I am anti-copyright, but I think you're considering this through the lens of a computer scientist/rocket engineer instead of someone who's had to work a worthless desk job or wait tables or paint houses.
As someone who recently (and probably unsustainably) got out of the cycle of worthless jobs and knows a handful of musicians, here's my perspective:
Indie (and indie label) musicians can actually do fairly well with recorded music. No, they won't be rich. Middle class is at most the target, usually under. Live in a third-tier city and have few expenses. You don't need to sell very much for a baseline livable state.
$10000 a month isn't an achievable target for most working artists. $800, on the other hand, is, even without touring. Sell a handful of Bandcamp copies, sell a few physical copies (cassettes are best for this in the current moment, being cheap to produce and having a fairly loyal audience), have your back catalog do well enough on streaming.
$800 is enough to live on, if you're living with roommates. In many ways, living with $800/month and no unfulfilling 40hr job is much better than living with $1800 and an unfulfilling 40hr job. Even if you don't want to live with roommates, it cuts the amount of work for an employer you have to do by a great deal. Working low-skill work is soul-crushing.
For authors, from what I understand, this baseline is even more achievable. If you have no hopes of getting rich, the current copyright system is fine.
But there are multiple other avenues for revenue. One can sell merchandise, such as the ever-popular band t-shirt. And there are still many who will want to buy an official cassette rather than just download a song. There are also paid gigs - a live performance is not replaceable with a download. One can livestream a performance, and get paid for the ad placements.
All of these are uniquely worse than the current system for the artists, though. Again, I agree that copyright should be abolished (or that copyleft should be enshrined in law), entirely, for all forms of media (including software). I just think it's important to realize that there are classes of people for whom the existing circumstances are better for. Acknowledging that a change will disadvantage or make circumstances materially worse for people is important.
Livestreaming and live performances and merch creation are all vastly different skillsets than making music in your bedroom, and some musicians are only really good at that part.
Singapore as the benchmark for "competent local government" seems flawed. Ignoring decades of corruption incidents[1], it's also plagued with human rights abuses, including significant volumes of human trafficking[2]. As a nation-state, it's still extremely enthusiastic about draconian punishments and the death penalty. The state is full of moral decay; worst of all, its former prime minister is reading about Haskell in his semi-retirement[3]. The latter example of moral decay is not unique to Singapore (he is not the only senior national government official to decline into Haskell usage in Southeast Asia), but it is not a good sign of national health.
There are better "canonical examples" of competent local government, like Zurich, Geneva, or Vienna. All of which are generally rated higher in HDI than Singapore, none of which have the death penalty, and none of which have government officials who are Haskell programmers.
Not in Wikipedia: how the Singapore ruling party also appoints their most loyal members to high-paying political positions ($660k/year), where nobody really knows what the role is about [1].
Many loyal members also get cushy directorship and leadership appointments to state-controlled companies [2], labour associations [3], and non-profits [4].
Some of these are up-and-coming MPs in need of resume padding, others are election losers that still need to maintain their million-dollar lifestyles.
It's easy to govern a town in a competent-looking fashion when you have plenty of money to spend, and it's easy to have plenty of money to spend when you decide to close your eyes to the source of the cash flowing into your vaults.
Swiss banks largely don't exist in the way they did in the 1990s and prior because of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (an American regulation almost universally agreed to be overreaching and violating the sovereignty of other countries); privacy is only guaranteed to Swiss nationals, and they automatically share information with external governments. These days, if you want to be secretive about your banking but park assets in a stable country, you go to Singapore.
Also, Singapore (as well as Zurich and Geneva) is where it is through plain fiscal dumping. Which won't work if everyone does it. It turns growth into a zero sum game, where you grow through sucking other's wealth.
Singapore and Switzerland are successful parasites.
Hong Kong used to be pretty good. Government services were quite efficient. Business friendly. Excellent healthcare. Low taxes. Low crime rate. All of Singapore's positives minus the negatives. Not sure how it is these days.
I would say from personal experience in Hongkong, that during the transition from a multi-party democracy to a single party state, the gov't services (minus the police and protest-related judges/courts) still remains excellent. The day to day workings are still extremely functional and efficient.
That said, the excitment about "low taxes" in Hongkong is mostly misguided. Yes, the max is 15% of your total income, but you basically get nothing except an (admittedly world-class) international airport and metro system. Public health care? You will never use it. You wrote: "Excellent healthcare". Sure, the private hospitals where your private health care insurance pays for services are excellent. Public schools? You will never use them. Public pension (retirement)? What a laugh -- you will be poor. Even the police are very lazy unless they are already present when the crime occurs. One weird bright spot: Public housing is very decent, but again, you will never use it. So really, what are you getting for 15% tax rate? Not much. If you are upper middle class and above, and are comfortable to watch elderly people in your neighborhood collect aluminium cans or cardboard for recycle-for-cash, then you will be fine paying for these essential life services from your handsome earnings. However, you will be surrounded by many very low income people. It is not a low tax paradise. My motto: "Hongkong isn't rich, but rich people do live there."
