject the idea of a 300 page PHP book with an add on every header or every page, the idea that this book would be free to the reader might change their viewpoint.

Catalog or data-book providers have an incentive for providing these book or documents for free: They are trying to sell you what's inside them. That transition was a no-brainer. Novels, fiction, business, political, hobby and other books might not have such strong tie-ins with revenue generating opportunities. This means that they have to make some money per unit sold (or unit read). Maybe all books will become websites with advertising and many opportunities to monetize them. And, at the same time, the reader will have the option to pay a nominal amount to turn off all advertising.

The idea of transferring ownership of digital assets to survivors might eventually translate into simply providing a list of the books, songs, etc. that the survivors can freely explore as a sample of what the deceased like to read or listen to. In the end, I think only a limited set of physical items hold sentimental value. As far as real monetary value, well, I think that books and records hardly count as investments save for very, very rare stuff.

</comment><comment><USER32> The simplest long-term consumer approach to digital media is to just hold a list of the titles of the stuff you like, and assume you can download any item from it at any time if you want access to it. You don't need to worry about keeping a private multi-gigabyte storage intact and accessible over decades nor access control and rights management arrangements with a single commercial entity that might not exist in ten years. Unfortunately for commercial content providers, this approach is basically equivalent to "pirate everything, all the time".

</comment><comment><USER33> This is another reason there was supposed to be an expiratoin date on copyright. It was never intended to last 120 years and multiple generations, was it?

</comment><comment><USER34> I'd love to know what happened to the iTunes library of Steve Jobs when he died. He undoubtably will have had many purchases of music, books, movies etc. He was adamant that the physical medium was dead. I would assume that his library is now unused? Or perhaps he had a single account his whole family used - which, from my understanding, wouldn't be compliant with the licensing agreement.

<comment><USER35> I would be surprised if he had time to read, watch movies or listen to music. It would not surprise me at all to learn that he essentially used iTunes only for QA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This simple issue shows the big, huge, _gaping_ problem with the future of digital media.

In the past, the labls/publishers/whoever wanted to create content, be able to sell it, and have a monopoly on it. The way to do this was to sell physical instances of the creation, like books, DVDs, and CDs. This worked wonderfully, because it's simple for people to understand giving money over to receive a physical good, which you own, and which you can e.g. later sell, or transfer to your kids.

In short, the old way was: "buying" == "getting a physical copy of the media".

The problem is, since digital media arose, there has been a slow shift in the meaning of _buying_ content. The producers are acting like "buying" no longer means "getting a physical copy of the media". They're acting like it means "having access to consume the media". E.g., buying a song from Queen means I get to listen to the song. It has nothing to do with having the physical file.

In other words, the new model is: "buying" == "getting the (legal) ability to consume the media".

This is true in many ways, both good and bad for the consumer.

The good is that, e.g., when I buy an audiobook on Audible, the physical file is irrelevant. I can delete it, and download it again. It's my _ability_ to get the book that they're selling. I can have many physical copies of the book, on my computer/iPhone/laptop/whatever, and they're fine with it. The bad is that a lot of the rules for physical media are no longer relevant - I can't sell it, I can't lend it, I can't let people inherit.

Actually, this doesn't bother me much. Because I don't think of owning an Audiobook in the same way I think of owning a physical book. My thoughts are "I pay $10 to hear this book, once". Of course, this says a lot about me, because I _don't_ have this same thought about ebooks - I _do_ equate them to physical books.

My prediction is that the world will be going in a direction in which physical ownership of digital media is irrelevant. This _has_ to happen, because of the way digital media works. People will be buying the "ability" to listen to songs, not buying actual songs. Programs like Amazon's "lend books" will be seem very antiquated and irrelevant. Arguably, the way these will work is by buying subscriptions to services, i.e. $10 for all the music you can listen to ala Spotify. I think this is the only way the world can go which will make sense to consumers, although I fear for the publishers.

</comment><comment> angry-hacker Owners of digital products want the same kind of protection like products you can touch have but they don't want to give anything back. Such as right to loan, lend or resell their products... it's wrong on so many levels.

(I know Amazon somehow let's you lend books for limited time but I'm talking about industry in general)

</comment><comment><USER37> Webapp idea: cross-reference an iTunes library with mp3s available via torrent (or ed2k/kad) of similar quality.

<comment><USER38> To what end? iTunes music has been DRM free since April 2009: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7813527.stm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> While I do keep an archived copy of my entire 200GB library on the home server, does this even matter anymore?

Spotify anyone?

Subscription services will eventually win over large locally owned media. It's so nice to have access to any song I want for $10 /month, without having to worry if my iPhone has enough storage to hold it all.

</comment><comment><USER40> I remove DRM from everything I purchase.

Who inherits my iTunes library (or kindle library etc etc)? My estate does.

</comment><comment><USER41> An extension of this is, will we see more wills with login credentials to different services? Is that even legal to pass down to someone after you die? For example you include your lastpass/1password account in your will.

<comment><USER42> It's common for services (e.g., NetFlix, iTunes) to explicitly forbid giving your passwords to anybody else. I suppose they would enforce this by cancelling your account (which they can do at any time) when they learn that you're dead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Classic first world problem, right here...