An anecdote about gov't staff efficiency: I will never forget the day that I applied for an international driver's license. I handed over my regular, local (HK) driver's license to the staff. He said nothing, but began to frantically fill forms at his desk. After about a minute, I was confused and asked, "Is there an issue?" "Oh nothing too big. Your [Chinese] name was changed, but you never applied for an updated driver's license. I have filled all the forms for you. You only need to sign here." The craziest part: On paper (if I recall correctly), there are relatively draconian rules about updating your driver's license in X days if your name or address changes.
EDIT
You wrote:
> Low crime rate.
To be clear, all of northeast Asia has very low crime rates: Mainland China, China, Macau, Hongkong, Taiwan, South & North Korea, and Japan. This is a complex issue that could be the subject of multiple PhDs. I doubt it has anything to do with a high quality police force.
> none of which have government officials who are Haskell programmers
Haskell is just an aspiration. The language he is known to command is C++, or rather C, because from a cursory look I'm not seeing any C++ features being used here :)
If you read the article, he notes that after he retires, he's got a book on Haskell he's going to read. He retired from the Prime Minister position earlier this year. His aspiration is becoming his reality as we speak.
>There are better "canonical examples" of competent local government, like Zurich, Geneva
When was the last time you were in Geneva? It deteriorates with each passing year. Homeless druggies on Rue du Rhone were not possible even 5 years ago, now they are there every 50 metres. The worst part is that now, during the summer, the ambient weed smell mixes with the evaporation from the lake to produce a truly obnoxious atmosphere.
While I agree with some of this post, I am confused this by this part:
> The state is full of moral decay
What do you mean? And can you provide some clear examples?
I do think many people here are not aware of the political situation in Singapore. On the surface, it is a multi-party democracy. However, looking deeper, you will see the majority party has always been the same since independence from Malaysia: The People's Action Party (PAP). (Man, that party name has such a distopian vibe to it, like a political party name from the original Blade Runner film!) Also, freedom of speech (and media) is incredibly weak -- in name only, similar to Mainland China (and now Hongkong). And, they have very strong libel laws that the gov't frequently uses against critics.
> What do you mean? And can you provide some clear examples?
On top of the things you listed?
Genital mutilation is common and accepted. Sex trafficking is common. Politicians are extremely nepotistic. Politicians are Haskell programmers. They outright murder people convicted of certain crimes. Conversion therapy is legal. Children are not allowed to view content with LGBT people in it. That's just scratching the surface; it is similar to the UAE in that it gets an unreasonably high HDI spot for how few human rights and how little decency it actually respects.
- Do you have a reference for 'Genital mutilation is common and accepted'? It seems it only occurs in a minority of the also-minority 15% Muslim group, along with male circumcision. Obviously not great, but phrasing is dramatic.
- 'outright murder people convicted of certain crimes' - this is commonly known as the death penalty, which many developed countries unfortunately still practice. The phrasing is certainly dramatic.
- Certainly agree re LGBT. They decriminalized male intercourse recently (though this is more symbolic since it was never prosecuted) so there's progress - it is still a conservative Asian society but seems like leaning Western liberal over time.
> Singapore as the benchmark for "competent local government" seems flawed.
That may well be, but taking issue with the headline's factuality is different than declaring it to be nonsensical, which is what the GP was essentially saying.
>“Functional programmers ruining cities as well as codebases.”
The information [and communication] technology {I.[C.]T.} boom at the beginning of the millenium & especially at the beginning of the 2010s – where you've had banks, investment firms, and angel investors just throwing away their money to anything relating to computing, communications, hardware, and software – had two aims that are publicly known: quantum computing and machine-learning technology (later known as artificial intelligence).
They figured out quantum computing sometime in the ±2015.
Machine-learning, A.I., took a bit longer but it's here – confirmed at the beginning of the 2020s.
Now, I.T. has served its original mission and it's relegated to maintenance & routine work for the [already] existing infrastructure.
Self-serving, self-important, self-fulfilling prophecy; who knew!?
You got me. Normally, I downvote these Reddit-type of comments, but this comment just has too much bloody wit. And, I say that with no hate for functional programming concepts.
You realize that is actually a very short list of corruption scandals - 12 over 55 years; and that they were investigated and prosecuted? The list of countries with stronger corruption records is short - this is not a great point to start your argument. And while it's certainly not the best in terms of human trafficking, it still has lower rates than most other developed Western European nations, and the US. I share equal disgust on the Haskell issue, of course.
Barely related, but do you have advice for someone who wants to work on a very specific project at Google? I'm not at the point of hireability yet, but in the long-term I want to optimize my chances to get hired to work on AndroidXR. Should I just put my effort into writing tangentially-related open source projects? Should I be trying to grab positions at similarly-focused companies first? I don't really care about optimizing for comp, and I don't even really mind if I'm only contracting and not at Google proper, I just very specifically want to work on that project.
So that's why he would never pass forum administration to the other guy. For anyone who's caught by surprise, you should look at his portable Gamecube.
Could you change the name? Since there hasn't been a release yet, it would break nothing, and there's already a project (that you also started, but that is used by more people, since it is released software) that was named Freenet, that would probably like its name back.
Reusing the name of a longstanding software project for a similar but distinct project with wildly different security guarantees is hazardous; it means that existing documentation which directs people to use "Freenet" in a specific way may expose them to unexpected risks. Please reconsider.
The name belongs to the non-profit and not a specific codebase, the previous codebase had itself a number of fundamental rewrites (eg. with the 0.7 release) and retained the name Freenet through them - this is no different.
The name change decision was made over a year ago after a long debate and very careful consideration. There is risk but risk is inevitable if you want to make progress.
> The name change decision was made over a year ago after a long debate and very careful consideration.
There was no "careful consideration" whatsoever.
What you did was the opposite of careful in fact:
Without ANY prior discussion with the maintainers of the existing Freenet project you came to the mailing list and DICTATED your decision of reusing the name "Freenet".
It's all publicly documented in the mailing list archive, see the thread "Important Announcement: Freenet naming change" of Ian Clarke (Ian Clarke is the user "sanity" I am replying to here):
When you dictated this, the team said they're against it - and you did it anyway.
Yes, you claimed you discussed it with the "board" of the project!
But the "board" only contains people who haven't talked to the team in over a decade. Of course they shrugged off your decision because the only way they are in contact with the project is through what you say, so you can shape their opinion however you please by selectively deciding what you tell them.
It was a very sad act of disgracing the effort of volunteer contributors.
And it isn't even in the best interest of your new project either, because it seems to haunt every discussion about it.
How about thinking about whether you made a mistake?
Mistakes happen and aren't bad. What's bad is never admitting one.
I'm sorry to hear that you feel this way, but I need to correct some inaccuracies in your comment.
The decision to rebrand Locutus as Freenet 2023 was not made lightly or without discussion. On the contrary, I had an extensive discussion with the lead maintainer of the original codebase starting over a year before the decision was announced.
The primary reason for the redesign was to address the significant changes in technology and the web since the original Freenet was first designed in 1999 and underwent its last major redesign in 2005. These different eras brought different technologies and problems. To effectively address today's challenges, a comprehensive redesign was necessary.
As the architect of Freenet, it was my responsibility to make this decision based on what would lead to the best end result, even if it wasn't the most popular choice. The goal was to create software that could gain sufficient adoption to tackle the serious problems we're seeing with centralization today.
I understand that this decision was controversial and not everyone agreed with it. However, it was made to ensure that Freenet could continue to innovate and adapt in the face of modern challenges. Mistakes can happen, but in this case, the decision was made with careful consideration and a focus on the long-term goals of the project. I stand by my decision.
I appreciate the contributions of all volunteers and maintainers, and I deeply respect their work. The goal was never to overshadow their efforts but to build on the legacy of Freenet in a way that meets current and future needs.
I hope this clarifies the situation and provides some context for the decision.
I'm not going to change the name again. I carefully weighed up the pros and cons over the course of a year - debating the issue with those that disagreed. Eventually I made a call as the architect of Freenet. It's not without risk, but risks are sometimes necessary.
People are entitled to disagree but I'm not going to relitigate it at this point.
East Asian wars tend to be drastically more deadly than the wars of any other group. The Three Kingdoms War wiped China's population to 30% of what it once was, and had half the deaths of WWII in a world with two hundred million people instead of billions.
It's Dedoimedo. The entire point of Dedoimedo is whining loudly about whatever gets reviewed. If he stopped complaining about things his audience paid him to complain about, they would stop paying him enough money for overpriced vehicles that he then could complain about in an overly-braggadocios manner.
As someone who recently (and probably unsustainably) got out of the cycle of worthless jobs and knows a handful of musicians, here's my perspective:
Indie (and indie label) musicians can actually do fairly well with recorded music. No, they won't be rich. Middle class is at most the target, usually under. Live in a third-tier city and have few expenses. You don't need to sell very much for a baseline livable state.
$10000 a month isn't an achievable target for most working artists. $800, on the other hand, is, even without touring. Sell a handful of Bandcamp copies, sell a few physical copies (cassettes are best for this in the current moment, being cheap to produce and having a fairly loyal audience), have your back catalog do well enough on streaming.
$800 is enough to live on, if you're living with roommates. In many ways, living with $800/month and no unfulfilling 40hr job is much better than living with $1800 and an unfulfilling 40hr job. Even if you don't want to live with roommates, it cuts the amount of work for an employer you have to do by a great deal. Working low-skill work is soul-crushing.
For authors, from what I understand, this baseline is even more achievable. If you have no hopes of getting rich, the current copyright system is fine.