Oh no - I have so much music that a physical storage model doesn't scale - <USER2> fact, I have so. much. music. that I can't afford to own it in physical media! I can only afford to license it for my lifetime! Whatever shall I do?

This isn't to say that transferable digital assets are unimportant, but just to point out that part of the reason people in previous generations did not suffer our terrible woes is that only very few of them tried to accumulate obscenely large collections. (I have 27 GB of music accumulated - that's 16 days of nonstop music. When I cast my eye over history, I am in the obscenely wealthy 0.001% (pick a number) who could command over two weeks of nonstop music on a whim. It's nothing less than obscene.)

If you keep a moderate library, there's nothing wrong with physical media.

<comment><USER44> Library size has _nothing_ to do with it. People choose digital for reasons other than "too many little plastic discs to keep track of".

Digital content enables a certain class of packrat, to be sure. But they're tangentially relevant, at best.

<comment><USER43> I wouldn't say that library size is only tangentially relevant. After, all, if we all had small libraries, we wouldn't be worried about them as a valuable part of our estate, would we?

You're right, digital media bring all kinds of convenience and portability that make them valuable forms of media that should be transferable. (More important is that they should be transferable across formats/devices in time - I don't think my kids will be able to play my mp3s when I die :-)

But digital media uniquely encourage large library size - they are uniquely prone to accumulation.

How many times have you seen the following argument made, "If you made it easy to buy a digital copy legitimately, I wouldn't pirate?" Well, with successful stores (such as iTunes) the purchasing process has been made extremely easy.

What happens when you have extreme ease of purchase coupled with negligible storage cost? That's a recipe for inadvertent hoarding if I ever saw one!

Digital media enable us to lose all sense of scale of how much we have accumulated(because we have no physical objects to haul about. I don't think it's just a certain class of packrat that suffers, I think we _all_ suffer from this loss of perspective.

It makes the question of transferability more acute to us, because we're investing more (money, time, attention) in gathering and consuming media than we would otherwise. So I stand by my original post - this is a first world problem :-)

<comment><USER44> Value makes them relevant to estate issues.

It seems to me unlikely that digital content will remain the domain of relatively cheap music, books and videos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I've been pondering exactly this for my current business plan, what's been clear to me is that this is more of a business/legal issue as opposed to technology. Oh to sunder the walled gardens.

</comment><comment><USER46> iTunes songs are currently DRM-free. You can just copy the files to wherever you want, or re-sync the whole library to another iTunes match account for $25.

That's one battle won, now we need to get rid of DRM for video and ebooks...

<comment><USER47> >or re-sync the whole library to another iTunes match account for $25.

why $25?

<comment><USER46> <http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Fascinating post - thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm not a lawyer, but here are the questions I'd ask, which likely have different answers for different online services, different states, and different countries:

1\. Are the rights under the EULA / ToS transferable due to terms explicitly in the EULA governing transferability?

2\. If there are no explicit terms, what is the "default setting" for transferability?

3\. Are the digital items being sold considered goods, services, or some combination? (I'd imagine it's much easier to terminate a contract for ongoing services than to negate heirs' rights to goods the deceased has purchased.)

4\. Is there a catch-all "escape clause" in the EULA which says "We're allowed to terminate your right to access these songs or movies at any time for any reason, or no reason"?

5\. What about the first sale doctrine? Doesn't it say that you have some right to transfer items regardless of what the EULA / ToS says?

From a practical standpoint, you can probably transfer the account by just giving the password to the receiving heir. Making new purchases on the old account may no longer be possible if they check to make sure the name on your credit card matches the name the account is registered to, but I'd imagine many providers don't do this check and only care about what your CC info says if they start getting chargebacks.

If you don't know the password and don't have access to the deceased's email to use the usual password reset mechanism, you may be facing an uphill battle.

It would also be a micromanagement nightmare to have several accounts on the same service with different content. It might also trigger provider's alarms if you access several different accounts from the same IP address (although if the number is reasonably small -- less than ten, let us say -- hopefully they'll assume it's legit, i.e. multiple accounts belonging to different people living in the same house with a single NAT'ed Internet connection.)

The simple fact of the matter is that most Web businesses' domain modeling assumes that customers live forever. What happens when they don't is basically anarchy. We're still at the point where most of the people who die never had a large online presence, but in 30-50 years that will no longer be true.

An ideal situation for content providers would be for all content to be destroyed when someone dies, because then the next generation would have to buy it if they wanted it instead of inheriting it. The problem is that this leads to cognitive dissonance, because heritability of possessions is a central feature of many cultures, including ours.

An ideal situation for consumers is complete transferability. The first problem is that this encourages piracy -- if there was a free and legal resale market where any song could be sold for (let us say) $0.50, while songs can be bought on iTunes for $1.00, iTunes would make exactly $1.00 on each song it released, because exactly one person would buy it, then resell it (keeping a local copy), and its buyer would resell it, etc. The second problem is that it's difficult for a company halfway around the country to differentiate between the legitimate heir of someone who's actually died and an account thief.</comment>